Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age

In 1962, the young Eugene Rose undertook to write a monumental chronicle of the abandonment of Truth in the modern age. Of the hundreds of pages of material he compiled for this work, only the present essay, on Nihilism, has come down to us in completed form. Here Eugene reveals the core of all modern thought and life - the belief that all truth is relative - and shows how this belief has been translated into action in our century. Today, three decades after he wrote it, this essay is more timely than ever. It clearly explains why contemporary ideas, values, and attitudes - the "spirit of the age"--Are shifting so rapidly in the direction of moral anarchy, as the philosophy of Nihilism enters more deeply into the fiber of society. Nietzche was right when he predicted that the 20th century would usher in "the triumph of nihilism."