Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Nihilism

Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Nihilism

The word “nihilism” comes from the Latin word ‘nihil’, which means ‘nothing’. As a term, ‘nihilism’ first came into wide use in the period extending from the 1870s into the early years of the twentieth century, perhaps, due to the influence of three writers: the Russian novelists Ivan Turgenev and Fëdor Dostoevskii, and the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Prior to this,  the scattered uses of ‘nihilism’ can be found in philosophical, theological, political and literary writings of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Europe to refer to atheism and its alleged inability to provide support for knowledge and morality, or to impart purpose to human life. Nihilism as “the radical repudiation of value, meaning, and desirability” is a force contrary to the will to create something that is valuable, meaningful and desirable.

There are different perspective views on the idea of nihilism.

First is St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas’s conception of nothingness (nihilism) was so absolute that it disbarred any idea of “succession or even motion”^. For Aquinas, there is only God and outside of and apart from God, there is nothing, just as there is not even any “outside of’ or “apart from”. Nothing is a relative concept; it is correlative with something; that is, with already existing^.

The Second is Anselm of Canterbury who speaks of creatio ex-nihilo (creation out of nothing). In his inquiry of the source of things in existence, Anselm asserts in his monologium that, from whatever source anything is created, that source is the cause of what is created from it. Accordingly, if anything was created from nothing, this very nothing was the cause of what was created from it. However, the whole idea of Anselm about creatio ex-nihlo is total denial or rejection of emanation as posited by Plotinus.

Consequently, Friedrich Nietzsche who is the bridge between modernity and post-modernity understands nihilism in another perspective that is quite different from the previous views we formally listed. Nietzsche’s idea of Nihilism is referred to as ‘Radical Nihilism’ and in his book titled The Will to Power, published in 1901, he announced ‘the advent of nihilism’ in European culture, its character and causes. There he attributed nihilism to the declining influence of Christianity and loss of faith in God, for without God, human life seemed deprived of purpose and value.

According to Nietzsche, Nihilism is the devaluation (or suppression) of the supreme values. Nietzsche took nihilism seriously, but only as part of an effort to provide an alternative to the void that it offered. Nietzsche could be categorized as a nihilist in the descriptive sense, in that he believed that there was no longer any real substance to traditional, social, political, moral, and religious values. He denied that those values had any objective validity or that they imposed any binding obligations upon us. He argues further that they could at times have negative consequences for us. We could also categorize Nietzsche as a nihilist in the descriptive sense, for he saw that many people in the society around him were effectively nihilists themselves for they did not believe in the existing moral and socio-political principle in their society.

 More so, Nietzsche saw that the old values and old morality simply did not have the same power that they once did. It is here that he announced the “death of God” with his famous dictum ‘God is dead. He thus argued that the traditional source of ultimate and transcendental value; God, no longer mattered in modern culture and was effectively dead to us. In view to this, Nietzsche could also be described as a nihilist in a normative sense because he regarded the “death of God” as being ultimately a good thing for society. For he believed that traditional moral values, and in particular those stemming from traditional Christianity, were ultimate harmful to humanity. As such, Nietzsche is not simply interested in tearing down traditional beliefs based on traditional values; instead, he also wanted to help build new values. It is in line with this that he pointed out a ‘Superman’ who would be able to construct his own set of values independent of what anyone else thought.

This very idea of nihilism is figured also in Jean-Paul Sartre but Sartre holds a somewhat different concept of Nihilism from Nietzsche. Sartre updated the philosophy of Nihilism earlier espoused by Frederick Nietzsche. According to Sartre, Nihilism (or nothingness) becomes apparent in man’s freedom. In a lucid way, he declares that humans are nothingness, a lack of everything. And this nothingness is freedom; man is freedom. Man, according to him, is not free to be free; he is condemned to be free.

Critiques and possible debates on the philosophy of Friedrick Nietzsche

            Having listened to Nietzsche, his views on the happenings in his society, the loss of moral values, and the birth of the Superman which Zarathustra speaks of, lots of criticisms abounds. Famously, there are two major critics on Nietzsche’s philosophy. In the biography of Nietzsche, we were told that he was formally a devoted Christian but, was made an atheist through the influence of his master Schopenhauer. Now, if Nietzsche does not believe in the supremacy of God in the universe, why did he not agree with his contemporaries on the supremacy of reason? The fact that Nietzsche still laments on the ills of human reason raised the question whether he wants humanity to go back to its dogmatic slumber or to blend dogma with reason for he did not set forth the way forward for man.

            Secondly, in presenting the world as chaotic, meaningless and valueless, Nietzsche went further to posit the possibility of man becoming a Superman. He praises the Superman as one who can still affirm the value of existence. Now, granted that nihilism is unlivable as Nietzsche thinks, is Nietzsche’s call to overcome nihilism by assigning meaning to our existence not merely asking us to create another illusion in order to go on living? Also, if we should follow Nietzsche’s requirement on what will make one a Superman, then hardly could anyone live up to that. This is true because man is both a being of nature and nurture. 

In addition, Nietzsche was also said to have committed a genetic fallacy. This criticism was raised from his philosophical method. Nietzsche always finds succor in dismissing traditional philosophical ideas by merely demonstrating that they have psychological origins and fulfill subjective needs within us. But, is it not possible that a belief in God or rational world order fulfills subjective needs? As such, that an idea is not psychologically or rationally satisfying does not necessitate its rejection. This and many more are the criticisms of Nietzsche’s nihilistic philosophy.