In this paper, I examine a set of theoretical tools Nietzsche offers for making sense of the emotional dynamics and psychophysiological impacts of sexist oppression. Specifically, I indicate how Nietzsche’s account of the social and cultural production of emotional experience (i.e. his account of the transpersonal nature of emotional experience) can serve as a conceptual resource for understanding the detrimental emotional impacts of social norms, beliefs, and practices that systematically devalue certain of one’s ends and interests.

Nietzsche is perhaps best known for his diagnosis of the problem of nihilism. Though his elaborations on this diagnosis often include descriptions of certain beliefs characteristic of the nihilist (such as beliefs in the meaninglessness or worthlessness of existence), he just as frequently specifies a variety of affective symptoms experienced by the nihilist that weaken their will and diminish their agency. This affective dimension to nihilism, however, remains drastically underexplored. In this book, Kaitlyn Creasy offers a comprehensive account of affective (...) nihilism that draws on Nietzsche’s drive psychology, especially his reflections on affects and their transformative potential. After exploring Nietzsche’s account of affectivity (illuminating especially the transpersonal nature of affect in Nietzsche’s thought) and the phenomenon of affective nihilism, Creasy argues that affective nihilism might be overcome by employing a variety of Nietzschean strategies: experimentation, self-narration, and self-genealogy. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the sociality of emotional experience in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. Specifically, I describe four key mechanisms through which an individual's sociocultural context shapes her emotional experience on Nietzsche's view—emotional contagion as habitual affective mimicry, the production of emotions' felt character through the assimilation of dominant social beliefs and norms, affective interpretation à la Christopher Fowles, and the imposition of dominant notions of emotional appropriateness—fleshing out a dimension of Nietzsche's thought which is largely taken for (...) granted but remains undertreated. After detailing these mechanisms, I argue that attending to the sociality of emotional experience in Nietzsche's thought is crucial not only for understanding key elements of his moral psychology (including certain of his reflections on freedom and self‐transformation), but also for understanding his interpretation of nihilism as a psychological‐affective phenomenon produced by the society to which one belongs. On Nietzsche's view, attending to the sociality of emotion helps individuals recognize the way in which the sociocultural contexts they inhabit might undermine their flourishing—and also helps them envision the conditions (especially sociocultural conditions) requisite for healthier, more empowering emotional lives. (shrink)

In The Affirmation of Life, Bernard Reginster argues that Nietzschean nihilism is best characterized as a "philosophical claim."1 This account has inspired a number of critical responses from contemporary scholars.2 Ken Gemes and John Richardson, for example, both point out that while Reginster's characterization presents nihilism as a purely cognitive phenomenon involving particular beliefs about meaning and value, it is just as frequently presented by Nietzsche as a feeling-based phenomenon, a weariness that comports one negatively toward the world of which (...) one is a part.3 How, then, should Nietzsche's reader understand the problem of nihilism in his thought?In... (shrink)

This article offers an account of Nietzschean decadence as a psycho-physiological condition characterized by a failure of psychic integration—a failure Nietzsche thinks precludes genuine agency, since the psychic integration the decadent fails to achieve is necessary for agency. As part of this account, this article develops an interpretation of an underexplored but crucial form of decadence: repressed decadence. Exploring this variety of Nietzschean decadence both enables us to make sense of the case of Wagner’s alleged decadence and adds nuance to (...) predominance models of Nietzschean unity. After developing this account, the article argues that Nietzsche finds decadence especially problematic when it disempowers (or obstructs the empowerment of) the individual who suffers from it, even if only in the long run. The article concludes by demonstrating that in (rare) cases in which decadence facilitates individual empowerment, Nietzsche evaluates it positively, finding such a condition worthy of affirmation. (shrink)

