For several decades now, there has been talk of Europe, and with it the whole world, being threatened by the specter of nihilism. Appeals to ward off this threat are coming from the most diverse quarters, without there being any general clarity about what is actually meant by nihilism. The “advent of European nihilism,” which Nietzsche was one of the first to announce in impressive words, can only be understood from philosophical and cultural-historical considerations, which appear more necessary than ever to undertake today; after all, the problem of nihilism has long since become a fundamental question for today's man. In the midst of the endless discussions about the origin, cause and overcoming of nihilism, it seems imperative for every responsible individual to strive for a principled clarification of these questions.

Interpretation of the world and of human life

Nihilism is an interpretation of the world and of human life. As such, it is one of the possible interpretations of the meaning and value of reality that are suggested to us by philosophy, science and religion. Having become aware of himself, man cannot help but make an overall assessment of his life and the world in general.

Optimism: This world is “the best of all possible worlds”

There is the possibility of approving the world as a whole and postulating the prevalence of a good principle and a higher meaning for it. Under this premise, a kind of optimism arises, for which it is established that good triumphs over evil in the world and that order and meaning can always prevail over chaos and chance everywhere. This type of world view found its most significant expression in the “theodicy” of Leibniz, in which it is proved that this world is “the best of all possible worlds”. Leibniz's defense of God as the creator of this world goes so far as to justify all evil in metaphysical argumentation. Because we humans have only a limited range of vision, we absolutize a suffering or a pain without realizing that God   – as Leibniz believes   – also wants our best with it. All is well in this world of “pre-established harmony”; God, as “world engineer”, has done his thing so admirably that the only essential worldview can only be optimism. Understandably, this doctrine did not remain unchallenged.

The prelude to critical comments on the theodicy was Voltaire's “Candide”, which uses the unrelenting logic of satire to contrast the true course of the world with the speculative one of the theodicy. The young Candide believes the tenets of his teacher that “everything here is arranged for the best,” and creates a corresponding world view: “Noses are there to wear glasses on... Obviously, legs are made for wearing stockings and shoes and trousers, and so we have shoes, stockings and trousers on. The stones grew so that they could be hewn and used to build castles, and that is why the gracious lord has a wonderful castle.” Candide goes through life with this world view, and it takes a great deal of misfortune and all manner of persecution before he realizes that the world is not exactly perfect. The conclusion he draws from his experiences is realistic enough; when the philosophizing Pangloss wants to prove to him the “higher meaning” of all his suffering, Candide replies, “Well said, but now we have to tend our garden.”

Pessimism: The world is terribly ill-conceived

Optimism, as old as humanity itself, has always found its opponent in the pessimistic interpretation of the world. Contrary to the doctrine of a meaningful world order and the value of human life, pessimism maintains that the world is terribly ill-conceived. The world is chaotic and senseless; evil constantly triumphs over good, violence over justice, hatred over love, etc. — The Greeks already knew the resigned saying: “It is best not to be born.” The sum of suffering in our lives far outweighs the sum of our happiness, and all pleasure is in itself nothing positive but merely the temporary absence of displeasure.

What man calls happiness are only those brief moments when the ever-tightening grip of misfortune loosens and disaster gathers to pounce on us anew. This perspective, in which existence presents itself in the darkest of colors, has always held a strong appeal for a certain type of person. Indian religion and philosophy are full of pessimistic pronouncements; the Greek Stoics were great exponents of pessimism, occasionally combined with heroic attempts at conquest.

For example, in Marc Aurelius's “Meditations”: “Man's life a moment, his essence eternal flux, the senses dim and the body a prey to putrefaction. The soul incomprehensible, fate a mystery and posthumous fame uncertain. What is of the body is like flowing water, what is of the soul like dreams and smoke. Life is a struggle and a traveler's stop in a strange land, and our end is oblivion.” The Stoic attitude is one of pessimism, which bravely seeks to find its way into the realities of this bleak world. Earthly life is affirmed despite its harshness and hopelessness, and pessimism is not yet combined with a doctrine that transfers the actual life of man into a world beyond or behind.

Christianity combines optimistic and pessimistic elements

This only happens through Christianity, in which optimistic and pessimistic elements have interpenetrated each other in a peculiar way. In its view of the sinfulness of this world, of man's being enslaved to the “flesh” and thus sinning, Christianity proves to be pessimistic, while its hope for salvation, grace and the “Kingdom of God” can be considered optimistic. The question of whether nihilistic components can also be found in Christianity, as postulated by Nietzsche, for example, is a question that we will deal with later.

