Nietzsche and Wallace on Self-Affirmation and Affirmability
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12314890 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jeremy Forster (Columbia University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 375-401 |
| Publication date | 2017-11-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Nietzsche Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0968-8005 • E-ISSN: 1538-4594 |
| Publisher | The Pennsylvania State University Press (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.5325/jnietstud.48.3.0375 |
| OpenAlex | W2769365088 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 5 |
This article brings to bear aspects of Nietzsche's understanding of the affirmation of life on R. Jay Wallace's account in The View from Here (2013). While Wallace takes as a sufficient condition for an individual to affirm her life (what I call “self-affirmation”) that she prefer on balance the life she actually lived over the alternative of not having lived at all, he claims that, because of the lamentable past conditions causally connected to our lives, the normative bases for self-affirmation are generally absent. I propose an interpretation of Nietzsche on which achieving self-affirmation is not simply a matter of forming certain preferences regarding one's life; instead, achieving the warrant for self-affirmation involves the sort of life one has lived, namely a life engaged in the pursuit of growth (the exercise of the will to power), in part through confrontation with the problematic and questionable aspects of life
Balance (ability · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy · Meaningful life · Normative · Power (physics · Self · Self-affirmation · Warrant · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |