Friedrich Nietzsche: Nihilism and the solution
Channel: P3: Philosophy, psychology, and politics
Date: 2022-03-12

Nihilism.

Nihilism: any aim is lacking, any answer to the question "why" is lacking. What does nihilism mean? -- that the supreme values devaluate themselves.

- Friedrich Nietzsche The will to power

To put it briefly, Nihilism denies the existence of genuine moral truths or values, rejects the possibility of knowledge or communication, and asserts the ultimate meaninglessness or purposelessness of life or of the universe. In other words, we could simply explain it as stating that nothing is real, that it’s impossible to know anything, that all values are based on nothing, especially moral values, or believing that life is inherently and utterly meaningless.

Nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who argues that the effects of Nihilism would abolish all moral, religious and metaphysical convictions and cause the greatest crisis in human history. Nietzsche argues that the strength of Nihilism is expected to increase and as this collapse in meaning and purpose increases, it will be the greatest crisis of humanity! Nietzsche was not advocating nihilism rather he was concerned about the affects of nihilism on society and culture.

Nietzsche argues that the world was bound to become increasingly nihilistic for many years and that it would lead to despair, immorality, and pointless destruction. However, he also claimed that this might be necessary to demolish the irrationality of old traditional beliefs and maybe create a better foundation for ethics and meaningfulness in our lives.

One might ask, what problems does Nietzsche see in Nihilism anyway? I think this quote is the one that really sums it up well:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

God is dead, Nietzsche says. He understands the danger of this atheistic worldview. So how will we overcome this? Nihilism is at our door, the morals we held onto, these pregiven values are being demolished before our very eyes, people are turning away from what was the holiest answer of them all, so how do we steer ourselves from this? It is important that you understand that when Nietzsche claims that God is dead, he doesn’t mean that there was a God that actually died, but rather that the idea that there was a God died.

So what solutions are there for Nihilism?

I think one solution to Nihilism that Nietzsche presents is the overman concept that he introduced in his book called Thus spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche has his character Zarathustra suggests the overman as a goal for humanity to set for itself. What is this concept of the overman? I already created a video that explains the concept but to explain it again, in the simplest terms, Nietzsche presents the overman as the creator of new values to banish Nihilism. The overman would create new life-affirming values that were much better and creative as opposed to the Christian value system that Nietzsche saw as somewhat nihilistic towards reality.

Of course, what Nietzsche presents is much more complex than what I have explained. I think he really built this with a lot in mind. For example, he has the concept of the last man and this last man was the opposite of the overman. The last man is a sort of response to the problem of Nihilism. All the last man could do was destroy but he could never create his own values or self-actualize. The last man is interested in the basics of survival such as safety and security above everything else. The last man is a pacifist, a boring person, an absolute nihilist, they see no value in anything, a lazy person, a mediocre person, a person who sees nothing deep in art, history, culture and who doesn’t have the ability to dream, to strive, or to take risks, instead simply earning their living and keeping warm. According to Nietzsche, the last man is the goal that modern society and Western civilization have apparently set for themselves. So to avoid this disgusting thing that comes flying out of some nihilistic void, we have the concept of the overman, who is the opposite of the last man, they would understand that pain and suffering is a part of life, they would be creative beings with the will to power, to dominate themselves and others, to self-master and to be able to create their own values.