Nihilism, as a psychological condition, has yet a third and last form. Admitting these two points of view: that no purpose can be assigned to Becoming, and that no great entity rules behind all Becoming, in which the individual may completely lose himself as in an element of superior value; there still remains the subterfuge which would consist in condemning this whole world of Becoming as an illusion, and in discovering a world which would lie beyond it, and would be a real world. The moment, however, that man perceives that this world has been devised only for the purpose of meeting certain psychological needs, and that he has no right whatsoever to it, the final form of Nihilism comes into being, which comprises a denial of a metaphysical world, and which forbids itself all belief in a real world. From this standpoint, the reality of Becoming is the only reality that is admitted: all bypaths to back-worlds and false godheads are abandoned—but this world is no longer endured, although no one wishes to disown it.
What has actually happened? The feeling of worthlessness was realised when it was understood that neither the notion of "Purpose" nor that of "Unity" nor that of "Truth" could be made to interpret the general character of existence. Nothing is achieved or obtained thereby; the unity which intervenes in the multiplicity of events is entirely lacking: the character of existence is not "true," it is false; there is certainly no longer any reason to believe in a real world. In short, the categories, "Purpose," "Unity," "Being," by means of which we had lent some worth to life, we have once more divorced from it—and the world now appears worthless to us....
B.
Admitting that we have recognised the impossibility of interpreting world by means of these three categories, and that from this standpoint the world begins to be worthless to us; we must ask ourselves whence we derived our belief in these three categories. Let us see if it is possible to refuse to believe in them. If we can deprive them of their value, the proof that they cannot be applied to the world, is no longer a sufficient reason for depriving that world of its value.
Result: The belief in the categories of reason[2] is the cause of Nihilism—we have measured the worth of the world according to categories which can only be applied to a purely fictitious world.
Conclusion: All values with which we have tried, hitherto, to lend the world some worth, from our point of view, and with which we have therefore deprived it of all worth (once these values have been shown to be inapplicable)—all these values, are, psychologically, the results of certain views of utility, established for the purpose of maintaining and increasing the dominion of certain communities: but falsely projected into the nature of things. It is always man's exaggerated ingenuousness to regard himself as the sense and measure of all things.
[2] This probably refers to Kant's celebrated table of twelve categories. The four classes, quantity, quality, relation, and modality, are each provided with three categories.—TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
13.
Nihilism represents an intermediary pathological condition (the vast generalisation, the conclusion that there is no purpose in anything, is pathological): whether it be that the productive forces are not yet strong enough—or that decadence still hesitates and has not yet discovered its expedients.
The conditions of this hypothesis:—That there is no truth; that there is no absolute state of affairs—no "thing-in-itself." This alone is Nihilism, and of the most extreme kind. It finds that the value of things consists precisely in the fact that these values are not real and never have been real, but that they are only a symptom of strength on the part of the valuer, a simplification serving the purposes of existence.