philosophical conversations

nihilism as history and metaphysics

Chapter 9 of Heidegger's Nihilism book on Nietzsche suggests two lines of questioning. Heidegger says:

"First, nihilism, as Nietzsche thinks it, is the history of the devaluation of the highest values hitherto, as the transition to the revaluation of all prior values, a revaluation that comes to pass in the discovery of a principle for a new valuation, a principle Nietzsche recognizes as the will to power.

Second, Nietzsche conceives of the esssence of nihilism solely on the basis of valuative thought, and in that form alone does it become an object of his critique and his attempt at overcoming. But because the valuation has its principle in the willl to power, overcoming nihilism by fulfilling it in its classical form develops into an interpretation of being as a whole. The new valuation is a metaphysics of will to power."

Nihilism is a history of valuations. If this history is considered one of decline, then nihilism is the inner logic of the decline.If the highest values are devalued, then the feeling arises that the world has gone awry and the world seems valueless.

What then happens is an attempt to circumvent nihilism without revaluating prior values.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at March 14, 2005 07:31 PM | TrackBack