Nihilism in Nietzsche - Coursework Example

Nihilism in Nietzsche Table of Contents I. Introduction II. Nietzsche and Nihilism- Beginning from the End III. Nihilistic Perspectives in Nietzsche’s Philosophy and Thoughts IV. Conclusion 1 2 3 I. Introduction This paper aims to explore nihilism from the perspective of Nietzsches views on nihilism and its vital aspects, from the psychological and existential roots of nihilism, to the various types of nihilism, to Nietzsches distinctions of the passive and active nihilists, to his prescriptions for overcoming nihilism through the realization of a fundamental error in the nihilist position, and ways to live an affirming kind of life that is in touch with an inner motivation and reason for existing, and a drive to excellence and the avoidance of the fearful, lazy, mediocre life. The idea is to trace the evolution of Nietzsches own thinking and regard for life in general and his vital motivations for coming to grips with nihilism, the suffering that first sunk him in nihilist despair and the inner strength that he tapped into to first fully embrace that suffering and emerge victorious from it, as he himself claimed. 1. Through this very detailed, brilliant and also very personal perspective of nihilism from Nietzsche, the idea is for the paper to be able to cull vital insights into the nature of the nihilist position, what the various types of nihilism are and how they regard suffering, meaning, pessimism, the death of God, and the overcoming of that death in ways that affirm one’s existence and one’s life. At the same time, the paper also goes into an extrapolation of possible loose ends and shortcomings in the subjective, philosophical, and existential takes of Nietzsche on the meaning of life and on the nihilist position and its overcoming. 2 The hope is that through this exercise too, one gets to have a more profound understanding of what the nihilist take on life is, and what lessons can be had from a unique perspective that is also, as the literature notes, a philosophy that is born out of a more primary face to face encounter with the collapse of an old way of looking at life that relies on a true world perspective to keep life on an even keel and livable, in spite of the enormous suffering, pain and hopelessness that accompanies it.3 4 II. Nietzsche and Nihilism- Beginning from the End First to define terms, When one talks about true world theories, one talks about the different permutations in religious and related beliefs relating to the presence of a true world where things are real and permanent, in the context of which this present life on earth is impermanent, fleeting, a shadow reality that is full of pain and suffering. These true world theories have propped up man for millennia, and have given him the means to cope with life on earth that is often full of suffering. This true world is the Christian heaven for instance, or Plato’s world of pure form. 5 When one talks about the last men, on the other hand, one talks about those men who, having seen that there are no true worlds, nevertheless do not experience any feeling of disorientation or loss, but live out their lives instead in pursuit of petty ordinary ambitions and interests, as he discusses in. 6 When one talks about free spirits, meanwhile, one refers to those entities in Nietzsche’s ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ who, having knowledge that the true worlds do not exist and that there are no absolute and eternal values that can guide life, nevertheless seem unaffected too, and go on to forge lives that are authentic and full of adventure and zest for life, seemingly also immune from the psychological despair and sense of loss that afflicts those like Nietzsche who were gripped by great psychological turmoil and despair. 7 It is important to start at the end and say that for Nietzsche the end of nihilism is not a passive surrender to it, but that there are ways out of nihilism, which Nietzsche saw as a kind of disease, a phase, something that is transitory, and something that is to be overcome partly by seeing the flawed logic that brought it about, and also something that, with superhuman effort, something to be made the basis of a new mode of living. This new mode of living consciously shatters all the old foundational truths that came with the true worlds perspective of life on the one hand and also actively builds a new life attuned to an inner seed or imperative or drive to create a life in accordance with a vision of excellence or the achievement of something great, on the other. This new exalted life does not preclude suffering, but includes suffering as something vital to the experience of human life in its fullness. It is a formulation that also sees nihilism as something that is also flawed in a cognitive sense. This flaw goes like this, that since the true world perspective is false then all perspectives that give meaning are false. This is false because not all meaning is false, as evidenced from Nietzsche’s own arrival at a sense of meaning after the collapse of the true world paradigm. His perspective works and gives meaning and lies on the other side of nihilism. He lived through the despair and emerged with a cure, according to him. Nietzsche in other words was not also just spouting some dry theory. He lived and breathed, and followed through to the end the reality and implications of the nihilist life, and came out of it with diagnoses of the root causes of nihilism and the cures and ways out of that nihilism. 8 9 Starting from the end therefore, one can see how even when there are those who say that Nietzsche’s attempt at emerging triumphant from nihilism was a failure, one can nevertheless see that his insights into consequences of the death of God and the psychology of despair and nihilism are profound. Those have equally compelling implications for a sane life. There is room to at the very least to consider the application of Nietzsche’s realizations regarding a life lived past the death of God, rising above one’s personal limits and pursuing virtues and a personal impetus towards greatness and away from mediocrity, in one’s life. For those who are in despair he offers a way out. Having jumped ahead to the end to gain a perspective of Nietzsche’s end game as far as nihilism is concerned so to speak, the following sections will then deal with the actual nuts and bolts of Nietzsche’s perspectives on nihilism itself and the psychological, emotional and philosophical processes tied to those views. 