Nietzschean perspectivism versus Nihilism
Both start from the loss of anything that gives values a ground from outside. Nihilism is the denial that any value stands, while Nietzsche treats the loss as a crisis and asks what new values could be made.
What they share
Both start from the loss of anything that gives values a ground from outside. Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless. For Nietzsche there is no objective order in the world except what we give it, and nature has no value in itself until people give it one.
Where they differ
- What follows the loss. Nihilism, as defined, is the denial: all values are baseless. Nietzsche is the thinker most often linked with it, and he describes it as a crisis in which the highest values lose their force. Readers disagree about what he made of it. Some see his praise of affirming life as a rejection of nihilism, and some interpreters think he embraced it. Others think he thought humanity could eventually work through it.
- Making new values. In Nietzsche's writing, values are created by people. When inherited values stop serving life, people must use their creative powers to build new ones, and he thought it was the job of philosophers to create them. What these new values are is much less clear than what he criticised. Nihilism, as defined, stops at the denial and has no such project.
A question that separates them
- Does anything matter without a given meaning? “Without a meaning given from outside, nothing matters in the end” against “Without a meaning given from outside, it falls to us to create values worth living by”.
- What comes after old values fall? “All values are baseless, and that is where it ends” against “The loss of old values is a crisis to work through, and something better may come after it”.
Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 9 October 2026. The sources are listed below.
Read each on its own
Sources we used
- Friedrich Nietzsche · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 9 October 2026
- Friedrich Nietzsche · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 9 October 2026
- Nihilism · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 9 October 2026