Overcoming Nihilism

Overcoming Nihilism

“That the ascetic ideal has meant so much to man, however, is an expression of the basic fact of the human will, its horror vacui: it needs a goal, – and it would rather will nothingness than not will. – Am I understood? Have I been understood? … ‘Absolutely not! dear Sir!’ – Then let us start at the beginning” (GM III a.1).

This essay will show that Nietzsche overcomes nihilism with the “Philosopher of the Future.” It will explain nihilism from Christianity through modernity by critiquing them. It will explain the concept of pity and the consequences of the Death of God. The essay will then explore Nietzsche’s solution to humanity’s nihilism in the idea of the “Philosopher of the Future.” The “Philosopher of the Future” is the most radical thinker, one who critiques the critiquing. This philosopher is the one who reaffirms life with the will to power. They understands that all life is willing and to think differently is to be a nihilist.

I must explain what Nietzsche means by critique first, or what it means to critique. A critique must be total and positive in its critiquing. “Total because ‘nothing must escape it’; positive, affirmative, because it can not restrict the power of knowing without releasing other previously neglected powers” (Deleuze 89). Most critiques (like Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason) fail to achieve either totality or positivity. Kant attempts to critique reason, yet uses reason to critique reason effectively making reason both accused and accuser. Kant cannot use reason to critique when he hasn’t shown reason’s existence. Nietzsche’s critique is a critique of thought itself. Nietzsche’s total critique is perspectival. “There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival knowing” (GM I a. 12). The more viewpoints one allows to enter, the more one knows how to deal with an object, “the much more complete will our ‘concept’ of this matter, our ‘objectivity’ be” (GM a. 12). To Nietzsche, perspectivism is the only possible objectivity and the Philosopher of the Future is a perspectival thinker.

Critiquing Nihilism

Since antiquity, humanity has been in nihilism, has been nihilistic, has believed in nothing. How is this true? What about my belief in God, morals, science, and the ego? Is this not something and not nothing? one may question. These are only human made conceptions and these conceptions are not grounded in the world. “We have only created the world which is of any account to man!” (GS a. 301). These conceptions are fictions; humanity has only created them because it finds some utility in them. In truth, humanity is believing in nothingness; he is willing nothingness. But what really is nihilism; what does it mean to will nothingness? Practical nihilism is to deny or depreciate life (actual, immediate life) (for theoretical nihilism, see below). To will nothingness is to depreciate life by inventing a separate world, a separate plane of reality: the afterlife, monads, the thing in-itself, concepts, the absolute – all are fictions which do not accord with nature as one’s senses receive them. Once these concepts are created, nihilism says, “All is finished! There is nothing left to be done!” However, life is only finished when it reaches its demise. “Life wants to climb and overcome itself climbing” (Z 101). Life is never finished in the moment; it always strives for more. Life is a continuous, chaotic abyss. This is in direct contradiction to nihilism; nihilism looks up, above live, in search of a transcendent value, in search of a meaning/reason/necessity for the chaos. The chaos creates immense suffering and nihilism seeks to cure the incurable suffering of life by positing an afterlife of no suffering or by explaining the suffering as non-suffering.

In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Zarathustra traveled far and wide in search of the living, of life. Zarathustra spoke, “wherever I found the living, there I heard also the speech on obedience. Whatever lives, obeys” (114). All life is an obeying of forces; all will wills and all life obeys. The will that obeys is the passive will and nihilism is nothing but obeying. However, Zarathustra found two other points of life, “he who cannot obey himself is commanded” and “commanding is harder than obeying” (114). To command will is difficult because one then carries the burden of those who obey. Why is commanding so difficult? Because the commanding will is the active will. The active is creative and self-transcending. It is the will which stares into the chaotic abyss of life and affirms life; all willing is an attempt to master life (Z 114). Yet with nihilism, humanity does not want to create or affirm; when nihilism is not overcome and there is just obeying. “No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same” (Z 18). With sameness, mediocrity, and passivity the Last Man appears. The Last Man is humanity as it now exists and will always exist unless humanity overcomes itself. The Last Man says, “we have invented happiness” and nothing more needs to be done except “think” about this invention, this end, this goal (Z 18).

