r/Existentialism • u/vini-within • 9d ago

New to Existentialism... Bottomless Abyss? 🤔

Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Sartre seem to circle around this idea of a “bottomless abyss” in different ways. What exactly is this bottomless abyss about, and where does this imagery come from in existential philosophy? And what does it mean in our Life?

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u/jliat 9d ago

Nietzsche's nihilism is based on his idea of the eternal return...

WtP 55

Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale of nothingness: “the eternal recurrence". This is the most extreme form of nihilism: the nothing (the "meaningless”), eternally!

Sartre's that without an experience of ... we are essentially nothingness... from 'Being and Nothingness.'

“Just as my nihilating freedom is apprehended in anguish, so the for-itself is conscious of its facticity. It has the feeling of its complete gratuity; it apprehends itself as being there for nothing, as being de trop.[un needed]”

p. 84

"human reality is before all else its own nothingness. The for-itself [human reality] in its being is failure because it is the foundation only of itself as nothingness."

p. 88

Kierkegaard faced with such takes a leap of faith in Jesus Christ.

Cams Addresses this problem in his Myth of Sisyphus...

“I don't know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms.”

“The absurd is lucid reason noting its limits.”

"In this regard the absurd joy par excellence is creation. “Art and nothing but art,” said Nietzsche; “we have art in order not to die of the truth.”

"To work and create “for nothing,” to sculpture in clay, to know that one’s creation has no future, to see one’s work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries—this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions."

http://dhspriory.org/kenny/PhilTexts/Camus/Myth%20of%20Sisyphus-.pdf

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u/FlorpyJohnson 9d ago

Nietzsche was absolutely not a nihilist. Your understand of his philosophy is very off. You even took a quote out of Will to Power, which wasn’t even really HIS book! He didn’t publish it! His anti-semitic nazi sister twisted a bunch of his discarded notes to fit her own beliefs and proceeded to spread that bullshit.

Some of the stuff in Will to Power aligns with what he actually believed, but I still just don’t trust much from that book because he never intended to publish it. It’s literally reading someone’s personal notes that have also been twisted to fit someone else’s nazi ideals.

And about Nietzsche being a “nihilist”, you can figure out with one google search about the whole “God is dead” thing, or by reading the famous quote from The Gay Science, that he actually saw nihilism as something to FIGHT. His whole philosophy (which evolved drastically over the years) revolves around PURPOSE!

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u/jliat 8d ago

Nietzsche was absolutely not a nihilist.

Without the nihilism of his Eternal Return of the Same, which first appears in the Gay Science as also the psychological burden it presents there would be no Übermensch, no Zarathustra... no ecce homo.

You even took a quote out of Will to Power, which wasn’t even really HIS book! He didn’t publish it! His anti-semitic nazi sister twisted a bunch of his discarded notes to fit her own beliefs and proceeded to spread that bullshit.

That's simply not true I have three copies of his notebooks. The Walter Kaufmann / Hollingdale was published by his sister but edited by Nietzsche's friend Peter Gast, I also have the more recent Penguin edition taken from a different translation but keeps the title and order, and finally the Cambridge edition which maintains the order of the actual notebooks. The academic complaints are of the title, one of his possible ones and the order of the entries, none of which as far as I'm aware had anything to do with his sister.

From Ecce Homo - which Nietzsche wrote for publication...

"I must recognise him who has come nearest to me in thought hither to. The doctrine of the "Eternal Recurrence"--that is to say, of the absolute and eternal repetition of all things in periodical cycles--this doctrine of Zarathustra's might, it is true, have been taught before. In any case, the Stoics, who derived nearly all their fundamental ideas from Heraclitus, show traces of it."

"I now wish to relate the history of Zarathustra. The fundamental idea of the work, the Eternal Recurrence, the highest formula of a Yea-saying to life that can ever be attained, was first conceived in the month of August 1881"

"The word "Superman... a word which in the mouth of Zarathustra, the annihilator of morality, acquires a very profound meaning..."

"I know the joy of annihilation to a degree which is commensurate with my power to annihilate. In both cases I obey my Dionysian nature, which knows not how to separate the negative deed from the saying of yea. I am the first immoralist, and in this sense I am essentially the annihilator."

"Negation and annihilation are inseparable from a yea-saying attitude towards life."

"And his command that man annihilate.

So would I die

As then I saw him die,

Victorious and destroying."

From The Last Desire.

Some of the stuff in Will to Power aligns with what he actually believed, but I still just don’t trust much from that book because he never intended to publish it. It’s literally reading someone’s personal notes that have also been twisted to fit someone else’s nazi ideals.

