nihilism is dead and we have killed it: a formal rescue of nietzsche, on truth and lies in a nonmoral sense, and ourselves

a theory paper for my german philosophy class in college. i can't guarantee that i still know what the fuck 21-year-old me was thinking

Among the laundry list of philosophers and theorists whose names have graced the far recesses of postmodernist Reddit and 21st-century existentialist media, no name must have been uttered more times than that of Friedrich Nietzsche. The attitudes posited in his work have been iterated and reiterated with numerous parodies, analyses, and bastardizations; if one were to crudely condense the essence of Nietzsche in the public collective consciousness, only the idea of Ubermensch, Nietzsche’s notorious notion that God is dead, and the repeated citation of life’s inherent pointlessness would remain. From Bojack Horseman to Fight Club, any piece of work that remotely lamented over humanity’s lack of meaning has been described as “Nietzschean," despite the very probable likelihood that few artists and creators have ever given his work a scholarly reading. In spite of such, the words “nihilist” and “Nietzschean” are almost completely synonymous, for better or for worse, as popular culture and media have determined that all that qualifies an idea to be derived from Nietzsche is merely the abject despair and resignation that births from standing in the face of the beast that is existential horror.

A quick readthrough of any of Nietzsche’s other works would beg to differ with the almost permanent stereotype that has befallen him, especially that of his philosophical essay “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense,” which goes into immense depth on the relationship between mankind, language, and the universe in which the two exist. So long as the mainstream public continues to define nihilism as the cynical, Machiavellian rejection of living earnestly and with meaning, I firmly posit that Nietzsche was never a nihilist and never will be. Instead, interpreting Nietzsche’s work as a philosophy capable of societal liberation could potentially free man from the oppressive structures he has forcibly subscribed himself to.

It must then be imperative to standardize the meaning of nihilism. If nihilism was defined as the rejection of objective moral doctrine, as is understood in philosophical academia, then the philosophy could seem to apply in a discussion regarding Nietzsche. However, this is not the definition typically used to describe Nietzsche in such discussions, and engaging under this discursive framework would still fail to provide a completely accurate portrayal of Nietzsche’s philosophy, which speaks on several abstractions not limited to morality, truth, and language. Defining the entirety of Nietzche’s work as nihilistic would be reductionist. If one instead refers to nihilism by its more conventional understanding, “the claim that neither the world nor values are such that anything both positive and objectively true may be said about them,” (Schacht, p.72) then none of Nietzsche’s published works could not be described as nihilistic. Schacht cites him in The Will to Power, demonstrating that Nietzsche is in fact capable of forming discoveries on the existence of moral truths; his constant affirmation that the “will to power” grounds the site of all change that occurs in the world proves that Nietzsche believes in fundamental truths that are able to define human existence. Therefore, under this standardized definition, it would be erroneous to categorize Nietzsche as a nihilist.

In reinforcing the belief that Nietzsche is a nihilist, many are quick to cite his aphorisms from The Gay Science, most notably “The Madman” and “The Heaviest Weight,” two brief but melodramatic declarations on the death of religious dogma and the absence of an omnipresent greater meaning; however, it is the brevity and theatrics of his aphorisms that give way for their unfaithful misinterpretation. Quotes such as “God is dead and we have killed him” are quoted in extreme excess for their punchy shock factor; however, without proper context and use, the citation of these laments characterize Nietzsche as a pathetic man who has given up on retaining any sense of morality and hope. If one takes the time to read the aphorisms in tandem with his more in-depth works, it should be obvious that this is not the case; the death of God so commonly associated with Nietzsche is in fact a reference to the death of truth and the birth of secular ontological becoming. (Hatab, 93) Nietzsche’s attitudes are not to be understood as the mourning of a established culture but rather a celebration of a newfound philosophical freedom to pursue one’s own meaning.

Quite similarly, Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense is commonly referenced for its emotionally charged messages on knowledge and language. His frustration with the integration of seemingly objective truths in modern existence is palpable; he compares truth to “illusions one has forgotten as illusions” and “metaphors that have become worn-out and deprived of their sensuous force.” (Nietzsche, 30) Nietzsche defines moral truth as nonmoral lies that man has told himself enough times to assimilate as reality, thereby shattering the validity of all manmade concepts to have ever been conceived to make sense of life. One could then possibly infer that Nietzsche would consequently call for an unyielding rejection of all things moral and “true”, as he has shown great disgust for the untruths that has constructed our worldview throughout civilization. However, doing so is a majorly fallacious extrapolation of Nietzsche’s beliefs.

