What does Nihilism mean?--_That the highest values are losing their
value._ 8
Thorough Nihilism is the conviction that life is absurd, in the
light of the highest values already discovered; it also includes the
view that we have not the smallest right to assume the existence of
transcendental objects or things in themselves, which would be either
divine or morality incarnate.
This view is the result of fully developed "truthfulness": therefore a
consequence of the belief in morality. 8
_Moral valuations are condemnations, negations; morality is the
abdication of the will to live._ 12
All values with which we have tried, hitherto, to lend the world
some worth, from our point of view, and with which we have therefore
_deprived it of all worth_ (once these values have been shown to be
inapplicable)--all these values, are, psychologically, the results of
certain views of utility, established for the purpose of maintaining
and increasing the dominion of certain communities: but falsely
projected into the nature of things. It is always man's _exaggerated
ingenuousness_ to regard himself as the sense and measure of all
things. 15
Every purely _moral_ valuation (as, for instance, the Buddhistic)
_terminates in Nihilism:_ Europe must expect the same thing! It is
supposed that one can get along with a morality bereft of a religious
background; but in this direction the road to Nihilism is opened. 19
Nihilism is not only a meditating over the "in vain"--not only the
belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one's
shoulder to the plough; _one destroys._ 22
The time is coming when we shall have to pay for having been
_Christians_ for two thousand years: we are losing the equilibrium
which enables us to live--for a long while we shall not know in what
direction we are travelling. We are hurling ourselves headlong into the
_opposite_ valuations, with that degree of energy which could only have
been engendered in man by an _overvaluation_ of himself.
Now, everything is false from the root, words and nothing but words,
confused, feeble, or overstrained. 25
Modern Pessimism is an expression of the uselessness only of the
_modern_ world, not of the world and existence as such. 29
The "preponderance of _pain over pleasure_" or the reverse (Hedonism);
both of these doctrines are already signposts to Nihilism....
For here, in both cases, no other final purpose is sought than the
phenomenon pleasure or pain. 29
"Life is not worth living"; "Resignation"; "what is the good of
tears?"--this is a feeble and sentimental attitude of mind. 29-30
People have not yet seen what is so terribly obvious--namely, that
Pessimism is not a problem but a _symptom,_--that the term ought to be
replaced by "Nihilism,"--that the question, "to be or not to be," is
itself an illness, a sign of degeneracy, an idiosyncrasy.
The Nihilistic movement is only an expression of physiological
decadence. 32
_Decay, decline,_ and _waste,_ are, _per se,_ in no way open to
objection; they are the natural consequences of life and vital growth.
The phenomenon of decadence is just as necessary to life as advance or
progress is: we are not in a position which enables us to _suppress_
it. On the contrary, reason _would have it retain its rights._
It is disgraceful on the part of socialist-theorists to argue that
circumstances and social combinations could be devised which would put
an end to all vice, illness, crime, prostitution, and poverty.... But
that is tantamount to condemning _Life._ 33
Decadence itself is not a thing _that can be withstood:_ it is
absolutely necessary and is proper to all ages and all peoples.
That which must be withstood, and by all means in our power, is the
spreading of the contagion among the sound parts of the organism. 33-34
All those things which heretofore have been regarded as the _causes of
degeneration,_ are really its effects. 34
If Nature have no pity on the degenerate, it is not therefore immoral:
the growth of physiological and moral evils in the human race, is
rather the _result of morbid and unnatural morality._ 44
The whole of our sociology knows no other instinct than that of the
herd, _i.e.,_ of a _multitude of mere ciphers_--of which every cipher
has "equal rights," and where it is a virtue to be--naught. 45
Nihilism is a sign that the botched and bungled have no longer any
consolation, that they destroy in order to be destroyed, that, having
been deprived of morality, they no longer have any reason to "resign
themselves," that they take up their stand on the territory of the
opposite principle, and _will also exercise power_ themselves, by
compelling the powerful to become their hangmen. 52
Our age, with its indiscriminate endeavours to mitigate distress, to
honour it, and to wage war in advance with unpleasant possibilities, is
an age of the _poor._ 57