Absolutely. But many more of his ideas are relevant. We are living in the days Nietzsche (FN) described the time of nihilism. Nihilism is the cause for people seeking answers in religious groups, medication, heroin, mushrooms, freebasing, fringe (Nazi, white pride, etc.) groups, terrorist groups, extreme sexual situations, masochism, sadism, you get the idea. The reason is they do not feel as if they are part of this world. All these answers are sought in a world of pervasive meaninglessness. I have always wondered why the religious mind (especially Christianity) consistently seeks to deny that life on this earth is in itself a supreme value, but, rather, is in need of a higher, transcendental justification? And though it may be understandable, is it honest?

We live in a dark period, and all of us suffer the painful contradictions and uncertainties which characterize this age. One of our most abused manners with which we deal with these sufferings is psychology. One aspect of the modern fissure between knowledge and mind (but perhaps not believers in Jesus “and other religious figures”) is found by those millions of people who participate in the sketchy enterprise of seeking out psychologists for self-understanding. What “self” is being understood in the psychologist’s office? A sick self? An aggressive self? A “depressed” self? A “borderline” self? A “masochistic” self? A sex addict? An anti-social self? But, whatever the person who experiences these things, somehow psychologists characterize and label them using supposedly “objective” criteria. Thus, psychology always denies its own psychology, and thus it is bad psychology. The fundamentally subjective nature of each “patient’s” pain, whose expressions of confusion and pain are unique to them, and, moreover, each person’s problems will mean different things to different doctors, and each question asked by each “doctor” means something different to each “patient.” We have become a nation of sick people. But the problem I am raising is much bigger.

Actual facts hardly exist in the study of the mind, so what is the basis of psychology to claim objective analysis and universality about the sufferings of unique patients? Each person possesses different desires and therefore different self-knowledge. All knowledge is knowledge of something. Our experience of the world is subjective since we are a particular subject viewing an object. We can view ourselves, but we are then the subject and object, and as described above regarding psychologists, the nature of viewing oneself is skewed by the perspective or purpose. Also, the subjective nature of our self-analysis is too complicated because viewing a person as an object is viewing a false self. The self is, by its nature, subjective—that is except to modern psychologists. Nietzsche put this problem brilliantly, “And thus all new knowledge about our “soul” is knowledge of a different soul.” Put more coolly, all activities by which man seeks self-knowledge are false at their core. We have come to the point in this civilization if we are honest, that there is no “objective knowledge.” But Man cannot live with this conclusion. It is a game that cannot be won—but Man still tries to escape this final pronouncement—even though it was articulated almost 90 years ago. As Nietzsche pointed out “Since all of our questions are subjective, and all questions call for particular types of answers, are we not required to take responsibility for the kinds of questions we ask—because the nature of our question will always lead to a very different type of answer.”

The types of perspective to which we ascribe knowledge are dangerous to the world and our souls. We all know, or should know, that when psychology gazes at art or listens to music, it inevitably denigrates these creations of beauty, by objectifying the desires and passions that went into the art, thus reducing them to “mere” sublimation. History, as well, undermines the accumulated reputation of human history by characterizing the almost god-like monuments of the past as based on childish or foolish motives. And, perhaps most importantly, Science has exposed the true nature of matter and energy as either incomprehensible or chaotic, senseless energy. And isn’t the reason that physics died in this age, (as opposed to cosmological physics) that, in the last century Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Albert Einstein revealed that science was unable to comprehend the object of its inquiry within one logically coherent system. And the unmoveable wall now left between man’s mind and his desire for truth and his inability to reach it has led to extreme scientific pessimism, and even to incomprehensible scientific mysticism.

Nietzsche demanded that these insights all be understood by all who came after him, and even more, his insight that “the desire for truth is in need of critique.” He disclosed a significant and fatal link between truth and the amorality of science. Science at its core still believes that its subject and methods are beyond any moral questions, and it steadfastly refuses to allow “higher values” to influence its “higher truth”—as it conceives it. And it will follow its insatiable search wherever it may lead, beyond any moral desirability and in part to satisfy society’s hunger for the applications of its technique—not its scientific understanding. And has not the search for truth in our age (which is hardly certain of its values), already led both to trivialities—and catastrophe. But we know in this age that every destructive invention discovered by science will ultimately be used in furtherance of genocide, terrorism, murder, the killing of innocents, and even war crimes such as using atomic weapons on Japanese civilians? There is only one conclusion, our desire for truth, as it is sought by Science, embodies an element of nihilism in its amoral ethics.

More responsive to your answer, the result of the nihilism pervasive in this age, as pronounced by Nietzsche, is that man, in his soul, is incapable of finding anything meaningful in the world so he takes refuge in every evasive action. And, in our society, there are so many: “morality without God?—No, all purely moral demands without their religious basis must needs end in nihilism.” So, “what is left but [sex, money,] drugs, alcohol, and intoxication, with music, cruelty, hero-worship or hatred, some sort of mysticism….Art for Art’s sake, Truth for Truth’s sake, all as a narcotic against self-disgust, even to the point of the fanaticism of the banal.”

In what was clearly a despairing moment, Nietzsche wrote that: “he who no longer finds what is great in God will find it nowhere. He must either deny it or create it.” Since truth is subjective, our baser instincts are legitimized by society. Nietzsche was legitimately afraid that honesty of mind, genuine aesthetic perception, and the integrity of character would be debased, corrupted and finally crushed in the age to come. Wasn’t he right?

Certainly, Nietzsche’s pronouncements cannot be ignored, but perhaps we can take away something positive: lucidity in a dark age and perhaps even the conviction that philosophical inquiry may be a noble undertaking.

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