The aggression found in Nietzsche’s essay was not directed at the lack of objective truth itself but rather the compromising subjugation that mankind has imposed onto itself as a result of subscribing to fabricated concepts that are fundamentally unfounded. Nietzsche sympathizes with the fallen man, or at the very least, acknowledge his struggles in the essay; he cites the reason for mankind’s invention of knowledge as the necessity to “exist socially and in herds," as "man needs a peace treaty and strives at the least to rid his world of the crudest forms of bellum omnium contra omnes,” or “war of all against all.” (Nietzsche, 22) Nietzsche recognizes man’s desire to exist securely in a community and does not try to scrutinize it; he may describe the human intellect in “how miserable, how shadowy and fleeting, how aimless and arbitrary” it appears in nature, but in doing so Nietzsche aims to critique the futility in civilization posturing itself as the author of objective truth.

The current untenable influence that nonmoral truth has on civilization forcibly subjugates mankind to participate in conventions that feel indisputable and “real.” However, as projected in Aphorism 341, “The Heaviest Weight”, man would likely be forced into despairing dissatisfaction if he was to relive the same life authored by the oppressive untruths he so loyally abides by. No matter how undeniably real civilization’s truths may seem, mankind will ultimately exist unhappily under them. However, it would be a disservice to the entirety of the essay to interpret it as a call for the anarchic dissolution of humanity. Yann Wermuth goes as far as to describe what Nietzsche describes as nonmoral lying as a human necessity, as “if we were not lying to ourselves through art, then ‘[i]ntellectual dishonesty would bring disgust and suicide in its wake’ (GS 107).” (Wermuth, 14) Nonmoral lying, to Nietzsche, is an artform necessary as a means for survival; would interpreting On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense as a sacrilegious disbelief in the existence of positive, valid values not be tantamount to a call for collective suicide? Nowhere in any of Nietzsche’s works does the philosopher demand a moralistic forfeit of one’s life; if anything, Nietzsche seeks to encourage the broken man to unveil its true meaning for himself.

Despite the amount of evidence proving otherwise, many are still eager to designate Nietzsche as the representative face of nihilism, in a manner that he would likely find pitiful. Subscribers to nihilism have an almost self-destructive tendency to hold no loyalties and to egregiously condemn existence itself. In their hyperbolic belief that “nothing in life matters”, nihilists compare life with no fundamental truth as equivalent to death and in turn treat their life and the lives as others as such: with great misery and violence. A world without objective meaning has been beaten into an excuse for relentless sadistic acts of hedonism and violence, both of which are concepts that are not remotely mentioned in the Nietzschean essay in question. Brad Pitt’s character in Fight Club, Tyler Durden, represents the nihilist attitude at its most sinister extreme: a man at odds with the hollowness in living a life with fabricated truths, politics, and societies with no other way to cope than to engage in unrestrained destruction. Durden exists to only reveal the desperation of a truthless and godless existence but does not represent any of the restorative aspects of Nietzschean thought.

The impact that resulted from such a pessimistic dissemination of juvenile nihilism has contributed to a culture where the collective sigh of apathy and resignation has been normalized as an acceptable response to great global crisis. The duration of the COVID-19 pandemic has borne witness to self-defeating, ecofascist ideals that called for the eventual destruction of humanity through the means of environmental genocide. The argument goes as follows: the world as we know it is overpopulated and corrupted beyond repair and as such, it would only make sense to let a microbial beast wipe out as much as humanity as possible. The argument is both lazy and extremist; only those too cowardly to accept the social responsibility of embracing the existence of meaning would succumb to nihilistic platitudes of not doing anything because “humans are the virus” and “we’re all going to die anyway.” In essence, contemporary nihilism is the broken man’s evasion from the accountability of making a contribution to reshape a broken world.

In “Nietzsche and Nihilism”, Schacht defines the nihilist as unimaginative and incapable of viewing the world’s values through metrics that have begun to collapse; because the nihilist is unable to break free from conceiving of the world’s meaning through values that were traditionally established, he is doomed to view the world as meaningless when those values are proven to be unfounded in reality. (Schacht, 69) Unfortunately, the development of societal progress is largely hinged on the fragile possession of hope, a value that nihilists have traditionally deemed themselves too morally superior to have. The nihilist refuses to imagine a world where a brighter future is possible and subsequently wastes his life spending time in a world he deems too meaningless to rescue. If such a rejection of a moral imperative only affected the nihilist individually, there would be less of an urgency in attempting to salvage this person’s character. However, the individualistic nature of nihilism weakens the possibility of improving civilization as a whole, which is a collective effort incapable of being reached through the sole actions of a single person.

