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Nihilism Before Nietzsche

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In this work, Michael Gillespie attempts to find the roots of nihilism in European thought. Unlike Nietzsche who argues that nihilism arises from the death of God, Gillespie contends that nihilism in fact comes from a new understanding of God, as omnipotent will. Where does this new understanding come from? Gillespie contends that it originated in the middle ages in the realist versus nominalist debates. The medievals drew a distinction between God's power as "potentia absoluta" (absolute power) and "potentia ordinata" (ordered power). The scholastics on the side of the realists contended that God would not supersede his potentia ordinata; however those who sided with the nominalists, such as William of Ockham, contended that God was indeed omnipotent so He could do as he pleased. This debate came to a head, and was played out during the Reformation. Thus, the nominalists presented a new understanding of God, and it is precisely here where nihilism originated.

Gillespie argues that in the thought of Descartes (and in his near omnipotent "evil genius", deceiver God) modern philosophy began and nominalism triumphed. However, the omnipotent God of will was too frightening for Descartes so he created a bastion (based on "I think therefore I am") for reason and man's freedom. Gillespie traces this development through time as it arrives in the hands of Fichte and his absolute I. Fichte was attacked as a nihilist by Jacobi because his philosophy was one of appearances ("and therefore of nothing"). Nihilism then was developed by the German Romantics. Gillespie uses Blake's poem "Tyger" and the Romantic heroes Manfred and Faust to illustrate the rise of "the demonic", the omnipotent God of will. Gillespie then considers the thought of Hegel and it's development by the Left Hegelians. Next, Gillespie turns his attention to the Russian nihilists, and their political revolution (an overturning of values). Finally, Gillespie considers Nietzsche himself, his concept of the Dionysian (as opposed to the "Crucified"), his relationship to Schopenhauer and thereby Fichte (as Gillespie states, "his reversal of Schopenhauer was a reversal of Schopenhauer's reversal of Fichte that brought him full circle back to Fichte"). Finally, Gillespie considers the importance of understanding nihilism for the modern world.

Overall this is a very well written and profound book, which takes a seriously look at the history of nihilism and how that history has played out in the modern world. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the subject.

In Nihilism Before Nietzsche Gillespie argues that Nietzsche's nihilism has a surprising and obscure origin. We are all aware that Russian novelists spoke of nihilism before Nietzsche, but not that they got it from Fichte, who ultimately got it from a group of Scholastics, the nominalists! The nominalists were the anti-Thomist resistance to the Aristotlization of Christian Theology in the Middle Ages. Gillespie shows us, brilliantly, how the nominalists successful attempt to exalt God above mere reason led to an absurdly high valuation of His Will. He then shows us the migration of this Will into philosophy. This divine Will, beholden to absolutely nothing, would become man's inheritance after the 'death of God'. And this all to human will, which willingly stands on nothing, is what may yet destroy us.

This is an extremely impressive entry into the (seemingly) never-ending contest to come up with the most coherent 'story of modernity'. As such it should be read alongside not only the accounts of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger but also those of philosophical historians of modernity like Hans Blumenberg, Karl Lowith, Alasdair MacIntyre and Bernard Yack.

The story that our author wants to tell begins with the rejection of the rationalism (i.e., Aristotelianism) of the falasifa (i.e., al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes), Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas by the Latin Theologians. Today, we tend to think of Latin Scholasticism as a monolithic structure with Aquinas somehow serving as both foundation and capstone. But this is only a confession that one hasn't read the medievals at all. Indeed, the (now infamous) Condemnation of 1277 was in fact aimed not only at exponents of 'radical Averroism' like Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia but also Aquinas himself. In the wake of this ill-conceived condemnation the thought of (most of the) significant subsequent thinkers in the Latin West (i.e., Duns Scotus, Ockham) turned ever more decisively to the God of Absolute Will and His nominalistic World, i.e., the via moderna. Even thinkers who consciously thought of themselves as Thomists (Suarez, for instance) in fact turned away from crucial aspects of Thomistic thought. I should add that we do not even know if the Papacy had a hand in the Great Condemnation or if the Bishop of Paris, Tempier, acted on his own because much of the documentation seems to have been 'conveniently' lost.

But I have gotten ahead of myself! At first blush comparing the present study to those of Blumenberg, Lowith and MacIntyre might seem quite a stretch. One might think that this book is a very focused study of an extremely narrow aspect of the relentless march to modernity. But Gillespie doesn't see it that way and I agree. For instance. in contrast to Blumenberg ('Legitimacy of the Modern World') Gillespie argues that the modern concept of Will is but the secularized version of the Will of the God of (nothing but) Divine Omnipotence. This medieval conception of God originates in the wake of the Great Condemnation and, in its rejection of the limits that Reason imposes on Omnipotence, is (I think) but the Latin form of Arabic Kalam (i.e., speculative theology). Gillespie also maintains, against Blumenberg, that the modern conception of Will (self-assertion to Blumenberg) leads, thanks to the rejection of rationalism it inherits from the medieval divines, to the de-legitimacy of modernity. Indeed, arguing against Yack ('The Longing for Total Revolution), Gillespie points out that the problem with modernity isn't perpetual longing for goals but rather the "repeated rejection of all attained goals as limitations on human freedom". ...Moderns can thus never be satisfied; and this would indeed be nihilism. A caveat though: Gillespie doesn't think this understanding exhausts the possibilities of modernity; indeed, he holds out the hope that a chastened liberalism can yet learn to 'muddle through' and stand up to the various supermen (whether reactionary, revolutionary or postmodern) that want to ever "create the world anew through the application of <their> infinite will." ...Good luck Mr. Gillespie!