Zarathustra and Nietzsche warn humanity against becoming the Last Man or following tarantulas, wise men, and ascetic priests. These men relish in tragedy, the tragedy of life: suffering; however, they do not enjoy creative suffering (i.e. art), but the cruelest suffering humanity can create: pity. “What is pity? It is the tolerance for states of life close to zero. Pity is the love of life, but of the weak, sick, reactive life” (Deleuze 149). While Deleuze is certainly correct in his description of pity, one must take a closer look at Nietzsche’s words to avoid misunderstanding. Pity lacks the energy of the feeling of life, i.e. “it has a depressing effect” (A a. 7). All life is suffering, which diminishes the will. Pity, unlike courage, does not act to overcome suffering but is passive, becomes saturated with suffering, ultimately strengthening suffering till it overwhelms. Zarathustra calls pity “the deepest abyss” (Z 157). Why is pity the deepest abyss? Because the pitiful forever fall in the void that is human life; the pitiful do not overcome suffering and also, the pitiful do not realize the abyss they are in. Abysses only appear when one is looking into it and when one is standing high above it. We now know what pity is and what is pitiful, but who is the pitiful? “The domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick animal man – the Christian” (A a. 3). Nietzsche blatantly calls Christianity the religion of pity (A a. 7). Why? you ask. Because Christianity has always affirmed the weak-willed, the banal, the unincorporated and depreciated life-affirming instincts. So, who led the pitiful for centuries? Certainly not God, for God is the thinnest, emptiest concept, a mere causa sui perpetrated as ens realissimum (TI 47). The leaders of the pitiful are the ascetic priests, those whose wish is for a different existence, an existence opposed to life; life against life: this is the ideal of the ascetic priest. However, life against life is a contradiction and in this contradiction the ascetic shackles himself and his herd to the pity of Christianity. The pitiful wallow in their suffering because of the incorporation of errors forced upon them. The Christian error is the promise of “the real world, unattainable for the moment, but promised to the wise, the pious, the virtuous man” (TI 50) – this wise, virtuous human is the one who denies life and affirms nothingness (i.e. God, the afterlife, the eternal). What kind of human could possibly overcome the shackles of Christianity? Only a madman.

What would such a madman say? “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him” (GS a. 125). With the Death of God comes the death of Christian morality and the nihilism it entails: the will to nothingness. Is humanity then free of the shackles of nihilism? Certainly not. The madman questions whether the world has become darker, colder, more empty after God’s death. Humanity, which clung so hard to this highest conception called God, now plunges continually in all directions as if straying through an infinite nothingness (GS a. 125). Now, humanity has lost all values it once clung too. For Nietzsche, this is the birth of theoretical nihilism. Theoretical nihilism is the realization that there are no transcendent values. It is the feeling that nothing has any meaning and that everything is the same. Out of this feeling of sameness, tarantulas appear; these are the preachers of equality (Z 99). Tarantulas say they want equality, but in reality they only want revenge. “’We shall wreak vengeance and abuse on all whose equal we are not’ – thus do the tarantula-hearts vow” (Z 100). Zarathustra warns against such people. He says their most secret ambition is not equality for all but to be tyrants (Z 100). The tarantulas wish to be tyrants over all who are not equal to them, all who are above them. The message of equality is another form of pity. “Life must overcome itself again and again” preaches Zarathustra (101). If there was such a thing as equality, nothing could be overcome.

Another consequence of the Death of God is the death of the highest concept, the transcendental concept. The madman asks, “shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it” (GS a. 125). When human becomes God, he attempts to become the transcendental ground for the world. What then happens? Humanity becomes an end unto itself. This is the ultimate consequence of Modernity and theoretical nihilism. Much like with equality, if humanity is an end there is nothing to be overcome. With this thought, everything must spring from humanity. From Descartes’ “I think, therefore, I am” to Hegel’s “I think, therefore, all is.” Humanity then imagines the world as a living being, a machine, or uniform everywhere. Nietzsche warns us to be on our guard against such thoughts (GS a. 109). “The general character of the world, on the other hand, is to all eternity chaos; not by the absence of necessity, but in the sense of the absence of order, structure, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever else our aesthetic humanities are called” [emphasis added](GS a. 109). Modernity is the will to the thinkability of all beings. Modernity seeks to bend the world around itself. Modern thinkers want to create a world where that they can kneel to (Z 113). They kneel to this world and believe it is an escape from the suffering of life. They are not overcoming life, they are acquiescing to it.

Practical nihilism reduced humanity to a level near zero, through pity, shackling him and preventing him from overcoming the suffering of life. Theoretical nihilism reduced all of humanity’s values and beliefs to nill. Now, humanity equates all things as equally nothing and does not strive to overcome anything. For Nietzsche, these are both deprecatory ways of existing in life. The reason both forms of nihilism are anti-life is because they don’t affirm, what to Nietzsche is, the most fundamental aspect of life: the will to power. “Only where there is life is there also will: not will to life but – thus I teach you – will to power” (Z 115). Nihilism perpetrates an end for humanity, either in this life or the next. It says there is nothing left to do, nothing left to create, there is only reactive, sullen life to live. This is the antithesis of the will to power. The will to power always wants more will, always strives to surpass itself. If something does not will, it is not alive. Nietzsche sees the future, after the Death of God is truly understood by humanity, as filled with a certain type of philosopher. These philosophers reaffirm life through the will to power. They are creators and destroyers. “Genuine philosophers, however, are commanders and legislators: they say, ‘Thus it shall be!” (BGE a. 211).

