The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism

By Bernard Reginster

Harvard University Press, 2006

Reviewed by Benjamin Moritz (Music Department, Mansfield University)

Most people familiar with Nietzsche scholarship will find Bernard Reginster’s new book, The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism, striking in its conclusiveness. The paradoxical and ecstatic nature of Nietzsche’s texts has long led to secondary literature that maintains a degree of the poetic and literary approach characterized by the original. Reginster, on the other hand, presents us with a rigorously argued analysis of Nietzsche’s arguments in which he discovers a unifying philosophical system present in Nietzsche’s works as a whole. That system, Reginster claims, is constructed to provide the logical apparatus for overcoming nihilism through an affirmation of life’s inconsistencies.

Reginster begins by placing the problem of nihilism squarely in the center of Nietzsche’s thought. The abundance of primary and secondary literature on the topic provides Reginster ample material to assert this position, after which he goes on to distinguish different types of nihilism identified by Nietzsche. Reginster’s keen logical abilities serve him well in this pursuit as he deconstructs the psychological affect of nihilism to reveal a relationship of failed expectations. Nihilism as disorientation results from a realization that our values are subjective and therefore not binding. Nihilism as despair, on the other hand, results from our understanding of the world as one in which our highest values are unobtainable. The primary source material marshaled in support of this distinction is convincing, and seems to show that Nietzsche approached the concept from different perspectives at different times. For Reginster’s systematic project however, one of these accounts of nihilism must assume a primary role—a role he grants to nihilism-as-despair. Assuming this to be the true foundation of nihilism, it is only justified if our selection of values is justified. Nietzsche’s famous call for a revaluation of all values is therefore seen as a response to the error of nihilism in which values contingent on the existence on God (life-negating values) are replaced with values appropriate to a non-metaphysical life-view (life-affirming values).

Reginster proceeds by describing how Nietzsche undermines the entrenched status of life-negating values by identifying the implied propositions underlying nihilistic despair. Descriptive objectivism and normative objectivism account for the erroneous adoption of life-negating values, and Reginster credits Nietzsche with providing the strategies of fictionalism or subjectivism to counter the disorienting void left from the destruction of these assorted forms of objectivism. Even these approaches are doomed to failure however, because they are essentially reactive measures that do little to fill the nihilistic void. According to Reginster, Nietzsche proceeds to posit the concept of the will to power as a substantive move to fill the metaphysical vacuum.

His account of the will to power is one of the highlights of the book. He places the concept’s development within the context of Schopenhauer’s thought and carefully traces Nietzsche’s subtle alterations of various constituent parts. In particular he notes that Schopenhauer believed that human willing was doomed to failure because of the unsatisfactory nature of the relationship between desires and objects. Specifically, Schopenhauer bemoans the fleeting nature of desire satisfaction and the looming problem of boredom. Reginster argues that Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power is a direct response to and critique of Schopenhauer’s views. Whereas Schopenhauer concentrated almost exclusively on first-order desires, Nietzsche establishes and defends second-order desires: the will to power. Although several recent books have presented enlightening discussions of this most controversial of Nietzsche’s constructs, Reginster’s scrupulous conceptual analysis brings much needed specificity and clarity to this important aspect of Nietzschean thought.

In a clever act of logical argumentation, Reginster finds a place for the will to power within Nietzsche’s philosophical system, without focusing on it as an end in itself. Its place is to serve as justification for life’s suffering. By establishing a second-order desire—the will to power—as the highest value, the paradoxical nature of a desirable life that simultaneously includes suffering is remedied. Through desiring the process of overcoming (a simplified but largely accurate reduction of Reginster’s conception of the will to power) one can desire suffering without falling into the asceticism that Nietzsche loathes. Subsequently, the acceptance of this newly revaluated state of affairs lies at the core of the eternal recurrence.

If my description of Reginster’s book seems overly analytical and argument-driven, then you have also recognized one of its most controversial aspects. The degree to which Reginster assumes a teleological continuity of Nietzsche’s disparate works is largely unprecedented. He goes beyond the scope of taking Nietzschean ideas to construct a Nietzschean-influenced philosophy of his own, and attributes this high level of systemization to Nietzsche himself. Reginster briefly addresses the potential objections by acknowledging Nietzsche’s well-known avoidance of systems, citing “I mistrust all systematizers. The will to a system is a lack of integrity” (TI, I 26). But he goes on to rebut:

The systematic approach I adopt here … simply assumes that, appearances notwithstanding, Nietzsche’s thought is systematic in the sense that it is organized and logically ordered, and not a haphazard assemblage of brilliant but disconnected ideas. (Reginster 3)

Put in this way, it is difficult to argue with Reginster, but the actual scope of his book goes far beyond establishing Nietzsche’s organizational and logical prowess, and superimposes a level of premeditation that is highly dubious. In many ways, The Affirmation of Life is an exercise in puzzle-solving wherein Reginster has taken all of Nietzsche’s most integral concepts—the will to power, the revaluation of all values, the eternal recurrence, the Dionysian—and turned them around until he could piece them together in an all-encompassing logical argument. In fact, he argues that it is the precise lack of such a macroscopic project that has led to the failure of other systematic projects. While scholars such as Nehemas, Kofman, and John Richardson have focused on the will to power, or the eternal recurrence, and sublimated other concepts to support the one, Reginster sublimates all of them as logical means to an end: the affirmation of life. The revaluation of all values becomes Nietzsche’s opening salvo to debunk the nihilistic outcome of a dependence on a deceased God, the will to power becomes a way to establish a level of normativity in new values as well as to account for suffering, the eternal recurrence is the logical outcome of an embrace of these new paradigms, etc.

