In this groundbreaking work, Michael Gillespie argues that Nietzsche misunderstood nihilism and that his own misunderstanding has misdirected almost all subsequent thinkers who have dealt with the subject.
By reconstructing the intellectual origins of nihilism before Nietzsche gave it its final form, Gillespie focuses his attention on decisive turns in the evolution of nihilism, from Ockham and the nominalist revolution to Descartes, Fichte, the German Romantics, the Russian nihilists, and Nietzsche himself. His analysis demonstrates that nihilism is not the result of the death of God, as Nietzsche believed, but the consequence of a new idea of God, a God of will, who reverses all the eternal criteria for truth and justice. To understand nihilism, one must understand how this idea of God created a new conception of man and nature, which places will in the place of reason and freedom in the place of necessity and order.