In this chapter, I contend that Nietzsche’s robust critiques of human exceptionalism and the “humanization of nature [Vermenschlichung der Natur]”, as well as his positive, proto-ecocentric vision of the “naturalization of humanity [Vernatürlichung des Menschen]”, afford contemporary environmental philosophy a novel perspective from which to critique anthropocentric conservation ideologies (according to which nature conservation ought to be motivated by the interests and aims of humanity, especially economic development and prosperity). Importantly, I also argue that Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the work (...) in which Nietzsche’s positive vision appears most conspicuously, as suggested by Zarathustra’s relationship to the natural world and exhortations to “remain faithful to the earth.” -/- As Nietzsche’s critique of anthropocentrism reinforces his positive project, I will begin by detailing Nietzsche’s rejection of human exceptionalism (section 1). In addition, I will analyze Nietzsche’s critique of the “humanization of nature” (KSA 10:10[43]; 10:13[20]; 12:1[29]), emphasizing specific pernicious projections of human values onto the other-than-human world. Although these themes appear throughout Nietzsche’s body of work, they are central to Zarathustra. -/- After describing Nietzsche’s critical project, I present his positive, proto-ecocentric vision for humanity’s re-naturalization, one he most emphatically endorses and fleshes out in Zarathustra (section 2). This positive vision can be found in his calls for the human being to become more natural and to cultivate a noble reverence and gratitude for the natural world so that we may learn from it about ourselves—rather than falsifying it for our ends and then insisting that we are part of this other, falsified nature. Only when we can see ourselves as natural beings—specifically, as living beings willing power, embedded in a world with other living beings who do the same—can we identify tasks and pursue aims that empower and strengthen us. In Nietzsche’s view, this recognition results only from an attunement to the other-than-human world. Finally, after adding a few important caveats to proto-ecocentric strains in Nietzsche’s thought, I briefly explain the contributions his thought might make to contemporary environmental philosophy and policy (section 3). (shrink)

This article interprets David E. Storey’s foundation of an environmental ethic on Nietzsche’s philosophy of life as a version of new conservationism. Critically examining Storey’s various claims, the article demonstrates potentially problematic aspects of the new conservationist project. In order to both question Storey’s interpretation of a Nietzschean philosophy of life and problematize the new conservationist understanding of nature, this article returns to the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. In particular, it argues from a Nietzschean perspective that the new conservationist projection (...) of human teleology and values onto wild nature and non-human life results in a nihilistic conception of wild nature. (shrink)

In recent work, Bernard Reginster argues for an interpretation of the relationship between morality and the affects in Nietzsche which he calls ‘sentimental pragmatism’. According to this view, the values, value judgments, and moral practices agents develop and adopt function to serve specific affective needs. Reginster deploys this interpretation to argue for a functional interpretation of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality, according to which all three essays of the Genealogy comprise psychological studies designed to uncover Christian morality’s function to (...) serve the affect of ressentiment. In this paper, I first develop Reginster’s sentimental pragmatism by specifying a need to feel powerful as the one affective need which all moral developments aim to serve on Nietzsche’s view. Then, I argue that while Reginster’s functional interpretation of the Genealogy makes sense of key moral phenomena discussed in the first and third essays, it works less well to explain key developments in the second essay. I then suggest that my power-based sentimental pragmatism does better in this regard, allowing us to identify one basic function of morality that Nietzsche intends to uncover in all three essays of the Genealogy, one basic affective need it aims to serve: the need to feel powerful. (shrink)

This Cambridge Elements series provides introductions to central topics in Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought. Written by specialists who engage debates central to Nietzsche studies and draw original conclusions from their distinctive viewpoint, contributions treat distinctively Nietzschean topics and offer Nietzsche’s perspective on topics of interest to philosophers in the Anglophone tradition.

In an 1881 letter, Nietzsche remarks incredulously that he is "utterly amazed" to have found in Spinoza "a precursor" with whom he shares an "overtendency [...] to make knowledge the most powerful affect."1 It is this tendency to assign knowledge and ways of knowing the functional role of an affect that I intend to investigate as a means of overcoming affective nihilism.2 In particular, it is by participating in certain practices of self-knowledge and introducing oneself, experimentally, to new sites and (...) bodies of knowledge that one might reengage oneself with one's world and affirm life.In his work, Nietzsche describes affects as "reactions of the will", as "inclinations" and "aversions... (shrink)