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The Problem of
Affective Nihilism
in Nietzsche
Thinking Differently, Feeling Differently
Kaitlyn Creasy
The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche
Kaitlyn Creasy
The Problem
of Affective Nihilism
in Nietzsche
Thinking Differently, Feeling Differently
Kaitlyn Creasy
California State University
San Bernardino, CA, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-37132-6 ISBN 978-3-030-37133-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37133-3
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For Justin
Acknowledgments
I presented material from this book at the 2017 meeting of the Friedrich
Nietzsche Society, the 2018 meeting of the North American Nietzsche
Society, the 2018 meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Exis-
tential Philosophy, and the 2019 workshop for Nietzsche in the North-
east. My sincere thanks to the audiences present for their questions,
critiques, and suggestions. I would like to especially thank Lanier An-
derson, Rebecca Bamford, Jessica Berry, Ian Dunkle, Richard Elliott,
Rachael Flanagan, Robert Guay, Kathleen Higgins, Andrew Huddleston,
Scott Jenkins, Anthony Jensen, Paul Katsafanas, Paul Kirkland, Paul Loeb,
Allison Merrick, Katrina Mitcheson, Justin Remhof, John Richardson,
Jacqueline Scott, Alan Schrift, Ashley Sharples, Melanie Shepherd, Iain
Thomson, Sander Werkhoven, Joel Van Fossen, Corinne Wilber, and
Gabriel Zamosc. Special thanks are due to Matthew Meyer, who was
always willing to review and critique material from the manuscript. His
thoughtful and straightforward feedback made this a better book.
My thanks to the Journal of Nietzsche Studies and the Pennsylvania
State University Press for allowing me to include revised material from
two previously published articles of mine. Chapter 5 includes mate-
rial from “On the Problem of Affective Nihilism,” Journal of Nietzsche
Studies, Vol. 49, No. 1, 2018, pp. 31–51. This article is used by permis-
sion of The Pennsylvania State University Press. Additionally, Chapters 5,
6, and 8 include material from “Making Knowledge the Most Powerful
Affect,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 50, No. 2, 2019, pp. 210–232.
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This article, too, is used by permission of The Pennsylvania State Uni-

versity Press. In addition, I am grateful for the opportunity to work with
the editorial team at Palgrave Macmillan and owe thanks to Philip Getz,
Amy Invernizzi, and Karthika Purushothaman, whose guidance and co-
operation has been invaluable throughout the process of bringing my first
manuscript to fruition. My gratitude also to the anonymous referees of
this manuscript for their generative feedback.
For supporting me through the development and completion of this
project, I am exceedingly grateful both to my former colleagues in the
Philosophy, Religion, and Classics Department at Butler University (espe-
cially Chad Bauman, Brent Hege, Lynne Kvapil, and Ezgi Sertler) and to
my current colleagues in the Philosophy Department at California State
University, San Bernardino.
This project was made possible, in many ways, by the support of family
and close friends. Thank you to Diane Macco and Gary Creasy, Jill and
Pat Faley, Ginny Wilmerding and Stuart Pett, Emma Creasy (the high-
achieving nursing student), and Kyle Creasy; for their assistance and en-
couragement, I am appreciative. Thank you also to my grandmother,
Marilyn Macco, my first and longest source of inspiration: her open-
heartedness, unfailing interpretive charity, and expansive mind showed me
from an early age what a philosopher should look like. To Richie Macco
and José Alcaraz: thank you for always supporting my intellectual devel-
opment, and for never failing to ask when the book would be done. Most
of all, thank you to Justin Messmore. My world is exponentially richer,
and life more fascinating, because of our relationship. Justin’s patience,
understanding, and proofreading were all crucial for the completion of
this project, and I am exceedingly grateful for his love and friendship.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 What Is Nietzschean Nihilism? 13
3 Nihilism as Life-Denial 27
4 Before Affective Nihilism, Understanding Affect 63
5 The Problem of Affective Nihilism 87
6 Affective Nihilists, Weak Agents 107
7 Cognitive Nihilism, Affective Nihilism, and Their

