Should we embrace nihilism, as Nolen Gertz suggests, or try to overcome it? For Nietzsche, nihilism must be overcome – if we're strong enough. The key, argues Alex Silk, is to see how nihilistic beliefs – that, say, nothing matters – derive from nihilistic feelings and bodily states. Understanding the basic features of human nature and experience at the root of nihilism paves the way toward a healthier, affirming perspective on ourselves and human life. Nietzsche’s rhetorical style helps us incorporate such a perspective by engaging our feelings as well as our rational faculties.

“Nihilism”: what?

There is a popular conception of Nietzsche as nihilist and arch “anti” figure of all things moral. “Conclud[ing] that there is nothing good, nothing beautiful, nothing sublime, nothing evil in itself” (D 210) [1] might seem to invite such an understanding. And yet, in a characteristic Nietzschean twist, the self-described “Antichrist” and “first immoralist” (EH III:2, IV:2–4) is in fact an “anti-nihilist” (GM II:24, A 58), whose ideal is a wholehearted “affirmation” and “ultimate, most joyous […] Yes to life” (BGE 56, EH BT:2). What, then, is at issue in the talk of nihilism? Why is it so “danger[ous]” (GM III:14)? How, if at all, can we overcome it? One must tread carefully with an author who aims to “reduce to despair” any reader “who is ‘in a hurry’” (D P:5). We’ll do our best.