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While Reginster claims (perhaps rightfully) that his approach to Nietzsche avoids the pitfalls encountered by other systemizers—namely giving preference to one concept over another—he encounters an entirely different, and arguably more troubling problem: a lack of engagement with the unique simultaneity of Nietzsche’s writing. Nietzsche’s published works can be characterized by their nuance and multifaceted nature in which Nietzsche simultaneously creates and destroys in the same aphorism. When taken as a link within a complex logical argument, the simultaneities must collapse and the multiple perspectives contained in a short aphorism are compressed into a one-dimensional proposition. Hence, Zarathustra’s announcement “To esteem is to create: hear this, you creators! Esteeming itself is of all esteemed things the most estimable treasure” (Z, I 15) is explained as:

Nietzsche’s arguments against descriptive objectivism, though allusive at best, suggest that considerations like explanatory minimalism and ontological parsimony ought to lead us to deny the existence of objective values. (Reginster 98)

Furthermore, Reginster summons little evidence to support the overall assertion of a Nietzschean master plan encompassing works from The Birth of Tragedy to Also Sprach Zarathustra. As an example, he points to the concluding sentence of Ecce Homo (“Have I been understood?—Dionysus versus the Crucified.”) as an indicator of the primacy of the “affirmation of life” within his thought. Beyond the questionable applicability of the quote in the first place, it is hardly unusual for Nietzsche to end books with grandiose, provocative language, and an appeal to the late date of its publishing (Ecce Homo was the last book Nietzsche published) cannot be given too much weight given that Nietzsche did not intend it to be his final book. Reginster also appeals to Nietzsche’s notes from later in his life, including several sketches for a more systematic work. The problems inherent in using unpublished notes as a basis for such a large-scale re-evaluation are numerous, to say the least, and are even more exaggerated when dealing with someone as paradoxical as Nietzsche.

These issues have come to a head in the controversy surrounding The Will to Power, the posthumous collection of Nietzsche’s notes and sketches produced by his sister, Elisabeth. Because of the volume of The Will to Power citations Reginster uses, he cannot avoid engaging with this controversy. To his credit, he gives full voice to the critics of The Will to Power, ably and effectively conveying their concerns and arguments. He also makes the very reasonable and effective claim that, despite the many problems with the posthumous work, surely some of the material can help to shed light on Nietzsche’s thought process. The issue then becomes how much of the questionable material is used, and whether the material is supported from material from the published works. In many cases—particularly in regards to attributing a system to Nietzsche’s thought—Reginster appeals only to The Will to Power, or primarily to that text with minor references to the published works. In one such example, Reginster asserts that Nietzsche’s identification of the negation of life as a hidden premise of nihilism is, “nothing less than the opening wedge of his critique of [nihilism]” (Reginster 50). He goes on to argue that Nietzsche’s deconstruction of nihilism is only a means towards a subsequent goal of producing “new values.” To support this claim he quotes The Will to Power: “Once we have devaluated these three categories, the demonstration that they cannot be applied to the universe is no longer any reason for devaluating the universe” (WP 12).

The concise, analytical nature of this quote is unusual for Nietzsche, but is typical of the more black-and-white quality of The Will to Power in general. Again, Reginster breaks with many Nietzsche scholars in his endorsement of this work specifically for its concreteness—a quality that stands in stark contrast to the ephemeral quality of the published works. “The presentation of ideas in published works is often characterized by a sometimes frustrating brevity. Nietzsche often only alludes to important concepts and theories, which he leaves barely adumbrated” (Reginster 19). In a very interesting argument—one that warrants a book or article in itself—he alludes to Nietzsche’s claims that his style intentionally conceals the truth from “those not worthy of them, or not prepared to face them,” (ibid) and therefore the unpublished notes (as found in The Will to Power) present a sort of undecorated rendition of Nietzsche’s arguments. For those willing to endorse the theory that The Will to Power is a sort of decoder ring to Nietzsche’s published works, Reginster’s new book will be seen as a translational tour de force. For the rest of us, it may be difficult to get beyond this initial stumbling block and appreciate the truly original and fascinating insights Reginster provides.

Though some may take umbrage with the foundational principle that Nietzsche’s writings contain a systematic argument for the affirmation of life, it is difficult to find fault with his subsequent reasoning. Reginster’s scrupulous attention to conceptual integrity, definition, and categorization produces a refreshing clarity and certainty that much of the secondary Nietzsche literature lacks. This is especially helpful and effective when he traces Schopenhauer’s influence on Nietzsche’s later works. By identifying the premises and causal links operating in Schopenhauer’s conception of human willing, Reginster makes a strong case for thinking of Nietzsche’s will to power as an evolution of his predecessor’s idea. Secondarily, by more precisely identifying the exact nature of the desires for which the will to power strives, Reginster has provided an ethically satisfying explanation of this frequently troubling Nietzschean notion. (See Chapter 3 in Reginster for more detail.)

This book is well written, impeccably reasoned, and will challenge many people’s conception of Nietzsche’s thought. For those who cringe at the thought of turning Nietzsche into Hegel, this book is worth reading if for no other reason, than to see what such an exercise might produce. Reginster seems fully aware of the potential objections and dutifully expresses these objections at the very outset, thereby obviating any claim that he is subverting the “true” spirit of Nietzsche. The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism will, no doubt, create discussions, disagreements and controversies, but may also serve to inject more logical rigor into Nietzsche scholarship. In either case, Reginster has produced an important addition to the vast repertoire of secondary Nietzsche literature.

Review by Benjamin Moritz (Music Department, Mansfield University)

All Rights Reserved. © Benjamin Moritz-Nietzsche Circle, 2006.