The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche: Thinking Differently, Feeling Differently [1st ed.] 9783030371326, 9783030371333

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The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche Thinking Differently, Feeling Differently Kaitlyn Creasy

The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche

Kaitlyn Creasy

The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche Thinking Differently, Feeling Differently

Kaitlyn Creasy California State University San Bernardino, CA, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-37132-6 ISBN 978-3-030-37133-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37133-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Contributor: Joerg Metzner/Restless Photography/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Justin

Acknowledgments

I presented material from this book at the 2017 meeting of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, the 2018 meeting of the North American Nietzsche Society, the 2018 meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, and the 2019 workshop for Nietzsche in the Northeast. My sincere thanks to the audiences present for their questions, critiques, and suggestions. I would like to especially thank Lanier Anderson, Rebecca Bamford, Jessica Berry, Ian Dunkle, Richard Elliott, Rachael Flanagan, Robert Guay, Kathleen Higgins, Andrew Huddleston, Scott Jenkins, Anthony Jensen, Paul Katsafanas, Paul Kirkland, Paul Loeb, Allison Merrick, Katrina Mitcheson, Justin Remhof, John Richardson, Jacqueline Scott, Alan Schrift, Ashley Sharples, Melanie Shepherd, Iain Thomson, Sander Werkhoven, Joel Van Fossen, Corinne Wilber, and Gabriel Zamosc. Special thanks are due to Matthew Meyer, who was always willing to review and critique material from the manuscript. His thoughtful and straightforward feedback made this a better book. My thanks to the Journal of Nietzsche Studies and the Pennsylvania State University Press for allowing me to include revised material from two previously published articles of mine. Chapter 5 includes material from “On the Problem of Affective Nihilism,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 49, No. 1, 2018, pp. 31–51. This article is used by permission of The Pennsylvania State University Press. Additionally, Chapters 5, 6, and 8 include material from “Making Knowledge the Most Powerful Affect,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 50, No. 2, 2019, pp. 210–232.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article, too, is used by permission of The Pennsylvania State University Press. In addition, I am grateful for the opportunity to work with the editorial team at Palgrave Macmillan and owe thanks to Philip Getz, Amy Invernizzi, and Karthika Purushothaman, whose guidance and cooperation has been invaluable throughout the process of bringing my first manuscript to fruition. My gratitude also to the anonymous referees of this manuscript for their generative feedback. For supporting me through the development and completion of this project, I am exceedingly grateful both to my former colleagues in the Philosophy, Religion, and Classics Department at Butler University (especially Chad Bauman, Brent Hege, Lynne Kvapil, and Ezgi Sertler) and to my current colleagues in the Philosophy Department at California State University, San Bernardino. This project was made possible, in many ways, by the support of family and close friends. Thank you to Diane Macco and Gary Creasy, Jill and Pat Faley, Ginny Wilmerding and Stuart Pett, Emma Creasy (the highachieving nursing student), and Kyle Creasy; for their assistance and encouragement, I am appreciative. Thank you also to my grandmother, Marilyn Macco, my first and longest source of inspiration: her openheartedness, unfailing interpretive charity, and expansive mind showed me from an early age what a philosopher should look like. To Richie Macco and José Alcaraz: thank you for always supporting my intellectual development, and for never failing to ask when the book would be done. Most of all, thank you to Justin Messmore. My world is exponentially richer, and life more fascinating, because of our relationship. Justin’s patience, understanding, and proofreading were all crucial for the completion of this project, and I am exceedingly grateful for his love and friendship.

Contents

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1

Introduction

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What Is Nietzschean Nihilism?

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3

Nihilism as Life-Denial

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4

Before Affective Nihilism, Understanding Affect

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The Problem of Affective Nihilism

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Affective Nihilists, Weak Agents

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Cognitive Nihilism, Affective Nihilism, and Their Interplay

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Overcoming Affective Nihilism

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8

References

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Index

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List of Abbreviations of Nietzsche’s Works

A

BGE BT CW D EH

GM GS HH KSA TI

The Antichrist from Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols: And Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, trans. Raymond Geuss and Ronald Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) The Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967) Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) Ecce Homo from Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols: And Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974) Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden. Edited by G. Colli and M. Montinari. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967–77. Twilight of the Idols from Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols: And Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS OF NIETZSCHE’S WORKS

Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Adrian Del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

As Bernard Reginster argues in his seminal text The Affirmation of Life, “nihilism is the central theme of Nietzsche’s philosophy” (2006, p. 21). As a multifaceted phenomenon with affective, cognitive, and socio-cultural components, however, it has proven surprisingly difficult to offer a comprehensive account of what exactly the problem of nihilism is for Nietzsche—and, therefore, what potential solutions to this problem could look like. In part, this difficulty follows from the fact that, while something properly called “the problem of nihilism” animates and permeates so many of Nietzsche’s most critical works, he rarely calls this problem by its name: Nihilismus. Thus, though one happens upon possible symptoms or consequences of this problem in nearly every one of Nietzsche’s works—one senses the specter of nihilism at every turn—a comprehensive account of nihilism remains difficult to construct. Indeed, although Nietzsche makes reference to nihilists [Nihilisten] in two separate notes from 1880 (KSA 9:4[103], [108]) and mentions nihilism [Nihilismus] in an 1881 letter to his dear friend, Heinrich Köselitz (BVN-1881, 88), Nietzsche’s explicit mentions of nihilism [Nihilismus] occur with much more frequency in his private notes from 1885 onward. Though he discusses the problem of nihilism in some of his late published works including Beyond Good and Evil (1886), the fifth book of The Gay Science (1887), The Genealogy of Morality (1887),

© The Author(s) 2020 K. Creasy, The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37133-3_1

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and The Antichrist (1888), the problem of nihilism in Nietzsche is more explicitly examined and hashed out in his Nachlass .1 These features of Nietzsche’s analysis of nihilism—its generally late appearance, its relegation to his personal notebooks—might lead one to believe that Nietzsche deals with the problem of nihilism only in his philosophical maturity, and that he did not consider his thoughts on the matter sufficiently mature so as to warrant publication or promotion. But as Charles Andler suggests, the increase in explicit mentions of Nihilismus in Nietzsche’s late work and notes is less a sign of a new interest or emphasis, and more likely a result of Nietzsche’s increased familiarity with the term following from his reading of Paul Bourget’s Essais de psychologie contemporaine (Andler as cited by Müller-Lauter 1999, p. 41). Indeed, Nietzsche’s adoption of Nihilismus as a technical term (as well as his increased references to Pessimismus and Decadence) in his later works allows him to designate a particular kind of phenomenon to which he has been attending to all along. Ken Gemes picks up on this when he notes that, though it was a “problem [Nietzsche] was always working towards” (Gemes 2008, pp. 460– 461), the problem of nihilism was a problem “initially unbeknownst to [Nietzsche]” (ibid., p. 460). Although he is not yet aware of nihilism as a particular kind of problem in his early work, then, the problem of nihilism still animates much of this work. Additionally, even when Nihilismus is not explicitly mentioned, Nietzsche’s analyses of the struggle between life-denial and life-affirmation and the world-denial implicit in what he calls the christlich-moral interpretation of the world (KSA 12:2[127]) indicate his supreme concern with nihilism and its dangers.

Outline of the Book In what follows, I offer a comprehensive account of a particular kind of nihilism, that “most profound form of nihilism” (Gemes 2008, p. 462) with which Nietzsche is concerned: affective nihilism. Understanding the affective dimensions of Nietzschean nihilism, however, requires one to first understand what constitutes nihilism for Nietzsche. Thus, I begin by 1 See Gemes (2008). See also Van Tongeren (2018) for more on how the sense of “nihilism” (as “pessimism” [Pessimismus], “nihilism” [Nihilismus], and “decadence” [Decadence]) evolves throughout his work.

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examining the problem of Nietzschean nihilism generally. First, I explain the account Nietzsche offers his readers of the historical development of nihilism as the specific phenomenon he hopes to problematize and, eventually, overcome. Though nihilism is understood by Nietzsche generally as life-denial (as I demonstrate in the third chapter), he believes the problem of nihilism as it is actually lived by nineteenth-century Europeans to have a very specific historical development, involving certain critical sociocultural formations and systems of belief. In other words, the history of life-denial, of nihilism, has a very particular shape. Chapter 2 examines three recent characterizations of Nietzschean nihilism: those of Paul Van Tongeren (2018), Bernard Reginster (2006), and Andrew Huddleston (2019). Although each of these accounts is a helpful and illuminating addition to the literature on Nietzschean nihilism, I argue that none of them, taken alone, gives a satisfying account of Nietzschean nihilism. For this reason, I offer an account of my own in Chapter 3. There, I argue that thinking nihilism most broadly as lifedenial or the negation of life [die Verneinung des Lebens] allows Nietzsche’s reader to find a commonality in the various kinds of nihilism he discusses throughout his work. After Chapter 3, I turn towards a particular kind of nihilism: nihilism as a feeling-based phenomenon, or affective nihilism. It would be quite impossible, however, to understand Nietzsche’s framing of nihilism as a complex affective condition if one did not first understand what exactly Nietzsche believes affects to be and how they function to (1) excite or inhibit the drives, (2) motivate behavior (by inclining and disinclining the individual who experiences them), and (3) shape evaluative orientations. For this reason, I offer a Nietzschean account of affect in Chapter 4.2 In Chapter 5, after a close examination of the function of affect in Nietzsche, I focus in more closely on the main topic of the book: affective nihilism. In this chapter, I explore Nietzsche’s account of nihilism as a psychophysiological disorder that infects the affective nihilist, weakening her will and disengaging her from her goals and interests. In Chapter 6, I describe affective nihilism specifically as a problem of agency that takes two distinct forms: (1) will-weakness as drive suppression and (2) will-weakness as involving the disintegration or fragmentation of the will. In order to overcome affective nihilism, then, one must 2 Note that Nietzsche often uses Affekt and Leidenschaft interchangeably. I follow him in this, translating both as “affect.”

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both re-establish goals toward which she is directed by somehow stimulating the activity of her drives or integrating her will and move toward those goals in action. Only when one is an effectual agent can one be said to have overcome affective nihilism. Thus, in order to overcome affective nihilism, the nihilist must undergo a profound personal transformation, enacting fundamental changes in her constitution as a complex of drives. In Chapter 7, I clarify both the scope of affective nihilism and the relationship between cognitive and affective nihilisms in Nietzsche. First, I explain that affective nihilism is not a condition from which all Nietzschean nihilists suffer. Indeed, as I point out, it is possible to be a cognitive nihilist who is not suffering from affective nihilism. Then, I explain the relationship Nietzsche establishes between affective nihilism and nihilism’s cognitive manifestations, including certain beliefs, judgments, or epistemic practices (Riccardi 2018, p. 267). In short, I demonstrate that Nietzsche believes nihilism as a cognitive phenomenon both results from affective nihilism and potentially results in affective nihilism. Finally, in Chapter 8, I identify and investigate potential Nietzschean strategies for overcoming affective nihilism. The three strategies I outline include (1) experimentation (with locales, ideas, texts, and contexts); (2) self-narration as a practice of self-knowledge; and (3) genealogical inquiry into the origins of one’s beliefs, values, and affective life. While the first strategy works potentially through the generation or production of new and stimulating first-order affects, the second strategy has the potential to work by generating second-order affects that lead to (1) negative evaluations of harmful affects (affects that ultimately function to weaken the will); and (2) positive evaluations of healthy affects (affects that ultimately function to strengthen and unify the will). Finally, genealogical inquiry into one’s own beliefs, values, and affective life potentially provokes transformative second-order affects (produced as one attempts to honestly face the origins of her affects, beliefs, and values) and presents one with the opportunity to learn a kind of affective mastery. Such strategies potentially enable the affective nihilist not only to overcome nihilism as a psychophysiological condition, but to maintain the conditions of their own affective flourishing. Furthermore, an empowered, strong-willed individual is likely to form life-affirming beliefs and engage in epistemic practices, thus overcoming nihilism in its cognitive manifestations.3 3 Gemes (2008) is especially pessimistic about this possibility. Indeed, he claims that from Nietzsche’s perspective, “Judeo-Christian morality had left such a deep scar on the

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Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Nihilism Below, as a bit of background, I sketch out Nietzsche’s genealogy of nihilism as a socio-cultural phenomenon, a particular problem plaguing nineteenth-century Europe that results in the widespread adoption of beliefs, attitudes, and norms that Nietzsche believes to be life-denying. I begin here because while Nietzsche’s analysis of the problem of nihilism in its many manifestations is exceptionally complicated, he does present a relatively clear and straightforward genealogy of European nihilism. In fact, Nietzsche understands the problem of nihilism as it is lived by nineteenthcentury Europeans to have a very specific historical development, involving certain critical socio-cultural formations and systems of belief. Those more familiar with Nietzsche’s reflections on nihilism, and especially on nihilism as a worldview or series of interrelated worldviews plaguing nineteenth-century Europe, are likely familiar with this developmental account. For those less familiar, however, understanding Nietzsche’s genealogical inquiry into nihilism as a worldview inhabited by nineteenth-century Europeans will be critical for understanding both the structure of life-denial and, eventually, the way that all of the varieties of nihilism Nietzsche introduces—nihilism as a cognitive phenomenon, nihilism as a socio-cultural phenomenon, and nihilism as an affective phenomenon—intertwine. In short, to understand Nietzschean nihilism in a comprehensive manner—and to imagine what the overcoming of nihilism might look like—one ought to attend carefully to the genealogy of nihilism Nietzsche constructs. Below, I offer an abbreviated history of European nihilism as a sociocultural phenomenon inextricable from Judeo-Christianity. Indeed, in his unpublished reflections on the nature of nihilism, Nietzsche specifies that nihilism is “rooted” in “one particular interpretation, the Christian-moral [christlich-moral] one” (KSA 12:2[127]). This picture, according to which there is an interpretation of the world characteristic of Christianity that dominates the cultural landscape of Europe at the time of Nietzsche’s life, provides us with our first glimpse into the specific sociocultural phenomenon that Nietzsche calls European nihilism, here and elsewhere. As a socio-cultural phenomenon, European nihilism is historically contingent: its development depended on, and was made possible modern soul that the inevitable nihilism resulting from this wound negated the possibility of a general elevated culture” (2008, p. 460).

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by, certain socio-cultural factors. Put simply, without the specific historical developments that led to the origin of Christian-moral ways of interpreting the world (as well as its eventual predominance), nihilism—as the particular phenomenon of “European nihilism [der europäische Nihilismus]” (KSA 12:5[71]) that Nietzsche treats at such length in his work—might have been avoided. In his late work and notes, Nietzsche offers an account of the development of European nihilism. According to Nietzsche, nihilism as a socio-cultural phenomenon specific to nineteenth-century Europe arises when those in educated European societies become conscious of the implausibility of certain fundamental beliefs that have historically provided extraordinary value to these societies. When these beliefs are undermined, individuals in these societies experience a crisis of value: they are left not only without those values in which they were invested, but without values altogether (insofar as they believed their previous values to be the only “real” values). In this moment of crisis, a belief in the meaninglessness and/or worthlessness of existence becomes culturally widespread. This leads individuals to evaluate their world and existence negatively, turning them against the world in which they live. In short, it leads to widespread life-denial. Nietzsche’s analysis of European nihilism tells a very specific story of the crisis that catalyzes it, beginning with Plato’s theory of the Forms and continuing through the emergence and expansion of Christianity in Europe. His account begins by focusing in on Plato’s theory of the Forms, which proposes a transcendent world beyond the world of sensible experience. This transcendent world—the world of the Forms—manifests eternal perfection. Indeed, for Plato, this transcendent world is the only intrinsically valuable world there is; the immanent world is merely instrumentally valuable, valuable only insofar as it manifests certain properties or features that originate in the transcendent world. In short, the world of the Forms is the “true” and “best” world, while the immanent world of earthly experience is inferior and gives rise to false and harmful beliefs and behaviors. According to this view, one lives meaningfully and well only when one dedicates oneself to knowledge of the Forms. Thus, knowledge of the Forms is a necessary prerequisite for the living of a good life. Furthermore, the immanent, sensible world of Becoming is a misleading shadow-world; it is only “real” to the extent that it participates in the world of the Forms (Plato, Republic, 509b–511e). The

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world of the Forms—not the sensible world of earthly existence—functions as the sole source of knowledge for mankind. In this sense, Plato denies the reality of the world of Becoming. Thus, Plato’s worldview is life-denying insofar as it both disvalues and denies the reality of the world of Becoming: the sensible realm of earthly existence. According to Nietzsche, European Christianity develops from out of Plato’s theory of the Forms (BGE, Preface; BGE 191; GM III:24; TI, “True World”; TI, “Ancients,” 2; A 55). With its notion of heaven or a “beyond” (A 7, 12, 23, 43), Christianity re-inscribes the Platonic divide between an aspirational transcendent realm and an inferior, earthly realm which human beings must inhabit for a time. The goal of Christianity is to reach this transcendent, heavenly realm; one does so by living a morally good life and by maintaining faith in Christian doctrine. This requires one to (1) familiarize oneself with Christian doctrine and metaphysics and cultivate belief in such a doctrine; (2) acquire knowledge of Christian morality by becoming aware of Christian norms of good and evil; and (3) live according to a particular moral code. Christianity also introduces an omnipotent and all-knowing creator-God into the picture; this transcendent God creates a purposeful universe and has a plan for each individual. According to Nietzsche’s analysis, the fundamental beliefs that European societies took for granted included the existence and nature of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving Christian God; a transcendent, aspirational world (the heavenly realm) beyond the world of everyday experience (life on Earth); the inherent purposefulness of the universe and those in it; and good and evil as universal, fixed values, identical to those values established in Christianity. Yet as scientific developments began to offer humanity explanations for things that they could previously only speculate about—and as rationalist philosophers such as René Descartes and Immanuel Kant began to emphasize mankind’s extensive capacity for objective knowledge—the need for a transcendent deity to explain earthly phenomena and bless human beings with his wisdom began to disappear. Eventually, according to Nietzsche’s picture, the educated European’s belief in a Christian God becomes not only unnecessary, but unbelievable (GS 125).

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The death of God, as the implausibility of the Judeo-Christian God in the wake of post-Enlightenment advancements, has predictably devastating consequences.4 According to Nietzsche, as disbelief in the Christian God spreads throughout Europe, the modern European becomes convinced both that otherworldly aspirations are empty and that hopes for a better world beyond this one are futile. Though individuals continue to adopt Christian standards of good and evil out of convention, the foundations of those standards are undermined and the educated individual recognizes the insignificance and meaninglessness of conventional moral action. The idea that there is a purpose to the universe or to human action is thrown into doubt. Since the notion of a meaningful life in Christian Europe was formulated in relation to some greater purpose of the universe beyond the individual and her particular life, the death of Christianity in Europe leads many to reject the possibility of a meaningful life. This leads many to despise their existence, to become sick of themselves and the world to which they belong. Just as hoping for transcendence led the European Christian to denounce the immanent world of experience, so too does coping with the impossibility of transcendence after the death of God lead man to condemn the immanent world of existence. The former is anti-life insofar as it affirms transcendent, otherworldly existence instead of this-worldly, earthly existence (A 43); the latter is anti-life insofar as it devalues this-worldly, earthly existence after transcendent sources of value are pulled out of the world (after all, these transcendent sources were understood as the only sources of value thus far). In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche offers a concise summary of the latter phenomenon, where he describes nihilism as an attitude of “contempt for that existence which is knowable by us” that results from Europe’s realization that “the world is not worth what we thought it was” (BGE 346). Because humanity had historically located the value of its existence in those transcendent sources of value—supplied, in the European context, by Christianity— the death of God leaves humanity in a devalued world. In short, after the death of God, modern Europeans are either disillusioned by or left with scorn for the apparently meaningless world. In this way, European nihilism results when “the highest values devalue themselves [die obersten Werthe sich entwerthen]” (KSA 12:9[35]).

4 For another interpretation of the death of God, see Loeb (2010, pp. 226–234).

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When the Christian-moral longing for other worlds and transcendent values that justify this-worldly human existence is undermined, Europe is thrown into a crisis of meaning. Nietzsche describes nihilism in his notes as the conviction that our highest values cannot be defended or justified, “plus the realization that we lack the least right to posit a beyond or in-itself of things that might be divine” (KSA 12:10[192]). This latter realization leads us to reject the Christian-moral hypothesis [christliche Moral-Hypothese] which (1) “granted man an absolute value, as opposed to his smallness and accidental occurrence in the flux of becoming and passing away;” (2) “posited that man had knowledge of absolute values;” and (3) prevented man from “taking sides against life [and] despairing of knowledge” (KSA 12:5[71]). European nihilism results, then, when post-Enlightenment Europe experiences the collapse of the transcendent, otherworldly values in which its understanding of the world (and its value) was fundamentally rooted. It is perpetuated by humanity’s continued inability to honestly confront and affirm this-worldly existence—and to discover immanent sources of value—in the face of this collapse. In large part, then, European nihilism as a socio-cultural phenomenon results when human beings realize the contingency of their most fundamental beliefs about the world: the contingency of their belief in some ultimate telos or purpose of the universe, and the contingency of conventional moral systems in which European societies are invested, and (eventually) the contingency of their belief in a certain kind of truth (as disinterested objectivity). This series of realizations leads to a variety of psychological side effects, including humanity’s increasing disillusionment and felt weariness with the world. Those who were once so certain of a necessary, transcendent source of truth, meaning, and value either despair of this contingency or accept it with an attitude of jaded disenchantment. The human pursuit of knowledge thus far presupposed the existence of non-contingent truth: a kind of “truth” Nietzsche believes Europe will eventually come to reject.5 The religious, philosophical, and scientific systems of thought which dominated European culture were founded on a picture according to which the universe unfolds along a specific trajectory, progressing toward some ultimate goal; yet human truthfulness reveals no such trajectory and no

5 Ironically, he comes to this realization by way of his own to truth as an “impulse to knowledge” or “knowledge drive” (BGE 6).

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such thing as progress (KSA 13:15[8]). Various systems of morality purported to represent universal and timeless values—but when we reflect, we notice that these allegedly eternal values evolved out of a noxious combination of weakness and cleverness (GM II:16; GM III:18): they were invented by man and grew out of contingent historical circumstances. Before the death of God, European culture located the purpose and value of human life in humanity’s pursuits of truth and moral correctness. When the contingency of these values is revealed, both humanity’s self-understanding and its belief that life is worth living are seriously compromised. As these various schemas of truth, meaning, and value collapse, human beings (most of whom have, by this point, developed a psychological need for teleology (GM III:28)) struggle to locate other phenomena that enable them to understand themselves and their lives as valuable. The transcendental subject one finds in Kantian philosophy and objective, disinterested truth one finds in science are two examples of these phenomena. Yet since the original problem of the Christian-moral worldview, according to Nietzsche, is that it prioritizes and values the otherworldly (transcendent goals, aspirations, purposes) over the this-worldly (immanent life and the world of experience), these new investments are hardly solutions. Instead, they simply defer some of nihilism’s psychological manifestations and function as new expressions of the same fundamentally deluded and entirely human tendencies that individuals have to understand themselves as the centers of the universe and to search for value or meaning in their lives wherever possible. The problem with humanity’s ways of doing this after the death of God is that their valuations still both emerge from and preserve declining forms of life. The phenomena in which they remain invested continue to deny and desecrate life, vitality, and immanence.

Conclusion Becoming familiar with Nietzsche’s genealogy of European nihilism allows us to see how nihilism, as a socio-cultural phenomenon infecting nineteenth-century Europe, emerges when widespread beliefs that have historically given that society and its citizens value collapse: that is, when a society’s highest values are devalued. Nietzsche is particularly interested in how Europe’s investment in beliefs characteristic of a JudeoChristian worldview—and eventual post-Enlightenment disinvestment in

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these beliefs—gives the problem of nihilism he describes a very particular historical shape. In short, Nietzsche understands European nihilism as a historical phenomenon resulting from concrete socio-cultural developments. And although the developmental arc of European nihilism is historically contingent—that is to say, its development depended on, and was made possible by, certain ultimately contingent socio-cultural factors—it has very real consequences for ways of thinking, being, and feeling.

References Gemes, Ken. 2008. “Nihilism and the Affirmation of Life: A Review of and Dialogue with Bernard Reginster.” European Journal of Philosophy 16 (3): 459–466. Huddleston, Andrew. 2019. “Nihilism: A Unifying Thread.” Philosopher’s Imprint 19 (11): 1–19. Loeb, Paul. 2010. The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Müller-Lauter, Wolfgang. 1999. Nietzsche: His Philosophy of Contradictions and the Contradictions of His Philosophy. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “eKGWB/BVN-1881,88—Brief an Heinrich Köselitz von 13/03/1881.” Nietzsche Source. Accessed March 5, 2019. http://www. nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/BVN-1881,88. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2002. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2005. Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings. Translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007. On the Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Carol Diethe. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1967–77. Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden. Edited by G. Colli and M. Montinari. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Plato. 1945. The Republic. Translated by Francis Cornford. New York: Oxford University Press. Reginster, Bernard. 2006. The Affirmation of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Riccardi, Mattia. 2018. “Psychological Nihilism, Passions, and Neglected Works: Three Topics for Nietzsche Studies.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49 (2): 266– 270.

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Van Tongeren, Paul. 2018. Friedrich Nietzsche and European Nihilism. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

CHAPTER 2

What Is Nietzschean Nihilism?

Introduction Nietzschean nihilism is a complex phenomenon with socio-cultural, cognitive, and affective dimensions. As a particular historical, sociocultural phenomenon treated by Nietzsche, nihilism is “European nihilism”: the specifically European and Judeo-Christian denigration of this-worldly existence, either explicitly stated or implied by particular belief systems or ideologies (KSA 12:2[131]). In its cognitive aspect, nihilism involves certain characteristic beliefs and judgments about the meaninglessness or worthlessness of life (Reginster 2006), as well as certain “epistemic practices” or tendencies (Riccardi 2018, p. 266). Additionally, there is a psychological, affective dimension to nihilism: Nietzsche frequently describes nihilism as both originating from and manifesting in will-weakness, exhaustion, and nausea at existence (GM III:11, III:14). Given this variety of manifestations, one might ask: just what is Nietzschean nihilism, after all? Below, I examine three recent attempts to answer this question: those of Paul Van Tongeren (2018), Bernard Reginster (2006), and Andrew Huddleston (2019). Though each of these accounts serves as a crucial addition to the scholarship on Nietzschean nihilism, I argue below that none of them, taken alone, offers a wholly satisfying account of that in which Nietzschean nihilism consists. While Reginster and Van Tongeren each offer an account illuminating a particular form of Nietzschean nihilism, thus construing the problem of nihilism too narrowly, © The Author(s) 2020 K. Creasy, The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37133-3_2

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Huddleston’s account is overly broad. By aiming to offer “a unifying thread linking together the main forms of nihilism [Nietzsche] targets” (2019, p. 2), Huddleston succeeds at presenting an accurate and somewhat illuminating answer, but fails to offer a sufficiently robust account. Thus, his interpretation requires supplementing.

Nihilism as the Antagonism of Absurdity: Van Tongeren on European Nihilism In his analysis of Nietzschean nihilism in Friedrich Nietzsche and European Nihilism, Van Tongeren is clear: though the problem of nihilism animates much of Nietzsche’s philosophical project, “Nietzsche has no systematic theory of nihilism” (42). Yet even as he remains skeptical of any one theory of Nietzschean nihilism, Van Tongeren ventures to offer a succinct summary of nihilism derived from Nietzsche’s many reflections on the matter (paying special attention to the Lenzer Heide text): “nihilism is (4) the conscious experience of an antagonism, that is the result of (3) the decline of (2) the protective structure that was built to hide (1) the absurdity of life and world” (100). According to Van Tongeren, Nietzschean nihilism—while inseparable from a history of ideas and frameworks of understanding that emerge from out of that history—is a fundamentally personal phenomenon, experienced by the individual: nihilism occurs when one comes to recognize that those structures once thought to give meaning to one’s world and life fail to eradicate life’s absurdity (100). In nihilism, a felt need for meaning—a compulsion to make sense, perhaps, of life’s absurdity—exists alongside an acknowledgment that life and this world are meaningless. In short, the nihilist is one who consciously experiences the tension between (1) her need for meaning, order, or sense and (2) her recognition that her world is absurd or meaningless (102). Nietzsche’s nihilist is one who feels compelled to seek out the truth even when she recognizes it does not exist; she feels driven to find a meaning and purpose for existence even when she believes there is no such meaning to be found. On Van Tongeren’s view, nihilism—as involving the first-personal experience of that above antagonism—does not permit of general solutions: it is something all individuals might come to face, yet it is also something that we can only come to know—and learn to overcome—“in the singularity of an experimental life” (153). To ask whether nihilism can be overcome is to ask whether it can be overcome in me, the individual

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reader contending with nihilism. Given the singular nature of nihilism’s overcoming in each individual case, Van Tongeren does not believe we can describe the overcoming of nihilism in general terms. Additionally, it is crucial for his account that the antagonistic structure of nihilism is one Nietzsche himself fails to overcome. Indeed, Van Tongeren argues that Nietzsche’s work serves both as an analysis of nihilism and as the fulfillment of nihilism, insofar as Nietzsche’s drive to truthfulness and knowledge (spurred on by his prioritization of honesty) betrays his own nihilistic moral commitments, especially his commitment to the value of truth. In many respects, Van Tongeren’s account is exceptionally illuminating. In addition to offering extensive historical context for Nietzsche’s reflections on nihilism (18–19), he also helpfully traces the evolution of the problem of nihilism in Nietzsche’s thought, from Schopenhauerian pessimism (resulting from one’s inability to know an inherently illogical world); through nihilism as “intensified pessimism” involving either (1) a belief in the meaninglessness of existence or (2) beliefs meant to protect against this belief; through decadence as a fundamentally physiological condition, an illness resulting from the chaotic plurality of cosmopolitan Europe. Van Tongeren’s account is thus not only rooted firmly in Nietzsche’s historical moment; it seems also to leave room for many manifestations of nihilism and for many different kinds of nihilists. The definition of nihilism on which he eventually settles, however, is problematic. First, as Matthew Meyer notes, the definition of nihilism on which Van Tongeren settles omits another, perhaps more important, feature of Nietzschean nihilism: his definition leaves out any reference to the life and world-condemning judgment that is a key feature of a number of passages, including the Lenzer Heide text, in which Nietzsche discusses nihilism. It is one thing to recognize the absurdity of life and the world and to be conscious of how it conflicts with our desire to believe in some other world. It is another thing – and this seems to be what Nietzsche is most concerned about – to condemn a world so understood [emphasis mine]. (Meyer 2019)

As Meyer notes here, Nietzschean nihilism does not merely involve some recognition of the world’s absurdity alongside a continued need for that world to be less absurd. Rather, it necessarily involves a negation or condemnation of life. In the Lenzer Heide text, for example, Nietzsche notes

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that morality functioned as an antidote to nihilism, in part, because morality “prevented man from despising himself as man, from taking sides against life [emphasis mine]” (KSA 12:5[71]). Though Nietzsche does indeed describe how nihilism might result from needs “implanted [in us] by centuries of moral interpretation” (KSA 12:5[71]) which we now find ourselves unable to fulfill, this failure of fulfillment matters to Nietzsche because of the consequences it has. Since “the value for which we endure life seems [to us] to hinge on these [implanted] needs” (KSA 12:5[71]), when those needs go unfulfilled, we instinctively devalue, denigrate, and condemn life, understanding it as worthless and not worthy of enduring (KSA 12:5[71]). Thus, Nietzschean nihilism does not merely consist in an antagonism between a meaningless world and individuals’ needs for meaning; it also (and, perhaps, more importantly) involves the negation of life. Indeed, the fundamental problem with nihilism from Nietzsche’s perspective seems to be that value is denied to something supremely valuable—existence, life itself—and that this harms our own form of life (as will to power). Additionally, though Van Tongeren is correct to identify an antagonism fundamental to Nietzschean nihilism, the one he identifies is not sufficiently broad to leave room for the wide-ranging variety of nihilisms—and nihilists—Nietzsche includes in his texts. As we see above (and as Meyer notes), Van Tongeren “seems to suggest that the antagonism [fundamental to Nietzschean nihilism] is between our longing to believe in something and the knowledge that we can no longer believe it” (2019). Insofar as this definition of nihilism fundamentally frames nihilism as a conscious, first-personal experience, it fails to account for many of those feelings, beliefs, values, social institutions, and political configurations Nietzsche deems nihilistic. “Nihilism” in Nietzsche designates more than individuals’ consciously inhabited perspectives involving the absurdity of life; it also designates (1) a variety of unconsciously inhabited perspectives and (2) consciously inhabited perspectives that do not explicitly or outwardly appear to involve the absurdity of life. Nietzsche designates ideologies, institutions, and political configurations as nihilistic; he describes a wide variety of emotions (or affects) as nihilistic, too. Indeed, even though Nietzschean nihilism sometimes appears as a conscious, first-personal perspective inhabited by individuals, there are plenty of individuals Nietzsche deems nihilists who either do not consciously experience the antagonism referred to by Van Tongeren or do not experience the antagonism at all: the devoted Christian serves as a case of the former, and the last man

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a case of the latter. Unfortunately, then, Van Tongeren’s definition of nihilism not only leaves out the problem of nihilism qua life-denial; it is also far too narrow.

Nihilism as a Philosophical Claim: Reginster on Nietzschean Despair Perhaps the most well-known recent work on Nietzschean nihilism is Bernard Reginster’s seminal text, The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism. In this text, Reginster distinguishes between two varieties of Nietzschean nihilism: nihilism as disorientation and nihilism as despair. In both cases, Reginster insists that Nietzschean nihilism is, most fundamentally, a philosophical position or claim: it appears either as a meta-ethical claim about one’s values (in the nihilism of disorientation) or as a more general value judgment about our world (in the nihilism of despair). In short, Reginster’s account of Nietzschean nihilism presents nihilism as a primarily cognitive phenomenon. As mentioned above, while the nihilism of disorientation involves certain claims about one’s values, the nihilism of despair involves value judgments about one’s world. For Reginster, nihilism as disorientation “results from the endorsement of normative objectivism (the normative authority of a value depends on its objective standing) and the rejection of descriptive objectivism (there are no objective values)” (2006, p. 98). On this account of nihilism, the nihilist understands their highest values to be valuable (and authoritative) only insofar as they have “objective backing” (Clark 2019, p. 373): insofar as they function as objective, absolute standards of good and evil. Nihilism as disorientation occurs, then, when an individual recognizes that those values to which they have been committed—those standards of good and evil to which they have historically referred for action guidance—are not in fact objective and absolute. This realization plunges the individual into the nihilism of disorientation, in which there is a “lack of normative guidance” (Reginster 2006, p. 8). (Indeed, this can also occur at a socio-cultural, rather than individual, level: if modern European culture were to generally endorse normative objectivism and reject descriptive objectivism, this culture, too, could be plunged into this nihilism of disorientation.) On such a view, “there is nothing wrong with the world and something wrong with our values” (34). In the case of Reginster’s nihilism of despair, on the other hand, “there is nothing wrong with our values but something wrong with the

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world” (ibid.). According to Reginster, the problem in this case is that the world is inhospitable to the realization of our highest values (31). Although this form of nihilism clearly has a phenomenological dimension—that is, the despairing nihilist experiences the affect of despair— Reginster argues that it is fundamentally characterized by a specific “conviction,” a “belief that what is most important to us is unattainable” (28). That is, Reginster defines the despairing nihilist as an individual who supports “an ethical claim about the world, and our existence in it: ‘it would be better if the world did not exist’ (WP 701)” (28). The despairing nihilist is thus committed to a negative evaluative judgment about the world in which she lives, rather than a negative judgment about her values. After presenting these two plausible interpretations of Nietzschean nihilism, however, Reginster points out that these two kinds of nihilism are fundamentally incompatible: indeed, “the devaluation of values appears to undermine despair, since we have no reason to trouble ourselves over the world’s being inhospitable to the realization of values we consider devaluated” (34). In short, one cannot be both a disoriented nihilist and a despairing nihilist. If one is a despairing nihilist, one finds the world inhospitable to her values and is thrown into despair by this fact. Yet if she also believed, as the disoriented nihilist would, that her values are worthless, there would be no reason for her despair. As Gemes neatly points out, nihilism as disorientation involves the belief that “there are no ultimate values,” whereas nihilism as despair insists that “there are ultimate values” and that these values are unattainable, given the constitution of the world (462). Given this incompatibility, there is a choice to be made. Reginster settles on nihilism of despair as characteristic of Nietzsche’s overarching project of overcoming nihilism and affirming life after demonstrating possible resources for overcoming nihilism as disorientation in Nietzsche. On Reginster’s account, then, the “primary form of Nietzschean nihilism is despair over the unrealizability of our highest values” (54). Reginster thus characterizes nihilism as “an ethical claim about the world, and our existence in it: ‘it would be better if the world did not exist’” (28). Otherwise put, nihilism is a “philosophical claim” (39), and as such, it “can be overcome only by distinctively philosophical means, including philosophical arguments” (38). After fleshing out his account of nihilism as despair, Reginster aims to describe just how the nihilist is implicated in the denial of life. If nihilism

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is philosophical despair, the question seems to be, where does the negation of life—with which Nietzsche is supremely concerned—show up? According to Reginster, life-denial is a feature of values; specifically, the negation of life is found in the nature of those moral values to which the nihilist is committed. Yet there are several ways in which values can be life-negating.1 First, Nietzsche characterizes a value as life-negating when it “cannot be realized under the conditions of life in this world, and therefore underwrites a condemnation, or a negation, of this life” (47). Importantly, however, life-negating values may also be “directly intended to condemn life” (46), or more explicitly “motivated by hostility to life” (47). In this second sense, values are life-negating insofar as they were “invented in order to condemn life in this world” (46): that is, they are life-negating if they originate in an intentional attitude of life-negation. Finally, Nietzsche characterizes values as life-negating when they are “harmful to life” (47). When moral values “[undermine] the conditions for [life’s] preservation and prosperity… by design” (47), Reginster notes, Nietzsche designates such values life-denying. Importantly, however, Reginster believes the fundamental sense in which moral values are life-denying is the first sense mentioned above: life-denying moral values are those that “underwrite” (47) the condemnation of life insofar as they cannot be realized, or actualized, in the world to which the individual who holds those values belongs.2 According to Reginster, then, nihilism is a philosophical claim about the world—that it ought not to exist—based on the world’s hostility to the realization of my values. Life-negation is simply a feature of certain moral values endorsed by the nihilist; it is a characteristic values have when they (1) cannot be actualized in the world as it presently exists, thus underwriting a condemnation of life; (2) originate in an attitude that condemns life; or (3) necessarily result in a decline of growth or power (those fundamental characteristics of life). Importantly, however, the “core” sense in which moral values are life-denying is the first. To

1 Throughout this section on the negation of life, Reginster specifically describes ways in which values might be life-negating from Nietzsche’s perspective. It seems to me, however, that the descriptions he offers apply not only to life-negating values, but to other life-negating phenomena, such as beliefs, ideologies, institutions, and practices. He would have done better, in my view, to frame the negation of life more broadly. More on this below. 2 Reginster calls this the “core notion of a life-negating value” (47).

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overcome nihilism, then, is to experience a radical change of mind, a cognitive shift resulting from a revaluation of one’s “life-negating values” (267) that enables one “to recognize that those necessary aspects of [life] ‘hitherto denied’ are ‘desirable for their own sake’” (267). One holds values that are not life-denying—or life-negating—when one commits oneself to values that can actually be realized in the world to which one belongs. This account of the problem of Nietzschean nihilism is an impressive one, one with which several scholars contend in their own recent interpretations of Nietzschean nihilism (Jenkins 2012; Katsafanas 2015; Huddleston 2019; Clark 2019). In identifying a paradox between two ways of framing nihilism and arguing compellingly for one interpretation rather than another, Reginster’s contribution to existing scholarship on the problem of Nietzschean nihilism is substantial. Additionally, in his prioritization of nihilism as despair, it seems to me that Reginster rightly claims that Nietzschean nihilism involves more than a meta-ethical claim about my values. Indeed, Nietzsche appears much more concerned about the way my values, ends, and interests interface with the world in which I find myself.3 The problem of nihilism is indeed a problem about the values we embody, the way we assess the world to which we belong, and how the expression of my values is either inhibited or facilitated by my world. Significantly for my account, however, Reginster ultimately presents the problem of nihilism as a fundamentally cognitive issue: it is most basically a problem with how the nihilist understands her world, expressed in her claims about the world’s hostility to the expression of her values. This way of framing nihilism is, as Gemes points out, “overly cognitive [emphasis mine]” (2008, p. 462)—and thus, too narrow to apply to a variety of phenomena Nietzsche understands as central to the problem of nihilism. Though Nietzsche certainly describes various cognitive manifestations of nihilism—and though the overcoming of nihilism must involve rejecting a series of beliefs about the worthlessness of the world—there is much more to the picture. The former nihilist who has overcome nihilism does not merely have a change of mind—she must also have a change of heart. That is to say, the former nihilist does not just think differently

3 For more on this, see Huddleston (2019) against nihilism as mere meta-ethics.

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about her world and its worth; she feels differently about this world.4 Although Reginster acknowledges the phenomenological dimensions of nihilism, he does not treat the psychological and physiological dimensions of Nietzschean nihilism at sufficient length; in focusing on nihilism as a primarily cognitive phenomenon, he undertreats a critical piece of Nietzsche’s account. Additionally, it seems to me that Reginster’s framing of life-negation— his claim that the negation of life involves a condemnation of life, underwritten by the unrealizability of one’s values—circumscribes the phenomenon of life-negation, or life-denial, too narrowly. For Nietzsche, that life-denial characteristic of nihilism is not merely a feature of values, but a feature of a variety of other beliefs, practices, affective states, and psychophysiological configurations. Although Nietzsche indeed presents lifedenial as a feature of certain beliefs and values (especially as an explicit or implicit premise crucial to the nihilist’s argument that this life is worthless), he also frequently presents it as a feature of social institutions (KSA 11:37[11]; GM III:12; KSA 12:2[127]), instincts (EH, “Books: BT,” 2), and affective states (BGE 208). In short, Reginster’s framing of life-denial as “nihilism’s hidden premise” (50), like his account of nihilism generally, frames life-denial far too cognitively. Furthermore, Reginster’s core criterion by which we ought to judge a value as life-denying—whether that value can be “realized under the conditions of life in this world” (45)—wrongly prioritizes this sense of life-denial. Indeed, it seems to me that the second sense of life-denial Reginster details, according to which life-denying phenomena are those phenomena “harmful to life,” is at least as important to Nietzsche’s own account of life-denial as the first. When Nietzsche says, for example, that in socialism “life denies itself [das Leben sich selber verneint] and cuts itself off by the roots” (KSA 11:37[11]), he is not claiming that our world is hostile to the realization of socialism. Indeed, the problem Nietzsche finds with socialism is that it can be realized, and that its realization would be harmful to life. We see this also in the way Nietzsche frames lifedenying affective states. For example, when Nietzsche claims that “pity negates life, it makes life worthy of negation… pity is the practice of nihilism” (A 7), he intends to emphasize the way in which pitying tends to be harmful to life, power, and growth—not to claim that the affect of pity 4 As I indicate in a later chapter, it even happens in certain cases that this change in feeling explains the change in mind.

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expresses a value that cannot be realized. Again, the problem is not that we cannot pity, but that we can—and do. For Nietzsche, then, determining the life-negating tendency of a particular phenomenon—whether it be a value or something else—requires one to attend to that phenomenon’s tendency to turn against life itself. This is just as fundamental, or perhaps even more so, as attending to whether or not a particular phenomenon can be actualized in this world (potentially underwriting a condemnation of this world if it cannot be). Determining whether a value is life-denying or not requires one to assess whether or not that value is “hostile to life” and “uses power to block the sources of power, [turning] the green eye of spite on… physiological growth itself” (GM III:13)—and this is just as important, or even more important, than assessing whether that value might underwrite a condemnation of life due to its unattainability. In sum, while Reginster offers a crucially important account of Nietzschean nihilism, his focus on nihilism as a cognitive (and more specifically, ethical) phenomenon is too narrow, and “overly cognitive” (Gemes 2008): it does not account for many kinds of nihilisms and nihilists Nietzsche describes (Huddleston 2019), and it fails to sufficiently account for important non-cognitive aspects of Nietzschean nihilism. Likewise, by framing life-denial as a characteristic of values, he frames the negation of life far too narrowly and fails to account for life-denying phenomena other than values, such as beliefs, social practices, and more. Finally, and importantly, Reginster does not attend sufficiently to Nietzsche’s account of life-denial as the obstruction or degradation of life as will to power. Indeed, Reginster’s failure to give priority to this sense of life-denial in Nietzsche perhaps leads him to miss the way in which life-denial might in fact be constitutive of nihilism—not only in its cognitive manifestations, but in its socio-cultural and affective manifestations as well. I argue for this at much more length below.

