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Nihilism In Nietzsche; A Critical Evaluation Of Nigerian Situation
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1.2 NIETZSCHE’S BIOGRAPHY
Fredrick Wilhelm Nietzsche was born in
October 15th 1844 at Rocken in Prussian Saxony (present day Germany),
into a family where his father and grandfather were Lutheran pastors.
When Nietzsche was barely five years, his father died. Consequently, he
was brought up at Naumburg in the feminine company of his mother,
sister, grandmother and two aunts. Between 1854 and 1864 he studied at
Pforta. There, his admiration for Greek thought was ignited, as he was
particularly attracted to the Greeks gods, writing of Plato, Aristotle
and Aeschylus. In October 1864, Nietzsche went to the University of
Bonn. Later that year he moved to Leipzig, to further his philosophical
studies under Ritsch. During his stay in Leipzig, Friedrich gradually
abandoned Christianity, occupying his mind with atheism of Schopenhauer.
As at 1869, Friedrich Nietzsche was appointed professor at Basel at the
age of 24 years.
In the years between 1869 and 1889, Nietzsche had
published a lot of works including ‘The Dawn of Day’, ‘Joyful Wisdom’,
‘The Birth of Tragedy’, ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ and ‘Thus Spake
Zarathustra’, etc. From his multiple works, he was able to posit ideas
of the Superman; The Will to Power, Eternal Return, and God is Dead etc.
As at 1888, with the publication of the Antichrist and Ecce Homo, clear
signs of mental disorder manifested in Nietzsche. Though he was
hospitalised in January 1889, he never recovered fully from the insanity
till the end of his life. He died on August 25th 1900.
1.3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM.
We
live in the era when men are more concerned with power, pleasure,
wealth and connection than character formation. An era when Hobbesian
theory of man being wolf to man, the Machiavellian principle of might is
right, and the Darwinian evolutionism of survival of the fittest are
not only accepted but also cherished and adopted as the guiding
principle in human relation. Today, what matters is how successful one
is, with little or no regard to the means of the attainment of that
success thus instead of the means justifying the end, the reverse is the
case. Thus honesty is disregarded, indolence is extolled, probity is
derided, and ostentation is paraded. Hence, there is apparent disregard
of rule of law. Crime is committed with impunity. Therefore, there is
loss of order and the society is chaotic.
This is not unconnected
with Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s nihilistic proclamation. Having seen
the meaninglessness, nothingness and absurdity of Judeo/Christian belief
in God, Nietzsche announced to the world his shocking discovery that
“God is deadâ€.4 He does not simply say that God does not exist, but that
God is dead. What a catastrophe? Strengthening this, Omoregbe opined
that: “What formerly gave meaning and sense of direction to human
existence is no longer there. Men are now left simply with nothing, with
emptiness and a meaningless existenceâ€.5 Thus, the nothingness and
nihilism of human existence, according to Nietzsche is the consequences
of the death of God. It is this apparent lack of meaning and nihilism is
what we are experiencing in Nigeria today. The situation in Nigeria has
grown worse that she is “being described in international circles as
the second most corrupt country in the worldâ€6, by The Transparency
International. It is to elicit this cankerworm or virus and to
quarantine it that is the major problem of which this research sets out
to resolve.
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