The birth, baptism, and banalization of nihilism: Twentieth century responses to meaninglessness

This is a study of modern interpretations of nihilism, understood as the perceived absence of any foundation to human reflection. Focusing on three thinkers--Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Barth, and Richard Rorty--it explores some of the ways the appraisal of nihilism has changed since Nietzsche declared the unfolding of "this uncanniest of all guests" to be the "history of the next two centuries." Viewed in the nineteenth century as something synonymous with irrationality and chaos, by the late twentieth century nihilism is increasingly being regarded as simply a not-too-interesting characterization of how things are. This change, I argue, reflects the shift from the modern to the "post-modern" sensibility and has important implications for ethical and religious reflection.;I begin with Nietzsche's analysis of nihilism as the self-dissolution of the will to truth. For Nietzsche nihilism was an ambiguous and transitional phenomenon, something that would either destroy European culture or propel it to new (and potentially healthier) forms of valuation. The ambiguous cast Nietzsche gave to nihilism was picked up by Karl Barth who, in his early works, used nihilism both to point to the sterility of conventional understandings of religion and to articulate a new religious vision. The experience of nihilistic despair, while in part a symptom of human sinfulness, was made the sole condition of genuine religious affirmation. Yet Barth abandoned the transitional status Nietzsche attributed to nihilism, making it instead a concomitant of human existence.;The consequences of this move are then discussed in light of Richard Rorty's anti-foundationalism, in which nihilism is seen as simply an unobjectionable characteristic of our nature as radically historical, radically interpretive beings.;This shift away from nihilism as crisis to nihilism as trivial is one of the defining traits of the postmodern mood. But the price paid for this change, I argue, is great. We can lose the distress that nihilism traditionally has evoked only by sacrificing our commitment to truth, to "getting things right" in the largest possible sense. When we lose this commitment, we also lose the ground upon which ethical and religious reflection can intelligently take place.