Frederich Nietzsche regards the extremist form of Nihilism; the insight that every belief, ever taken for true (Fur-Wahr-Halten), is necessarily false because there is no true world at all. Nihilism explicitly rejects the correspondence theory of truth because Nietzsche was having a thoroughly disillusioned conception of the world, which is as hostile to human aspirations as he could imagine it to be. The recognition of the negative fact should not lead us to “a negation, a no, a will, and to nothingness.” The world is devoid of meaning and form, if anything a Dionysian Ye (Ja-Sagen) to the world as it is without exceptions, exemptions and deductions. In contrast, for Nietzsche, we must abandon hope and expectations, which had comforted men through religion and philosophies from the beginning – for adopting such an attitude he provided the doctrine of Emor Fati – loving one’s fate, accepting without palliative or protection, the results of most thoroughgoing critique of philosophical and scientific ideas, seen as fiction, the products of some human needs for security and endeavoring to live in a world impervious to these needs.
On the other hand, Nietzsche also invented the obscure doctrine of the eternal recurrence: a view that the world repeats itself infinitely and exactly the same situation in which we find ourselves in having already occurred an infinite number of times. For him, the world is structureless, lawless and meaningless; which infinitely repeats itself in the same manner. So, fate he encourages to accept and to love is made considerably more difficult through this purposelessness repetitiveness of the “Universe toto”.
Nietzsche says, “let us think this thought through its most fearful form: existence such as its, without sense or goal, but inevitably current without a finale in nothingness: the eternal recurrence that is the extremest form of nihilism-nothingness and meaninglessness forever.”
Nietzsche also invented the obscure doctrine of the eternal recurrence: a view that the world repeats itself infinitely and exactly the same situation in which we find ourselves in having already occurred an infinite number of times
Another major controversial invention of Nietzsche was the doctrine of “Ubermensch” – Nietzsche’s critique of other philosophies rests on the psychological thesis that each metaphysical advanced was due, in the end, to a need to find order and security in the world – a position where the mind might “respond and recreate itself” – Nietzsche treats all of them as false. According to Nietzsche’s psychological-philosophical analysis, human beings try continually to impose an order and structure upon an unordered and senseless universe in order to preserve their sense of dignity and importance. As Nietzsche said:
“There is then, no true, rational, orderly, permanent or benign universe for us. Thus, every philosophy, logic, reason, and religion needs a revolution to understand this phenomenon.”
On the contrary, all his philosophical interpretation drew inspiration from the writings of Richard Wagner and Arthur Schopenhauer. Nietzsche believed that, life is a meaningless process of shapes that perishes as they are born with ‘illusion, will and pain’. To be more precise, he concluded these dilemmas with a Greek tragedy which he brought to the scene through vibrant inspiration from Richard Wagner. In the birth of tragedy, Nietzsche argues that human thought in this so-called form and structured world has always been Apollonian. But reality is formless and Dionysian and the real problem for him was whether one could significantly achieve a Dionysian language with which to express Dionysian thought. Moreover, all the essays in the birth of tragedy are concerned with the quality of contemporary culture.
His other three major works; The Joyful Wisdom, Human all too Human, and the Dawn of the Day has opened a fierce attack on morality and metaphysics of the contemporary society. He ruthlessly divulged the unconscious, irrational sources of beliefs, and behavior commonly held as rational and moral. Nietzsche believed, altruism and charity are simply distorted and shameful forms of egoism, about which he famously argued: ‘Your judgement that is right has a pre-history in your instincts likes, dislikes, experiences and non-experiences’.
He also lambasted existing values which he deemed as the creation of man – what he said; ‘the dominant values are created by dominant man and are overthrown, when these men are overthrown’. According to Nietzsche, illusions have contributed more to human consciousness than truth because through this aspect, illusions became subtle, delicate, inventive. Basically, here Nietzsche has glorified the relativist conception of truth, interpreting all systems and concepts as ideological and concerned only with their practice and moral implications.
In contrast, though his method and thinking may not lead to the interpretation of the world, it does create a framework of belief within which a new direction can be achieved to surpass the manufactured myths. Thus, his method is indeed unique and quintessential in this regard.
The writer is a postgraduate student with a keen interest in writing on history, geopolitics, current affairs, and international political economy
Published in Daily Times, February 16th 2019.