Process and the Escape from Nihilism

Abstract

Nietzsche defined nihilism as occurring “when everything is permitted.” If “everything is permitted,” then one can easily move to the “truths” that nothingness prevails and that life is meaningless. But one cannot ordinarily tolerate the consequences of this vision of life for long. One either finds no value in life and commits suicide or one comes to grips with or seeks to go beyond this negative and most pessimistic version of human existence. As Camus formulates the problem in “An Absurd Reasoning,” this concern is with the one true philosophical problem, i.e., the question as to whether life is or is not worth living.¹ This question, unlike problems associated with the ontological argument or any other technical philosophical problem, has consequences for action which these other questions do not have.