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In 1888, Nietzsche announced he was writing the history of the next two centuries: the coming of nihilism. This lecture from Academy of Ideas asks whether he was right. It traces the old ‘true world’ promises — Plato’s forms, Christian heaven, and their modern secular replacements — and shows how each one quietly steps toward despair. When every otherworldly hope collapses, pessimism hardens into the belief that life has no meaning at all. Nietzsche’s cure is not another true world, but an earthly outlook that affirms life — including its suffering — as the only world we truly have.
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In 1888, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote,
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.
Nihilism is the conviction that there is no meaning to life,
that the world is inhospitable to our highest hopes and values,
and that there are no gods or higher purposes to justify our suffering.
To be a nihilist is to flirt with despair and the sentiment that life is not worth living,
and thus, the nihilist position is antithetical to life.
The question whether not to be is better than to be is itself a disease, a sign of decline.
The nihilistic movement is the expression of physiological decadence, explains Nietzsche.
Although nihilism has existed in all times and places,
it is especially prevalent in the modern West. To understand why, we are going to turn to the
insights of Friedrich Nietzsche. Specifically, we are going to examine why Nietzsche thought
that all the dominant worldviews of the West have been pessimistic evaluations of life,
and thus, precursors to modern nihilism. In 1885, Nietzsche saw the specter of nihilism
looming on the horizon of Western civilization. And as he wrote,
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. The West has long been under the spell of worldviews predicated on
the existence of what Nietzsche called a true world. Such worldviews posit that along with this
flawed earthly reality, there exists another, more perfect reality, a true world. Or as the
philosopher Julian Young explains in his book The Death of God and the Meaning of Life.
A true world is a destination, a destination such that to reach it is to enter, or perhaps re-enter,
a state of eternal bliss, a heaven, paradise, or utopia. Hence, true world philosophies give
meaning to life by representing it as a journey, a journey towards redemption, towards an arrival
which will more than make up for the stress and discomfort of the traveling. A true world account
of the proper course of our lives as a kind of story, a narrative. One of the first and most
influential true world philosophies in western history was forged in the mind of the ancient
Greek philosopher Plato. According to Plato, the earthly reality we experience with our senses
is a deception. It is akin to watching shadows on the wall of a cave. Plato called this deceptive
reality the world of becoming, and posited that behind it exists an unchanging world of being,
a true world, which is the realm of forms. For Plato, the meaning of life is to turn away from
our senses, temper our emotions, and through the development of our intellect grasp the forms that
exist in the world of being. This is the path to truth, to enlightenment, and to the elimination
of suffering. And as Julian Young writes, Plato’s way of giving meaning to life has dominated
virtually the entire history of Western thought and feeling. I am referring here, in the first
instance to Christianity, though as we will see, Platonism, which I use as a synonym for true
worldism, continued, in disguised forms, to dominate Western thinking even in the materialist
atmosphere of the post-Christian era. But let us attend, for now, to Christianity. Nietzsche
famously wrote that Christianity is Platonism for the masses, by which he meant that the Christian
worldview is a slightly modified version of Platonism, but with greater mass appeal. For
like Platonism, the Christian worldview is a true world theory. According to it, this world is a
spiritually and morally degraded, or fallen world, and in it we suffer for sins against God. Yet over
and above this fallen world exists the kingdom of heaven, the true world, where the souls of the
righteous find salvation, redemption, eternal life and happiness, following the death of their mortal
flesh one does not i think need much convincing that christianity according to nietzsche the
product of saint paul’s grafting of jesus’s ethics onto greek metaphysics is basically a version of
platonism of the true world true home view of reality explains julian young there is of course
not a complete identity between platonism and christianity there is for example no omnipotent
Creator God in Plato. Yet in both the Platonic and the Christian story there is the same metaphysical
division between the natural and the supernatural worlds, between earth and heaven, with the latter
portrayed as home and the former as a place of exile. It is well known that Nietzsche heralded
the death of God, by which he meant that in the West the belief in a monotheistic God was in
decline. Yet what is less known is that he also forecasted that following the death of God,
true world theories would continue to flourish. However, rather than positing a transcendental
heaven and redemption in the afterlife, these post-Christian true world philosophies structured
themselves around the possibility of redemption in this life and the coming of a heaven on earth
that is forged by the hands of men. Nietzsche referred to these post-Christian true world
theories as shadows of God and as he wrote, God is dead. But given the way of men,
there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.
The political ideologies which plagued the 20th century, be it fascism, socialism, communism,
or totalitarianism, are shadows of God. Nietzsche called socialism latent Christianity,
while Carl Jung, 75 years after Nietzsche, took note of the correlation in Europe between the
decline in religious belief and the rise in political fanaticism. The state takes the place
of God. The socialist dictatorships are religions,” observed Jung. The practitioners of these
political true-world theories sought to socially engineer a new man who would be redeemed from
past defects and sins. And they promised their followers that, if given enough power and
control, the state would construct a true world, a heaven on earth. The Nazi ideology,
for example, promised the coming of an Aryan utopia, while the theologian of communism,
Karl Marx stated that the arrival of a communist utopia would mark what he called the end of history.