Nihilism as a Failing-to-Value the Highest Values: Huddleston’s “Unifying Thread” In “Nihilism: A Unifying Thread,” Andrew Huddleston convincingly argues that Reginster’s account of nihilism fails to account for certain forms of nihilism detailed by Nietzsche, “especially the sort we see in Christianity, in a certain form of truth-seeker, and in the ‘last man’” (Huddleston 2019, p. 9). In response, Huddleston presents a different

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characterization of nihilism than that on offer from Reginster. Nihilism is not a matter of whether or not my values can be realized; instead, [w]hat unites nihilists… is what they are failing to value, substantively characterized. They have come unmoored from the most important, meaningconferring values. Their valuational commitments are directed away from the highest sorts of things, or connecting to them in only a weak fashion. (13)

According to Huddleston, Nietzschean nihilism arises when individuals fail to commit to those values Nietzsche holds in high esteem. In particular, nihilists fail to value “the higher aspects of life and the world” (13). From a socio-cultural and historical perspective, then, the problem of Nietzschean nihilism is that modern society—as it marches toward the emergence of the last man—becomes more and more unmoored from those highest values (14). The last man is the “nadir” of nihilism for Huddleston because such a man not only fails to value a certain set of highest values; he also finds no need for commitment to such values in the first place. Although he insists that what unites the main forms and instances of Nietzschean nihilism is the failure of individuals to embrace those “first-order evaluative commitments” Nietzsche himself holds, Huddleston himself remains quite vague about just what these “most important, meaning-conferring values” might be. In passing, Huddleston suggests that those individuals Nietzsche designates as nihilistic fail to value excellence (13), but he does not offer a robust characterization of that in which excellence might consist. Although he expresses discontent with the overly formal nature of other accounts of nihilism, his characterization turns out to be, by and large, quite formal itself: the nihilist is someone minimally committed to “those categories of meaning, value, and desirability” who is not committed to the right type of values. In the selection from his text above, he notes that “what unites nihilists… is what they are failing to value, substantively characterized”—but Huddleston does not offer such a substantive characterization. Thus, Huddleston’s vagueness—though prudent for one attempting to offer a “unifying thread” among all forms and instances of nihilism Nietzsche describes—results in a rather thin account of Nietzschean nihilism. As such, it is unlikely to satisfy those attempting to understand either

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what the problem of nihilism is more substantively or what its overcoming might look like. Although Nietzschean nihilism indeed involves a failure to commit to the right type of values, it is unclear what values these are, on Huddleston’s account. Additionally, although Nietzschean nihilism involves a failure to celebrate “excellence” and to embrace “important, meaning-conferring values,” this failure might be better characterized as a result of nihilism; such a failure is not constitutive of nihilism itself.

Conclusion Although the accounts on offer from Van Tongeren, Reginster, and Huddleston are welcome additions to the scholarship on Nietzschean nihilism, none of these offer a satisfying account of Nietzschean nihilism. Although Van Tongeren helpfully situates the problem of Nietzschean nihilism in its historical context, his account is too narrow, and fails to treat Nietzschean nihilism as involving the negation of life. Although Reginster offers an especially elucidating and thorough account of Nietzschean nihilism as a cognitive phenomenon, he does not pay sufficient attention to its affective dimensions. And although Huddleston is sensitive to the affective dimensions of nihilism in his examinations of its “main manifestations” (4), his account is too vague. Huddleston’s vagueness likely reflects not only his prudence (after all, one must not construe nihilism too narrowly if one hopes to offer a single unifying thread among its main forms and instances), but Nietzsche’s own lack of systematicity (Huddleston himself correctly notes that “Nietzsche never produced a worked-out account of nihilism” [3]). In spite of this lack of systematicity, however, I argue that we can still glean a more specific concept of nihilism from Nietzsche’s texts: one that accounts for its cognitive, affective, and socio-cultural manifestations. Specifically, as I argue in the next chapter, nihilism in Nietzsche should be understood as life-denial (or the negation of life [die Verneinung des Lebens ] (BGE 4, 208, 259; A 7, 56; KSA 13:10[137], 13:15[13])). This understanding of Nietzschean nihilism both unifies the manifestations of nihilism Huddleston mentions and offers a more substantive characterization that helps make sense of nihilism as a problem.

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References Clark, Maudemarie. 2019. “Nietzsche’s Nihilism.” The Monist 102 (3, July): 369–385. Gemes, Ken. 2008. “Nihilism and the Affirmation of Life: A Review of and Dialogue with Bernard Reginster.” European Journal of Philosophy 16 (3): 459–466. Huddleston, Andrew. 2019. “Nihilism: A Unifying Thread.” Philosopher’s Imprint 19 (11): 1–19. Jenkins, Scott. 2012. “Nietzsche’s Questions Concerning the Will to Truth.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 50 (2): 265–289. Katsafanas, Paul. 2015. “Fugitive Pleasure and the Meaningful Life: Nietzsche on Nihilism and Higher Values.” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (3): 396–416. Meyer, Matthew. 2019. “Review of Friedrich Nietzsche and European Nihilism.” Accessed January 2, 2020. https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/friedrich-nietzscheand-european-nihilism/. Reginster, Bernard. 2006. The Affirmation of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Riccardi, Mattia. 2018. “Psychological Nihilism, Passions, and Neglected Works: Three Topics for Nietzsche Studies.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49 (2): 266– 270. Van Tongeren, Paul. 2018. Friedrich Nietzsche and European Nihilism. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

CHAPTER 3

Nihilism as Life-Denial

Introduction In his work, Nietzsche describes a wide variety of nihilistic phenomena. Nietzsche sometimes frames nihilism as involving an explicit belief in the meaninglessness or worthlessness of the world (Reginster 2006); other times, he describes it as involving beliefs that imply the worthlessness of the world. Still other times, he seems to frame nihilism as a socio-cultural phenomenon (Van Tongeren 2018) or a psychophysiological condition. Given how different these manifestations of Nietzschean nihilism seem to be from one another, one might ask why these phenomena ought to be unified under a single term—nihilism—at all. Indeed, one may wonder, as Huddleston does (2019), whether there is a sufficiently broad sense of the term that can encompass all three.1 By thinking nihilism most broadly as what Nietzsche calls life-denial or the negation of life [die Verneinung des Lebens] (BGE 4, 208, 259; A 7, 56; KSA 13:10[137], 13:15[13]), however, such a worry can be avoided. In fact, Nietzsche offers each of the above components of nihilism as examples of life-denying phenomena. Nietzsche calls life-denying any phenomenon that either (1) involves an explicitly or implicitly negative evaluation of life or (2) results in the degradation of the will (BGE 208) or the mere preservation of weak forms 1 Thank you to Matthew Meyer for posing this question to me at the 2019 meeting of Nietzsche in the Northeast.

© The Author(s) 2020 K. Creasy, The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37133-3_3

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of life (BGE 61; GM III:25). Since life must be understood as will to power, the negative evaluation of life that life-denial involves is a negative evaluation of life qua will to power. And indeed, as we will see, in each of nihilism’s incarnations—in its socio-cultural, cognitive, and affective manifestations—life is disparaged, degraded, or preserved only in its weakest forms. Thus, I argue that Nietzschean nihilism must be understood, most broadly, as life-denial.2 Importantly, as is the case with all judgments for Nietzsche, the nihilist’s negative judgments of life and this-worldly existence are based in negative evaluations at the level of her psychophysiological constitution (that is to say, they are based in her drives and affects).3 Most basically, then, Nietzsche characterizes a phenomenon as life-denying (be it an ideal, individual, or ideology) when it involves negative judgments of life or existence that are either (1) generated from a negative assessment of life at the level of one’s drives and affects or (2) tend to produce a negative assessment of life at the level of one’s drives and affects.4 Indeed, the same phenomenon—for example, Christianity’s belief in a transcendent “beyond [Jenseits]” (A 62) through which life and existence are justified—might function in both of these ways. Such a belief, after all, both (1) results from a particular embodied, drive-based perspective (ibid.) and (2) tends to lead to a negative evaluation of life, resulting in either the weakening of the will (GM II:21, 22) or the preservation of will-weakness, once one adopts and internalizes this belief. In short, those beliefs, epistemic practices, socio-cultural practices, and psychophysiological configurations Nietzsche deems nihilistic are designated as such because they are life-denying. Proceeding through each of these allows us to see both (1) that insofar as a phenomenon functions to negate or deny life, Nietzsche frames it as nihilistic and (2) that the problem of nihilism is most fundamentally a problem of life-denial.

2 For Nietzsche, the disparagement of life also includes negative evaluations of thisworldly existence and humanity itself. 3 This is similar to what John Richardson calls “no-to-life nihilism,” or “a ‘bodily’ stance occurring beneath the level of consciousness and language [in which] one’s ‘physiological’ condition rejects or disvalues life” (forthcoming). 4 Note that here the “negative assessment” is of life as it actually is.

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Life-Denial as a Cognitive Phenomenon: Beliefs (as Ideals), Judgments of Life, and Epistemic Practices Throughout his body of work, Nietzsche designates certain beliefs, judgments, and epistemic practices as life-denying.5 According to Nietzsche, beliefs that function as “radical repudiation[s] of value, meaning, and desirability” (KSA 12:2[127]) can be either explicitly or implicitly lifedenying with respect to their negative evaluation of life. Below, I take a closer look at those concepts and beliefs Nietzsche identifies as characteristically life-denying, including (1) the belief in a “beyond”; (2) the belief in a “higher purpose” through which life, humanity, and existence are justified; and (3) the belief in the possibility of disinterested, objective knowledge (or “knowledge as such” (GM III:12)). In each of these cases, Nietzsche describes a variety of implicitly life-denying beliefs—otherworldly beliefs that devalue this-worldly existence—adopted by modern Europeans. Such beliefs are false, but they are specifically life-denying insofar as they serve as ideals or standards against which individuals judge or assess this world—thus functioning to devalue this-worldly existence.6 In addition to these implicitly life-denying beliefs, Nietzsche also describes explicitly life-denying beliefs, including beliefs in the meaninglessness and valuelessness of life and this-worldly existence. Such explicitly life-denying beliefs follow, Nietzsche argues, when modern Europeans come to recognize the untenability of those implicitly life-denying beliefs mentioned above. After reviewing this series of life-denying beliefs, I look specifically at those value judgments Nietzsche frames as life-denying. In the course of this analysis, we will come to see that Nietzsche not only typically describes a variety of values, virtues, and norms as implicitly life-denying; he also claims that treating almost any ideal or value as universal can be life-denying. Finally, I analyze those epistemic tendencies and practices that Nietzsche characterizes as life-denying, such as prizing objective, disinterested knowledge over perspectival knowledge (TI, “Socrates,” 4), overvaluing logic and reason (TI, “Socrates,” 10), and seeking out “articles of faith” to which one can anchor oneself (Riccardi 2018, p. 266). Nietzsche characterizes each of these life-denying beliefs, judgments, and 5 Again, I take the phrase “epistemic practices” from Riccardi’s work on psychological nihilism (2018). 6 Thank you to Matthew Meyer for encouraging clarity on this point.

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epistemic practices either as nihilistic or as characteristic of the nihilist. Understanding nihilism as a cognitive phenomenon, then, requires us to understand the life-denying structures of these beliefs, values, and practices. The Belief in a “Beyond” Let us begin with the belief Nietzsche most frequently criticizes as lifedenying: the positing of a “beyond,” a life, world, or realm that exists over and above this-worldly existence and is preferable to it. As we saw in the Introduction, and as I will briefly review below, two obvious sources of such a belief are Platonism and Christianity. In short, Nietzsche understands the Platonic and Christian traditions as implicitly lifedenying frameworks of belief, insofar as they establish a supremely valuable “beyond” over and above this life and world. In these traditions, the “beyond” functions as an ideal against which this-worldly existence is measured, and any world that does not measure up to this ideal is cause for disappointment. As Nietzsche makes clear, however, there is no beyond in terms of which this world can be justified, and in measuring this world in terms of such an ideal, we devalue this-worldly existence (KSA 13:11[99]). This life-denying ideal thus judges of “the world as it is… [that it] ought not to be” (KSA 12:9[60]). According to Plato’s two-world view, reality is composed of two separate (though linked) realms: the realm of empirical experience, or the “world of becoming,” and the realm of intelligibility, or the “world of being.” The world of empirical experience is not strictly “real”; it is a mere copy or imitation of a separate, transcendent world: the world of the Forms, a world comprised of paradigms for knowledge. It is this world of the Forms, according to Plato, that constitutes reality proper, or the “true” world. On the Platonic worldview, one only comes to know reality as it actually is (instead of how it appears to be) when one becomes familiar with the world of the Forms, a world entirely separate from one’s own. Furthermore, one comes to know the Forms in Plato so that one may come to live a virtuous life. On Plato’s system, the becoming-virtuous and potential apotheosis of the individual (through the quieting of the body and the acquisition of knowledge about the world of being) requires the individual to rebuke this-worldly existence (the world of becoming) in favor of a “true” world of being. It is hard to imagine a worldview that invests more value in a beyond—but in Christianity, Nietzsche finds one.

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Christianity borrows heavily from Plato, and Nietzsche has a specific account of this Platonic inheritance: Christian metaphysics essentially parallels Plato’s metaphysical framework. According to Christianity, there is a divine, heavenly world above and beyond the world of earthly existence, but only those individuals who deny the pleasures of this world and profess faith in God gain access to this exceedingly valuable world (GM III:11).7 Christianity builds on Plato’s notion of virtue as attainable only through acquiring divine knowledge of another world. Like Plato, the ascetic Christian tradition “relate[s] [human life] (together with all that belongs to it, ‘nature’, ‘the world’, the whole sphere of what becomes and what passes away), to a quite different kind of existence that it opposes and excludes, unless it should turn against itself and deny itself: [here,] life counts as a bridge to that other existence” (ibid.). Indeed, in his 1886 “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” Nietzsche explicitly describes Christianity and Christian morality as “disgust and weariness with life, which only dressed itself up, only hid itself in… the belief in an ‘other’ or ‘better’ life. The hatred of the ‘world’…[and] a world beyond created so that the world on this side might be more easily slandered, at bottom a longing for nothingness, for extinction, for rest” (BT, “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” 5). In both Platonism and Christianity, then, the valuation of a “beyond” implicitly devalues life and this-worldly existence. As Nietzsche argues in the Antichrist , “[w]hen the emphasis of life is put on the ‘beyond’ rather than on life itself, when it is put on nothingness —then the emphasis has been completely removed from life” (43). Though one who believes in a life or world over and above this-worldly existence “[does] not say ‘nothingness’: instead [saying] ‘the beyond’; or ‘God’; or ‘the true life’; or nirvana, salvation, blessedness,” Nietzsche is clear that what appears 7 See also the 1886 preface to The Birth of Tragedy: “Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life’s nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in ‘another’ or ‘better’ life. Hatred of ‘the world,’ condemnations of the passions, fear of beauty and sensuality, a beyond invented the better to slander this life, at bottom a craving for the nothing, for the end, for respite, for ‘the sabbath of sabbaths’—all this always struck me, no less than the unconditional will of Christianity to recognize only moral values, as the most dangerous and uncanny form of all possible forms of a ‘will to decline’—at the very least a sign of abysmal sickness, weariness, discouragement, exhaustion, and the impoverishment of life. For, confronted with morality (especially Christian, or unconditional, morality), life must continually and inevitably be in the wrong, because life is something essentially amoral—and eventually, crushed by the weight of contempt and the eternal No, life must then be felt to be unworthy of desire and altogether worthless…”

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to be “innocent rhetoric from the realm of religious-moral idiosyncrasy suddenly appears much less innocent when you see precisely which tendencies are wrapped up inside these sublime words: tendencies hostile to life” (A 7).8 Belief in a Higher Purpose Nietzsche also frames belief in higher purpose (qua ideal) as life-denying (GM III:28). Such a belief differs from belief in a “beyond” for Nietzsche, though many belief systems invested in a world “beyond” ours also frame the attainment of some transcendent world as this world’s “higher purpose.” The belief in a higher purpose to which Nietzsche refers is a belief in (1) a purpose (qua final cause or telos ) to the world as a whole, in accordance with which the universe develops and (2) in which humanity participates (that is, a purpose in which seemingly divergent human pursuits are unified, and toward which human pursuits either are or ought to be directed) (KSA 13:11[99]).9 The belief in a higher purpose of which Nietzsche is critical thus involves one’s belief in a global or allencompassing purpose that unifies human pursuits in one goal.10 A higher purpose also (3) conditions the value of human pursuits in the same way: those who believe in a higher purpose understand their principles, actions, and purposes as valuable (or not) only with reference to this higher purpose; such a view assumes that every individual’s actions can be judged valuable (or not) by the same standard.11 According to Nietzsche, finally, 8 Babette Babich’s work productively investigates continued contemporary investments in a notion of a beyond. For example, Babich suggests that humanity’s increasing “absorption in… virtual worlds” exemplifies a contemporary version of nihilism as life-denial insofar as those who absorb themselves in virtual worlds devote themselves to an idealized world beyond this one (Babich 2007, p. 233n99). Additionally, in a 2017 article, Babich pinpoints transhumanist thought as a contemporary ideology that implicitly devalues life and this-worldly existence insofar as it celebrates a time beyond our own, in which human beings will master and control themselves and their world. In that piece, she argues convincingly that Nietzsche would reject such an ideology on grounds that it is overly humanistic and life-denying (2007, pp. 115–116). 9 Such human pursuits can be knowingly or unknowingly directed toward such a purpose. 10 See also Hatab (2006). 11 In his notes, Nietzsche remarks that “[w]e have, from an early age, placed the value

of an action, of a character, of a being, into the purpose [den Werth einer Handlung,

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(4) the ways that individuals participate in this higher purpose will often look the same. In many of the examples he offers, such purposes are transcendent purposes, projected beyond this-worldly existence. But higher purposes need not be transcendent; they need not involve the projection of ideals into a world beyond our own, toward which we ought to be directed. Indeed, while many teleological conceptions of life and thisworldly existence that Nietzsche designates life-denying frame the higher purpose as some transcendent purpose—think, for example, of Christianity’s invention of a god in whose divine plan humanity participates (an understanding which posts human existence as a mere means to some higher end)—this is not always the case. Indeed, Nietzsche believes there exist a variety of life-denying conceptions of the “purpose” of life that immanentize the ideal of a purposeful existence. Science’s optimistic belief in the necessity of rational progress,12 as well as the “artist-metaphysics” Nietzsche embraces in The Birth of Tragedy, are examples—and both can be just as pernicious as those belief systems that invest in some transcendent purpose. On Nietzsche’s view, those who assume that human life participates in some higher purpose or telos fail to recognize that this conception of telos is a human invention and projection that falsifies this world. According to Nietzsche, there is no such telos, no higher goal at which the universe eines Charakters, eines Daseins in die Absicht gelegt, in den Zweck] for the sake of which it was done, for the sake of which we acted, lived: this ancient idiosyncrasy of taste finally takes a dangerous turn” (KSA 12:7[1]). Here we can imagine one example of such a higher purpose: an understanding of “social progress” such as that subscribed to by nineteenth-century ethnologists. On a nineteenth-century picture of social progress, “primitive” societies advanced through a number of stages to eventually become “civilized” societies, and this progression or advancement involved increases in social complexity and cultural sophistication. On such a picture of social progress, the purpose of society is ever greater civilization, and societies are understood as more or less valuable with reference to this higher purpose: “more civilized” societies are “better,” more valuable societies than “more primitive” ones. Furthermore, civilization is the purpose at which these “more primitive” societies knowingly or unknowingly aim. 12 In KSA 12:9[130], Nietzsche enacts a “critique of modern man” which involves a

critique of “reason as authority; history as overcoming of errors; the future as progress.” In KSA 12:2[127], Nietzsche remarks upon the “nihilistic consequences of contemporary natural science (together with its attempts to escape into some beyond).” See also progress as nihilistic in KSA 13:11[99]; “progress” as decadence in KSA 13:17[6]; and a general critique of progress in KSA 13:15[8]. Nietzsche’s critique of this-worldly permutations of a “higher purpose” is also in the background of Nietzsche’s critiques of “scientific optimism” in his early notes—where he calls that “the laisser aller of our science” a “national-economic dogma” involving “faith in an absolutely beneficial success” (KSA 7:19[28])—and in later reflections (BT, “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” 4).

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as a whole aims, or end toward which it advances. Indeed, according to Nietzsche, “We have invented the concept ‘purpose’: in reality, purpose is absent” (TI, “Four Errors,” 8). This theme frequently recurs in Nietzsche’s early and late works, in both his published works and notebooks. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche notes that “it is we alone who have devised cause, sequence, reciprocity, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we interpret and intermix this symbol-world, as ‘being-in-itself,’ with things, we act once more as we have always acted— mythologically” [emphasis mine] (BGE 21). On this picture, any notion of purposiveness that purports to unify the aims of all the world in a single telos posits a final cause to the universe and consists in mere human invention and myth. Nietzsche cites this projection of a final cause onto the world as one of the “four great errors” of humanity from the Twilight of the Idols : what Nietzsche calls the “error of imaginary causes” (TI, “Four Errors,” 4). In this excerpt, Nietzsche explains that human beings invent various causes in order to give sense or meaning to their feelings, actions, and lives. The invention of an “imaginary cause”— and, in particular, higher purposes as final causes—answers the question “why” and therefore provides humanity with rationale for their experiences. This erroneous invention misleads humanity (TI, “Four Errors,” 6). We find an example of this in the Genealogy, where Nietzsche explains that conceptions of God’s plan as a divine, higher purpose toward which the world is directed—and an eternal afterlife as a divine, higher purpose toward which human life is directed—developed and flourished because humanity sought out an explanation for suffering (GM III:28). Nietzsche understands the projection of this ideal onto reality as lifedenying because when one assesses the world as it actually is—that is, a world devoid of higher purposes—with reference to this ideal, this world comes up short (12:9[182]). Otherwise put, such an ideal implicitly devalues this world and life. As we see in Twilight of the Idols , Nietzsche is thus keen not only to argue for the falseness of this ideal, but to argue that one ought to reject such an ideal as harmful and life-denying: No one is responsible for a man’s being here at all, for his being such-andsuch, or for his being in these circumstances or in this environment. The fatality of his existence is not to be disentangled from the fatality of all that has been and will be. Human beings are not the effect of some special purpose, or will, or end; nor are they a medium through which society can realize an “ideal of humanity” or an “ideal of happiness” or an “ideal

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of morality.” It is absurd to wish to devolve one’s essence in some end or other. We have invented the concept of “end”: in reality there is no end. A man is necessary, a man is a piece of fatefulness, a man belongs to the whole, a man is in the whole; there is nothing that could judge, measure, compare, or sentence his being, for that would mean judging, measuring, comparing, or sentencing the whole. But there is nothing besides the whole. That nobody is held responsible any longer, that the mode of being may not be traced back to a primary cause, that the world does not form a unity either as a sensorium or as “spirit” — that alone is the great liberation. (TI, “Four Errors,” 8)

On Nietzsche’s view, any framework for understanding the world that includes a higher purpose toward which the universe is directed is confused. There is no single justification for human existence, no one reason that can explain the existence of humanity or the world in which we live. There is no will that willed man’s creation, no one, fixed goal towards which mankind aims or makes progress. Human beings must be explained only in the same terms as the world to which they belong, according to Nietzsche. Idealizing an inherently purposeful world qua a world with some higher purpose implicitly devalues life. Importantly, as noted above, Nietzsche does not understand belief in a higher purpose as characteristic only of Platonic and religious interpretations of existence. Indeed, humanity’s need to justify or rationalize their existence historically results in a number of other implicitly life-denying interpretations that falsify the world by projecting a goal or purpose onto it. In The Gay Science, Nietzsche explicitly derides such interpretations for their reinterpretation of “the emphatically derivative, tardy, rare and accidental… into the essential, universal and eternal” (GS 109); here, he also remarks that those who believe in a goal toward which existence aims have not yet realized that the world “is assuredly not constructed with a view to one end” (ibid.). In this same aphorism, Nietzsche denounces those who anthropomorphize the world by establishing some commanding and law-giving entity that directs the workings of the world and thus can be praised or blamed for the agreeable or disagreeable nature of these workings (GS 109). In all of these interpretations, humanity invents a rationale for existence and this world that involves a universally applicable justification for why things are the way they are. We see this same mechanism outlined in Nietzsche’s critique of progress from his 1888 notes, where he rejects notions of “progress” and

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“development” as illusions that assign a telos to the world and humanity that simply is not there. Nietzsche’s interpretation of “progress” as an ideal according to which “everything that is in [time]… marches forward”—elsewhere called the “future as progress”—reveals that even in certain immanent interpretations of existence or life qua purposeful, we fail to escape the nihilistic structure of a higher purpose. After all, any notion of developmental “progress” assumes the possibility of a better, more advanced world beyond our own, toward which our world aims and through which our existence is justified13 (KSA 12:9[130]; 12:9[131]; 13:15[8]).

13 Nietzsche’s own presentation of the overman in Thus Spoke Zarathustra should give us pause here. After all, he insists that “the overman shall be the meaning of the earth” (TSZ, Prologue, 3) and remarks that “Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss … what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.” Nietzsche goes on to praise “[he] who justifies future and redeems past generations” (TSZ, Prologue, 4). Nietzsche’s call for the overman in Zarathustra certainly sounds like his proposal of a better, more advanced world which justifies our current aims and existence! Indeed, Zarathustra even remarks that “I will teach man the meaning of their existence—the overman, the lightning out of the dark cloud of man” (TSZ, Prologue, 7). What might make his account of the overman different than the accounts of higher purpose which he critiques as false and life-denying? One thought is that what separates accounts of higher purpose from Nietzsche’s account of the overman is the ambiguity of the overman’s values and purposes. If the overman is to justify existence, Nietzsche is famously vague about how he will do so. Unlike nihilistic conceptions of progress which measure positive, forward-moving development with reference to one standard or ideal (for example, social progress involves the becoming-civilized of societies, scientific progress involves the acquisition of ever more knowledge, etc.), Nietzsche’s vagueness about the content of the values the overman will create allows for a multiplicity of realizations and standards, such that we cannot justify our current actions with reference to any one or unify our pursuits in any one standard. Striving toward the overman will never involve striving towards one pre-established standard, as it does in the cases of higher purpose I discuss above. We see this also when Nietzsche remarks in this same section of Zarathustra that “my happiness should justify existence itself!” (TSZ, Prologue, 3). Here, one understands existence as justified by standards and values which emerge from out of one’s own engagement in the world, one’s own “happiness.” If we read this idea together with Nietzsche’s emphasis on the overman as the justification of existence, we see the importance of actively justifying existence through the creation of new values situated in one’s own interests and engagements. Yet on Nietzsche’s picture, this can only happen through this-worldly engagements. On this picture, any life-affirming future-oriented goal or purpose must emerge from out of the immanently grounded process of value creation; no one purpose can be firmly fixed as “the purpose” which justifies all of existence. In short, Zarathustra’s teaching of the overman as the “meaning of existence” need not involve the fixation of a pre-established and unchanging standard through which existed is justified.

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For Nietzsche, then, any teleological conceptions of this-worldly existence that understand the world or existence as purposeful in the way described above are both false and life-denying. After all, such conceptions understand the world and existence only as a means to a higher end, which Nietzsche argues implicitly denies and denigrates this-worldly existence. To make this especially clear, we can begin by again taking Christianity as an example. As we saw earlier, in virtue of its doctrine of divine teleology, Nietzsche asserts that Christianity fundamentally understands the human being “not [as] a goal but just [as] a path, an episode, a bridge, a great promise” (GM II:16). On this picture, humanity is justified only as a means to an end. Christianity develops this notion and couples it together with an understanding of the Christian God as divine creditor and human beings as lowly debtors, unable to repay the debt incurred by the fact of their very existence. Given that on this picture, “existence in general… is left standing as inherently worthless ” (GM II:21), humanity seeks relief through the promise of a higher existence after their death. Nietzsche frames this as a “nihilistic turning-away from existence, the desire for nothingness” (ibid.).14

14 We see Nietzsche’s rejection of a higher purpose in his 1886 critique of his own early work, The Birth of Tragedy. In this retrospective critique, Nietzsche recognizes The Birth of Tragedy as a youthful attempt to present an idealized, amoral picture of the world that would serve to justify humanity generally, or bestow humanity with a meaning, through a higher purpose. Nietzsche’s early notion that the “existence of the world is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon” presents the world as “at every moment the attained manifestation of God, as the eternally changing, eternally new vision of the person who suffers most, who is the most rent with contradictions” (BT, “Attempt at a SelfCriticism,” 5). In The Birth of Tragedy, the world is an artistic creation of this “amoral artist-God” who creates the world in order to “[rid] himself of the strain of fullness and superfluity, from the suffering of pressing internal contradictions.” As an expression of the contradictions and chaos of this artist-God, the suffering of humanity and the chaos of the world of earthly existence are given some sense, and man can be consoled by this fact. Nietzsche’s late interpretation of his attempt at metaphysical consolation in The Birth of Tragedy, which understands the artist’s metaphysics as an attempt to resist Christian interpretations of the purposefulness of the universe, acknowledges that this attempt still results in a nihilistic conception of the world (albeit an amoral one, distinguished from Judeo-Christian conceptions of higher purpose). Nietzsche himself interprets his artist’s metaphysics as a system which “would sooner believe in nothingness or the devil than in the here and now.” This nihilistic conception of the world is what Nietzsche ultimately rebukes in his “Attempt at a Self-Criticism.” His early “artist’s metaphysics” both posited a higher purpose to the universe that was not there, and judged human existence as justified through this purpose alone. This worldview, like those Judeo-Christian worldviews which

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In his critiques of particular scientific and historical interpretations of existence, Nietzsche hopes to indicate that this life-denying, otherworldly structure of Christian belief appears even where one least expects it. Indeed, for Nietzsche, any account of the world that insists upon some global, this-worldly purpose toward which the world aims—as in the progressivist accounts offered by scientists in Nietzsche’s day—functions as a life-denying conception of the world, insofar as it posits a subsequent world outside and above our own as a higher stage of advancement, thereby drawing our attention and hopes towards that false ideal and away from our world. We see this in his critiques of “progress” understood as a movement toward a rational, scientific enlightenment. In KSA 12:9[130], Nietzsche enacts a “critique of modern man” which involves a critique of “reason as authority; history as overcoming of errors; the future as progress”; in KSA 12:2[127], Nietzsche remarks upon the “nihilistic consequences of contemporary natural science (together with its attempts to escape into some beyond).” Nietzsche’s critique of thisworldly permutations of a “higher purpose” is also in the background of his critiques of “scientific optimism” in his early notes—where he calls “the laisser aller of our science” a “national-economic dogma” involving “faith in an absolutely beneficial success” (KSA 7:19[28])—and in later reflections (BT, “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” 4). Importantly, Nietzsche’s interpretation of scientific notions of progress as life-denying hinges on his understanding of a deeper problem with notions of scientific progress: because scientific interpretations of progress necessarily measure the value and purpose of this world and humanity in terms of a single standard of progress—yet one such standard does not in fact exist—these interpretations devalue this life and this world as they are in actuality.15 While Christianity fairly obviously devalues the world as it actually is (in its hope for a transcendent purpose that might justify and redeem human existence), Nietzsche finds a similar devaluation at work in positivistic science. Indeed, in Nietzsche’s indictment of scientific notions of progress, we see that any attempt to find a higher purpose that might serve to justify and give value to this-worldly existence—a purpose in which human pursuits are unified and the value of these pursuits conditioned in the the young Nietzsche had hoped to supplant with The Birth of Tragedy, denigrates thisworldly existence and leaves man without immanent sources of meaning through which he might affirm his life. 15 For a different but related interpretation, see Thomson (2011, p. 151).

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same way—belies a fundamental denial of this life and world. When we structure our lives and actions around a “higher purpose” or understand our lives as meaningful only with reference to such a purpose, we both implicitly devalue the world as it actually is and fail to engage meaningfully with the world to which we belong.16 Belief in Objectivity or “Knowledge as Such” Another belief Nietzsche identifies as implicitly life-denying—and characteristic of nihilistic conceptions of knowledge and knowing—is the ideal of objectivity, or “knowledge as such”: that is, disinterested, extraperspectival knowledge. In the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche describes this ideal of objectivity as “contemplation without interest” involving a “pure, will-less, painless, timeless, knowing subject” aiming at “knowledge as such” (GM III:12). For Nietzsche, belief in objectivity—in objective truth, or “knowledge as such”—involves the belief in truth as something that (1) exists apart from or independently of human attempts to ascertain it (apart from human attempts at knowing); (2) can be apprehended in a disinterested (or extra-perspectival) way, without the interference of a knowing subject’s drives or desires; and thus is (3) identically intelligible to all (often through the use of reason or via pure contemplation, although religious notions of objective truth may also allow for divine revelation).17 One of Nietzsche’s most memorable early accounts of belief in objectivity is his account of the theoretical man from The Birth of Tragedy.18 16 In a note from 1887, he remarks that “the nihilistic question ‘for what?’ is rooted in the old habit of supposing that the goal must be put up, given, demanded from outside” (KSA 12:9[43]). This otherworldly hope ignores the fact that, for Nietzsche, we have a perfectly good explanation for why things are the way they are in the will to power. As Matthew Meyer notes in Reading Nietzsche through the Ancients, “the idea is that there is a kind of naturalized or immanent teleology divorced from theology, and this kind of teleology explains the organization, behavior, and movement of organic and even inorganic entities in terms of goal-directed forces at work within nature” (Meyer 2012, p. 247). 17 For this reason, disinterested, objective truth can be understood as “extraperspectival” truth. 18 It is worth noting here that Nietzsche’s account of the theoretical man is actually an account of Socrates’ influence in the ancient Greek world (BT 15). But insofar as Nietzsche himself seems to be reading this influence anachronistically through the lens of the scientific tendencies of his day, this need not complicate the picture I present.

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According to Nietzsche, modern culture is hyper-rational, and the “highest ideal” of “our whole modern world” is that of the theoretical man, who makes the acquisition of scientific knowledge his utmost priority (BT 18). This man wishes to “penetrate to the ground of things and to separate true knowledge from illusion and error” and his faith in the “highest powers of [human] understanding” ensure Western culture that such a pursuit is possible (BT 15). According to Nietzsche, modern Western humanity understands scientific investigation and analysis as the only means by which one can acquire knowledge. Truth, on this picture, is objective and non-perspectival. Western culture, influenced by this ideal, makes “existence appear comprehensible and thus justified” and “ascribes to [rational] knowledge and insight the power of a panacea” (ibid.). In the eyes of modern Western culture, then, scientific analysis is the “only truly human vocation” and the ultimate goal of education is the pursuit of scientific knowledge (as the ascertainment of objective truth) and rational insight (ibid.).19 Western culture thus aims to master the world through scientific reasoning and theorizing, attempting to fit the world into rational categories by insisting on the existence of objective, nonperspectival truth and then employing empirical means in order to discover such objective truth in the world.20 In The Gay Science, Nietzsche specifically pinpoints the faith that underlies modern culture (and indeed, this culture is our own): for modern culture, “[n]othing is more necessary than truth; and in relation to it, everything else has only secondary value’’ (GS 344). Indeed, as “the concept of truthfulness… [is] taken more and more seriously,” Western Nietzsche’s point in this section of The Birth of Tragedy seems to trace the history of truth as objective truth in the West back to its origins in “Plato’s Socrates” (“Socrates’ influence has spread out across all posterity to this very day”), and indeed, this is something which is firmly in the spirit of what I do in this chapter. His characterizations of knowledge and hyper-rational culture is clearly shaped by his understanding of the “science” of his day as “hurrying unstoppably to its limits, where the optimism hidden in the essence of logic will founder and break up (ibid.).” 19 Nietzsche refers to modern Western culture both as “Socratic culture” and “Alexandrian culture” here. For a more extended interpretation of this section of the Birth and an argument that locates the culmination of such “Alexandrine” culture in contemporary “techno-scientific culture,” see Babich (2007, p. 209). 20 If one feels inclined to dismiss this as an “immature” and “early” version of Nietzsche’s thoughts on the matter, one need only to read Nietzsche’s 1886 “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” in which he explicitly remains supportive of his critique of “science” from The Birth of Tragedy while skewering other features of this early text.

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humanity’s drive to know becomes “translated and sublimated into scientific conscience, into intellectual rigor at any price” (GS 357). This scientific conscience encourages the modern individual to “[seek] ‘the truth’… a true world…. [h]e does not doubt that a world as it ought to be exists; he would like to seek out the road to it” (KSA 12:9[60]). In sum, the theoretical man in the post-Enlightenment West assumes that the world is both comprehensible and identically intelligible to all seekers of objective truth; he also assumes that human reason is the tool by which one comprehends the world. The “objective spirit” is praised; along with it, “the desubjectivization and depersonification of spirit” are celebrated “as if this were some sort of goal in itself, some sort of redemption or transfiguration” (BGE 204). Modern Western culture believes deeply in the redemptive value of science and objectivity. Yet this belief is founded on an even more basic attitude of faith, a faith that assumes that a “true” world of scientific observation and analysis (about which humanity can discover objective truths) exists. Nietzsche’s groundbreaking insight in On the Genealogy of Morality, as well as elsewhere, is that this conception of truth—as objective, disinterested, and non-perspectival—is thoroughly life-denying: …these pale atheists, Antichrists, immoralists, nihilists, these skeptics… these last idealists of knowledge in whom, alone, intellectual conscience dwells and is embodied these days — they believe they are all as liberated as possible from the ascetic ideal, these ‘free, very free spirits’: and yet, I will tell them what they themselves cannot see— because they are standing too close to themselves — this ideal is quite simply their ideal as well, they themselves represent it nowadays, and perhaps no one else, they themselves are its most intellectualized product, its most insidious, delicate and elusive form of seduction… They are very far from being free spirits: because they still believe in truth. (GM III:24)

Rather than offering new, life-affirming, non-nihilistic ideals, modern science offers ideals that remain ascetic and life-denying.21 According to Nietzsche, our apprehension of this world and life is always shaped by those particular, personalized epistemic perspectives we inhabit. We see this in Beyond Good and Evil, where Nietzsche argues that

21 As Gemes also points out, “In the context of Christianity and the modern scholarly spirit [Nietzsche] sees the will to truth as slandering life” (2006, p. 197).

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“absolute knowledge” is a “contradiction in terms” and rejects accounts that frame knowledge and knowing “as though cognition here got hold of its object purely and nakedly as ‘the thing in itself’” (BGE 16). Put simply, then, objectivity of the kind I define above is not possible for Nietzsche; there is no such thing as disinterested, extra-perspectival knowing, no such thing as absolute knowledge (or “knowledge as such”). More importantly, however, our embrace of objectivity and absolute knowledge as ideals is also life-denying: by investing in such ideals, we implicitly devalue this world and life. In “To What Extent Even We too are Still Pious,” for example, Nietzsche remarks that “those who are truthful in the audacious and ultimate sense that is presupposed by the faith in science… affirm another world than the world of life, nature, and history [emphasis mine]” (GS 344). Here, Nietzsche argues that idealizing a world that is identically intelligible to all who access it (via disinterested empirical observation and rational thought) implicitly devalues the world as we can actually come to know it: through our particular, personal epistemic perspectives—and only ever partially. Additionally, in condemning the perspectival nature of knowledge—a feature of our existence that Nietzsche believes follows from our status as living beings who will power—such ideals implicitly condemn life as will to power and distract us from the fact that “perspectivism… is the fundamental condition of all life” (BGE, Preface). From Nietzsche’s point of view, then, anyone who understands the world as something it is possible “to seize, stark naked”, as a “thing-in-itself… [as if] no falsification took place from either the side of the subject or the side of the object” remains invested in a “superstition” (BGE 16), and a life-denying one at that. In conclusion, when modern scientific culture grounds the value of human existence in the pursuit of absolute knowledge and the apprehension of objective truth (that is, when modern scientific culture comes to value objectivity and pursues it “at any price” (GS 357)), this culture unwittingly devalues this world and life itself.22 Indeed, just as Plato’s realm of the Forms and the Christian afterlife give mankind a means of retreat from everyday existence, “science can act as a means of withdrawal from the world” (Gemes 2006, p. 194).

22 In his article titled “Nietzsche’s Questions Concerning the Will to Truth,” Scott Jenkins (2012) gives a detailed account of science’s otherworldly asceticism.

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A Digression: On False and Life-Denying Beliefs At several points in my analysis thus far, I have argued that Nietzsche believes investing in those life-denying ideals I mention above requires one to adopt false beliefs about the world as it actually is. And indeed, Nietzsche argues that individuals who embrace these ideals fundamentally misunderstand the world and are thus prevented from affirming life as it actually is: as becoming without any one ultimate justification or telos, as purposeless chaos, as accessible only through the lenses of our partial perspectives (or at least as many perspectives as we can accrue).23 For this reason, one might be tempted to think I am arguing that the ideals I mention above are life-denying simply insofar as they are false beliefs that get the world wrong. Importantly, this is not my claim. Although Nietzsche does in fact understand the life-denying beliefs above to be false, he does not consider such beliefs to be life-denying simply in virtue of their falsity. Rather, as I argue above, Nietzsche understands one’s belief in objectivity, a beyond, or higher purposes as lifedenying because, in affirming these ideals, one negates or devalues the world as it actually is. Otherwise put, insofar as these ideals function as standards by which the world is assessed and found wanting, they are lifedenying. Of course, the falsity of these beliefs matters for the picture of life-denial I sketch, but it is not what makes them life-denying. Crucially, however, Nietzsche has a second, more basic criterion by which he judges a belief as life-denying or life-affirming: that is, whether the belief in question tends to hinder or advance strong forms of life. Otherwise put, beliefs and ideals are also life-denying insofar as they discourage or weaken strong forms of life. (These same beliefs often function to merely preserve weak forms of life.) Recall Nietzsche’s claim that “[t]he falseness of a judgment is for us not necessarily an objection to a 23 An apparent tension arises when we attempt to square Nietzsche’s claim that (1) absolute knowledge, or totally disinterested, objective knowledge, is impossible with his claim that (2) life and reality are purposeless becoming (that is, a world of ceaseless flux devoid of any global, higher purpose/s). In what sense can Nietzsche say it is true that the world as it actually is is ceaseless becoming? This tension, I argue, is one Nietzsche does not explicitly resolve, but Anderson’s account of claims to truth (in Nietzsche) as a “matter of satisfying norms and standards drawn from within the circle of our cognitive practices” (Anderson 1998, p. 14) can help; “life is becoming” and “the world is will to power” count as truths in a Nietzschean sense because they “demand acceptance across a broader class of perspectives by satisfying shared epistemic standards” (Anderson 1998, p. 21).

