The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on the Overcoming of Nihilism (review)

This is an important, curious book that is worth the effort it takes to get through it. It makes a distinctive case for the centrality of Nietzsche's grappling with nihilism, giving content to his notoriously thin notion of "affirming life," and it offers a nuanced account of "will to power," specifically in relation to Schopenhauer's "will to live." Among its curiosities are its method of extensive reliance on the collection of notes published as The Will to Power and its characterization of a paradox at the core of Nietzsche's project: affirming life turns on embracing the idea that "will to power requires pain as one of the conditions of its satisfaction" (234). Only the second of these can be discussed here. And while the writing style tediously resembles a form of scholasticism that gets in the way of understanding what exactly Reginster is arguing, the book repays the reader's forbearance by offering some genuinely provocative ideas.

Reginster's main project is to show how nihilism and its solution are central to Nietzsche's thinking about the "affirmation of life." This hinges on revaluing suffering as intrinsic to satisfying an ultimate desire to overcome resistance. In a nutshell, that is Nietzsche's "doctrine of the will to power," and it leads Reginster to claim that the agent of will to power both does and does not want to overcome resistance insofar as it seeks overcoming but not ultimately; that is, it wants to be perpetually overcoming, not simply to have overcome (126). This promotes the "feeling of power," which is good, and in this sense, pain and suffering mingle with, rather than merely lead to, pleasure and happiness (194–97).

This analysis of will to power allows Reginster to show how overcoming is an activity, not simply a state or desired end (196), which he links with creativity (242) and affirming impermanence (247). Showing how suffering is vital to satisfaction allows Reginster to make some novel though problematic observations about Mitleid (often translated as 'pity'). Another long explication of Schopenhauer leads Reginster to argue that Nietzsche is not diametrically opposed to compassion but rather to the morality of compassion (189), that is, to moral injunctions motivated by compassion. A truer sense of wanting to help someone might be realized in letting them suffer (187), since suffering can be so good for them (and for us), on the terms sketched above. Thus, if moralized compassion turns on eliminating suffering, that should be rejected.

But Reginster tells us little about what makes some particular resistance good and the limits, if there are any, of ceaseless striving. We can see that the feeling of power, which is supposed to be good, is linked with overcoming, and that being engaged in overcoming entails meeting resistance, which itself entails suffering. Thus, at least some suffering might be good, but it is hard to see how all suffering, suffering itself, and the whole diversity of suffering (which Reginster understands quite broadly for other reasons) gets revalued, much less that we should seek it. Without finer distinctions among good struggles and bad, it is hard to know how one ought to go about seeking one's own satisfaction or relate to others who are suffering (or perhaps are not yet suffering enough). Reginster's brief discussion of this is insufficient for addressing these concerns.

Finally, this revaluation of suffering leads Reginster to emphasize seeking resistance, engaging in war, and feeling hatred to the point that Nietzsche looks like a sadomasochist. Revealing this would be fine if it were Nietzsche's project, but Reginster ignores, and he is in good company, what Nietzsche has to say about love. A deep current of eros courses through Nietzsche's eristic economy. Love seems essential to affirmation, but there's hardly a peep of that in the book (229–30). Two memorable images set the stage for a discussion I can only defer. Zarathustra first...