Nineteenth-century pessimism

In modern times, pessimism found a strong following in the nineteenth century in particular. The waning Romantic era gave rise to a peculiar ailment of a poetic nature, known as “Weltschmerz” (“world-weariness”   – the term was coined by Jean Paul), in which tormented individuals project their subjective dissatisfaction with their purposeless lives onto the world. Chateaubriand, Lord Byron, Lenau, Heine and others express their suffering in the world in their works, thus achieving a painfully dark creativity that cannot be denied a certain impressiveness.

In philosophy, pessimism is taught by Giacomo Leopardi (The Theory of Beautiful Madness), Arthur Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann. Schopenhauer can be said to have popularized pessimism in Europe and is, so to speak, the patriarch of modern pessimists. In his doctrine of the “will to live”, Schopenhauer explains that the fundamental nature of the world and reality is completely unreasonable, a “blind urge” that is only concerned with “life”. This restless will can never come to rest; hurrying from pleasure to desire, it creates a world of misery and suffering. Every human life flows between wanting and achieving. But wanting is pain, is the displeasure of not-yet-being-satisfied. The feeling of displeasure always exists primarily, and it is only suspended for those moments when the will has arrived at one of its goals. Nevertheless, it is perfectly reasonable to break out into lamentation that the best thing is never to have been born. In the words of a modern poet caricaturing this point of view: “He who is not born has not lost much / He sits on a tree in space and laughs”...

Nihilism between optimism and pessimism

Between the positions of optimism and pessimism, that of nihilism arises. Even a linguistic reference can make it clear where the difference between the ideological points of view begins. All three words are derived from Latin; optimus = best and pessimus = worst, while nihil means nothing or nothingness. Nihilism sees neither evil nor good in the world   – it is, in the truest sense of the word, 'void', meaningless, without value, order or structure.

The consequence to be drawn from this is   – as in Buddhism   – to tear the “veil of Maya”, to stop the wheel of “rebirth” and thus enter “Nirvana”, the Nothing. It is clear that nihilism has a great affinity with the pessimistic world view and that in most cases both points of view occur together.

From the negative evaluation of the whole of reality, it is only a small step to the assertion that “all is vanity.” This is illustrated by the motto of the “Rose Garden” by the Persian poet Saadi (13th century A.D.), which Schopenhauer reproduces in his “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life” as follows:

If a world’s possession has slipped away from you,Do not grieve over it, for it is nothing;
And if you have gained a world’s possession,
Do not rejoice over it, for it is nothing.
Pain and joy will pass away;
Pass by the world— it is nothing.

The manifold experiences of the vanity of the world and of human life cause the nihilist to utter a “destructive” overall judgment about the world and reality. It is only correct to speak of nihilism when all meaning and value within the world are denied. Whenever meaning and value are still recognized in some form, it is not nihilism.

Widespread misuse of the verdict of “nihilism”

If we keep this in mind with absolute clarity, we recognize that actual and genuine nihilists, with the exception of some varieties of Buddhism, do not and perhaps cannot exist. What is generally denigrated by the term “nihilism” is usually not nihilistic. If one examines the use of the word, it becomes clear that the cries of warning about the “dawning of nihilism” usually come from the representatives of the traditional orders and institutions, who immediately diagnose “nihilism” in every liberal and revolutionary current.

Thus, in ecclesiastical circles, any religiously neutral point of view is repeatedly described as “nihilistic”; the atheist is then also a nihilist who, because he does not worship God, must worship nothingness. The ruling classes in state and society view any rebellion against tradition, even a tradition of oppression, as “nihilistic”; the socialist is then also a nihilist who, because he denies the current state, questions the social order altogether.

By making their “truth” and their “reality” absolute, everything that this “truth” doubts and that this “reality” wants to change becomes nihilism to them. On the basis of this state of affairs, the verdict of “nihilism” is used to wreak havoc, making it almost impossible to clearly define the problem. Therefore, in this context, it will be necessary to bring all the issues related to nihilism to light and to present them in brief outlines according to their systematic sequence.

The following questions arise, for example:

• Does the world as a whole have order, value and meaning?

• Is there a “meaning” to human life?

• Where do we stand today in the world and in science in terms of the overall evaluation of our existence?

