“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
- Shakespeare, Macbeth
When Macbeth’s wife died, he gracefully uttered the words above. This sentiment of how absurd and meaningless life is, is something that most of us have felt at least once in our own lifetimes.
In philosophy, the lack of belief in the meaningfulness of life is called “existential nihilism”.
Is there a way to overcome this existential crisis?
Like a person who is going through a heartbreak and therefore concludes that love does not exist, the nihilist looks at the world in which he suffers and therefore concludes that there is no meaning in life. According to Friedrich Nietzsche, the conclusion that life is meaningless is an erroneous generalization. The notion that suffering is meaningless is, Nietzsche believes, a curse of mankind. We actually have a choice in how to deal with our own suffering.
An alternative to existential nihilism is to give meaning to our suffering.
It may very well be for mankind’s inability to cope with suffering that mankind has longed for an otherworld (heaven) in order to give himself reasons for suffering. Man tells himself that the reason we suffer in the present is to gain more happiness in the future (heaven or other otherworldly places). Nietzsche saw that religion used to be the main source that provided us these reasons for our suffering. However, he also saw that we were moving towards a more secular world where God’s influence over us is diminishing. This is why Nietzsche proclaimed that “God is dead. And we have killed Him”. We have killed Him, not by physical deeds, but by stopping to believe in Him. Nietzsche thought that this trend was dangerous as it would give people no meaning in life's suffering anymore.
Interestingly, despite his heavy criticism of Christianity, Nietzsche also saw that it provided us one way out of our existential crisis. However, there is another way out.
Becoming an Active Nihilist
The active nihilist disregards God as the sole source of value-giver. He overcomes his existential crisis by giving himself new meaning to life. He regards his suffering as meaningful, and as a means through which he can test his character. He is contrasted with the passive nihilist who believes that reality is irrational, chaotic, full of suffering and therefore meaningless.
The active nihilist knows
“quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that there will be no second chance… he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience – why? From fear of his neighbor, who demands conformity.”
The active nihilist does not conform to his environment. He reflects upon himself and tries to understand who he is and what he truly desires. Knowing what he desires, the active nihilist will chase his dreams. The more difficult the dream, the greater he will have to become in order to accomplish it. An individual who understands himself, will make his dreams his meaning in life.
The big problem that many people have, however, is that they don’t know what their dreams are. Fortunately, Nietzsche gives us some advice in this regard:
“Let the youthful soul look back on life with the question: what have you truly loved up to now, what has elevated your soul, what has mastered it and at the same time delighted it? Place these venerated objects before you in a row, and perhaps they will yield for you, through their nature and their sequence, a law, the fundamental law of your true self… for your true nature lies, not hidden deep within you, but immeasurably high above you, or at least above that which you normally take to be yourself.”
And so we have come to our conclusion that according to Nietzsche there are two ways to overcome the meaninglessness of our lives:
1. Becoming engaged with religious practices and believing in otherworldly purposes;
2. or becoming an active nihilist.
Nietzsche preferred the active nihilist above the other. He even created an image of the supreme active nihilist which he termed the Übermensch.
I hope that you have enjoyed reading this article, and that it somehow has inspired you to chase your dreams. In my next article on Nietzsche, I will write about the three metamorphoses of the human spirit and its progressive steps towards the Übermensch.