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- - Nihilism? (https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-philosophy/57542-nihilism.html)

that nietzsche quote is always taken a bit out of context.
he never stated that God existed and now he's dead, it was a general statement about the (forseen) death of organized religion which will usher in the new age of morality (overman).

That's true and it's not; it's true that it's usually taken out of context as you say, but what Nietzsche meant was that the concept 'God' was no longer relevant to society, and that society didn't realize it yet. If you'll excuse a lengthy quote (I really like this passage). (Bugger, it's in German. Translation is mine, quote is at vol. 3, pp 480-2 of the Kritische Studienausgabe).

Quote:

Did you not hear of the crazy man, who on a bright morning lit a lantern, ran to the market, and cried without ceasing "I'm looking for God! I'm looking for God!" Since there were many people standing there who did not believe in God, this caused great laughter. "Did he get lost?" said one. "Did he run away like a kid?" said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Did he get on a ship? Emigrate? So they shouted and laughed in confusion. The crazy man lept into their midst and bored through them with his glance. "Where is God?" he cried, "I will tell you! We have killed him, you and I. We are all murderers. But how did we do this? How were we able to drink up the seas? Who gave us a sponge to wipe away the horizon? What did we do, when we unchained the earth from her sun? Where are we moving to? Away from all suns? Are we not falling ceaselessly? And backward, sidewards, forwards, to all sides? Is there yet an over and an under? Are we not erring through unending nothingness? Isn't empty space breathing down on us? Hasn't it gotten colder? Isn't there coming evermore night and more night? Mustn't we light lanterns in the morning? Don't we hear the noise of the gravediggers, who are burying God? Do we not yet smell anything of the divine rot? of the rot of gods? God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How are we to comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? The holiest and most powerful that the world possessed -- it has bled to death under our knives. Who will wash this blood from us? With what water could we be cleaned? What feast of atonement, what holy games must we invent? Isn't the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not become gods ourselves, merely to appear worthy of it? There never was a greater deed -- and whoever is born after us belongs to a higher history than all history up to now by virtue of it!" Here the crazy man fell silent and looked again to his listeners: they were also silent and looked at him alienated. Finally he threw his lantern to the ground, so that it broke into pieces and was extinguished. "I have come too early" he said then, "It is not yet time. This monstrous event is still undeway and wanders -- it has not yet pushed to the ears of men. Lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars need time, deeds need time, even have they have been done, to be seen and heard. This deed is further from you than the furthest stars -- and yet you have done it!" They tell further, that the crazy man the same day invaded different churches and there intoned his Requiem aeternam Deo. Driven out and pushed to speak, he always said just this: "What are these churches now, if not the crypts and gravestones of God?"

Quote:

Originally Posted by asaris

the concept 'God' was no longer relevant to society, and that society didn't realize it yet.

yeah. thats pretty much what i meant, just didn't convey it as well. kudos on the translation, its pretty spot on.

Thanks for the translation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RedbeardUH

Nihilism is the belief system of nothingness. Nietzsche did not want a nihilistic world. He warned us against it. Nihilists believe that all "power" (think noble power, as in noble romans or noble greeks) should be dissipated. Nietzsche called it slave morality because the weak majority fettered the strong noble majority. Nietzsche, more than any philosopher since Plato, has shaped modern culture. He influenced Derrida and Foucault. Both who have proven that everything is relative to perspective.

For example: Someone mentioned ealier that sex is the basis for life. Foucault in his book "The History of Sexuality" shows us that sexuality has meant myriad things over time. That there has been a huge discourse on sexuality that has changed the connotation of it immeansely. Now-a-days we have a sex-life. We can discuss our sexlife amongst each other. In, say, the 1500s if you asked someone about their sexlife (or connotational equivilant) they'd look at you like you were crazy. To them a 'sexlife' was no different than a 'sleep life.' Sex was something as natural as sleep, or eating or whatever.

Nietzsche did the same thing for morality. In his book "Genealogy of Morals" he traces western concepts of "Good" and "Bad" to their pre-christian roots.

Saussure wrote an essay on the fact that all language is relative. That no language has any a priori essence. That if we call something a tree, the sound "tree" is relative to the word "tree" which is relative to the object of a "tree."

Derrida used this to show that despite the entirety of abitraryness, we still have to impose some sort of quasi-metaphysics because of the connotation associated with every word.

If anyone cares I'll explain in more detail, but hopefully this explains a little

RedBeard,

thanks, can you provide me with a nutshell explanation of 'slippage'?

I think that the misconception here is that nihlism is a permanent philosophy. It's not, it's a temporary condition, a passing phase. If you reject authority, and their belief systems, and architecture, and social customs, etc...because you see there is no worth to those things, is that wrong? However, once you've rejected and destroyed everything, you have to choose either to destroy yourself, or to create something. That tearing down is a precursor to building anew.

As some people have suggested, nihlism is the adolescant's philosophy, seeing the holes and the errors and the flaws in established things, and wanting to tear them down, and anything that's been built up on the back of them. As the article that Jynx linked to said, Nietzsche was worried about there being a growing trend for these kind of tendencies in the world's societies - and He may be right, perhaps it is time for our civilisation to go through its own adolescance - tearing down the things its built itself on to either find nothing, or some nub of truth on which to build itself afresh. Isn't that the same process as growing up? As kids we reject our family's ideals, we rebel, we think it's all so much bs, but, if we don't end up killing ourselves in the process, we do, after time, get an appreciation of the truth behind those ideals. And so the cycle continues. I think nihlism (adolescance) is a valid (if transitory) philosophy in that it helps weed-out weaker ideas, or those that really do have no merit, leaving behind the fitter survivors that really do have grains of truth buried within them.

[QUOTE=Yakk]You can value nothing, believe nothing, and be happy. You just have to believe dispair is nothing. =)
[QUOTE]

and Hence the conundrum. If you believe that dispair is nothing, then you are basing a dicision on a belief - the beliefe that dispair is nothing, and therefore this in not a true nihilist notion.

For that to work, you have to beleive that there is nothing that you could believe that would cause your to dispair and so dispair does not exist because nothing can cause it to exist.

Nihilism - the beleif system that makes you play seamntics without the fun of believing that you've actually accomplished the mental gymnastics that you actually did perform. My belief system? I believe that nihilism is nothing. Ouch.

Pierre