In part, the assessment of the current state of things in the grand scheme, from the perspective of our antiquated and enfeebled position, is by and large due to the problem of Nihilism. To define this properly called philosophy one must subjugate themselves to the demanding conclusions of German idealism and romanticism which led to the manifestation of it with the national socialist party in the unstable and anxious post-war Germany. First and foremost, anything that would shrug off the many wailings which engendered this thought would leave us in a position where we could not properly cage and analyze the issue correctly. It is precisely a lack of true consideration that would leave us empty handed in light of material consequences which we all find ourselves in today. So as the true philosopher does, we have to engage and give credence where it’s due, else we fight with obscurantism as the sword and barbarism as the shield.
“Nihilism might mean: velle nihil, to will the nothing, the destruction of everything, including oneself and therefore primarily the will to self-destruction.”
It would be clear to anyone that has knowledge of this topic, even remotely, that such a definition is absolutely insignificant for purposes like we have. It’s a simple reduction, etymology which often requires too much abstraction. Although it serves perfectly as a precursor to the proper analysis.
If we are to take nihilism and try to trace back the roots, we quickly realize that this is a specifically German view. This is not to say that the Anglo-saxon framework that dominated western society isn’t nihilistic, for this is the very reason we are even speaking of it. Rather, it’s roots in Germany thought give the basis for an identification of parts which we are ultimately also concerned with. If we are to look to the National Socialists for answers we find very quickly that they are a sort of materialized form of these philosophical fundamentals which are treated as novelties. A quick glance at a lineage of thought brings us to a first principle, antagonism against the way things are in a historical sense. During the industrialization the world was thrust into a chamber of ever dogmatic statements ringing about from supposed validation by the current realities. Marxists for example, saw the destruction of the feudal classes, the growth of the middle classes, the world emphasis on labor to be a manifestation of their classist doctrine. So what might have this to do with the velle nihil, to will the nothing. Well in a way it was the shaking off of a plague troubling the world. The headstrong throng of the ever encompassing supposed reality based on a positivistic and naturalistic nonteleological conception of the universe and human life, which to the Germans was an impending doom with no proper response or solution. A solution that would be scientific in itself was exemplary of the very dilemma, and no honest man could supposedly work this, for how can one argue against medicine which it uses to stand upright?1
The prospect of a pacified planet, without rulers and ruled, of a planetary society devoted to production and consumption only, to the production and consumption of spiritual as well as material merchandise, was positively horrifying to quite a few very intelligent and very decent, if very young, Germans.2
Surely an interested thing to note here is that as Catholics, we force a theological view onto these supposed problems. But we must acknowledge that Godlessness, while being the heart of the matter, is the difference between a wish and a reality. It’s important to know that these men, the nihilists perplexed and hostile towards this Marxist doctrine did not have an angle of religion, they did not reject it because of religion. In other words, both the Marxists and the Nihilists were in fact atheists3, however, religious either camp might sound at certain times. This provides yet another difficulty in a proper assessment. If the Marxist goal was the fulfilment of the dream of mankind and to the Germans, “the greatest debasement of humanity, as the coming of the end of humanity, as the arrival of the last man.” Wherein lies the basis for nihilism? It is nothing but a sheer want of opposition, of wanting the nothingness than the supposed debasement, “the chaos and the jungle, the wild west, and the Hobbesian state of nature.” in this lies the difference between the National Socialist conceptualization and that of their main catalyst and doctrinal father, Nietzsche.
To Nietzsche, the situation of modern civilization was impossible to defeat dialectically, the backbone, being modern science, both natural and civil proved irrefutable so to speak. Religion was to him no proper means since modern science undid the supposed credibility of it, of course, we know this supposed and unfair contention all too well, I nevertheless claim we are we harmed and perplexed by certain notions in modern science, such as evolution and singularity. In a way, where Nietzsche saw a laughable embarrassment to religion in modern science, we saw a pike unto which we would impale ourselves. Should we have reacted undialectically, or rather, properly German, then we would surely be in a different place. This is precisely the problem and answer of Nihilists. The rejection of the answer, the unscientific and illogical response to things which claim absolute domination. Where the positivist hordes saw virtue as the humanistic object, materialized by pacifism, utilitarian infatuations, the Nihilists countered with the opposite. The very reason they cannot accept science as a foundation to what should be, is due to it’s universal property, if the evil claim universality, what room do you have to argue from universals? If Germans were to fight the universal claim of modern science, they had to do it from a particular, from something that allows evasion of the question at hand. But this very evasion, the notion of “Faustic science reject eo ipso the idea of “science.” is self destructive. How can it be that different “cultures” have produced different types of sciences when “only one of them can be true, can be science?”4
The German Nihilists necessarily grasp at notions to reject modern civilization, they grab at what can be called “ancestral tradition” to the things which circumvent the arrival of Christianity and the conceptualizations of modern science. Of course this notion of ancestral tradition is in reality nothing short of a specific type of barbarism.5 The barbarism of what may be vaguely considered Germanic peoples, and it is this very thing that kept men in the horrid conditions of brutality and animalistic practices. But to the Nihilists, this was a perfect exemplification of proper humanity since it’s opposed to what can be called “mechanical society as distinguished from, and opposed to, organic community.” That of the robotic, utilitarian masses of modern day society and the localized closed off barbarians which held particular, unscientific beliefs and practices. The barbarian civilizations ability to stay independent of universalization, to stay as closed and independent in what can be called “values”6 is the aim of the nihilists. If there are no answers without the basis of Christianity, since it is supposedly delegitimized, yet historical periods of time, in a romanticized way, certain people abstained from performing the detestable behaviors definitive of modern man, it must still be somehow actuated. The blunder here then is what kept the barbarians in act, is it ignorance of truth by will or accident? Is it true that science itself, distinct from modern science proves to be the antithesis to the end of man as perceived by the nihilists? I don’t believe we have an exact answer. To ignore the realities of a natural hostility between Jerusalem and Athens is far too naïve.7 Should we completely brush off the reality that the unhinged philosopher and natural scientist when given free reign, we end up in murky waters. I’m inclined to compare the very many futile attempts to solidify a kind of placated mutual existence of the Church and modern science manifested by certain unfavorable characters.8 In many ways I find myself wanting to will the destruction of modern science, ending up in a similar situation like the National Socialists, albeit from a solid basis. The contrast is with the domain in which the National Socialists stayed. They, without a universal system for morality, just like the Marxists, saw a way to appeal to a sort of religious maxim. That the German race is what provides basis for law, for belief, for all things that should be. As Leo Strauss points out regarding the National Socialists absolute appropriation of Nietzsche is not particularly unjust, this is generally a liberal, historicist purging in which they try to salvage what hates them. Though Nietzsche is not reducible to a rejection of a certain political regime and the want for a type of revolution there is no doubt. But as we see, he is the catalyst of what ultimately manifests as the National Socialists in post-war Germany.