Now back to our story. As we have seen, nihilism (contra Nietzsche) did not rise due to the 'death of God' but, according to our author, rose thanks to the inception of an entirely new way of understanding (the Omnipotence of) God by the late medieval nominalists and their followers. For Scotus, "who asserted that de potentia absoluta God could do everything that was not contradictory, concluded that even if God did act inordinata, it would entail the immediate creation of a new order." But for Ockham, even this isn't enough. "Indeed, Ockham even maintains that God can change the past if he so desires." Thus there is no longer any (necessary) Order to God's Power. It is this God, whose Will is indescribably 'free', that ends up as the deceiving god of Descartes. However, after his 'conquest' of doubt, Descartes takes this unmoored Will, freed by God's reduction (thanks to the Cogito) to the role of Guarantor of Science, and ties it to the Human Project of the Conquest of Nature. Thus Divine Omnipotence became an anthropological category. ...But what of Reason? "To think, for Descartes, however, is ultimately to will." ...And what of the Cartesian God? Gillespie will say that, "[H]e cannot deceive us and as a result is irrelevant for science." In the end one can perhaps then best understand the scientific project as the declaration of war against God: Where God was Man shall be.

Of course, Gillespie doesn't simply maintain that all this is Descartes position. "While this potentiality was latent in the thought of Descartes, it was counterbalanced by the rational element in his thought." The next major philosopher that Gillespie discusses in detail is Fichte. Naturally Gillespie begins this discussion with Kant. "For Kant the fundamental philosophical problem is the antinomy of freedom and natural causality." Kant 'solves' this, to almost no ones satisfaction, by positing the phenomenal and (unreachable) noumenal realms. "For Fichte, the I is all." By this Gillespie means the "absolute I of the general will or practical reason." This I is limited by the phenomenal realm of nature. "The I is thus alienated from itself." First through reason (theory) and then through Will the absolute I will attempt to overcome this alienation. But, as we see in most dialectical thought, one term is sacrificed to the other. "The I is thus the source of the objective world. This recognition that the not-I is only a moment of the I, however, does not produce reconciliation and perfect freedom." At first blush one might think this anarchistic egotism. Not so! We all participate in the absolute I, and thus 'experience' perfect freedom and absolute power, through the "feelings and emotions of the people"! Thus the Absolute I attains a most pedestrian view.

At the beginning of modernity Descartes struggles against omnipotent Divine Will (the deceiver god) but Fichte's absolute I embodies, to a frightening degree, this all-powerful caprice. This refusal to recognize anything beyond itself is what Jacobi called nihilism. In the space that Amazon provides it is impossible to go into more detail about this book. Suffice it to say that, for Gillespie, Nietzsche doesn't overthrow modernity; he exaggerates its most dubious component - the Will. He takes the omnipotent irrational Will of his predecessors and offers it to anyone Willing to take it. It would now seem that nihilism is not the death of God - but rather the Nietzschean Overman's irrational Imitatio Dei (Imitation of God).

I have given, in this review, perhaps undue space to the beginning of Gillespie's story because most people today entirely ignore medieval philosophy and I wanted to show its importance. Gillespie divides up his book neatly into three sections: Descartes, Fichte and Nietzsche. Suffice it to say that in a brief review like this one cannot even hope to bring out the rich detail of Gillespie's argument. I found the section on Fichte especially eye-opening. This is a superb book, four and a half stars!

This work challenges Nietzsche's claim on the term and concept of 'nihilism'.
Hegel's notion of the history of philosophy in relation to a philosophy of history seems as obscure as the core of (his)philosophy itself, yet the history of philosophy is closely cousin to the dynamics of the modern, and we see Hegel's point better than he in the strange way the rise of modernity transforms a complex series of thoughts, streaming in from the medieval, evoked and tuned by Descartes, climaxing in the period of Kant,and his successors, the relation of Fichte to Kant being crucial, yet with an echo of Descartes. It is all too arcane, and proceeds in disguises. Like particles in an atom smasher the breakdown products stream across the nineteenth century and beyond. The point is that anything succeeding the period of early transformation has a poor chance of escaping the comprehensive nature of the 'history' as 'philosophy'.
Nietzsche cries out to be seen as entirely original, progressing beyond this peak,in some ways he is, yet we should wonder at his place in this sequence. Sure enough, as this work shows, the connection is direct. The relation to Schopenhauer is the obvious clue, but in this fascinating and quite compelling account Gillespie digs deeper to find the direct relationship to Fichte, and his response to the achievement of Kant. Fichte is the fall guy, forever excoriated, yet the man who is the key to what comes later. Here the words 'will', 'absolute I', and 'god' are the verbal chimeras of Fichte's entry into the noumenal realm, a venture denounced with his last breath by Kant. From there the explanation is suddenly clear, almost too clear perhaps, and proceeds through the Romantics, Hegel, the Left Hegelians, the Russian nihilists, and finally Nietzsche and his Dionysus.
Nietzscheans should tighten their seatbelts here, but the ride is worth it. Fascinating piece.