Interplay 121
8 Overcoming Affective Nihilism 137
References 177
Index 183
ix
List of Abbreviations of Nietzsche’s
Works
A The Antichrist from Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the
Idols: And Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005)
BGE Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge
BT The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, trans. Raymond Geuss and
Ronald Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
CW The Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House,
1967)
D Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982)
EH Ecce Homo from Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the
Idols: And Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge
GM On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2007)
GS The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974)
HH Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1996)
KSA Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden. Edited by G.
Colli and M. Montinari. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967–77.
TI Twilight of the Idols from Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twi-
light of the Idols: And Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005)
xi
xii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS OF NIETZSCHE’S WORKS
UM Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge

Z Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Adrian Del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
As Bernard Reginster argues in his seminal text The Affirmation of

Life, “nihilism is the central theme of Nietzsche’s philosophy” (2006,
p. 21). As a multifaceted phenomenon with affective, cognitive, and
socio-cultural components, however, it has proven surprisingly difficult
to offer a comprehensive account of what exactly the problem of nihilism
is for Nietzsche—and, therefore, what potential solutions to this prob-
lem could look like. In part, this difficulty follows from the fact that,
while something properly called “the problem of nihilism” animates and
permeates so many of Nietzsche’s most critical works, he rarely calls this
problem by its name: Nihilismus. Thus, though one happens upon pos-
sible symptoms or consequences of this problem in nearly every one of
Nietzsche’s works—one senses the specter of nihilism at every turn—a
comprehensive account of nihilism remains difficult to construct.
Indeed, although Nietzsche makes reference to nihilists [Nihilisten]
in two separate notes from 1880 (KSA 9:4[103], [108]) and men-
tions nihilism [Nihilismus] in an 1881 letter to his dear friend, Hein-
rich Köselitz (BVN-1881, 88), Nietzsche’s explicit mentions of nihilism
[Nihilismus] occur with much more frequency in his private notes from
1885 onward. Though he discusses the problem of nihilism in some of
his late published works including Beyond Good and Evil (1886), the
fifth book of The Gay Science (1887), The Genealogy of Morality (1887),
© The Author(s) 2020 1

K. Creasy, The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37133-3_1
2 K. CREASY
and The Antichrist (1888), the problem of nihilism in Nietzsche is more

explicitly examined and hashed out in his Nachlass .1
These features of Nietzsche’s analysis of nihilism—its generally late
appearance, its relegation to his personal notebooks—might lead one
to believe that Nietzsche deals with the problem of nihilism only in his
philosophical maturity, and that he did not consider his thoughts on the
matter sufficiently mature so as to warrant publication or promotion. But
as Charles Andler suggests, the increase in explicit mentions of Nihilis-
mus in Nietzsche’s late work and notes is less a sign of a new interest
or emphasis, and more likely a result of Nietzsche’s increased familiarity
with the term following from his reading of Paul Bourget’s Essais de
psychologie contemporaine (Andler as cited by Müller-Lauter 1999, p. 41).
Indeed, Nietzsche’s adoption of Nihilismus as a technical term (as well
as his increased references to Pessimismus and Decadence) in his later
works allows him to designate a particular kind of phenomenon to which
he has been attending to all along.
Ken Gemes picks up on this when he notes that, though it was a “prob-
lem [Nietzsche] was always working towards” (Gemes 2008, pp. 460–
461), the problem of nihilism was a problem “initially unbeknownst to
[Nietzsche]” (ibid., p. 460). Although he is not yet aware of nihilism
as a particular kind of problem in his early work, then, the problem
of nihilism still animates much of this work. Additionally, even when
Nihilismus is not explicitly mentioned, Nietzsche’s analyses of the strug-
gle between life-denial and life-affirmation and the world-denial implicit
in what he calls the christlich-moral<ischen> interpretation of the world
(KSA 12:2[127]) indicate his supreme concern with nihilism and its dan-
gers.
Outline of the Book