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judgment… The question is to what extent it is life preserving, speciespreserving, perhaps even species cultivating” (BGE 4).24 In this aphorism, Nietzsche goes so far as to claim that, in many cases, “a renunciation of false judgments would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life. To acknowledge untruth as a condition of life: this clearly means resisting the usual value feelings in a dangerous manner” (BGE 4). In this selection, we see that Nietzsche assesses the value of a belief not with respect to its truth value (say, whether the belief corresponds with reality), but with respect to its potential to hinder or advance strong forms of life (Gemes 1992, pp. 53–54). Thus, although Nietzsche designates the beliefs I describe above as life-denying and objects to them on this basis, he objects not merely (or even most fundamentally) on the basis that, as ideals, they implicitly devalue the world as it is. Indeed, he objects to them most fundamentally because they hinder or prevent the flourishing of strong forms of life. Nietzsche describes this concern in detail in an 1888 note from the Nachlass where he describes his “primary objection” to Christianity: One should never stop fighting against this in Christianity: that it has the will to break the strongest and noblest souls [daß es den Willen dazu hat, gerade die stärksten und vornehmsten Seelen zu zerbrechen]. The whole absurd residue of Christian fable, conceptual cobweb-spinning and theology does not concern us… But we fight this ideal that… makes the strong tired… What do we fight in Christianity? That it wants to break the strong, that it discourages their courage, that it preys on their dark hours and wearinesses, that it wants to turn their proud security into restlessness and a need for conscience, that it knows how to make noble instincts toxic and sick, until their strength and their will to power turns backwards, against itself, until the strong perish from the excesses of self-contempt and self-abuse. (KSA 13:11[55])

Here, Nietzsche objects to Christianity not because it encourages believers to condemn this world in relation to the heavenly world that awaits, but because it “make[s] noble instincts toxic and sick”: that is, it harms strong forms of life. Gemes puts this point succinctly when he remarks that Nietzsche is primarily concerned with “ideas as vehicles for promoting or stultifying various forms of life” (Gemes 1992, p. 54). Using Gemes’ terminology, then, beliefs in a beyond, higher purposes, and

24 Translation from Gemes (1992, p. 53).

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objectivity are life-denying insofar as they serve as vehicles for stultifying strong forms of life (KSA 13:11[55]) and preserving weak forms of life (BGE 61).25 That such ideals diminish strong forms of life is evident in Nietzsche’s concept of the pathos of distance (GM III:14). That they preserve weak forms of life, however, requires a bit more explanation. Let us take the example of an individual, then, who adopts a teleological worldview: Nietzsche’s Christian (though a scientist who idealizes progress or a Hegelian invested in the culmination of world spirit as an ultimate telos would do just as well). For Nietzsche, a Christian who believes in a higher purpose adopts an ideal that understands life and existence as valuable only insofar as it participates in some ultimate, higher end. (Again, the same would be true of a scientist’s belief in progress and a Hegelian’s beliefs in the developmental progress of world spirit.) For Nietzsche, it is key that the Christian is drive-driven to adopt such a view. Indeed, according to Nietzsche, the Christian adopts this ideal out of need, given his weak form of life and its corresponding need of a justification. Such a need emerges, then, from out of the Christian’s psychophysiological constitution (as a complex of drives and affects). We see this in Beyond Good and Evil, where Nietzsche argues that religion (and religious beliefs, such as the belief in a higher purpose): gives [individuals] an invaluable sense of contentment with their situation and type; it puts their hearts greatly at ease, it glorifies their obedience, it gives them (and those like them) one more happiness and one more sorrow, it transfigures and beautifies them, it provides something of a justification for everything commonplace, for all the lowliness, for the whole half-bestial poverty of their souls. (61)

In short, those whose souls are impoverished require ideals like the belief in a higher purpose in order for them to remain content and pacified with

25 Importantly, Gemes advances a stronger claim: in asserting that “Nietzsche’s attack on Christianity is based on the fact that it enfeebles strong wills, not that it is false” (58), he argues that the truth value of a given belief is largely irrelevant to Nietzsche’s assessment of that belief. This claim, in my estimation, is too strong. Indeed, Nietzsche does at times take issue with the falseness of Christianity, especially insofar as the false and confused beliefs it promotes preclude an honest reckoning with life as becoming, as devoid of transcendent or global teloi. After all, such a reckoning is required for a thoroughgoing affirmation of life.

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their form of existence: this belief emerges from out of a need to preserve their weak form of life.26 And indeed, as Nietzsche makes clear, to need or “wish to preserve oneself is a sign of distress, of a limitation of the truly basic life-instinct, which aims at the expansion of power” (GS 349). Adopting a teleological worldview, then, can preserve individuals in their will-weakness—but it does not thereby transform weak individuals into strong-willed, healthy individuals. Otherwise put, the “transfiguration” and “beautification” of a weak-willed individual that occurs as the result of adopting a teleological worldview does not result in a genuine enhancement or improvement of the form of life that required such beliefs for survival in the first place. Rather than advancing weak forms of life, a belief in higher purposes prevents weak-willed individuals from extreme suffering, enabling them to preserve their life as opposed to destroying it. As Nietzsche argues in the Genealogy, with such ideals, “the door [is] shut on all suicidal nihilism [emphasis mine]” (GM III:28). According to Nietzsche, the teleological worldview in which the Christian invests—like the scientist’s belief in progress and the Hegelian’s belief in the eventual culmination of world spirit—functions as a “fixed idea” that “hypnotizes the whole nervous and intellectual system” into a state of peace and contentment. It results in “happiness,” to be sure, but only that “happiness… of the powerless… [that] manifests itself as essentially a narcotic, an anesthetic, rest, peace, ‘sabbath’, relaxation of the mind and stretching of the limbs, in short as something passive” (GM I:10). When Nietzsche argues that adopting a teleological worldview merely preserves or maintains weak forms of life in their weakness, he is claiming that belief in a higher purpose fails to get rid of the underlying condition, the physiological “base” of “a certain impoverishment of life” (GM III:25).

26 It is worth noting that, in a number of places, Nietzsche’s analysis of the scientific outlook and its origin (as well as its function) parallels this analysis of the Christian’s experience. For example, in his “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” Nietzsche asks rhetorically: “Is scientific scholarship perhaps only a fear and an excuse in the face of pessimism?” (1). He goes on in “Attempt” to argue that “it was precisely during the period of their dissolution and weakness that the Greeks became constantly more optimistic, more superficial, more hypocritical, and with a greater lust for logic and rational understanding of the world, as well as ‘more cheerful’ and ‘more scientific’? What’s this? In spite of all ‘modern ideas’ and the prejudices of democratic taste, could the victory of optimism, the developing hegemony of reasonableness … which occurs in the same period, perhaps be a symptom of failing power, of approaching old age, of physiological exhaustion?” (4). See also GM II:12, GM III:23.

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Life-Denying Morality: The Harm of “the Good” Along with the beliefs mentioned above, Nietzsche also typically frames a variety of norms or values as implicitly life-denying.27 For example, Nietzsche famously critiques the “virtues” of pity [Mitleid] (A7) and selflessness (BGE 260) on the grounds that they are will-weakening and, thus, life-denying. In The Antichrist, Nietzsche claims both that “pity negates life” and that “pity is the practice of nihilism”: People have dared to call pity a virtue (—in every noble morality it is considered a weakness—); people have gone even further, making it into the virtue, the foundation and source of all virtues,—but of course you always have to keep in mind that this was the perspective of a nihilistic philosophy that inscribed the negation of life on its shield. Schopenhauer was right here: pity negates life, it makes life worthy of negation,—pity is the practice of nihilism. Once more: this depressive and contagious instinct runs counter to the instincts that preserve and enhance the value of life: by multiplying misery just as much as by conserving everything miserable, pity is one of the main tools used to increase decadence – pity wins people over to nothingness ! (A 7)

Throughout his body of work, Nietzsche also describes selflessness [Selbstlosigkeit] and self-sacrifice [Selbstopferung] as typically life-denying “virtues” prized by slavish systems of morality (GS 21; BGE 260), as action-guiding norms the adoption of which degrades and devalues life.28 For example, Nietzsche understands himself in the Genealogy as investigating (and ultimately, rebuking) “the value of the ‘unegoistic’, the instincts of pity, self-denial, self-sacrifice which Schopenhauer had for so long gilded, deified and transcendentalized until he was finally left with them as those ‘values as such’ on the basis of which he said ‘no’ to life and

27 Throughout this section, I understand “norm” to mean a standard or guideline that fixes what counts as normal, proper, or acceptable behavior, and by which the normalcy or propriety of behavior is measured. I also say that Nietzsche frames certain values or norms as “typically” life-denying because there are always exceptions. For example, pity might be life-affirming and life-enhancing for certain individuals to adopt, depending on their constitution. Furthermore, all norms and values mentioned here must be understood as socio-cultural byproducts; thus, doxastic life-denial is fundamentally connected to lifedenial as a socio-cultural phenomenon. 28 Note here that life as will to power is degraded—and that this is all life is, for Nietzsche.

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to himself as well” (GM, P, 5). Indeed, in these values, Nietzsche locates a “great danger to mankind, its most sublime temptation and seduction [to nothingness]” (ibid.).29 In this selection, again, Nietzsche both identifies selflessness and self-sacrifice as life-denying values and explicitly ties such life-denying values to nihilism as an impending danger. Notice here, also, that although Nietzsche often talks about the virtues of selflessness and self-sacrifice in the context of Christianity, here and elsewhere they are framed as byproducts of slave moralities and not merely of Christianity—hence Nietzsche’s claim that Europe’s embrace of slave moralities or “moralit[ies] of pity” might be framed as a “Euro-Buddhism” (GM, P, 5). I point this out in order to make it clear that Nietzsche’s analysis—his account that designates a variety of values and social norms life-denying— does not merely apply to Judeo-Christian norms or values, though Nietzsche focuses much of his energy on these. As demonstrated above, Nietzsche often frames particular norms, ideals, or values as life-denying. Yet he also claims that treating almost any ideal or value as universal—as applicable to all individuals and prescribing the same behaviors and courses of action regardless of the individual’s constitution—is life-denying.30 Ideals or values, generally prescribed, are life-denying insofar as they risk devaluing and weakening the drives that one actually possesses. Given that drives are frustrated in their expression when they are devalued (that is, when the individual internalizes a negative assessment of those drives), generally prescribed ideals or values threaten to cause widespread will-weakness. In The Gay Science, for example, one sees that the virtues (such as diligence, obedience, chastity, piety, justice) are mostly harmful to their possessors, being drives which dominate them all too violently and covetously and in no way let reason keep them in balance with the other drives. When you have a virtue — a real, complete virtue (and not just a small drive towards some virtue) — you are its victim!…The praise of virtues is the praise of something privately harmful – the praise of

29 Nietzsche frames this as a rhetorical question: “Precisely here I saw the great danger to mankind, its most sublime temptation and seduction – temptation to what? To nothingness?” (GM, P, 5). 30 Of course, there are ideals Nietzsche understands as exceptions to this general “rule”: namely, those ideals the endorsement of which leads one to value one’s drives and become stronger (such as valuing one’s unique form of will to power, for example).

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drives which deprive a human being of his noblest selfishness and of the strength for the highest form of self-protection… (21)

Later in the same text, Nietzsche frames this negative claim—that virtues, generally applied and adopted as one’s own, are damaging and lifedenying—in a positive way, emphasizing the importance of understanding something as virtuous only with reference to one’s own constitution. So he notes: …‘virtue is the health of the soul’ would, in order to be useful, have to be changed at least to read, ‘your virtue is the health of your soul.’ For there is no health as such, and all attempts to define such a thing have failed miserably. Deciding what is health even for your body depends on your goal, your horizon, your powers, your impulses, your mistakes and above all on the ideals and phantasms of your soul. (GS 120)

As we see here, what serves as a favorable condition of one’s life—that which potentially increases one’s flourishing and stimulates or strengthens one’s will—differs depending on the individual’s constitution. Hence, adopting allegedly universal “virtues” without keeping one’s own constitution in mind too often tends to damage one’s form of life.31 Nietzsche’s account of the philosopher’s relationship to the ascetic ideal from the Genealogy further illuminates this point. In the beginning of the third essay, Nietzsche reflects on the fact that when philosophers adopt ascetic ideals, they do so as a means of creating more favorable conditions for their particular form of life. By adopting ascetic ideals, philosophers are better able to flourish as the kind of beings that they are. “[W]ith philosophers and scholars,” Nietzsche claims, “ascetic ideals mean… something like a nose and sense for the most favorable conditions of higher intellectuality” (GM III:1). “Every animal, including the bête philosophe, instinctively strives for an optimum of favorable conditions in which to fully release his power and achieve his maximum of power-sensation” (GM III:8), he notes—and the philosopher’s adoption of ascetic ideals is simply his means of achieving this goal. Given that the “particular drives and virtues of the philosopher” are “his drive to doubt,

31 This has to do, of course, with Nietzsche’s claim that virtues, or moral goods, typically develop as means of increasing the flourishing of a community or society, not of one’s own life (GS 21).

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his drive to deny, his drive to prevaricate (his ‘ephectic’ drive), his drive to analyze, his drive to research, investigate, dare, his drive to compare and counter-balance, his will to neutrality and objectivity” (GM III:9), the conditions in which he finds it most favorable to live (those which he finds “indispensable”) involve “freedom from compulsion, disturbance, noise, business, duties, worries; clear heads; the dance, bounce and flight of ideas; [and] good, thin, clear, free, dry air, like the air in the mountains, in which all animal existence becomes more spiritual and takes wings” (GM III:8). By embracing ascetic ideals, then, philosophers are “thinking of themselves”—specifically, they are thinking of how to best secure conditions favorable to their form of life. This is not only natural, according to Nietzsche, but admirable. In sum, Nietzsche is critical of ascetic ideals because in the vast majority of individuals, the adoption of these ideals leads to life-denial. Otherwise put, for most people—those non-philosophers—the adoption of ideals that devalue embodiment and sensual experience creates unfavorable conditions for their forms of life, weakening their wills. Nietzsche focuses so often on Christianity, then, because it is the nihilistic religion par excellence: it both promotes ascetic ideals and prescribes ascetic ideals universally, regardless of an individual’s constitution or form of life. When these ascetic ideals become culturally ubiquitous—that is, when they are taken up by a society as ideals that ought to be respected and guide action— life-denial is bred at a socio-cultural level. Ascetic ideals then “infect” even those for whom they are not beneficial: that is, those for whom the internalization of such ideals results in damaged, weakened wills. Life-Denying Epistemic Orientations and Practices Finally, Nietzsche also characterizes particular epistemic orientations and practices as fundamentally life-denying. As Riccardi rightfully points out, understanding such orientations and practices is critical for understanding life-denial as a cognitive phenomenon.32 Since I discuss these at greater length in a later chapter on cognitive nihilism, I review them only briefly below, and only to more convincingly demonstrate that nihilism, for Nietzsche, simply is life-denial. 32 Riccardi would say that this is critical for understanding the cognitive aspect of “psychological nihilism” (2018), as his term “psychological nihilism” is meant to capture both the cognitive and affective dimensions of life-denial in Nietzsche (ibid., p. 266).

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Perhaps the best-known epistemic orientation that Nietzsche frames as life-denying is the “demand for certainty” where there is none to be had (GS 347). According to Nietzsche, individuals’ psychological need for certainty—the need to secure absolutely certain knowledge—manifests in an epistemic orientation of faith, and both of these are the result of a “demand for foothold, support” (ibid.). In Christians, such faith manifests as a belief in Christian doctrine. In the case of “great masses” of educated non-believers, this faith instead takes a “scientific-positivistic form” (ibid.): it manifests as blind faith in the existence of objective, disinterested knowledge. For Nietzsche, this need for faith is a direct result of the development of the will to truth: a will to ascertain extra-perspectival, objective truth that results from an aversion to open-endedness and ambiguity, especially moral ambiguity.33 Insofar as an epistemic orientation of 33 Nietzsche offers his reader two accounts of this development: first, the development of a will to truth from the conflict of drives and conceptions of utility in “Origins of Knowledge” from The Gay Science, and second, the will to truth’s origin in morality. According to the former account, at an earlier time in Western culture, something was considered true only insofar as it was useful for life. The critical moment for the will to truth’s development arrives when two different drives or complexes of drives present contradictory notions of what is truly useful for life. Since both notions appeared equally useful for life, it became “possible to argue about the higher or lower degree of utility for life,” and these drives or complexes of drives came into conflict (GS 110). Although disagreements about notions of utility begin as “intellectual play,” the separate drives or complexes of drives eventually recognize that only their conception of utility has the value of potentially helping them to achieve their aims. Each baptizes its own conception of utility as the only absolutely “good” and “true” conception. In essence, the will to truth results from this becoming-absolute of conflicting conceptions of utility. In short, the free intellectual play mentioned above turns into the struggle for extra-perspectival, objective truth when each drive or complex of drives wills the domination of its own conception, its own “truth,” above all others. As the needs of various drives (or complexes of drives) conflict with the needs of other drives (or complexes of drives), each attempts to employ its own “truth” to subjugate and dominate the other. Eventually, Nietzsche describes how “the human brain became full of such judgments and convictions, and a ferment, struggle, and lust for powers developed in this tangle. Not only utility and delight but every kind of impulse took sides in this fight about ‘truths.’ The intellectual fight became an occupation, an attraction, a profession, a duty, something dignified—and eventually knowledge and the striving for the true found their place as a need among other needs” (GS 110). Although the will to truth begins as the mere instrument of other drives, it eventually establishes itself as an independent drive: Nietzsche’s “knowledge drive” (BGE 6). Nietzsche’s account of the origin of the will to truth in morality from On the Genealogy of Morality fits with this picture from The Gay Science: after all, it is when the human mind develops certain convictions or value judgments that the power struggle among the drives intensifies. In the Genealogy, as mankind begins to develop a need for morality and moral understanding (from out of his need to give meaning to his suffering),

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faith expresses an instinct of declining forms of life, then, such an orientation is life-denying. In this same section, fanaticism—the tendency to commit oneself unwaveringly and without reason to a single point of view—appears as another life-denying epistemic orientation. Fanaticism is life-denying not only because such an orientation is characteristic of weakwilled individuals, but because indulging in fanaticism tends to ultimately weaken the will (ibid.).34 Another life-denying epistemic orientation Nietzsche introduces is the need to locate a reason or justification for one’s suffering—that wellknown, all-too-human preference for suffering meaningfully instead of senselessly (GM III:28). Such an orientation has become natural for that “interesting animal” (GM I:6), the human being. But the need itself—and the search for meaning or justification that accompanies such a need—is life-denying. After all, there is no one reason why human beings suffer as they do, no one reason that justifies continued suffering; there is no one higher meaning to the universe in terms of which suffering makes sense. The need for one’s suffering to be justified is a life-denying epistemic orientation; the pursuit of such a meaning or justification is a life-denying epistemic practice, resulting in ever-sicker individuals whose weak, declining wills are preserved (GM III:28). Finally, Nietzsche also claims that certain forms of “intelligence” or cleverness (GM I:10), as well as certain modes of thinking or reasoning (especially hyper-rational, logical modes of reasoning (TI, “Skirmishes,” he also develops a drive to attain knowledge of objective truths qua extra-perspectival facts about the world around him. The will to truth first awakens as a desire to know extra-perspectival moral facts; after all, traditional morality and its enforcement requires knowledge of what counts as truly good or bad. In this way, as Katrina Mitcheson notes, “our search for truth has been driven by something other than a pure desire for the goal of truth” (Mitcheson 2013, p. 60). Nietzsche is famously ambivalent about the will to truth. In its relentless pursuit of “the true,” the will to truth uncovers a number of hard truths with which human beings must reckon in order to truly affirm life. Indeed, after the “steady and laborious process of science will in the end decisively have done” with otherworldly notions and conceptions of truth (HH I:16), it is the job of free spirits to learn to embrace life nonetheless. Many, Nietzsche thinks, will uncover these hard truths as a result of their wills to truth; few are able to incorporate and affirm such truths. Still others, of course, cling to old truths; this is the case with “old believers” in Europe: “an article of faith could be refuted to [them] a thousand times; as long as [they] needed it, [they] would consider it ‘true’ again and again, in accordance with that famous ‘proof of strength’ of which the Bible speaks” (GS 347). 34 Riccardi isolates fanatacism as an epistemic orientation associated with “psychological nihilism” (2018).

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15)) have the potential to be life-denying. These forms of “intelligence” and modes of thinking are indicative of life-denial insofar as they emerge from out of a need to explain away life in all its richness, to order and understand the essentially disordered chaos of a world of becoming. This need, according to Nietzsche, comes from a fundamental will-weakness: in Twilight, for example, we see that Socrates’ physiological decadence is what leads to his overdeveloped “logical” tendency (TI, “Socrates,” 4).

Life-Denial as Socio-Cultural: Institutions and Ideologies Along with particular beliefs, judgments, and epistemic tendencies, those socio-cultural configurations Nietzsche deems nihilistic are designated as such because they are life-denying. Examples of such nihilistic sociocultural configurations include particular religions (such as Christianity and Buddhism), schools of thought (such as Schopenhauerian philosophy), and other socio-cultural phenomena or institutions, such as particular political systems (for example, socialism, in which “life denies itself [das Leben sich selber verneint] and cuts itself off by the roots” (KSA 11:37[11])) and fields of inquiry (for example, positivist science) (GM III:12; KSA 12:2[127]). As might be expected, Nietzsche designates these socio-cultural formations as life-denying largely because of the systems of belief or doctrines they espouse. This makes a good deal of sense, as socio-cultural formations often coalesce around a particular ideology or set of beliefs. For example, a socialist government promotes a particular (socialist) ideology, and involves a degree of “practical indoctrination [praktische Belehrung]” (KSA 11:37[11]). Specifically, Nietzsche designates a sociocultural formation life-denying if the beliefs it encourages individuals to adopt and/or the practices it encourages individuals to perform are themselves life-denying: that is, if those beliefs or practices (1) devalue life or human existence implicitly or explicitly or (2) tend to weaken strong forms of life while preserving weak forms of life. Thus, Nietzsche characterizes both Buddhism and Christianity as life-denying not only because he alleges that the origin and spread of both can be attributed to a “tremendous sickening of the will ” (GS 347; GM, P:5), but because their doctrines fundamentally promote selflessness (a life-denying “virtue”), either as the goal of this-worldly existence (in Buddhism) (A 20) or as instrumentally valuable, a means to salvation (as in Christianity). The

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same is true of Nietzsche’s indictment of Schopenhauerian philosophy: insofar as Schopenhauer’s philosophy makes aesthetic experience as total will-lessness the goal of life itself (as a means of “[counteracting] sexual ‘interestedness’” (GM III:6)), his philosophy fundamentally devalues life itself.35 So, too, with positivistic science’s investment in the possibility of objectivity, or disinterested knowledge as knowledge from the perspective of a “pure, will-less, painless, timeless, subject of knowledge” (GM III:12). Adopting the ideal of knowledge as objective, absolute knowledge involves an implicit devaluation of life itself, as always-already involving will (and, thus, involving the multifarious vested perspectives of the knower). It should be unsurprising that life-denying ideals, norms, and values are, for Nietzsche, deeply intertwined with life-denial as a socio-cultural phenomenon: after all, the particular beliefs and values one adopts (or, at least, to which one is introduced) are largely a function of the sociocultural context to which one belongs. Yet Nietzsche also identifies particular socio-cultural practices as life-denying. In The Gay Science, for example, Nietzsche lambasts the “blindly raging industriousness [der blindwüthende Fleiss]” of the modern worker, castigating their dedication to mindless work as a means of accumulating wealth and honor36 : Blindly raging industriousness, for example — this typical virtue of an instrument — is represented as the road to riches and honor and as the best poison for curing boredom and the passions; but one keeps silent about its danger, its extreme dangerousness. That is how education always proceeds: it tries to condition the individual through various attractions and advantages to adopt a way of thinking and behaving that, when it has become habit, drive and passion, will rule in him and over him against his ultimate advantage but ‘for the common good’ [emphasis mine]. How often I see it: that blindly raging industriousness brings riches and honor but at the same time deprives the organs of refinement that make it possible to enjoy the riches and honor… (GS 21)

35 See Janaway (2007) for more on this (especially p. 196). Janaway helpfully glosses pure will-lessness in Schopenhauer as “a kind of altered state of consciousness where desire, emotion, bodily activity, and ordinary conceptual thought are all suspended” (2007, p. 191). 36 It is worth noting that Nietzsche gives this example of “blindly raging industriousness” in an aphorism on the harmfulness of virtues that encourage the erasure of oneself and one’s goals (GS 21).

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Here, Nietzsche describes the mindless expenditure of effort in work as a practice that weakens one’s constitution even as it benefits one’s society. That such a practice involves a “decrease in strength,” the “deterioration of the spirit and the senses or even a premature demise”—this is its “extreme dangerousness” (ibid.), and what makes it properly lifedenying. Indeed, later in the aphorism Nietzsche cites such a practice as a self-sacrifice and self-renunciation that precludes one from “apply[ing] his entire strength and reason to his own preservation, development, elevation, promotion, and expansion of power” (ibid.). In his analysis of “On the Use and Disadvantage of History for Life” from Ecce Homo, Nietzsche both makes the case that practices in contemporary scholarship are life-denying and connects this critique to his analysis of the harmfulness of mindless industriousness. There, he notes that: The second Untimely one (1874) sheds light on the danger inherent in the way we conduct our scholarship, which gnaws away at life and poisons it —…life is sick from this dehumanized cog-grinding and mechanism, from the ‘impersonal’ nature of the worker… The goal, culture, disappears— the means, modern scholarly practice, barbarizes … In this essay, the ‘historical sense’ that this century is so proud of is recognized for the first time as a disease, as a typical sign of decay. (EH, “Untimely,” 1)37

There are a number of facets to Nietzsche’s critique here. First, he is critical of the allegedly “impersonal” or detached nature of the scholar’s approach (HL 5, pp. 84–87; GM III:23). As we see in the case of the historian from “On the Use…”, the scholar’s “dehumanized [entmenschten]” approach requires a “total surrender of the personality” (HL 9). This aspiration on the behalf of the scholar to disinterested, depersonalized knowledge contributes to the degradation and weakening of life. After all, for Nietzsche, such knowledge is impossible, and energy expended towards this end is energy wasted on an essentially otherworldly goal. Furthermore, the more culture becomes infected by this scholarly consciousness, the more individuals aspire to this unattainable goal—and the more distracted they become from life as it is. 37 Nietzsche’s critical perspective on general scholarly praxis and his critique of historical scholarship are very closely related, though distinct. Below I illuminate the qualities they share of which Nietzsche is critical—both are life-denying—but this is not to identify them with one another entirely.

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In book five of The Gay Science, Nietzsche is also highly critical of the scholar’s tendency to fix and preserve that which is already in place, to merely organize or schematize in a new way that which is. In the context of the selection from Ecce Homo above, one might hear this as a critique of a typically antiquarian tendency shared by scholars. There, Nietzsche describes this tendency in relation to the historian, remarking that an excess of historical scholarship …[prevents] man from feeling and acting unhistorically. From an infinite horizon he then returns to himself, to the smallest egoistic enclosure, and there he must grow withered and dry: probably he attains to cleverness, never to wisdom. He ‘listens to reason,’ calculates and accommodates himself to the facts, keeps calm, blinks… (HL 9)

As Nietzsche remarks, this tendency is borne from out of the scholar’s “wish to preserve [herself]” which “is a sign of distress, of a limitation of the truly basic life-instinct which aims at the expansion of power and, wishing for that, frequently risks and even sacrifices self-preservation” (GS 349). This tendency, then, both signifies declining, weakened life and impels one towards pursuits that either weaken life or preserve it in its declining forms. Furthermore, in the Genealogy, Nietzsche impugns “the industry of our best scholars [and] their unreflective diligence [ihr besinnungsloser Fleiss],” calling it a “means of self-anesthetic [als Mittel der Selbst-Betäubung]” (III:23). In other words, scholarly pursuits make one numb to life itself, and especially numb to avenues of truly radical, transformative shifts in what life could become. Nietzsche’s critique of a mindless or senseless [besinnungsloser] industriousness that rages on blindly [blindwüthende], deadening one’s sensibility and numbing individuals to life itself, thus appears not only in the case of a modern individual obsessed with work, but in the case of the scholar.38 Furthermore, the more widespread such mindlessly industrious pursuits become, the sicker and more stagnant life becomes—and the less likely a truly elevated and life-affirming culture is to develop.

38 The way Nietzsche frames the comportment of the worker and scholar (in The Gay Science and “On the Use…”, respectively) also mirrors his characterization of the “last man” from Zarathustra (Z: P, 5) and the “objective man” from Beyond Good and Evil (BGE 207).

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Life-Denial as Psychophysiological: Drives, Affects, and the Will Above, I review a selection of institutions, ideologies, epistemic orientations, values, and beliefs that Nietzsche deems life-denying. As I explain earlier in the chapter, he designates these phenomena as such because they involve (1) the adoption of explicitly or implicitly negative evaluations of life or (2) tend to result either in the weakening of the will or the preservation of declining forms of life. Such phenomena hinder the growth or advancement of life in its higher forms. Otherwise put, they generate conditions hostile to flourishing life. These hostile conditions serve either to perpetuate weakness or to weaken once-strong drives and complexes of drives.39 Indeed, Nietzsche’s standard for determining whether a judgment or belief is life-denying is whether that judgment or belief is “hostile to life” and “uses power to block the sources of power, [turning] the green eye of spite on… physiological growth itself” and becoming “more self-assured and self-triumphant to the same degree as its own condition, the physiological capacity to live, decreases” (GM III:11). In other words, beliefs, values, and practices are life-denying insofar as they diminish or disrupt the activity of the drives in such a way that the will is weakened and life is turned against itself. Most basically, then, Nietzsche designates beliefs, practices, and institutions life-denying insofar as they have certain characteristic effects on one’s psychophysiological constitution. But Nietzsche also refers to particular instincts and physiological configurations as life-denying, both in themselves and insofar as they tend to lead to life-denying beliefs. (We see him suggest, for example, that “nihilism” and “otherworldiness [Jenseitigkeit]” are consequences of physiological degeneration (KSA 13:14[74]).) In this sense, then, life-denial is also a psychophysiological phenomenon for Nietzsche. In his characterization of the “nihilistic instinct” that certain individuals have to will nothingness rather than life, Nietzsche introduces lifedenial as a psychophysiological phenomenon:

39 Remember the life-denying genius of slave morality from the Genealogy: that it exerts a covert weakening influence on strong life, raising the status of the weak in comparison.

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The nihilistic instinct [Der nihilistische Instinkt] says no; its mildest claim is that it would be better not to exist than to exist; that the will to nothingness has more value than the will to life; its more severe manifestation arises when nothingness is of the most supreme desirability [and] this life, as its opposite… becomes objectionable. (KSA 13:13[7])

Here, Nietzsche introduces an instinct (a feature of one’s psychophysiological constitution) that desires nothingness rather than life. For one driven by such an instinct, “life…becomes objectionable” (ibid.).40 This same nihilistic instinct [Der nihilistische Instinkt] characterizes those pessimistic individuals who “suffer from a reduction of life [die an der Verarmung des Lebens Leidenden], those poor in life [Lebensärmste]” (GS 370).41 Nietzsche contrasts these pessimists with “those richest in vitality” [der Reichste an Lebensfülle] (ibid.). Elsewhere, as an example of those suffering from such a reduction in life, Nietzsche cites the skeptics; he describes their “physiological condition [physiologischen Beschaffenheit]” as “weak nerves and ill health” [Nervenschwäche und Kränklichkeit] (BGE 208). As seen above, then, individuals who possess a nihilistic instinct—who “suffer from a reduction of life” (GS 370)—thus experience “an aversion to life, a rebellion against the most fundamental presuppositions of life” (GM III:28). This feeling of aversion to life occurs naturally alongside a desire not to exist. Importantly, however, one’s deeply-rooted aversion to life (or desire for nothingness) need not be recognized by the individual as such. Often, Nietzsche thinks, one’s aversion to life remains unconscious and unrecognized by the individual who harbors it. For example, in the Christian’s conscious feeling of excitement for an afterlife, Nietzsche locates a concealed aversion to life. (In fact, he understands the Christian’s excitement for another world as a manifestation of her aversion to life.) Yet the Christian does not recognize it as such; it remains something of which she is unconscious, unaware. Yet this aversion must

40 In the Genealogy, Nietzsche calls the nihilistic instincts which cause man to deny life and himself “great danger[s] to mankind” and notes that nihilism marks “the beginning of the end, standstill, mankind looking back wearily, turning its will against life” (GM, Preface, 5). 41 As seen below, Nietzsche also calls this nihilistic instinct a “degenerate instinct” or “instinct of decadence [den entartenden Instinkt]” in Ecce Homo (“Books: BT,” 2).

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be rooted, for Nietzsche, in one’s drives and affects—and more specifically, in a psychophysiology that Nietzsche calls life-denying insofar as it is dominated by a will-weakening instinct or set of instincts. We find further evidence for life-denial as a psychophysiological condition when Nietzsche frames life-denial in Ecce Homo as involving a “degenerate instinct that turns against life with subterranean vindictiveness [den entartenden Instinkt, der sich gegen das Leben mit unterirdischer Rachsucht wendet]” (EH, “Books: BT,” 2).42 This echoes his description of the men of ressentiment from the Genealogy as “worm-eaten physiological casualties [diese physiologisch Verunglückten und Wurmstichigen]” who serve as “a whole shivering soil of subterranean revenge” [ein ganzes zitterndes Erdreich unterirdischer Rache] (GM III:14). We see, then, that life-denial is not only a cognitive or socio-cultural phenomenon, but a psychophysiological phenomenon. Importantly for my conclusion in this chapter, those instincts and psychophysiological features Nietzsche designates life-denying are those he frames as either nihilistic or characteristic of a certain kind of nihilist: the affective nihilist.43 See, for example, his claim that one can discern whether an individual possesses a “nihilistic instinct [nihilistische Instinkt]” by detecting whether she says “no or yes” to her world and life (KSA 13:17[7]). In this same reflection from his notes, Nietzsche also describes a “nihilistic tendency [einer nihilistischen Tendenz]” present in particular individuals. Later, he asserts that individuals (such as Schopenhauer) who possess that life-denying “nihilistic instinct” manifest “the spirit of nihilism [der Geist des Nihilismus]” (KSA 13:17[7]). So we see not only that Nietzsche designates a variety of psychophysiological phenomena lifedenying, but that he also deems them nihilistic because they are fundamentally life-denying.

42 Note here that such a “degenerate instinct” is explicitly placed in opposition to a formula for the “highest affirmation born out of fullness, out of overfullness, an unreserved yea-saying even to suffering, even to guilt, even to everything questionable and strange about existence… This final, most joyful, effusive, high-spirited yes to life” (EH, “Books: BT,” 2). 43 Importantly, Nietzsche does not believe that all nihilists are affective nihilists. More on this in Chapter 7.

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Conclusion Nietzschean nihilism is an exceptionally complex and multifaceted phenomenon. For Nietzsche, a description (and, ultimately, a diagnosis) of nihilism as a problem of modernity needs not only to describe nihilistic socio-cultural configurations, but also to describe nihilistic beliefs, values, practices, and psychophysiological features. To truly understand Nietzschean nihilism and the problem it poses, one must become familiar with each of these elements in turn. But one must also discern what unites these phenomena. On my account, the nihilistic phenomena Nietzsche describes are all united under the concept of life-denial: all of the beliefs, norms, institutions, practices, and psychophysiological phenomena Nietzsche frames either as nihilistic or as characteristic of the nihilist deny life in some way. In other words, all of the phenomena Nietzsche identifies as nihilistic either (1) involve a negative evaluation of life (implicitly or explicitly) or (2) forestall the possibility of healthy life by weakening the will (thus weakening and degrading life itself) or preserving weak forms of life. Just as there are certain life-denying beliefs, judgments, and epistemic practices characteristic of the nihilist, so, too, are there life-denying socio-cultural configurations—particular life-denying practices and institutions—that characterize nihilism as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Furthermore, there are life-denying instincts, affects, and other psychophysiological features characteristic of nihilists. In what follows, I focus on the psychophysiological constitution of a particular kind of nihilist: the affective nihilist. Such an individual suffers from physiological decadence, a nihilistic “will to deny life [Willen zur Verneinung des Lebens]” (KSA 13:14[17]) that manifests as weakness of the will, as “the feeling of powerlessness, the lack of the great affirmative feelings of power (in muscles, nerves, centers of movement)” (KSA 13:14[29]). The affective nihilist, as an individual with a weakened will, experiences the weakening of “desires, the feelings of pleasure and pain, the will to power, the feeling of pride, having and wanting to have more” (KSA 13:14[65]). This weakening of the will to power functions “as aversion and shame to everything natural, as negation of life, as disease and habitual weakness” (ibid.). Understanding affective nihilism, I claim, is fundamental to understanding nihilism both as a cognitive and as a socio-cultural phenomenon. After all, since Nietzsche believes one’s beliefs, values, and epistemic orientations follow from one’s psychophysiological constitution—and since he also believes societies and cultures are

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shaped by those beliefs, doctrines, values, and institutions that become dominant—understanding nihilism as an affective phenomenon enables us to understand the origin of nihilism in certain of its cognitive and socio-cultural aspects as well.

References Anderson, R. Lanier. 1998. “Truth and Objectivity in Perspectivism.” Synthese 115 (1): 1–32. Babich, Babette. 2017. “Nietzsche’s Posthuman Imperative: On the Human, All too Human Dream of Transhumanism.” In Nietzsche and Transhumanism: Precursor or Enemy? Edited by Yunus Tuncel. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. Babich, Babette. 2007. “‘The Problem of Science’ in Nietzsche and Heidegger.” Revista Portuguesa De Filosofia 63 (1/3): 205–237. Gemes, Ken. 1992. “Nietzsche’s Critique of Truth.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52 (1): 47–65. Gemes, Ken. 2006. “We Remain of Necessity Strangers to Ourselves.” In Nietzsche’s on the Genealogy of Morals: Critical Essays. Edited by Christa Davis Acampora. Lanham, USA: Rowman & Littlefield. Hatab, Lawrence. 2006. Nietzsche’s Life Sentence. New York: Taylor and Francis Books. Huddleston, Andrew. 2019. “Nietzsche on Nihilism: A Unifying Thread.” Philosophers’ Imprint 19 (11): 1–19. Janaway, Christopher. 2007. Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche’s Genealogy. New York: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, Scott. 2012. “Nietzsche’s Questions Concerning the Will to Truth.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 50 (2): 265–289. Meyer, Matthew. 2012. Reading Nietzsche Through the Ancients. Berlin: De Gruyter. Mitcheson, Katrina. 2013. Nietzsche, Truth, and Transformation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2002. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1999. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Translated by Raymond Geuss and Ronald Speirs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1996. Human, All Too Human. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

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Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2005. Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings. Translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007. On the Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Carol Diethe. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1967–77. Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden. Edited by G. Colli and M. Montinari. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2006. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Reginster, Bernard. 2006. The Affirmation of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Riccardi, Mattia. 2018. “Psychological Nihilism, Passions, and Neglected Works: Three Topics for Nietzsche Studies.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49 (2): 266– 270. Richardson, John. 2020, forthcoming. Nietzsche’s Values. New York: Oxford University Press. Thomson, Iain. 2011. “Transcendence and the Problem of Otherworldly Nihilism: Taylor, Heidegger, Nietzsche.” Inquiry 54 (2): 140–159. Van Tongeren, Paul. 2018. Friedrich Nietzsche and European Nihilism. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

CHAPTER 4

Before Affective Nihilism, Understanding Affect

Introduction As indicated in the preceding chapter, Nietzsche not only deems certain beliefs, norms, and socio-cultural configurations life-denying (and thus, nihilistic): he also designates certain affects, instincts, and psychophysiological constitutions as such. In Chapter 5, I focus on the latter species of life-denying phenomena, explicating what nihilism looks like for Nietzsche when it infects one at the level of one’s drives and affects: that is, what it looks like as affective nihilism. It would be quite impossible to understand the complex affective condition Nietzsche designates affective nihilism, however, if one did not first come to understand Nietzsche’s account of affectivity. In this chapter, then, I offer a Nietzschean account of affects and their functions, which include exciting or inhibiting the drives, motivating behavior (by inclining and disinclining the individual who experiences them), and shaping evaluative orientations. Additionally, I explain the transpersonal nature of affect: not only are affects contagious, but they are also communicated in a norm-laden socio-cultural context that plays a critical role in shaping the phenomenal character and motivational force of affective experience. The transpersonal nature of affect—especially the way that affects are socially and culturally mediated—is critical for understanding how one might become “infected” by affective nihilism: by internalizing certain beliefs and norms that damage one’s will.

© The Author(s) 2020 K. Creasy, The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37133-3_4

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Affect in Nietzsche In his notes, Nietzsche remarks that “Under every thought there is an affect [Affekt]” (KSA 12:2[103]). And indeed, throughout his work Nietzsche examines a wide variety of affects and their functions, analyzing the influence of affects such as pity, guilt, contempt, fear, honor, dishonor, pride, and cheerfulness. As Mark Alfano notes, “affect crops up in 87 passages” from Nietzsche’s corpus (Alfano 2019a, p. 6). Yet Nietzsche’s treatment of affects extends far beyond the passages in which he explicitly utilizes the word “affect” [Affekt]. In fact, he largely uses “affects” [Affekte] and “passions” [Leidenschaften] interchangeably (BGE 36, 198, 201), and in numerous passages, he uses “affect” [Affekt] and “feeling” [Gefühl] interchangeably as well (BGE 19; GM II:11, 14; GM III:17, 20; A 20). Indeed, reflections on affect are fairly ubiquitous in Nietzsche’s body of work. Predictably, then, several scholars offer accounts of Nietzschean affectivity. While some investigate the way in which affects produce values or evaluative stances (Janaway 2009; Katsafanas 2016; Poellner 2007; Kail 2018), still others examine the way in which affects shape epistemic perspectives (Janaway 2007; Clark 1998; Clark and Dudrick 2012) and perceptual experience (Poellner 2007; Katsafanas 2013). Some offer a broadly cognitivist account of Nietzschean affects (Poellner 2007); others take issue with a purely cognitivist account (Leiter 2019). Yet few scholars examine Nietzsche’s claim that affects not only shape thought and experience; they also shape behaviors and individuals (Anderson 2012; Alfano 2019b; Leiter 2019). We see, for example, that when one’s “most lively drives [Triebe]… grow together with depressive affects [Affekte]” such as suspicion and fear, psychological illness and physiological degeneration result (TI, “Skirmishes,” 45). Furthermore, the affects one experiences do not merely reflect or express some feature of the individual’s particular psychology, divorced from the context in which they are experienced. Rather, affects are communicated between and among individuals, and such communication always takes place in a norm-laden socio-cultural context. In what follows, I offer a detailed account of affect in Nietzsche’s thought. I attend especially to the transformative force of affects and the critical functional role Nietzsche assigns to affect in the mechanics of personal transformation. Understanding Nietzsche on the transformative force of affects is critical for understanding affective nihilism, since as we will see, the psychophysiological disorder of will-weakness experienced by the affective nihilist results from particular kinds of affective experiences.

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Affects as Felt Inclinations and Disinclinations That Produce Beliefs, Experience, and Behavior In his notes, Nietzsche describes the activity of those drives and affects that make up the physiological constitution of the individual as those “actual happenings” operating “underneath our consciousness […] [and] the occurring series and succession of feelings, thoughts, and so forth are symptoms of [these]” (KSA 12:1[61]). Nietzsche goes on: Under every thought there is an affect [Affekt]. Every thought, every feeling, every will is not born from one particular drive, but an overall condition […] and it results from the momentary determinations of power of all the constituting drives—that is, the ruling instinct as well as those obedient or resistant ones. (KSA 12:1[61])

Although human beings are fundamentally composed of what Nietzsche calls drives [Triebe], affects for Nietzsche operate alongside these drives, interacting with them to produce desires, beliefs, actions, and new feelings.1 Most basically, Nietzsche understands affects as evaluative feelings.2 Yet these evaluative feelings—these “reactions of the will” (KSA 13:11[71]) often associated with somatic states of arousal (BGE 19, 259; KSA 13:15[111], [118])—crucially function to shape our experiences and behaviors in a variety of ways.3 Indeed, Nietzsche characterizes affects as

1 Of course, they are also induced by drives. See below. 2 His reflections on value-feelings [Werthgefühlen], both in his published work (Nachlass

D 148; BGE 4; 186) and in the Nachlass (KSA 12:6[25], 6:[26]; 9:[1], [62]; 10:[2], [23], [49], [168] and KSA 13:14[185], 15[17]) are illuminating here, especially as he sometimes uses Werthgefühlen and Affekte interchangeably (KSA 12:6[26], 10[168] and KSA 13:14[185]). 3 Nietzsche frequently connects affects (as “inner movement[s]” of the body) to physiological movements or feelings: he speaks about how affective experiences are accompanied by “vascular changes” (KSA 13:14[170]) and how they impact “the whole muscular system” [des ganzen Muskelsystems] (ibid.), and he relates affective evaluations to the presence and absence of “feelings of power (in muscles, nerves, centers of movements)” (KSA 13:14[29]). Still, it is unclear from his texts whether or not he intends to establish a strict identity between affects and somatic states.

