Wellicht is het een goed idee om de heer Nietzsche zelf even aan het woord te laten.

Hier een vrij uitvoerige quote uit zijn niet-voltooide hoofdwerk "The Will to Power" (Engelse vertaling dus). Dit werk bestaat uit aantekeningen die Nietzsche ervoor had gemaakt, en is dus geen doorlopend verhaal. Ook gaat zo ongeveer het hele eerste boek ervan over nihilisme, en dat is wat veel om te quoten, dus ik kies er wat stukken uit.
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PREFACE
(Nov. 1887-March 1888)
1
Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness. With greatness--that means cynically and with innocence.
2
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.
3
He that speaks here, conversely, has done nothing so far but reflect: a philosopher and solitary by instinct, who has found his advantage in standing aside and outside, in patience, in procrastination, in staying behind; as a spirit of daring and experiment that has already lost its way once in every labyrinth of the future; as a soothsayer-bird spirit who looks back when relating what will come; as the first perfect nihilist of Europe who, however, has even now lived through the whole of nihilism, to the end, leaving it behind, outside himself.
4
For one should make no mistake about the meaning of the title that this gospel of the future wants to bear. "The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values"--in this formulation a countermovement finds expression, regarding both principle and task; a movement that in some future will take the place of this perfect nihilism--but presupposes it, logically and psychologically, and certainly can come only after and out of it. For why has the advent of nihilism become necessary? Because the values we have had hitherto thus draw their final consequence; because nihilism represents the ultimate logical conclusion of our great values and ideals--because we must experience nihilism before we can find out what value these "values" really had.--We require, sometime, new values.
BOOK ONE
[..]
2 (Spring-Fall 1887)
What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; "why?" finds no answer.
3 (Spring-Fall 1887)
Radical nihilism is the conviction of an absolute untenability of existence when it comes to the highest values one recognizes; plus the realization that we lack the least right to posit a beyond or an in-itself of things that might be "divine" or morality incarnate.
This realization is a consequence of the cultivation of "truthfulness"--thus itself a consequence of the faith in morality.
4 (June 10, 1887)3
What were the advantages of the Christian moral hypothesis?
1. It granted man an absolute value, as opposed to his smallness and accidental occurrence in the flux of becoming and passing away.
2. It served the advocates of God insofar as it conceded to the world, in spite of suffering and evil, the character of perfection-including "freedom": evil appeared full of meaning.
3. It posited that man had a knowledge of absolute values and thus adequate knowledge precisely regarding what is most important.
4. It prevented man from despising himself as man, from taking sides against life; from despairing of knowledge: it was a means of preservation.
In sum: morality was the great antidote against practical and theoretical nihilism.
5 (June 10, 1887)
But among the forces cultivated by morality was truthfulness: this eventually turned against morality, discovered its teleology, its partial perspective--and now the recognition of this inveterate mendaciousness that one despairs of shedding becomes a stimulant. Now we discover in ourselves needs implanted by centuries of moral interpretation--needs that now appear to us as needs for untruth; on the other hand, the value for which we endure life seems to hinge on these needs. This antagonism--not to esteem what we know, and not to be allowed any longer to esteem the lies we should like to tell ourselves--results in a process of dissolution.
[..]
7 (Nov. 1887-March 1888)
The supreme values in whose service man should live, especially when they were very hard on him and exacted a high puce--these social values were erected over man to strengthen their voice, as if they were commands of God, as 'reality," as the true" world, as a hope and future world. Now that the shabby origin of these values is becoming clear, the universe seems to have lost value, seems "meaningless"--but that is only a transitional stage.
8 (1883-1888)
The nihilistic consequence (the belief in valuelessness) as a consequence of moral valuation: everything egoistic has come to disgust us (even though we realize the impossibility of the unegoistic); what is necessary has come to disgust us (even though we realize the impossibility of any liberum arbitrium or intelligible freedom"). We see that we cannot reach the sphere in which we have placed our values; but this does not by any means confer any value on that other sphere in which we live: on the contrary, we are weary because we have lost the main stimulus "In vain so far!"
