Nihilism and the «will to nothingness»: the reduction of the world to nothing in Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24310/EstudiosNIETen.vi19.11717Keywords:
nihilism, nothingness, Schopenhauer, NietzscheAbstract
The claim made in this article is that what Nietzsche calls «nihilism», particularly in On the Genealogy of Morals, cannot be understood without some reflection on how Nietzsche and Schopenhauer conceive of ascetism. Although the formula «will to nothingness» belongs to Nietzsche, it also expresses rather adequately the way in which Schopenhauer conceives of the ascetic will — the will that he sees behind all forms of ascetism, and that Nietzsche sees behind the «ascetic ideal». In On the Genealogy of Morals, «nihilism» is precisely the nihilism of the ascetic ideal, and in chapter 14 of the Third Essay Nietzsche defines it quite clearly as «the last will of the human being, his will to nothingness». However, a close study of the
concept of ascetic will in Schopenhauer shows that such a «will to nothingness» must be at the same time a will to self-anihilation (i.e. to the anihilation of the will) and to the anihilation of the world in which that will can act.
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