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felt “inclinations and aversions” (D 34) that play a “powerful” role in coloring or “painting” the world of experience4 (GS 152), motivating belief formation, and producing behavior. In addition, affective states typically have a phenomenal character: there is something it is like to be under the influence of a particular affect (Mitchell 2017, p. 41; Kail 2018, p. 238; Leiter 2019, p. 70).5 R. Lanier Anderson’s account is particularly helpful for getting clear on the structure of affectivity in Nietzsche. In distinguishing between Nietzschean drives and affects, Anderson suggests that unlike drives, which have a characteristic “aim/object structure,” affects involve (1) a “stimulus object”; (2) “a default behavioral response”; and (3) a specific valence, or “emotional coloring,” that shapes the way the stimulus object is encountered in experience (2012, p. 218). For any affect, on Anderson’s view, there must be an object that provokes that affect and a tended behavioral outcome. In addition, there is a particular feature of every affect—its “emotional coloring”—that both impacts how the stimulus object shows up and shapes the particular behavioral response one has. To say that the emotional coloring of a particular affect impacts how the stimulus object shows up is to say that it both determines (1) how one assesses the stimulus object at hand and (2) which features of the stimulus object become salient (standing out to the individual in the throes of a particular affect) and which go unnoticed. To say that an affect’s emotional coloring shapes the particular behavioral response one has is to say that the specific form that the tended behaviors of an affective experience take—the “pattern and the manner of the agent’s default response” (2012, p. 219)—is determined by the emotional quality of the affect at hand. As an example, Anderson describes how the “evaluative framework [of ressentiment ] shapes the pursuit of revenge”—the default behavioral response to which one who experiences ressentiment is disposed—in a very specific way. If the impelling affect is ressentiment, that 4 In “On Knowledge, Truth, and Value,” Clark remarks on the way in which “whatever belongs to the affective side of human beings” “colors” existence (Clark 1998, p. 60). 5 Leiter believes Nietzsche presents a “non-cognitivist view” of certain “basic affects of inclination and aversion” insofar as such affects “are marked by a distinctive conscious, qualitative feel” (74). Following Kail, however, I find it potentially problematic to attribute a robust philosophical theory to Nietzsche (246)—one with which he would have been unfamiliar—and so I avoid framing Nietzsche’s thought in this way. Still, I am sympathetic to many of Leiter’s claims about the non-cognitive nature of certain basic affects, as well as the cognitive nature of many second-order affects.

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“most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred” (GM I:7), the revenge one pursues is likely to be drawn-out, insidious, and subterranean. If the impelling affect is a comparatively more benign, superficial form of hatred—for example, a hatred that “consummates and exhausts itself in an immediate reaction (GM I:10)”—then one’s course of action will look very different (Perhaps one lashes out briefly and unthinkingly). In short, the way in which one pursues revenge (and the shape that revenge takes) will depend on the emotional coloring of the affect driving that pursuit. In order to understand what role affects play in the production of beliefs, experience, and behavior, let us look at each of these in turn, beginning with the role affects play in shaping both (1) one’s experience of the world and (2) one’s interpretation of that experience (via their emotional coloring or valence). This is perhaps the most commonly treated function of affects in Nietzsche.6 In The Gay Science, Nietzsche reflects on the way in which human beings actively create their world by “continually [making] something that was not there before: the entire ever growing world of valuations, colors, accents, perspectives, scales, affirmations, and denials” via affective means (GS 301). This power of affects to shape reality appears again in the first essay of the Genealogy, where Nietzsche reflects on the way in which “the affect of contempt” distorts one’s perception of the world (GM I:10); in Beyond Good and Evil , Nietzsche notes that “affects like fear, love, and hate, as well as passive affects of laziness, will be dominant during even the ‘simplest’ processes of sensibility” (BGE 192). As Nietzsche’s descriptions above seem to suggest, then, affects shape our epistemic perspectives. In the third essay of the Genealogy, Nietzsche reflects on the way affects organize and assemble perceptual experiences, shaping one’s perspectives on the world in part by making certain features of that world salient (and others less so).7 Affects shape what we notice at any given time; thus, they plays a critical role in shaping what and how we know. Indeed, the perspectival nature of knowledge for Nietzsche is due, in large part, to the partiality of the affects; as Janaway notes, “the in-built constraint upon knowledge that makes it ‘only perspectival’ lies in the knowing subject’s affective nature” (2009, pp. 52–53).

6 See, for example, Clark (1998), Poellner (2009), and Katsafanas (2013). 7 This is something treated both by Clark (1998, 2015) and Katsafanas (2013).

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Additionally, affects motivate belief formation. Indeed, Nietzsche remarks that beliefs are often fabricated as pretexts for affective experiences (D 34), as “imaginary causes” that function to explain our affective states (TI, “Four Errors,” 6). We see in the Genealogy, for example, that feelings of hatred and impotence—experienced by powerless individuals towards more powerful individuals—lead the powerless to develop beliefs in free will and responsibility that make the powerful (1) culpable for actions that harm the powerless and (2) evil. These beliefs, according to Nietzsche, are formed merely as a means of justifying the particular affects experienced by the powerless: here, the “affects of revenge and hatred [experienced by powerless individuals] put [beliefs] to their own use” (GM I:13). Notably, this is true of positive affective experiences— what Nietzsche calls “generally pleasant feelings [der angenehmen Allgemeingefühle]” as well as negative ones (TI, “Four Errors,” 6). Additionally, Nietzsche sometimes suggests that one’s commitment to a particular belief maps onto the strength of the affective experience motivating that belief: when particularly strong affects underpin a belief, one feels all the more committed to that belief and is willing to “defend [that] belief more passionately” (ibid.). Finally, affects shape and motivate behavior. In the Genealogy, for example, Nietzsche remarks upon the capacity of “strong affects…released suddenly” to “throw the human soul out of joint, plunging it into terror, frosts, fires, and raptures to such an extent that it rids itself of all small and petty forms of lethargy, apathy, and depression” (GM III:20). So, too, in Twilight of the Idols do we see Nietzsche describe the “domesticated” behaviors of those who have internalized “the depressive affect of fear” (TI, “Humanity, 2”). We see in these examples that changes in affectivity are reflected in one’s behavior. Indeed, in both of these examples, we find that affects prompt certain characteristic behavioral outcomes. For Nietzsche, a critical way in which affects determine particular behavioral outcomes has to do with the way in which affects shape behavior, by influencing one’s (typically unconscious) decision-making and motivating one to pursue a particular course of action rather than another. According to Nietzsche, affects have motivational force, or what Leiter calls “motivational oomph,” in virtue of their impelling and repelling character (Leiter 2019, p. 70).8 Otherwise put, affects pull us 8 According to Kail, affects are responsible for the phenomenal character of conscious valuation as “impelling and repelling” (2018, p. 240).

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toward particular courses of action and attract us toward a variety of phenomena (such as places, people, or ideas), even as they push us away from others (KSA 12:7[6]). (Remember here Nietzsche’s description of affects as “inclinations and aversions” (D 34)). In a selection of passages, Nietzsche refers to one’s affective nature as a “primum mobile,” the “first mover” in which one’s actions and movements originate (KSA 10:4[136]9 ; KSA 12:10[9]). For this reason, any explanation of one’s actions or decisions should appeal to one’s affective states, as well as the fundamental push and pull of affect. And indeed, we see Nietzsche himself appeal to affect in explanations of particular actions. In Beyond Good and Evil, he suggests that “[w]hen the highest and strongest drives erupt passionately”—that is, spurred on by strong affects—an individual acts in such a way that she is “[driven]…up and out and far above the average, over the depths of the herd conscience” (BGE 201). Later in this same text, he claims both that a variety of affective sources motivate artistic creation (BGE 370) and that those with an affective nature dominated by the “passion [Leidenschaft] for knowledge” are compelled by that passionate affect to pursue “bold and painful experiments” in their attempts to acquire that knowledge they seek (BGE 210). Affects as Drive-Induced Evaluative Orientations Assembling a more robust account of just how affects constitute the individual and influence behavior requires us to understand the interplay between drives and affects. John Richardson’s analysis of Nietzsche’s drive ontology (1996), as well as his reflections on affect and value (1996, pp. 36–37), give us an excellent place to start. For Nietzsche, argues Richardson, the evaluative perspectives of drives emerge organically from out of the natural way in which each and every drive “‘polarizes’ the world,” in virtue of its end-directedness (1996, p. 36): Each drive’s end-directed activity already ‘polarizes’ the world toward it, giving everything a significance relative to it. So, for example, the sex drive views the world as inspiring or requiring a sexual response; the world

9 Here, Nietzsche refers to “[a] heap of affects, a primum mobile, but with its movement displaced and crushed by everything that moves”—that is, all other things with an affective nature.

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appears with erotic potential as its meaning or sense. (Richardson 1996, p. 36)

As we see here, the fact that every drive can only approach the world around it through its own goal-directed activity means that the world is never experienced as a neutral world for a drive; it is experienced, rather, as a world that aids or hinders a drive’s end. And indeed, we see this in Human, All Too Human, when Nietzsche connects a drive’s “feeling that one wants to be promoted” with its “estimate of the value of the goal” (HH I:32). It is because of this “polarization” of the world at the level of one’s drives, then, that certain things seem valuable, while others do not. Importantly, however, these experiences of value—what is valuable to us and what is not—depend crucially on our affective lives. As Richardson notes, “value lies in the way the world is ‘polarized’ for each will…. It lies in how things ‘matter’ to the will and so depends on that deep receptiveness of will that Nietzsche calls ‘affect’ [Affekt] or ‘feeling’ [Gefühl]” (Richardson 1996, p. 37). Inspired by Richardson’s remark here, Paul Katsafanas’s illuminating work offers a much more detailed account of the relationship between drives, affects, and value/s. According to Katsafanas, drives lead beings to “experience situations in evaluative terms,” since “drives induce affective orientations that shape a driven being’s perspective on the world, and these affects arise in response to features of the world that driven beings experience as having a certain value” (Katsafanas 2013, p. 744). Unlike Peter Kail, who suggests affects might be “mere symptoms of the most basic value judgments of the drives”—that is, mere indications or “signs” of an even more basic valuation at the level of a drive (“related to the success or otherwise” of a drive’s achieving its particular goal) (Kail 2018, p. 240)—Katsafanas understands affects as evaluative orientations, as feelings that constitute value judgments or evaluations of one’s world (BGE 260).10 It is thus because of affects that “[o]ur experience of the world is fundamentally value-laden”; that the “world tempts and repulses, threatens and charms” (Katsafanas 2013, p. 745).11 10 Poellner also notes that “[h]uman value is… largely identified by [Nietzsche] with [affective] structures” (2009, p. 165). 11 In my view, Katsafanas’s claim—that affects, in Nietzsche, constitute evaluative orientations—offers a more convincing start to a Nietzschean account of affect. Indeed,

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Although Katsafanas’s account—according to which Nietzschean affects are drive-induced evaluative orientations—is a convincing start to a Nietzschean account of affect, he misses a crucial feature of affect that makes clear its transformative potential. Not only do drives induce affects, inclining us or disinclining us in particular ways; affects also exert influence on drives. Otherwise put, there is a “feedback loop” mechanism at work between Nietzschean drives and affects.12 We see, for example, that affects can (1) enhance or weaken a drive’s activity and even (2) change the directionality of one’s drives. Much of this depends on how affects function in individual cases, or whether they lead one to “feel” either positively or negatively: that which Kail calls their “motivational valency” (240). Think of Nietzsche’s suggestion that one might “give oneself over to the… unrestrained gratification of a drive in order to generate disgust with it and with disgust to acquire a power over the drive” (D 109). In this case, we see both that drives generate affects, and that affects can acquire power over drives. Here, an affect—disgust—opposes the vehemence of a drive, thus weakening it. Elsewhere, Nietzsche claims that while certain affects “augment the energy of vital feelings,” other affects function to depress one’s activity and inhibit one’s feeling of life, resulting in “a total loss of life and vital energy” (A 7). This already is an acknowledgment of the way in which affects, even if induced by drives, turn back to transform and redirect those drives. We find further evidence of this in the Genealogy, where Nietzsche notes that reactive affects and the evaluative frameworks that arise from out of them are “hostile to life” (GM II:11),

Kail’s contention that affects are signs or symptoms of drives’ evaluations (determined by whether their success conditions are met) rather than “essential constituents” (236) of valuations relies heavily on a passage in which Nietzsche frames pleasure and “unpleasure” as signs or expressions of valuations (“judgments”) occurring at the level of one’s drives (KSA 13:11[71]). Here, Nietzsche seems to identify pleasure and pain with the most basic affective orientations of inclination and disinclination. And since Nietzsche goes on to claim that “feelings of pleasure and unpleasure are reactions of the will (affects) in which the intellectual center sets the value of certain changes” (ibid.), Kail surmises that affects in Nietzsche might simply be expressions of judgments, rather than phenomena from out of which evaluations or judgments fundamentally emerge. Though, as Kail suggests, Nietzsche seems here to frame pleasure and “unpleasure” as feelings resulting from drives being satisfied or thwarted in their strivings (thus signs of whether a drive has met its success conditions), it does not follow that he generally understands affects as mere indications of valuations rather than evaluative orientations themselves. 12 See also D 34 and BGE 238.

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while active affects facilitate the “true will to life” (ibid.). In order to better understand the interactions of affects and drives, then, we must look not only at the way that drives structure one’s affects, but the way affects bring about changes in the drives. An example of this affective feedback loop is the obstruction or depression of a drive by an affect that weakens it or turns the drive away from its end. We see this in Nietzsche’s account of pity [Mitleid] as a “depressive” affect. In Daybreak, Nietzsche describes pity’s “essential nature” as “harmful”; it is a “weakness” and a “losing of oneself through a harmful [schädigenden] affect.” His later description of pity as a “particular case of being unable to withstand stimuli” (EH “Wise” 4) illustrates why pity might be considered damaging, a “[loss] of oneself.” Insofar as pity hinders one’s ability to act—for Nietzsche, an ability inseparable from the efficacy of one’s drives—it damages the pitying individual by lessening their vitality and turning them away from their ends (Creasy 2018). Quite simply, “one loses force [verliert Kraft] when one pities” (A 7). Though Nietzsche’s accounts of the depressive or inhibitory function of certain affects might be most memorable, his descriptions of the excitatory function affects can play is just as characteristic. Animating, strengthening affects include noble varieties of pride and honor (BGE 260); productive contempt for one’s enemies (GS 169 and 283); a fortifying and forward-looking cheerfulness [Heiterkeit] (GS 283, 343; BGE 24, 26913 ; TI, “Skirmishes,” 13); a lust that propels one forward (BGE 23; Z 3:10); and the feeling of beauty [Gefühl des Schönen] (TI, “Skirmishes,” 19, 20).14 In the case of the feeling of beauty, Nietzsche describes its excitatory function explicitly, remarking that while “everything ugly weakens and oppresses human beings… actually [making] them lose strength,” an individual’s “feeling of power, their will to power, their courage, their pride… rises with the beautiful” (TI, “Skirmishes,” 20). Just as certain affects inhibit the will, others embolden and excite it, strengthening drives and thrusting the individual toward certain ends.

13 Note for BGE 269 that cheerfulness (and hardness) are remedies against succumbing to self-destruction and corruption, a way to keep forward momentum. 14 Other examples include the feeling of overfullness or intoxication (BGE 260, TI, “Skirmishes,” 9).

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For Nietzsche, then, one’s affects shape the strength and directionality of the drives alongside which they occur. Importantly, however, the relationship among affects and drives must be understood as an “interpenetration/interlocking, a process” (KSA 12:2[139]). An affect thus most basically situates an individual or object in this “interpenetration” or “process” in certain determinate and determining ways, such that something about oneself—one’s affective orientation—shapes the way that one exerts and encounters force. Nietzsche’s account of affect and its transformative force is undoubtedly influenced by Spinoza’s reflections on affects (Creasy 2018). Most broadly, since the manifestation of a particular affect or emotion for Spinoza determines a set of possibilities for interacting with one’s world, a change in affect changes the way in which one is situated in one’s world. On Spinoza’s account, this is due to the role affects or emotions play in changing one’s potential to affect anything at all, or to be affected. In particular, in Spinoza’s Ethics (III:D3), he defines affect as the following: By ‘affect’ I understand states of a body by which its power of acting is increased or lessened, helped or hindered, and also the ideas of these states. Thus, if we can be the adequate cause of any of these states, the affect in question is what I call an ‘action’; otherwise it is a ‘passion.’ (2017, p. 50)

For Spinoza, the affects we experience (and the affective orientations we inhabit) either increase our ability to act from out of ourselves (making us more adequate causes of our actions) or constrain this ability (making us merely partial, less adequate causes of our actions). In Spinoza’s terminology, one’s affects either aid one’s conatus, advancing that striving for perseverance in existence that is part of one’s most basic nature, or hinder it, making it more difficult for a being to persist in existence. Nietzsche holds a similar view, though in the place of conatus as a will either to persevere in being or increase one’s capacity to act, Nietzsche emphasizes the latter. That is, in his notion of the will to power, Nietzsche argues that rather than striving for mere preservation, living beings strive to advance and further their ends. On Nietzsche’s view, then, our affective orientations either augment or diminish our will(s) to power.15

15 Thank you to Alan Schrift for pointing this out. For more on parallels between Nietzsche and Spinoza, see Schrift (2013).

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An indication of Spinoza’s influence on Nietzsche shows up in a letter he wrote to Franz Overbeck, in which he enthusiastically describes Spinoza as his “precursor.”16 While Nietzsche rejects Spinoza’s rationalism, then, his account of affects preserves Spinoza’s broad point about the transformative potential of affects: an individual’s affects put that individual in a determinate sort of relation to the world, such that certain interactions are open for them and others are foreclosed. Affects, then, shape an individual’s relational possibilities, thus shaping the potential that the world has to transform that individual and the potential that individual has to transform their world. On Nietzsche’s account of affect, as with Spinoza’s, one’s affects and affective orientations situate one in the world in some determinate way, such that they can be influenced and transformed by certain things and not others, in certain ways and not others (what Spinoza calls a capacity for being affected). Furthermore, an individual’s affects and affective orientations enable them to influence or transform their world in certain determinate ways and not others (what Spinoza calls a capacity for affecting).17 Additionally, for both thinkers, the more one masters one’s affective life—the more one is able to “freely have or not have [their] affects, [their] pros and cons” (BGE 284), the freer one becomes. For both thinkers, freedom consists in becoming a more adequate cause of one’s feelings and actions. As Spinoza puts it: we ‘act’ when something happens, in us or outside us, of which we are the adequate cause—that is (by D1) when something happens that follows from our nature, and can be clearly and distinctly understood through it alone. On the other hand, I say that we are ‘acted on’ when something happens in us … of which we are a partial cause. (2017, p. 51) 16 Nietzsche’s enthusiasm is apparent here: “I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted!

I have a precursor, and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza: that I should have turned to him just now, was inspired by ‘instinct.’ Not only is his overtendency like mine—namely, to make all knowledge the most powerful affect [Affekt]—but in five main points of his doctrine I recognize myself; this most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to me precisely in these matters: he denies the freedom of the will, teleology, the moral world-order, the unegoistic, and evil. Even though the divergences are admittedly tremendous, they are due more to the difference in time, culture, and science. In summa: my lonesomeness, which, as on very high mountains, often made it hard for me to breathe and made my blood rush out, is now at least a twosomeness” (Nietzsche 1989, p. 105). 17 Deleuze remarks that Nietzsche’s “will to power is always determined at the same time it determines, qualified at the same time it qualifies” (Deleuze 1983, p. 62).

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In his indictment of typical misunderstandings of freedom from Beyond Good and Evil, we see Nietzsche offers a similar account, reducing “freedom of the will” to “the word for the multi-faceted state of pleasure of one who commands and, at the same time, identifies himself with the accomplished act of willing” (BGE 19).18 As we will see later, Nietzsche believes that we can become more adequate causes of our feelings and actions by cultivating a stance of reflective distance from our feelings, values, and beliefs. In his commitment to genealogical inquiry as a practice and way of life, Nietzsche thus reveals what he understands to be his Spinozist “overtendency… to make all knowledge the most powerful affect [Affekt]” (Nietzsche 1989, p. 105). In sum, Nietzschean affects are (1) evaluative feelings, felt inclinations and disinclinations with distinctive phenomenal characters. They are both (2) induced by one’s drives and impact one’s drives (Creasy 2018). Additionally, as evaluative feelings, affects (3) constitute value-laden perspectives on the stimulus objects that provoke them. They also (4) tend to result in particular behaviors (due to their impelling and repelling character). Finally, though he frequently describes discrete affective states, Nietzsche understands affectivity as an unfolding process, which he often characterizes as involving fluctuations in somatic arousal or activity (HH 1:133; TI, “Skirmishes” 10; KSA 13:15[111). For Nietzsche, affects play a crucial role in the formation and transformation of individuals. Although the influence one’s affects have on who one becomes (and how one becomes) often goes unnoticed, Nietzsche believes it is extensive. Affects incline or disincline individuals toward or against particular beliefs, behaviors, courses of actions, and objects. As inclinations and disinclinations, affects have motivational force: the affects I experience motivate my decisions and behaviors and dispose me to particular beliefs. As functioning to inhibit or excite certain of one’s drives, affects are also transformative: they encourage particular directions for personal development and discourage others.

18 I am not hereby taking a position with respect to Nietzsche as a determinist, compatibilist, or self-creationist; I merely note that a Nietzschean conception of freedom involves becoming a more adequate cause of one’s feelings and actions.

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Second-Order Affects and the Transpersonal Nature of Affect According to Nietzsche, as driven beings, we constantly experience affects of pleasure and displeasure, happiness and unhappiness: indeed, “in every act of willing there is, to begin with, a plurality of feelings [Gefühlen], namely: the feeling of the state of away from which, the feeling of the state towards which, and the feeling of this ‘away from’ and ‘towards’ themselves” (BGE 19). Otherwise put, whenever I am willing—which, as a being who wills power, I always am—I experience a range of first-order affects. Yet according to Nietzsche, I also experience affects in relation to certain of my first-order affects: that is to say, I experience second-order affects. Second-order affects play a special role in shaping the individual, insofar as they either incline or disincline me toward particular affects, actions, and interactions. When I experience disgust at my anger, for example, I feel an aversion toward that first-order affect. According to Nietzsche, this aversion will result in a range of tended behavioral outcomes. For example, experiencing disgust at my anger is likely to motivate me to avoid people or situations that provoke my anger. (It might also motivate me to work on my emotional life, so that I might feel anger less frequently!).19 If, on the other hand, I experience pride in my anger—one might imagine an individual experiencing the second-order affect of righteous rage—I will feel inclined toward that first-order affect. This inclination will likely motivate me to pursue situations or people that provoke my anger. At the very least, I will not be inclined to avoid such situations or people. A few examples from Nietzsche help illustrate this point. In Beyond Good and Evil , Nietzsche describes the arrogance of suffering individuals, an arrogance felt in relation to a pain that gives them “a greater knowledge than the cleverest and wisest can have” (BGE 270). (Along with arrogance in suffering, the sufferer experiences disgust [Ekel] in response to the simplistic and naïve pleasure of those who have not suffered enough (ibid.).) Felt arrogance in response to pain both reveals an implicit valuation of pain and might incline one to pursue painful experiences. At a minimum, one who rejoices in their pain will not be likely to shy away from painful experiences (or to pursue (implicitly devalued) pleasurable experiences in their stead). 19 See Alfano on disgust and the pathos of distance (2019b, p. 209).

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In a later section that illuminates the incredible complexity of our affective natures, Nietzsche presents his reader with the example of an individual at a dinner party who feels shame in response to a furious [rasend] explosion of affect that expresses an underlying and unarticulated disappointment [Enttäuschung] and disgust [Ekel] with one’s “vulgar” culture and contemporaries (BGE 282). In the example Nietzsche offers here, the shame this individual experiences in relation to her fury seems to turn her away from source and origin of her fury, disinclining her both from experiencing such an intense outburst of fury and from reflecting deeply on the underlying cause of this affect. Indeed, when one of her dining partners inquires into what really happened, the ashamed individual “hesitantly” responds: “I don’t know… maybe the harpies flew over the table at me” (BGE 282).20 In addition to inclining or disinclining us towards particular affects, actions, and interactions, second-order affects have the potential to change us, insofar as they change our affective nature. After all, the human being for Nietzsche is no more than a complex of drives and affects. In the Preface to The Gay Science, for example, Nietzsche details a host of second-order affects, emphasizing their transformative force. We see, for example, that one’s mind can “oppose” the negative impacts of certain affects—what Nietzsche calls “pathological states of the mind” such as repentance and gloom—by generating the second-order affect of pride (Preface, 2). One becomes deeper—and, eventually, stronger— by “[pitting] pride… against” a feeling of immense pain (Preface, 3), embracing and becoming proud of one’s suffering. As a way to a “new happiness,” one can also love one’s own doubt and delight in one’s distress: “the attraction of everything problematic, the delight in an X, is so great in highly spiritual, spiritualized people … that this delight flares up like bright embers again and again over all the distress of what is problematic, over all the danger of uncertainty” (ibid.).21 Each of these secondorder affects has transformative force: delight in one’s pain, for instance, “[transforms] all we are into light and flame, and also all that wounds us” 20 Nietzsche describes how those who reject slave morality experience a “higher, more far-sighted pity” in response to slavish pity: “don’t you realize who our inverted pity is aimed at when it fights against your pity as the worst of all pampering and weaknesses?— Pity against pity, then!” (BGE 225). 21 For another investigation of the significance of this Preface, see Anderson and Cristy (2017).

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(ibid.). Indeed, Nietzsche explicitly designates these affective experiences as “dangerous exercises in self-mastery” from which “one emerges … a different person, with a few more question marks, above all with the will henceforth to question further, more deeply, severely, harshly, evilly, and quietly than one had previously questioned” (ibid.). Second-order affects are generated in a variety of ways. Though they most frequently occur automatically and spontaneously, expressing some conflict among one’s drives, Nietzsche also details particularly generative or transformative circumstances that tend to provoke second-order affects. Some individuals might straightforwardly attempt to reflect upon their affective nature and either passively experience second-order affects or attempt to actively provoke and cultivate them.22 Still others might read a text featuring characters whose practices and affective lives they find abhorrent (or admirable), realizing only later that one shares certain practices and affective orientations with those characters.23 (And indeed, any positive or negative evaluation one experiences must be a result of broadly approbatory and disapprobatory affects that incline or disincline one.) The story of our affective lives, according to Nietzsche, is one of desire and distaste, of cravings and aversions (HH I:34; KSA 12:7[3]) that impel us toward certain courses of action and repel us from others. Given the opacity of introspection,24 our frequent confusion as to the true sources of our decisions and actions (GM, “Preface,” 1; BGE 32),25 and the complex ways in which second-order affects are formed, the stories of our individual affective lives are also exceptionally difficult—if not impossible—to tell. Though I might experience feelings of attraction and repulsion, of inclination and disinclination, I frequently do not know why I do, or quite how those affects motivate my decisions and actions. In short, knowledge of the causal role that affective experience plays in shaping my evaluations and motivating my behavior is often heavily obscured, if not entirely inaccessible (HH I:491; KSA 10:7[268]). This is further complicated by the fact that second-order affects are often produced in 22 One should be reminded here, too, of Nietzsche’s claim that one must think differently in order to “feel differently” (D 103). 23 Indeed, this is the experience Ken Gemes believes Nietzsche intended to generate in his contemporaneous readers of the Genealogy (2006). 24 For more on this, see Riccardi (2015). 25 For a more extended discussion of this, see Katsafanas (2012).

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me as a result of my unconsciously adopting and internalizing beliefs and judgments (especially widespread social norms26 ) from without. In other words, the transpersonal nature of affect complicates the story of my affective life. According to Nietzsche, the affects one experiences (and thus, the beliefs, behaviors, and objects toward which one is inclined or disinclined in virtue of these affects) are not simply a function of pre-determined, culturally independent, individual drives. Indeed, according to Nietzsche, one’s affective experience often results from the ways in which one’s drives, qualities, and actions are conceptualized and assessed at the level of one’s culture or society, and how that is implicitly or explicitly communicated to the individual. Such assessments have the power to shape one’s affective experience whether or not the individual is consciously aware of them or able to articulate their value-laden content. Broadly put, Nietzsche often frames affects and affective orientations as transpersonal: though they are individually experienced, they are socially and culturally mediated, produced in part by the interaction between an individual and the world to which she belongs. The causal story of affects, then, frequently exceeds or transcends the individual. In Nietzsche’s analysis of cowardice and humility from Daybreak, we find a clear example of this. The same drive evolves into the painful feeling of cowardice under the impress of the reproach custom has imposed upon this drive: or into the pleasant feeling of humility if it happens that a custom such as the Christian has taken it to its heart and called it good. That is to say, it is attended by either a good or a bad conscience! In itself it has, like every drive, neither this moral character nor any moral character at all, nor even a definite attendant sensation of pleasure or displeasure: it acquires all this, as its second nature, only when it enters into relations with drives already baptized good or evil… (D 38)

In this example, whether one experiences the affect of cowardice or that of humility depends on the customary beliefs and norms one assimilates. So it is that “custom” (in the form of customary beliefs or values), taken “to… heart,” has the power to shape affective experience. Otherwise put, those customary ideas, beliefs, and values endemic to my socio-cultural 26 This seems to be part of the picture Leiter constructs when he reflects on the way in which second-order affects often contain some cognitive content, insofar as the dominant evaluative frameworks in one’s culture shape how one evaluates oneself (2019, p. 75).

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context can impact how an affect shows up for me, shaping the form an affect takes, the motivational force that affect carries with it (as inclination or disinclination), and its intensity. To say that affects in Nietzsche are transpersonal is to call attention to two features of affect: (1) affects are frequently transmitted in a normladen socio-cultural context that impacts how one experiences a given affect and (2) affects are often contagious. Nietzsche’s analysis of the feeling of sin from Human, All Too Human illustrates the former point nicely: …if the representation [Vorstellung] of God falls away, so does the feeling [Gefühl] of ‘sin’ as transgression against divine precepts…Then there probably remains over that feeling of displeasure [Unmuth] which is very much entwined with and related to fear of punishment by secular justice or the disapprobation of other men; the displeasure caused by the pangs of conscience, the sharpest sting in the feeling of guilt, is nonetheless abolished when one sees that, although one’s actions may have offended against human tradition, human laws and ordinances, one has not therewith endangered the ‘eternal salvation of the soul’ and its relationship to divinity. (HH I:133)

In this passage, Nietzsche claims that the phenomenal character of sin crucially involves a representation of a deity, God, and that this representation colors the affect itself, adding an extra “sting” or “pang[] of conscience” to the feeling. Importantly, however, this representation—that of the Christian God, or maybe a world created by and for God—is a cultural transmission, communicated to one through a variety of social and cultural institutions. A comprehensive causal story of how affects feel and the impact they have on the individual thus cannot be reduced down merely to the workings of an individual’s psychophysiological constitution. Any such story must also include an account of the socio-cultural context in which one finds oneself, given that affects are frequently mediated by this context. Here, we see that a description of the particular drives (and correspondent ends) that an individual has will not be enough to explain her affective experiences. Rather, good explanations of particular affects and affective orientations for Nietzsche will often involve a description of certain socio-cultural facts and features. Attending once more to the structure of affects as outlined by Anderson—as involving (1) a “stimulus object”; (2) “a default behavioral

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response”; and (3) an “emotional coloring” that shapes the way the stimulus object is encountered (2012, p. 218)—enables us to describe the transpersonal nature of affect in much greater detail. Think back to Nietzsche’s remarks on sin and the pangs of conscience from Human, All Too Human I:133 above. In this selection, Nietzsche describes how the affect of guilt, experienced as sin, has a different quality—a different emotional coloring, a “sharp[er] sting”—because I experience the affect as one who believes in a deity to which I am consecrated (or, at least, as one who has unwittingly, perhaps unconsciously, assimilated it into their mental economy).27 The stimulus object encountered—whether it be certain of one’s actions, one’s nature, or one’s desires—is filtered through the emotional coloring of one’s affect: in this case, the feeling of sinfulness as involving the disapprobation of an entity to which one owes one’s existence and the eternal damnation of a sinner’s soul. To claim that the “sharpest sting” in the feeling of guilt goes away when the idea of god disappears is to acknowledge that the quality or emotional coloring of one’s affective experience—the “sting” of the conscience, the depth of one’s guilt—can be shaped by beliefs, values, or norms that one either consciously adopts or unwittingly assimilates. Accordingly, a change in one’s beliefs, values, or norm-exposure will often result in a change to an affect’s emotional coloring. Since an affect’s emotional coloring shapes how one encounters a given stimulus object, a change in beliefs, values, or norm-exposure may change how one encounters the stimulus object. In the current example, when one’s affective experience is no longer influenced by notions of a deity and eternal damnation, the affect of guilt (qua sinfulness in the face of god) formerly experienced in relation to one’s nature transforms into a different kind of affect (perhaps guilt qua lawlessness), and this changes the way the stimulus object shows up: what was formerly encountered as a sinful action is now encountered as a merely antisocial or illegal action. Both (1) the quality or emotional coloring of the new guilty affect (guilt qua lawlessness) and (2) the stimulus object (one’s action, newly 27 For an example of how one might profess disbelief in a god but still assimilate the idea of a god into their mental economy (in a way that impacts affective experience), see Lindeman et al. (2014). In this study, an explicitly stated disbelief in god did not prevent affective states that seemed to result from assimilating the idea of a deity or god. Cases such as those outlined by this study show that the quality and intensity of one’s affective experience can still be shaped by ideas that are not explicitly avowed beliefs. Such an idea can then play a role in shaping one’s encounter with the stimulus object at hand: in the case of the study, a requested curse on one’s family.

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encountered as merely antisocial or illegal rather than sinful) transform along with one’s beliefs. Given the fairly tight connection between the emotional coloring of an affect and its motivational force, it seems likely that the affect’s motivational force would transform as well. For example, one might imagine that the “sharpest sting” or pang of conscience unique to guilt qua sinfulness is also uniquely motivational: that is, it disinclines one more intensely against certain actions or desires. My account here neatly dovetails with Peter Poellner’s claim that affects are “co-constituted in their phenomenal, experienced character by representations of the world or aspects of it” (Poellner 2009, p. 161). As we see above, beliefs, values, and norms often play a critical role in constituting my affective experience: in part, they constitute its quality and intensity, or emotional coloring. This, in turn, impacts how the stimulus object shows up for me, since the stimulus object is always already filtered through an affect’s emotional coloring. In other words, beliefs, values, and norms that originate from outside of me (from my socio-cultural milieu) frequently play a role in constituting the quality and intensity of my affective experience, which in turn shapes my encounter with a given stimulus object. Attending to this helps us understand a critical part of affect’s transpersonal nature: that is, my experience of a given stimulus object is influenced not only by my drives, but by socio-cultural factors (such as beliefs, norms, value-laden representations of individuals and behaviors, etc.). It is thus critical from Nietzsche’s perspective to recognize that the ideas, values, and norms that co-constitute many of one’s affects (those beliefs and norms of which one unconsciously or consciously avails oneself, that play an integral role in shaping affective experience) are bestowed upon one by one’s society and/or culture. Otherwise put, it is critical to recognize affects as transpersonal, for it helps us see that any comprehensive causal story of how affects feel and the impact they have on the individual cannot be reduced merely to the workings of an individual’s psychophysiological constitution, but must include an account of the socio-cultural context in which one finds oneself. After all, affects are

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frequently mediated by this context.28 In other words, one’s affects— those feeling-based states most often understood as individual psychological states or processes—are frequently socially and culturally produced. This is the case, Nietzsche thinks, even though we typically experience those affects of which we are consciously aware as our own, personal feelings in relation to a stimulus object. In short, although we experience them as such, our feelings are rarely our own. Not only does Nietzsche believe that affects are co-constituted in their character by the socio-cultural context to which one belongs, however; he also believes that affects are contagious. Affects are contagious insofar as they are communicated between and among individuals. Indeed, according to Nietzsche, we frequently “contract” affects from the individuals with whom we surround ourselves. Nietzsche highlights this affective contagion—a result of human beings’ fundamental affective vulnerability—when he recommends that psychologically healthy, powerful individuals should “remain separated from [sick individuals and] should even be spared the sight of the sick so that they do not confuse themselves with the sick” (GM III:14). Though psychologically sick, powerless individuals naturally experience displeasure when faced with the noble, easy happiness of the healthy and powerful, this displeasure with noble happiness is all-too-easy to contract. When those powerful individuals come into contact with this displeasure of the powerless, there is a risk that they will begin to doubt or distrust their own happiness. And indeed, this is exactly what happens when a sickly culture takes up and celebrates those ideals promoted by the ascetic priest. In The Antichrist, a work supremely concerned with the problem of physiological decadence and depressive affects, Nietzsche further emphasizes the contagious nature of affect, noting that pity is a “depressive [depressive] and contagious [contagiöse] instinct [that] runs counter to the instincts that preserve and enhance the value of life” (A 7). Here, he also remarks 28 Importantly, in this aphorism from Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche explains that one can come to reject concepts (or representations of the world) that have historically been communicated to an individual and impacted her affective experience. Although one’s socio-cultural context shapes one’s affective life, then, it does not determine one’s affective life. As one acquires different beliefs or representations of one’s world, one’s affective experience changes. This is especially clear at the end of the aphorism: “If a man is, finally, able to attain the philosophical conviction in the absolute necessity of all actions and their complete unaccountably and to make it part of his flesh and blood, then that remainder of the pang of conscience also disappears…” (HH I:133).

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that “[p]ity makes suffering into something infectious; sometimes it can even cause a total loss of life and of vital energy wildly disproportionate to the magnitude of the cause” (A 7).

Conclusion To review, Nietzschean affects are evaluative feelings, felt inclinations and disinclinations (with particular phenomenal characters) that produce beliefs and experience and motivate behavior. As drive-induced inclinations and disinclinations, affects constitute evaluative orientations: we positively value certain aspects of our world and negatively value others by virtue of our affects. And, though affects are induced by one’s drives, they also exert influence on drives. We see this “feedback loop” mechanism at work among Nietzschean drives and affects in examples where affects function to obstruct or excite particular drives, hindering or aiding them in the achievement of their ends. Nietzsche describes a wide range of affects, some of which are firstorder and others of which are second-order affects: that is, feelings of inclination or aversion in relation to first-order affects. Nietzsche often characterizes these second-order affects as playing a particularly important role in personal transformation. After all, by inclining or disinclining us toward particular affects, actions, and interactions, second-order affects offer uniquely potent opportunities for the transformation of our affective nature. Finally, affects are transpersonal, insofar as (1) one’s affective experience is shaped by the norm-laden, socio-cultural context in which one finds oneself and (2) affects are contagious, transmitted among individuals, with the power to “infect” others. With this understanding of affect in mind, we are now well-situated to understand affective nihilism as a particular—and quite complex—affective orientation.

References Alfano, Mark. 2019a. “Editor’s Introduction.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 50 (1): 1–10. Alfano, Mark. 2019b. Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

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Anderson, R. Lanier. 2012. “What is a Nietzschean Self?” in Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity. Edited by Christopher Janaway and Simon Robertson. New York: Oxford University Press. Anderson, R. Lanier, and Rachel Cristy. 2017. “What Is ‘The Meaning of Our Cheerfulness’? Philosophy as a Way of Life in Nietzsche and Montaigne.” European Journal of Philosophy 25 (4): 1514–1549. Clark, Maudemarie. 1998. “On Knowledge, Truth, and Value: Nietzsche’s Debt to Schopenhauer and the Development of His Empiricism.” In Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer as Nietzsche’s Educator. Edited by Christopher Janaway. Oxford: Clarendon. Clark, Maudemarie. 2015. Nietzsche on Ethics and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. Clark, Maudemarie, and David Dudrick. 2012. The Soul of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Creasy, Kaitlyn. 2018. “On the Problem of Affective Nihilism.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49 (1): 31–51. Deleuze, Gilles. 1983. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Columbia University Press. Gemes, Ken. 2006. “‘We Remain of Necessity Strangers to Ourselves’: The Key Message of Nietzsche’s Genealogy.” In Nietzsche’s on the Genealogy of Morals: Critical Essays. Edited by Christa Davis Acampora. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Janaway, Christopher. 2009. “Autonomy, Affect, and the Self in Nietzsche’s Project of Genealogy.” In Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy. Edited by Ken Gemes and Simon May. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Janaway, Christopher. 2007. Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche’s Genealogy. New York: Oxford University Press. Kail, Peter. 2018. “Value and Nature in Nietzsche.” In The Nietzschean Mind. Edited by Paul Katsafanas. New York: Routledge. Katsafanas, Paul. 2012. “Nietzsche on Agency and Self-Ignorance.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 43 (1): 5–17. Katsafanas, Paul. 2013. “Nietzsche’s Philosophical Psychology.” In Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche. New York: Oxford University Press. Katsafanas, Paul. 2016. The Nietzschean Self: Moral Psychology, Agency, and the Unconscious. New York: Oxford University Press. Leiter, Brian. 2019. Moral Psychology with Nietzsche. New York: Oxford University Press. Lindeman, Marjaana, Bethany Heywood, Tapani Riekki, and Tommi Makkonen. 2014. “Atheists Become Emotionally Aroused When Daring God to Do Terrible Things.” The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 24 (2): 124–132.

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Mitchell, Jonathan. 2017. “Nietzsche on Taste: Epistemic Privilege and AntiRealism.” Inquiry 60 (1–2): 31–65. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2002. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1982. Daybreak. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1996. Human, All Too Human. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2005. Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings. Translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1989. “Postcard to Franz Overbeck in Sils-Maria.” In Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence. Translated by Yirmiyahu Yovel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1967–77. Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden. Edited by G. Colli and M. Montinari. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Poellner, Peter. 2007. “Affect, Value, and Objectivity.” In Nietzsche and Morality. Edited by Brian Leiter and Neil Sinhababu. New York: Oxford University Press. Poellner, Peter. 2009. “Nietzschean Freedom.” In Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy. Edited by Ken Gemes and Simon May. New York: Oxford University Press. Riccardi, Mattia. 2015. “Inner Opacity: Nietzsche on Introspection and Agency.” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 58 (3): 221–243. Richardson, John. 1996. Nietzsche’s System. New York: Oxford University Press. Schrift, Alan. 2013. “Spinoza vs. Kant: Have I Been Understood?” In Nietzsche and Political Thought. Edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson. New York: Bloomsbury. Spinoza, Baruch. 2017. The Ethics. Translated by Jonathan Bennett at www.earlymoderntexts.com, https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/ pdfs/spinoza1665.pdf.

