Why is there an essentialistic drive to 'grasp' Nietzsche's nihilism?

NocturnalRuminator May 22, 2025 at 07:10 1125 views 1 comments
Forgive me if it's a dumb question but, I am currently composing a paper examining the conceptual relationship between Nietzsche and nihilism, with particular attention to the apparent reductive tendency within academic discourse to interpret nihilism as a static, monolithic concept—an interpretation exemplified by scholars such as Reginster and Gemes (yes even Gemes, who critiques Reginster for exactly the same reason). I contend that these readings tend to be overly cognitive and perhaps overlook Nietzsche’s explicit critique of essentialism. Nietzsche himself explicitly emphasizes his rejection of fixed, essentialist categories; however, I have yet to identify a definitive quotation that directly substantiates this stance. It seems to me that this drive to 'grasp' Nietzsche's nihilism not as a philosophical-transformative process that is situated in history, but as one concept, is problematic.

Could anyone provide clarification on this matter or point me toward specific passages where Nietzsche specifically articulates his anti-essentialist perspective, that could be interpreted as a critique on pulling something out of it's historical context? I would greatly appreciate any assistance, as I am not an expert on Nietzsche and did not select this topic myself, I couldn't choose.

The secondary sources I am referring to are: Reginster's The affirmation of life: Nietzsche on overcoming nihilism, and Gemes' Nihilism and the Affirmation of Life: A Review of and Dialogue with Bernard Reginster

Comments (1)

ChatteringMonkey May 25, 2025 at 10:41 #990124
Reply to NocturnalRuminator

His anti-essentialist views follow from his Heraclitean 'metaphysics' (Panta rhei) and his views on language and 'truth'... from his perspectivism.

Perspectivism implies that things are viewed from a certain point of view, which is necessarily only partial and within a historical context.

Its hard to point to a particular passage to illustrate this because it runs through his entire work.

On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense maybe is good place to start:

Nietzsche:Let us still give special consideration to the formation
of concepts. Every word immediately becomes a concept,
inasmuch as it is not intended to serve as a reminder of the
unique and wholly individualized original experience to
which it owes its birth, but must at the same time fit
innumerable, more or less similar cases—which means,
strictly speaking, never equal—in other words, a lot of
unequal cases. Every concept originates through our
equating what is unequal. No leaf ever wholly equals
another, and the concept "leaf" is formed through an
arbitrary abstraction from these individual differences,
through forgetting the distinctions; and now it gives rise to
the idea that in nature there might be something besides the
leaves which would be "leaf"—some kind of original form
after which all leaves have been woven, marked, copied,
colored, curled, and painted, but by unskilled hands, so that
no copy turned out to be a correct, reliable, and faithful
image of the original form.