What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; “why?” finds no answer. (The Will to Power #2)
The Will to Power is a collection of notes (actually several different collections of notes in different editions of The Will to Power) which were assembled by editors after Nietzsche’s death in 1900. The first edition appeared in 1901; others followed until the definitive Colli and Montinari Ausgabe finally put an end to the notion that this posthumous selection of notes represented anything more than that. For readers of Nietzsche without German, however, The Will to Power remains the best collection of his unpublished notes in English because it is available in a reliable translation by Walter Kaufmann.
The notes in Will to Power date to the 1880s. Nietzsche (born 1844) could see, like his older contemporary Dostoevsky (born 1821), that that the spiritual and intellectual tradition of Europe was imploding and that the consequences for individuals and society would be catastrophic. Now, despite a century of unparalleled bloodshed intervening between Nietzsche and us, the ultimate unfolding of nihilism still lies in the future. And this will be still more terrible in its consequences than those of the twentieth century in which nihilistic spiritual disorder led to the deaths of hundreds of millions of people in world wars and in further conflicts in nearly every corner of the planet.
That it would take centuries for nihilism to play itself out was foreseen by Nietzsche:
What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. This history can be related even now; for necessity itself is at work here. This future speaks even now in a hundred signs, this destiny announces itself everywhere; for this music of the future all ears are cocked even now. For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect. (Preface, #21)
Do you not reflect?
Congratulations! You are a conservative!
- The notes in The Will to Power are numbered consecutively except for those in the Preface, which are numbered separately. Only the aphorism number will be noted in references, therefore, except in the case of the Preface where it is noted as well as the local aphorism number there. ↩