[..]
12 (Nov. 1887-March 1888)
Decline of Cosmological Values
( A )
Nihilism as a psychological state will have to be reached, first, when we have sought a "meaning" in all events that is not there: so the seeker eventually becomes discouraged. Nihilism, then, is the recognition of the long waste of strength, the agony of the "in vain," insecurity, the lack of any opportunity to recover and to regain composure--being ashamed in front of oneself, as if one had deceived oneself all too long.--This meaning could have been: the "fulfillment" of some highest ethical canon in all events, the moral world order; or the growth of love and harmony in the intercourse of beings; or the gradual approximation of a state of universal happiness; or even the development toward a state of universal annihilation--any goal at least constitutes some meaning. What all these notions have in common is that something is to be achieved through the process--and now one realizes that becoming aims at nothing and achieves nothing.-- Thus, disappointment regarding an alleged aim of becoming as a cause of nihilism: whether regarding a specific aim or, universalized, the realization that all previous hypotheses about aims that concern the whole "evolution" are inadequate (man no longer the collaborator, let alone the center, of becoming).
Nihilism as a psychological state is reached, secondly, when one has posited a totality, a systematization, indeed any organization in all events, and underneath all events, and a soul that longs to admire and revere has wallowed in the idea of some supreme form of domination and administration (--if the soul be that of a logician, complete consistency and real dialectic are quite sufficient to reconcile it to everything). Some sort of unity, some form of "monism": this faith suffices to give man a deep feeling of standing in the context of, and being dependent on, some whole that is infinitely superior to him, and he sees himself as a mode of the deity.--"The well-being of the universal demands the devotion of the individual"--but behold, there is no such universal! At bottom, man has lost the faith in his own value when no infinitely valuable whole works through him; i.e., he conceived such a whole in order to be able to believe in his own value.
Nihilism as psychological state has yet a third and last form.
Given these two insights, that becoming has no goal and that underneath all becoming there is no grand unity in which the individual could immerse himself completely as in an element of supreme value, an escape remains: to pass sentence on this whole world of becoming as a deception and to invent a world beyond it, a true world. But as soon as man finds out how that world is fabricated solely from psychological needs, and how he has absolutely no right to it, the last form of nihilism comes into being: it includes disbelief in any metaphysical world and forbids itself any belief in a true world. Having reached this standpoint, one grants the reality of becoming as the only reality, forbids oneself every kind of clandestine access to afterworlds and false divinities--but cannot endure this world though one does not want to deny it.
What has happened, at bottom? The feeling of valuelessness was reached with the realization that the overall character of existence may not be interpreted by means of the concept of "aim," the concept of "unity," or the concept of "truth." Existence has no goal or end; any comprehensive unity in the plurality of events is lacking: the character of existence is not "true," is false. One simply lacks any reason for convincing oneself that there is a true world. Briefly: the categories "aim," "unity," "being" which we used to project some value into the world--we pull out again; so the world looks valueless.
( B )
Suppose we realize how the world may no longer be interpreted in terms of these three categories, and that the world begins to become valueless for us after this insight: then we have to ask about the sources of our faith in these three categories. Let us try if it is not possible to give up our faith in them. Once we have devaluated these three categories, the demonstration that they cannot be applied to the universe is no longer any reason for devaluating the universe.
Conclusion: The faith in the categories of reason is the cause of nihilism. We have measured the value of the world according to categories that refer to a purely fictitious world.
Final conclusion: All the values by means of which we have tried so far to render the world estimable for ourselves and which then proved inapplicable and therefore devaluated the world--all these values are, psychologically considered, the results of certain perspectives of utility, designed to maintain and increase human constructs of domination--and they have been falsely projected into the essence of things. What we find here is still the hyperbolic naivete of man: positing himself as the meaning and measure of the value of things.