Does the world as a whole have order, value and meaning?

Above all, it was the great monotheistic religions that claimed order, value and meaning for the world. The idea of a world logo, a general world reason, already appears among the Greeks, which has shaped the original chaos into a luminous cosmos. God as creator of the world vouched for the orderliness of the world for the faithful; world and human history reflect divine guidance, according to which “at the end of time” everything must turn out for the good. God has set up the world so that everything is in its place and that man, the crown of creation, finds an ordered world building.

However, the negative opponent is not absent here either. The devil, the representative of chaos, dissolution and negation, rebels against the divine world order. Thus, the course of the world is given a dialectical tension, which is caused by the contrast between positive and negative forces.

But since God's supremacy seems inviolable, the world as a whole proves to be imbued with meaning and value, and man himself receives his intrinsic value from his relationship to the Absolute, whereby his life is incorporated into the higher meaning.

This religious and partly mythological world view, which remained of decisive importance for centuries, has a decisive opponent in modern science, which dissolves the foundations of religious world interpretations through objective analysis of natural processes. All processes in inanimate nature follow the law of causality; every effect is based on a cause and is also determined by it. The whole of world history is an endless chain of cause and effect, whereby it is impossible to foresee how such a sequence of causalities could contain any meaningfulness.

Events in inanimate nature occur as pure necessity, in a blind causality that makes it impossible to identify a goal, meaning or value. To ascribe to the universe a striving for order or the realization of meaning is to personify it, and to do so according to the pattern of man, who projects himself and his laws of life into the cosmos. But all anthropomorphism is an illusion; what applies to man does not apply to the world and vice versa.

Modern science has eliminated teleology, the notion that natural processes are directed towards ends. Nature is not organized in a “purposeful” way. Its apparent harmony is only a random state in which the forces balance each other for an uncertain period of time; but this equilibrium is repeatedly challenged, and it takes little effort to demonstrate the instability of this state.

This point of view of modern science can only be described as “realistic” when compared to the mythological and religious, which after all can only refer to unfounded belief. Now, it is usually claimed from the religious side that the causal consideration of nature means a piece of “nihilism”. Man is said to be involved in a meaningless course of the world; there is no higher order for him anymore, and a meaningful, coherent world building turns into a chaotic chain of events that follows the purposeless fatality of cause and effect.

Despite the correctness of this observation, it seems completely unjustified to speak of nihilism here. The belief that the course of the world is directed and ordered is a wish rather than a reality. In the face of the insecurity of the forces of nature, man has created the idea that a superhuman being holds the world “in his hands” and thus, as “providence”, is able to watch over human destinies. From this illusionary idea, man gained a kind of sense of security, which, however, basically contributed nothing to the factual security of man. The consoling idea of a world ruler who “does not let a sparrow fall from the roof” and who has also “counted the hairs on every human head” did not prevent the causality of natural events from taking its course. Modern science is now abandoning this ancient illusion, and it has nothing to do with “nihilism” to take note of the unsparing reality of the course of the world without reinterpreting it in terms of desirability.

The realm of the living offered a stronger reason to postulate a purposeful design in nature. That the universe is a well-constructed “clock” that points to a supernatural “clockmaker” — that is, God — (physico-teleological proof of God's existence) is a claim that today can only be made by someone who is stuck in the pre-Kantian era of Western thought. In the organic, however, the general fitness for purpose is so obvious that the idea suggests itself of attributing these perfect arrangements to a divine creator who has brought about the meaningful and purposeful connections in the organic. But here, too, the mistake is made of interpreting the momentary state of adaptation and harmony as a permanent state.

The adaptation of the organic to its environment is a process that has taken millions of years and repeatedly proves to be questionable. A closer look shows that most of the living substance is destroyed by unsuccessful attempts at adaptation. Life, a function of matter that is still inexplicable to us today, is adaptation. This adaptation is attempted in an infinite number of experiments, but is only ever successful in a few cases. The number of extinct animal species is many times greater than the number of species that we can see today in a relative classification in their environment.

If we consider the internal structure of organisms, we find countless inexpedient features that can only be understood as wrong, but still viable, constructions in the service of self-preservation. “Trial and error” is the principle by which living things adapt to their environment. The current adaptation may be explained by training of vital organs (Lamarck), the struggle for existence and sexual selection, with the consequence of the survival of the fittest (Darwin) or mutations (de Vries)   – but in any case, the fitness in the realm of the organic is not the result of a one-time “construction” by supernatural powers; the meaningful orderliness of living things is the result of a striving that is identical with the property of being “alive”, and thus the “meaning” belongs in the living itself and is not imposed on it “from the outside”.

