Dominic Kirby

Zack De Piero
Writing 2
10/2/15
Nihilism: The Freedom of Emptiness
In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the sequel to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
both by Douglas Adams there is a machine that shows the user the entirety of the universe as well as their
place within it. It destroys their soul, crushes their sense of purpose, and transforms them into a lifeless husk of
their former self. The pointlessness of their existence when compared to the infinity of the universe makes
them lose all faith in everything. That sounds like a poor experience. However, this is what Nihilists believe.
Nihilists believe in nothing--even the root of the word, nihil, means nothing. They believe that life is
meaningless, completely and indisputably meaningless. While comparing two academic pieces and one popculture piece that discuss Nihilistic views from different perspectives rhetorically , I will be trying to show
you, the reader, how these different pieces target different parts of our consciousness/brain and try to appeal
these parts through specific rhetorical moves.
The first academic article that I chose to analyze is, The Structure of Emptiness by Graham Priest.
In it, he uses beliefs from both western and eastern philosophy/religions as well as mathematics to prove that
the belief in nothingness is actually a belief in a precise structure, the totality of emptiness.
The discipline of philosophy is in based logic. As such, one of Priests moves is the use of logical
transitions between components of his arguments. By contrast, of course, therefore, however, and suppose are
all heavily used throughout the article to give it a sense of direction and to guide the reader from one argument
to the next. These help the reader to understand the argument of the author and prevent the reader from getting
lost as the argument moves forward. Although these transitions are important, what really makes a piece part
of the philosophy discipline is how they prove their claim. In this piece, the argument is made through
inductive reasoning. When Priest explains, Let us start by returning to the question of relational existence.
To be empty is to exist only as the locus of a field of relations.(Priest 472) this is an example of inductive
reasoning. It starts out with something small and uses it to prove a larger point. In this example he is arguing
that once you believe in nothing, you believe that our existence is nothing more than a sum of our relationships
with the universe. Small to big. Inductive reasoning is one of the pillars of the philosophy discipline; the fact
that he uses it in his argument would be expected by his colleagues.
The final move is his use of mathematics and visual aids to support his argument. When connecting
the pieces of his arguments, Priest postulates, A natural way of thinking about objects and the relations
between them is as a labeled graph. Thus, suppose that we have a set of objects, X_o (why the subscript we
will see in due course), and a bunch of relations, p = {R : i e /}, between them. Suppose,

for simplicity, that X_o = {a, b, c} and that p = {Ro, R^}. Then the graph might be depicted in the diagram in
figure 1. In this section, he uses both mathematics and visual aids to prove his argument, which is really cool.
The ability to illustrate a non-physical idea using mathematics is an amazing thing that is a specialty of the
philosophy discipline.
Based on the fact that the author relies heavily on logical transition, induction, mathematics, and visual
aids, we can assume that his audience is meant to be well versed in philosophy beforehand. We can also
assume from this that the author himself is well versed in the conventions of his genre(it takes one to no one).
This makes Priest seem credible to his readers because it establishes his expertise in this field. However, when
he uses beliefs from eastern and western philosophies/religions, he makes sure to explain them thoroughly
before using them in an argument, indicating that he does not expect his audience to be knowledgeable on
these ideas. Based on this, we can assume that the audience was expecting this piece to be a semi-rigorous
proof that uses typical components of philosophy as evidence for his claim.
The purpose of the piece is clear: to prove that the belief in nothingness is actually the belief in the
structure that provides nothingness. Everything he does in his paper comes back to this. He accomplishes this
by using the beliefs of both eastern and western philosophers, extracting what he wants out of these beliefs,
then using what he extracts to form his own argument. All of this is supplemented with visual aids,
mathematics, and inductive reasoning.
Every step that Priest makes in his argument is very formulaic and methodical. Inductive reasoning,
mathematics, visual aid , and logical transitions all make his essay appeal to the left side of our brain and the
logical/critical thinking side of our consciousness. The mathematics provide raw data, the inductive reasoning
manipulates this raw data to support his claims in a meticulous, step-by-step way, the visual aids connect all of
the claims and data together in a reader-friendly way, and the transitions move the argument from step to step.
There are no grand leaps or exposition, everything is slow and steady. This approach forces the reader to use
the left side of the brain to follow the argument, and therefore forces them to think about the paper in a specific
light. By controlling the light in which his paper is read, Priest can make sure that his essay will be read in the
way he wants it to be. Priest isnt the first to do it, the whole discipline of Philosophy does it, and he simply
followed those conventions. These conventions appeal to the left side of the brain, the part that the discipline is
trying to target.
The next article is an economic piece titled, The Wages of Liberal Nihilism by Mike Konczal. In it,
he uses statistics and visual aids as well as biased language to argue that liberals are to blame for the low wage
prices in America. In his own words, the nihilism part, rests in the fact that these stories are palliatives meant
to relieve the anxiety of facing a massive political problem.(Konczal 1).

