NIETZSCHE AND NIHILISM

Brian Gilbert
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Education
Department of Theory and Policy
Ontario hstitute for Studies in Education of the
University of Toronto
O Copyright by Brian Gilbert (1999)
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NIETZSCHE AND NIHILISM
Brian Howard Gilbert, Ed. D., 1999
Department of Theory and Policy Studies
University of Toronto
ABSTRACT
The failure of Hegel's attempt at a 'grand' synthesis of Platonic and Christian thought has
forced
upon continental philosophy a radical rethinking and reevaluation of both metaphysics and
theology - what Heidegger has called the onto-theological tradition. Nietzsche's
reevaluation
of that tradition results in the thesis of philosophic nihilism - that philosophy itself, since
Parnienides' thesis of the identity of thought and 'Being', is cornplicitous in nurturing the
modem sense of meaninglessness which Nietzsche calls European nihilism. If nihilism is
viewed
as being at the very centre of Nietzsche's thought, then very different conclusions may be
drawn,

than by those interpreters who take his 'doctrines' of the ubermensch, the etemal recurrence.
and
the will to power, tm literally as 'solutions' to the 'problem' of nihilism. The recognition of
nihilism as the culmination of a long historical process which begins, philosophically, with
'morality' as the unexplored substratum of al1 claims to tmth, forbids further solutions in
the
form of 'overcoming' or 'progress' - the modemist strategy by which the past is hollowed
out,
denigrated, in the interest of a newer tmth. Instead Nietzsche responds to European nihilism
with
an exploration of the possibilities of history - foremost of which is the notion of eternal
recurrence. Here the etemal recurrence is taken figuratively, a poetic device which points to
a
new definition of philosophy which "so far as it is science and not legislation, ... means
only the
broadest extension of the concept of history."
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCrION
CHAPTER 1
CHAETER 2
CHAiTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 10
Nihilism as Nietzsche's Problematic ......................................................... iv - xv
Nietzsche and the Orthodox Tradition of Philosophy .................... .. .............. 1
Plato : The Allegory of the Cave : The Distinction Between Being
and Becorning, hterpreting the Cave, The Philosophic
Context of the Cave, Conclusions .......................... .. ...................................... 7
Nietzsche's Anti-Platonism : Revisiting the Cave from the
Perspective of History, Homer and Plato According to Arendt ...................... 30
Descartes : Ni hilism as Absolute Transcendence : Descartes'
Disengagad Reason and Mathematical Thought, Descrates'
Originating Impulse and the Relationship to Scholasticism.
Intuition and Deduction found Inadequate, The Descartes of
the Meditations, Absolute Transcendence and the
Abandonment of Finitude ............................... .... .................................. 43
Nietzsche's hti-Cartesianism : Introduction, Nietzsche's
Subversion of Categories, Nietzsche's Attack on
Mechanism and Self ......................................................................................... 59
The Weight of the Past and the Ascetic Ideal .................................................. 67
From Active Nihilism to Accomplished Nihilism :
Active and Passive Nihilism ............................................................................ 8 L
Tragedy : The Birth of Tragedy, The Death of Tragedy,
The Birth of Tragedy as Cosmology, Anti-Socratism
and History, Socratism as Truthfulness ........................................................... 96
The Will to Truth and The Will to Power :