In what follows, I offer a comprehensive account of a particular kind of
nihilism, that “most profound form of nihilism” (Gemes 2008, p. 462)
with which Nietzsche is concerned: affective nihilism. Understanding the
affective dimensions of Nietzschean nihilism, however, requires one to
first understand what constitutes nihilism for Nietzsche. Thus, I begin by
1 See Gemes (2008). See also Van Tongeren (2018) for more on how the sense of
“nihilism” (as “pessimism” [Pessimismus], “nihilism” [Nihilismus], and “decadence”
[Decadence]) evolves throughout his work.
1 INTRODUCTION 3
examining the problem of Nietzschean nihilism generally. First, I explain

the account Nietzsche offers his readers of the historical development of
nihilism as the specific phenomenon he hopes to problematize and, even-
tually, overcome. Though nihilism is understood by Nietzsche generally as
life-denial (as I demonstrate in the third chapter), he believes the prob-
lem of nihilism as it is actually lived by nineteenth-century Europeans to
have a very specific historical development, involving certain critical socio-
cultural formations and systems of belief. In other words, the history of
life-denial, of nihilism, has a very particular shape.
Chapter 2 examines three recent characterizations of Nietzschean
nihilism: those of Paul Van Tongeren (2018), Bernard Reginster (2006),
and Andrew Huddleston (2019). Although each of these accounts is
a helpful and illuminating addition to the literature on Nietzschean
nihilism, I argue that none of them, taken alone, gives a satisfying account
of Nietzschean nihilism. For this reason, I offer an account of my own in
Chapter 3. There, I argue that thinking nihilism most broadly as life-
denial or the negation of life [die Verneinung des Lebens] allows Niet-
zsche’s reader to find a commonality in the various kinds of nihilism he
discusses throughout his work.
After Chapter 3, I turn towards a particular kind of nihilism: nihilism
as a feeling-based phenomenon, or affective nihilism. It would be quite
impossible, however, to understand Nietzsche’s framing of nihilism as a
complex affective condition if one did not first understand what exactly
Nietzsche believes affects to be and how they function to (1) excite or
inhibit the drives, (2) motivate behavior (by inclining and disinclining the
individual who experiences them), and (3) shape evaluative orientations.
For this reason, I offer a Nietzschean account of affect in Chapter 4.2
In Chapter 5, after a close examination of the function of affect in
Nietzsche, I focus in more closely on the main topic of the book: affective
nihilism. In this chapter, I explore Nietzsche’s account of nihilism as a
psychophysiological disorder that infects the affective nihilist, weakening
her will and disengaging her from her goals and interests.
In Chapter 6, I describe affective nihilism specifically as a problem of
agency that takes two distinct forms: (1) will-weakness as drive suppres-
sion and (2) will-weakness as involving the disintegration or fragmenta-
tion of the will. In order to overcome affective nihilism, then, one must
2 Note that Nietzsche often uses Affekt and Leidenschaft interchangeably. I follow him
in this, translating both as “affect.”
4 K. CREASY
both re-establish goals toward which she is directed by somehow stimu-