Konczals uses statistics heavily in his piece, both to support his claim and to establish credibility as a
writer. Economics is a relatively new science. As such, it is still in its infancy phase of gathering information
and analyzing the trends the information shows. This make statistics invaluable in economics because it is the
best and really only way to display the information in a meaningful way. Because of this, almost every
economic article has some sort of statistics. In Konczals article he uses statistics about employment, economic
regulations, and union participation to legitimize his claim. For example, he uses the fact that, unemployment
has been over 6% for the last 6 years as well as that There are 500,000 fewer government workers since
2008 to support his claim that the FED has undershot inflation consistently. The hard evidence that statistics
provide gives a base to his argument and therefore make it stronger.
Another move is his use of visual aids in his article. He mostly uses visual aids in conjunction with his
statistics to make it clear to the reader what he wants these statistics to show. Statistics dont say anything by
themselves; they need the context that the writer provides to give them meaning. To give them context,
Konczal uses animated pictures. In Understanding Rhetoric: Spaces for Writing, Elizabeth Losh and Josh
Alexander postulate that the context an image is in frames the meaning of the image. This is especially true in
this article because the images are given meaning by the statistics just like the statistics are given meaning by
the pictures.
The final move is Konczals use of biased language. His audience is not only other economists but
specifically other conservative economists. His first sentence, Liberals need to own the wage problem
(Konczal 1)instantly gives him credibility with other conservatives, because it lets them know that he agrees
with them. His purpose is to blame liberals for an economic problem, and he is speaking to an audience that
presumably already disagrees with liberals. The biased language that he uses gives him credibility with his
audience because it makes them see him as like-minded. It also give his argument strong footing because it
makes his essay one sided and therefore more direct. The directiveness of his argument make it easy for the
reader to follow since the reader knows what to expect.
Konczals use of biased language is the key to understanding what part of the brain he is trying to
appeal to. As humans, we tend to who think like us. When someone holds the same beliefs as us, we are more
likely to listen to what they have to say. This is what Konczal is trying to do with his obviously biased
language. His opening sentence make it clear to the reader at the very beginning what side of the political
spectrum he is, and since his target audience is on the same side of that spectrum, it makes them more likely to
agree with what he has to say in his article. Cleverly, he supplements his biased language with statistics, as to
make his biased language seem more objective, making the reader think that their biased opinion are more
objective, leading them to agree with Konczal even more.

I want my pop culture example to be something significantly ingrained in pop culture: The Dark
Knight. For those who dont know, The Dark Knight is the second installment in the Christopher Nolan
Batman trilogy. The main villain in it is the Joker; he is a nihilist. He believes in nothing. EX:The only
sensible way to live in this world is without rules! His goal the entire movie is to show the pointlessness of
everything. He wants to tear down the fabric of society in order to show that peoples morality is rooted in
selfishness and lies. Ex: Youll see, Ill show you, that when the chips are down, these uh civilized people,
theyll eat each other.
This is nihilism, and it is the most influential example of nihilism in mainstream pop culture since
Dostoevskys The Brothers Karamazov. Everybody loves the Joker in the movie. The question is why: why