10 11 III. Nihilistic Perspectives in Nietzsche’s Philosophy and Thoughts The literature notes, first, that for Nietzsche nihilism is the total undermining and absence of values that tie everything together as an objective set of codes or standards to which one can anchor one’s life. It is just a step away from saying that when there are no absolute values then there are no absolute meanings too. This is therefore also the undermining of course of the notion that life has meaning, and that meaning is to be found in that anchoring to universal distilling values. The operative concept is a set of values that tie everything together, or a set of values that overarch the whole of reality so to speak. This is lacking, according to the nihilist view, even as there are relative values, or individual values, without which one cannot talk of course of a proper human life. This latter is what provides a kind of continuity to the life of people and out of this one weaves a tale, a life story, a continuing and satisfying life narrative out of which a person crafts meaning, derives purpose, and thus allows himself to moor himself through life and achieve a kind of temporary and tenuous happiness. The grand narrative for the Christian for instance is the will of God and the salvation of man and for Nietzsche this is gone for the nihilist. The literature terms this, borrowing the term from Reginster, the disorientation nihilism, or the nihilism brought about by the lack of an orienting principle or belief that can guide one through On the one hand, the loss of absolute values, but on the other Reginster posits that there is another kind of nihilism that traces its roots not in the absence of absolute values but gives a nod to the existence of those absolute values, This latter kind of nihilism is what Reginster terms as despair nihilism. This is the nihilism of someone who sees that there are indeed absolute values, but that those values cannot be made real on earth. This incapacity and this sense of helplessness of not being able to do so is at the root of this kind of nihilism. The contradiction therefore is that on the one hand the nihilism of despair acknowledges absolute values, and the nihilism of disorientation negates the existence of absolute values and true worlds, saying that those do not really exist. 12 Meanwhile, there is a concern in the academic literature that both types of nihilism are deemed as too cognitive and intellectual, and present problems when it comes to considering the nature of the last men and the free spirits, who cognitively recognize the loss of absolute values, but are not affected in the same way that those who consider the loss of absolute values as the cause of horror ,and the eventual slide into despair and nihilism. It is true that the last men fall into a kind of nihilism too, in some respect, but they seem neither to fall into despair, nor do they suffer from a disorientation in the obvious sense as discussed above. Moreover, when one talks about nihilism in the way that Nietzsche lived and discussed it, one sees that the despair and the disorientation seem not to be the starting point, but the symptoms of something more fundamental, and therefore there is a need to further explore those more fundamental causes and principles that are at the root of a more existential, urgent, and personally gripping version of nihilism. 13 The literature therefore adds a third kind of nihilism, which is affective nihilism. This is the psychological, pathological kind of nihilism that in essence undergirds both despair and disorientation as symptoms rather than the thesis or the starting points of discussions on nihilism, in the way that Reginster makes them out to be. In affective nihilism, the nihilism is something existential, psychological, and deeply pathological, emanating, according to the literature, from the repression of natural drives such as sexuality. The suppression comes from the moralizing that say, Christianity enforces, that attaches a sense of moral failure to the very existence of those natural drives, and which in turn drives Christians into nihilism. The symptoms of that then are disorientation and despair. When Nietzsche says that Christianity is essentially nihilist, he refers to this fundamental repression of the natural drives, so that the drives and the life forces go the other way and act against themselves in a kind of destructive dynamic. The literature refers to this as the absolutely destructive impact of the moralizing impulse in Christianity that brings about the existence of affective nihilism and its destructive effects. Nietzsche does not term this nihilism affective, but judging from his thoughts affective nihilism, with its existential and psychological roots, captures what Nietzsche’s nihilism. This also moves the discussion of nihilism beyond the intellectual categories of Reginster, and takes a step back and examines the existential roots and the societal and religious roots of nihilism as the thwarting and the repression of the life drives. In essence, affective nihilism captures the essence of the existential despair in terms of the psychic, emotional and existential dread and pathology that characterizes those who, having lost faith in the old true world paradigms of existence, find themselves, sometimes against their will and their good judgment, falling into a state of existential dread. Affective nihilism captures this reality, and sees that despair and disorientation are aspects of this developing, evolving dread emanating from the suppression of man’s more natural and life-affirming drives, such as sex. 14 The literature notes that there are problems still with the application of affective nihilism and its symptoms, despair and disorientation, to both the free spirits and the last men. It is the last men in particular that are deemed the most problematic, because they do see the loss of absolute values and understand them, but they do not seem to be affected by that, there is no sense of loss in other words, and no sense of grief or disorientation or despair. Instead they continue to exist living out petty lives and having petty ambitions and desires, and live out lives anchored to their petty values. They are not affected in the same way as those who, like Nietzsche, take to heart that sense of loss and the existential feeling of having the rug pulled from under their feet, and finding that they have nothing to stand on. It is to the last men in particular that the literature refers to the presence of a fourth kind of nihilism and that is the nihilism of complacency. Here the key is the loss of absolute values, coupled by the absence of that sense of deep loss that drove Nietzsche and others to despair and to nihilism. The nihilism of complacency is the nihilism of those who are the antithesis of men who fall under the category of being hit by affective nihilism as discussed above. 