lating the activity of her drives or integrating her will and move toward
those goals in action. Only when one is an effectual agent can one be said
to have overcome affective nihilism. Thus, in order to overcome affective
nihilism, the nihilist must undergo a profound personal transformation,
enacting fundamental changes in her constitution as a complex of drives.
In Chapter 7, I clarify both the scope of affective nihilism and the
relationship between cognitive and affective nihilisms in Nietzsche. First,
I explain that affective nihilism is not a condition from which all Niet-
zschean nihilists suffer. Indeed, as I point out, it is possible to be a
cognitive nihilist who is not suffering from affective nihilism. Then, I
explain the relationship Nietzsche establishes between affective nihilism
and nihilism’s cognitive manifestations, including certain beliefs, judg-
ments, or epistemic practices (Riccardi 2018, p. 267). In short, I demon-
strate that Nietzsche believes nihilism as a cognitive phenomenon both
results from affective nihilism and potentially results in affective nihilism.
Finally, in Chapter 8, I identify and investigate potential Nietzschean
strategies for overcoming affective nihilism. The three strategies I outline
include (1) experimentation (with locales, ideas, texts, and contexts); (2)
self-narration as a practice of self-knowledge; and (3) genealogical inquiry
into the origins of one’s beliefs, values, and affective life. While the first
strategy works potentially through the generation or production of new
and stimulating first-order affects, the second strategy has the potential
to work by generating second-order affects that lead to (1) negative eval-
uations of harmful affects (affects that ultimately function to weaken the
will); and (2) positive evaluations of healthy affects (affects that ultimately
function to strengthen and unify the will). Finally, genealogical inquiry
into one’s own beliefs, values, and affective life potentially provokes
transformative second-order affects (produced as one attempts to hon-
estly face the origins of her affects, beliefs, and values) and presents one
with the opportunity to learn a kind of affective mastery. Such strategies
potentially enable the affective nihilist not only to overcome nihilism as
a psychophysiological condition, but to maintain the conditions of their
own affective flourishing. Furthermore, an empowered, strong-willed
individual is likely to form life-affirming beliefs and engage in epistemic
practices, thus overcoming nihilism in its cognitive manifestations.3
3 Gemes (2008) is especially pessimistic about this possibility. Indeed, he claims that
from Nietzsche’s perspective, “Judeo-Christian morality had left such a deep scar on the
1 INTRODUCTION 5
Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Nihilism

Below, as a bit of background, I sketch out Nietzsche’s genealogy of
nihilism as a socio-cultural phenomenon, a particular problem plaguing
nineteenth-century Europe that results in the widespread adoption of
beliefs, attitudes, and norms that Nietzsche believes to be life-denying. I
begin here because while Nietzsche’s analysis of the problem of nihilism in
its many manifestations is exceptionally complicated, he does present a rel-
atively clear and straightforward genealogy of European nihilism. In fact,
Nietzsche understands the problem of nihilism as it is lived by nineteenth-
century Europeans to have a very specific historical development, involv-
ing certain critical socio-cultural formations and systems of belief.
Those more familiar with Nietzsche’s reflections on nihilism, and
especially on nihilism as a worldview or series of interrelated world-
views plaguing nineteenth-century Europe, are likely familiar with this
developmental account. For those less familiar, however, understanding
Nietzsche’s genealogical inquiry into nihilism as a worldview inhabited
by nineteenth-century Europeans will be critical for understanding both
the structure of life-denial and, eventually, the way that all of the varieties
of nihilism Nietzsche introduces—nihilism as a cognitive phenomenon,
nihilism as a socio-cultural phenomenon, and nihilism as an affective
phenomenon—intertwine. In short, to understand Nietzschean nihilism
in a comprehensive manner—and to imagine what the overcoming of
nihilism might look like—one ought to attend carefully to the genealogy
of nihilism Nietzsche constructs.
Below, I offer an abbreviated history of European nihilism as a socio-
cultural phenomenon inextricable from Judeo-Christianity. Indeed, in his
unpublished reflections on the nature of nihilism, Nietzsche specifies that
nihilism is “rooted” in “one particular interpretation, the Christian-moral
[christlich-moral<ischen>] one” (KSA 12:2[127]). This picture, accord-
ing to which there is an interpretation of the world characteristic of Chris-
tianity that dominates the cultural landscape of Europe at the time of
Nietzsche’s life, provides us with our first glimpse into the specific socio-
cultural phenomenon that Nietzsche calls European nihilism, here and
elsewhere. As a socio-cultural phenomenon, European nihilism is histor-
ically contingent: its development depended on, and was made possible
modern soul that the inevitable nihilism resulting from this wound negated the possibility
of a general elevated culture” (2008, p. 460).
6 K. CREASY
by, certain socio-cultural factors. Put simply, without the specific historical
developments that led to the origin of Christian-moral ways of interpret-
ing the world (as well as its eventual predominance), nihilism—as the par-
ticular phenomenon of “European nihilism [der europäische Nihilismus]”
(KSA 12:5[71]) that Nietzsche treats at such length in his work—might
have been avoided.
In his late work and notes, Nietzsche offers an account of the
development of European nihilism. According to Nietzsche, nihilism
as a socio-cultural phenomenon specific to nineteenth-century Europe
arises when those in educated European societies become conscious of
the implausibility of certain fundamental beliefs that have historically
provided extraordinary value to these societies. When these beliefs are
undermined, individuals in these societies experience a crisis of value:
they are left not only without those values in which they were invested,
but without values altogether (insofar as they believed their previous
values to be the only “real” values). In this moment of crisis, a belief in
the meaninglessness and/or worthlessness of existence becomes culturally
widespread. This leads individuals to evaluate their world and existence
negatively, turning them against the world in which they live. In short, it
leads to widespread life-denial.
Nietzsche’s analysis of European nihilism tells a very specific story of
the crisis that catalyzes it, beginning with Plato’s theory of the Forms
and continuing through the emergence and expansion of Christianity
in Europe. His account begins by focusing in on Plato’s theory of the
Forms, which proposes a transcendent world beyond the world of sensi-
ble experience. This transcendent world—the world of the Forms—man-
ifests eternal perfection. Indeed, for Plato, this transcendent world is the
only intrinsically valuable world there is; the immanent world is merely
instrumentally valuable, valuable only insofar as it manifests certain prop-
erties or features that originate in the transcendent world. In short, the
world of the Forms is the “true” and “best” world, while the immanent
world of earthly experience is inferior and gives rise to false and harm-
ful beliefs and behaviors. According to this view, one lives meaningfully
and well only when one dedicates oneself to knowledge of the Forms.
Thus, knowledge of the Forms is a necessary prerequisite for the living
of a good life. Furthermore, the immanent, sensible world of Becoming
is a misleading shadow-world; it is only “real” to the extent that it par-
ticipates in the world of the Forms (Plato, Republic, 509b–511e). The
1 INTRODUCTION 7
world of the Forms—not the sensible world of earthly existence—func-