Here too, it is not a matter of “nihilism” when this fact is noted; the universe is not “devoid of meaning” because of it   – the “meaning” and order that earlier epochs saw as imposed from outside on living things must be taken back into the living things themselves. The same applies to humans, who are themselves only one link in the development of life on earth. If there is a meaning to human life, it must not be sought outside of life, but must arise from the conditions and prerequisites of being human.

Is there a “meaning” to human life?

If the universe is a purposeless sequence of cause and effect and even life itself has no “higher meaning”, then one must ask oneself what the most highly developed life   – namely human life   – has to offer in terms of meaningfulness. Every person who has awakened to consciousness must ask himself the question of what he is here for and what should constitute the meaning of his life. Here one must almost say, with J. G. Fichte: “What kind of philosophy one chooses depends on what kind of person one is.” If we leave aside the idea that God sends each individual into the world with a specific task or, in Hegel's fantastic speculation, that the Weltgeist (world spirit) uses people and nations as puppets to become conscious of itself through the “cunning of the idea”, it seems at first glance that there can be no meaning to human life per se.

The first realization one has to make is the randomness of each individual's existence. Why was I born in this century? Why in this or that place? Why in this or that social class? There can be no answer to any of these questions. Before we can even arrive at a self-responsible way of life, the randomness of our existence has already decided the preconditions of our lives. The here and now of our lives initially lacks any sense; it is a naked fact, without meaning, reason or purpose.

But it is precisely in the randomness of his historical, social and human situation that it is possible for man to give meaning to his life. This meaning does not come into life from outside   – it must be chosen by oneself. By choosing a task, a goal for his striving, man gives his life a meaning to which it can be directed. This choice can be concrete: working together in the community, contributing to the evolution of culture, promoting humanity, etc. However, in everything that man actually chooses, he always chooses himself with a view to giving meaning to his life.

In this way, the human being brings something like “meaning” into the world, and we have sufficient reason to assume that it is only through this self-chosen act that we can find meaning in the way the world works. The structure of meaning that the human being is capable of realizing consists of the activity of consciously setting goals and responsibly taking on a life task within the framework of a community of fellow human beings.

The truth of his life must be found by each individual himself. We must grasp, create and sometimes even “invent” the values by which we want to orient our lives. It is highly problematic to want to postulate universally binding truths and values. The criticism of the “ideologues” has shown that what is usually praised as “eternal truths” is entirely “location-dependent”. Starting with Francis Bacon's doctrine of idols, through the analysis of “prejudices” in Helvetius and Holbach, to the biological-sociological critique of values and truth in Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, etc., the ideologues have been able to make it clear that behind the so-called eternal truths, a political, social, power-related or vital interest is repeatedly encountered.

The lesson to be learned from this is at least a moderate skepticism, which says with Montaigne: “Truth on this side, error beyond the Pyrenees.”

The dissolution of generally binding truths and values leads us back to the one who “set” and created these values, namely, the human being. It is man who, in certain social, biological and historical conditions, creates values and, through these values, attempts to give his life “meaning”. The process of creating values and truth is never complete; it must be constantly continued, since with the birth of each individual the task of finding a viable meaning for an individual life arises anew.

Even if it is impossible to concretize this meaning, for which each individual is responsible, in its respective uniqueness, a general law can be formulated about the value of a possible self-election. The meaning that one gives to one's life ultimately derives its value from the fact that it is “valuable” for the community of fellow human beings. What remains within the framework of the merely “individual” and does not benefit the community is, in the higher sense, “worthless”. The process of civilization discards it because it has no use for it. Thus, in our search for meaning in our lives, we are always referred to the community, whereby it is true that all meaningfulness in human life is based on co-work and co-striving, that is, on humanity. Those who choose themselves in such a way that their choice does not fit into the stream of ascending culture do not realize any “value”, because all value is always also a social and cultural one.

Where do we stand today in the world and in science in terms of the overall evaluation of our existence?

The table of values that is limited only to this world and human life and remains completely “inner-worldly” is often characterized as “nihilistic.” The person who wants to give meaning to his or her own life is called excessive, and it is claimed that the person left to his or her own means will inevitably fall into nihilism. On closer inspection, however, this “proclamation of nihilism” also proves to be unfounded.