What tends to occur with Nietzsche’s rejection of universal truth is the unfortunately repeated conflation with the absence of meaning, which in turn has mutated itself into the belief that life is not worth living. Shows like Rick and Morty and Bojack Horseman will often lament on the spiritlessness of a meaningless world but are slow to explore the positive implications of a universe freed from fundamental truth. Nihilists tend to resolve their despair by fervently rejecting the will to live, a task posited by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. This is however not the stance Nietzsche decided to take. “Nietzsche sought to unveil the genealogical origins of this moral stance, with the aim to revalue life rather than reject it as Schopenhauer so eloquently bids his addressee.” (Kopp, 11) It was never Nietzsche’s intention to abandon life as we know it; rather Nietzsche seeks resolution through the reconstruction of the metaphysical self.

In the second part of his essay, Nietzsche divides humanity into two consciousnesses: the rational man and the intuitive man. Where the former operates on the Stoic agenda to “meet the most pressing needs with foresight, intelligence, and regularity," the latter regards life as “real only when it feigns semblance and beauty.” The latter is then condemned by the former as naive and baseless, the former by the latter as inartistic and uncompromising. Nietzsche goes on to comment on how though the rational man has shielded himself from the disappointments of the real world through the concealment of artistic creation, the joys he will experience will never rival those experienced by the intuitive man. The intuitive man, freed from the restraints of the concepts the rational man regards as truth, is privy to experiencing greater and more frequent suffering, but is given a “continuous influx of illumination, cheerfulness, redemption.”

It is within that delineation between Nietzche’s rational man and intuitive man where we can find liberation from the fabricated restraints of human existence. Instead of hiding behind reason to avoid the inherent suffering of the human existence, Nietzsche argues that the intuitive artist’s method of reflecting reality without painful fabricated stories bears the highest form of happiness. Once the cosmic plan to follow all moral obligations society has imposed on us ceases to stand as fundamental doctrine, we as individuals are then free to imagine what existence can look like to us. Our potential to expand past antiquated ways of living becomes infinite, and we are given the agency to assert our own future with values we have determined for ourselves.

Lawrence J. Hatab in “Nietzsche, Nihilism, and Meaning” proposed to alter the definition of nihilism to better serve the self; in what he calls “the negative thesis,” nihilism can be redefined to emphasize the inherent negativity found in human existence. The negativity described by Hatab is not to be understood in the depressive, wallowing sense but rather simply in the sense that human existence is inherently lacking in fundamental meaning and value. Meaning and value are inseparable from negativity in that the two are entities that do not have an additive existence. (Hatab, 103) In terms of integrating this method of nihilism into society, Hatab explains that introducing a self that is not defined by what they “are” or “have” into metaphysical, politico-legal, moral, and personal infrastructure allows a person to freely define themselves however they please; reducing a person to set list of immutable restrictions begets the impossible task of assigning moral meaning to an entity inherently incapable of one. If a society then lets go of forcibly attributing meaning to every person, we can then transcend the issues created by the contradictory nature of meaning to begin with.

Reconstructing a worldview that breaks free from prescriptive conventions as Hatab describes has proven to be possible and even sustainable. Judith Butler has done so with her poststructuralist theories involving gender performativity, as did Michel Foucault with his theories on sexuality. The very existence of the queer community is living proof that the collapse of traditional values and meanings does not have to result in the destruction of mankind. An increasingly growing desire to abolish restrictive means to define and govern people is taking place in modern-day society; discussions on whether it is meaningful to legally categorize people on manmade concepts like sex have been led by queer scholars and activists who recognize the contradictions found within these untruths. It should then be understood that it is possible for this course of action to take place in other realms of society, as humanity learns how to revalue its own existence to provide a lifestyle more suited for comfortable living.

What Nietzsche dreamed of is a civilization liberated from the misery of its own rationality. Based on his own words, would Nietzsche not then be an optimist? Would he then not be a man capable of holding beliefs and hopes that the nihilist claims to be foolish and unattainable? To compare Nietzsche to the immutable despairing man that fashions his likeness to the Joker would be a disservice to his work and the mania he endured while producing it. Nietzsche never established himself to be a nihilist, but rather as the orator who sought to liberate the nihilists from their wallowing despair.