Our Nietzschean Future

Paul O’Mahoney considers the awful fate Nietzsche predicts for humanity.

- Paul O’Mahoney

Scattered through Nietzsche’s writings are proclamations of his ‘untimeliness’, expressing the conviction that he will be ‘born posthumously’. He claims that few in his time have ears to hear him, that he must trust in future generations to understand him, and also that he is preparing that future audience. Along with these proclamations goes his prediction that one day his name will be associated with a crisis unprecedented in human history. Nietzsche appears to suggest that his work may help precipitate the most acute stages of this crisis; but he also positions himself as humanity’s guide through and beyond the coming upheaval.

What is the nature of this predicted crisis? The most common reading of it represents, I believe, a misconception or underestimation of its nature and scope. This common idea is that Nietzsche is speaking of the gradual erosion among humankind of our belief in any binding, transcendental values. This process is exemplified by, but not restricted to, the decline in religious faith. Without the foundational belief in a divine sanction for human systems of morality, and without faith in a reward beyond it for our conduct in this brief life, the idea that one’s life and actions (and especially one’s efforts and sufferings) are meaningful becomes inestimably more difficult to accept. The result is nihilism: a renunciation not only of religious belief but also of the sustaining convictions of antiquity that the continued flourishing of the community to which one belonged might supply a suitable end for one’s action.