There is no evidence that man must derive the meaning of his life from the hereafter, the world beyond or the world behind. The reasons given for the assumption that the meaning of human life must be sought “outside” this life itself always arise from the atmosphere of mere belief, of taking something to be true, which ultimately always retreats to the vague feeling of “a purely absolute dependency” (Schleiermacher). Modern philosophy since Ludwig Feuerbach has endeavored to show this feeling of absolute dependence in its psychological conditionality and to dissolve it precisely through psychological-anthropological understanding.

Only in primitive stages of development and forms of consciousness does that reaching beyond the true world and reality emerge, which can be found in all variations of mythological consciousness. But as soon as man leaves the ground of reality, he enters the realm of "nothingness", and only worldviews that alienate man from reality and call upon him to deny this reality should properly be referred to as nihilism in the true sense of the word.

Seen in this light, nihilism appears to be a fundamental fact of Western intellectual life, a fact that is by no means limited to our present time, but has experienced a diverse development in European intellectual history. The reality of human life is that we humans on this earth must secure and maintain our lives. Man's struggle is aimed at making the earth habitable and realizing the idea of humanity by means of culture.

In terms of this task, movements of mankind can be evaluated just like the lives of individuals. It is not an isolated case in cultural history that, instead of taking on the tasks of being human, it is taught that life is worthless: better not to be than to be. Behind such teachings is the weakness of not being able to bear the conditions that are inextricably linked with human life. The weak and sickly life always strives beyond reality and seeks to find a vantage point in illusion from which “the world can be unhinged.” The religious worldview has its roots here, and the world order it postulated was an artificial sense of values that was not grounded in reality.

This value system has not withstood the rise of science and the growing social liberation of man. Dominance over nature and insight into the basic facts of social life have taken the place of the religious world view. As a result of this development, the orientation towards divine instances has been increasingly reduced, and it can rightly be said of our era that “God is dead”. The question here is not so much whether God exists or does not exist; Nietzsche, who coined the phrase 'God is dead', wanted to point out that the life of modern man is shaped in such a way that a God can no longer find any room in it.

The entire hierarchy of values, which for two millennia provided the West with a sense of direction and a sense of measure, has thus become obsolete. Values have vanished from the world that provided a compass for civilization and served as guiding stars for human life. From this cultural-philosophical perspective, our epoch appears as a transitional period in which the old ideals have been devalued and new ideals have not yet been established. In any case, it is clear that there is no way back for humanity. The results of a two-thousand-year struggle for liberation in philosophy, science, technology and social life cannot be reversed. The meaning of life can no longer be sought in a world beyond. The modern man is in search of ideals that make his life in this world, in the real and true world possible. The specter of nihilism emerges where new values have not yet become visible.

There is little sense in denying this necessary phase of Western development, which, of course, also has a universal human character. Every genuine difficulty can only be overcome if it is accepted as a difficulty. The positive aspect of the dissolution of old values lies in the fact that it clears the space within which a new set of values can be established. It seems to us that these new values have already been found. The only way to discover a true and original meaning of existence lies in affirming the here and now, the factual conditions and prerequisites of human life.

The claim that human life has no meaning says less about human life itself than about the person making the statement. Life does not have meaning; meaning must be given to it. Schiller expresses this as follows: “Know that a noble spirit imparts greatness to life and does not seek it therein.” In other words, the void that opens up before a person when they renounce the idea of life’s meaning deriving from something beyond this world must lead to the conclusion that the meaning of life must be established and created by the person themselves.

The “abyss of nihilism” that we are standing at today, according to the opinion of numerous cultural-philosophical diagnosticians, means nothing other than that man has found the way to himself and his freedom. The use of this freedom must lead to the realization of the “kingdom of man” on earth, that is, to the creation of an order in which man can lead a “dignified” life. For if the supermundane values and hopes are eliminated, only the mundane ones remain, and their non-realization always means at the same time the “meaninglessness” of human existence. If we have nothing but mundane values, then we cannot help but strive for their realization with the full commitment of our personality. Perhaps this is the positive meaning of the crisis that is commonly referred to as “nihilism” and which, as we have tried to show, is more a matter of the Western past than of the present   – a crisis that leads from a morbid past into a healthy future.