The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism PDF
Preview The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism
The Affirmation of Life Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College The Affirmation of Life J NIETZSCHE ON OVERCOMING NIHILISM BERNARD REGINSTER HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College Copyright(cid:1)2006bythePresidentandFellowsofHarvardCollege Allrightsreserved PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2008. LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Reginster,Bernard. Theaffirmationoflife:Nietzscheonovercomingnihilism/Bernard Reginster. p. cm. Includesbibliographicalreferences(p. )andindex. ISBN978-0-674-02199-0(cloth : alk.paper) ISBN978-0-674-03064-0(pbk.) 1. Nietzsche,FriedrichWilhelm,1844–1900. 2. Ethics. 3. Nihilism. 4. Life. I. Title. B3318.E9R44 2006 193—dc22 2005052809 Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College To my father and the memory of my mother Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College Preface The present book develops a systematic interpretation of Nietzsche’s ethicalthought.IhavereliedonthecriticaleditionofNietzsche’sworks by Colli and Montinari, and I have referred to the still-classictransla- tionsofhisworksbyWalterKaufmannandR.J.Hollingdale,including, no doubt controversially, their collaborative translation of The Will to Power.Ihavedonesoontheassumptionthatthesearethetranslations with which the reader is most likely to be familiar. However, I have also consulted some new translations, such as that of On the Gene- alogyofMoralitybyMaudemarieClarkandA.J.Swensen.Ingeneral, I have left those translations intact, occasionally reproducing theorig- inal German, except in a few cases in which I estimatedthattheywere simply too misleading. For Kant and Schopenhauer, I have also used the classic translations, and relied on the standard Akademie edition of Kant’s original works, and the Brockaus complete edition of Scho- penhauer’s original works. Here, too, I have remained largely faithful to the translations. I have indicated omissions of parts of the original text in all of my quotations with the convention “[...].” I gratefully acknowledge permission to reproduce the following of my already-published materials: parts of “Nietzsche on Ressentiment and Valuation” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (June 1997), pp.281–305, have been reproduced in Chapter 6; parts of “Happiness as a Faustian Bargain” in Daedalus 133 (2) (Spring 2004), pp.52–59, have been used in Chapters 3 and 6; and parts of “Nihilism and the Affirmation of Life” in International Studies in Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College viii • Preface Philosophy 34(3) (2002), pp.55–68, have been used in Chapters 1 and 6. PortionsofthisbookwerewrittenundertheauspicesoftheNational Humanities Center, at which I was a fellow during spring 2000. I am deeply grateful for the support I received then. I have also, to varying degrees, incurred debts of gratitude to many colleagues, friends, and students during the conception and preparation of this book. They include, in alphabetical order, R. Lanier Anderson, Neera Badhwar, Akeel Bilgrami, Justin Broackes, Maudemarie Clark, Garrett Deckel, James Dreir, Jorge Fernandez, Harold Hodes,RobertHowell,Nadeem Hussain, Jonathan Ichikawa, George Kateb, Jaegwon Kim, Joshua Landy,CharlesLarmore,BrianLeiter,WolfgangMann,FrederickNeu- houser, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Pippin, John Richardson,Matthias Risse, Ivan Soll, Richard Schacht, R. Jay Wallace, and Linda Zag- zebsky. I owe special thanks to Alexander Nehamas, who showed me the possibility of an interpretation of Nietzsche that is at once philo- sophical and distinctive, and to Robert Howell and Brian Leiter, who wrote detailed comments on the entire manuscript. It is in spite of the assistance of all mentioned here that this book remains marred by many shortcomings. I have also benefited from discussions following presentations of parts of this book with audiences at Brown University, the University of Illinois at Champaign–Urbana, Stanford University, CornellUniver- sity, Wellesley College, the University of New Mexico, the University of Oklahoma, the Radcliffe Seminar at Harvard University, theRhode Island Philosophical Society, the International Nietzsche Tagung in Naumburg, and the Nietzsche Kolleg at the Goethe-SchillerStiftungat Weimar, and at various meetings of the North AmericanNietzscheSo- ciety. Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College Contents Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 1 Nihilism 21 2 Overcoming Disorientation 54 3 The Will to Power 103 4 Overcoming Despair 148 5 The Eternal Recurrence 201 6 Dionysian Wisdom 228 Notes 271 Bibliography 301 Index 309 Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College
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