What did Nietzsche mean by the abyss, exactly?

Question

Is it the darker side of ourselves, or just the scary side? Or what?

Answer 1

I always thought reading Neitzsche was like flogging a dead horse.

Answer 2

I take the symbol to mean what it does colloquially: the abyss is an oblivion, a terrain without space or reference, where nothing matters for one any longer. It is a perilous dimension for an artist, for someone who loves life, as N. does. But it's also the very thing the tightrope walker must face, balancing ever so carefully, to reach new plateaus. We could see the abyss as Sartrean 'nothingness' or take Heidegger's line of being-towards-death, that which is an issue for us and gives us anxiety: the real possibility of the end of ourselves.

What kind of artist would be that does not go to the limit of life to go beyond, and what kind of artist would be that embraces peril (embraces the risk rather than the goal!) and forgets life? It is a delicate though heroic walk to traverse.

Answer 3

I guess I always thought of it as nothingness. A vast empty void of total nothingness. Of course this vast void doesnt actualy exist in our world because light devoured the abyss. EM fields can extend forever if not stoped by another EM field and basicaly light is just EM fields. The first light could easly have filled the total void with something. Of course EM fields are strongest closer to the sorce. All of this is obv based on my knowledge of physics and could easly be wrong.

Answer 4

Never been depressed, eh?
Good for you, and I mean that sincerely.
Anyone who has been depressed can tell you exactly what the abyss is.
Nietzsche, Camus, C.W. Lewis, Robin Williams, and John Belushi all knew.
Just felt like being random there.

Answer 5

the abyss is the vast emptyness of our soul, the dark depression that has no light at the end and no end to the depression !

Answer 6

Hmmm.

Answer 7

I call it the state where universal slow suicide is called life.

Also sprach Zarathustra