[..]
20 (Spring-Fall 1887)
The nihilistic question "for what?" is rooted in the old habit of supposing that the goal must be put up, given, demanded from outside-by some superhuman authority. Having unlearned faith in that, one still follows the old habit and seeks another authority that can speak unconditionally and command goals and tasks. The authority of conscience now steps up front (the more emancipated one is from theology, the more imperativistic morality becomes) to compensate for the loss of a personal authority. Or the authority of reason. Or the social instinct (the herd). Or history with an immanent spirit and a goal within, so one can entrust oneself to it. One wants to get around the will, the willing of a goal, the risk of positing a goal for oneself; one wants to rid oneself of the responsibility (one would accept fatalism). Finally, happiness--and, with a touch of Tartuffe, the happiness of the greatest number.
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Alle waarden die tot nu toe zijn gebruikt, de waarden waarop onze hele cultuur is gebaseerd, waren gebaseerd op grondslagen die nu zijn weggevallen. Het doel van de mensheid is verdwenen, wij kunnen daar niet meer aan geloven. Daarmee vallen alle waarden weg, en dus ieder gevoel van waardevolheid. Nu zijn er maar weinigen die dit ook werkelijk voor langere tijd zo ervaren: de overgrote meerderheid van de mensen zorgt onbewust dat zij ergens waarden vandaan haalt om de leegte van het nihilisme op te vullen. Maar de vraag waar die waarden op gebaseerd zijn blijft zich met een ijzingwekkende consequentheid stellen - en het antwoord 'nergens op' is in feite slechts een affirmatie van het nihilisme. Als waarden nergens op gebaseerd zijn, waarom heb jij dan die waarden en geen anderen? Waarom zou je het ook maar iemand kwalijk nemen als hij compleet andere waarden heeft?
Wat is nu de uitweg die Nietzsche wijst? Wijst hij wel een uitweg?
Is er wel een uitweg? De nieuwe moraal die Nietzsche ons voorhoudt is geworteld in zijn idee van de 'Wil tot Macht'. Dit idee is toch, goed bekeken, een nieuwe metafyssica, en lijkt niet beter bestand te zijn tegen het nihilisme dan eerdere systemen. Welke merites Nietzsche's vrij complexe moraal ("het recht van de sterkste", zoals zij wel eens wordt samengevat, is zeker geen goede omschrijving van het Nietzscheaanse morele systeem) ook mag hebben, een vrijwaring van het nihilisme is het zeker
niet.
En dus blijven wij zitten met de fundamentele vraag welke reden wij in godesnaam hebben om onze waarden aan te hangen. Hoe je die vraag ervaart verschilt ongetwijfeld van persoon tot persoon, maar ik zie de verschrikking er wel van in. Er
is geen doel, er
is geen absolute moraal - maar tegelijkertijd is een leven zonder doel en moraal onverdragelijk. Er kan geen antwoord zijn op deze kwestie, ook niet vanuit een 'herenmoraal'. Belangwekkender in dit verband is dan ook Nietzsche's onderzoek naar de oorzaken van dit nihilisme. Alleen zij die de vraag naar de zin van het bestaan stellen zullen de afgrond van het nihilisme tegen komen. Er zijn tijden geweest dat deze vraag helemaal niet gesteld
werd, tijden
voordat de mens zich vragen stelde over de morele waarde van zijn daden. Tijden dat de mens simpelweg leefde - en Nietzsche's antwoord op het nihilisme komt dan ook min of meer neer op het idee dat die toestand, een 'amorele' (niet 'immorele') toestand, weer opgezocht moet worden. De mens die de vraag naar de waarde van het bestaan niet stelt kan ook niet in het nihilisme gevangen worden. En toch is ook deze oplossing niet sterk: want waarom zou de nihilist van het nihilisme verlost willen worden?