Now let's jump a great deal forward as examine how Nietzsche sees and defines *the world*:
“And do you know what “the world” is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by “nothingness” as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a space that might be “empty” here or there, but rather as force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; out of the simplest forms striving toward the most complex, out of the stillest, most rigid, coldest forms striving toward the hottest, most turbulent, most self-contradictory, and then again returning home to the simple out of this abundance, out of the play of contradictions back to the joy of concord, still affirming itself in this uniformity of its courses and its years, blessing itself as that which must return eternally, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no disgust, no weariness: this, my Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my “beyond good and evil,” without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself— do you want a name for this world? A solution for all of its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men?— This world is the will to power—and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power—and nothing besides!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power
Obviously (and those who have studied the history of thought know this) the view that Nietzsche is expressing came about when, and after, he overthrew and overcame the *shadow* and final traces of the Scholastic view. If we are going to speak about what nihilism is we cannot see it as something invented on a whim but rather as the necessary outcome of the *models* of reality that scientific and materialistic view has brought into view. So when Nietzsche talks about taking a sponge and 'wiping away the horizon' he means not that he did this but that it was done! The *horizon* is, of course, all the sense and all the meaning that was intuited (or invented and imposed if you wish) through let's say 1,000 years of dedicated thought. The world that is 'wiped away' is, let's be frank and direct, the world that religious Christians seek to hold to, to conserve.
The *battle*, as it were, is really & truly between two different and to a degree incommensurate metaphysical systems-of-view, explanation and interpretation. It seems to me fair and also necessary to state that if this is not understood, then one can only grasp the struggles going on in our present in a superficial sense.
Now, we will have to present and think about 'militant nihilism'. It is one thing to, let us say 'naturally', arrive at a position-of-view, a perceptual stance, that makes it impossible to *see* God (higher orders of non-physical being that determine the *real* working of the world) or angelic being, and of course cannot see or even conceive of *the soul* as it was formerly conceived. This is the 'dusk' that Nietzsche referred to through the metaphor of
the twilight of the idols. Since that world of meaning can no longer be seen, and since *the horizon* of meaning and also value defined over a thousand years was *wiped away* and *erased*, one has no choice but to succumb to the 'dusk', the beginning of a terrible night.
So if one is looking for a definition of nihilism I think it must begin from this point: nihilism is the loss of the capacity to *see* and believe in the former structures that were understood to be the origin or cause of 'meaning and value'. And by referring to *meaning & value* I mean essentially meaning and value as interpretations based in and arising out of the former metaphysics.
Militant nihilism is a nihilistic perspective given revolutionary focus and impetuous. It is something more than having *naturally* arrived at the perspective which can honestly no longer *see* the outline of the old metaphysic as being *real* in any sense, and it becomes a creed and a commitment to 'overturn' through conscious undermining the pillars on which this Olden Metaphysics was built.
One becomes, as it were, a revolutionary termite!
Really, the very definition of *love* -- as it was in fact understood and defined, is undermined:
Love 'lives not alone immured in the brain;
But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd;
Love's feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails;
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste.
For valour, is not Love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides
Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Make heaven drowsy with the harmony."
Well, excuse these (ridiculous) flourishes but if we are in my view to understand nihilism I think we must begin to grasp what it means for an individual to have his *horizon* wiped away and to have *sense of meaning* an *sense of value* undermined. Effectively, that individual can no longer explain himself except in mechanistic terms. And any other sort of *higher* explanation cannot be seen in any sense as being real but is rather seen as being invented -- made up.
So true nihilism is a state of perception where one is cut off from everything that was (formerly) conceived of as coming to man from a 'higher dimension'. This gave meaning & purpose to life and to living. But in the nihilistic view that is all phantasy and projection. None of that is real.
Now here is another aspect. If the world really & truly is *a monster of energy* as Nietzsche says -- and in fact, and in accord with modern view it really & truly us just that and nothing more -- then it is right, proper and good to imitate 'the world' in this sense; to become also a monster. I do not mean this quite in the way it will be taken but I do mean that the systems of power and governance, if the world is really as they say it is, do best if they act also like 'controlling and determining monsters'. For how then will you define 'rights'? In the world defined by modern materialism man has no 'rights'. There is nothing 'golden' and angelical about him. And billion years-old carbon is as billion year-old carbon does.
Humanism is an illusion really, a fore-stance to the full-on perception of what man really
is. A nothing in a cosmos of nothingness or of such vast somethingness that man's being has no particular meaning nor sense.
And what definition of man can be given through the modern view, that view that Nietzsche expresses? Think it through and then turn your gaze out the window to the control-systems that are being devised. Man is solely a biological robot in a world where meaning and values have been invented but are not real in any
substantial sense. Here a great
transvaluation of values has been enacted and potentially completed.
