This is post two of a series titled: Monica’s Mind-Blowing Trip Through Existential Philosophy.

The thing about nihilism is that everyone recognises it’s no way to live. In fact, some of the most famous philosophers to write on the subject sought to find escape hatches.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), a Prussian philosopher, is a name often associated with nihilism:

Nietzsche claimed the ‘death’ of God would eventually lead to the loss of any universal perspective on things, and along with it any coherent sense of objective truth. Instead we would retain only our own multiple, diverse, and fluid perspectives. This view has acquired the name “perspectivism“. Alternatively, the death of God may lead beyond bare perspectivism to outright nihilism, the belief that nothing has any importance and that life lacks purpose. (Wikipedia)

And yet Nietzsche did not consider all values of equal worth. Which is to say, just because morality is a human invention, doesn’t mean it isn’t a project worth working on. Nietzsche appreciated nihilism, but only as a stage in human development that we could one day overcome, following which we would build a new and true foundation upon which to live.

Nietzsche saw light in a concept he called the Übermensch, which he expounded in his 1883 novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra (a book I currently have on order.)

The Übermensch is an exercise of action and life: one must give value to their existence by behaving as if one’s very existence were a work of art. Nietzsche believed that the Übermensch “exercise” would be a necessity for human survival in the post-religious era. (Wikipedia)

That first sentence caused a little “bing!” sound to go off in my head. After all, do we not come to a piece of art accepting of it’s own self-created reality? For example, when you listen to a piece of music, or watch a film, it is like entering a different world. And even though it’s “fictional” – that is to say creates it’s own world of logic, colour, textures, emotions etc. without any direct relationship with ‘reality’ – we are still greatly moved and emotionally invested, despite leaving our own ‘true’ world behind, during the experience of the piece.

And perhaps that’s how we should see life. Nihilism shows us that nothing is “real” in a permanent, absolute, transcendental way. But we are living, and experiencing something, albeit for the short time that constitutes one lifetime. So why not, as in art, accept the world it is offering – admire it’s beauty, allow yourself to be moved, and experience it. Just like the mini-reality of every art piece, something is triggering us to have feelings and thoughts (LIFE!). There may be no concrete reality behind these sensations, but that does not mean we should discard those very sensations as worthless.

Because beyond those sensations, there is nothing.

The analogy with art only works in the sense that like our experience with art, we must see life as a contained experience. And how even with the knowledge that it is ‘untrue’, we can enjoy it and find meaning in it. What happens within the realm of that piece of art, or life, doesn’t matter in any permanent sense but you accept what you are offered and ‘go with it’, so to speak.

However I don’t think the analogy works when trying to decide, in practical terms, how to live one’s life. That is, morality.

How do we make choices, when we ‘know’ nothing has any inherent value. When you take away all inherent value (and in fact, all universal truth), does this not lead to a ‘nothing/anything goes’ situation. When nothing is valid, everything is valid! When everything is valid, nothing is valid. On what basis do we make decisions when deep down inside we know nothing is actually (or essentially) right, wrong, good, bad or evil? What happens when the very foundation upon which all ethics is based, suddenly has no substance?

As with all the existentialists to follow him, there’s a high degree of paradox in the thinking of Nietzsche:

Sometimes Nietzsche may seem to have very definite opinions on what he regards as moral or as immoral. Note, however, that one can explain Nietzsche’s moral opinions without attributing to him the claim of their truth. For Nietzsche, after all, we needn’t disregard a statement merely because it expresses something false. On the contrary, he depicts falsehood as essential for “life”. Interestingly enough, he mentions a “dishonest lie”, (discussing Wagner in The Case of Wagner) as opposed to an “honest” one, recommending further to consult Plato with regard to the latter, which should give some idea of the layers of paradox in his work.

Which, I believe, leads us to the concept of facticity and authenticity, that can be found in the work of 20th century existentialists. But let’s leave that for another post!