Verbatim quote · defining passage

“Nihilism is a mode of thinking that, since Nietzsche, we have been constrained to acknowledge as our own homegrown response to all transcendence, to all valuations. Nietzsche described it as the will to nothing as preferable to no will at all.”

— Eric Gans, Scandal, Resentment, Idolatry: The Underground Psychology of Terrorism · Spring 2002 · Anthropoetics