tions as the sole source of knowledge for mankind. In this sense, Plato
denies the reality of the world of Becoming. Thus, Plato’s worldview is
life-denying insofar as it both disvalues and denies the reality of the world
of Becoming: the sensible realm of earthly existence.
According to Nietzsche, European Christianity develops from out of
Plato’s theory of the Forms (BGE, Preface; BGE 191; GM III:24; TI,
“True World”; TI, “Ancients,” 2; A 55). With its notion of heaven or a
“beyond” (A 7, 12, 23, 43), Christianity re-inscribes the Platonic divide
between an aspirational transcendent realm and an inferior, earthly realm
which human beings must inhabit for a time. The goal of Christianity is to
reach this transcendent, heavenly realm; one does so by living a morally
good life and by maintaining faith in Christian doctrine. This requires
one to (1) familiarize oneself with Christian doctrine and metaphysics
and cultivate belief in such a doctrine; (2) acquire knowledge of Chris-
tian morality by becoming aware of Christian norms of good and evil;
and (3) live according to a particular moral code. Christianity also intro-
duces an omnipotent and all-knowing creator-God into the picture; this
transcendent God creates a purposeful universe and has a plan for each
individual.
According to Nietzsche’s analysis, the fundamental beliefs that Euro-
pean societies took for granted included the existence and nature of an
all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving Christian God; a transcendent,
aspirational world (the heavenly realm) beyond the world of everyday
experience (life on Earth); the inherent purposefulness of the universe and
those in it; and good and evil as universal, fixed values, identical to those
values established in Christianity. Yet as scientific developments began to
offer humanity explanations for things that they could previously only
speculate about—and as rationalist philosophers such as René Descartes
and Immanuel Kant began to emphasize mankind’s extensive capacity for
objective knowledge—the need for a transcendent deity to explain earthly
phenomena and bless human beings with his wisdom began to disappear.
Eventually, according to Nietzsche’s picture, the educated European’s
belief in a Christian God becomes not only unnecessary, but unbeliev-
able (GS 125).
8 K. CREASY
The death of God, as the implausibility of the Judeo-Christian God in