were we, as a society, so taken by the Joker? How did he manage to corrupt us. My answer to this is that
he fed off our raw, repressed animal emotions. He spoke to the side of us that we try to repress, and we ate it
up. This is what pop culture sources can do so radically different when compared to academic sources. As I
discussed earlier in this paper, academic papers are based on statistics and rigorous logic. They want to
disconnect as much as possible with our irrational, animal emotions. However, pop culture can do the
opposite. They can go so far as to manipulate our emotions to elicit the reaction they want us to have. The
difference between the two is the change in audience and purpose. The audience of a pop culture piece are
those who have a surface level understanding of the subject matter, and the purpose of it is to entertain. These
differ greatly from the audience and purpose of a highly academic piece and therefore grant the creators a
different set of tools. The most important of which, I believe, is the ability to access and even manipulate the
emotions of their audience.
Mike Bunn wrote an article that we read titled, Reading like a Writer. Conversely, I want to argue
that in two of the examples above(the scholarly ones), the authors are trying to write like a reader. They both
know who their audience is, so they both know how the reader wants the information to be displayed. They
use the tools of their disciplines to make arguments that will be easy to follow by other members of their
discipline. In Dirks Navigating Genres he quotes Devitt who states,When people write, they draw on the
genres they know, their own context of genres, to help construct their rhetorical action. This is exactly what
the authors of the scholarly articles are doing. They are well versed in the genres they write it and therefore
reproduce them well. Since their target audience are members of their discipline, they conform their writing to
be in accordance with the conventions of said discipline. For example, I showed earlier that Priest uses
induction to prove his point. Induction is a common tool in a philosophers toolkit, therefore anyone with an
understanding of philosophy will be able to read his piece and instantly understand what he is doing. Similarly,

Konczal uses statistical evidence to interpret the trends of the economy and make claims based on these trends.
This a key idea in economics and will be easily understood by other economists.
Conversely, authors of pop culture cannot write like their reader. The nature and previous education of
their readers(or in my case movie-goers) cannot be defined in simple terms. Their audience is the masses, and
their purpose is to entertain. Therefore, they must provide entertainment that is simple enough for most people
to understand yet unique enough to separate themselves from everyone else. My source, The Dark Knight, was
unique partly because it heavily feature nihilism in it; however, it was also easy to understand because the
characters of Batman and the Joker have been around for generations. This is the balance pop culture writers
must strike.
Pop culture creators dont know all that much about their audience. Sure, they can try to pick a
specific demographic to target, but even then they still dont know that much about said demographic besides
generalizations and blanket statements. So in order to truly connect with the masses, pop culture creators have
make something that can connect with all people. To do this, they must find something that is uniformly and
intrinsically human. One of these things is the emotions we all have. They can target them and force us to
connect with their piece through these emotions. That is the part of our brain they are targeting and appealing
to, our irrational emotional side.
When you read a piece, you can read it in a lot of different ways. The specific way that you read it can
drastically change what you get out of it. If I watched Spongebob while trying to study marine biology, I
would be sorely disappointed. That is why authors targets an aspect of your brain, and forces you to look at it
through that light. The philosophy discipline has conventions that force the reader to think strictly logically,
pop culture tries to feed off of the raw emotion, and Konczal uses biased language to make the reader feel like
they are visiting with a like-minded friend. This is important for good writing. The more you can control how
your reader views what you have to say, the more you can force them to see things as you do.

Work Cited

The Dark Knight. By Christopher Nolan. Perf. Michael Caine, Aaron Eckhart, and Christian Bale. Warner
Bros. Pictures, 2008.
Konczal, Mike. "The Wages of Liberal Nihilism." N.p., n.d. Web.
Priest, Graham. "The Structure of Emptiness." N.p., n.d. Web.
Losh, Elizabeth M., Jonathan Alexander, Kevin Cannon, and Zander Cannon. Understanding Rhetoric: A
Graphic Guide to Writing. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Adams, Douglas. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. New York: Harmony, 1981. Print.
Lowe, Charles, Pavel Zemliansky, and Mike Bunn. "Reading Like a Writer." Writing Spaces: Readings on
Writing. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor, 2010. N. pag. Print.