For Nietzsche, nihilism is the result of the conviction that there are no absolute truths and values. This results in a "belief in absolute worthlessness, that is, meaninglessness"
Nietzsche viewed nihilism genealogically as the result of a historical process that spanned from ancient Greece to Christianity. The loss of belief in a god, as it was taught in antiquity by Socrates and Plato, in Judaism and then in Christianity, leads to a destruction of the traditional world view and thus to a devaluation of all previous values. “What does nihilism mean?" asks Nietzsche "That the highest values are devalued”. With the philosophy of Kant the end of religions and metaphysical belief was ushered in. For the sciences, too, this means that they no longer have a secure foundation. There is no longer any absolute truth. “That there is no truth; that there is no absolute nature of things, no "thing in itself" - this is itself a nihilism, and indeed the most extreme" Correspondingly, there is no longer any standard for morality either. Nevertheless, nihilism in its complete form would be the realization of the pursuit of truth and truthfulness. Nietzsche not only wanted to remain destructively in pessimism like Schopenhauer, but was looking for a perspective to overcome nihilism.
The history of nihilism can also be seen as a process from the loss of the old (pre-Socratic) values through which the true world became a fable, to metaphysics and to the Judeo-Christian forms of a dogmatic religion. The story of the overcoming of dogmas in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment follows a “logic of decadence”, a decline in values and a transition to slave morality . The result is disorientation and ambiguity, the highest expression of which is nihilism in its pure form. According to Nietzsche, a foundation of meaning can only be found through new values that are not developed from the mind, but are achieved through a voluntary affirmation of the world.
Instead of God (who died) as the idea of the world ground, Nietzsche puts the idea of eternal return, the idea that everything that has happened has already happened infinitely often and will return infinitely often. The one who succeeds in creating new values by revaluing all values is the man of the future, the superman , at the same time antichrist and overcomer of God as well as anti-minihilist and conqueror of nothing. The action of the new person follows the driving force of the will to powerand overcomes nihilism by saying yes to inevitable fate, expressed through the term amor fati ("love of fate").