CHAPTER 5

The Problem of Affective Nihilism

Introduction In The Affirmation of Life, Reginster argues that Nietzschean nihilism is best characterized as a “philosophical claim” (2006, p. 39); it is a form of “philosophical despair” and, as such, “can be overcome only by distinctively philosophical means, including philosophical arguments” (ibid., p. 38). Reginster’s characterization here captures an important aspect of the “problem of nihilism” in Nietzsche: nihilism is, in part, an intellectual stance involving a negative evaluation of the world (that “radical repudiation of meaning, value, and desirability” that grows out of a “Christian-moral” interpretation of one’s world (KSA 12:2[127])). Insofar as nihilism for Nietzsche involves explicit value judgments, it is accurately characterized as a cognitive phenomenon. Yet Reginster’s “overly cognitive” approach has inspired a number of critical responses (Gemes 2008; Pippin 2008; Janaway 2009). In a review of Reginster’s work, Ken Gemes notes that nihilism “in its deepest manifestation” is an “affective rather than a cognitive disorder,” “a matter of the constitution of one’s deepest drives rather than a matter of one’s overt beliefs” (Gemes 2008, p. 461). Christopher Janaway notes that Nietzsche’s diagnosis of the problem of nihilism is fundamentally a “diagnosis of the sickness that allegedly makes a substantive revaluation of values needful” (Janaway 2009, p. 522); what is needed most fundamentally is not a new theory of values, but a “change of attitude” (ibid., p. 521). Relatedly, Robert Pippin argues that overcoming © The Author(s) 2020 K. Creasy, The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37133-3_5

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Nietzschean nihilism has more to do with the achievement of a particular “psychological state” than it does with arriving at a rational justification for existence. Pippin also rightly emphasizes that achieving this nonnihilistic psychological state “is extremely hard, much harder than being convinced by an argument about the positive values of suffering would suggest” (Pippin 2008, p. 287). Thus, though Reginster’s characterization presents nihilism primarily as a cognitive phenomenon, involving particular beliefs about meaning and value, it is just as frequently presented by Nietzsche as a feeling-based phenomenon, a weariness with one’s world that comports one negatively toward that world. A few scholars have begun to sketch out an account of this kind of nihilism. Pippin, for example, defines Nietzschean nihilism as a “failure of desire, the flickering out of some erotic flame” (Pippin 2010, p. 54). Nietzschean nihilism results, according to Pippin, because “we moderns can no longer bring ourselves to want things in the right way” (ibid.). Alternatively, John Richardson treats the affective component of nihilism as a contracted illness of feeling, the “feeling that ‘life is too much’” (Richardson forthcoming). This is what Richardson characterizes as “no-to-life nihilism.” In Richardson’s view, this “affective response” of the Nietzschean nihilist is a “bodily judgment regarding the inefficacy of one’s drives” that results in felt “despair [and] disgruntlement” with life (ibid.). Gemes, Pippin, and Richardson all present Nietzschean nihilism as a feeling-based, or affective, phenomenon: that is to say, they frame nihilism as affective nihilism. While Pippin understands Nietzschean nihilism as a “failure of desire,” Gemes and Richardson present affective nihilism as a disorder of the drives. Similarly, Wolfgang Müller-Lauter interprets nihilism as a “disease” with a physiological basis (Müller-Lauter 1999, p. 41). According to Müller-Lauter, the “‘weak, delicate, and morbid effects of the spirit’ are for [Nietzsche] ultimately merely the symptoms of physiological processes” (ibid., p. 42) and “the nihilistic movement is merely the expression of physiological decadence” (ibid.). In my analysis of affective nihilism below, I offer a complementary account to those of Müller-Lauter, Reginster, Gemes, and Richardson. With Reginster, I agree that there are uniquely cognitive dimensions of Nietzschean nihilism. (And indeed, there is plentiful textual evidence for the cognitive dimensions he describes.) Insofar as human beings are cognitive beings, nihilism is, in part, a cognitive stance involving certain conscious beliefs and judgments. Given, however, that Nietzsche “tend[s]

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to treat [one’s] conscious beliefs as… reflection[s] of deeper causes” (Gemes 2008, p. 461)—that is, as reflections of one’s psychophysiological constitution—merely exploring the cognitive dimensions of Nietzschean nihilism misses much of the problem. Thus, in this chapter, I argue that nihilism must be understood not only as a system of beliefs, but also as a psychophysiological condition, which I call (following Gemes and Richardson) affective nihilism.1

Affective Nihilism Throughout his body of work, Nietzsche regularly refers to nihilism as a feeling-based phenomenon: an affective condition involving “worldweariness” or “weakness of will” and rooted in one’s physiology. In an unpublished reflection from 1888, Nietzsche describes “a nihilistic instinct” that first “says no” to life (KSA 13:17[7]). According to Nietzsche, it is from out of this nay-saying condition (which I argue is an affective condition) that the nihilist makes certain claims about the world: her “mildest claim [mildeste Behauptung] is that it would be better not to exist than to exist; that the will to nothingness has more value than the will to life” (ibid.). Though, as mentioned above, Reginster’s account describes an important manifestation of Nietzschean nihilism—cognitive nihilism, and more specifically, ethical nihilism—the urgency of nihilism as a problem for Nietzsche lies not in the content of the nihilist’s claims, but in the psychophysiological basis of the nihilist’s negative evaluation of life, as well as the affective consequences that such negative evaluations have both for the affective nihilist and for those around her. On my account, affective nihilism involves a world- and life-denying evaluative stance rooted in one’s drives and affects; it is an affective stance inhabited by the “Nay-saying [neinsagenden] spirit” (EH, “Zarathustra,” 6). This Nay-saying spirit is characterized by that “nihilistic instinct” to which I refer above (KSA 13:17[7]). According to Nietzsche, such an instinct is expressed in a host of different negative affective responses. These negative affective responses are rooted in an underlying psychophysiological condition—a condition of one’s drives—that Nietzsche

1 As I demonstrate in the following chapter, although understanding affective nihilism is critical for understanding the problem of Nietzschean nihilism (and envisioning solutions), it is not the case that all individuals Nietzsche calls nihilists are thereby affective nihilists.

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characterizes as “weakness of the will [Willensschwäche]” and as life turned “against itself and deny[ing] itself” (GM III:11).2 Although there are a number of affects characteristic of affective nihilism, Nietzsche never attempts or intends to provide a taxonomy of these. This is because, for Nietzsche, affective nihilism—as a problem with the structure and organization of one’s drives that results in a weakness of will—takes a variety of forms. The discrete affects and clusters of affects manifest by affective nihilists often differ depending on the person. For this reason, although I review certain prototypical affects of the affective nihilist below, I want to emphasize the life-denying structure of those affects, and the way they function to degrade the will.3 As we will see below, affective nihilism in Nietzsche can most generally be described as a psychophysiological condition involving a broad range of negative affective responses that function to weaken the will. Importantly, however, not all of the forms of affective nihilism Nietzsche introduces involve immediately depressive affects. In certain cases, the affects experienced by the affective nihilist serve as short-term stimulants for the will. According to Nietzsche, however, even these seemingly excitatory affects ultimately function oppressively, eventually weakening or degrading the will. Otherwise put, every affect or affective state Nietzsche describes as characteristic of the affective nihilist turns out to be life-denying in the long-term. On the Problem of Affective Nihilism According to Nietzsche, affective nihilism is a disorder at the level of one’s drives and affects, a psychophysiological condition in which one experiences a variety of affects that function in the long term to weaken

2 It is worth mentioning that in his notes, Nietzsche points to an ambiguity in nihilism: it can either be “a sign of increased power of the spirit: as active nihilism” or “decline and recession of the power of the spirit: as passive nihilism” (KSA 12:9[35]). Affective nihilism of the type described here would thus serve as an example of passive nihilism. 3 Of course, my analysis of affective nihilism does include an examination of particular

affects Nietzsche presents as characteristic of a world-denying or nihilistic stance. But affects that serve to depress the drives and degrade the will in most cases might, in certain other cases, serve to stimulate the drives in a healthy way, strengthening the will in a life-affirming and sustainable way. What makes the difference, here, are differences among individuals and their complexes of drives.

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the will. Those prototypical affects most frequently associated with affective nihilism in Nietzsche include a series of depressive affects with (1) a specific first-personal character and (2) a characteristic set of intentional objects. These depressive affects are neither exclusively first-order nor exclusively second-order; in fact, Nietzsche describes both first-order affects (such as a “dull pain” (GM III:20)) and second-order affects (such as disgust with oneself (GM III:13)) that are characteristic of the affective nihilist. Additionally, insofar as Nietzsche describes affective nihilism as a generalized condition disposing one to affects that degrade the will, it is best understood as a protracted, “global” mood that determines the range of affects and affective orientations available to the individual (Anderson 2012, p. 227). Below, I proceed through each of these points in turn. To begin, affective nihilism for Nietzsche frequently involves a specific first-personal character. Often, affective nihilism is characterized by exhaustion [Ermüdung] and disgust [Ekel] and said to involve feelings of weariness or fatigue [Müdigkeit], disappointment with one’s self [Verdruss an sich selbst] (GM III:13), and a great nausea with man [der grosse Ekel vor dem Menschen] (GM III:14). In the Genealogy, Nietzsche describes the first-personal character of nihilism as a “dull, debilitating, long-drawn-out painfulness [die dumpfe lähmende lange Schmerzhaftigkeit]” (GM III:19). Nihilism involves “lethargy, heaviness, and depression [Depression, Schwere und Müdigkeit]”; it is a “slow sadness [der langsamen Traurigkeit],” a “dull pain [dumpfen Schmerz],” and a “lingering misery [zögerndes Elend für Zeiten]” (GM III:20). In Twilight of the Idols, it is experienced as a “resistance to life [voll Widerstand gegen das Leben]” (TI, “Socrates,” 1). In this range of typical affects, there is an overwhelmingly negative valence—sadness, heaviness, and misery dominate—coupled with a feeling of impediment, obstruction, inhibition, or motion arrested. This is felt as exhaustion, heaviness, debilitation, and depression.4 In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s metaphors of heaviness—personified by the spirit of gravity—serve as especially suggestive illustrations of affective nihilism’s prototypical first-personal character. Zarathustra

4 The affects I include here are those Nietzsche associates most frequently with affective nihilism. Yet there are certain affective nihilists, including Nietzsche’s last man, who do not experience affects with this typical first-personal character. Instead, the last man experiences affects indicative of a lack of care about and/or engagement with his world: he is bored, aloof, and superficially content.

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describes the spirit of gravity as drawing one’s soul “downwards, towards the abyss” (Z:3, “On the Vision and the Riddle,” 1); in the case of an individual weighed down by the spirit of gravity, Zarathustra remarks: “heavy do earth and life seem to him; and the spirit of gravity wants it so” (Z:3, “On the Spirit of Gravity,” 2). The spirit of gravity is a source of self-loathing, and one overcomes it only when “one may endure to be with oneself” (ibid.). In contrast to the heavy-hearted individual are those individuals whose souls “flutter” with the lightness, flexibility, cheerfulness, and resilience of life-affirmation. The spirit of gravity is a debilitating heaviness, marked by inertia, and overcoming this spirit requires the ability to actively and energetically initiate one’s own movement (Z:1, “On Reading and Writing”). Indeed, in his account of how he “kill[ed] the spirit of gravity,” Zarathustra remarks that “I learned to walk, since then I let myself run. I learned to fly, since then I do not wait to be pushed to move” (ibid.). The depressive, nihilistic affects Nietzsche describes with the most frequency are directed towards a relatively limited range of phenomena (allencompassing as these phenomena might be). These prototypical affects share a particular intentional structure and are directed towards a telling set of intentional objects: life, human existence or humanity, and the world of earthly existence. Throughout Nietzsche’s work, life recurs as one intentional object of the affects typical of the affective nihilist (GM, P, 5; GM III:28). In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, life feels “heavy” for the affective nihilist (Z:3, “On the Spirit of Gravity,” 2); in his “Attempt at a Self-Criticism”, Nietzsche describes a nihilistic attitude of “disgust and weariness with life” (BT, “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” 5). This is echoed in the Genealogy, where Nietzsche describes nihilistic man’s “disgust at life” (GM III:13), remarking later that the affective nihilist experiences “an aversion to life, a rebellion against the most fundamental presuppositions of life” (GM III:28).5 In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche describes a pessimistic, nihilistic stance “full of weariness with life, full of resistance to life [voll Müdigkeit am Leben, voll Widerstand gegen das Leben]” (TI, “Socrates,” 1). In his unpublished notes, furthermore, we see that an individual manifesting a nihilistic instinct feels life to be “objectionable” (KSA 13:13[7]). 5 This framing of the affective nihilist’s experience is particularly illuminating as a very broad characterization of the affective nihilist’s experience, given that affects in Nietzsche are most fundamentally inclinations and aversions.

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In the Genealogy of Morality, both the individual and humanity as a whole are identified as intentional objects of nihilistic affects. Nietzsche speaks of man’s “disgust with himself” (GM III:13) and a “great nausea of man” which leads to the “‘last will’ of man, his will to nothingness, nihilism” (GM III:14). Nietzsche speaks of a nihilism which denies and degrades human existence (GM III:20), including one’s own existence, both in the body of the work and in the Preface to the Genealogy (GM, P, 5). In this Preface, Nietzsche also ascribes this direction of the passions to Schopenhauer, finding it in his praise of the “‘unegoistic’… instincts of pity, self-denial, [and] self-sacrifice [der Mitleids-, Selbstverleugnungs-, Selbstopferungs-Instinkte]” (GM, P, 5).6 We also see the affective nihilist herself identified as the intentional object of her nihilistic affects in the selection from Thus Spoke Zarathustra above, where Nietzsche remarks that in order to overcome one’s experience of “life and earth” as “heavy,” one must learn how to “endure to be with oneself” (Z:3, “On the Spirit of Gravity,” 2), acquiring an ability that does not come naturally to the individual weighed down by the spirit of gravity. Indeed, we can assume that such an individual—she who feels life and this world are heavy and weary-making—also feels an aversion to herself. This aversion to (or displeasure with) herself leads her to self-loathing and self-avoidance, rather than self-love and affirmation; her comportment mirrors that of an ostrich, rather than that of an eagle (Z:3, “On the Spirit of Gravity,” 2). Finally, Nietzsche also identifies the world of earthly existence as an intentional object of nihilistic affective responses. Negative affects, on this picture, bring about negative evaluations of one’s world. In a discussion from Dawn on the harmfulness of spiritual intoxication—a close relative to the excess of feeling the ascetic priest utilizes in the third essay of the Genealogy—Nietzsche remarks that those who utilize such intoxication are “insatiable sowers of the weeds of dissatisfaction with oneself and one’s neighbor, of contempt for the age and the world [Weltverachtung], and especially of world-weariness [Weltmüdigkeit]” (D 50). In “On the Hinterworldly,” Zarathustra describes how the invention of an

6 Nietzsche’s association of Schopenhauer with nihilism runs through his work, appearing as early as 1880, where Nietzsche claims that “Nihilists have Schopenhauer as a philosopher [Die Nihilisten hatten Schopenhauer als Philosophen]” (KSA 9:4[103]). In the Third Essay of the Genealogy, Nietzsche uses the adjectives “nihilistic [nihilistisch]” and “Schopenhauerian [Schopenhauerisch]” interchangeably.

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eternal afterlife as a justification for suffering arose from weariness with one’s own world, a “weariness that wants its ultimate with one great leap, with a death leap; a poor unknowing weariness that no longer even wants to will: that created all gods and hinterworlds… it was the body that despaired of the earth” (Z:1, “On the Hinterworldly”). This also describes those world-weary ones of “On Old and New Tablets”: “out of weariness he yawns at the road and the earth and the goal and himself; not one more step will he take” (Z:3, “Old and New Tablets,” 18). Later, in the fourth book, Nietzsche identifies the teaching of “the proclaimer of the great weariness” as the belief that “All is the same, nothing is worthwhile, knowledge chokes” (Z:3, “The Convalescent,” 2). This weariness towards this-worldly existence is manifest in humanity’s invention of “afterworlds,” of worlds beyond the world of earthly existence and eternal life beyond this life, such as in Christian-moral interpretations of the world (GS 344; EH, “Destiny,” 4). This is clear in Nietzsche’s claim that “the moral world interpretation ends in world negation (criticism of Christianity) [Die moralische Welt-ausdeutung endet in Weltverneinung (Kritik des Christenthums)] (KSA 12:2[117]).” The intentional objects of these prototypically nihilistic affects—life, human existence, and the world of earthly existence—are used fairly interchangeably by Nietzsche. What is key, however, is that in each of these cases, affective nihilism manifests as a host of negative affects directed towards this-worldly existence. In short, affective nihilism is an illness which comports one unfavorably toward the life and world of which one is a part. In his analysis of affects and emotions, Poellner notes that “what is characteristic of the emotions we are inclined to describe as love, admiration, or contempt, is that they are normally experienced not merely as caused by their objects, but as merited by them” (Poellner 2009, p. 162). In the case of affective nihilism in Nietzsche, the weariness and disgust that the suffering individual experiences towards life, the world, and human existence appear to this individual both as caused by the world and as a justified response to an unjust world. Since the world is understood by those “weary ones” as the cause of their suffering, the disgust and weariness with the world felt by these suffering individuals is experienced as warranted by the world. Thus, for the affective nihilist, the

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world is understood as inherently weary-making, nauseating, and meaningless. In this way, affective nihilism manifests and perpetuates a worldor life-denying stance.7 Similarly, affective nihilism typically manifests and furthers a stance of self-denial. Remember here that the affective nihilist sometimes functions as the intentional object of her own negative affects. Since she understands the intentional objects at which her affects are directed to be worthy of the particular affective responses she has—since we unreflectively assume that our affective responses are justified by the objects that inspire them—her disgust with herself and aversion toward herself appear as appropriate responses, given their intentional object. In other words, according to Nietzsche, the affective nihilist who feels self-disgust will understand her self-disgust as merited or warranted by who she is. Not only does the affective nihilist’s world often appear inherently nauseating, then; the affective nihilist often also appears to herself as inherently nauseating, worthy of disgust, and unsatisfactory. In this example of self-disgust, we see that Nietzsche’s descriptions of the depressive affects most typical of affective nihilism include descriptions of both first-order affects (such as feelings of pain or despair at existence) and second-order affects (such as disgust with oneself, dissatisfaction with oneself, and a “weariness that no longer even wants to will” (Z:1, “On the Hinterworldly”)). Put differently, alongside those affects experienced by the affective nihilist that lead her to negatively value her world and humanity in general are affects that lead her to negatively value herself and a variety of her emotional states. The Psychophysiology of Affective Nihilism In reflecting upon the range of affects experienced by Nietzsche’s prototypical affective nihilist, one notices a striking, though not surprising, similarity among them: the negative affects characteristic of the affective 7 In the Preface to his Genealogy, Nietzsche speaks of a “great danger to mankind” and “temptation…to nothingness” consisting in humanity’s “looking back wearily, turning its will against life, and the onset of the final sickness becoming gently, sadly manifest.” This sickness and reversal of one’s will against life, as a symptom of European culture, points Europe toward a “new Euro-Buddhism” and “nihilism.” Thus, we see that affective nihilism—as a psychophysiological condition which gives one a sense of world-weariness—is connected to Nietzsche’s account of European nihilism as a cultural and historical phenomenon.

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nihilist function (either in the short- or long-term) as inhibitory, obstructive, depressive, and debilitating. Importantly, however, the momentary experience of a depressive or debilitating affect does not make one an affective nihilist. Rather, affective nihilism is a protracted mood characterized by certain clusters of affects (Anderson 2012, p. 227). This mood results from a disorder at the level of one’s drives and affects. In order to characterize the problem more precisely, then, we must examine the psychophysiology of affective nihilism: that is, its status as a psychophysiological condition characterized by (1) disruptions in the activities of one’s drives and (2) will-weakness. Since Nietzsche understands affective nihilism most fundamentally as a drive-based disorder with a particular psychophysiological structure, this will be an especially important part of our analysis. Understanding this basic structure will both make sense of the prototypical affective nihilist described above and allow us to see why Nietzsche counts even those who do not manifest prototypically nihilistic affects as affective nihilists. In the Genealogy, Nietzsche characterizes individuals suffering from affective nihilism as “physiological casualties” (GM III:14).8 Later in this work, he notes that affective nihilists suffer from “a physiological feeling of obstruction” and a “deep physiological depression [emphasis mine]” (GM III:17). Affective nihilism, then, is a condition marked by “physiological inhibition and exhaustion [physiologische Hemmung und Ermüdung]” (GM III:13), “turn[s] against itself and den[ies] itself.” In other words, affective nihilism is a physiological condition that weakens life through the obstruction or inhibition of one’s end-directedness. This physiological condition often manifests in sick individuals as a “deep disgust for themselves, for the world, for all life” (GM III:11), as we saw above. But Nietzsche believes this life-denying condition can manifest in other, more subtle ways via more subtly life-denying affects, as it does in the case of the last man. In any case, since Nietzschean drives dictate those ends toward which human beings propel themselves, this disruption of one’s end-directedness must be explained in terms of one’s drives and oneself as a complex of drives. Indeed, as hinted at above, affective

8 See more on the importance of physiology in the second section of the Preface to The Gay Science. Remember also the importance of physiological “elucidation and interpretation” in GM I:17 and theimportance of physiological “elucidation and interpretation” in GM I:17 and the importance of physiological remedies in Ecce Homo’s “Clever.”

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nihilism is an affliction of the will based in the activity of the drives and affects. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche identifies the source of a life-denying stance in a “degenerative instinct [entartenden Instinkt], which turns itself against life with a subterranean vengefulness” (EH, “Tragedy,” 2). For a form of life suffering from affective nihilism, this “turn[ing] against itself and [denying] itself” is a “sickliness” described by Nietzsche as “the physiological struggle of man with death (to be more exact: with disgust at life, with exhaustion and the wish for the ‘end’)” (GM III:13); here, “man [is] suffering from himself in some way, at all events physiologically” (GM III:20). Nietzsche remarks upon the case of an “ill-bred instinct” which serves as the source of the affective nihilist’s world- and life-denying evaluative stance, identifying a “value judgment [which] most basically says here: ‘I’m not worth much’” and describing this as “a merely physiological value judgment, even explicitly: the feeling of powerlessness, the lack of great affirmative feelings of power (in muscles, nerves, motor centers) (KSA 13:14[29]).” Thus, those life-denying valuations characteristic of affective nihilism—as evaluations which emerge from out of certain kinds and configurations of one’s drives and affects—are fundamentally rooted in a physiological affliction of the will, a powerlessness and inefficacy of the will which Nietzsche characterizes as will-weakness [Willensschwache] (KSA 13:14[74]; KSA 13:14[182]). Further evidence for the psychophysiological basis of affective nihilism appears in Nietzsche’s critique of Herbert Spencer’s notion of the organism in the second essay of the Genealogy, where Nietzsche characterizes Spencer’s denial of the organism as a being in which “the life will is active and manifests itself” as an example of nihilism (GM II:12). For examples illuminating the affective dynamics at work here—how, in the case of the affective nihilist, affects disrupt the function of an individual’s drives and depress their will—one need only look to Nietzsche’s examples of the “knower” and the “criminal.” In the case of the “knower” from Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche describes an individual who internalizes the affect of cruelty, “compelling his mind to perceive against his inclination and often enough against his heart’s desire—namely, to say ‘no’ where he would like to affirm, love, and adore” (BGE 229). In seeking the truth at any price, the knower inflicts cruelty upon “the fundamental will of the spirit” (BGE 229), inhibiting or obstructing that “binding, subduing, domineering, and truly masterful will” (BGE 230).

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In the case of the criminal “made sick” and “anemic” by society from Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche offers a striking example of the disruption of one’s end-directedness and the eventual inability to engage with one’s goals and move toward them in action. In this criminal, he identifies “almost the recipe for physiological degeneration”: the criminal’s “most lively drives [Triebe], which he has brought with him, soon grow together with depressive affects [Affekte], with suspicion, fear, and dishonor […] and his feelings [Gefühl] turn against his instincts” (TI, “Skirmishes,” 45). In this case of the physiological degeneration of the criminal—an individual who has lost his vitality and finds his most lively drives to be inefficacious, dampened by depressive affects—Nietzsche provides one of the clearest cases of how depressive affects might wage war even on one’s strongest, or “most lively,” drives. In this case, we see that those negative affective responses to one’s world characteristic of affective nihilism can lead to a weakness of the will insofar as they produce oppressive affects which ultimately dampen or weaken the activity of the drives. In Nietzsche’s characterization of pity [Mitleid] as a “depressive” affect (A7), mentioned in the previous chapter, we find another example of this mechanism: that is, the obstruction or depression of a drive by an affect that weakens it or turns it away from its end. In Daybreak, Nietzsche describes pity as “a weakness, like every loss of oneself through a damaging [schädigenden] affect” (D 134); in Ecce Homo , he reflects upon how pity, as a “particular case of being unable to withstand stimuli,” results in a “loss of oneself” (EH, “Wise,” 4). As seen above, the affect of pity damages the individual who experiences it because such an affect weakens that individual’s drives, diminishing their vitality and turning them away from their ends. This same picture of pity appears in The Antichrist , where Nietzsche remarks that “pity stands in opposition to… emotions which augment the energy of the feeling of life [die Energie des Lebensgefühls erhöhn]: it has a depressive effect. One loses force [verliert Kraft] when one pities” (A 7). Here, Nietzsche remarks that there are emotions which “augment” one’s energy and feeling of life and emotions “in opposition to” those, which function to depress one’s activity and inhibit one’s feeling of life. The affects which dominate the individual suffering from affective nihilism, and which I detail at length above, are examples of the latter kind. Affective nihilism, then, is characterized by affects that weaken life and either obstruct or hinder its growth. Such affective responses to the world comprise essentially physiological judgments (what Richardson calls

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those “values… built into our bodies”) (2004, p. 74) made on the behalf of one’s drives and affects. Yet since human beings—as complexes of drives in constant struggle, interacting with affects—experience a range of affects in any given day which depress certain drives and excite others, it is important to remark upon the difference between a fleeting negative affect and affective nihilism. In Ecce Homo, for example, Nietzsche contrasts one’s experience of “moments of decadence” with long-term decadence, an indulgence that carries on until one “knows not how to get rid of anything, how to come to terms with anything… [or] to cast anything behind him” (EH, “Wise,” 6). This latter case is that of the affective nihilist proper, and it is characterized by Nietzsche as a “will to hibernate,” “to accept nothing more, to undertake nothing more, to absorb nothing more… to cease entirely from reacting.”9 This distinction enables Nietzsche’s reader to understand why although Nietzsche has passing moods with intentional structures resembling those of the affective nihilist’s moods—we see Nietzsche profess a distinct and heartfelt disgust for man, for the “man of today” in The Antichrist (38), for example—he can still describe himself as one who “has even now lived through the whole of nihilism, to the end, leaving it outside himself, behind himself” (KSA 13:11[411]). Though Nietzsche experiences moods of disgust, his life-affirming orientation enables him to pass from these into anticipatory and optimistic moods which look to a better future for humanity and understand the “disgusting” men of today as conditions of the possibility of flourishing of great individuals (A 4, 56). On my account, affective nihilism is an exceptional case of drive suppression and will-weakness, involving both (1) the domination of a nihilist’s psychophysiological constitution by affects that ultimately play a depressive function and (2) the relative stability of this domination, resulting in the continuous inhabitation of a life-denying affective stance. In Anderson’s account of moods from “What is a Nietzschean Self?,” he distinguishes between simple affects in Nietzsche—feelings and emotions—and certain “higher order” states he calls “global moods.” While simple affects can be fleeting, changing moment to moment, global

9 In this passage from Ecce Homo, Nietzsche also speaks of his own experience with a “prolonged illness” of the kind described above and admits that he employed “Russian fatalism” (via the will to hibernate) as a coping mechanism for this illness. Nietzsche certainly seems to be describing his own past experience with affective nihilism here.

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moods are “standing dispositions for some first-order affect (or characteristic range of affects) to be activated” (Anderson 2012, p. 227). A global mood disposes one to a particular range of affects. Such a mood, according to Anderson , pervades one’s existence and necessarily shapes the way one experiences oneself and one’s world: indeed, a global mood “operates as a kind of collective condition within which my other attitudes have to operate and with which they have to contend—a kind of ‘weather system’ influencing my other attitudes” (ibid.). Thus, though one might experience nihilistic or life-denying affects while in a particularly bad mood, this alone does not make one an affective nihilist. Rather, affective nihilism requires a protracted mood that holds sway over the range of affects available to the individual, leading to the perpetuation of negative, ultimately depressive affects and the continuation of the will-weakness characteristic of the affective nihilist. It is particularly interesting for my argument that Anderson cites depression as an example of a global mood, since a parallel between major depressive disorder and prototypical forms of affective nihilism (such as those I explicate above) is especially apt. Indeed, Nietzsche himself describes affective nihilism as “lethargy, heaviness, and depression”; it is a “slow sadness” and “dull pain,” experienced as a “resistance to life” (GM III:20; TI, “Socrates,” 1). Nietzsche’s affective nihilist is characterized by exhaustion and disgust; she experiences feelings of weariness or fatigue, disappointment with herself, and a great nausea with humanity (GM III:13). These descriptions, as well as Nietzsche’s description of the will-weakness characteristic of the affective nihilist, align with a number of the characteristics required for a diagnosis of major depressive disorder: (1) a “depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day, as indicated by… subjective report (e.g., feels sad, empty, hopeless [emphasis mine]); (2) “markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities most of the day, nearly every day”; (3) “fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day”; (4) “feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt (which may be delusional) nearly every day”; and (5) a “diminished ability to think or concentrate, or indecisiveness, nearly every day” (DSM IV 2013). It is not hard to see a parallel here between depression and the condition experienced by the prototypical affective nihilist. Affective nihilism is a condition which involves the ineffectiveness of one’s drives, or an inability of one’s drives to achieve their ends. Just as the depressed individual

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feels worthless, so too does the affective nihilist manifest consistently negative evaluations of herself and humanity. Just as one’s goals and purposes are unclear, unattainable, unachieved, undervalued, or absent when one is in a depressed state, so too does the affective nihilist find herself unable to act, accomplish goals, or affect the world around her. Just as the symptoms experienced by the depressed individual prevent her from staying engaged and interested in her world—depression consists not only in an inability to effect action, but also in an inability to be moved by one’s world or surroundings—so too, I argue, will those depressive and obstructionist affects experienced by the affective nihilist lead to a disruption in one’s potential both (1) to stay engaged in her world (in a way that would enable the affirmation and appreciation of existence) and (2) to be inspired by the world around her (in a way that would allow for the overcoming of her condition and the development of a truly creative spirit). Insofar as affective nihilism is a global mood that weakens one’s will and disposes an individual towards life-denial, it narrowly circumscribes the ways in which the world can inspire, stimulate, or energize the affective nihilist. I draw this comparison not to equate the affective nihilist with the clinically depressed individual; to do so would be to draw too crude an equivalence. (In fact, as we will see, Nietzsche believes that certain affective nihilists (such as the last men) have inefficacious wills and disharmonious drives but do not experience emotions akin to those of the depressed individual. Such individuals often simply feel bored, aloof, or even superficially content). Rather, I include this comparison because it enables us to more concretely understand what it means to say that affective nihilism is a disorder of end-directedness. Furthermore, this parallel between the depressed individual and the affective nihilist allows one to understand the connection between a drive-based account of the nihilist’s condition and Nietzsche’s descriptions of its outward manifestations. In short, by comparing the affective nihilist to one experiencing depression, one can more concretely envision how affective nihilism, as a generalized condition involving complex emotional responses, might result from disruptions in the operations of one’s drives . The Transpersonal Dynamics of Affective Nihilism As demonstrated above, Nietzsche frames affective nihilism as a psychophysiological condition. Why, then, does he not simply treat this

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as one more psychological illness among many, perhaps one treated by way of medicine? By examining the transpersonal dynamics of affective nihilism—especially the way in which affective nihilism, though a condition suffered by individuals at the level of their individual psychophysiological constitution, involves dynamics that exceed the individual—we can see why Nietzsche understands this illness as both harmful to individuals and potentially injurious to humanity in general. For this, let us return to Nietzsche’s example of the criminal and the “criminal type [Verbrecher-Typus],” that “strong human being under unfavorable conditions, a strong human being made sick [das ist der Typus des starken Menschen unter ungünstigen Bedingungen, ein krank gemachter starker Mensch]” (TI, “Skirmishes,” 45). As noted above, the criminal experiences a host of “depressive affects” that become intertwined with his “most lively drives” (ibid.). As his drives diminish in strength and activity (due to this affective suppression), his will is weakened. The criminal from Twilight of the Idols serves as an excellent example of the transpersonal affective dynamics at work in the prototypical affective nihilist. Not only do we see here that affects are communicated between and among individuals (that is, they are contagious); we also see that the communication of affect takes place in a particular norm-laden socio-historical context that ultimately shapes affective experience. In the case of the criminal, we see the contagion of affect as the fear and suspicion with which other members of his society view his instincts creeps into his own affective life. Indeed, Nietzsche straightforwardly notes that his “most lively drives” soon become intertwined with affects that serve a depressive function because “[h]is virtues are ostracized by society” (TI, “Skirmishes,” 45). In the criminal, then, we see the affective responses of others in the society to which the criminal belongs “infect” his own affective responses, leading him to develop a number of negative affects that dampen his desires and obstruct his end-directedness. Importantly, however, the will-weakness of the criminal caused by depressive affects not only results when the criminal “catches feelings” of fear and suspicion from particular individuals; it also occurs when he internalizes or incorporates others’ evaluations in the form of social norms and values. As Nietzsche notes, individuals like the criminal—those “strong human being[s] under unfavorable circumstances” are “so constituted that for one reason or another, they lack public approval and know that they are not felt to be beneficent or useful” (TI, “Skirmishes,”

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45). In the case of such individuals, “everything about them becomes paler than in those whose existence is touched by daylight” (ibid.). Due to a mismatch between those values built into their bodies and the values or norms prevailing in the socio-cultural context in which they find themselves, such individuals “feel the terrible gulf separating them from everything that is conventional and honorable [sie selbst die furchtbare Kluft fühlen, die sie von allem Herkömmlichen und in Ehren Stehenden trennt] [emphasis mine]” (ibid.). In short, their affective experience is shaped, both in its phenomenal character (as pleasure or displeasure) and its motivational force (as inclining them or disinclining them, in this case, toward their own instincts), by the particular socio-cultural context in which they find themselves. The influence here is deep and profound: indeed, over time, how I am disposed to feel when a particular drive is active changes depending on whether the ends and goals of that drive accord with social values and norms. Attending here to the transpersonal nature of affect allows one to see why affective nihilism, though a psychophysiological condition, is not treated by Nietzsche as a mere psychophysiological condition, but as the primary danger of his time. Insofar as affective nihilism results from the internalization and incorporation of socio-cultural norms and judgments, it is not a malady wholly reducible to the individual’s psychophysiological make-up, to one’s being poorly constituted or inherently weak and powerless (GM I:13; GM III:14).10 Indeed, it is a malady to which all individuals—including strong, powerful individuals—are susceptible, in virtue of their capacities for incorporation and internalization. Nietzsche highlights this fundamental affective vulnerability in the Genealogy when he discusses the harmful effects of sympathy and the recommended pathos of distance. Attending to the transpersonal nature of affect allows us to see how affective nihilism can result from the internalization of social mores and norms. In his account of bad conscience, Nietzsche describes how internalizing customs and norms generates affects that police one’s desires and weaken one’s end-directedness (GM II:16). It should be no wonder, then, that Nietzsche hopes for a future in which the values embraced at the levels of society and culture are the values of strong, healthy, and lifeaffirming individuals: such a socio-cultural context, after all, will always

10 Although, of course, Nietzsche thinks it does occur for this reason, too.

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make affective nihilism less likely as an illness contracted by those who were not affective nihilists to start.

Conclusion At this point, it will be helpful to summarize what we have learned about affective nihilism thus far. According to Nietzsche, the prototypical affective nihilist inhabits a pessimistic, life-denying evaluative stance “full of weariness with life, full of resistance to life” (TI, “Socrates,” 1), experiencing “disgust with himself” and humanity, that “great nausea of man” that leads to the “‘last will’ of man, [their] will to nothingness, nihilism” (GM II:24). Importantly, this perspective is rooted in his drives and affects: it is an affective stance characterized by a series of negative affective responses that include feelings of exhaustion, heaviness, weakness, misery, and debilitating feelings of obstruction or inhibition. Additionally, as indicated above, affective nihilism frequently results from one’s internalization of social or cultural norms. And although any individual might experience depressive affects in passing, this does not make him an affective nihilist. Affective nihilism is a protracted state (akin to a “global mood”) characterized by will-weakening clusters of affects, not the merely momentary experience of a life-denying or nihilistic affect. Furthermore, for Nietzsche, the will-weakening affective responses dominating the affective nihilist are rooted in (and perpetuate) an underlying psychophysiological condition marked by “physiological inhibition and exhaustion,” in which life “turn[s] against itself and den[ies] itself” (GM III:13). As we see above, Nietzsche describes the affective nihilist as “infected” by nihilism at the level of his psychophysiological constitution; thus, he characterizes those suffering from affective nihilism most fundamentally as “physiological casualties” (GM III:14). This “infection” results both in prolonged will-weakness and a (conscious or unconscious) negative evaluation of life and this-worldly existence. As I hinted above, however, not all affective nihilists fit the affective profile of the prototypical affective nihilist, who laments: “If only I were some other person […] but there’s no hope of that. I am who I am: how could I get away from myself? And oh—I’m fed up with myself !” (GM III:14). To think so would be to construe affective nihilism far more narrowly than Nietzsche intends, as Nietzsche’s account aims to accomodate other forms of affective nihilism as well. In its broadest sense, then,

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affective nihilism is a psychophysiological condition in which a preponderance of affects that interrupt or obstruct one’s end-directedness ultimately function to weaken one’s will and vitality. In short, the problem of affective nihilism is a problem of agency, and the affective nihilist is a weak agent.

References Anderson, R. Lanier. 2012. “What Is a Nietzschean Self?” In Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity. Edited by Christopher Janaway and Simon Robertson. New York: Oxford University Press. Gemes, Ken. 2008. “A Review of and Dialogue with Bernard Reginster.” The European Journal of Philosophy 16 (3): 459–466. Janaway, Christopher. 2009. “Review of The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism by Bernard Reginster.” Mind 118 (470): 518–522. Müller-Lauter, Wolfgang. 1999. Nietzsche: His Philosophy of Contradictions and the Contradictions of His Philosophy. Translated by David J. Parent. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2002. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1999. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Translated by Raymond Geuss and Ronald Speirs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1982. Daybreak. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2005. Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings. Translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007. On the Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Carol Diethe. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1967–77. Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden. Edited by G. Colli and M. Montinari. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2006. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pippin, Robert. 2008. “The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77: 281–291. Pippin, Robert. 2010. Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Poellner, Peter. 2009. “Nietzschean Freedom.” In Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy. Edited by Ken Gemes and Simon May. New York: Oxford University Press. Reginster, Bernard. 2006. The Affirmation of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Richardson, John. Forthcoming. Nietzsche’s Values. New York: Oxford University Press. Richardson, John. 2004. Nietzsche’s New Darwinism. New York: Oxford University Press. Richardson, John. 1996. Nietzsche’s System. New York: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 6

Affective Nihilists, Weak Agents

Introduction As demonstrated in the previous chapter, affective nihilism is a psychophysiological condition that results when affects function depressively, resulting in will-weakness. From Nietzsche’s perspective, this consequence of affective nihilism—that it results in a loss of one’s capacities to will actively and effectively—makes the problem of affective nihilism a dire one, urgently in need of addressing. Due to her will-weakness, the affective nihilist is unable to engage with her world in a way that enables her to be moved, inspired, and nourished by that world—and these losses lead to a disruption of her evaluative orientation, such that she is unable to find value in her world and/or herself.1 Fundamentally, the affective nihilist suffers from the incapacity or ineffectiveness of her drives: as a drive-based condition, affective nihilism involves a disruption in one’s ability to identify aims and goals and act accordingly. Disengaged from one’s goals and unable to exert one’s will or engage with the world in meaningful ways, the affective nihilist not only develops a negative valuation of life, humanity, and herself; she also feels helpless to change her position. And according to Nietzsche, in fact, she is: the problem of affective nihilism is a problem of weakened agency, and the affective nihilist is a weakened agent (if she can be considered an 1 Creasy, Kaitlyn. 2019. “Making Knowledge the Most Powerful Affect: Overcoming Affective Nihilism.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 50 (2): 210–232.

© The Author(s) 2020 K. Creasy, The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37133-3_6

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agent at all). In short, the problem of affective nihilism is, in large part, a problem of agency.2 As a problem of agency, however, affective nihilism manifests in a variety of forms. While some affective nihilists experience directly depressive affects that immediately inhibit certain of their drives, others experience excitatory affects that overstimulate particular drives and fragment the will. (Indeed, the same individual suffering from affective nihilism might experience these different affective stances at different times.) Furthermore, the ways in which individuals (either consciously or unconsciously) cope with affective nihilism often sustain it in a new guise. These methods of coping lead to ever-more variegated forms of will-weakness, all of which Nietzsche understands as nihilistic psychophysiological configurations. Given this heterogeneity, “affective nihilism” is best understood as an umbrella term that refers to a variety of life-denying psychophysiological configurations. In what follows, I demarcate two basic forms of affective nihilism that occur throughout Nietzsche’s body of work: (1) nihilism as drive suppression and (2) nihilism as will fragmentation. I will also detail a number of ways in which the affective nihilist sustains or worsens their affliction through conscious and unconscious attempts at coping.

Affective Nihilists, Weak Agents: Nihilism as a (Variety of) Psychological States As mentioned above, one can separate affective nihilism in Nietzsche into two basic forms: (1) affective nihilism as drive suppression, involving either the global suppression of one’s drives or the obstruction of one’s strongest, characteristic drives and (2) affective nihilism as will fragmentation, involving the deterioration or disintegration of one’s will. Though Nietzsche does not explicitly identify these two forms of affective nihilism, his reflections on nihilism as an affective condition characterize it in these two (fundamentally different) ways.

2 Importantly, however, describing affective nihilism as a problem of weakened agency

that can be explained as a psychophysiological disorder does not tell the whole story of affective nihilism and its significance for Nietzsche. Indeed, as mentioned in the previous chapter, it is critical for Nietzsche that affective nihilism as a disorder can be caused by the internalization of life-denying norms or beliefs: norms and beliefs inherited from one’s culture or society.

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N1: Affective Nihilism Involving Drive Suppression In his work, Nietzsche often describes affective nihilism as a condition involving the large-scale suppression of one’s drives (Gemes 2008, p. 461), or “degenerate instincts [Instinkt-Entartung]” (TI, “Four Errors,” 2). Let us call this affective nihilism N1a. As global drive suppression, affective nihilism N1a “dissolves [auflöst] and undermines [untergräbt] all actual instincts” (KSA 13:14[154]), resulting in the general erosion of one’s end-directedness. It is this form of affective nihilism that Christians and other “sportsmen of ‘holiness’” perpetuate “with methods that reduce the awareness of life to the lowest point” (GM III:17). As Nietzsche notes, such individuals already possess degenerate instincts that cause in them a “deep depression […] leaden fatigue […] and black melancholy” due to the “physiological feeling of obstruction” (GM III:17) they experience. In their attempts to avoid this depression, some undergo “what hibernation is for […] animals and estivation is for […] plants […] a minimum of expenditure of energy and metabolism” (GM III:17). This coping attempt requires the absence of affects as potential stimulants: “absolutely no more wanting, no more wishing; everything that arouses the emotions and ‘blood’ must be avoided” (ibid.). Though it curtails the affective nihilist’s suffering (because it diminishes feelings generally), this coping mechanism ultimately exacerbates affective nihilism. Ken Gemes and Christopher Sykes seem to have affective nihilism N1a in mind when they claim that affective nihilism is the “wholesale repression of the drives” (2013, p. 673). According to Gemes and Sykes, this sense of nihilism “captures the nihil (nothing) of nihilism, since the drive to suppress or extirpate the drives is a kind of drive to nothingness… to eliminate the drives is to eliminate life itself” (ibid.). Indeed, Gemes and Sykes understand affective nihilism as a large-scale extirpation of the drives, in which the activity of an individual’s drives diminishes over time (and, perhaps, is ultimately extinguished). Though, as seen above, Nietzsche does sometimes describe affective nihilism in this way, such a picture does not account for all cases of affective nihilism. First of all, it does not leave room for Nietzsche’s claim that affective nihilism might follow from the obstruction or repression of drives that are of particular importance to the individual, and not just from global drive suppression. Indeed, alongside that version of affective nihilism involving the global suppression of one’s drives and instincts (N1a), Nietzsche identifies a

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more localized phenomenon: affective nihilism as involving the obstruction of one’s strongest (“most lively”) or characteristic drive or drives (affective nihilism type N1b). We see this in the example of the criminal whose “most lively drives […] grow together with depressive affects” when those drives are devalued by those around him (TI, “Skirmishes,” 45). The criminal experiences the obstruction of “his virtues […] what he can do best, what he would most like to do” (ibid.). In this case, depressive affects obstruct or inhibit certain of an individual’s drives: those drives that orient an individual to their highest task (BGE 211, 212). Given how significant these particular drives are for inspiring and motivating the individual, their suppression results in will-weakness, which impedes agency and personal development. These two kinds of affective nihilism—both of which involve a suppression of one’s drives that results in a weakened will—are critical for understanding the specific ways in which nihilism might manifest itself as a psychophysiological condition that hinders the agency of the individual suffering from it. Yet these two kinds of affective nihilism (N1) do not exhaust affective nihilism as a phenomenon in Nietzsche. Indeed, as Andrew Huddleston points out, if we understand affective nihilism merely as involving drive suppression, we find ourselves unable to account for instances of affective nihilism that appear elsewhere in Nietzsche’s corpus (2019a, p. 10). For example, this characterization of affective nihilism leaves out the “last man,” a character from Thus Spoke Zarathustra who Nietzsche introduces “as the nadir of this condition” (ibid., p. 2). Huddleston’s analysis is particularly illuminating on this point: …in the case of the “last man”, the issue is not that drives tout court are reduced to nothingness or to a low level of expression. Many drives toward shallow and petty goals will be expressed, perhaps energetically so, by the “last man”… [thus,] the problem with the “last man” is not so much one of diminished drive, motivation, and affect. (2019b, p. 10, 12)

In order to make sense of the last man’s status as an affective nihilist—as well as to do justice to other of Nietzsche’s characterizations of nihilists suffering from will-weakness—we must introduce another type of affective nihilism: affective nihilism as will fragmentation (N2).

