Pushing the Falling: Self-Creation as Be-coming of the Death of God Restricted; Files Only
Wu, Kairos (Spring 2026)
Abstract
Nietzsche’s philosophy identifies the problem of the modern age as rooted in metaphysics, the belief in a priori truth, and seeks a solution that avoids repeating the mistake of nihilism. Drawing primarily on The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and Beyond Good and Evil, this thesis articulates a consistent program for overcoming metaphysics and nihilism thereof, notwithstanding Nietzsche’s fragmentary writing. Nietzsche understands nihilism as a symptom of the death of God as faith, or of the self-overcoming of God as faith: when Christianity is practiced so rigorously that the faith and the practice contradict each other, the highest values devaluate themselves. Nietzsche thereupon hypothesizes that any truth that purports to be a priori will overcome itself when “pushed to its utmost limit.” Nietzsche’s strategy consists in, rather than the confirmation of the hypothesis by experiment, the process of experimentation—of pushing truths to their limits—itself. This process has two moments. First, to have a truth to experiment on is to have, instead of an external object, a life conditioned by that truth, since a truth constitutes a subject’s subjectivity and drive to truth. An individual without truth is a form of life open to the perspective of things around it here and now, which becomes their truth and therefore creates them as a subject. Second, to experiment on a truth requires the ethical quality of honesty—both the affirmative attitude towards one’s own subjectivity and coordination, or self-control, of the body so that one’s impulses are directed towards the movement the drive to truth demands. When a subject’s truth is “pushed to the point of nonsense,” the individual becomes openness again and may be recreated by another truth. Thus, life becomes the eternal recurrence of experimentation. The moment Nietzsche calls “noon”—the end of metaphysics, when all self-proclaimed truths become perspectives—is not a future to come but is always coming and be-coming amid the process of experimentation. Nietzsche’s fragmentary writing serves this strategy: by evoking the feeling, or intuition, of perspectivity, it transmutes truth into something that can be experimented on, thereby preparing individuals to overcome their truths.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Death of God: Overcoming Truth by Experiment
Chapter 2: The Child at Noon: The Beginning of A Truth
Chapter 3: Honesty: The Ethics of Experimentation on Truths
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File download under embargo until 28 May 2027 | 2026-04-06 15:58:17 -0400 | File download under embargo until 28 May 2027 |
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