That is no philosophic race, these Englishmen. bacon represents an attack on the philosophic spirit as such. Hobbes, Hume and Locke are a degradation and debasement of the very concept of “philosopher” for more than a century. against Hume, Kant stood up and stood out. It was lock , of whom Schelling was entitled to say ‘je méprise Locke.’ in the fight against English mechanists interpretation of nature [newton] , Hegel and Schopenhauer and Goethe were unanimous.9
Strauss continues by stating that there is no doubt as to the German view of the “modern ideas” or those that seemingly took over the 18th century as English in origin. That is to say, that modernity proper, even to us, has a root based in the race of those men that innovated and advanced it. This is of course reflected in the general Germanic disdain for modern ideas from the idealist philosophers, Romanticists like Wagner and of course, the ideologues of the National Socialists. He ends by giving Nietzsche credit where credit is due, it is in fact true that the Germans waged philosophic war against the Anglos, it is just a question of whether the race is an accidental or essential part. In our own perspective, we frequently question the issue of race. The extent of which it means something or not, how far to take it as a consideration of all things. Many falter to a pseudo-idolatry of course, subjecting principles of sovereignty and the origin of civil power to race itself, and this cannot be. We know this from the Scholastics. Nonetheless, questions of whether Anglos are responsible for the modern matrix we are in seem somewhat pertinent. Why is it that western men, stoop so low in our evil and rejection of Christianity? Why is it that many African populations have a superior societal order, rejecting grotesque and unnatural notions of feminism and hedonism? Where I can connect some thoughts on Easterns in their treatment of women10 and the westerners vivid championing of a kind of idolatry, they might serve as a means to examine why it appears races tend towards one thing or another.
- This tension of Dogmatism and Skepticism as described by Nietzsche was what had to be overcome. One cannot have intellectual probity if the back is turned on self evident truth. Such where in the 19th century, the positive science affirming the realities of biological evolution as self evident could not be overcome without turning a blind eye to the supposed undisputable facts. It’s interesting to note, Nietzsche also claims that the issue of historicism would require the same juxtaposition which ends in a necessary ultimatum between unphilosophical religion or philosophical atheism. But as Dogmatic people, we should think as the Crown Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria: “Some people say that the wheel of history cannot be turned back. This is an error.” “If the doctrines of sovereign becoming of the fluidity of all concepts, types and species, of the lack of any cardinal difference between man and beast, doctrines which I regard as true but deadly…” Nietzsche, F. W., Nietzsche, F. W., Collins, A., & Levy, O. (1927). The Use and Abuse of History; Schopenhauer as Educator. In Thoughts out of season. essay, George Allen & Unwin. Strauss, L. (n.d.). Session 1: Introduction (Use and Abuse of History; Zarathustra). In M. Blitz (Ed.), Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil A course offered in 1971–1972 St. John’s College, Annapolis, Maryland. ↩︎
- Strauss, L. (1999). German Nihilism, General Seminar: Experiences of the Second World War, February 26, 1941. Interpretation, 26(3), 355–378. ↩︎
- As Strauss puts it: “Nietzsche presents himself as an atheist, but the peculiarity of his atheism is that it is an atheism of the right. Atheism was already at that time rather common as an atheism of the left: think of Communism and especially of Marx.” Strauss, L. (1967). Nietzsche, A course offered in the winter quarter, Department of Political Science, The University of Chicago ↩︎
- Strauss, 1999 German Nihilism, 366 ↩︎
- “The non Greek barbarian as well as the Greek barbarian, believes that all of his questions are solved by, or on the basis of, his ancestral tradition.” (IBID) See Aristot. Pol. 1.1252b for the reference Strauss makes where this view is taught by Aristotle and the Poets. ↩︎
- The “Fact-Value” distinction made by the likes of Weber, still held by society at large to this day. See Strauss, L. Relativism and the Study of Man. ↩︎
- To shrug it off as if it has been dealt with is really like shoving your head in the sand. See Janssens, D. (2008). Between Athens and jerusalem: Philosophy, prophecy, and politics in Leo Strauss’s early thought. State University of New York Press. ↩︎
- See the so called Lemaître Affair. ↩︎
- Kaufmann, W. trans. (1966). Part VIII – Aphorism # 252. In Friedrich Nietzsche: Beyond good and evil. essay, Vintage Books. ↩︎
- In honesty, it’s somewhat Schopenhauer’s thoughts I have appropriated. See Schopenhauer, A., & Godfrey, J. (1931). On women. Felshin. ↩︎