the wake of post-Enlightenment advancements, has predictably devastat-
ing consequences.4 According to Nietzsche, as disbelief in the Christian
God spreads throughout Europe, the modern European becomes con-
vinced both that otherworldly aspirations are empty and that hopes for a
better world beyond this one are futile. Though individuals continue to
adopt Christian standards of good and evil out of convention, the foun-
dations of those standards are undermined and the educated individual
recognizes the insignificance and meaninglessness of conventional moral
action. The idea that there is a purpose to the universe or to human action
is thrown into doubt. Since the notion of a meaningful life in Christian
Europe was formulated in relation to some greater purpose of the uni-
verse beyond the individual and her particular life, the death of Christian-
ity in Europe leads many to reject the possibility of a meaningful life. This
leads many to despise their existence, to become sick of themselves and
the world to which they belong. Just as hoping for transcendence led the
European Christian to denounce the immanent world of experience, so
too does coping with the impossibility of transcendence after the death
of God lead man to condemn the immanent world of existence. The for-
mer is anti-life insofar as it affirms transcendent, otherworldly existence
instead of this-worldly, earthly existence (A 43); the latter is anti-life inso-
far as it devalues this-worldly, earthly existence after transcendent sources
of value are pulled out of the world (after all, these transcendent sources
were understood as the only sources of value thus far). In Beyond Good
and Evil, Nietzsche offers a concise summary of the latter phenomenon,
where he describes nihilism as an attitude of “contempt for that existence
which is knowable by us” that results from Europe’s realization that “the
world is not worth what we thought it was” (BGE 346). Because human-
ity had historically located the value of its existence in those transcendent
sources of value—supplied, in the European context, by Christianity—
the death of God leaves humanity in a devalued world. In short, after the
death of God, modern Europeans are either disillusioned by or left with
scorn for the apparently meaningless world.
In this way, European nihilism results when “the highest values devalue
themselves [die obersten Werthe sich entwerthen]” (KSA 12:9[35]).
4 For another interpretation of the death of God, see Loeb (2010, pp. 226–234).
1 INTRODUCTION 9
When the Christian-moral longing for other worlds and transcendent val-
ues that justify this-worldly human existence is undermined, Europe is
thrown into a crisis of meaning. Nietzsche describes nihilism in his notes
as the conviction that our highest values cannot be defended or justi-
fied, “plus the realization that we lack the least right to posit a beyond
or in-itself of things that might be divine” (KSA 12:10[192]). This lat-
ter realization leads us to reject the Christian-moral hypothesis [christliche
Moral-Hypothese] which (1) “granted man an absolute value, as opposed
to his smallness and accidental occurrence in the flux of becoming and
passing away;” (2) “posited that man had knowledge of absolute values;”
and (3) prevented man from “taking sides against life [and] despairing of
knowledge” (KSA 12:5[71]).
European nihilism results, then, when post-Enlightenment Europe
experiences the collapse of the transcendent, otherworldly values in which
its understanding of the world (and its value) was fundamentally rooted.
It is perpetuated by humanity’s continued inability to honestly confront
and affirm this-worldly existence—and to discover immanent sources of
value—in the face of this collapse. In large part, then, European nihilism
as a socio-cultural phenomenon results when human beings realize the
contingency of their most fundamental beliefs about the world: the con-
tingency of their belief in some ultimate telos or purpose of the universe,
and the contingency of conventional moral systems in which European
societies are invested, and (eventually) the contingency of their belief in a
certain kind of truth (as disinterested objectivity).
This series of realizations leads to a variety of psychological side effects,
including humanity’s increasing disillusionment and felt weariness with
the world. Those who were once so certain of a necessary, transcendent
source of truth, meaning, and value either despair of this contingency or
accept it with an attitude of jaded disenchantment. The human pursuit of
knowledge thus far presupposed the existence of non-contingent truth: a
kind of “truth” Nietzsche believes Europe will eventually come to reject.5
The religious, philosophical, and scientific systems of thought which dom-
inated European culture were founded on a picture according to which
the universe unfolds along a specific trajectory, progressing toward some
ultimate goal; yet human truthfulness reveals no such trajectory and no
5 Ironically, he comes to this realization by way of his own to truth as an “impulse to