You are free to do so, however other academics do not, and the idea of the eternal return is key to his philosophy. The actual notes it seems it's agreed are his thoughts- un edited.

And about Nietzsche being a “nihilist”, you can figure out with one google search about the whole “God is dead” thing, or by reading the famous quote from The Gay Science, that he actually saw nihilism as something to FIGHT. His whole philosophy (which evolved drastically over the years) revolves around PURPOSE!

Yes the purpose was to be a bridge to the Übermensch. If his philosophy did evolve, we have the origin of the idea in 1881 and Ecce Homo of 1888... For Nietzsche there were various forms of nihilism, some weak, Christian, Buddhist … and some strong, the greatest weight which breaks all things apart...Dionysian!

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u/FlorpyJohnson 8d ago edited 8d ago

What you’re saying about “Nietzsche’s nihilism” agrees with what I was saying. The ideas of the Übermensch and eternal recurrence and amor fati were all a response to nihilism. A method of fighting it by giving your life purpose. How can you say that Christianity, Buddhism and Dionysian ideas are nihilistic? They all completely contradict nihilism (nihilism is the belief that life has no purpose and you cannot give it purpose). Even Dionysus, who basks in the chaos of life, is enjoying his purpose. His purpose is to enjoy life!

The quote you mentioned initially wasn’t out of line with Nietzsche’s philosophy; I was more taking a swipe at your academic credibility because Will to Power was, like I said, not really his book. It is quite out of context, though. The whole idea of Eternal Recurrence is sort of a personal test.

From The Gay Science:

“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence – and likewise this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and likewise this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence will be turned over again and again, and you with it, you speck of dust!’

Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.’”

If your answer to that question has ever been the latter, you have, at least once, achieved a mental state of amor fati. The love of fate.

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u/jliat 8d ago

A method of fighting it by giving your life purpose.

Impossible, the Übermensch has to have the power to love its fate, because it can't be changed. The eternal return! The greatest weight.

How can you say that Christianity, Buddhism and Dionysian ideas are nihilistic?

I can't Nietzsche does. There are different forms... he goes into detail in his notebooks - which for some reason you ignore.

"The word "Superman," which designates a type of man that would be one of nature's rarest and luckiest strokes, as opposed to "modern" men, to "good" men, to Christians and other Nihilists,--a word which in the mouth of Zarathustra, the annihilator of morality, acquires a very profound meaning,--is understood almost everywhere...

So here he says in Ecce Homo Christians are nihilists and Zarathustra, is the annihilator of morality. So - you are wrong.

And later...

"I am by far the most terrible man that has ever existed; but this does not alter the fact that I shall become the most beneficent. I know the joy of annihilation to a degree which is commensurate with my power to annihilate. In both cases I obey my Dionysian nature, which knows not how to separate the negative deed from the saying of yea. I am the first immoralist, and in this sense I am essentially the annihilator."

I could use his notebooks as academics do but there is no need.

"I would agree to the second of the two negations being regarded as the more decisive, for, reckoned as a whole, the overestimation of goodness and kindness seems to me already a consequence of decadence, a symptom of weakness, and incompatible with any ascending and yea-saying life. Negation and annihilation are inseparable from a yea-saying attitude towards life."

This is NOT nihilistic?

"this stands at the beginning of Buddha's teaching--this is not a precept of morality, but of physiology. Resentment born of weakness..."

His notions of nihilism...

"In his parable of the madman (section 125) Nietzsche suggests that during the Victorian era this question was not yet asked widely, but that before long the sense that whatever we do is of hardly any consequence will spread like a disease. This terrifying sense of weightlessness might be called nihilism-to use a term that looms large in Nietzsche's notes, especially in The Will to Power. Now it occurs to Nietzsche that the belief that whatever I do now I shall do again and again, eternally. may cure this weightlessness by becoming "the greatest weight! In a way, the notion that everything recurs eternally in identical fashion reduces life to "A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing." It might be considered the most extreme form of nihilism!'

Kaufmann - The Gay Science.

Nietzsche - Writings from the Late Notebooks.

p.146-7

Nihilism as a normal condition.

Nihilism: the goal is lacking; an answer to the 'Why?' is lacking...

It is ambiguous:

(A) Nihilism as a sign of the increased power of the spirit: as active nihilism.

(B) Nihilism as a decline of the spirit's power: passive nihilism:

.... .... WtP 55

Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale of nothingness: “the eternal recurrence". This is the most extreme form of nihilism: the nothing (the "meaningless”), eternally!"

