The Roots of Contemporary Nihilism and Its Political Consequences According to Nietzsche

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Abstract
This essay is meant to help prepare a confrontation with the philosopher who is the most penetrating and thoroughgoing opponent of liberal democratic civilization. Nietzsche characterizes the modern democratic spirit, in all its forms, as “decadence.” This decadence he understands, however, as the final, catastrophic emergence into broad daylight of a previously hidden historical process which has been unfolding in all Western history: the “nihilism” of Athens and Jerusalem, of scientific rationalism and Judeo-Christian monotheism. Nietzsche understands himself as the thinker through whom this process finally attains self-consciousness. Now by Nietzsche's own testimony,Thus Spoke Zarathustrais the published writing in which his mature philosophy finds its fullest expression. YetZarathustra, because it comprises the “Yes-saying part” of Nietzsche's project, because in it “the eye is spoiled by the tremendous need for seeing far,” possesses a “remoteness” that makes it the most difficult to approach of all his finished works (cf.EH, p. 1141). It seems to presuppose, rather than supply, an account of how Nietzsche understands the cultural crisis to which Zarathustra is responding. My purpose here is to attempt to gather from Nietzsche's diverse pronouncements a synoptic, consistent statement of his critique of the West.

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