knowledge” or “knowledge drive” (BGE 6).
10 K. CREASY
such thing as progress (KSA 13:15[8]). Various systems of morality pur-

ported to represent universal and timeless values—but when we reflect,
we notice that these allegedly eternal values evolved out of a noxious
combination of weakness and cleverness (GM II:16; GM III:18): they
were invented by man and grew out of contingent historical circum-
stances. Before the death of God, European culture located the purpose
and value of human life in humanity’s pursuits of truth and moral correct-
ness. When the contingency of these values is revealed, both humanity’s
self-understanding and its belief that life is worth living are seriously com-
promised.
As these various schemas of truth, meaning, and value collapse, human
beings (most of whom have, by this point, developed a psychological
need for teleology (GM III:28)) struggle to locate other phenomena
that enable them to understand themselves and their lives as valuable.
The transcendental subject one finds in Kantian philosophy and objective,
disinterested truth one finds in science are two examples of these phe-
nomena. Yet since the original problem of the Christian-moral worldview,
according to Nietzsche, is that it prioritizes and values the otherworldly
(transcendent goals, aspirations, purposes) over the this-worldly (imma-
nent life and the world of experience), these new investments are hardly
solutions. Instead, they simply defer some of nihilism’s psychological
manifestations and function as new expressions of the same fundamentally
deluded and entirely human tendencies that individuals have to under-
stand themselves as the centers of the universe and to search for value
or meaning in their lives wherever possible. The problem with humani-
ty’s ways of doing this after the death of God is that their valuations still
both emerge from and preserve declining forms of life. The phenomena
in which they remain invested continue to deny and desecrate life, vitality,
and immanence.
Conclusion
Becoming familiar with Nietzsche’s genealogy of European nihilism
allows us to see how nihilism, as a socio-cultural phenomenon infect-
ing nineteenth-century Europe, emerges when widespread beliefs that
have historically given that society and its citizens value collapse: that
is, when a society’s highest values are devalued. Nietzsche is particularly
interested in how Europe’s investment in beliefs characteristic of a Judeo-
Christian worldview—and eventual post-Enlightenment disinvestment in
1 INTRODUCTION 11
these beliefs—gives the problem of nihilism he describes a very particu-

lar historical shape. In short, Nietzsche understands European nihilism as
a historical phenomenon resulting from concrete socio-cultural develop-
ments. And although the developmental arc of European nihilism is his-
torically contingent—that is to say, its development depended on, and was
made possible by, certain ultimately contingent socio-cultural factors—it
has very real consequences for ways of thinking, being, and feeling.
References
Gemes, Ken. 2008. “Nihilism and the Affirmation of Life: A Review of and
Dialogue with Bernard Reginster.” European Journal of Philosophy 16 (3):
459–466.
Huddleston, Andrew. 2019. “Nihilism: A Unifying Thread.” Philosopher’s
Imprint 19 (11): 1–19.
Loeb, Paul. 2010. The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Müller-Lauter, Wolfgang. 1999. Nietzsche: His Philosophy of Contradictions and
the Contradictions of His Philosophy. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. “eKGWB/BVN-1881,88—Brief an Heinrich Köselitz von
13/03/1881.” Nietzsche Source. Accessed March 5, 2019. http://www.
nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/BVN-1881,88.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2002. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Judith Norman.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann.
New York: Vintage.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2005. Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the
Idols, and Other Writings. Translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007. On the Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Carol
Diethe. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1967–77. Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15
Bänden. Edited by G. Colli and M. Montinari. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Plato. 1945. The Republic. Translated by Francis Cornford. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Reginster, Bernard. 2006. The Affirmation of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Riccardi, Mattia. 2018. “Psychological Nihilism, Passions, and Neglected Works:
Three Topics for Nietzsche Studies.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49 (2): 266–
270.
12 K. CREASY
Van Tongeren, Paul. 2018. Friedrich Nietzsche and European Nihilism. Newcastle
upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
CHAPTER 2
What Is Nietzschean Nihilism?
Introduction
Nietzschean nihilism is a complex phenomenon with socio-cultural,
cognitive, and affective dimensions. As a particular historical, socio-
cultural phenomenon treated by Nietzsche, nihilism is “European
nihilism”: the specifically European and Judeo-Christian denigration of
this-worldly existence, either explicitly stated or implied by particular
belief systems or ideologies (KSA 12:2[131]). In its cognitive aspect,
nihilism involves certain characteristic beliefs and judgments about the
meaninglessness or worthlessness of life (Reginster 2006), as well as cer-
tain “epistemic practices” or tendencies (Riccardi 2018, p. 266). Addi-
tionally, there is a psychological, affective dimension to nihilism: Niet-
zsche frequently describes nihilism as both originating from and mani-
festing in will-weakness, exhaustion, and nausea at existence (GM III:11,
III:14). Given this variety of manifestations, one might ask: just what is
Nietzschean nihilism, after all?
Below, I examine three recent attempts to answer this question: those
of Paul Van Tongeren (2018), Bernard Reginster (2006), and Andrew
Huddleston (2019). Though each of these accounts serves as a cru-
cial addition to the scholarship on Nietzschean nihilism, I argue below
that none of them, taken alone, offers a wholly satisfying account of
that in which Nietzschean nihilism consists. While Reginster and Van
Tongeren each offer an account illuminating a particular form of Niet-
zschean nihilism, thus construing the problem of nihilism too narrowly,

