Nietzsche and Nihilism?

Question

I having a rough time grasping the meaning behind
"will to truth" and nietzsches overall thoughts on nihilism
what i know so far is
- he would rather a little something than a lot of nothing
- truth over the luxery of beleiving in a god
- and i somewhat understand his thoughts on the real and apparent world.

i think i have it covered. but i would really appreciate if somebody could input in this,in laymens terms...if possible

Answer 1

http://whalonlab.msu.edu/Student_Webpages/Nihilism/Webpage/nietzsche.html

try this its pretty striaghtforeward.

Answer 2

Oy. It's been a while since I studied Nietzsche, but I'm pretty sure that link above misses the point.

For Nietzsche, nihilism is a little different than the traditional idea of just not believing in anything. For him, nihilism is the valuation of something unconditionally. When someone places one thing, or several things, above all others no matter what, that person is engaging in nihilism.

Nietzsche endorsed perspectivism, which is the idea that all knowledge is interested; that is, when a person has any knowledge, it is never purely factual but has some amount of emotional content as well. The will to truth is the desire for truth that recognizes the interestedness of all knowledge. He doesn't prescribe a method to attaining truth, just describes the basic desire for it and the many obstacles. When one refuses to acknowledge those obstacles, they are not willing truth.

As for the God stuff, by saying that "god is dead" Nietzsche meant that the idea of God in society is dead. That society at large no longer acts as if there is a god. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra he writes that something else will take the place of god in our society and that the best thing would be to move beyond the judeo-christian value system.

Answer 3

Nietzche didn't believe in values, and he has a lot of company among people who discount values saying they are relative to the culture, nonexistent, or irrelevant to ones pursuit of ones own advantage. He said values destroy themselves. This is great for people who believe it is okay to ride roughshod over everybody else in pursuit of personal advantage, but the question is, how do the rest of ourselves protect us from these outlaws without having some laws and values that are both internalized and collectively taught and enforced? (A telling anecdote: when there were rumors that a large oil was going to occur on his land, a lifelong friend saluted him formally with the greeting MISTER M____.!" The man explained, "I'll keep calling you MISTER if you get rich, but if you don't, you're just like the rest of us sonsob****ches! " Nietzchian philosphy's fine if, like Napoleon you have the power to cast aside values and say "Morals have nothing to do with a man such as I am." But Napoleon ended up under house arrest on Elba just like the rest of the SOBs like him. .

Answer 4

i think that this link will help u understand it little better

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism

Good luck