Llenaremos de sal vuestros campos. Reflexiones en torno a la guerra y el nihilismo

Abstract

Friedrich Nietzsche proclaims the advance of nihilism in Also sprach Zarathustra with the phrase “The desert grows†and thereby puts the entire metaphysical tradition in check, for nihilism is not the fruit of political, social and cultural movements, but has belonged to the West since its own Greek dawn. Nihilism is imbricated in the history of the for- getting of being, but it only becomes visible when a transmutation of values takes place. War, for its part, can be interpreted either as an imposition of new values or as a defence of old ones, but in the end it is still part of the nihilistic game, since the space occupied by these values is located in the metaphysical framework that favours the forgetfulness of being. One might suppose that this space, when it is deserted (empty), it is possible to try to locate new values. But that Nietzsche points to nihilism with the metaphor of the desert is no coincidence, for the desert is characterized by the fact that there is nothing, nor can there be, it is nothingness as such: the desert is characterized by the irretrievability of the terrain: desertified land cannot be cultivated again. This punishment, can serve as a metaphor with which to establish a relationship between war and nihilism, not because war is another form of nihilism, but rather to show that, from its origin, established as a Heraclitean war of opposites, nihilism is part of a tradition condemned to the oblivion of being.