Nihilism & Philosophy by Gideon Barker
Roger Caldwell scrutinises philosophical revolutions.
Book Review
For Heidegger, that philosophy is not the overcoming of nihilism Nietzsche had intended. On the contrary, it is “the ultimate entanglement in nihilism”, and fails to escape from the metaphysical prison. In effect, Nietzsche remains caught up in Platonism. If the true world is one of eternal Becoming for Nietzsche, as compared to one of eternal Being for Plato, it is still, for all that, a true world: all that’s happened is that Being and Becoming have changed places.
Exactly. If, for Niezsche, the "death of God", the "will to power" and the "Übermensch" are seen to be paths enabling mere mortals to "overcome nihilism", how then do they not become just one more secular rendition of religion itself? The only things missing are immortality and salvation.
No small things, obviously, but: But at least on this side of the grave you have access to the one true path that separates you out from the contemptuous "masses". You become a "master" of all you survey by adopting one or another rendition of, say, the philosophical tripe peddled by Satyr over at Know Thyself.
If, for me, nihilism revolves around a "fractured and fragmented" I, confronting "rival goods" out in an essentially meaningless world, the narrative of all too many Nietzscheans today seems to be downright noble, righteous, honorable.
Right?
But in Nietzsche’s doctrine of the will to power, Heidegger sees the end of metaphysics, the completion of a history of forgetfulness of Being lasting more than two thousand years: with the essence of knowledge as will to power comes “the unrestrained exploitation of the earth” even “the thrust into outer space”, confirming mankind’s sense of homelessness.
Here of course we confront Heidegger's
doctrine pertaining to Nietzsche's
doctrine regarding the will to power such that for any particular flesh and blood human being, it can mean practically anything. What does it mean to you? Me? I'll need a context first.
Seriously, though, what on earth are we to make of something like this? How is it applicable to your own life from day to day given the manner in which you connect the dots between will to power and nihilism?
"Sense of homelessness"?! Huh? A little help with that please.
The ‘essence of metaphysics’, Heidegger tells us, is nihilism.
I'm trying to imagine if it is actually possible that this could be further removed from my own considerably more
existential assumptions about nihilism. In particular, moral nihilism.
And, just out of curiosity, if the author is right about what Heidegger tells us here, how might Heidegger go about connecting the dots between it and, say, the Nazis? Or is this only a "technical" thing that has absolutely nothing to do with the lives that we live.
If Nietzsche remains the last metaphysician despite his repudiation of all philosophy since Plato, what of Heidegger himself? Arguably he is in no better position. Nietzsche awaits the Übermensch for the transvaluation of all values. Heidegger, seeking to recover a sort of poetics of Being in a time when instrumental (practical-goal-directed) reason has strangled thought, vainly evokes what is, in effect, a return of the gods.
Try as I might, I can't make any sense of this. It's basically just intellectual gibberish to me -- everything that I have come to despise about the sort of philosophy some practice. Will Durant's "epistemologists".
All I can do then is to ask someone who thinks they do understand how "for all practical purposes" this is relevant to their own lives, to describe in more detail how and why that is the case. Otherwise for me I'll stick with the distinction I make between knowledge able to be conveyed and exchange in the either/or world as opposed to the is/ought world.
Given a particular set of circumstances.