Where Are We Now?

Rethinking nihilism and resisting Heidegger's Nietzsche in Tracy Llanera's Outgrowing Modern Nihilism

“…For example, his recommendation to participate in redemptive relationships with "persons, ideas, events, and things that draw out powerful experiences such as overpowering hope, love, and happiness from us"-relationships that "[infuse] our life with existential significance, [inspire] risk and sacrifice, and [lead] to transformation and enlargement of our old selves" (79)-seems one path to overcoming affective nihilism. 6 Another place where I found myself disagreeing with Llanera was in her presentation of Nietzsche as the nihilist par excellence. Indeed, it seems to me that the Nietzsche presented in the book (often via Dreyfus and Kelly) is Heidegger's Nietzsche-the "tyrannical Nietzschean-Wallacean egotist" (110) Heidegger's Nietzschean nihilist-and that Heidegger gets Nietzsche deeply wrong.…”

“…Although strategies for enlarging the self are markedly more cooperative for Rorty, involving "solidarity" with others (79-80), Nietzsche acknowledges that we only grow by expanding the range of experiences we have, inhabiting outside perspectives on ourselves, and encountering resistance from without. Additionally, like Rorty, Nietzsche thinks redemptive self-creation as self-enlargement will involve narrative creation 12 (98) and experimentation. 13 In short, both Nietzsche and Rorty promote self-creation as a strategy for averting and overcoming nihilism.…”