‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ This question in this form, for which we must thank Leibniz 1, is characterised by Heidegger as “the basic question of metaphysics,” 2 and not arbitrarily. In its expression is contained not merely its truth – that there is something – but, in being so expressed, it is made my truth; it is so because I will it to be. By this, we do not mean to suggest that it is through the self that this something is constituted, and to thereby collapse into solipsism – a position refuted by any child who sees that the ‘I’ which says, “I found you!” in a game of hide-and-seek is just as correct as the ‘I’ which says, “I’ve been found!”. Rather, it is precisely because we will it that the something is not ours to begin with, for in this we say simply that we are, in a literal sense, not the be-all and end-all. Or, put another way: in willing that there is something, I necessarily comport myself towards it in such-and-such a way as to render it a means, a thing which really is outside me*, and so recognise that I am wanting in something, i.e. dependent.
But what if it transpires that this original ‘truth’ is no more than a dogma of the living, who are the only ones stubborn enough to duck when someone fires a bullet? Surely it cannot be that I must necessarily will that there is something, because to ‘will necessarily’ is a manifest contradiction? “Over himself … the individual is sovereign.” 3 At this juncture, it is crucial to distinguish between what it would mean to will nothing, and what, to will nothingness. The latter recognises itself as a philosophy (because it is consciously directed towards an end), albeit one of abstract negation: a sincere nihil-ism; the former (what is commonly meant by nihilism, the possibility of which is the object of our enquiry), on the other hand, appears to us as antiphilosophy, pure and simple. The affirmation of the will is the bale of hay, while its negation is the pail of water.
Let us therefore entertain the concept of nothing. To will nothing, or what is the same, to not will, would be to consciously be taken up into an absolute passivity that is indifferently each and every activity (a dead matter). In truth, however, it is clear that willing nothing cannot be anything simple, because self-knowledge is the standard to which its own truth is held, and vice versa (to will nothing is to be aware that I will nothing, but moreover, I cannot be aware of my willing nothing without actually doing so; neither, properly understood, is logically prior). From this it follows that, in my real knowledge that I will nothing, the opposite must also maintain: I concede the possibility that at another time I will something (this is just what it means to will – any consideration of scientific determinism must be delayed, because even it involves a willing of sorts, insofar as, were one to will nothing, it would be relativised and annihilated). So – and this is the novel insight of Blondel when he asserts the identity of “nolo velle” (I do not will) and “volo nolle” 4 (I will not to will) – reflective consciousness, our consciousness of ourselves as willing x, reveals to us that the will must first assert itself to deny itself. And even if the nihilist holds that this is not the decisive blow it seems to be (I will not to will, yes, but I will not to will all the same), it is clear enough now that the nihilist-will can only subsist in the continual assertion of its truth over-against all positivity – it must remain a willing, rather than a willed: τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι.†
The will is the “No” which calls out to answer the question, “Are you here?”, and can only know its deadness by living it. Why does the nihilist fall into this confusion of a vincible for an invincible ignorance? It is because, while not knowing what they really say, they enter into a duality, an internal contradiction whose consequence is the annihilation of truth: “The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.” 5 It is helpful as a propaedeutic to examine this annihilation, which first comes on the scene as an all-encompassing dilettantism, a vain effort to experience and thereby know reality which takes itself to be precisely the greatest affirmation of it. Thus, the will must shun contradiction, because, as it were, everything in nature is natural (the universe does not bear contradiction); and in so doing, it is driven towards an acceptance of every doctrine, an absolute levelling.
By virtue of that confusion in nihilism, there emerges in the unfolding of its project a contradiction of its own, familiar to everyone as the ‘paradox of tolerance’. For in attempting to embrace all reality, to leave nothing behind, one is therefore compelled to leave behind anything which might itself demand that we leave something behind. But in so doing, I abandon everything which is not an attempt to embrace all reality, and so am left with nothing but the empty ambition with which I began. Nihilism applies a principle whose force it does not truly understand‡, namely, of non-contradiction: that a given method of apprehending reality, A, must exclude all methods which involve not-A, which in turn is a simple reaffirmation of its self-identity (A = not-not-A); and it is at this moment that nihilism realises its mistake, for in excluding all content that would exclude it, it discovers how, owing to its original appeal – that it represents the only undogmatic philosophy – it is both the most dogmatic philosophy of all, and pregnant with the destruction of its philosophical character. Hence, nihilism is deprived of all real content, and dissolved into a pure identity of form and content. It is impotent, and signals the acceptance of the most absurd truth: that there is no truth at all.
We must now synthesise the negative truths of its content (that it wills not to will) and form (that it rejects all truths, because, as truths, they are necessarily external and in opposition to it) to arrive at the collapse of nihilism as a distinct philosophy: that it wills the truth of the self (what is unavoidable in the content), and nothing else (what is avoided in the form). The will does not allow itself to become an accessory to others, and so becomes a law unto itself – a self-sufficiency (αὐτάρκεια), but a sufficiency (αὐτο-ἀρκέω) nonetheless. And if it does not accept this destiny, if it intends rather to maintain what it believed itself to be doing all along, nihilism finally exposes its duplicity: it can avoid mere egoism only by suspending its being in contradiction. Whenever the nihilist acts, they act in the knowledge that the truth they will (nihilism) is not realised in the willed action: he is the “man whose chi said nay despite his own affirmation,” 6 and so is hounded by a guilty conscience. In this knowledge, however, the nihilism which one affirms is necessarily transformed. For it is clear from what has surfaced throughout our enquiry that, in returning to the willing of nothing, one must take as their object, not the privation of will (which is really the object of egoism), but its negation; in other words, the will embarks upon its second movement – that of willing nothingness. But while the will progresses to the next stage in its development, the nihilist remains where they are, succeeding in both egoism and nihilism, by: 1) willing themselves, and so willing nothing in the self; and, in turn, 2) willing nothing, and so willing themselves in the nothing.
It is clear, then, that nihilism carries within itself a contradiction, which is borne out in its thought and action. It is the action of a guilty conscience, an evil raised by ambition to a universal maxim, and a lie told to itself. The nihilist can answer only to themselves, and the kernel of truth in their doctrine is one they cannot see: ex nihilo, nihil fit.
*Again, we must avoid confusion: this outsideness is not to be confused with the outsideness of sense-certainty, which describes a physical relation (where my innards can become my outards). Provisionally, we can define it as the content, or object, of my will (the willed-not-will), because we, as humans, cannot at the outset define it any other way.
† ‘To think and to be is the same thing.’
‡ If we are cynical, nihilism knows this principle perfectly well, but is so convinced of its own truth that it exempts itself from the truth of the principle, in order to stare at its reflection a little longer.
Bibliography
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Leibniz’s Monadology: An Edition For Students, trans. Nicholas Rescher.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press, p. 135.
2 Heidegger, Martin (2014). Introduction
to Metaphysics, Second Edition, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard F. Polt.
New Haven: Yale University Press, p. 7–8.
3 Mill, John Stuart (1859). On Liberty.
Oxford, England: Oxford University, p. 21–22.
4 Blondel, Maurice (1984). Action:
Essay on a Critique of Life and a Science of Practice, trans. Oliva
Blanchette. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame, p. 26.
5 Aristotle (1922). De Caelo.
trans. J.L. Stocks. The Works of Aristotle Translated into English.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, II, 5.
6 Achebe, Chinua (2010). Things Fall
Apart. London: Penguin, p. 113.
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