Over het Nihilisme : Nietzsches actualiteit of de onze?

Abstract

On Nihilism: Nietzsche’s “Here and now” or our own?If philosophy claims to be an analysis of the here and now, it should also reflect on the preconditions of a description and diagnosis of the present. One of the challenges presented by such an analysis is the risk of repeating the prejudices of the present in the description thereof. In this article, I attempt to address this challenge by presenting Nietzsche’s description and interpretation of nihilism in such a way that the topicality of that description comes to light.Nietzsche distinguishes at least three different stages or forms of nihilism. The first one is also called pessimism, or more precisely: the pessimism of the tragic Greeks. It is an awareness of the absurdity of life and reality without becoming completely befuddled by it. The history of European culture from Socrates up to Nietzsche’s 19th century is the period in which a second form of nihilism emerges. Unable to affirm the absurdity of reality, people started to devalue it and to interpret it in the light of a truer reality. This ultimate reality was conceived as meaningful and intelligible, and it showed the reality of our sensual experience to be unreal, only apparent and contingent. This schema is nihilistic because it denies the reality of our sensual world. It was introduced first and foremost by Plato’s philosophy and then “democratized” in Christianity. But it dominated all of European culture (science, morality, religion and art) for 2500 years. The third stage or form of nihilism is associated with “the death of God”, i.e. the erosion and eventual demise of the core concept upholding the protective structure that was built by the second phase of nihilism. The death of God is what Nietzsche foresees as coming to pass in the two centuries to come. His theory of nihilism is a description of this future. It proves not to be too difficult to present Nietzsche’s description of this future in such a way that we recognize our present.