The Will to Power and the Tragic, History,

Science and the Will to Power, Conclusion .................................................. 11 3
Surnmary and Conclusions. ............................................................................ 128
B
IB
WOGRAPHY... ........................................................................................................................
.. 13 5
iii
Nietzsche's Problematic: Nihilism
The history of philosophy is a secret raging against the preconditions of life, against
the value feelings of Me, against partisanship in favour of life. Philosophers have
never hesitated to aflirm a world provided it contradicted this world and furnished
them with a pretext for speaking il1 of this world. It has ken hitherto the grand
school of slander. (WP 46 1)
This essay is a discussion of the issue of nihilism as it is viewed by Nietzsche. The bais of
this discussion is the idea that Nietzsche's stniggle wilh nihilism is at the centre of his
thought. My
thesis is first, that Nietzsche refuses the evasion of subjectivity that, 1 think, is at the heart
of
rnetaphysical thought. Secondly, the reintroduction of subjectivity, or 'illusion' into
philosophy
requires a radicai revision of the notion of reason and philosophy. And finally, nihilism cm
only be
'overcorne' and transformed by lirst recognizing its deep roots in the history of philosophy.
Such
transformation is for Nietzsche the philosophic and educational task of modernity.
By subjectivity 1 mean that al1 action and thought must be based on only partid knowledge
and therefore on a certain degree of error. To this extent all action is 'tragic' in the broadest
sense or
the word and Nietzsche claims to be the first uagic philosopher (EH 8). But Nietzsche
ultimately
goes beyond or wishes to go beyond the notion that error or illusions are acceptable, at least
philosophicdly. The acceptance or illusion, or what is somclimes called Jesuitisrn, is what
Nietzsche does NOT accept; neither does he accept the noble lie of Plato which is an aspect
of this
Jesuitism. The philosophic search is infinite (JW 124). Nietzsche's answer to a tragic
insight is
"nolhing other than a histoncal consciousness which prepares his long encounter with the
persistence of the past in archaic history, a prsistence he atternpts to re-evaluate and surpass
by
translating the Dionysian excess of space and time into the eternal recurrence, a time in
excess of
history's self figuration (Ghisalberti, 1996). In other words, Nietzsche transfomis
philosophy into an
historical analysis which he calls genealogy through which 'illusions' are understood
'scientifically'
as necessary to particular context specific 'world disclosures.'
The metaphysical tradition resulted in nihilism because neither subjectivity, nor illusion,

and therefore the partiality of knowledge was honoured. hstead the infinite search for tmth
which
has always really guided both philosophy and science has ken hidden, buried, for two
rasons.
First the very hypothetical nature of Greek philosophy had ben hidden by the notion that
certain,
absolute, truths were possible in the form of, for exarnple, Platonic Ideas. Second Plato's
noble lie,
the necessity of the ordering of society and the sou1 according to the epistemology of
Forms, had
hidden over the notion of the infinity of Eros, which always refuses denotation, always
evades
language itself. [n short classicai metaphysics had atternpted to represent philosophy as the
attainment of finite tmths.
Nietzsche refuses the finite of classical metaphysics and the mimetic repetition of the past
by custom and tradition which accompanies this 'finite'. Philosophy's task is precisely to
prevent the
repetitions of time and history by a fonn of "indemonstrable philosophizing", a philosophy
no
longer motivated by certainty but by the will to power, to expansion which "gravitates
towards a
condition of irnmeasurability - wills its own expansion, desires to be more than it is at any
given
time - the will to power becomes the motivating principle of an ecstatic ontology - even
though the fini te con tinuosly restrains this movement" (Ghisalberti, 1 996):
Measure is alien to us, let us admit it to ourselves; what we itch for is the infinite,
the unmeasured. Like a rider on a charging steed we let fall the reins before the
infinite, we modem men, like semi-barbarians - and attain our state of bliss when
we are rnost - in danger!
If Nietzsche here expresses a certain ambivalence towards the in rinite it is because
"without
any limitation there is no knowing' (PTAG 37). It is for this reason that Nietzsche cannot
merely
'overcome' the Greeks, cannot forego Apollo and metaphysics in particular, but must
engage in a
critique of metaphysics which is more than 'deconstructive', which points out possibilities
which
have heretofore been hidden by forms of 'teleology' which have evaded many truths,
particularly the
'abject', the homfying, the unsavoury truths of history, in favour or a philosophy which cm
evenlually show those Lniths as insignificant in the light of an episternology of certainty. It
is
precisely this (Platonic-Parmenidean) persistent focus on 'Being' as a purified entity which
Nietzsche sees as at the origins of nihilistic thinking. The exclusive locus on 'Being' as
tmth, as
God, as the 'good' as the essence of metaphysics is what Nietzsche humourously labels
"monotonotheisrn",

a persistent neurosis ingrained in philosophy as repetition, and as a repetition which

confirms conventional realities while at the same time putting out of play the infinite quest
which
really has been the impetus (though unacknowledged in the orthodox tradition) of
philosophic