Trajectory (plain list)
Nihilism
The climate after the death of God: values that devalue themselves, the need for belief, and the late self-portrait as the crisis that answers them.
1882 · Anticipates
The Joyful Science · §125 · The Madman
The Joyful Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882/87)
The madman’s event empties the horizon — nihilism as the climate that follows the death of God.
_The Madman._—Have you ever heard of the madman who on a bright morning lighted a lantern and ran to the market-place calling out unceasingly: "I seek God! I seek God!"—As there were many people standing about who did not believe in God, he caused a great deal of amusement. Why! is he lost? said one. Has he strayed away like a child? said another. Or does he keep himself hidden? Is he afraid of us? Has he taken a sea-voyage? Has he emigrated?—the people cried out laughingly, …
Sources: gutenberg:52881
1886 · Develops
Beyond Good and Evil · §55
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
Ultimate cruelty: to sacrifice God for nothingness — nihilism as religious endgame.
There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, with many rounds; but three of these are the most important. Once on a time men sacrificed human beings to their God, and perhaps just those they loved the best--to this category belong the firstling sacrifices of all primitive religions, and also the sacrifice of the Emperor Tiberius in the Mithra-Grotto on the Island of Capri, that most terrible of all Roman anachronisms. Then, during the moral epoch of mankind, they sacrificed …
Es giebt eine grosse Leiter der religiösen Grausamkeit, mit vielen Sprossen; aber drei davon sind die wichtigsten. Einst opferte man seinem Gotte Menschen, vielleicht gerade solche, welche man am besten liebte, - dahin gehören die Erstlings-Opfer aller Vorzeit-Religionen, dahin auch das Opfer des Kaisers Tiberius in de…
Sources: gutenberg:4363 · gutenberg:7204
1887 · Introduces
The Joyful Science · §346 · Our Note of Interrogation
The Joyful Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882/87)
Our note of interrogation: what remains when the highest values devalue themselves?
_Our Note of Interrogation._—But you don't understand it? As a matter of fact, an effort will be necessary in order to understand us. We seek for words; we seek perhaps also for ears. Who are we after all? If we wanted simply to call ourselves in older phraseology, atheists, unbelievers, or even immoralists, we should still be far from thinking ourselves designated thereby: we are all three in too late a phase for people generally to conceive, for _you_, my inquisitive friend…
Sources: gutenberg:52881
1887 · Develops
The Joyful Science · §347 · Believers and their Need of Belief
The Joyful Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882/87)
Belief as need: nihilism and the free spirit appear as alternate responses to the demand for certainty.
_Believers and their Need of Belief._—How much _faith_ a person requires in order to flourish, how much "fixed opinion" he requires which he does not wish to have shaken, because he _holds_ himself thereby—is a measure of his power (or more plainly speaking, of his weakness). Most people in old Europe, as it seems to me, still need Christianity at present, and on that account it still finds belief. For such is man: a theological dogma might be refuted to him a thousand times,…
Sources: gutenberg:52881
1887 · Develops
On the Genealogy of Morality · I §12
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Present-day nihilism named: we are tired of man.
I cannot refrain at this juncture from uttering a sigh and one last hope. What is it precisely which I find intolerable? That which I alone cannot get rid of, which makes me choke and faint? Bad air! bad air! That something misbegotten comes near me; that I must inhale the odour of the entrails of a misbegotten soul!--That excepted, what can one not endure in the way of need, privation, bad weather, sickness, toil, solitude? In point of fact, one manages to get over everythin…
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1887 · Develops
On the Genealogy of Morality · II §24
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Will to nothingness as tocsin — and the hope of a free will against it.
I conclude with three queries, as you will see. "Is an ideal actually set up here, or is one pulled down?" I am perhaps asked.... But have ye sufficiently asked yourselves how dear a payment has the setting up of every ideal in the world exacted? To achieve that consummation how much truth must always be traduced and misunderstood, how many lies must be sanctified, how much conscience has got to be disturbed, how many pounds of "God" have got to be sacrificed every time? To e…
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1887 · Develops
On the Genealogy of Morality · III §14
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
The sick’s will for nothingness — nihilism as physiological danger.
The more normal is this sickliness in man--and we cannot dispute this normality--the higher honour should be paid to the rare cases of psychical and physical powerfulness, the _windfalls_ of humanity, and the more strictly should the sound be guarded from that worst of air, the air of the sick-room. Is that done? The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest. Is that known? Broadly considered…
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1887 · Develops
On the Genealogy of Morality · III §27
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
“History of European Nihilism” announced — the concept becomes a research program.
Enough! enough! let us leave these curiosities and complexities of the modern spirit, which excite as much laughter as disgust. Our problem can certainly do without them, the problem of _meaning_ of the ascetic ideal--what has it got to do with yesterday or to-day? those things shall be handled by me more thoroughly and severely in another connection (under the title "A Contribution to the History of European Nihilism," I refer for this to a work which I am preparing: _The Wi…
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1887 · Develops
On the Genealogy of Morality · III §28
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Ascetic ideal closed the door to suicidal nihilism by giving suffering meaning.
If you except the ascetic ideal, man, the animal man had no meaning. His existence on earth contained no end; "What is the purpose of man at all?" was a question without an answer; the _will_ for man and the world was lacking; behind every great human destiny rang as a refrain a still greater "Vanity!" The ascetic ideal simply means this: that something _was lacking_, that a tremendous _void_ encircled man--he did not know how to justify himself, to explain himself, to affirm…
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1888 · Develops
Ecce Homo · Why I Write Such Good Books · Birth of Tragedy §1
Ecce Homo (1888)
Late diagnosis: the book against the nihilist and decadent reading of the tragic.
In order to be fair to the _Birth of Tragedy_ (1872) it is necessary to forget a few things. It created a sensation and even fascinated by means of its mistakes--by means of its application to Wagnerism, as if the latter were the sign of an ascending tendency. On that account alone, this treatise was an event in Wagner's life: thenceforward great hopes surrounded the name of Wagner. Even to this day, people remind me, sometimes in the middle of _Parsifal,_ that it rests on my…
Sources: gutenberg:52190
1888 · Comments on
Ecce Homo · Why I Am a Fatality §1
Ecce Homo (1888)
Transvaluation named as the counter-stroke to millennia of falsehood — nihilism as the crisis he claims to personify.
I know my destiny. There will come a day when my name will recall the memory of something formidable--a crisis the like of which has never been known on earth, the memory of the most profound clash of consciences, and the passing of a sentence upon all that which theretofore had been believed, exacted, and hallowed. I am not a man, I am dynamite. And with it all there is nought of the founder of a religion in me. Religions are matters for the mob; after coming in contact with…
Sources: gutenberg:52190