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N2: Affective Nihilism Involving the Fragmentation of the Will As mentioned above, another species of affective nihilism is one in which the individual’s will disintegrates, becoming ineffective. This “disintegration of the will [Disgregation des Willens]” (TI, “Four Errors,” 2) most often occurs when the will fragments and an individual is left with a disharmonious array of conflicting drives (N2a)—though it can also result (as we will see) when drives neither conflict with one another nor coordinate (N2b). In both kinds of cases, though an individual’s drives are active, she is unable to will sustainably in any particular direction, and thus manifests a weak and scattered agency. In these examples of affective nihilism, there is “anarchy among the atoms, disintegration of the will [Disgregation des Willens] […] everywhere paralysis, distress, and numbness, or hostility and chaos […] The whole no longer lives at all” (CW 7). This disintegration leads to disunity in willing—the dissolution of a productive “synthesis [between one’s] values and goals” (KSA 12:9[35])— and thus a lack of robust engagement with the world to which one belongs. In his unpublished notes, Nietzsche frames physiological decadence as “the conflict of passions, the two-ness, three-ness, multiplicity of ‘souls in one breast’” (KSA 13:14[157]). Such conflict is “very unhealthy, inner ruin, dissolution, betrays and intensifies antagonism [Zwiespalt] and anarchism…. unless a passion finally becomes master” (ibid.). When and if a passion becomes master, Nietzsche calls this the “return of health”: that is, health results when “the work of one’s inner systems coordinate in the service of one [passion]” (ibid.). In a later note, Nietzsche emphasizes this: The multiplicity and disintegration of the drives, the lack of systematic coordination among them [der Mangel an System unter ihnen] results in a “weak will”; the coordination of the same under the dominance of a single drive results in a “strong will”; in the former case, it is the oscilliation and lack of weightiness [Schwergewicht]; in the latter; it is the precision and clarity of direction. (KSA 13:14[219])

For Nietzsche, a strong will requires unity among the drives, or the coordination of the drives under the dominance of one strongest drive. As Richardson argues, unity of will occurs only when there is “one ruler of [an individual’s] set of drives—a single dominant drive, or perhaps a

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ruling ‘committee’ of drives” (2009, p. 135).3 It is not enough for one drive to predominate, however; indeed, the dominant drive must unify the complex of drives one is by integrating and incorporating other drives into its end, in such a way that one’s form of life (that is, one’s will to power) is enhanced. In Nietzsche’s unified individual, the dominant drive or set of drives does not tyrannize the other drives, attempting to extirpate them entirely.4 A will is fragmented or disunified, then, when the above conditions do not hold: either when there is no one dominant drive or set of drives bringing the complex of drives into unity, or when one drive tyrannizes rather than incorporates the other drives.5 As an example of an individual with “anarchic instincts” (TI, “Socrates,” 4) 3 This view is also shared by Gemes (2009, p. 42). 4 For more on this, see Huddleston (2019b, pp. 86–87). 5 Katsafanas (2016) argues that agential unity does not result when “one drive predominates and coordinates the other drives” (2016, p. 175). Instead, he believes that “an agent is unified—or, equivalently, the agent is active in the production of her action— when she approves of her action, and further knowledge of the action’s etiology would not undermine the approval” (ibid., p. 195). This is because Katsafanas, unlike other scholars (Gemes 2009; Richardson 2009), understands unity to involve a “relation between [one’s] drives and [one’s] conscious thoughts” (ibid., p. 165). Such unity is required for one to be a genuine agent. On Katsafanas’ view, however, it seems that the last man may very well count as a unified agent, one who genuinely acts as opposed to one who merely manifests behaviors in virtue of his drives. After all, the last man experiences an unreflective, easy contentedness with the ends he pursues—that is to say, he seems to approve of his ends and actions—and his noncommittal, detached attitude makes it unlikely that discovering the etiology of his actions (what seems to be a desire for undisturbed, simple comfort) would trouble him at all. In fact, that “sunny and impartial hospitality with which he accepts everything that comes his way, his type of unscrupulous benevolence” (BGE 207) seems to ensure that he would remain cheerful and unmoved even in the face of such a discovery. Yet Nietzsche characterizes the last man’s will as lacking unity. According to Nietzsche, the last man’s soul undergoes “ever greater deterioration and disintegration” (KSA 11:25[9]; he has “no goal, no conclusion and sunrise […] nothing tough, powerful, self-reliant that wants to be master” (BGE 207). (Note here that I read Nietzsche’s descriptions of the last man, the theoretical man, and the objective man as descriptions of the same type of individual.) Thus, I resist Katsafanas’s claim that Nietzschean unity involves a relation between conscious thought and drives (rather than a relation among one’s drives and affects). In addition, it seems clear that Nietzsche would not characterize the last man as an agent. Indeed, the last man’s behaviors and pursuits are framed as mere “pastimes” (Z P:5); according to Nietzsche, such a man “change[s], [he does] not become” (KSA 13:14[157]). Thus, the particular kind of self-approbation described by Katsafanas—one that would persist in the face of discoveries about the origins of one’s actions—is not a sufficient condition for agency in Nietzsche. Still, I do think that Nietzsche believes a kind of self-approbatory attitude similar to the one Katsafanas describes here will be an important characteristic of one who has overcome affective nihilism: this

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suffering from this kind of affective nihilism (N2a), Nietzsche offers the example of Socrates.6 Along with those individuals whose drives are in antagonistic relationships with one another, Nietzsche believes there are individuals with fragmented wills whose drives merely exist alongside one another, in relations that are neither antagonistic nor cooperative. In such cases, an individual’s multiplicity of drives is in chaos: each drive simply strives in its own direction, and though the will might unify periodically behind one drive in a healthy way, this unity—and, thus, health—is not lasting. Such an individual has drives in a relationship of mere “coexistence [Nebeneinander], without being in conflict or cooperation [ohne ein Gegeneinander und Füreinander zu sein]” (KSA 13:14 [157]). Nietzsche calls individuals so constituted “chameleons,” explaining that “they are not at odds with themselves, they are happy and sure, but they make no developmental progress [aber sie haben keine Entwicklung],—their states lie next to each other, even if they are disaggregated seven times. They change, they do not become—” (KSA 13:14 [157]). In Nietzsche’s view, such individuals are comfortable, but disengaged. They are noncommittal, and thus, stagnant. Their inner states change, but they play no active role in that change. Although they are able to periodically achieve strength of will, they do not achieve lasting health. For the most part, such individuals are pushed in different directions at different times by the chaos of their drives. Thus, they remain weak agents, suffering from affective nihilism N2b. Both of these types of will fragmentation—a fragmentation of the will resulting from drives in conflict (N2a), and a fragmentation of the will resulting from the mere coexistence [Nebeneinander] of one’s drives (N2b)—count as affective nihilism for Nietzsche. In addition, both forms appear when the “herd-instinct” comes to dominate the individual, and affects that encourage one to identify the interests and ends of others as will be the attitude that “redeem[s] what is past…. transform[ing] every ‘It was’ into ‘Thus I willed it’” (Z II:20). I discuss this at more length in the eighth chapter. 6 Socrates’ development of “a hypertrophy of the logical faculty” as a response to his spirit’s anarchy is no indication that he has unified his will in the way Nietzsche recommends; indeed, in Socrates’ case, reason plays the role of “counter-tyrant” (TI, “Socrates,” 9) to the drives, which Socrates already experiences as tyrannical. One whose will is unified in the proper way will achieve mastery over their drives in the form of their dominant drive or set of drives; the dominant drives do not become a “tyrant” in Nietzsche’s healthy individual. For more on this distinction between tyranny and mastery, see Reginster (2003) and Katsafanas (2016).

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their own (such as pity) are experienced (A 7). An individual suffering from affective nihilism as will fragmentation is in contrast to one able to “stay in control, to keep the height of [one’s] task free from the many lower and short-sighted impulses that are at work in supposedly selfless actions” (EH, “Wise,” 5). In the figure of the last man from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, we find an example of an affective nihilist (N2b) suffering from a fragmented will: one in which the drives merely coexist alongside one another, neither conflicting nor coordinating. Nietzsche describes the soul of the last man as “poor and exhausted” soil; with this type, man “no longer [launches] the arrow of his longing beyond man” (Z P:5). Instead, the last man is content with “small pleasures” and the status quo; he only pursues an easy, untroubled happiness. Such men have “left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loves one’s neighbor and rubs against him; for one needs warmth” (ibid.). Every activity pursued by the last man is understood as mere “pastime”: One still works, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one. One no longer becomes poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wants to rule? Who still wants to obey? Both are too burdensome. No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same; everyone is the same: he who feels differently goes voluntarily into the madhouse. “Formerly all the world was insane,”—say the subtlest of them, and they blink. They are clever and know all that has happened: so there is no end to their derision. People still quarrel, but are soon reconciled—otherwise it upsets their stomachs. They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health. “We have discovered happiness,”—say the Last Men, and they blink.

In the case of this last man, affective nihilism appears when “previous goals and values have become incommensurate and are no longer believed” (KSA 12:9[35]). Nietzsche alludes to this type in an 1884 note, where he describes his contemporary moment as characterized by “ever greater deterioration and disintegration [Auseinanderfallens]” in which “one lives for tomorrow, as the day after tomorrow is dubious” (KSA 11:25[9]).

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This last man bears close resemblance to the objective man from Beyond Good and Evil. As one who is unable to command and who functions as a mere “instrument” for others, the objective person is “no ‘end in himself’” (BGE 207). Nietzsche goes on: He has lost any seriousness for himself, also time: he is cheerful, not for lack of distress, but for lack of fingers and handles for his need. His habit [is] of meeting every thing and experience half-way... [he has a] sunny and impartial hospitality with which he accepts everything that comes his way... [this is] his type of unscrupulous benevolence […]. His mirror soul, eternally smoothing itself out, no longer knows how to affirm or negate; he does not command, neither does he destroy. (BGE 207)

This individual, unable to unify his will by means of a dominant drive or commanding instinct, is described by Nietzsche as “inauthentic, fragile, questionable, and worm-eaten” (BGE 207); he has “no goal, no conclusion and sunrise […] nothing tough, powerful, self-reliant that wants to be master” (BGE 207). In short, this “objective man” suffers from affective nihilism N2b, that nihilism characterized by a fragmented and ineffective will.7 In Nietzsche’s various accounts of the ways in which individuals (either consciously or unconsciously) attempt to mitigate affective nihilism, one finds further support for affective nihilism as involving a disunity in willing. Left without attachment to particular values and goals that might serve to unify and stimulate one’s will, lifting the soul ever higher, affective nihilists with disunified wills engage in “mechanical activity.”8 This is true both of those whose wills disintegrate due to conflicts among their drives (N2a) and those whose wills remain fragmented because their drives merely operate alongside one another (N2b). In the case of those with fragmented wills, the method for coping with an already-impoverished soul sustains the affective nihilism with which they—unconsciously, here—attempt to cope. As “training to combat the condition of depression,” “mechanical activity” involves “completely diverting the interest of the sufferer from the pain” through the 7 Further support for this point can be found in a note from the Nachlass in which Nietzsche characterizes “objectivity as the disintegration of the will [Willens-Disgregation]” (KSA 13:14[83]). 8 It is worth noting that the connection between mechanical activity and the herd instinct appears in both Zarathustra and the Genealogy.

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“prescription of a small pleasure that is readily accessible and can be made into normal practice” (GM III:18). Although individuals engaging in “mechanical activity” find their affects temporarily stimulated in the pursuits of small pleasures and trivial goals, their wills fail to unify in a sustained way around an orienting goal or task. Another example of this type is the fanatic from The Gay Science. In this text, Nietzsche remarks that those most in need of faith—and those most susceptible to fanaticism—are affective nihilists who manifest an “instinct of weakness [Instinkt der Schwäche]” and suffer from the “feeling of weakness [Schwächegefühls]” (GS 347). In such individuals, a commanding will that serves as “the decisive mark of sovereignty and strength” is “lacking” (ibid.). For those who have experienced such a “tremendous sickening of the will,” fanaticism offers the possibility of willing—which, in this case, means the “hypnosis of the entire sensual-intellectual system to the benefit of the excessive nourishment (hypertrophy) of a single point of view and feeling” (ibid.). In other words, the faith of the fanatic affords her temporary relief from affective nihilism because she was unable previously to unify her will and become effective. In the case of fanaticism, the fanatic is able to unify her will temporarily, though at the expense of being commanded rather than commanding. The fanatic is unable to sustain her fervor in the long run, however, and she is left with a more severe case of affective nihilism than before. Otherwise put, she is an even weaker agent than she used to be. We see this in Nietzsche’s account of the “guilty means” employed by the ascetic priest to relieve the suffering of the affective nihilist: the inspiration of excessive emotion (GM III:15; GM III:20). To throw the human soul out of joint, plunging it into terror, frosts, fires and raptures to such an extent that it rids itself of all small and petty forms of lethargy, apathy and depression, as though hit by lightning: what paths lead to this goal? … Basically, all strong emotions have this capacity, providing they are released suddenly: anger, fear, voluptuousness, revenge, hope, triumph, despair, cruelty; in fact, the ascetic priest has insouciantly taken into his service the whole pack of wild hounds in man, releasing now one, then another, always with the same purpose of waking man out of his long-drawn-out melancholy, of putting to flight, at least temporarily, his dull pain, his lingering misery, always with a religious interpretation and ‘justification’ as well. Every such excess of emotion has to be paid for afterwards, it goes without saying– it makes the sick person even sicker –: (GM III:20)

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As seen here, although fanaticism can unify the will in the short-term, it does not allow the affective nihilist to will sustainably. Instead, she remains a weakened agent, a slave to her extreme passions, commanded by them instead of commanding them. And not only this: she also becomes committed to pretexts invented to justify her affective experience, thus becoming an instrument of the ascetic priest and the ascetic ideal. In sum, though affective nihilism has a variety of manifestations (created, exacerbated, or perpetuated by conscious and unconscious methods of coping), there are two basic types of this disorder: affective nihilism as drive suppression (N1) and affective nihilism as the disintegration of the will (N2). Once we have sketched out these basic types, it is not difficult to see how they might be related. For example, the disintegration or fragmentation of the will is likely to occur when one’s strongest or characteristic drive (or set of drives) is suppressed, often by hostile affects produced by the socio-cultural context in which one finds oneself. Furthermore, Nietzsche sometimes seems to frame these two types of affective nihilism as progressive stages: the weak-willed individual experiencing the largescale suppression of her drives frequently develops the herd-instinct, and this development of the herd-instinct (and the accompanying affects) leads to the ever-increasing fragmentation of her will. Nietzsche’s establishment of the last man as the culmination of nihilism offers further support for this progressive picture. This also seems broadly in line with the trajectory of the Genealogy, which begins by describing affective nihilists as powerless, slavish individuals unable to will and ends with an entirely new kind of affective nihilist: those allegedly neutral, detached, objective “contemplatives” (GM III:28) no longer at risk of “suicidal nihilism” but able only to “will nothingness” (GM III:28). Though I remain wary of insisting that affective nihilism as the fragmentation of the will (N2) must always be preceded by affective nihilism as drive suppression (N1), Nietzsche’s texts indicate the possibility of such a progression.9

9 Although a robust account of Nietzschean nihilism must include affective nihilism, it is not the case that every Nietzschean nihilist suffers from affective nihilism. Indeed, one can judge this-worldly existence negatively or believe in the worthlessness of existence without suffering from affective nihilism.

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Conclusion After reviewing Nietzsche’s reflections on affective nihilism above, it should be clear that affective nihilism, as a drive-based, psychophysiological disorder, is a problem of weakened agency. Otherwise put, affective nihilists are weak agents, though Nietzsche offers different version of this will-weakness: either the intensity of one’s will is diminished due to the weakened activity of one’s drives (N1), or the efficacy and endurance of one’s will drops off as one’s will is fragmented into a chaotic cluster of contradictory drives (N2). It is only by attending to affective nihilism as a problem of agency, based in one’s drives and affects, that we can start to envision the profound personal transformation the affective nihilist will have to undergo to overcome this condition. Contra Reginster, Nietzschean nihilism is not simply an intellectual stance that “can be overcome only by distinctively philosophical means, including philosophical arguments” (Reginster 2006, p. 38). Overcoming nihilism is not merely a matter of changing one’s beliefs about the value of the world, existence, and oneself; rather, the nihilist must undergo a profound personal transformation, enacting fundamental changes in her constitution as a complex of drives. In order to overcome her condition, the affective nihilist must re-establish goals towards which she is directed by somehow stimulating the activity of one’s drives, integrating her will, and moving toward her goals in action. To overcome affective nihilism, in other words, she must become an effectual agent. It is only then that she will be able to properly affirm life, existence, and herself. In this sense, Nietzsche’s affirmation of life is not a matter of merely changing one’s beliefs about the world; it is about changing oneself.10 Of course, according to Nietzsche, one’s constitution—that particular complex of drives and affects of which one is composed—impacts the beliefs one holds. One can imagine, then, that undergoing a profound personal change will also involve a change in one’s perspective, outlook, or system of beliefs. In what follows, I detail the relationship Nietzsche establishes between nihilism as an affective phenomenon and nihilism as

10 Importantly, though it is a necessary condition of overcoming affective nihilism that one’s will is strengthened and one is able to accomplish those goals one sets for oneself, this is not sufficient for overcoming nihilism (Anderson 2013, p. 164). This is something I discuss at greater length in the next two chapters.

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a cognitive phenomenon, involving the devaluation of one’s world and existence. Additionally, I explain why it is not the case that all individuals Nietzsche deems nihilists count as affective nihilists.

References Anderson, R. Lanier. 2013. “Love and the Moral Psychology of the Hegelian Nietzsche: Comments on Robert Pippin’s Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy.” The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 44 (2): 158–180. Gemes, Ken. 2008. “A Review of and Dialogue with Bernard Reginster.” The European Journal of Philosophy 16 (3): 459–466. Gemes, Ken. 2009. “Nietzsche on Free Will, Autonomy, and the Sovereign Individual.” In Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gemes, Ken, and Christopher Sykes. 2013. “Nihilism.” In Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences. Edited by B. Kaldis. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Huddleston, Andrew. 2019a. Nietzsche on the Decadence and Flourishing of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Huddleston, Andrew. 2019b. “Nietzsche on Nihilism: A Unifying Thread.” Philosophers’ Imprint 19 (11): 1–19. Katsafanas, Paul. 2016. The Nietzschean Self. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2002. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1967. The Case of Wagner. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2005. Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, And Other Writings. Translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007. On the Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Carol Diethe. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1967–77. Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden. Edited by G. Colli and M. Montinari. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2006. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reginster, Bernard. 2006. The Affirmation of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Reginster, Bernard. 2003. “What Is a Free Spirit? Nietzsche on Fanaticism.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 85: 51–85. Richardson, John. 2009. “Nietzsche’s Freedoms.” In Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy. Edited by Ken Gemes and Simon May. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 7

Cognitive Nihilism, Affective Nihilism, and Their Interplay

Introduction As explained above, affective nihilism is a drive-based (and thus psychophysiological) condition in which affects function to weaken one’s will and vitality through the obstruction or inhibition of one’s enddirectedness. Given the heterogeneity of forms of will-weakness Nietzsche ascribes to the affective nihilist, however, I insist that “affective nihilism” should be understood as an umbrella term with a variety of life-denying psychophysiological configurations as its referents. In what follows, I first look to Nietzsche to more precisely fix the scope of this term. In particular, I demonstrate that, while the majority of individuals Nietzsche designates as nihilists suffer from one of the varieties of nihilism described above, there are individuals Nietzsche designates as nihilists who are not affective nihilists. After establishing the scope of affective nihilism in Nietzsche, I go on to detail the relationship between affective nihilism (as a disorder of the will based in one’s drives and affects) and cognitive nihilism (as a system of beliefs involving life-denying beliefs and judgments about the meaninglessness or worthlessness of life, as well as certain epistemic practices or tendencies). That such a relationship exists should be unsurprising. After all, Nietzsche insists that our beliefs and judgments, which we typically understand to be freely and consciously formed by us, are in

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fact “reflection[s] of deeper causes” (Gemes 2008, p. 461) localized in the complex interactions of our drives and affects. A well-known Nachlass passage makes this exceptionally clear: “moral evaluation is a construction [Auslegung], a way of interpreting. The construction itself is a symptom of certain physiological conditions… Who interprets ?—Our affects” (KSA 12:2[190]). Understanding just how nihilism as a cognitive phenomenon both follows from and perpetuates affective nihilism will be critical for envisioning what the overcoming of Nietzschean nihilism might look like.

The Scope of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche As I argue throughout this work, a comprehensive account of Nietzschean nihilism must include an analysis of affective nihilism. Importantly, however, this does not mean that every individual Nietzsche identifies as a nihilist suffers from affective nihilism. Indeed, Nietzsche believes that one can judge life or this-worldly existence worthless and meaningless without suffering from the kinds of affective nihilism I describe above. One need only attend to the affective and volitional dynamics of nihilism that Nietzsche describes to see this. Not only does he present his readers with examples of both strong-willed nihilists (such as the priest) and weak-willed nihilists (such as the last man); he also distinguishes between “active” and “passive” nihilism in the Nachlass . The strong-willed nihilist in Nietzsche is an individual who adopts nihilistic beliefs, yet does so in a way that does not compromise the strength of will he possesses. One example of this can be found in the priest and his embrace of implicitly nihilistic ideals. Nietzsche describes the priest as “the incarnate wish for being otherwise, being elsewhere, indeed, he is the highest pitch of this wish, its essential ardor and passion” (GM III:13). Although the priest adopts beliefs that devalue thisworldly existence and facilitates the dissemination of life-denying ideals (GM III:11), he does so as a means of enhancing his own ends, thus strengthening his own will in the process: The ascetic priest not only rests his faith in [life-denying] ideal[s], but his will, his power, his interest as well. His right to exist stands and falls with [these] ideal[s]: hardly surprising, then, that we encounter a formidable opponent in him. … (GM III:11)

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Furthermore, though priests start out as the “most powerless” enemies of those in the strong, noble caste, their intellectual trickery increases their strength of will, as well as their ability to impose their will and their ideals upon others: Rule over the suffering is [the ascetic priest’s] domain, his instinct directs him towards it and his own special skill, mastery, and brand of happiness are to be had in it. He must be sick himself, he must really be a close relative of the sick and the destitute in order to understand them, – in order to come to an understanding with them; but he has to be strong, too, more master of himself than of others, actually unscathed in his will to power… (GM III:15)

In the priest, then, we find an example of a strong-willed nihilist, an individual who holds implicitly nihilistic beliefs and espouses nihilistic ideals but does not suffer from affective nihilism. The “active” nihilist—she who has become strong enough for nihilism—is another example of a strong-willed nihilist, though her nihilism is explicit: she professes the belief that the world is meaningless, that it is devoid of inherent value. In the case of the active nihilist, her nihilism is a “sign of strength: the spirit may have grown so strong that previous goals (‘convictions,’ articles of faith) have become incommensurate (for a faith generally expresses the constraint of conditions of existence, submission to the authority of circumstances under which one flourishes, grows, gains power)” (KSA 12:9[35]). The weak-willed nihilist, on the other hand, is unable to further her ideals and ends due to the weakness of her will. As we begin to see above, along with distinguishing strong-willed and weak-willed nihilists, Nietzsche contrasts “active” nihilism as a “sign of increased power of the spirit” and “passive” nihilism as “decline and recession of the power of the spirit” (KSA 12:9[35]). Although the active nihilist is strong-willed, every strong-willed nihilist will not be an active nihilist. The active nihilist must both have strength of will and recognize or express (at least to herself) explicitly nihilistic beliefs. In Nietzsche’s view, the active nihilist is one who has become strong enough for such beliefs; she is strong enough to live without those highest values around which she had previously organized her life. Though a strongwilled nihilist, the priest is not an active nihilist. Rather than discard the implicitly life-denying ideals around which he has oriented his life, the priest remains committed to those ideals and finds a way to impose them on others.

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In the case of passive nihilism, as opposed to active nihilism, one is not strong enough to “posit for oneself, productively, a goal, a why, a faith” (KSA 12:9[35]). The passive nihilist, then, is an individual suffering either from the suppression of her drives (affective nihilism N1) or from the “disintegration” of her will as the dissolving of a “synthesis [between her] values and goals” (ibid.) (affective nihilism N2).1 Unlike with active and strong-willed nihilisms, Nietzsche does not distinguish between passive and weak-willed nihilisms. The passive nihilist described above is necessarily weak-willed, and every weak-willed nihilist presented by Nietzsche can be characterized as having decreased “power of the spirit” (ibid.). In sum, then, neither strong-willed nor active nihilists suffer from affective nihilism. Instead, such a condition characterizes passive, or weak-willed, nihilists.

A Crucial Interplay: The Relationship Between Affective and Cognitive Nihilism As a psychophysiological condition, affective nihilism is logically distinct from cognitive nihilism. Importantly, however, these different dimensions or manifestations of Nietzschean nihilism are related.2 Cognitive nihilism is an intellectual stance involving a number of characteristic beliefs and judgments about the meaninglessness or worthlessness of life. Such beliefs, as Bernard Reginster helpfully notes, include “the belief that existence is meaningless” (21); the belief that life has no value; and the belief that life is not worth living. Cognitive nihilism, then, involves a range of life-denying beliefs that assess life, this-worldly existence, and humanity negatively. More specifically, the cognitive nihilist judges life, this-worldly existence, and humanity to be meaningless and without value. As we see above, the nihilist might be conscious of these beliefs and express them explicitly, or she might hold a series of beliefs that implicitly devalue the world. In the latter case, she might be totally unaware that certain of her beliefs imply a negative evaluation of this-worldly existence; here, the cognitive nihilist unconsciously judges life and finds it wanting.3

1 This disintegration happens also on the level of culture. 2 See also Reginster (2006) and Riccardi (2018). 3 In The Affirmation of Life, Reginster famously claims that nihilism (as a “rational phenomenon”) must involve one of two stances: either nihilism as disorientation or nihilism

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Importantly, however, there is more to cognitive nihilism than a collection of life-denying beliefs and judgments. Though Nietzsche’s discussions of nihilism as a cognitive phenomenon focus mainly on these, he also mentions a variety of epistemic practices in which the nihilist is more likely to engage (or epistemic tendencies characteristic of the nihilist) (Riccardi 2018, p. 266). Looking to The Gay Science 347, Mattia Riccardi explains that Nietzsche often characterizes the nihilist as possessing certain “unconscious dispositions” to adopt particular beliefs and seek out “articles of faith” to which she can anchor herself (and through which she can justify her existence) (ibid.). Nietzsche also often frames the nihilist as privileging certain sources of evidence and ways of knowing. A definition of cognitive nihilism ought to include these epistemic practices or tendencies. Affective nihilism both underpins the beliefs and epistemic tendencies characteristic of cognitive nihilism and is exacerbated by them. Nietzsche frequently makes mention of these dynamics, and on at least one occasion, he explains in the same aphorism both that nihilistic beliefs spring forth from the physiology of decadent individuals and that such beliefs, when adopted, weaken the will (TI, “Skirmishes,” 35). Let us first investigate the latter dynamic: the ways in which Nietzsche claims that life-denying beliefs, judgments, and epistemic tendencies originate in those suffering from affective nihilism. On several occasions, Nietzsche frames beliefs characteristic of cognitive nihilism as expressions of complex interactions at the level of the drives and affects. We see this in

as despair. Nihilism as disorientation requires the belief that, because one’s ultimate values have been devalued, there are no absolute values and thus nothing to offer moral guidance. Nihilism as despair, on the other hand, requires the belief that there are ultimate or highest values, but the world is constituted in such a way that such values cannot be realized. After finding these two stances inconsistent, Reginster rejects the possibility of Nietzschean nihilism as disorientation and insists that cognitive nihilism must be framed as nihilism of despair. On Reginster’s account, then, the “primary form of Nietzschean nihilism is despair over the unrealizability of our highest values” (2006, p. 54). It seems to me that Reginster’s framing here creates an artificial dilemma that Nietzsche himself does not recognize. Yes, it is logically impossible for an individual to simultaneously subscribe to that stance characteristic of disoriented nihilism and to that stance characteristic of despairing nihilism. But both of these stances—nihilism as despair and as disorientation—are stances Nietzsche attributes to the nihilist, and the beliefs characteristic of both are beliefs I subsume under cognitive nihilism as a broad phenomenon. It is worth noting also here that in Riccardi’s reflections on the “cognitive side of nihilism,” cognitive nihilism is framed as a devaluation or absence of higher values. So he seemingly comes down on the side of nihilism of disorientation (Riccardi 2018, p. 266).

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an 1888 note, where he claims both that “the question of whether notto-be is better than to be is itself already an illness, decline, an idiosyncrasy” (KSA 13:17[8]) and that nihilism, as a “pessimistic [pessimistische] movement,” is “simply the expression of physiological decadence” (ibid.). Ken Gemes (2008, p. 461) and Riccardi also support the idea that the beliefs characteristic of nihilism result (at least in part) from an underlying psychophysiological condition. Indeed, Riccardi notes that “Nietzsche sees an essential link between the functioning of one’s will and the epistemic attitudes one endorses” and that “epistemic attitudes [for Nietzsche] result from deeper psychological facts, among which… is the state he describes as psychological nihilism” (2018, p. 268). Given Nietzsche’s accounts of the mechanics of belief formation and the psychophysiology of valuation, his claims that certain beliefs, judgments, and tendencies characteristic of cognitive nihilism result from a more fundamental psychophysiological condition (affective nihilism) should be unsurprising. Still, apart from short treatments by Reginster, Gemes, and Riccardi, such claims have been underthematized. Below, I identify a few specific versions of the claims above and examples of these from Nietzsche’s texts. First, Nietzsche claims that certain psychophysiological facts about the affective nihilist—usually, her will-weakness and decadence—are causally responsible for the beliefs and judgments characteristic of cognitive nihilism. Throughout the third essay of the Genealogy, for example, Nietzsche describes how the will-weakness characteristic of affective nihilism leads to negative judgments about this-worldly existence. In one section, he straightforwardly asserts that “the ascetic ideal springs from the protective and healing instincts of a degenerating life” and “indicates a partial physiological inhibition and exhaustion against which the deepest instincts of life, which have remained intact, continually struggle” (GM III:13). A similar claim appears in Nietzsche’s reflections on sages and the problem of Socrates from Twilight of the Idols, where he explains that the judgment the “wisest sages of all times have reached… about life: it’s worthless ” comes from “fatigue with life” and “hostility with life” (TI, “Socrates,” 1). Critically, Nietzsche argues that these sages reach the same nihilistic judgment as a result of physiological features they share in common. These individuals, according to Nietzsche, are “declining types … these

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wisest ones [were] somehow in physiological agreement, so that they took the same negative stance toward life – and had to take it” (TI, “Socrates,” 2). In this same section, Nietzsche explains that all judgments, including “value judgments about life, for or against… have value only as symptoms, they can be considered only as symptoms…” (ibid.). For Nietzsche, then, evaluations of life and this-worldly existence function as symptoms that indicate the physiological condition of the one doing the evaluating. It makes sense, then, that negative evaluations such as the ones he discusses above would indicate an underlying psychophysiological disorder: physiological decadence, a weakened or fragmented will, that is, affective nihilism.4 In Nietzsche’s discussion of “anti-natural morality” later in Twilight of the Idols, we see again that beliefs and judgments characteristic of cognitive nihilism follow from a “décadence-instinct ”: …even that anti-natural morality that takes God to be the antithesis and condemnation of life is just one of life’s value judgments—A judgment made by which life? Which kind of life? But I already gave the answer: declining, weakened, tired, and condemned life. Morality as it has been understood up to now—as it was finally formulated once again by Schopenhauer, as “negation of the will to live”—is the décadence-instinct itself, making itself into an imperative. “Perish!” it says—it is the condemnation decreed by the condemned… (TI, “Morality,” 5)

In this selection, we see that those instincts of decadence characteristic of the affective nihilist serve as the origins of moral principles and judgments that negate the will to life. Not only is the physiology of the affective nihilist causally responsible for characteristically nihilistic beliefs, however; there are also certain epistemic practices and tendencies that stem from her psychophysiological condition. For example, as a function of her psychophysiological condition, the affective nihilist is likely to find the beliefs characteristic of cognitive nihilism—beliefs that life is worthless and/or has no meaning—compelling (GS 347). This makes the affective nihilist more likely to embrace “decadence-values,” more likely to “choose”, to “prefer, what is injurious to [her]” (A 6).

4 This is, of course, complicated by the priest, who affirms and positively values his own form of life while negatively judging a nobler, initially stronger form of life.

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When we remember Nietzsche’s claim that individuals frequently form beliefs in order to justify or rationalize their affective experiences, it makes sense that the affective nihilist would find characteristically nihilistic beliefs compelling. Importantly, this epistemic tendency to rationalize one’s affective experience is especially pronounced in those who are suffering. In the Genealogy, Nietzsche describes “sufferers, one and all, [as] frighteningly willing and inventive in their pretexts for painful affects” (GM III:15). Though, as Nietzsche remarks, the “true reason” for their suffering is physiological, when these individuals experience harmful affects (resulting, no doubt, from their current physiological state), their first impulse is to search for an explanation, to generate a justification for their affective experience. In his description of the way in which “sick people” form a variety of beliefs to explain their illness, Nietzsche offers us an example of this mechanism: “‘Someone or other must be to blame that I feel ill’ – this kind of conclusion is peculiar to all sick people, and in fact becomes more insistent, the more they remain in ignorance of the true reason, the physiological one, why they feel ill” (GM III:15). Here, we see that the suffering affective nihilist is more likely to require justification for her affective experience. But it is also the case that those beliefs adopted, as justifications for negative affective experiences, are more likely to implicitly or explicitly devalue her world or herself. After all, the simplest explanation for a negative feeling or set of feelings is that there is something wrong or undesirable going on, either with one’s world or with oneself.5 To the extent that it is a psychophysiological state involving frustration, despair, and suffering, then, affective nihilism both produces the need for an explanation (GM III:28) and compels one to adopt beliefs that might justify one’s suffering. As Nietzsche notes, “belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed, where there is a lack of will” (GS 347). This remains true even when the affective nihilist, in the guise of the knower, “forces [her] spirit to know against its own inclination and, often enough, against the wishes of [her] heart” (BGE 229). For the suffering affective nihilist, it is better to embrace ascetic ideals, to believe in something that is at bottom life-denying, than it is to be left without an explanation for one’s experience (GM III.28).

5 In a similar reflection from the second essay, Nietzsche describes a drive to “legitimize…the reactive affects” with vengeful beliefs and actions (GM II:11).

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Finally, Nietzsche suggests that the affective nihilist privileges certain sources of evidence and ways of knowing. Specifically, Nietzsche argues that, owing to her fundamental distrust of her body and instincts, the affective nihilist embraces reason as a more trustworthy evidentiary source than her senses. Thus, she privileges “objective,” disinterested knowledge, removed from life and the instincts (TI, “Socrates,” 10). As we see in “The Problem of Socrates,” the nihilist invests in “rationality at all costs, a life clear, cold, careful, aware, without instinct, in resistance to the instincts” (TI, “Socrates,” 11). Furthermore, Nietzsche describes a tendency of those suffering from affective nihilism to be more intelligent (TI, “Skirmishes,” 14), more clever (and “respecting of cleverness”) (GM I:10), and more logical: …the weak become the masters of the strong, again and again—because they are the great majority, and also cleverer … the weak have more intelligence. One has to need intelligence in order to get intelligence—one loses it if one no longer needs it. Anyone who has strength gets rid of intelligence… (TI, “Skirmishes,” 14)

We see this same pattern in Nietzsche’s analysis of Socrates from Twilight of the Idols. There, Nietzsche cites the “overdevelopment of [a] logical” tendency in Socrates as an indication of an underlying psychophysiological condition: namely, decadence (TI, “Socrates,” 4). Yet another example of weak-willed individuals requiring belief—and not just belief, but certainty—can be found in Nietzsche’s attacks on science and positivism. In The Gay Science, he interprets the positivists’ “demand for certainty” as “the demand for a support, a prop, in short, the instinct of weakness” which is a symptom of nihilism akin to a need for metaphysics: Metaphysics is still needed by some; but so is that impetuous demand for certainty that today discharges itself among large numbers of people in a scientific-positivistic form. The demand that one wants by all means that something should be firm (while on account of the ardor of this demand one is easier and more negligent about the demonstration of this certainty)—this, too, is still the demand for a support, a prop, in short, [an] instinct of weakness …. (347)

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In Beyond Good and Evil , Nietzsche straightforwardly identifies an investment in certainty at all costs as “nihilism, and symptomatic of a desperate soul in a state of deadly exhaustion” (BGE 10). Those who require certainty are “puritanical fanatics of conscience who would rather lie dying on an assured nothing than an uncertain something” those individuals who “still prefer a handful of ‘certainty’ to an entire wagonload of pretty possibilities” (BGE 10). Later, he contrasts this “tendency of the knower, who seizes and wants to seize things in a deep, multiple, rigorous [tief, vielfach, gründlich] manner”6 with those tendencies of strong-willed free spirits to embrace the open-ended and multifarious nature of life as it unfolds in its becoming. According to Nietzsche, strong, life-affirming individuals experience “a sense of pleasure in every uncertainty and ambiguity, a joyful self-delight at the arbitrary narrowness and secrecy of a corner” (BGE 230). In the various ways detailed above, then, affective nihilism leads to cognitive nihilism. Though I take such a claim to be fairly well-demonstrated by this point, some might still disagree, citing especially Nietzsche’s claim (in his 1885 notes) that “[i]t is an error to point to… ‘physiological degeneration’ or even corruption as the cause of nihilism” (KSA 12:2[27]). But let us look more closely at this selection: [i]t is an error to point to “social emergencies” or “physiological degeneration” or even corruption as the cause of nihilism. These still allow for very different interpretations. But it is in one particular interpretation, the Christian-moral one, that nihilism is manifest. (KSA 12:2[27])

In this fragment, it seems Nietzsche wants to fend off two potential misunderstandings of nihilism: (1) nihilism understood merely as the result of a psychophysiological illness involving constitutional weakness and (2) nihilism understood as resulting merely from a disruptive historical moment or series of moments. An explanation of nihilism that reduces this phenomenon down to a set of psychophysiological features would miss those socio-cultural norms, values, and practices that lead to and perpetuate psychophysiological manifestations of nihilism. It

6 Translation mine.

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would also leave out nihilism as a socio-cultural phenomenon: as European nihilism.7 On the other hand, to give a causal explanation of nihilism qua a strictly historical explanation of certain social and political moments and events would be to ignore the existential and spiritual dimensions of nihilism. Any purely historical explanation of nihilism risks obscuring the way in which nihilistic worldviews and beliefs arise from uniquely human ways of coping with suffering, powerlessness, and will-weakness. In sum, a comprehensive account of Nietzschean nihilism must include a psychophysiological explanation, but any account will be incomplete without a corresponding historical and genealogical explanation. Additionally, Nietzsche believes that Judeo-Christian principles and practices will play a central role in any genealogical account of nihilism in 19th century Europe. Thus, his emphasis on the importance of JudeoChristianity and the “Christian-moral” interpretation.8 Now that we understand how affective nihilism can lead to cognitive nihilism, let us investigate the ways in which cognitive nihilism both leads to and exacerbates affective nihilism, according to Nietzsche. In fragments intended as a “criticism of nihilism,” Nietzsche straightforwardly claims that nihilism as a psychological state [Der Nihilismus als psychologischer Zustand] results both from one’s engagement in certain epistemic practices—for example, when one seeks “a ‘meaning’ in all events that is not there”—and one’s adoption of certain beliefs, such as the belief in “any organization in all events, and underneath all events” or the belief in a “world beyond [the world of becoming], a true world” (KSA 13:11[99]). Toward the end of this fragment, Nietzsche remarks that “[t]he feeling of worthlessness is produced by the realization that the overall character of human existence may not be interpreted with the concepts ‘purpose,’ ‘unity,’ or ‘truth’” (ibid.). Then, by way of a conclusion, he recapitulates the main point: “the belief in the categories of reason [die VernunftKategorien] is the cause of nihilism [die Ursache des Nihilismus]” (ibid.). 7 It’s also worth mentioning that those strong-willed nihilists who are not physiological decadents are left out. 8 The fact that Nietzsche writes this note in 1885 is significant, since it precedes the period in which he turns to thematizing decadence and nihilism as a physiological phenomenon at much more length. After all, Nietzsche’s most sustained treatments of the causes and effects of decadence as physiological weakness and degeneration occur much later, in Twilight of the Idols , the Antichrist , and Ecce Homo—as well as in his late notes (Van Tongeren 2018, p. 39). It is plausible to think, then, that Nietzsche had not yet fleshed out his “mature” account of affective nihilism by the time the note was written.

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In this fragment, we see that certain nihilistic beliefs and epistemic practices play a role in the perpetuation of affective nihilism. Elsewhere, Nietzsche explains that nihilistic beliefs and epistemic practices have the potential to produce affective nihilism. Nietzsche’s emphasis on a pathos of distance and insistence that “the healthy should remain separated from the sick” (GM III:14) indicates that he thought nihilism in its cognitive aspects could potentially produce that will-weakness characteristic of affective nihilism. After all, life-denying beliefs, negative judgments of life and existence, and wrong-headed epistemic tendencies have the potential to weaken even a noble spirit. One might think here of Christianity’s “taming” of noble individuals by corrupting their spirit in order to make them weak (TI, “Humanity,” 2), or that “[a]nti-natural morality… [that] turns precisely against the instincts of life – [as a] sometimes hidden, sometimes loud and bold condemnation of these instincts” (TI, “Morality,” 4). In Twilight of the Idols , after remarking that degenerate, weak wills produce life-denying beliefs and moralities,9 Nietzsche notes that: …[i]nstead of naively saying, “I’m not worth anything anymore,” the lie of morality says in the mouth of the decadent individual: “Nothing is worth anything”… Such a judgment is always a great danger, it has an infectious effect – throughout the unwholesome soil of society it soon spawns a tropical conceptual vegetation, sometimes as religion (Christianity), sometimes as philosophy (Schopenhauerianism). Under certain circumstances the fumes of such a poisonous vegetation, poison life itself, even for thousands of years. (TI, “Skirmishes,” 35)

In this selection, we see both that life-denying beliefs and judgments have their origin in the psychophysiology of the decadent individual and that they have the potential, as poisonous “conceptual vegetation,” to weaken other forms of life when they proliferate. This comparison of nihilistic ideologies to poisonous weeds harkens back to Nietzsche’s claim in the Genealogy that in the “soil of selfcontempt” comprising the inner life of the affective nihilist, “every kind of

9 In particular, Nietzsche outlines how the physiological instinct of the Christian leads to judgments which “condemn[], slander[], and dirt[y] the world” (TI, “Skirmishes,” 34).

