Nietzsche, Nihilism, and the “new materialist” thought

This paper draws connections between Nietzsche’s diagnosis of nihilism, his philosophy of the “nearest things” and issues of orientation in contemporary thought. The trajectory which Nietzsche traces from “the devaluation of the highest values” to the task of transvaluation, supplies an overarching context for addressing nihilism as a crisis of orientation. It is argued that Nietzsche’s turn towards the “closest” things as a new direction for thought shares priorities named as the “keywords” of our time: “embodiment, affect, the quotidian, singularity, contingency, intimacy, precarity” (Laura Marcus, 2016). In order to pursue the deeper implications of this affinity, some recent engagement with Nietzsche in new materialist writings are considered. It is claimed that Nietzsche’s ideas about the nearest things provide these theories with resources to contest nihilism at the level of value, without reinstating an uncritical appeal to the authority of “lived experience.