It is here that he announced the "death of God," arguing that the traditional source of ultimate and transcendental value, God, no longer mattered in modern culture and was effectively dead to us. Nihilism, according to Nietzsche, is the most extreme form of pessimism. Nietzsche begins by saying he thinks that humanity doesn’t really know or understand itself. Your email address will not be published. What is Aesthetics? These things are hollow escapes though, what Nietzsche calls “self-narcotization”. He denied that those values had any objective validity or that they imposed any binding obligations upon us. Important Books on Nihilism . The term was famously used by Friedrich Nietzsche to describe the disintegration of traditional morality in … In the absence of religion, Nietzsche searches for a meaning to life and comes up … It is here, however, that Nietzsche parts company from nihilism. Put simply, it is the belief that everything is meaningless, but this oversimplifies the concept. "[Against Nihilism] convincingly undermines the over-dramatic notion of Nietzsche’s and Dostoevsky’s 'twin paths'. You can find this assertion in both popular and academic literature, yet as widespread as it is, it isn’t an accurate portrayal of his work. – To nuance Nietzsche further, although he believes in theoretical nihilism, he believes practical nihilism to be impossible: o To live is to evaluate, to have no values is to be dead. o 1900 died (unknown cause, possibly syphilis or frontotemporal dementia). … Nietzsche does not posit the existence of ‘souls’. I am attempting to put together coherently what his views are on nihilism, sorting it out from the rest and leaving the rest alone). Describing nihilism isn't the same as advocating nihilism, so is there any sense in which Nietzsche did the latter? At this point in Nietzsche's life, he viewed certain types of philosophy as counterproductive, such as universalis… Nihilism, (from Latin nihil, “nothing”), originally a philosophy of moral and epistemological skepticism that arose in 19th-century Russia during the early years of the reign of Tsar Alexander II. Aims, motives, and goals are gone. Was Nietzsche a Nihilist? He writes about two different forms of nihilism, active nihilism and passive nihilism. For Nietzsche, Europe is in a state of "nihilism" because of "the death of God." Values, though originating from the ego, have been placed in a sphere so far outside and ‘above’ that they are untouchable. Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most influential of all modern existentialist and postmodernist thinkers. Indeed, he even argued that they could at times have negative consequences for us. For some time now, he wrote, our whole European culture has been moving as toward catastrophe : restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that want to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect. What might be worth noting here is (1) Nietzsche is considered both an existentialist and a nihilist and (2) nihilism involves the lack of an objective ground for action. The will now has an opportunity to assert its strength and power to deny all authority and deny goals and faith– to deny the constraints of existence. Nietzsche appears to attack almost everything that has been considered sacred: not only Socrates and scholarship, but also God, truth, morality, equality, democracy and most other modern values. Passive nihilism is more the traditional ‘belief that all is meaningless’, while active nihilism goes beyond judgement to deed, and destroys values where they seem apparent. ... Nietzsche Philosophy Summary. As mentioned above, Nietzsche believed that traditional moral values, and in particular those stemming from traditional Christianity, were ultimately harmful to humanity. It relies mostly on Nietzsche's work, and I just don't like Nietzsche's methodologically sketchy approach of designating anything that's destructive to what he considers human nature to be nihilism. But, in this pathbreaking work, Michael Gillespie argues that Nietzsche, in fact, misunderstood nihilism, and that his misunderstanding has misled nearly all succeeding thought about the subject. There are two main points. Nietzsche emphasises that nihilism is merely a means to an end, and not an end in itself. 2 Spirit refers to a person’s will. Instead of nihilism, Nietzsche thinks that we need new values, values that fit our finite condition, the suffering in life, the constant struggle to survive, and so forth. But not exactly cutting edge philosophy 2 ) Nietzsche ’ s will argue that everything meaningless... 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