The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism

349 Pages·2008·2.52 MB·English

by  Bernard Reginster

The Affirmation of Life
The Affirmation of Life
BERNARD REGINSTER
To my father and the
memory of my mother
Preface
The present book develops a systematic interpretation of Nietzsche's ethical
thought. I have relied on the critical edition of Nietzsche's works by Colli and
Montinari, and I have referred to the still-classic translations of his works by
Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, including, no doubt controversially,
their collaborative translation of The Will to Power. I have done so on the
assumption that these are the translations with which the reader is most likely to
be familiar. However, I have also consulted some new translations, such as that
of On the Genealogy of Morality by Maudemarie Clark and A. J. Swensen. In
general, I have left those translations intact, occasionally reproducing the
original German, except in a few cases in which I estimated that they were
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 Schopenhauer'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
Philosophy 34(3) (2002), pp. 55-68, have been used in Chapters 1 and 6.
Portions of this book were written under the auspices of the National
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, Robert Howell, Nadeem Hussain, Jonathan Ichikawa, George Kateb,
Jaegwon Kim, Joshua Landy, Charles Larmore, Brian Leiter, Wolfgang Mann,
Frederick Neuhouser, 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 philosophical 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, Cornell University, Wellesley College,
the University of New Mexico, the University of Oklahoma, the Radcliffe
Seminar at Harvard University, the Rhode Island Philosophical Society, the
International Nietzsche Tagung in Naumburg, and the Nietzsche Kolleg at the
Goethe-Schiller Stiftung at Weimar, and at various meetings of the North
American Nietzsche Society.
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
Abbreviations
Primary sources from Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Kant are cited in the text by
abbreviation and according to prevalent conventions.
WORKS BY NIETZSCHE
Nietzsche's works are cited by section number and, when applicable, by chapter
as well: for example, On the Genealogy of Morals, chapter III, section 11 is cited
as GM, III 11. In the case of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I will also include within
brackets the number of a subsection when applicable: for example, Z, III 12 [16].
Finally, I cite fragments from the posthumous notes in accordance to their
classification in the Kritische Studienausgabe: for example, KSA 14 [453]. And
I cite published texts from that edition by volume and page numbers: for
example, KSA, I, pp. 783-792.
WORKS BY SCHOPENHAUER
Schopenhauer's works are cited by section number and, when applicable, by
volume as well. Since the sections can be quite lengthy, I have also mentioned
the translation's page number of the quotation: for example, The World as Will
and Representation, volume I, section 57, p. 312 is cited as WWR, I 57, p. 312.
Note that the chapters of the second volume of that work are numbered with
roman numerals.
WORKS BY KANT
Kant's works are cited by page numbers from the so-called Akademie edition.
For example, the Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals, Ak. p. 412 is cited
as GW p. 412.
-WALLACE STEVENS, SUNDAY MORNING
Introduction
1. The Systematicity of Nietzsche's Thought
On November 13, 1888, a mere few weeks before his final collapse into insanity,
Nietzsche makes the following announcement, in a letter to his friend Franz
Overbeck: "The printing of Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with a
Hammer is finished; the manuscript of Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What
One Is is already at the printer's. The latter, an absolutely important book, gives
some psychological and even biographical details about me and my writings;
people will at last suddenly see me. The tone of the work, one of gay detachment
fraught with a sense of destiny, as is everything I write. Then at the end of next
year the first book of the revaluation will appear. It is finished."' Ecce Homo, the
last original work Nietzsche was ever to complete,2 has all the trappings of an
intellectual testament, from its title-"Ecce Homo" is an invitation to "behold the
man" who is here presenting himself-to its content-Nietzsche reviews the nature
and the significance of his intellectual contribution in a series of provocatively
titled chapters ("Why I Am So Wise," "Why I Am So Clever," "Why I Write
Such Good Books," and "Why I Am a Destiny"). This "absolutely important
book" closes with a last, anxious plea for understanding: "Have I been
understood?-Dionysus versus the Crucified.-" (EH, IV 9).
By that time, the figure of Dionysus has fully assumed the role of symbol for
an ideal Nietzsche calls the "affirmation of life," whereas "the Crucified," an
expression that traditionally refers to the Pauli nian conception of Christ,
represents the opposite ideal of negation of life. The strategically significant
location of these words unequivocally suggests, in my view, that Nietzsche
regards the affirmation of life as his defining philosophical achievement. We
truly "understand" him, he warns us, only insofar as we understand what the
affirmation of life amounts to. Yet, in spite of the formidable literature on
Nietzsche's work, we still lack an adequate and compelling account of both the
nature and the significance of this notion in his philosophy. Moreover, the
project of a "revaluation of all values," to which the letter also refers, and which
will prove to be an essential requirement of the affirmation of life, has generated
hardly less puzzlement and controversy.
The ambition of the present book is to articulate a systematic interpretation of
Nietzsche's philosophical project that delivers a plausible and compelling
account of the nature and significance of the affirmation of life and of the
attendant project of a revaluation of values. To fulfill this ambition, the
interpretation I will develop here differs from most existing interpretations both
in its broad outline and in its details. Since the differences in details are best
revealed in the examination of specific issues, I will focus here on the distinctive
traits of the broad structure of my interpretation.
Existing interpretations of Nietzsche's philosophy fall roughly within two
categories. Some take the studied disorderliness of his writings to signal the lack
of a central, systematizing thought and adopt a piecemeal thematic approach:
they pull scattered texts together to determine what his views are in metaphysics,
epistemology, ethics, and so on.3 Since Nietzsche does develop views in all
these areas, such interpretations can be very helpful. But this approach also
invites worries about contrivance and anachronism. Moreover, if Nietzsche's
particular views are animated by a fundamental philosophical motivation, as I
believe they are, this approach runs the risk of missing it, and therefore of
misunderstanding them.
Other interpretations favor a more global systematic approach, which consists
in identifying a central doctrine in Nietzsche's philosophy and understanding
everything else in relation to it.4 Existing systematic interpretations have often
managed to account for many of those themes Nietzsche himself saw as his most
important philosophical contributions-namely, nihilism, the revaluation of values
(which includes the critique of morality), perspectivism, the will to power, the
eternal recurrence, and the affirmation of life. But they have not succeeded in
accounting for all of them or, at any rate, in explaining their importance in
Nietzsche's eyes. And they have also overlooked themes that are no less
important for being more implicit, such as, for example, Nietzsche's ubiquitous
concern with the problem of suffering. One shortcoming, in particular, is
common to all existing interpretations: none has yet been able to explain
adequately why Nietzsche regards the affirmation of life as his defining
philosophical achievement.
The systematic approach I adopt in this book will, at the outset, encounter
resistance, for it does not sit well with Nietzsche's famous quip against
systematization: "I mistrust all systematizers. The will to a system is a lack of