Photography: Victor-Gabriel Hofer / victorgabrielhofer

Model: oddpharo

An essay by Gioi / gioiagiovani

We are at the gates of the 20th century and Western civilization sees itself demolished of its own values. The avant-gardes make their way, which will carry out the revolution of the plastic, literature and figurative arts, marking the destruction of the old world towards the realization of a new one. Thus we pass from one system of values ​​to another. It is destroying to recreate, it is a leap into the void. The concept of nihilism can thus be interpreted: the passage from the fall of certain specific references to the groundlessness of new ones and possible references. Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher, strongly anti-Christian and anti-metaphysical, defines nihilism as the process of devaluation of the hitherto supreme values. Nietzsche, although we remember him as not very funny and quite psychotic, we owe him the inevitable nihilistic destiny of European civilisation, which has guided humans for hundreds of years. The Westerner's modern mind of his time did not understand him. They faced the tragedies of life with a rational approach thus denying life and the search for truth too deep of existence. And it is precisely the concept of truth, which the philosopher fights and defends;and this is very modern.

The truth is a kind of lie necessary for the man, but on which it is impossible to found one absolute or definitive doctrine. And it is thanks to this passage that we rediscover the mystifying character of all values that have characterized the history of thought and civilization. At this point, a void opens up: in front of us we have nothing, but it is thanks to it, according to the philosopher, that we can finally build something new. It is from the devaluation of values ​​that we can reach a point of departure. The nihilist does not despair. Nietzsche in this is revolutionary: his radical thinking unmasks the illusory character of the values ​​highlighting how these in reality ty hide something different. Let's call it rebellion, let's call it the search for authenticity: surely we will find some fertile ground today. This distinct feeling of devaluation and emptying is something 21st century humans know very well. All busy and busy with our hectic lives: how many hours we go on complaining about our dissatisfactions, concerns? That sense of emptiness that we fail to justify why we do not benefit from an objective truth ready to defend ourselves. If before with  Nietzsche, it was more an overcoming of a system of thought, now it's something that affects us all personally. The discovery of groundlessness is latent in each of our acts, e for this we cannot but call ourselves nihilists.

We were taught that there is nothing certain, that every possible principle or value may turn out to be erroneous or unfounded, which we must orient ourselves on the basis of references of a momentary nature and relative to a particular situation. Nothing proves this to us as well as it does the historical moment we are experiencing: from one day to the next, everything what was certain, turned out to be unfounded: we never would have thought that someone could force us to lock ourselves in the house, limiting ours personal freedom without having committed any crime: we found out that it is not like this. We have experienced the existential void, the loss of principles which becomes the principle itself. Nihilism therefore appears as nothing, as a sense of loss of the present and of our future projects. In the course of life we ​​often ask ourselves about his philosophy and on the meaning of death. Not being able to understand anymore what the human condition allows us, we realize that all the questions are the fruit of ideas. Ideas are intimate, individual; a bit like truths and beliefs: there is no longer a belief sensible than another. Entering the world of ideas is so beautiful and dangerous: we often fall back into perceptions and truth illusions, the very ones that Nietzsche spoke about, the same ones that  created in us this feeling of emptiness and non-awareness. The nihilist does not despair but arise from it: our frustrations, lack of satisfaction, anxieties, fears lead to a sea of nihilism or pessimism. What nihilism causes is not only a feeling of confusion but also of pain. There are numerous doctrines that question the overcoming of this suffering: the Buddhism, for example, is one of them. And with it, its many variations. The line between Buddhism and nihilism is very thin: the concept of nirvana, for example, it should not be confused with nihilism in terms of cancelling any given condition and therefore dissolution in nothing, but rather as the achievement of a spiritual state of cessation of pain. The Buddhist approach questions how to address the problem pragmatically, using practice meditative, discipline of mind and body that provides an access to the interior and that allows you to specify perceptions and questions. That feeling of emptiness can develop in that sense liberating, thus freeing man from the representations of his mind that binds him so much.

Nihilism, literally "ideology of nothing", appears strongly as nonsense. But it is precisely from this nonsense that we can not escape. When our ego experiences the emptying of the self, nothing can mature in us and become everything. Nihilism, however, is not synonymous with pessimism, on the contrary: it approaches almost more to optimism, as a possibility of opening towards an overcoming the state of loss in which man finds himself. Today as never before, when we see our world falling apart piece after piece, we have not only the opportunity but also the responsibility to rewrite new values, far from the absolute and from the objective, close to our most intimate personal identities.