John Gray on Nihilism

In this short chapter, entitled "Homer's Vultures", John Gray manages to say the first new thing I have heard in a while. I am going to reprint it here in full, and hopefully once I finish the entire book, I will do a post on what I think about it.

Nietzsche's Superman sees mankind falling into an abyss in which nothing has meaning. By a supreme act of will, he delivers man from nihilism. Zarathustra succeeds Jesus as the redeemer of the world.

Nihilism is the idea that human life must be redeemed from meaninglessness. Until Christianity came on the scene, there were no nihilists. In The Iliad, Homer sang of the gods provoking men to war so they could enjoy the spectacle of ruin:

...Athene and the lord of the silver bow, Apollo
assuming the likeness of birds, of vultures, settled
aloft the great oak tree of their father, Zeus of the aegis,
taking their ease and watching these men whoe ranks, dense-settled,
shuddering into a bristle of spears, of shields and of helmets.
As when the shudder of the west wind suddenly rising
scatters across the water, and the water darkens beneath it,
so darkening were settled the ranks of Achaians and Trojans
in the plain.

Where is nihilism here? Homer's vultures do not redeem human life. There is nothing in it that needs redemption.

Earlier in the chapter, Gray quotes Cioran:

The certitude that there is no salvation is a form of salvation, in fact it is salvation. Starting from here, one might organise our own life as well as construct a philosophy of history: the insoluble as solution, as the only way out.

These are difficult sentiments to really get your mind around, but I really think they are on to something.