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weed and poisonous plant grows” (GM III:14). When poisonous “conceptual vegetation” springs forth from the soul of the affective nihilist and spreads—when it is taken up by her culture as a new system of beliefs, a new set of norms, and a new set of epistemic tendencies—then even those who are not yet affective nihilists are exposed to the toxic “fumes” of this system of beliefs. When otherwise strong individuals begin to incorporate or internalize such beliefs and norms or engage in such epistemic practices, this poisons their will. One need only look to the example of the criminal for a concrete example of this insidious process (TI, “Skirmishes,” 35).10

Conclusion In this chapter, I began by clarifying the scope of nihilism qua affective nihilism in order to fend off a potential misunderstanding of my account: that all Nietzschean nihilists suffer from affective nihilism. Indeed, as I demonstrate above, every Nietzschean nihilist is not thereby an affective nihilist. In fact, in particular cases—those of the strong-willed and active nihilists—cognitive nihilism indicates strength of will. We see, for example, that the ascetic priest wills life-denying, ascetic ideals as conditions of his power, while the active nihilist affirms the meaninglessness of life because she has become strong enough to do so. After sharpening the focus of my inquiry, I proceeded to investigate the relationship between affective nihilism and cognitive nihilism: two aspects or dimensions of Nietzschean nihilism that, while logically distinct, are clearly connected. As the first step towards illuminating the relationship between affective and cognitive nihilisms in Nietzsche, I demonstrated that affective nihilism underpins the beliefs and epistemic tendencies characteristic of cognitive nihilism. Specifically, I attended to the way in which Nietzsche frames psychophysiological facts about the affective nihilist as causally responsible for the beliefs, judgments, and epistemic tendencies manifest by the cognitive nihilist. After describing several ways in which affective nihilism underpins cognitive nihilism, I also demonstrated that 10 For an example on how affective over-stimulation can fragment the will, see Nietzsche’s remarks on fanaticism and also GM III:15.

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affective nihilism can be produced or exacerbated by one’s exposure to (and internalization of) those life-denying beliefs and judgments characteristic of cognitive nihilism. In the final chapter, I sketch out potential Nietzschean strategies for overcoming affective nihilism. Remember from last chapter that, in order to overcome affective nihilism, the individual must re-establish goals towards which she is directed by stimulating the activity of her drives and integrating her will, eventually moving toward the goals she establishes for herself in action. This requires a profound personal transformation at the level of one’s drives and affects, and given the will-weakness of the affective nihilist, this is a tall order. But it becomes even taller when one remembers that acquiring stronger drives (and, with them, more intense desires) will not, by itself, overcome nihilism as an affective phenomenon. Indeed, as Anderson points out, “[w]hat we need in order to avoid nihilism, pettiness, and asceticism all at once is not simply stronger desires, nor simply desires for the right things, but something on the order of more complex pro-attitudes than mere desires, pro-attitudes whose relations within the self are more intricate and highly structured” (2013, p. 164). Next, I sketch out what that might look like for Nietzsche.

References Anderson, R. Lanier. 2013. “Love and the Moral Psychology of the Hegelian Nietzsche: Comments on Robert Pippin’s Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy.” The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 44 (2): 158–180. Gemes, Ken. 2008. “A Review of and Dialogue with Bernard Reginster.” The European Journal of Philosophy 16 (3): 459–466. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2002. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2005. Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings. Translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007. On the Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Carol Diethe. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1967–77. Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden. Edited by G. Colli and M. Montinari. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

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Reginster, Bernard. 2006. The Affirmation of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Riccardi, Mattia. 2018. “Psychological Nihilism, Passions, and Neglected Works: Three Topics for Nietzsche Studies.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49 (2): 266–270. Van Tongeren, Paul. 2018. Friedrich Nietzsche and European Nihilism. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

CHAPTER 8

Overcoming Affective Nihilism

Introduction In this chapter, I first offer an abbreviated summary of the condition Nietzsche calls affective nihilism. By reflecting on the features and practices of the affective nihilist alongside Nietzsche’s vision of healthier, life-affirming individuals, we can envision a life beyond affective nihilism. After this summary, I then identify and investigate potential Nietzschean strategies for overcoming affective nihilism. As explained above, recognizing the various kinds of affective nihilism—as involving either drive suppression (N1) or a fragmented, chaotic will (N2)—enables us to understand the problem of affective nihilism as a problem of agency. To overcome affective nihilism, then, one must become a more effective agent, (1) re-establishing goals toward which one is directed by somehow either stimulating the activity of one’s drives or unifying one’s will and (2) moving toward one’s goals in action. In the case of the affective nihilist, such a self-transformation seems unlikely. After all, the affective nihilist is an ineffectual agent, if she can be considered an agent at all. Yet Nietzsche hints at the existence of noble individuals who, once suffering from affective nihilism, have moved beyond it and learned to affirm life down to the evaluative stances of their drives. What might make such a transformation possible? In the beginning of this chapter, I present strategies for overcoming affective nihilism that focus on jump-starting the agency of the affective nihilist, enabling her to will and, eventually, to transform herself. Two © The Author(s) 2020 K. Creasy, The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37133-3_8

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strategies I investigate include (1) “living experimentally” by placing oneself in a variety of potentially stimulating climates and contexts and (2) undertaking particular practices of self-knowledge, especially the formation of and reflection upon a personal narrative. Both of these strategies employ the production of affect in an individual to potentially stimulate one’s drives and energize one’s will. Additionally, while both strategies offer the potential to stimulate drives generally, they also afford the affective nihilist opportunities to unify her will behind a strengthened, commanding drive, as new values or goals are identified. After reviewing these two strategies, I then close the chapter by outlining a third strategy with the potential not only to help an individual overcome affective nihilism, but also to prevent the individual who has overcome affective nihilism from lapsing back into this condition. This final strategy is a kind of “self-genealogy” (Richardson 2009, pp. 145– 146), a process of meditating in a thoughtful and honest way on the origins of one’s beliefs, values, and affective life. Though Nietzsche is wellknown for employing this strategy in order to carry out his “revaluation of values,” the scholarship attends less to the way in which genealogical inquiry, a practice involving conscious reflection, might function to detach one both from (1) those life-denying beliefs one consciously adopts and (2) those life-denying values one unconsciously holds, that is, beliefs and values unwittingly internalized via socio-cultural transmission. With the latter two strategies (engaging in practices of self-knowledge and genealogical inquiry into the origins of one’s affective experiences), Nietzsche believes we discover uniquely human solutions to the specifically human problem of affective nihilism. Indeed, our capacity for selfconscious, reflective interpretation is something of which only human beings are capable, in virtue of their “intellectuality” [Geistigkeit] (A 14). It is also, of course, a capacity which Nietzsche insists has historically done more harm than good.1 Importantly, however, Nietzsche remains ambivalent about this capacity for self-conscious, reflective interpretation: it is this unique power, after all, that makes us “interesting animal[s]”

1 In a critical sense, affective nihilism is a byproduct of this capacity: without reflective, self-conscious interpretation (made possible by our intellect), human beings would have never been able to internalize or adopt values and norms that conflict with their instincts and interests, a mechanism that results in life-denying interpretations that understand ourselves, our lives, and our world as undesirable and worthless.

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(GM I:6). Additionally—and more importantly for my purposes here— Nietzsche believes we can use our “intellectuality” against the harmful results it initially brought about: “we have to learn to think differently—in order at last, perhaps very late on, to attain even more: to feel differently” (D 103). Indeed, Nietzsche believes we can employ our uniquely human capacities of reflection, consciousness, and interpretation for novel, healthier ends: to change our way of relating to and interpreting ourselves, life, and the world of which we are a part. As I demonstrate below, the transformative potential of such reflection lies in its power to generate a host of new affective orientations.2

Affective Nihilism, Redux: Getting the Problem in Full View Affective nihilism is a psychophysiological condition occurring at the level of one’s drives and affects which results in protracted will-weakness. The protracted will-weakness experienced by the affective nihilist results when one’s constitution becomes dominated by affects that ultimately play a depressive function, obstructing one’s end-directedness and diminishing one’s ability to will by suppressing one’s drives or fragmenting the will. Affective nihilism, again, is a problem of agency, and the active nihilist is a weak agent.3 The characteristic set of complex affects dominating the affective nihilist involves a negative orientation toward life, existence, humanity, or oneself; such affects include (but are not limited to) “disgust and weariness with life” (BT, “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” 5), “weariness” with one’s world (Z:1, “On the Hinterworldly”), and disgust with oneself (GM III:13) and humanity (GM, P, 5). As both inherently evaluative

2 According to Katsafanas, Nietzsche believes that “conscious thought can transform the motivational propensity of our affects” (2016, p. 163). My account below explains just how Nietzsche believes this to occur and why this is critical for addressing affective nihilism (that is, because how we interpret and understand ourselves “alter[s] our relationship to our own activities, the emotions that we experience, the cultural institutions that we take part in, the values that we are inclined to embrace, and so on” (Katsafanas 2018, p. 252)). 3 In certain cases, affective nihilists might, for a time, experience initially excitatory affects that sustain their wills (as is the case, for example, with the overstimulation of affect in the fanatic), but in the long-term such individuals lapse back into affective nihilism and are often left more exhausted than before.

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and having motivational force, such affects disincline one toward life, existence, humanity, and oneself and lead one to comport oneself negatively toward life, one’s world, and oneself. Importantly for Nietzsche’s account, and as we see in the example of the criminal above (TI, “Skirmishes,” 45), the affective states characteristic of the affective nihilist often result from the internalization of sociocultural norms that judge one’s characteristic (and “most lively”) ends, interests, or instincts negatively. This feature of affectivity explains why a life-denying culture or society can result in affective nihilism becoming a more widespread phenomenon, infecting previously strong individuals. Given that Nietzsche describes affective nihilism as undergirding the beliefs, judgments, and epistemic tendencies characteristic of cognitive nihilism, we can expect the affective nihilist to hold beliefs and embrace values typical of cognitive nihilism. In other words, the affective nihilist either consciously and explicitly or unconsciously and implicitly believes humanity, life, and this-worldly existence to have no meaning or value; the affective nihilist judges thus (either consciously or unconsciously) that life, in itself, is not worth living. Additionally, as Riccardi suggests, the affective nihilist manifests a variety of epistemic tendencies and practices (2018, p. 267). First, insofar as affective nihilists are more likely to require justification of their affective experiences—indeed, Nietzsche notes that a need for justification is more common in those who experience displeasure and suffering—they are more likely than others to rationalize their affective experiences, fabricating purported reasons for why they feel the way they do. Additionally, affective nihilists are more likely to be compelled by those beliefs characteristic of cognitive nihilism—beliefs that implicitly or explicitly devalue life, oneself, and this-worldly existence (GS 347)—in virtue of their psychophysiological constitution: their inability to will and to be engaged in or by their world. That affective nihilists feel compelled by these negative beliefs about their world, themselves, and existence makes good sense: indeed, many of their beliefs are formed via the mechanism of justification or rationalization referenced above, and the most likely explanation for a negative feeling or set of feelings is that there is something wrong or undesirable going on, either with one’s world or with oneself. This ongoing process of rationalization and justification occurring in the mind of the affective nihilist is also, perhaps, the reason why Nietzsche suggests that affective nihilists tend to be more

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intelligent or clever (TI, “Skirmishes,” 14). In fact, as we saw last chapter, Nietzsche remarks that “the weak” become more intelligent and clever because they require it for life, given their weakness. Similarly, affective nihilists are more likely to privilege certain ways of knowing. Objective, disinterested knowledge purportedly removed from the perspectives of life and the instincts, gleaned through reason or rationality, appears to the affective nihilist to be a more trustworthy form of knowledge than that partial, interested, and perspectival knowledge influenced by the body and the affects. Finally, affective nihilists are more likely to demand or be attracted to knowledge that appears absolutely certain. This desire to “fix” with certainty what is known and true once and for all belies a discomfort with the unknown, with those elements of experience, oneself, and one’s world that exceed one’s comprehension.

Overcoming Affective Nihilism: What It Isn’t I offer the above summary of affective nihilism so that we can envision what it looks like to suffer from nihilism as an affective phenomenon. Envisioning what it might look like to suffer from affective nihilism in turn allows one to imagine what it could look like for an individual who has overcome this condition. Otherwise put, now that we have the affective nihilist in view, we can imagine what the life-affirming individual might look like in contrast. To my mind, however, it is helpful to first recognize what overcoming affective nihilism will not look like: that is, what has sometimes passed in the literature for the overcoming of nihilism as an affective phenomenon. Let us begin with Gemes’ and Sykes’ account of affective nihilism as “wholesale repression of the drives” (2013, p. 673). Remember that, according to Gemes and Sykes, affective nihilism involves the “suppress[ion] or extirpat[ion of] the drives,” possibly even the “elimination [of] the drives” (ibid.). On such a view, overcoming affective nihilism would seem to merely require the reactivation of one’s drives. By stimulating one’s drives so that they are active and striving once again toward their ends, it would seem that nihilism can be vanquished. But such a picture is overly simplistic. While strengthening one’s drives might be a necessary condition of overcoming affective nihilism in some cases, it is by no means sufficient. To overcome this condition, one must not only

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have active drives; one must also have the strength of will that manifests in the ability to identify one’s goals and move toward them in action. As we see both in Nietzsche’s reflections on anarchic drives and his example of the last man, weakness of will results not only from the malfunctioning of particular drives or sets of drives, but from conflicting or chaotic drives that fail to coordinate under the direction of a dominant drive or set of drives, thus failing to orient the individual toward a higher task. Additionally, it is not clear what Gemes and Sykes understand the overcoming of affective nihilism to look like at the level of one’s drives and affects. While Gemes does discuss the possibility of life-affirmation as an overcoming of affective nihilism in Nietzsche, identifying both a naïve affirmation involving the “full and complete expression to one’s drives” (2008, p. 462) and a reflective affirmation that requires one to “step back from life, reflect upon it, and endorse it in all its details” (ibid.), he does not flesh out either of these options. Given Gemes’ convincing suggestion that naïve affirmation is not a viable option for the contemporary affective nihilist, it does seem that overcoming affective nihilism on his account must not merely involve fully and completely expressing one’s drives. But if “reflective affirmation” is required in addition, how might the affective nihilist gain this capacity? How must the affective nihilist be constituted so that she can affirm life reflectively, “endors[ing] it in all its details” (ibid.)? Let us turn to Pippin’s account from Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy. Here, Pippin offers an account of nihilism as a feeling-based phenomenon and proposes a potential solution to this problem (2010). According to Pippin, nihilism is a “failure of desire” (ibid., p. 54), an inability to care properly about one’s world. Overcoming this condition requires one to re-ignite one’s desire, to learn how to love (ibid., p. 57). Though Pippin frames the love required for overcoming affective nihilism as “far more than a felt desire” and as “involv[ing] a wholehearted, passionate, commitment to and identification with a desired end” (ibid., pp. 28–29), such a solution still proves overly reductive. First, as Anderson argues, Pippin’s account fails to explain why Nietzsche understands the last man as a nihilist, given that Nietzsche does not merely impugn the last man for the weakness of his desires. From

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Nietzsche’s perspective, as Anderson notes, “the last man’s core desires for comfort and the absence of suffering might be arbitrarily strong or intense without ceasing to be objectionably small-minded. Indeed, the more intensely a person desires that, the more he betrays his pettiness” (2013, p. 162)—and this is still a recipe for nihilism. In other words, Nietzsche is not troubled merely by the weakness of the last man’s desires; he is troubled by the unworthiness of the desiderata privileged and pursued by the last man. Huddleston, inspired by Anderson, emphasizes this in his recent work: the problem with the “last man” is not so much one of diminished drive, motivation, and affect. For matters wouldn’t be improved if he remained devoted to the same, by Nietzsche’s lights, shallow things, but in a more fervent way instead… [Rather, it is that he] can’t attach himself to the most important values. More than that, he can’t even see the allure, indeed even the allure of having higher values at all…. He is goalless, not in the sense of lacking goals entirely (he wants happiness, lack of quarrel, and comfort, after all), but lacking worthy higher goals. (Huddleston 2019a, pp. 12–13)

As both Anderson and Huddleston argue, then, Nietzsche expresses disdain for the particular ends the last man possesses, not just the weakness of his desire: the last man is problematic for Nietzsche because he has a dearth of worthy values and goals. Critically, however, Nietzsche’s critique of the last man is especially urgent because of the tended results of embracing those “small pleasures,” both at the level of the individual and at the level of culture. First, when one seeks out only small pleasures, one easily accomplishes one’s goals; there is little risk, little distress, little to no generative resistance. The last man’s small pleasures are unworthy ends—and the last man’s pursuit of them base and contemptible—because such a pursuit does not advance life or strengthen the will. Additionally, this pursuit fails to produce an honest and deep affirmation of life, an affirmation that requires experiences of displeasure and strife. Remember Nietzsche’s indictment of the last man: his soul is “poor and exhausted” soil from out of which he is no longer able to “launch the arrow of his longing beyond man” (Z P:5). As shown in the sixth chapter, he resembles the “objective man” who “no longer knows how to affirm or negate; he does not

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command, neither does he destroy” (BGE 207).4 Thus, Nietzsche derides the last man not just because of particular small-minded desires he possesses, but because he is unable to unify his will behind a higher task and unable to act sustainably from out of strength. The last man does not deeply affirm (or even attach to) the ends he pursues. Though he seeks out small pleasures that ensure him comfort, his goals are not properly his own: he pursues them mindlessly, without intention or sense of a purpose beyond simply achieving his next desire. Indeed, Nietzsche thinks of the pursuit of a variety of small pleasures as a kind of “mechanical activity” that deadens the soul and fragments the spirit by making all ends appear equally desirable or worthy, so long as they do not result in discomfort.5 The psychophysiological constitution of an individual who engages in such deadening mechanical activity for long enough is a “mirror soul, eternally smoothing itself out” (BGE 207), absent of opportunities for productive conflict among drives. The drives of such an individual subsist in a relationship of mere “coexistence [Nebeneinander], without being in conflict or cooperation [ohne ein Gegeneinander und Füreinander zu sein] (KSA 13:14 [157]). Nietzsche rejects the small pleasures embraced by the last man, then, because they result in weak, “ridiculously superficial” individuals (BGE 44). According to Nietzsche, then, embracing inconsequential, comfortable goals and tepid values tends to result in fragmented, weak wills—not merely (and perhaps not always) weakened individual desires. Additionally, the more widespread the type of the last man becomes, the more his norms (personal comfort and ease), values (egalitarianism), and affective orientations (involving aversion to risk, a feeling of satisfaction that inclines or disinclines only very weakly) propagate, threatening to infect even individuals with stronger wills—and loftier goals—than they. Last men, in Nietzsche’s view, are “levelers [Nivellirer]” (BGE 44), individuals who “strive…. with all their might [for] the universal, green pasture happiness of the herd, with security, safety, contentment, and an easier life for all [Sicherheit, Ungefährlichkeit, Behagen, Erleichterung des Lebens für Jedermann]” (ibid.). If such levelled-down, superficial 4 One might be reminded here of Nietzsche’s early claim that “[t]hose of [man’s] abilities which are terrifying and considered inhuman may even be the fertile soil out of which alone all humanity can grow in impulse, deed, and work” (HC). 5 Think here of that “mechanical activity” from the Genealogy involving the pursuit of “small pleasure[s] that [are] readily accessible and can be made into normal practice” (GM III:18).

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individuals were to proliferate in culture, so would their norms, values, and affective dispositions—and an impoverished, decadent culture would threaten to emerge. Indeed, as Huddleston notes in his analysis of cultural decadence in Nietzsche, the more “last men”—those concerned only with their petty and private projects, with “their own personal paths to happiness” (Huddleston 2019b, p. 123)—come to dominate, the more likely a culture is to become decadent: that is to say, the more likely it is to manifest a “failure of unity at the level of the organic aesthetic whole…[and] a corresponding form of atomistic social life” (ibid., p. 89).6 The result, according to Huddleston, is that individuals concerned with their own petty, private forms of happiness lose sight of “something greater than themselves” (ibid., p. 123) at the level of culture that might be achieved, as well as their role in achieving those ends. Otherwise put, when individuals in a given culture generally “lose all motivation to strive for anything higher” (ibid., p. 124), that culture becomes likely to transmit the norms, values, and affective orientations of the last men: that is, a series of norms, values, and goals that impede cultural excellence. This tended result of embracing “small pleasures” at the level of culture—as opposed to merely at the individual level—is also why Nietzsche understands his critique of the last man to be so urgent. Conversely, Nietzsche deems goals worthy—and values “higher”— insofar as they are life-affirming, functioning to advance an individual’s particular form of life by strengthening their will. The pursuit of worthy goals must involve pursuing goals or values one passionately identifies as one’s own, but it must also involve the eventual strengthening of one’s will, a strengthening that occurs both because the pursuit of such goals offers risk and resistance (against which one can struggle productively) and because one is able to unify one’s will in such a pursuit. An individual able to accomplish these achievements would not only fail to be alienated from his own desires, but would also affirm himself, his world, and life itself.7 What, then, might an individual capable of such affirmation look like?

6 As Huddleston notes, this is different from the mistaken view that, for Nietzsche, “a culture is décadent because it is composed of a majority (or substantial minority) of individually problematic people” (2019b, p. 87). 7 This is not to say, of course, that Nietzsche believes this to be a possibility for all people.

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Overcoming Affective Nihilism: What It Is Below, I describe the individual who, in Nietzsche’s view, has overcome affective nihilism. My description includes a variety of psychophysiological characteristics, as well as the life-affirming affective orientations and intellectual stances to which such an individual will be predisposed. Importantly, no one element described below (be it a characteristic, affective orientation, or intellectual stance) will, by itself, be sufficient for the overcoming of affective nihilism. Rather, each is a necessary condition: that is to say, Nietszche believes the individual who has fully overcome affective nihilism and learned to affirm life will manifest all of the features listed below.

Psychophysiological and Affective Features First, the individual who has overcome affective nihilism must have a robust, effective, and unified will. The complex of drives of which she is constituted must be integrated and unified under an especially active, dominant drive (or set of drives), driving her pursuit of a particular orienting goal or task. Her identification of this orienting goal and task is her creation of positive values; her pursuit of this goal and task indicates a striving in accordance with such values, and the integrated nature of her will indicates that she has been able to recruit drives other than the dominant drive/s in service of her highest value and task (that is, the bulk of her drives has been successfully incorporated into the end/s and purpose/s of her dominant drive or set of drives). In addition, one who has overcome affective nihilism will no longer be dominated by affects that play a depressive function, which is to say that she will no longer inhabit a “global mood” (Anderson 2013) disposing her to negative and damaging affects. On the contrary, though she experiences positive, stimulating affects alongside negative, depressive affects—that is, she experiences profound joy and moments of deep suffering—she remains positively disposed overall, both to life in general and to her affective life in all its variety (understanding the richness of that affective life as a condition of her flourishing). Indeed, a critical part of becoming stronger and healthier which must accompany the overcoming

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of nihilism, Nietzsche thinks, is cultivation of a global mood that disposes one to joyous, affirmative affects, an attitude of radical affirmation.8 An individual who inhabits such a higher-order attitude of radical affirmation, though she suffers and experiences displeasure, no longer remains stuck in her suffering in a protracted way. This is due to the fact that she has gained a measure of control over her affects, that command Nietzsche describes as the ability “to freely have or not have your affects, your pros and cons, to condescend to them for a few hours; to seat yourself on them as you would on a horse or often as you would on an ass: — since you need to know how to use their stupidity as well as you know how to use their fire” (BGE 284).9 Furthermore, as Anderson and Rachel Cristy recognize in their analysis of an affirmative attitude of cheerfulness, this radical affirmation is “radically non-naïve”: it is “the product of prior sickness or recognition of calamity” (2017, p. 1522). This returns to the point from Gemes above: the kind of affirmation required for overcoming affective nihilism in the modern individual must be a “reflective affirmation,” rather than a “naïve” one (Gemes 2008, p. 462). This attitude of radical affirmation—what Nietzsche calls “yeasaying”—ultimately leads one to evaluate her world and existence, in all its richness, positively—indeed, to such an extent that one can look back even on moments of one’s own profound despair and suffering and say, “thus I willed it” (Z II: “Redemption”). For this reason, the individual who has overcome affective nihilism will also manifest a characteristic series of beliefs and judgments. Characteristic Beliefs, Judgments, and Epistemic Tendencies Manifest by the Individual with an Attitude of Radical Affirmation As noted above, the affective nihilist, in virtue of the way her drives and affects are configured, adopts and internalizes characteristically lifedenying beliefs that involve negative judgments of life, this-worldly existence, and humanity. In addition, the affective nihilist manifests a variety of epistemic tendencies, including a disposition to adopt (or find compelling) certain life-denying beliefs, a tendency to value objective 8 As will be seen below, this attitude of radical affirmation shares many structural similarities with what R. Lanier Anderson and Rachel Cristy call “Nietzschean cheerfulness” (2017, p. 1522). 9 Translated by Janaway (2009, p. 57).

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or disinterested knowledge, and a need for certainty. One who has overcome affective nihilism, on the contrary—that is, one whose psychophysiological constitution has transformed dramatically in the ways described above—will consciously endorse and internalize life-affirming beliefs, including the beliefs that one’s life, existence, and world are valuable. First, such an individual will believe both that life is worth living and that this-worldly existence has meaning. These beliefs are expressions of a more basic affect, or feeling (those “values… built into our bodies” to which Richardson refers [2004, p. 74]) that assesses life and this world as valuable and desirable. That is to say, one is inclined toward this life and world; given this affective inclination, one forms the belief that life is worth living. In The Gay Science, we find an excellent example of what such an intellectual stance looks like: In media vita.10 No, life has not disappointed me. Rather, I find it truer, more desirable and mysterious every year – ever since the day the great liberator overcame me: the thought that life could be an experiment for the knowledge-seeker - not a duty, not a disaster, not a deception! And knowledge itself: let it be something else to others, like a bed to rest on or the way to one, or a diversion or a form of idleness; to me it is a world of dangers and victories in which heroic feelings also have their dance- and playgrounds. ‘Life as a means to knowledge’ - with this principle in one’s heart one can not only live bravely but also live gaily and laugh gaily! And who would know how to laugh and live well who did not first have a good understanding of war and victory?

In this selection, we see that the life-affirming individual believes life to be valuable and desirable partly in virtue of its becoming, its variety, the opportunity for experimentation, self-exploration, and growth. One adopts the belief that life, as it really is—and as it has been, with suffering and all included—is worth living. Such a pronouncement, however, can only be made from out of a healthy psychophysiology. Though even a generally life-affirming individual might have “low” moments where one entertains life-denying beliefs, one is able to process these beliefs and attitudes fairly quickly, such that they are not internalized. (This, too, is a result of the control one gains over one’s affective life.)

10 Translation: In the midst of life.

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In addition to affirming life, the individual who has overcome affective nihilism affirms herself and her form of life: she feels at the level of her drives and instincts that she is valuable. Because she values herself— because she affirms her own constitution—she is able to say “thus I willed it” not only about the world and existence, but about her entire life so far, including even those drives and affects that led her into affective nihilism in the first place. This requires a second-order affective orientation involving the positive assessment of one’s drives and affects. In this sense, overcoming affective nihilism requires a “more complex pro-attitude” that enables one to overcome “alienation and self-contempt” (Anderson 2013, p. 163). As Anderson convincingly argues, an individual’s mere possession of “powerful urges was never going to be sufficient [for overcoming nihilism], because a person can be alienated from such urges and even feel contempt for herself because of them” (ibid.). Indeed, overcoming affective nihilism requires “not simply stronger desires, nor simply desires for the right things, but something on the order of more complex proattitudes than mere desires, pro-attitudes whose relations within the self are more intricate and highly structured” (ibid., p. 164). Such an orientation closely resembles that self-approbation that Katsafanas believes is requisite for agential unity: “the agent A’s, and affirms his A-ing. Further knowledge of the drives and affects that figure in A’s etiology would not undermine this affirmation of A-ing” (2016, p. 192). I resist Katsafanas’s claim that agential unity in Nietzsche consists in the above sort of relation between one’s conscious thought and drives (rather than among one’s drives and affects). But it does seem that Nietzsche thinks one who has overcome affective nihilism will experience that conscious selfapprobation described here. The epistemic tendencies of the life-affirming individual are also markedly different from those of the affective nihilist. Rather than experiencing an instinctual suspicion of one’s body, instincts, and drives (as the affective nihilist does), one with an attitude of radical affirmation trusts the wisdom of one’s body and learns to act in accordance with one’s instincts. In this way, bodily knowledge—as partial and perspectival—becomes a more trustworthy form of knowledge than knowledge gleaned through reason. In addition, one becomes more comfortable with uncertainty, more at home in an open-ended world full of possibility: one experiences “a sense of pleasure in every uncertainty and ambiguity, a joyful self-delight at the arbitrary narrowness and secrecy of a corner” (BGE 230).

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Importantly, those who have overcome affective nihilism are unlikely to suddenly stop unconsciously forming beliefs that rationalize their affective lives: in fact, Nietzsche seems to think of this as a human-all-too-human tendency of modern individuals. Since the affective lives of life-affirming individuals are not dominated by negative, unpleasurable affects, however, they are less likely to require an “explanation” for their affective states aimed at making sense of some undesirable circumstance. Any explanation of positive affective states will also likely involve life-affirming beliefs, since those who have overcome affective nihilism feel not only that the world is not hostile to their ends, but that it is a venue that specially enables their flourishing. Even when they experience suffering, life-affirming individuals affirm that suffering as a means to a higher end: their own flourishing. An Ability to Maintain the Conditions of One’s Flourishing In addition to her healthier, stronger psychophysiological constitution, her radical affective affirmation, and her being disposed to characteristically life-affirming beliefs (beliefs involving a positive valuation of one’s world, existence, and oneself), one who has overcome affective nihilism also becomes able to maintain the conditions of her flourishing. That is, one who has overcome affective nihilism learns eventually to “instinctively [choose] the right means against wretched states” rather than choosing what is “disadvantageous” (EH, “Wise,” 2) to her—though this choosing will be intentional (rather than instinctual) at first. First, one who has overcome affective nihilism learns, slowly, to disrupt the influence one’s society or culture has to shape the way one feels and experiences affects, thus lessening the power socio-culturally shaped affects have to motivate oneself. That is, one becomes better able to recognize when one experiences life-denying, will-weakening affects—and when those affects are being generated, in part, by the internalization of particular social norms or values. Such an individual first learns to feel or sense (consciously or unconsciously) when an affective experience seems to be having a negative impact on one’s health—or disposes one to a negative evaluation of oneself and this-worldly existence—and then attempts to inquire after the origin of the affective experience, searching especially for its origin in the potential internalization of socio-culturally widespread but life-denying beliefs, norms, or values. The point of such an

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intervention or disruption is not to get to the truth of the matter; instead, it is a technique for combatting that internalization of socio-cultural norms that has become second nature for moderns. In this way, one becomes better at avoiding affects that serve a depressive function, skillfully navigating through one’s feelings and thus gaining more control of one’s “pros and cons” (BGE 284).11 Reflecting on the etiology of one’s feelings, then, affords a technique for resisting the internalization of lifedenying beliefs or social norms that judge one’s characteristic ends, interests, or instincts negatively. Participating in such a practice is thus one way in which those overcoming affective nihilism can play a more active role maintaining the conditions of their flourishing. Here, it is worth noting that Nietzsche’s account is especially Spinozistic: what Nietzsche recommends is a reflective practice, a new way of knowing, that affords one equanimity—and, thus, a kind of affective control that allows one freedom both from affective enslavement and from experiencing affects that hinder or inhibit one’s will(s) to power. Although Anderson and Cristy do not note the latent Spinozism in Nietzsche’s notion of freedom here, they, too, acknowledge that “the cheerful ‘philosopher and free spirit’ (GS 343) attains a distinctive form of distance from her second natural affects that renders her free in their possession” (2017, pp.1537–1538). They continue: “She is not at their mercy; on the contrary, they are at her disposal in that she has trained them into place” (ibid.). The individual who has overcome affective nihilism becomes freer, then, because her actions can more properly be said to come from her, given the affective control she exercises. In Spinoza’s terminology, one who has overcome affective nihilism moves from being an inadequate cause of their feelings and actions to becoming a more adequate cause of them. For Nietzsche, it is through genealogical inquiry—inquiry into the possible origins of one’s beliefs, values, and affective life—that such affective mastery becomes possible. Here, as in Spinoza, (a certain kind of) knowledge functions to make the individual stronger and freer, a more adequate cause of her feelings and actions.

11 This is part of the reason why one who has overcome affective nihilism no longer suffers life-denying affects in a protracted way.

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Nietzschean Strategies for Overcoming Affective Nihilism Above, I outline the psychophysiological constitution, beliefs, and epistemic practices of the life-affirming individual, as well as the abilities they acquire that enable them to secure the conditions of their own flourishing. Importantly, however, Nietzsche believes the overcoming of affective nihilism requires a cultivation of different modes of feeling and thinking. By utilizing a variety of strategies and engaging in novel ways with one’s world, one might eventually experience more life-affirming affective orientations and form more positive value judgments; slowly, as one identifies one’s highest value and task, one’s complex of drives might unify under a dominant drive, and one’s will might begin to strengthen. In short, the overcoming of affective nihilism is a process, and one becomes a truly life-affirming individual only when all of the conditions described above are fulfilled. Furthermore, given the long list of necessary conditions for overcoming nihilism as an affective phenomenon (as well as Nietzsche’s lack of explicit guidance for how one might accomplish the above), it is difficult to envision how one might begin to overcome this condition. Below, I propose a selection of Nietzschean strategies that might enable the affective nihilist to will and, eventually, to transform herself into the kind of individual who adopts life-affirming beliefs and judgments. Eventually, such an individual will also be able to maintain the conditions of her flourishing. The three strategies I outline below include (1) experimentation (with locales, ideas, and individuals); (2) self-narration as a practice of selfknowledge; and (3) genealogical inquiry into one’s beliefs, values, and affective life. While the first strategy works potentially through the generation or production of new and stimulating first-order affects—after all, as Clark and Dudrick note, “inducing in people new affective responses to things… [induces] people to posit things as valuable” (Clark and Dudrick 2007, p. 212)—the second strategy has the potential to work by generating second-order affects that lead to negative evaluations of harmful affects (affects that ultimately function to weaken the will) and positive evaluations of healthy ones (affects that ultimately function to strengthen the will and promote the integration of the will qua unification under a dominant drive). One is reminded here of Alfano’s claim that, for Nietzsche, “affects are only defeated by other affects” and that disgust

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can be productively utilized to disincline me away from particular (lifedenying) affects (Alfano 2018, p. 132). Finally, genealogical inquiry into one’s own beliefs, values, and affective life potentially provokes transformative second-order affects (produced as one attempts to honestly face the origins of her affects) and presents one with the opportunity to learn a kind of affective mastery. Each of these strategies potentially affords the affective nihilist a range of affective orientations otherwise unavailable to her. While living experimentally allows for the individual to know the world differently, both self-knowledge as self-narration and genealogical inquiry of the kind mentioned above enables the individual to know herself differently. In each of these cases, new ways of knowing change one’s potential for being transformed and transforming one’s world: in Nietzsche’s words, these are cases in which “[thinking] differently” might lead one “perhaps, even very late on, to attain even more: to feel differently” (D 103). Thus, in each of these cases, Nietzsche’s Spinozist “overtendency” to “make knowledge the most powerful affect” shows up as a key feature of the affective nihilist’s transformative regime, as a particular kind of knowledge comes to occupy the functional role of an affect. Through the production of affect, ideas gain the potential to change bodies—and new ways of knowing appear as potential treatments of affective nihilism. Experimentation and the Production of Affect: “Wir sind Experimente: wollen wir es auch sein!”12 In her work on agon in Nietzsche, Christa Acampora describes how agon functions as “an engine for producing and reproducing values [that is] crucial for combating nihilism,” since new agonistic engagements stimulate new desires (2013, p. 199). Acampora notes that this production of value requires the creation of a “new affective stance that makes it possible for us to want again, to find something worthy of commitment, something worth fighting for” (Acampora 2013, p. 199). By experimenting with one’s attachments to particular campaigns or causes as worthy of contestation, one stimulates new affects and comes to recognize new sources of value, being transformed in the process. As we will see below

12 D 453.

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in Nietzsche’s account of nutrition from Ecce Homo, however, fundamentally transformative relations need not be restricted to contest. Acampora calls attention to this, arguing that one can “amplify” the transformative force of relations simply by situating oneself in “a variety of physiological, historical, and psychological experiences and relationships” (Acampora 2013, p. 196). It is this strategy—living experimentally by placing oneself in new relational networks—that I wish to explore here.13 We find this potential strategy for strengthening agency—situating oneself in new locales and in the presence of new ideas and acquaintances—throughout Nietzsche’s corpus, though the explicit connection of experimentation and the production of affect with personal development is more frequent in late works. Still, as early as Human, All too Human, Nietzsche remarks upon the way in which affects produced by experimenting with new contexts, ideas, and individuals can spark personal development in particular directions.14 In reflections on self-mastery from Daybreak, one of his “methods of combating the vehemence of a drive”—“subjecting oneself to a new stimulus and pleasure and thus directing one’s thoughts and plays of physical forces into other channels” (D 109)—enables us to envision the developmental potential in living experimentally. In BGE, Nietzsche identifies the genuine philosopher as one who experiments and risks herself constantly on affectively productive and destructive experiences (BGE 205); in a late notebook, he writes that those who have become strong or will become strong must “not hesitate to offer human sacrifices, to risk every danger, to take upon oneself whatever is bad and worst” in order that one can ask after the value of these experiences (KSA 12:9[107], p. 398).15 According to Nietzsche, since situating oneself in new relational matrices creates the potential for new

13 For another piece on the transformative potential of experimentation, see also Bamford (2016). 14 In The Gay Science, the distinction Nietzsche draws between experimentation and personal cultivation becomes more explicit, remarking that “the thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions, as seeking explanations of something: to him, success and failure are primarily answers” (GS 41). See also HH 1:254, 368; GS 268, 370; BGE 61. 15 Translation from The Will to Power §26. In his 1887 addition to The Gay Science, Nietzsche also talks about the strengthening force of responding to uncertainty and openendedness with gratitude, amazement, or expectation (GS 343).

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affective engagements and orientations, this practice also potentially generates new networks of significance.16 Moreover, the affective stimulation that occurs in a new context can exert transformative force, energizing or diminishing drives and re-organizing the “order of rank” of one’s complex of drives, leading one to recognize new priorities and values. In this way, the generation of affect and the production of values accompanying the discovery of new ideas, climates, or individuals might jump-start the will of the affective nihilist. Note, here, that such effects are brought about by the generation of new first-order affects in response to new contexts. Nowhere is this clearer than in Nietzsche’s account of nutrition in Ecce Homo, where he emphasizes the importance of experimenting with relations of place, thought, and acquaintance for the generation of affect, personal growth, and the overcoming of will-weakness. In “Why I Am So Clever,” Nietzsche describes how the context in which one is situated— and the stimuli one incorporates into one’s life and body as a function of that context—can stunt or stimulate one’s instincts, nourishing strength of will or blocking it, depending on the kind of “nutrition” one finds. This is not only a spiritual, but a physiological matter: insofar as the influence of the above-mentioned nutritive sources affects “our metabolism, its retardation, its acceleration,” such sources can facilitate one’s goals or block one from achieving one’s task (EH “Clever,” 2). Not knowing which sources do which is a matter of physiological ignorance. In this text, Nietzsche claims that one’s strength of will and capacity for life-affirmation corresponds with how one digests the world around her: she must learn to keep what enlivens her, and let go of what does not. In short, she must place herself in circumstances where her strength can grow, whether this is the result of strengthening certain drives or unifying one’s will behind particular drives. The potential to do so comes from reversing one’s physiological ignorance, from noticing what kinds of environments and ideas energize one’s will—but this requires first experimenting with these to discover the function they might play.17 The significance 16 For more on this, see Clark and Dudrick (2007, pp. 216–217). 17 The treatment that serves as a stimulant—what counts as nutrition, as will-

strengthening and invigorating—will often depend on the individual. What provokes invigorating, positive affects in some—feelings of pride, love, beauty, honor, affirmation—will differ from what provokes invigorating, positive affects in another. So, too, with negative, self-destructive, and weakening affects (GS 370).

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of such experimentation for the affective nihilist becomes clear when we look to another of Nietzsche’s recommendations for proper nutrition and digestion. One must say No as rarely as possible. To detach oneself, to separate oneself from anything that would make it necessary to keep saying No. The reason in this is that when defensive expenditures, be they ever so small, become the rule and a habit, they entail an extraordinary and entirely superfluous impoverishment [...] [This is] energy wasted on negative ends. Merely through the constant need to ward off, one can become weak enough to become unable to defend oneself any longer. (EH “Clever,” 8)

Nietzsche goes on to compare the individual who approaches the world around them with “open hands” to an individual who disengages or engages merely negatively with what they understand to be a “flattened, cowardly world” (EH “Clever,” 8). The latter individual experiences a host of negative affects in response to the world around them, and these negative, inhibitory affects—beyond simply being a “waste”—preclude their development. The individual facing the world with “open hands,” though, locates sources of nourishment in the world. Such an individual practices the “art of self-preservation—of selfishness,”18 becoming well-versed in the ways that “nutrition, place, climate, recreation, the whole casuistry of selfishness […] are inconceivably more important than everything one has taken to be important so far” (EH “Clever,” 10). This requires recognizing that one must experiment with new conditions, acquaintances, and ideas to find nutriment; one must engage experimentally with relations that produce positive, stimulating affects and eventually enable one to “hook into” the world in a way that makes one’s life purposeful (EH “Clever,” 10). Then, when one develops a strong will by strengthening one’s drives and integrating one’s will behind a highest task, one might find that one “[does] not want in the least that anything should become different than it is” (EH “Clever,” 9).

18 Note here that Nietzsche speaks favorably of “self-preservation” in a way that might seem to conflict with his discussion of self-preservation elsewhere. The relevant difference here lies in a distinction between mere self-preservation (GS 349) and self-preservation as part of a regime of self-cultivation that also involves risking oneself for the furtherance of one’s own interests and goals (EH “Clever,” 10).

