The Nihilism of Contemporary Europe

While most of his contemporaries looked on the late nineteenthcentury with unbridled optimism, confident in the progress of science andthe rise of the German state, Nietzsche saw his age facing a fundamentalcrisis in values. With the rise of science, the Christian worldviewno longer held a prominent explanatory role in peoples lives, aview Nietzsche captures in the phrase God is dead. However, sciencedoes not introduce a new set of values to replace the Christianvalues it displaces. Nietzsche rightly foresaw that people needto identify some source of meaning and value in their lives, and ifthey could not find it in science, they would turn to aggressive nationalismand other such salves. The last thing Nietzsche would have wantedwas a return to traditional Christianity, however. Instead, he soughtto find a way out of nihilism through the creative and willful affirmationof life.

On one level, the will to power is a psychological insight:our fundamental drive is for power as realized in independence anddominance. This will is stronger than the will to survive, as martyrs willinglydie for a cause if they feel that associating themselves with thatcause gives them greater power, and it is stronger than the will tosex, as monks willingly renounce sex for the sake of a greater cause.While the will to power can manifest itself through violence andphysical dominance, Nietzsche is more interested in the sublimatedwill to power, where people turn their will to power inward andpursue self-mastery rather than mastery over others. An Indian mystic,for instance, who submits himself to all sorts of physical deprivationgains profound self-control and spiritual depth, representing amore refined form of power than the power gained by the conqueringbarbarian.

On a deeper level, the will to power explains the fundamental, changingaspect of reality. According to Nietzsche, everything is in flux,and there is no such thing as fixed being. Matter is always movingand changing, as are ideas, knowledge, truth, and everything else.The will to power is the fundamental engine of this change. For Nietzsche,the universe is primarily made up not of facts or things but ratherof wills. The idea of the human soul or ego is just a grammaticalfiction, according to Nietzsche. What we call I is really a chaoticjumble of competing wills, constantly struggling to overcome oneanother. Because change is a fundamental aspect of life, Nietzscheconsiders any point of view that takes reality to be fixed and objective,be it religious, scientific, or philosophical, as life denying.A truly life-affirming philosophy embraces change and recognizesin the will to power that change is the only constant in the world.

Nietzsche is critical of the very idea of objective truth.That we should think there is only one right way of consideringa matter is only evidence that we have become inflexible in ourthinking. Such intellectual inflexibility is a symptom of sayingno to life, a condition that Nietzsche abhors. A healthy mindis flexible and recognizes that there are many different ways ofconsidering a matter. There is no single truth but rather many.

At this point, interpreters of Nietzsche differ. Someargue that Nietzsche believes there is such a thing as truth butthat there is no single correct perspective on it. Just as we cannotget the full picture of what an elephant is like simply by lookingat its leg or looking at its tail or looking at its trunk, we cannotget a reasonable picture of any truth unless we look at it frommultiple perspectives. Others, particularly those who value Nietzschesearly essay On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, argue thatNietzsche believes the very idea of truth to be a lie. Truth isnot an elephant that we must look at from multiple perspectivesunder this view. Rather, truth is simply the name given to the pointof view of the people who have the power to enforce their pointof view. The only reality is the will to power, and truth, likemorality, is just another fig leaf placed on top of this reality.

Throughout his work, particularly in The Antichrist, Nietzsche writesscathingly about Christianity, arguing that it is fundamentallyopposed to life. In Christian morality, Nietzsche sees an attemptto deny all those characteristics that he associates with healthylife. The concept of sin makes us ashamed of our instincts and oursexuality, the concept of faith discourages our curiosity and naturalskepticism, and the concept of pity encourages us to value and cherishweakness. Furthermore, Christian morality is based on the promiseof an afterlife, leading Christians to devalue this life in favorof the beyond. Nietzsche argues that Christianity springs from resentmentfor life and those who enjoy it, and it seeks to overthrow healthand strength with its life-denying ethic. As such, Nietzsche considersChristianity to be the hated enemy of life.

As the title of one of his books suggests, Nietzsche seeksto find a place beyond good and evil. One of Nietzsches fundamental achievementsis to expose the psychological underpinnings of morality. He showsthat our values are not themselves fixed and objective but ratherexpress a certain attitude toward life. For example, he argues thatChristian morality is fundamentally resentful and life denying,devaluing natural human instincts and promoting weakness and theidea of an afterlife, the importance of which supercedes that ofour present life. Nietzsches aim is not so much to replace Christianmorality with another morality. Rather, he aims to expose the veryconcept of morality as being a fig leaf placed on top of our fundamentalpsychological drives to make them seem more staid and respectable.By exposing morality as a fiction, Nietzsche wants to encourageus to be more honest about our drives and our motives and more realisticin the attitude we take toward life. Such honesty and realism, hecontends, would cause a fundamental revaluation of all values.Without morality, we would become an entirely different speciesof being, and a healthier species of being at that.

Nietzsche contends that humanity is a transition, nota destination. We ceased to be animals when we taught ourselvesto control our instincts for the sake of greater gains. By learningto resist some of our natural impulses, we have been able to forgecivilizations, develop knowledge, and deepen ourselves spiritually.Rather than directing our will to power outward to dominate thosearound us, we have directed it inward and gained self-mastery. However,this struggle for self-mastery is arduous, and humanity is constantly temptedto give up. Christian morality and contemporary nihilism are justtwo examples of worldviews that express the desire to give up onlife. We come to see life as blameworthy or meaningless as a wayof easing ourselves out of the struggle for self-mastery. Nietzschesconcept of the overman is the destination toward which we startedheading when we first reined in our animal instincts. The overmanhas the self-mastery that animals lack but also the untrammeledinstincts and good conscience that humans lack. The overman is profoundlyin love with life, finding nothing in it to complain about, noteven the constant suffering and struggle to which he willingly submitshimself.

While it is hard to give a definitive account of the eternalrecurrence, we can undoubtedly claim that it involves a supremeaffirmation of life. On one level, it expresses the view that timeis cyclical and that we will live every moment of our lives overand over an infinite number of times, each time exactly the same.In other words, each passing moment is not fleeting but rather echoesfor all eternity. Nietzsches ideal is to be able to embrace theeternal recurrence and live in affirmation of this idea. In otherwords, we should aim to live conscious of the fact that each momentwill be repeated infinitely, and we should feel only supreme joyat the prospect.

On another level, the doctrine of the eternal recurrenceinvolves Nietzsches distinctive metaphysical notions. Nietzschecontends that there is no such thing as being: everything is alwayschanging, always in a state of becoming. Because nothing is fixed,there are no things that we can distinguish and set apart fromother things. All of reality is intertwined, such that we cannotpass judgment on one aspect of reality without passing judgmenton all of reality. In other words, we cannot feel regret for oneaspect of our lives and joy for another because these two aspectsof our lives cannot properly be distinguished from one another.In recognizing that all of life is one indistinguishable swirl ofbecoming, we are faced with the simple choice of saying yes toall life or no to all life. Naturally, Nietzschecontends that the yes-saying attitude is preferable.

Read more:
SparkNotes: Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900): Themes, Arguments, and Ideas