Gillespie makes clear his understanding of nihilism the book takes an almost history of Nihilisam approach to create a new idea of the often confused philosophy found in Nihilism. The book is well written and a sweet read.

In Nihilism Before Nietzsche, Michael Allen Gillespie argues that Nietzsche ripped off his entire philosophy from Schopenhauer, Kant, and Fichte. His "Will to Power" concept, says Gillespie, that Nietzsche says it is in all things, is proof that Nietzsche believes in the absolute. That Nietzsche even developed the Will to Power is due to his early influence and later rejection of Schopenhauer's "Will to Life." That Kant and Fichte worked with concerns for the noemena or "Beyond" is where Nietzsche becomes able to have his phenomenal world boundaries, says Gillespie. Nietzsche's concept of Nihilism comes not from the great analytic tradition where the absolute nothing of the Beyond is deified, but rather from active Russian Nihilism, he says. His Dionysus concept that sprung Nietzsche's Overman comes from Wagner and indicates "the radically free will not bound by past actions, [where] change is the result not of determinate negation but of absolute negation" (252). This capricious transrational will was common to the nominalist notion of God, he says. Therefore, Nietzsche is not novel, but has simply reinvented Christianity under a new guise.

Gillespie's point against the novelty or originality of Nietzsche's working conditions is flatly outside of the realm of philosophy. He clearly has not taken into consideration Nietzsche's meaning, which is Nietzsche's epistemological work-ethic in action. Rather, the case for Gillespie is to see who came up with what first. What consolation this ultimatum of novelty has one can only guess. Certainly, the boundaries and concepts Nietzsche works with come from his exposure to his milieu. What is the point of that? Certainly he would not quarrel over such trifles in action, although he certainly thought himself to be novel. That he was novel does not fall, however, simply because of the claims Gillespie raises. The man discovered things against his backdrop; we are being-there-with-others. How does the coincidental discovery of working concepts by someone after another say anything for the meaning of their philosophy? And as far as the claim of the "Will to Power" as evidence of Nietzsche's absolute is concerned, clearly no acknowledgment of Nietzsche's meaning has been made whatsoever here. What the Will to Power is resides in the human, but is encroached by the structures wielding the herd instinct. That is where Nietzsche is working, as we have seen, and that has nothing to do with a Beyond or any absolute. Rather, it is dealing within the now. There is no "omnipotent will" in Nietzsche, particularly because his prime motivation was the fear that Christianity and its universalist bastard offshoots would write the individual out of existence all together. Nietzsche's refusal to throw out any human system, contrary to the cultural philistine and, really, contemporary self-professed post-modern "radicals," clearly shows that his last resort, "The Last Man" no less, is one that maintains the system of Christianity as such before doing away with it. This is out of respect, the most profound respect in this writer's opinion, for the human being, the individual, self-with-other, known because there is the other. To get rid of that is indeed to extirpate willing altogether - a very real Angst residing in the eminent probability that nothing is absolute. Nietzsche, therefore, remains in a continuously willed positivistic phenomenology. The popular willing the belief in a rational ghost of will that is behind all things Nietzsche saw as leading to the creation of conditions allowing the end of the individual's willing. Christianity as a system to Nietzsche was a willing nothing, but not an absense of willing. That absense of any willing at all is Nietzsche's understanding of Nihilism, be it semantically different from apologists of idealism like Gillespie or not. And that the Christian's detriment to the individual's willing logically brings the prospect of no willing whatsoever, this cancels out any and all absolutes. This Nihilism is possible, and Nietzsche continues to hail as the most Anti-Nihilist philosopher thus far. Gillespie is sorely off the mark; too much time in the hollows of academia. Should one want anything to do with Nietzshe's philosophy, this book is a waste of time and could even be called a bag of utterly pompous namedroppings from the rotting epochs of the obfuscation of truth we can only respect insofar as our reaction to them has plunged us on. Whether that "on" is progress, however, is up to the individual to decide. Quibbling about semantics and what self-acclaimed, anachronistic "philosophers" INTENDED universally, rather than what their actions indicate, is all this book ammounts to. And thereto, it is very close to not willing anything but a bullet in the foot, that is, if any philosophy was to be done. Rather, read some R.J. Hollingdale on Nietzsche. Or, perhaps, read me on my geocities website.