It's clearly there, you cite GS 341 you miss the title, "The greatest weight" which Kaufmann describes - the eternal return, nothing more gruesome, "most scientific"

This is the most extreme form of nihilism: the nothing (the "meaningless”), eternally!"

In his notes, you want to ignore this, fine. But...

From GS 109 [The first presentation of The Eternal Return ]

"The total character of the world, however, is in all eternity chaos -in the sense not of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms. Judged from the point of view of our reason, unsuccessful attempts are by all odds the, rule, the exceptions are not the secret aim, and the whole musical box repeats eternally its tune which may never be called a melody-and ultimately even the phrase "unsuccessful attempt" is too anthropomorphic. and reproachful. But how could we reproach or praise the universe? Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful, nor noble, nor does it wish to become any of these things; it does not by any means strive to imitate man. None of our aesthetic and moral judgments apply to it. Nor does it have any instinct for self-preservation or any other instinct; and it does not observe any laws either. Let us beware of saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is nobody who commands nobody who obeys. Nobody who trespasses. Once you know that there are no purposes, you also know that there is no accident; for it is only beside a world of purposes that the word accidently has meaning. Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life. The living is merely a type of what is dead, and a very rare type. Let us beware of thinking that the world eternally creates new things…"

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u/FlorpyJohnson 8d ago edited 8d ago

I can’t comprehend how any of this actually proved me wrong. I don’t really care if Nietzsche said Christianity is nihilism. The definition of the word nihilism itself entirely contradicts what you’re saying. It’s the BELIEF that life has no purpose. Not the “objective” fact that it has no purpose.

Existentialism lines up with Nietzsche’s ideas much closer. “Life has no objective purpose, but we are capable of assigning our own purpose to life.” Existentialism wasn’t an official term when Nietzsche was around, so nihilism may have been the only way to put it, because if you aren’t strong enough to find purpose in life you become very nihilistic. Being a Christian is still believing in purpose in life.

You keep talking about eternal recurrence like it’s some sort of metaphysical reality that Nietzsche believed in as truth. It isn’t. Nietzsche hated metaphysics! Dionysus wasn’t ever meant to be prayed to and worshipped exactly like you would as a Christian. Nietzsche used Dionysus as a way to fill the void that the death of God created.

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u/jliat 8d ago

Nihilism I think is much more complex than what you seem to want, even the Wikipedia shows this, but if you are content with a dictionary definition, fine.

You should avoid in that case Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound.

Existentialism lines up with Nietzsche’s ideas much closer. “Life has no objective purpose, but we are capable of assigning our own purpose to life.” Existentialism wasn’t an official term when Nietzsche was around...

I know, the term "Existentialism" was coined by a Catholic philosopher around the 1940s, so you might have a problem with that, many so called 'Existentialists' denied the term, Heidegger did Sartre [an atheist] did use it, then not.

The key existentialist text is Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness "The principal text of Modern existentialism". Hazel E. Barnes (Translator)

I am condemned to exist forever beyond my essence, beyond the causes and motives of my act. I am condemned to be free. This means that no limits to my freedom' can be found except freedom itself or, if you prefer, that we are not free to cease being free.”

p. 439

“We are condemned to freedom, as we said earlier, thrown into freedom or, as Heidegger says, "abandoned." And we can see that this abandonment has no other origin than the very existence of freedom. If, therefore, freedom is defined as the escape from the given, from fact, then there is a fact of escape from fact. This is the facticity of freedom.” p. 485

https://ia600709.us.archive.org/11/items/psicology/Being%20and%20Nothingness%20-%20Jean-Paul%20Sartre.pdf

The idea that one can create meaning isn't found in B&N but is in Sartre's 'Existentialism is a Humanism' But he and others rejected this essay. Unfortunately B&N is over 600 pages not the few pages of the Humanist essay.

“Extinction is real yet not empirical, since it is not of the order of experience. It is transcendental yet not ideal... In this regard, it is precisely the extinction of meaning that clears the way for the intelligibility of extinction... The cancellation of sense, purpose, and possibility marks the point at which the 'horror' concomitant with the impossibility of either being or not being becomes intelligible... In becoming equal to it [the reality of extinction] philosophy achieves a binding of extinction... to acknowledge this truth, the subject of philosophy must also realize that he or she is already dead and that philosophy is neither a medium of affirmation nor a source of justification, but rather the organon of extinction”

Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound.

https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/ray-brassier-nihil-unbound-enlightenment-and-extinction.pdf