Words Matter

The disregard of language and the breakdown of the distinction between reality and appearance that characterize the Trump era not only are symptomatic of a loss of language and of politics, but also reveal an extreme nihilism that is worthy of question and thought. No less a philosopher-rhetorician than Friedrich Nietzsche offers us a diagnosis of this condition, most pithily in the six-moment history of Western philosophy that he presents in Twilight of the Idols. For Nietzsche, after the end of the history of the error of reason comes a joyous overcoming of nihilism. Nietzsche's critics, however, are not so sure.