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While potentially powerful, this Nietzschean strategy for overcoming affective nihilism comes with an important caveat: Nietzsche most frequently ascribes the ability to live dangerously to free-spirited individuals who have already achieved some strength or unity of will. Insofar as the affective nihilist is unable to will strongly in any particular direction, unable to decide one way or another, such a strategy might remain inaccessible. Thus, it is possible that experimental living on the behalf of the nihilist must be accidental, with the nihilist stumbling upon a new text or happening upon a new and invigorating climate—and it is by no means a guarantee (HH P:4). Self-Knowledge as Self-Narration The first strategy for overcoming affective nihilism—living experimentally—is largely passive. In the second transformative program I describe, however—self-knowledge as self-narration—one plays a more active role in their own self-transformation. This strategy, as mentioned above, involves generating affective responses to oneself as a complex of drive and affects: that is to say, it involves the generation of second-order affects as a means of personal transformation. Given Nietzsche’s skepticism about introspective self-knowledge, this might appear a strange avenue to pursue. After all, Nietzsche frequently insists on the inaccessibility of the self to itself. In spite of Nietzsche’s insistence on the “inner opacity” of human beings, however, I argue that self-knowledge can play a critical role both in stimulating and unifying drive-life (and thus treating affective nihilism), if self-knowledge is re-conceived as self-narration.19 As Nietzschean “self-culture,” personal transformation is “the child of each individual’s self-knowledge and dissatisfaction with himself”: when one “come[s] to hate one’s narrowness and shriveled nature,” one takes the first step toward transforming oneself. Indeed, Nietzsche remarks that while “there may be other means of finding oneself, of coming to oneself out of the bewilderment in which one usually wanders [there is] none better than to think on one’s true educators and cultivators” (SE, 130). Nietzsche engages in this process when he identifies certain features of Schopenhauer—“the elements of his honesty, his cheerfulness, and his

19 For more on this, see Riccardi (2015).

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steadfastness”—that stand out as particularly influential or significant to him, as having a particular value to him. It is by reflecting upon significant circumstances and influences as milestones in one’s development, then, that one might identify values toward which they hope to strive—and, in this striving, be transformed. Nietzsche again outlines this strategy in “On the Use and Disadvantage of History for Life,” where he calls upon his reader “to confront our inherited and hereditary nature with our knowledge, and through a new, stern discipline combat our inborn heritage and implant in ourselves a new habit, a new instinct, a second nature, so that our first nature withers away” (UM III:2). In an aphorism from The Gay Science entitled, “As interpreters of our experiences,” Nietzsche reflects upon how individuals might “[make] their experiences a matter of conscience for their knowledge, [asking] ‘What did I really experience? What was going on inside and around me? Was my reason bright enough? Was my will turned against all deceptions of the senses and stalwart in warding off the fantastic?’” (GS 319). He ends this aphorism by noting the critical importance of “[facing] our experiences as sternly as we would a scientific experiment, hour by hour, day by day” to become “our own experiments and guinea-pigs” (GS 319). Finally, as seen in his unpublished notes and letters, self-narration plays a significant role in the transformative regime outlined and practiced by Nietzsche. As Daniel Blue notes, by the age of twenty-four, Nietzsche had written at least six separate autobiographies (2016, pp. 2–5). Although the autobiographical content and philosophical problems addressed in these autobiographies varied widely, in every case Nietzsche’s autobiographical narratives “attempted an overview, a bid to plot the course of his existence…as the sequent development of an autonomous self…. [He] seems to have treated autobiography as a kind of report card, to assess his progress…. All allowed him to sketch a somewhat objective representation of himself, an externalized portrait” (Blue 2016, p. 3). This long and committed practice in his youth of reflecting on his personal development and attempting to view himself “objectively” continues throughout his body of work. Indeed, in a letter written during Nietzsche’s “free spirit period,” he explicitly remarks: “when I see my own writings, it is as if I have heard old travel adventures that I have forgotten. Let us see to it that we monumentalize [monumentalisiren] our whole lives in this way” (KSB 6, 97, emphasis mine).

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Elsewhere, he remarks upon the way in which past writings detailing prior events, ideas, and feelings continue to function as wellsprings of meaning and value in the present, as “monuments [Denkmälern]” that help one to pinpoint “a condition that was of value to me [eines Zustandes, der mir werthvoll war]” (KSA 9:7[90], p. 335). In a subsequent note, Nietzsche not only describes this function of self-narration, but prescribes this practice as part of a transformative regime in which one becomes both “teacher and creator” of oneself by identifying “the memory of [one’s] good moments and [finding] their context, the golden chain of [oneself]” (KSA 9:11[297], p. 555); in this same note, he explicitly reflects on the necessity of self-interpretation.20 In all of these remarks, we see that just as history should be utilized in the service of life, autobiographical reflection should be utilized in the service of personal transformation. Self-knowledge as self-narration, then, plays a role in personal development for Nietzsche. But how might self-narration offer promise as a treatment for affective nihilism? In Nietzsche’s terms, the formation of a personal narrative is what allows one to engage in a stocktaking of oneself (Selbstbesinnung), a practice of personal self-reflection that opens space in one’s soul for spontaneous growth and activity.21 Every new instance of self-narration affords the opportunity for a new interpretation of oneself: as Nietzsche remarks, “when we wish to step down into the stream of our apparently most peculiar and personal development, Heraclitus’s aphorism ‘You cannot step twice into the same river’ holds good” (HH II:223). These new lenses through which one sees oneself in every instance of self-narration offer potentially novel directions for development and growth. In short, one’s ability to identify and review milestones of one’s development—the “hundred rungs” of the ladder of life that appear as particularly significant parts of one’s development only in retrospect—leads to the kind of self-knowledge that can provoke the spontaneous activity of the drives, transforming the self and potentially strengthening the will.

20 Thank you to Matthew Meyer for highlighting these selections from the Nachlass. 21 Although Nietzsche most frequently uses Selbstbesinnung to refer to mankind’s tak-

ing stock of itself, he also speaks of personal Selbstbesinnung—and importantly, the structure of this stocktaking remains the same whether it is described as a practice of personal or supra-personal reflection.

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When an individual constructs an account of her own development, her dominant drives interpret her past and string together a narrative. Upon the expression of her narrative to herself—the individual’s taking-stock of herself—the subject-unity comes to know herself in some new way. This stock-taking provokes affects that are either stimulating or depressive, functioning to excite or inhibit certain of one’s drives.22 Upon reflection, one might be positively inclined toward certain milestones in one’s life, and negatively inclined toward others, given the current arrangement of her drives and their relative strength and weakness. Those affective responses made possible by self-narration thus potentially encourage the flourishing of certain drives (and thus the pursuits of certain ends, manifesting in certain behaviors) and discourage others. In other words, such affective responses have the potential to motivate one’s drives in particular directions. The laws given by these affects and drives are laws of one’s own; even as one “gives herself” these laws and is transformed, she is given these laws by her drives. We see the promise of such a strategy in Daybreak. There, Nietzsche remarks upon a kind of “intellectual artifice” one might employ to combat a drive’s vehemence: “associating [that drive] with a painful idea (such as that of disgrace, evil consequences, or offended pride)” (D 109). In the case of self-narration, one recounts one’s experiences in narrative form. This re-telling of one’s story to oneself generates particular affects (such as disgust, perhaps23 ) that then transform the individual by energizing or depressing particular drives. Importantly, as Nietzsche mentions, the success or failure of these methods, the desire to transform oneself or combat certain of one’s drives, is largely out of one’s control. We cannot say that I have formed an intention to transform myself which does, in fact, cause a transformation in me. Quite the opposite: I do not freely choose to be transformed. Instead, when I recount my life thus far, particular feelings arise in me in response. These affective responses are possible only because of my reflective distance. Since they change the configuration of my drives, they change me, and because the affective responses are wholly mine—the result of my constitution as a subject-unity—this transformation counts as a self-transformation.

22 Note here that the same affect may function as excitatory for one drive and inhibitory for another. 23 See Alfano (2019) for more on the use of disgust.

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This transformation also results in an expansion in the range of affections—the determinate ways in which one can influence or be influenced by the world—available to the individual, insofar as it brings new drives (and their affective orientations) to bear on one another. When drives engage with one another, the affective orientations they induce have the potential to change and transform, depending on the drives’ activities and relations of resistance, assimilation, and incorporation. Self-knowledge as self-narration, then, affords one a range of affects and affective orientations that would have remained otherwise unavailable to the individual, since such a practice enables the reflective individual to bring her drivebased perspective on herself into interaction with the drives of which she is composed. Thus, those reflections which constitute self-knowledge for Nietzsche become conditions of transformative self-critique. In order to see how personal transformation functions on this picture, imagine the case of a high-achieving nursing student named Emma.24 Emma consistently achieves high marks. In her everyday, pre-reflective state, Emma does not notice that she achieves these marks because of her grade-motivated attitude: she aims to get good grades, regardless of whether she learns the material. This motivation leads Emma to spend long nights cramming for exams. Though she scores high marks on her exams, she largely forgets the material she studies. Imagine Emma comes to a crisis point after cramming for a nursing exam on which she received an “A.” After the exam, she realizes that although she earned a high mark, she did not retain any information from the exam. Upon reflection, she recognizes she has been grade-motivated rather than learning-motivated. Imagine such reflection incites her to despair. This emotion will likely encourage the vitalization of certain drives—perhaps the drive to knowledge—and the weakening of others—perhaps the drive to obtain external rewards. Emma’s reflection, as well as her affective response, not only reveals or creates a desire to be learning-motivated; it also brings about a change in her constitution. Her despairing emotion, brought about by reflection on a significant part of her personal narrative, is something wholly hers: she alone experiences this affect and she experiences this particular affect because of the particular embodied multiplicity that she is. This affective response enacts a transformation of her drives, therefore, it transforms her. Yet since this affective response belongs uniquely 24 The case of Emma is not an example of affective nihilism, but a case that illuminates the mechanism of personal transformation via self-narration and the production of affect.

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to her and arises from who she is, her transformation is crucially a selftransformation. Although I submit that we ought to consider this a self-transformation, the individual still plays quite a passive role here. Indeed, Emma does not form an intention to develop in a particular direction and then will herself to develop in accordance with that intention. As it turns out, however, this is a benefit of my account: transformation through self-narration is exactly the kind of personal transformation we can expect to be accessible to the affective nihilist, an individual with ineffective drives and a weakened will. Thus, the significance of the reflective moment of Selbstbesinnung for one’s self-transformation helps us envision an alternative account of agency that might still be available to the affective nihilist. Such a method allows one to “spark” one’s development by producing affects that “pull” one toward a particular course of action.25 In “Freedom of Will and Concept of a Person,” Harry Frankfurt remarks that human beings are the only animals “capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and purposes, from what they are” (Frankfurt 1971, p. 7). Another way to put this is that human beings are capable of developing second-order desires: they can develop desires about their desires. Let us think back to Emma. While her (unconscious) first-order desire before her transformation is to earn a certain grade, the second-order desire that initiates her transformation is a desire not to be motivated by grades. To understand the import of this insight for the Nietzschean account I develop here, one might put Frankfurt’s point differently: human beings are those animals capable of reflectively developing second-order affects.26 Such second-order affects function as felt inclinations toward—or aversions to—aspects of one’s constitution (that is, one’s drives and affects); these affective assessments evaluate parts of one’s constitution positively or negatively. When Emma despairs upon realizing her grade-motivated attitude, then, her despair constitutes a second-order affect that functions 25 An individual must meet some minimal threshold of drive function (or some minimal degree of unity of the will) in order for affective responses to be provoked in the first place by reflection upon one’s personal narrative. If one’s drive functioning does not meet this threshold, it is unclear that self-narration will be able to increase the activities of one’s drives or result in self-transformation, since both of these require the motivating force of affective responses. This is one reason why self-narration as a practice of self-knowledge remains a potential treatment for affective nihilism. 26 Thank you to John Richardson for suggesting this reframing.

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to disincline her against some constitutive element of herself: in this case, her drive to earn external rewards (and the accompanying inclination toward earning high marks at any cost). This second-order affect, produced in the moment of self-reflection by an interaction between Emma’s affective orientation and certain drives of which she is composed, has transformative force. Such a second-order affect might even result in the development of a new drive (in her case, a drive that manifests in her desire to truly learn the material she studies). Then, if she were to reflect approvingly on this new drive (and its attendant affective disposition) at a later time, we might say she has developed a new second-order affect: one that positively evaluates her desire to be learning-motivated. Frankfurt attributes the development of second-order desires to man’s capacity for “reflective self-evaluation” and suggests that this capacity for self-evaluation as a “becoming critically aware of [one’s] own will” gives human beings the capacity for freedom of the will. Without committing Nietzsche to Frankfurt’s view, I suggest there is a structural similarity: Frankfurt’s account of the inextricability of agency and selfknowledge is prefigured in Nietzsche’s picture of self-knowledge as a potential means of self-transformation. On both views, the ability to form and reflect upon a narrative (1) generates second-order inclinations and aversions and (2) changes first-order inclinations and aversions. On my Nietzschean view, this happens as certain of one’s drives are excited or inhibited in the moment of reflection via one’s affective responses. Thus, the self-transformation of the affective nihilist might be made possible by a reflective self-evaluation of the kind Frankfurt suggests that opens up new possibilities for the will: the formation of a personal narrative (as self-knowledge) and the moment of Selbstbesinnung. Self-narration as a practice of self-knowledge that facilitates personal transformation is clearly not a guaranteed solution to affective nihilism. Still, we should understand it as a practice that might function to engage the affective nihilist with new desires and a new set of values, as well as allow her to regain some measure of agency. Although Nietzsche never explicitly claims that self-narration can be used to overcome nihilism as a feeling-based phenomenon, the power of self-narration—as a reflective practice that enables one to develop transformative second-order desires—offers the potential to “feel differently” about oneself and the world to which one belongs. Insofar as this strategy affords an individual the possibilities of (1) reactivating certain of her ends, (2) increasing the end-directed activity of her drives without the need for brute force of will,

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and (3) stimulating unique, personal aims or goals that might unify her will, self-narration might serve as a treatment for overcoming affective nihilism. Such a strategy, like the strategy of experimentation above, has its risks. Indeed, it seems likely that the transformative force Emma’s second-order affect of despair is due in large part to the distress it causes her. On such a picture of self-transformation, Emma’s personal transformation requires an initially negative evaluation of (purported) elements of herself that she envisions make her who she is—and it is certainly possible that she might be unable to move beyond this initial distress. One can imagine that this possibility will be all the more likely for the affective nihilist. As we see in The Gay Science, however, this is a risk one must take: “There is a recipe against pessimistic philosophies and excessive sensitivity, things which seem to me to be the real ‘distress of the present’ - but this recipe may sound too cruel and would itself be counted among the signs that lead people to judge, ‘existence is something evil’. Well, the recipe against this ‘distress’ is: distress” (GS 48). Self-Genealogy: Learning to Master the Affects and Creating the Conditions of One’s Flourishing A final strategy that might allow the affective nihilist not only to overcome her condition, but to acquire the capacity to maintain the conditions of her own flourishing, is genealogical inquiry into one’s beliefs, values, and affective life (after Richardson, I call such a strategy self-genealogy [Richardson 2009, p. 146]). The effectiveness of self-genealogy for these aims lies in its potential to (1) generate transformative higher-order affects and (2) lessen the influence that one’s socio-cultural context has on one’s affective life. This latter effect occurs, in part, because self-genealogy makes it less likely that one will internalize socio-culturally widespread but life-denying beliefs and values in the future, thus making it less likely that one’s affects will turn against one’s “liveliest” drives (TI, “Skirmishes,” 45). Indeed, this is a key part of Nietzsche’s aim in the Genealogy: he hopes both that we will see ourselves in the weakened, ascetic individuals he describes and that this recognition will have transformative effects. As Gemes succinctly says, in the Genealogy, “Nietzsche aims at therapeutic rather than historical knowledge” (Gemes 2006, p. 212).

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Strategy 3A: Genealogical Inquiry into One’s Affective Life (as a Means of Generating Will-Strengthening Higher-Order Affects) Let us begin by thinking about how genealogical inquiry into one’s affective life might impact one’s affective experiences via the generation of higher-order affects. According to Nietzsche, the impact of self-genealogy is, first and foremost, disruptive. Discovering that even that which seems most deeply personal and private—my affective life—has been infiltrated by forces external to me will often function to produce disruptive higherorder affects. Practices of self-genealogy that result in such a discovery have transformative potential insofar as they generate higher-order affects that either (1) make me averse to the way in which my affective experiences are shaped by cultural norms or (2) positively dispose me towards this realization (insofar as recognizing the socio-cultural contingency of my previous harmful affects “frees me” from their grip). As an example of the former, imagine an educated, modern individual—an academic, let’s say—who is inclined away from religion and toward science. Let’s say that such an individual, after deciding not to apply for an extremely competitive grant, experiences “the pleasant affect of humility” (D 38). An explanation for this feeling of humility, Nietzsche thinks, must include this individual’s situatedness in a largely ascetic, Judeo-Christian socio-cultural context that “baptizes” this individual’s acquisitive drive “evil” (ibid.). If, upon asking after the origins of that feeling of humility, such an individual surmises that the Judeo-Christian context in which they live and feel is a crucial part of the explanatory story for why they are experiencing this particular feeling (rather than “the painful feeling of cowardice” (D 38)), one can imagine such an individual will be displeased by this influence. This new perspective on oneself will lead one to no longer experience that “humility” in the same way (if one still experiences it at all). In this case, the affect of displeasure disrupts that socio-cultural influence, leading to an affective transformation (and, thus, a transformation of the self). To think through how affective approbation in response to the sociocultural shaping of my affective experience might function to disrupt and transform my affective life, imagine a woman suffering from affective nihilism, wracked with disgust at herself to such an extent that she cannot “endure to be with [herself]” (Z:3, “On the Spirit of Gravity,” 2). Like the criminal from Twilight, we might imagine that such a state follows

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when her “virtues are ostracized by society” (TI, “Skirmishes,” 45). Perhaps she is driven toward academic pursuits, as her liveliest drive is a drive to knowledge. Imagine, however, that the socio-cultural context in which she finds herself is highly misogynistic, a context in which women do not typically pursue academic interests (we can imagine that such a pursuit falls outside of societal norms). Additionally, imagine that her society implicitly (and less frequently, explicitly) discourages women from pursuing academic interests due to a series of mechanisms that specifically discourage and/or police such pursuits for women. (Maybe she frequently hears people say, for example, that women are generally less intellectually capable than men). In such a context, one can imagine that a host of “depressive affects”—those of “suspicion, fear, and dishonor” (TI, “Skirmishes,” 45)—will accompany every manifestation of her drive to knowledge, eventually obstructing and extirpating this drive. Since it is her characteristic and most lively drive, however, this extirpation results in the fragmentation and weakening of her will. Additionally, the continued devaluation of her drive to knowledge leads her to experience nihilistic affects, and she soon finds herself stuck in recurring affects of self-hatred, disgust at her world, and weariness at existence. Perhaps one day, this affective nihilist asks herself: why do I so often feel disgusted with myself and ashamed of who I am?27 If, upon reflecting on the origin of her self-disgust, she comes to recognize that it was shaped by the misogynistic socio-cultural context in which she finds herself, she very well might experience disapprobatory affects of anger and unhappiness that make her less likely to experience the affect of self-disgust.28 But she might also experience feelings of happiness, relief, and joy at this discovery, feelings that stem from her recognition that what she understood as her own failing and personal defect—a defect that felt for so long to be fated and inescapable (that is, her disposition to disgust with herself)—is, in fact, a defect bred into her by the society to which she contingently belongs. This positive affective response has just as much transformative force as a negative one, insofar as it is joy and relief that releases her from the grip of the affect. This opens the space for her to take an affirmative stance toward her drive to knowledge. The more she experiences positive, 27 Perhaps, even, such an impulse toward self-genealogy does not spontaneously emerge from out of her, but is provoked by a text she reads. 28 It is a possibility, of course, that she instead feels more disgust with herself for having so little control over her own emotional life!

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stimulating affects in the presence of this drive, the stronger it becomes. The stronger such a drive becomes, the more capable it is of pressing other of her drives into its service—and the more likely she is to have a unified, effective will. Strategy 3B: Genealogical Inquiry into One’s Beliefs and Values (as a Means of Making the Internalization of Life-Denying Beliefs and Values Less Likely, Thus Strengthening the Will) Notice in the above example that it is the woman’s act of reflecting on her affective life (and asking after the origins of the affects she experiences) that opens up the possibility for her to recognize how her affective life has been subject to the foreign influence of the (misogynistic) socio-cultural context to which she belongs. In my example, this proves transformative. It is possible, however, that her practice of self-genealogy begins with her reflection on the origin and history of the misogynistic context in which she is embedded: a context involving a variety of misogynistic beliefs and values. Indeed, reflecting on the misogynistic beliefs and values she lives alongside might enable her to recognize that the origins of such beliefs and values are not only contingent or accidental, but also problematic. Think, for example, of the misogynistic belief mentioned above: the belief that women are generally less intellectually capable than men. By reflecting on the origins of this belief (one we are imagining to be widespread in her misogynistic society or culture), she might discover that such a belief has become widespread because a majority of men—who believe themselves more intelligent than women although studies indicate this is not the case—adopt such a belief and disseminate it at the level of society and culture.29 She might also discover, in the course of her genealogical inquiries, that there are other socio-cultural contexts or cultures in which such a belief is not held; perhaps this helps her recognize the contingency of such a belief. Such discoveries make her less disposed to believe that men are more intellectually capable than women. Once such a belief loosens its grip on her—once she no longer feels compelled to believe it or takes it as seriously—I contend that she becomes much less likely 29 Perhaps not all that much imagination is required for this part of the thought experiment. See Cooper, Krieg, and Brownell (2018).

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to unconsciously internalize that belief. If this mechanism of internalization fails, that belief no longer influences her affective life in life-denying ways; its potential to generate depressive affects and weaken her will is disrupted.30 An example of this appears in the first part of Human, All too Human. There, Nietzsche describes both how internalizing a series of beliefs in God and divine law shapes the quality and intensity of affective experience and how discovering the origins of those beliefs can lead them to “fall away”: …the idea of a God is disturbing and humiliating as long as it is believed, but how it originated can at the present stage of comparative ethnology no longer admit of doubt; and with the insight into this origination that belief falls away… But if the representation [Vorstellung] of God falls away, so does the feeling [Gefühl] of ‘sin’ as transgression against divine precepts, as a blemish on a creature consecrated to God. Then there probably remains over that feeling of depression which is very much entwined with and related to fear of punishment by secular justice or the disapprobation of other men; the displeasure caused by the pangs of conscience, the sharpest sting in the feeling of guilt, is nonetheless abolished… If a man is, finally, able to attain to the philosophical conviction of the unconditional necessity of all actions and their complete unaccountability and to make it part of his flesh and blood, then that remainder of the pang of conscience disappears. (HH I:133)

In this selection, we see that Nietzsche believes genealogical inquiry into the idea of a God (especially a God to whom we are consecrated, whose laws we must follow) leads ultimately to the rejection of this idea. As we see here, divorcing the feeling of wrongdoing from the representation of a divine commander through genealogical inquiry lessens the “sting” or intensity of the depressive affects one experiences when one understands oneself to have done wrong. But it also fundamentally changes the qualitative nature of one’s displeasure. The “pangs of conscience” or affects disinclining one from a particular series of transgressive actions no longer involve fear in the face of God; instead, they involve fear in the face of others’ evaluations or punishments. While the feeling of sin in the former situation is intertwined with the fear of God and/or divine punishment, 30 After all, the potential a belief has to impact one’s affective life is tied to one’s internalization of that belief.

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the feeling of wrongdoing in the latter results from one’s fear of disapprobation or non-divine punishment. In short, the intentional object of that affect of fear related to one’s “pangs of conscience” changes, though the pangs of conscience remain (albeit in a somewhat different form). Importantly, however, Nietzsche insists that there is a way to make even “that remainder of the pang of conscience disappear[]”: one can adopt and internalize a new series of beliefs that reject the authority of “human tradition, human laws and ordinances” (HH I:133). In doing so, one divests the evaluations of others and the mechanisms by which others enforce such evaluations (i.e., mechanisms of punishment) of their power: these evaluations and mechanisms lose the power to shape one’s affective life or to motivate one’s behavior. Nietzsche offers determinism, here, as one worldview leading to such a divestment. But we can imagine there are a host of other worldviews which might also have this effect, and that one might feel compelled to believe in these “alternate” worldviews via the disruption of genealogical inquiry. In sum, the transformative practice of self-genealogy that “oomphs” one out of affective nihilism need not begin with reflection on one’s affective experience; it can also begin with reflection on certain life-denying beliefs and values that are communicated in a given socio-cultural context and internalized by the affective nihilist.31 Self-genealogy of this kind is critical for the personal transformation and flourishing of the would-be affective nihilist. After reflecting on (and often taking a critical perspective on) the socio-cultural context to which she belongs, the affective nihilist becomes able to recognize the specious origins and/or the contingency of seemingly “settled” norms and values. This disrupts the power that such norms and values exert on her affective life, insofar as they become less credible, less attractive, and less likely to be unconsciously internalized. Ultimately, this form of self-genealogy functions to reduce the influence of one’s socio-cultural context on one’s affective life, as beliefs, norms, and values that are widespread at the level of culture no longer shape the affects one experiences and thus how one feels about herself and her world—or at least they play less of a role in shaping her affective life than before.

31 This language of “oomphing” as “motivational oomph” is used by Leiter 2019, p. 70.

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Strategy 3C: Genealogical Inquiry into One’s Affective Life as a Means of Achieving Affective Mastery (and Maintaining the Conditions of One’s Flourishing) As we see above, becoming aware of the origins of one’s beliefs, values, and the structure of one’s affective life via genealogical inquiry enables one to start identifying the ways in which socio-cultural forces shape their affective experience. Apart from provoking higher-order affects that have transformative force, such self-genealogy also has the potential to make the internalization of socio-culturally widespread but life-denying beliefs and values less likely. Additionally, continued genealogical inquiry into the origins of one’s affects—especially the way in which one’s affects (and one’s affective experience generally) have been shaped by the sociocultural context in which one finds oneself—serves as a practice that might lead to a kind of affective mastery.32 As demonstrated above, the transpersonal nature of affect for Nietzsche is such that our socio-cultural context shapes the way we experience a given affect: that is, those valuations or norms that are widespread in the socio-cultural context to which I belong impact how an affect “shows up” for me, influencing the form an affect takes and the intensity of my affective experience. This, in turn, shapes the motivational quality and force a given affect carries with it (as inclination or disinclination). In short, interpretations and evaluations endemic to our socio-cultural context are built into the most basic of our affective experiences. Such internalized “social interests,” Richardson notes, … [oppose] what is in fact the basic and indispensable part of the organism, its drives. It’s only genealogy that brings these alien interests to light, and gives the agent a chance to oppose and correct for them… Thus genealogy gives us a new way to be ‘free from’ control by external wills. It is a way for the organism to take a fuller control over itself, as well as a kind of control over those foreign interests it culls out of itself… Nietzsche thinks [we have largely overlooked] a deeper kind of control we are subject to, through our values. GS 335: ‘Your judgment ‘‘that is right’’ has a prehistory in your drives, inclinations, aversions, experiences, and what you have not experienced; you have to ask ‘‘how did it emerge there?’’ and then also,

32 Self-genealogy of this sort involves a reconstruction of the potential socio-cultural origins of one’s affective life. It is not an introspective exercise (of which Nietzsche would be skeptical).

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‘‘what is really driving me to listen to it?’’’ We need to uncover, that is, the interests that lie behind our values, the functions they have been designed to play in us. (2009, p. 146)

Indeed, as we see both in Richardson’s text and in the selection from The Gay Science he cites, the transpersonal nature of affect makes selfgenealogy necessary for becoming a freer, more adequate cause of one’s feelings and actions—an accomplishment one achieves as the influence of one’s socio-cultural context on one’s affective life lessens. As the influence of those “foreign interests” wanes, one’s own interests become the primary formative forces of one’s affective life. In other words, insofar as genealogical inquiry into one’s affective life diminishes the influence of one’s socio-cultural context on one’s affects, this practice also facilitates a kind of affective mastery that enables one to become a more adequate cause of one’s actions. In the case of the individual who has overcome affective nihilism, such affective mastery (a mastery that, given the description above, is perhaps less “free” than one might imagine) is critical for maintaining the conditions of her flourishing, for not staying “stuck” in those negative, even nihilistic affects that one experiences. Nietzsche’s view here is strikingly Spinozistic: according to this picture, the more adequate an idea we come to have of how our feelings have been unconsciously shaped by norms in our socio-cultural context, the more potential we have to become a more adequate cause of our actions. It should not be surprising, then, that the strategies facilitating such a transformation evince what Nietzsche understands as his Spinozistic “overtendency”: to “make knowledge the most powerful affect.” When one becomes aware of the influence of one’s socio-cultural context on one’s affects, beliefs, and values, one begins to think differently about one’s world and oneself. This new way of thinking transforms one’s affective life. Knowledge functions as the “most powerful [mächtigsten]” affect in these strategies because one’s coming to consciousness has the power to fundamentally change those affective inclinations and disinclinations occurring at the level of our constitution. Of course, such a transformation involves the production of affect: since Nietzsche believes that “affects are only defeated by other affects” (Alfano 2018, p. 132), ridding oneself of nihilistic affects requires their being combatted by other affects. But it is knowledge—especially that all-too-human capacity for conscious reflection and interpretation—that provokes new affects in us. It is this that Nietzsche hopes to make clear when he insists that “we

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have to learn to think differently—in order at last, perhaps very late on, to attain even more: to feel differently” (D 103).

Conclusion Given that the overcoming of affective nihilism requires a strengthened, unified will; an attitude of radical affirmation issuing from out of one’s constitution (as a complex of drives and affects); the adoption of lifeaffirming beliefs and judgments, such that one understands humanity, one’s world, and existence to be both meaningful and valuable; and the maintenance of the conditions of one’s flourishing, it should be unsurprising that no one strategy is likely to function as a means to accomplishing all of these. Additionally, though certain strategies might work for a particular individual, they may not work for another. In other words: one’s pursuit of these Nietzschean strategies for overcoming affective nihilism provides no guarantee that one will, in fact, overcome this complicated and deeply rooted condition. What these Nietzschean strategies do provide, however, are potential means to overcoming. In the example of Nietzsche’s own life, we see the effectiveness of their deployment. Indeed, as we see in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche understands himself to have suffered from affective nihilism, framing himself earlier on as “at once a decadent and a beginning” and remarking that To the first indications of ascending or of descending life my nostrils are more sensitive than those of any man that has yet lived. In this domain I am a master to my backbone—I know both sides, for I am both sides… do I need to say that I am experienced in questions of decadence? I know them inside and out. (EH, “Wise,” 1)

How, then did Nietzsche allegedly overcome such decadence? In the aphorism immediately following this one, we get our first hint. There, Nietzsche remarks upon his tendency to “instinctively [choose] the right means against wretched states” rather than choosing what is “disadvantageous” (EH, “Wise,” 2). Later, he describes how he acquired such a tendency: by making himself an experiment and learning to identify the ideal climate for his flourishing (EH, “Clever,” 2). In the following aphorism, Nietzsche notes that he paired a selection of stimulating ideas and thinkers—hand-picked over the years as those most generative for his

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thought—with will-strengthening climates he identified (EH, “Clever,” 3) after observing their positive effects on his well-being. In short, Nietzsche experimented with a variety of climates, locales, ideas, and thinkers in order that he might identify those most conducive to his psychological and physiological health: that is, he employed a strategy of experimentation for overcoming affective nihilism. Alongside this strategy, Nietzsche employed self-narration as a practice of self-knowledge. Indeed, in Ecce Homo, he insists that his “highest form of recovery” and “cure” came from self-reflective practices that involved turning away from the ideas and frameworks of other philosophers and turning toward himself (EH, “Human,” 4). As we saw above, such practices involved explicitly writing autobiographies that tracked his personal development (Blue 2016, p. 3)—and, one can imagine, writing Ecce Homo. Finally, Nietzsche also utilizes practices of genealogical inquiry into the origin of his affective life, beliefs, and values to produce that “acquired good conscience accompanying hostility towards what is familiar, traditional, hallowed” (GS 297): a life-affirming conscience the possession of which is “the step of all steps of the free spirit” (ibid.). In his late notebooks, Nietzsche also describes how the reflective distance opened up by such self-genealogy33 enabled him to overcome nihilism: as one who “has done nothing so far but reflect… [and] found his advantage in standing aside and outside, in patience, in procrastination, in staying behind,” Nietzsche became “the first perfect nihilist [vollkommene Nihilist ] of Europe who, however, has even now lived through the whole of nihilism, to the end, leaving it behind, outside himself” (KSA 13:11[341]). These strategies for overcoming affective nihilism may not be accessible to every affective nihilist, and their deployment may prove ineffective. Regardless, Nietzsche believes such strategies are the best shot the affective nihilist has at becoming healthier, re-engaging her will, affirming life, and sustaining her affirmative affective orientations and attitudes. The only way to know if one might emerge a healthier, more affirmative individual on the other side of these potentially restorative strategies is to begin engaging in them, accepting the attendant risk that accompanies many of them in a hopeful leap of faith.

33 As well as genealogy generally, one imagines.

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Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2005. Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings. Translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007. On the Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Carol Diethe Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1989. “Postcard to Franz Overbeck in Sils-Maria.” In Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence, translated by Yirmiyahu Yovel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1967–77. Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden. Edited by G. Colli and M. Montinari. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2006. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1997. Untimely Meditations. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Pippin, Robert. 2008. “The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77: 281–291. Pippin, Robert. 2010. Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Poellner, Peter. 2012. “Aestheticist Ethics.” In Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity. Edited by Christopher Janaway and Simon Robertson. New York: Oxford University Press. Poellner, Peter. 2007. “Affect, Value, and Objectivity.” In Nietzsche and Morality. Edited by Brian Leiter and Neil Sinhababu. New York: Oxford University Press. Poellner, Peter. 2009. “Nietzschean Freedom.” In Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy. Edited by Ken Gemes and Simon May. New York: Oxford University Press. Reginster, Bernard. 2006. The Affirmation of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reginster, Bernard. 2003. “What Is a Free Spirit? Nietzsche on Fanaticism.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 85: 51–85. Riccardi, Mattia. 2015. “Inner Opacity: Nietzsche on Introspection and Agency.” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 58 (3): 221–243. Riccardi, Mattia. 2018. “Psychological Nihilism, Passions, and Neglected Works: Three Topics for Nietzsche Studies.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49 (2): 266–270. Richardson, John. 2009. “Nietzsche’s Freedoms.” In Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy. Edited by Ken Gemes and Simon May. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Richardson, John. 2004. Nietzsche’s New Darwinism. New York: Oxford University Press. Richardson, John. 1996. Nietzsche’s System. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Index

A Acampora, Christa, 153–154 Active vs. passive nihilism, 90n2, 124 Affect, 64–84 belief, experience, and behavior shaped by, 65–69 depressive, 90–95, 98–101 as drive-induced evaluative orientation, 69–75 excitatory, 72, 132, 139n3, 160 intentional objects of, 92–95 second-order, 76–79, 91, 162–164 as transpersonal, 79–84 Affective nihilism, 108–117 as concept, 88–91 cognitive nihilism caused by, 125–132 as drive suppression, 95–101, 109–117 as passive nihilism, 124 problem of, 90–97, 138–140 psychophysiology of, 95–101 transpersonal dynamics of, 102–104

as will fragmentation, 110–117, 143–145 Affective nihilism, overcoming, 137–173 false ideas of, 140–145 through experimentation, 152–156 through genealogical inquiry, 164–172 through maintenance of flourishing conditions, 150–152 through radical affirmation, 147–150 through self-narration, 157–164 Affirmation, radical, 147–150 Agency. See Will-weakness Alfano, Mark, 64 Anderson, R. Lanier, 43n23, 66, 80, 100, 143, 146, 151 Andler, Charles, 2 Antagonism, 13–17 The Antichrist (Nietzsche), 2, 31, 83, 98, 131n8 Ascetic ideals, 49–50, 117, 122–124, 126

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 K. Creasy, The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37133-3

183

184

INDEX

“Attempt at a Self-Criticism” (Nietzsche), 31, 40n20 B Babich, Babette, 32n8 Behavior, and affects, 67–69. See also Drives Belief, 28–46 and affects, 68 in the “beyond,” 6–9, 29–32 genealogical inquiry of, 167–171 in higher purpose, 32–39, 44–46 and justification, 128, 140 in objective truth, 17–18, 39–42, 51, 129–131 and radical affirmation, 147–149 strong forms of life prevented by false, 43–47 the “Beyond,” 30–32 Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche) on affect, 67–69, 76 on experimentation, 164 on freedom, 75 on higher purpose, 32 mentioned, 2 nihilism defined, 8 on objective man, 56n38, 115 on objective truth, 42, 130 on will, 97 The Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche), 31n7, 33, 37n14, 40–41 Blue, Daniel, 158 Bourget, Paul, 2 Buddhism, 53 C Christian worldview, 5–11, 30–32, 33–37, 43–46, 51, 53, 132 Civilization, 33n11 Clark, Maudemarie, 66n4 Cognitive nihilism

caused by affective nihilism, 125–132 in epistemic orientations and practices, 50–53, 124–126 and life-denial, 29. See also Belief Reginster on, 17–20, 87, 124 Coping mechanisms, 115–117 Criminal type, 98, 102–103, 110 Cristy, Rachel, 151 Cultural context. See Socio-cultural context D Daybreak (Nietzsche), 72, 79, 98, 154 Decadence. See Affective nihilism Deleuze, Gilles, 74n17 Depression, 100–101 Depressive affects, 89–95, 98–101 Descartes, René, 7 Descriptive objectivism, 17–18 Disorientation vs. despair, 17–18, 124–125n3 Drives and affects, 64–67 and experimentation, 154–156 fragmentation of, 110–117, 144–145 radical affirmation of, 148–150 suppression of, 100–102, 109–110 transformed by self-narration, 158–164 E Ecce Homo (Nietzsche), 55–56, 59, 97–99, 131n8, 153–156, 172, 173 Epistemic orientations and practices, 50–53, 125–126, 152 European nihilism, 5–11, 95n7 Excitatory affects, 72, 132, 139n3 Experience, and affects, 66–68

INDEX

Experimental living, 152–157 F Fanaticism, 52, 116, 117 Feedback loop, 71–72 First-personal character, of nihilism, 90–92 Forms, Plato’s theory of, 6, 30 Fragmented vs. unified will, 111–119, 144–145 Frankfurt, Harry, 162–163 G The Gay Science (Nietzsche) on affect, 67, 77 on blindly raging industriousness, 54 on distress, 164 on experimentation, 154n15 on fanaticism, 116 on higher purpose, 38 mentioned, 1 on objective truth, 40, 41, 51–52n33 on physiological condition, 96n8 on radical affirmation, 147 on self-narration, 158 on virtues, 47–50 Gemes, Ken, 2, 4n3, 18, 20, 44, 87–89, 109, 126, 141–142, 147, 164 Genealogical inquiry, 165–171 Goals. See Drives God death of, 8 genealogical inquiry into idea of, 168 and higher purpose, 33–35 H Heaviness, 91–93

185

Higher purpose, 32–39, 44–46 Huddleston, Andrew, 22–24, 27, 110, 143, 145 Human, All too Human (Nietzsche), 70, 80–82, 154, 168 Humanity, as intentional object, 92–94 I Individualized nihilism, 14–18 Industrious pursuits, 54–56 Intentional objects, 92–95 J Janaway, Christopher, 54n35, 67, 87 Judeo-Christian worldview, 5–11, 30–38, 43–46, 48, 131 Justification, of beliefs, 128, 140 K Kail, Peter, 66n5, 68n8, 70, 71 Kant, Immanuel, 7 Katsafanas, Paul, 70–71, 112n5, 139 Knowledge, absolute, 17–18, 39–42, 51, 129–131 Köselitz, Heinrich, 1 L Last man, 110, 112n5, 114–115, 141–144. See also Theoretical man Leiter, Brian, 66n5, 68, 79n26 Life-denial, 27–61. See also Willweakness as cognitive phenomenon, overview, 29. See also Belief in epistemic orientations and practices, 50–54 and life as intentional object, 92 in morality, 47–50, 127, 132

186

INDEX

as psychophysiological phenomenon, 56–59, 125–127. See also Affective nihilism Reginster on, 17–23 as socio-cultural phenomenon, 53–59. See also Socio-cultural context M Metaphysics. See Belief Meyer, Matthew, 15, 16, 39n16 Mitcheson, Katrina, 52n33 Moods, temporary vs. protracted, 98–100, 147 Morality Judeo-Christian, 5–11, 31–32, 132 life-denying, 47–51, 128, 132 Müller-Lauter, Wolfgang, 87–89 N Nachlass (Nietzsche), 2, 43–45, 115n7, 122 Nietzsche, Friedrich. See also Beyond Good and Evil; The Gay Science; On the Genealogy of Morality The Antichrist , 2, 31, 83, 98, 131n8 “Attempt at a Self-Criticism”, 31, 40n20 The Birth of Tragedy, 31n7, 33, 37n14, 39–41 Daybreak, 72, 79, 98, 154 Ecce Homo, 54–56, 58–59, 97, 98, 131n8, 153–156, 172, 173 experience of affective nihilism, 99n9 Human, All too Human, 70, 80–82, 154, 168 Nachlass , 2, 43–45, 115n7, 122 Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 36n13, 56n38, 91–93, 110, 114–116

Twilight of the Idols , 34, 51–53, 68, 91–92, 131n8, 132 use of term “Nihilismus,” 2 Nihilism. See also Affective nihilism; Cognitive nihilism; Life-denial Huddleston on, 22–24, 27 “Nihilismus” term, 1 passive vs. active, 90n2, 123–124 Reginster on, 17–23, 87, 88 as socio-cultural phenomenon, 5–11, 95n7 Van Tongeren on, 13–17 Nihilistic instinct, 57–59, 89. See also Affective nihilism Normative objectivism, 17–18

O Objective man, 115, 143. See also Last man; Theoretical man Objective truth, 17–18, 38–42, 51, 129–131 On the Genealogy of Morality (Nietzsche) on affect, 66–69, 71 on affective vulnerability, 103 on ascetic ideal, 126 on first-personal character of nihilism, 91 goal of, 164 on higher purpose, 32–35 mentioned, 1 on morality, 47, 49, 51n33 on nihilistic instinct, 58 on objective truth, 39–42 on scholarly consciousness, 55 socio-cultural context, 95n7 on suffering, 128–129 on teleology, 45 on will, 118 Optimism, 38, 46n26 Overbeck, Franz, 74

INDEX

P Passive vs. active nihilism, 90n2, 123–124 Pathos of distance, 45, 103, 132 Pessimism, 15, 92 Physiological decadence. See Affective nihilism Pippin, Robert, 87, 88, 142 Pity, 47–48, 77n20, 83, 98 Plato, theory of Forms, 6, 30 Pleasure, 70–71n11 Poellner, Peter, 70n10, 82, 94 Power. See Will-weakness Progress, 33n11, 35–38 Psychophysiology, 57–60, 95–101, 126–127 Purpose, higher, 32–39, 44–46 R Radical affirmation, 146–149 Reginster, Bernard, 1, 17–23, 87–89, 124 Religious worldviews, 5–11, 31–38, 44–46, 53, 132 Riccardi, Mattia, 50, 125–126, 140 Richardson, John, 28n3, 69, 70, 88, 89, 98, 111, 164, 170–171 S Scholarly consciousness, 54–56 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 47, 54, 59, 93 Science and higher purpose, 33, 34, 38–39, 43n23 and objective truth, 38–42, 128–129 Second-order affects, 76–79, 91, 162–164 Self-genealogy, 164–172 Selflessness, 47, 48, 53 Self-loathing, 93

187

Self-narration, 157–164 Self-transformation, 161–164 Socio-cultural context of affects and affective nihilism, 79–84, 101–104, 161 of European nihilism, 5–11, 95n7 genealogical inquiry of, 165–168 of life-denial, 52–56 Socrates, 40n18, 53, 112, 113, 113n6, 126, 129 Spencer, Herbert, 97 Spinoza, Baruch, 70–74, 151 Suffering, 34, 37n14, 52, 76, 94, 128–129 Sykes, Christopher, 109, 141–142 T Teleology, 10, 32–39, 44–46 Theoretical man, 39–41. See also Last man Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche), 36n13, 56n38, 91, 93, 110, 114–116 Transcendent existence, 30–32. See also Higher purpose Transformative potential, of affects, 75. See also Self-transformation Transpersonal dynamics, 79–84, 102–104. See also Socio-cultural context Truth objective, 17–18, 38–42, 51, 128–129 will to, 51–52n33 Twilight of the Idols (Nietzsche), 34, 53, 68, 90–92, 125–127, 131n8, 132 U Unified vs. fragmented will, 111–119, 146–147

188

INDEX

Universalized ideals, 48–50 Utility, 51n33 V Values and affects, 69–71 disorientation vs. despair over, 17–18 failure to commit to substantively characterized, 22–24 genealogical inquiry of, 167–170 and higher purpose, 32–39, 44–46 and life-denying morality, 47–50, 125, 132 life-negating, 19–20 and small goals, 110–119, 143–145 transcendent, 30–32 Van Tongeren, Paul, 13–17

Virtue. See Morality W Will to truth, 51–52n33 Will-weakness. See also Affective nihilism, overcoming and drive suppression, 97–101, 109–110 and fragmentation, 111–119, 144–145 of nihilistic instinct, 57, 89 vs. strong-willed nihilism, 122–124 through false belief, 42–46 through life-denying morality, 47–50, 126, 132 through socio-cultural life-denial, 52–56 World-weariness, 93–95