15 This latter, fourth kind of nihilism does capture the reality of the last men, although in essence the free spirits are not fully encapsulated by this. Nietzsche does discuss active versus passive nihilism and here the literature notes that in essence the free spirits are somewhat active nihilists, who do recognize the loss of absolute values but are not plunged into despair or disorientation, but rather proceed with passion and a sense of play towards living their lives in full. 16 Beyond the dry classifications of nihilism above, and the way that Nietzsche viewed certain religions and views of the world tied to the true world paradigm of existence as veiled forms of nihilism, it is important to note that Nietzsche’s thoughts and philosophizing tied to nihilism is rooted in an existential and lived experience of the emotional, psychic and spiritual and psychological consequences of the death of God. The true world paradigm gave people a sense of meaning in the midst of suffering, and validated their sense of self and sense of needing to be valued as important in the grand scheme of things. Nihilism, in that psychological dynamic, is the result of a choice in the fork in the road, or more appropriately, the removal of that alternative fork in the road that says belief in a better world after this one, that justifies all the pain, suffering and agony that this world represents. Having that safety valve or exit closed off, therefore, the psychological alternative left is despair and nihilism. In all versions of the true world discussed, the monistic, the eternal and the temporal, the common thread is the availability of a release from this earthly world into a world where one’s suffering is removed and contextualized in meaning and hope. Sans those, the being collapses, and this insight is what gives power to Nietzsche’s assertions on the death of God. It also gives greater urgency to understanding what he went through, how he saw the fallacy in the nihilist thinking process, and how he was able to go beyond nihilism and prescribe ways out of nihilism ultimately. 17 It is interesting that in this latter process Nietzsche posits two nihilist positions, of which he professes to belong to the second kind, passive and active. For the passive nihilist, the collapse of the meaning paradigm heralded by the death of God is terminal, and the passive nihilist sinks into irredeemable despair. For the active nihilist, on the other hand, the way forward is forged by going all the way and dismantling all the other structures of meaning tied to the collapse of the true world paradigm, and then dares to stand naked before the universe. The active nihilist does not dismantle all old truths and values just for the sake of the destruction. He destroys the old in order to pave the land, so to speak, to start over and to erect something new, with which to build a new reality and a new life consistent with the death of God so to speak. No longer relying on an outside agency or a better world after this one, moreover, the active nihilist goes beyond nihilism, acting on a personal, inward impulse to live a life excellently and to the full. 18 19 IV. Conclusion One can see that the insightful take of Nietzsche on the consequences of the collapse of the true world paradigm and the death of God owes from a primary face to face psychological, emotional and psychic immersion into the depths of that nihilist despair, and in therefore his philosophical formulations on aspects of nihilism take on grave significance and credibility. Moreover, as discussed earlier, the end game for Nietzsche is not nihilism, but the overcoming of it, which he regarded as a disease, and as a flaw in the nihilist mind that needed to be overcome, even as he affirmed the psychological and intellectual dynamics of the descent to despair and nihilism brought about by the death of God. One can see that the initial two types of nihilism by Reginster provide us with a glimpse of the impact of the loss of absolute values in terms of a sense of disorientation on the one hand, and on the other the contradictory sense of impotence at not being able to live out a set of absolute values. On the other hand, the literature notes that a third type of nihilism, affective nihilism, is able to arrive at more fundamental psychological, psychic and existential roots of nihilism, out of which the despair and the disorientation can be accommodated as symptoms of a greater existential dread, coming in turn from the repression, by religion and social forces, of very natural and life-affirming drives. A fourth kind of nihilism, the nihilism of complacency, describes those who, like the last men, seeing that there are no true worlds and no absolute values, are not impacted by a sense of loss, and instead go through life pursuing petty ambitions and satisfying very ordinary desires 20 21 4 References Deleuze, G. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Columbia University Press, 2006 Ken G, ‘Nietzsche, Nihilism, and the Paradox of Affirmation’. Birkbeck College & The New College of the Humanities Lecture Notes. 2015 Nietzsche, F. The Gay Science, Translated with Commentary by Walter Kaufmann. Vintage Books, 1974 Nietzsche, F. On the Genealogy of Morals. Penguin, 2013 Nietzsche, F. Beyond Good and Evil. Cambridge University Press, 2002. Nietzsche, F. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Oxford University Press, 2005. Reginster, B. ‘The Will to Power and the Ethics of Creativity’. Nietzsche and Morality. Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 32-56 Pearson, K. A. A Companion to Nietzsche. John Wiley & Sons, 2008 Reginster, B. The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism. Harvard University Press, 2009. Read More