- The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- Nietzsche and the Family
- Nietzsche and Women
- Nietzsche’s Illness
- Nietzsche and the Greeks
- Nietzsche and Romanticism: Goethe, Hölderlin, and Wagner
- Nietzsche the Kantian?
- Schopenhauer as Nietzsche’s “Great Teacher” and “Antipode”
- Influence on Analytic Philosophy
- The Themes of Affirmation and Illusion in <i>the Birth of Tragedy</i> and Beyond
- ‘Holding on to the Sublime’: On Nietzsche’s Early ‘Unfashionable’ Project
- The Gay Science
- Zarathustra: ‘that Malicious Dionysian’
- Beyond Good and Evil
- Nietzsche’s <i>Genealogy</i>
- Nietzsche’s <i>Antichrist</i>
- Beholding Nietzsche: Ecce Homo, Fate, and Freedom
- Nietzsche’s Metaethical Stance
- Nietzsche and the Arts of Life
- Nietzsche on Autonomy
- The Overman
- Order of Rank
- ‘A Promise Made is a Debt Unpaid’: Nietzsche on the Morality of Commitment and the Commitments of Morality
- Will to Power: Does it Lead to the “Coldest of all Cold Monsters”?
- Life’s Perspectives
- Nietzsche’s Naturalism Reconsidered
- Nietzsche’s Philosophical Aestheticism
- Being, Becoming, and Time in Nietzsche
- Eternal Recurrence
- Nietzsche’s Metaphysical Sketches: Causality and will To Power
- The Psychology of Christian Morality: Will to Power as Will to Nothingness
- Nietzsche’s Philosophical Psychology
- Nietzsche On Life’s Ends
- Subject Index
- Name Index
Abstract and Keywords
The main theme of Nietzsche’s first published work, The Birth of Tragedy (BT, 1872), is that the affirmation of life requires ‘illusion’ which allows us to cope with the ‘insight into the horrible truth’ of our condition. This article argues that Nietzsche held the same position in his later works: that illusion is a necessary to affirm life. The discussion is organized as follows. Section 1 sets out the core thesis of BT vis-à-vis the relationship between affirmation and illusion. Section 2 examines the role of illusion in one of Nietzsche’s litmus tests of affirmation found in The Gay Science of 1882, ‘amor fati’—that is, the ability ‘to see as beautiful what is necessary in things’. Sections 3, 4, and 5 consider Nietzsche’s understanding of ‘self-creation’ and how, through the employment of ‘distance’ and ‘pretence’, it engenders an affirmation of existence. Finally, Section 6 attempts a provisional assessment of Nietzsche’s conception of affirmation.
Keywords: Friedrich Nietzsche, illusion, life, affirmation, The Gay Science, amor fati, self-creation
Daniel Came: St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford
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- The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- Nietzsche and the Family
- Nietzsche and Women
- Nietzsche’s Illness
- Nietzsche and the Greeks
- Nietzsche and Romanticism: Goethe, Hölderlin, and Wagner
- Nietzsche the Kantian?
- Schopenhauer as Nietzsche’s “Great Teacher” and “Antipode”
- Influence on Analytic Philosophy
- The Themes of Affirmation and Illusion in <i>the Birth of Tragedy</i> and Beyond
- ‘Holding on to the Sublime’: On Nietzsche’s Early ‘Unfashionable’ Project
- The Gay Science
- Zarathustra: ‘that Malicious Dionysian’
- Beyond Good and Evil
- Nietzsche’s <i>Genealogy</i>
- Nietzsche’s <i>Antichrist</i>
- Beholding Nietzsche: Ecce Homo, Fate, and Freedom
- Nietzsche’s Metaethical Stance
- Nietzsche and the Arts of Life
- Nietzsche on Autonomy
- The Overman
- Order of Rank
- ‘A Promise Made is a Debt Unpaid’: Nietzsche on the Morality of Commitment and the Commitments of Morality
- Will to Power: Does it Lead to the “Coldest of all Cold Monsters”?
- Life’s Perspectives
- Nietzsche’s Naturalism Reconsidered
- Nietzsche’s Philosophical Aestheticism
- Being, Becoming, and Time in Nietzsche
- Eternal Recurrence
- Nietzsche’s Metaphysical Sketches: Causality and will To Power
- The Psychology of Christian Morality: Will to Power as Will to Nothingness
- Nietzsche’s Philosophical Psychology
- Nietzsche On Life’s Ends
- Subject Index
- Name Index