Nietzsche’s Analysis of Nihilism
by Vered Arnon
At the The World Is On Fire website
Here, however, we are always confronted with the [at times] complex interaction between someone’s “philosophy of life” and the set of circumstances they find themselves embedded in. That and having actual viable options in which to change those circumstances. After all, it’s easy enough to convince yourself it’s your “passive nihilism” that is impaling you when in fact it’s really more that your life is in the toilet and all you seem motivated to do is to flush it all away.
Everyone’s situation is unique in this regard. The “spirit” able to attach itself to any number of fulfilling distractions in life can send that passive nihilist philosophy packing to the back burner. Here one’s “existential meaning” from day to day makes all the difference in the world. Just as someone with an upbeat philosophy can tumble into a shitstorm of setbacks and be unable to fall back on that optimistic philosophy to pull them through. Here it’s often dasein down to the bone.
That and the distinction one makes between essential meaning and purpose in their life and existential meaning and purpose. These can become two very, very different things.
Or you can try something like this:
Hollow of course being in the mind of the beholder. And escapes that work and can be sustained are better than the alternative. Again, the emptiness might revolve only around the extent to which you allow yourself to dwell on the lack of essential meaning and purpose in your life. And, besides, to the extent you abandon the One True Path you are providing yourself with many more options in which to find existential meaning and purpose. And this doesn’t necessarily entail “resignation, generalizations, petty things, debauchery and fanaticism”.
Instead, this is often only how the objectivists construe passive nihilism. How bleak it must seem to them because they put all of their eggs – comfort and consolation – in the One True Path basket.
Also, in “revaluating values” you can dupe yourself into falling for all the Übermensch bullshit that some Nietzscheans use to divide up the world between the Masters and the Slaves. The Satyr Syndrome.