This responds to Timothy Lavenz’s FB post, here, which quoted a section of a blog essay, “Evil Compassion”, here. This is the quote:
“Nihilism is a belief in the sufficiency of any determination of what is, of how it is, of how one is, of what the future will be, in short, of what can or even might be (known, created, changed, destroyed). To turn one’s back on this presumed sufficiency of the thought-world necessarily leads to offense — but offense is not the goal, nor the non-nihilist’s point of pride; it is rather an effect of the search for future causes, for novel grounds of creativity not legitimated by any given situation or horizon of sense — causes that remain essentially unknown and suspended in their sufficiency, thus in constant contact with their own evental conditions, their own force of potential and means of invention. In Nietzsche’s words: ‘Excess force in spirituality setting itself new goals.'”
{AK}: To say that “Nihilism is a belief in the sufficiency of any determination of what is, of how it is, of how one is, of what the future will be, in short, of what can or even might be (known, created, changed, destroyed)”, is to characterise Nihilism according to ontological modality, and its given conventions (“sufficiency of any determination of what is”). This is precisely not an availing of Nihilism’s potential for liberation from any ontological “sufficiency”, whether allegedly quiescent or otherwise.
That Nihilism is often equated, by Occidental convention, with apathy, is merely the symptomatic characterisation conferred by Occidental ontology’s PR hype; its relentless campaign of self-celebration; & its ideology of positivist inflation.
The nihilistic moment, is the exceeding of any “given situation or horizon of sense”, in order to generate explosive Nietzschean revaluation.
But how often, do such alleged revaluations not merely return to the tired sufficiencies of ontological convention – “Every vaunted revolution, one more turn of the wheels of oppression.”?