Start ||| The Philosophical Europe ||| The Political Progress ||| European Witness Blog ||| Special Homages: Meister Eckhart / David Copperfield

Friedrich Nietzsche, The European Nihilism

From: Nietzsche, The Will to Power, I. The European Nihilism, II. History of European Nihilism

       THE PHILOSOPHICAL nihilist is convinced that all that happens is meaningless and in vain; and that there ought not to be anything meaningless and in vain. But whence this: there ought not to be, From where does one get this "meaning," this standard?- At bottom, the nihilist thinks that the sight of such a bleak, useless existence makes a philosopher feel dissatisfied, bleak, desperate. Such an insight goes against our finer sensibility as philosophers. It amounts to the absurd valuation: to have any right to be, the character of existence would have to give the philosopher pleasure. Now it is easy to see that pleasure and displeasure can only be means in the course of events: the question remains whether we are at all able to see the "meaning," the "aim," whether the question of meaninglessness or its opposite is not insoluble for us...  Read Complete

     Cf.  Nietzsche, Nationalism is Mediocrity (at the margin of Denis de Rougemont). * David Turner, Byzantium : The 'alternative' history of Europe