EX NIHILO TOTUM

Who said it first that “the passion for destruction is a creative passion”? Bakunin, of course! But then, notice this passage from Zarathustra, quoted in Ecce Homo, Why I am a destiny, Section 2:

“And whoever wants to be a creator in good and evil, must first be an annihilator and break values. Thus the highest evil belongs to the greatness goodness: but this is being creative.”

Observe how close this is to Bakunin’s famous dictum. This cannot be a coincidence, not by any stretch of imagination. Bakunin had said his piece before Nietzsche, and Nietzsche definitely must have familiarized himself with the works of the great Russian author of theoretical anarchism, and certainly with Bakunin’s prototype-practitioner of anarchism Nechayev. This idea had indeed originated in Russia, and Nietzsche’s fascination with the essence of violent revolutionism, and particularly, with its most sinister expression in Russian nihilism, is now well explained, and it does indeed transfer into the powerful freedom of the will, which allows him to predict Russia’s world-historical greatness in the nearest future.

I am not insisting, of course, that Nietzsche’s idea of the Will to Power, and all that it entails, was heavily influenced by Bakunin, but what this similarity shows is a kindred spirit, ready to adopt the Russian acorn and raise it into his own oak.

…And once again meet Nietzsche the Bakuninian! Here is his wisdom in point: You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star. Why the Bakuninian? Ask yourself this simple question: If chaos is what you must have, then how do you get it?

The answer is, of course, this: By destroying its enemy, the opposite of chaos, which is the existing order! (Now, even if this chaos happens to be within you, still its achievement has to be through destruction, that is, self-destruction?!)

Creation and destruction, destruction and creation. To add another dimension to this discussion, we return to the following Zarathustra passage in Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo, Why I am a Destiny, Section 3, which we have already quoted elsewhere:

“Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; therefore, he must also be the first to recognize it. Not only has he more experience in this matter, for a longer time than any other thinker: after all, the whole of history is the refutation by experiment of the principle of the so-called ‘moral world order,’ what is more important is that he is more truthful than any other thinker. His doctrine alone posits truthfulness as highest virtue; this means the opposite of the cowardice of the ‘idealist‘ who flees from reality.”

In the light of my thinking on the subject of truthfulness as the highest virtue, my thinking on the truth of fiction harmonizes well with Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, in the sense that the creation of fiction can be called a creative passion, and therefore the highest virtue (taking the cue from God, whose motivation to become a Creator clearly points to creativity being the highest of all virtues). Furthermore, because all fiction is truth, truthfulness is the essential attribute of pure creation. But then, going back to Nietzsche’s immortal dictum Fiat veritas, pereat vita! the concept of destruction is already deeply embedded in the essence of truth, and now tying up all loose ends we come up with a consistent, self-sustained picture, where everything gets its perfect fit.