A second question also arises: is nihilism, whose power of negation extends to everything, not akin to scepticism? Is it not, in some sense, a form of scepticism?

Here again, I believe these two modes of thought are incommensurable. Scepticism doubts the possibility of truth, whereas nihilism is concerned not with the notion of truth but with the notion of value.
More importantly still, the sceptic doubts everything and remains uncertain whether truth is even attainable. Through epoché, he suspends judgement—he neither asserts nor denies. Nihilism, by contrast, declares loud and clear that nothing has value. It is a position full of certainty, claiming the status of knowledge.

Nihilism thus emerges as a mode of thought irreducible to either pessimism or scepticism—a distinction that modern thought has often overlooked. It is a way of thinking whose specificity deserves to be understood on its own terms.

Once nihilism is more clearly identified in its theoretical dimension, we realise that there was a philosopher who was explicitly nihilist—or who at least gave explicit expression to the nihilist position. In other words, there exists in the history of philosophy a Manifesto of Nihilism, and we are now in a position to recognise it as such, having arrived at a clearer understanding of what nihilism is.

Remarkably, perhaps even extraordinarily, we encounter this philosopher at the very outset of philosophy as both a way of thinking and a way of life: Thales, the first philosopher. One fragment records the following exchange: Death is no different from life he said. So why are you not killing yourself? someone asked. Because, he replied, it makes no difference ¹.
If we take Thales to be implying not only an essential identity between life and death but also an equality of value, what conclusion might we draw? Not that Thales was a nihilist—we cannot be certain of this, and it would perhaps be unfair to attribute to him a position he may not have held, at the risk of anachronism. Yet Thales gives particularly clear expression to what a dialogue with an authentic nihilist might look like: his response would be no different.

A similar idea surfaces in Cioran, who at times gives voice to classic pessimistic thoughts—for example: Wouldn't it be better if I buried my tears in the sand on a seashore in utter solitude? But I never cried, because my tears have always turned into thoughts. And my thoughts are as bitter as tears ². Yet he also develops genuinely nihilistic reflections, as in the following passage: Although life for me is torture, I cannot renounce it, because I do not believe in the absolute values in whose name I would sacrifice myself. If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. […] Why should I bother? Let death appear in a ridiculous light; suffering, limited and unrevealing; enthusiasm, impure; life, rational; life's dialectics, logical rather than demonic; despair, minor and partial; eternity, just a word; the experience of nothingness, an illusion; fatality, a joke! ³.

Cioran is aware that the traditional responses of pessimism—despair, tears—are of no use to him, since embracing them would entail ascribing value to them, a step his axiological stance forbids. He senses, if only vaguely, that he inhabits an entirely different territory from classic pessimism, yet struggles to find the words to convey the full radicalism of his position: I do not know whether I am desperate or not, since lack of hope does not automatically imply despair. I could be called anything because I stand to lose nothing. I've lost everything! flowers are blooming and birds are singing all around me! How distant I am from everything! ⁴.

At one point, he brings together, magnificently, in a single sentence, the substance of nihilism and his awareness of its radical nature: Why don't I commit suicide? Because I am as sick of death as I am of life. I should be cast into a flaming caldron! Why am I on this earth? I feel the need to cry out, to utter a savage scream that will set the world atremble with dread. I am like a lightning bolt ready to set the world ablaze and swallow it all in the flames of my nothingness. I am the most monstrous being in history, the beast of the apocalypse full of fire and darkness, of aspirations and despair. [...] My symbol is the death of light and the flame of death. Sparks die in me only to be reborn as thunder and lightning. Darkness itself glows in me ⁵.

1. Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Book 1
2. On the heights of despair, Nothing is important
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., I do not know
5. Ibid., The monopoly of suffering