The Philosopher of the Future

So far, this essay has critiqued nihilism and shown its forms. However, there must be a way to overcome the nihilism which has plagued humanity for centuries. Nietzsche calls for a radical new wave of thinking. Nietzsche says modern philosophers are befallen by prejudices and prejudgments and have forgotten to doubt even the most basic of things. Nietzsche’s new philosopher has a taste and propensity with dangerous ideas, with the most dangerous ideas. Thinking dangerous ideas means being courageous. “Courage is the best slayer: courage even slays pity” (Z 157). By being a courageous thinker, one slays not only pity, but also one’s most sacred values and convictions. Sacred values and convictions try to prevent willing by saying “thou shalt do this,” by forcing one to obey. The new philosopher say, “I will” and slays all with his way, leaving room for new and creative forces (Z 26-27). The Philosopher of the Future embraces his will as both a creative and a destructive force. “And whoever must be a creator in good and evil, verily, he must first be an annihilator and break values. Thus the highest evil belongs to the highest goodness: but this is creative” (Z 116). Only by embracing the will to power can philosophy be creative.

So, what is the will to power? Is it an end in-itself? Nietzsche fervently says no to this. The will to power cannot be teleological otherwise the will is over. Will is a willing more, over and beyond itself. This is the problem of nihilism; it is only a will to an end and if will is ended then death has arrived. Will to power only seeks more power. Once a will has achieved power, it then seeks more power. In the willing process power is discharged in order to push forward and more power is needed. It is a from and a towards. From will, comes will in-order-to will more. In fact, will does not seek power as an end, but just seeks to will more. Will to power means will to will. The will is an active energy and Nietzsche takes it from the Greek word energeia which means “an active being-at-work.” Will to power is always a becoming; it is always continuous. For Nietzsche, the Being of the world (i.e. the will to power) is not the permanent concept of Being, but the impermanent concept of becoming.

Is the will to power a form of free will or determinism? A form of cause and effect? Absolutely not. First, Nietzsche thinks little of the concept of “freedom of the will.” He describes it as causa sui created by humans to pull themselves “out of the swamps of nothingness” (BGE a. 21). Nietzsche is also against the idea of the “unfree will” or determinism. It is a misrepresentation of cause and effect. “The ‘unfree will’ is a mythology; in real life it is only a matter of strong and weak wills” (BGE a. 21). Second, Nietzsche does not think philosophers should continue to use the concepts of cause and effect except as pure forms which are conventional only for communication. In the struggle over wills, one can only apply the term cause to strong wills and effect to weak wills, if that. Freedom in-itself always means a submission to a command. Every time one does something, there is a command to do something. Therefore, one is obeying a command.

So what is will to power? The will to power is the fundamental principle to life. However, it is not singular. Nietzsche says there are a plurality of feelings and habits which are all willing for dominance. All life is a multiplicity of wills affecting each other. This is important, because will only affects will. If it affected anything else, it would be an end and therefore would not be will. There is a ruling thought to the will to power i.e. to will more; to overcome itself. A will commands when it affects, and obeys when it is effected. Strong wills command; weak wills obey.

Only those that command can be both destructive and creative. Nihilism implies an obeying will. The Philosopher of the Future fully grasps his will and overcomes himself over and over again. The Philosopher of the Future destroys the old values and morals in order to create life-affirming values. But is not the Philosopher of the Future an ideal, a fiction which should be avoided? Fictions are not necessarily “bad” things and are probably unavoidable. Anything that is “life-promoting, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-cultivating” is “good” to Nietzsche (BGE a. 4). With the Philosopher of the Future, Nietzsche rids the nihilists and their self-deprecating theories to history. He brings in a new kind of philosopher, a philosopher who commands, creates, and legislates. If a philosopher cannot be a physician, artist, and legislator, he is no philosopher to Nietzsche, and only relegates humanity to further nihilistic thoughts.

Works Cited:

Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson, Columbia University Press, 1986.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morality: a Polemic. Translated by Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen, Hackett Pub. Co, 2009.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Gay Science. Translated by Thomas Common, Barnes & Noble, 2008.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book For All & None. Translated by Walter Kaufmann, Viking Press, 1954.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, Vintage Books, 2011.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale, Penguin Books, 1990.