In my critical discussion of Nadeem Hussain's fictionalist reading of Nietzsche's "value creation," I bracketed out Hussain's citation of WP 25, in which Nietzsche admits to having “hitherto [bisher] been a thorough-going nihilist.” I now briefly want to address this issue.
Five points:
First of all, The Will to Power is Nachlass, unpublished work, doesn't represent Nietzsche's most carefully considered, closely argued views, yada yada yada.
Second, the passage from WP 25 employs the qualifying word bisher, which Kaufmann translates as 'hitherto', but which could also be translated as 'previously'. Either way, and even if we were to suppose Nietzsche understood nihilism to entail the complete rejection of all value and meaning (which he does not; see the third, fourth and fifth points, below), the Nietzsche of WP 25 is saying not that he is a nihilist, but that he had been. [1]
Third, Nietzsche says again and again that nihilism (whatever else it is) represents a "transitional stage." [2] In the context of these and other passages, it is very clear that Nietzsche understands nihilism not as a thesis about the ontological status of value but as an assay of humankind's contingent psychological and cultural predicament.
Fourth, as he is elsewhere in his writings, Nietzsche is fairly consistent and canny in WP about distancing himself from anything resembling straightforwardly nihilist commitments. [3]
Finally, and most importantly, Nietzsche as much as rejects the categorical denial of all value when he remarks that "what is pathological [about this transitional nihilism] is…the inference there is no meaning at all" (my emphasis. (WP 13)
More could be said, of course, but this seems enough to rebut any attempt to attribute value antirealism to Nietzsche on the basis of his talk about "nihilism."
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NOTES
1. Nietzsche buttresses this point in the preface, describing himself in a well-known passage as "the first perfect nihilist of Europe who, however, has even now lived through the whole of nihilism, to the end, leaving it behind, outside himself" (my emphasis). (WP P:3)
2. See WP 7, 13; cf. WP P:4 (the "revaluation of all values" is "a movement that…will take the place of…nihilism").]
3. See again WP 7, in which Nietzsche notes that as a result of "moral" values having been discredited, "the universe seems to have lost value, seems 'meaningless'." (My emphasis, Nietzsche's scare quotes.)
