The initial encounter with nihilism is commonly experienced as dreadful and debasing. It announces itself as a threat to our highest ideals, evapo-rating our confidence in the valued and cherished ‘truths’ upon which we previously grounded our sense of self, world and purpose. With this crisis we find ourselves suddenly at sea, adrift in the blackness of an unfamiliar, threat-ening and mysterious domain where nothing is certain, nothing possesses meaning, and the world seems unreal. The guideposts that we previously relied upon and had faith in can no longer be trusted, and we are lost.

This crisis is often met with a whimper of despair. Our grandest aspira-tions - those hopes, desires and ambitions that we thought differentiated us from beasts - turn out to be unattainable abstractions; impossible targets that have lured us into a farcical game of chasing after illusions. Our highest objectives are revealed as mere mental projections, emanating from our own dissatisfaction with what we actually are. Whereas before the crisis of nihilism we were fortified by dreams of Truth, Being and the possibility of progress toward some form of lofty perfection, afterwards we question the point of vainly chasing after what have turned out to be unreal fabrications. Our ulti-mate ideals can never be made real, and with the ridiculous and pitiful pathos of a mule chasing hopelessly after a carrot on a stick, human aspirations appear absurd. It turns out that we are no better than beasts; we are, in fact, worse off because unlike other animals we unfortunately find it impossible to remain content and happy with our finite, incomplete state of being. The revelation of nihilism leaves us without aim, purpose, or meaning and we fall into despair.

But this despair is an opportunity, as it discloses to us that our previous haughtiness was rooted in a false sense of superiority, that we overestimated our powers, and that we are now in a position to abandon our past arrogance. Nihilism brings us down to earth by forcing us to confront our puniness, our failures and our finitude. It reminds us that we are not gods, and thus helps to put us back into our appropriate place.