Communism is utopia, that is nowhere, writes the sociologist Emanuel Wallerstein.
It is the avatar of all our religious eschatologies.
The coming of the Messiah, the second coming of Christ, Nirvana.
It is not a historical prospect, but a current mythology.
In the 20th century, the Czech writer Milan Kundera echoed this sentiment.
it. Totalitarianism is not only hell, but also the dream of paradise. The age-old dream
of a world where everybody would live in harmony, united by a single common will and faith.
If totalitarianism did not exploit these archetypes, which are deep inside us all and rooted deep
in all religions, it could never attract so many people.
In our age, there exist still other shadows of God. Some of the more radical environmentalist
movements are seeking to harness state power in order to radically diminish humanity’s impact on
nature and create an environmental utopia where humans redeem themselves from what are seen as
sins against mother earth some believe that if we follow science and harness the power of technology
big data and artificial intelligence we will be able to construct a technocratic or scientifically
managed utopian society the transhumanist movement is predicated on the belief that by merging man
with machine, we will be able to transcend human frailties and, at some point in the
future, become like gods.
Many spiritual movements see the world as invariably moving towards a utopia characterized
by universal love, freedom, and harmony.
While all these shadows of God possess flocks of disciples, today the true world theory
of choice for the masses is what the 20th century psychologist Michael Mahoney called
the myth of arrival.
Those who subscribe to this myth believe that one day they will reach a turning point in
life.
All their frustrations and problems will disappear and they will finally be happy.
In other words, they believe that in the future they will enter their own personal utopia,
or true world.
Or as Mahony writes,
Embedded in the myth of arrival is the message that there will come a day when our struggles
and suffering will be finished.
Depression, anxiety, anger, and all manner of ill-being will finally end.
We will wake up one morning and clearly recognize that we have arrived.
We will have gotten ourselves and our lives together in a way that can never be undone.
We will be healthy and happy, we’ll be in the job, the home, and the relationship that
we have always wanted, financially comfortable and fundamentally at peace with ourselves.
What Platonism, Christianity, and the post-Christian political and secular shadows of God have
in common is that at essence they are deeply pessimistic, putting aside the question of
whether a true world does or ever will exist, all these worldviews are predicated on a rejection
of this earthly reality and a condemnation of the present moment, or as Nietzsche explains,
the concept, the true world, insinuates that this world is untruthful, deceptive, dishonest,
inauthentic, inessential, and consequently also not a world adapted to our needs.
What is it that leads people to reject this earthly reality, which is the only reality we
know for certain exists and to posit the existence of a true world.
According to Nietzsche, it is a psychological need which is the driving force behind all
true world philosophies.
Those who subscribe to these worldviews tend to be morally and spiritually weak and unable
to cope with the human condition without a psychological crutch.
Such people, therefore, need to believe in the existence of a true world where they will
find lasting peace and salvation.
Otherwise they would be crippled by suffering and incapable of enduring life.
Or as Nietzsche writes, General insight.
It is the instinct of life-weariness which has created the other world.
To imagine another, more valuable world is an expression of hatred for the world that
makes one suffer.
Does man not eternally create a fictitious world for himself because he wants a better
world than reality?
As true world philosophies are pessimistic evaluations of our lot on earth, they are
precursors of nihilism, for as Nietzsche wrote, pessimism is a preliminary form of nihilism.
All that is required to move from being a believer in a true world to a full-blown nihilist
is a simple crisis of faith.
For if or when doubt deflates one’s belief in a true world, then one is forced to confront
the possibility that this earthly reality in the here and now, which one has already
judged to be irreparably flawed and insufficient, is all there is. In The Will to Power, Nietzsche
writes,
The development of pessimism into nihilism. The repudiated world versus an artificially built,
true, valuable one. Finally, one discovers how the true world is fabricated solely from
psychological needs. And now all one has left is the repudiated world. And one adds this supreme
disappointment to the reasons why it deserves to be repudiated. At this point nihilism is reached.
One grants the reality of becoming as the only reality, but cannot endure this world.
As true world theories are pessimistic and a mere step away from nihilism,
Nietzsche thought that to overcome nihilism what modern man needs is a worldview not dependent on
a true world. We need a worldview which, rather than repudiating this earthly existence, justifies,
affirms and even embraces the suffering that is indispensable to it. We need a worldview that
helps us cultivate meaning in the present moment and in the only life we know for certain we have.
We need, in short, a worldview that promotes human flourishing by remaining faithful to the here and
now and to this earth. And in the next video, we will explore Nietzsche’s worldview predicated on
the will to power, which he put forth as an alternative to true world theories.
I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who
speak to you of otherworldly hopes. Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers
of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary. So let them go.
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Source: Academy of Ideas