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Hello, the 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, there can be no doubt that morality

will gradually perish. This is the great spectacle in a hundred acts reserved for the next two

centuries in Europe.

And with chilling predictions like this, nihilism sped on its way.

The hard view that morals are pointless, loyalty is a weakness and truths are illusory.

Its excited, confused and appalled Western thinkers

ever since. But what happened to Nietzsche's revolutionary ideas about truth, morality and

a life without meaning? Existentialism can claim lineage to nature, as can postmodernism,

but so can Nazism. But so many interpretations and claims of ownership from the left and the right

has anything positive come out of the great philosopher of nothing.

With me to discuss Nietzsche and nihilism are the philosopher Rob Hopkins from the University of

Birmingham, Professor Raymond Tallis, Doctor, philosopher and and a critic of the post-modernists, and also with

us is one of their staunch defenders, Professor Catherine Belsey, from the University of Cardiff.

Let's talk first about Nietzsche and the Enlightenment, Nietzsche the second half of the 19th century, German, Prussian,

like his father he died insane.

Rob Hopkins, nihilism brings to my despair and purposelessness and the love of destruction.

How far are these central to nature's ideas?

They're central though not because not in the way that he supported those who use in the end.

He thought nihilism was a phenomenon of

enormous cultural importance that had come marked the development of Western civilization

...