19.

Every purely moral value system (that of Buddhism, for example) ends in nihilism: this to be expected in Europe. One still hopes to get along with a moralism without religious background: but that necessarily leads to nihilism.— In religion the constraint is lacking to consider ourselves as value-positing.

20.

The nihilistic question “for what?” is rooted in the old habit of supposing that the goal must be put up, given, demanded from outside—by some superhuman authority. Having unlearned faith in that, one still follows the old habit and seeks another authority that can speak unconditionally and command goals and tasks. The authority of conscience now steps up front (the more emancipated one is from theology, the more imperativistic morality becomes) to compensate for the loss of a personal authority. Or the authority of reason. Or the social instinct (the herd). Or history with an immanent spirit and a goal within, so one can entrust oneself to it. One wants to get around the will, the willing of a goal, the risk of positing a goal for oneself; one wants to rid oneself of the responsibility (one would accept fatalism). Finally, happiness—and, with a touch of Tartuffe, the happiness of the greatest number.

One says to oneself:
1. a definite goal is not necessary at all,
2. cannot possibly be anticipated.

Just now when the greatest strength of will would be necessary, it is weakest and least confident. Absolute mistrust regarding the organizing strength of the will for the whole.

21.

The perfect nihilist. — The nihilist's eye idealizes in the direction of ugliness and is unfaithful to his memories: it allows them to drop, lose their leaves; it does not guard them against the corpselike pallor that weakness pours out over what is distant and gone. And what he does not do for himself, he also does not do for the whole past of mankind: he lets it drop.

22.

Nihilism. It is ambiguous:

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

B. Nihilism as decline and recession of the power of the spirit: as passive nihilism.

23.

Nihilism as a normal condition.

It can be a sign of strength: the spirit may have grown so strong that previous goals (“convictions,” articles of faith) have become incommensurate (for a faith generally expresses the constraint of conditions of existence, submission to the authority of circumstances under which one flourishes, grows, gains power). Or a sign of the lack of strength to posit for oneself, productively, a goal, a why, a faith.

It reaches its maximum of relative strength as a violent force of destruction—as active nihilism.

Its opposite: the weary nihilism that no longer attacks; its most famous form, Buddhism; a passive nihilism, a sign of weakness. The strength of the spirit may be worn out, exhausted, so that previous goals and values have become incommensurate and no longer are believed; so that the synthesis of values and goals (on which every strong culture rests) dissolves and the individual values war against each other: disintegration—and whatever refreshes, heals, calms, numbs emerges into the foreground in various disguises, religious or moral, or political, or aesthetic, etc.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Gay Science

Macht kaputt, was euch kaputt macht (Destroy what destroys you)

– German political slogan

“Have the courage to be destructive and you will soon see which wonderful flowers grow out of the ashes of what you have torn down.”

— Max Stirner


“Destroy or be destroyed—there's no middle way! Let us then be the destroyers.”

— Mikhail Bakunin


“Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternally creative source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too.”

— Mikhail Bakunin

"The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power."

— Simone de Beauvoir

“After all, nobody can spend more than he has:—this is true of individuals, it is also true of nations. If you spend your strength in acquiring power, or in politics on a large scale, or in economy, or in universal commerce, or in parliamentarism, or in military interests—if you dissipate the modicum of reason, of earnestness, of will, and of self-control that constitutes your nature in one particular fashion, you cannot dissipate it in another. Culture and the state—let no one be deceived on this point—are antagonists: A “culture-state” is merely a modern idea. The one lives upon the other, the one flourishes at the expense of the other. All great periods of culture have been periods of political decline; that which is great from the standpoint of culture, was always unpolitical—even anti-political.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Twilight of the Idols

Fck fascists

Anti-Nazi slogan: follow your leader

“Work gets more and more of the good conscience to its side: the desire for enjoyment is already called ‘the need for recreation,’ and even begins to be ashamed of itself. “One owes it to one's health,” people say, when they are caught on a country trip. Yes, it might soon go so far that one could not yield to the desire for the vita contemplativa (i.e., excursions with thoughts and friends), without self-contempt and bad conscience.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science