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37133-3_2
14 K. CREASY
Huddleston’s account is overly broad. By aiming to offer “a unifying

thread linking together the main forms of nihilism [Nietzsche] targets”
(2019, p. 2), Huddleston succeeds at presenting an accurate and some-
what illuminating answer, but fails to offer a sufficiently robust account.
Thus, his interpretation requires supplementing.
Nihilism as the Antagonism of Absurdity:

Van Tongeren on European Nihilism
In his analysis of Nietzschean nihilism in Friedrich Nietzsche and Euro-
pean Nihilism, Van Tongeren is clear: though the problem of nihilism
animates much of Nietzsche’s philosophical project, “Nietzsche has no
systematic theory of nihilism” (42). Yet even as he remains skeptical
of any one theory of Nietzschean nihilism, Van Tongeren ventures to
offer a succinct summary of nihilism derived from Nietzsche’s many
reflections on the matter (paying special attention to the Lenzer Heide
text): “nihilism is (4) the conscious experience of an antagonism, that
is the result of (3) the decline of (2) the protective structure that was
built to hide (1) the absurdity of life and world” (100). According to
Van Tongeren, Nietzschean nihilism—while inseparable from a history
of ideas and frameworks of understanding that emerge from out of that
history—is a fundamentally personal phenomenon, experienced by the
individual: nihilism occurs when one comes to recognize that those
structures once thought to give meaning to one’s world and life fail to
eradicate life’s absurdity (100). In nihilism, a felt need for meaning—a
compulsion to make sense, perhaps, of life’s absurdity—exists alongside
an acknowledgment that life and this world are meaningless. In short,
the nihilist is one who consciously experiences the tension between
(1) her need for meaning, order, or sense and (2) her recognition that
her world is absurd or meaningless (102). Nietzsche’s nihilist is one who
feels compelled to seek out the truth even when she recognizes it does
not exist; she feels driven to find a meaning and purpose for existence
even when she believes there is no such meaning to be found.
On Van Tongeren’s view, nihilism—as involving the first-personal expe-
rience of that above antagonism—does not permit of general solutions:
it is something all individuals might come to face, yet it is also some-
thing that we can only come to know—and learn to overcome—“in the
singularity of an experimental life” (153). To ask whether nihilism can
be overcome is to ask whether it can be overcome in me, the individual
2 WHAT IS NIETZSCHEAN NIHILISM? 15
reader contending with nihilism. Given the singular nature of nihilism’s

overcoming in each individual case, Van Tongeren does not believe we
can describe the overcoming of nihilism in general terms. Additionally,
it is crucial for his account that the antagonistic structure of nihilism is
one Nietzsche himself fails to overcome. Indeed, Van Tongeren argues
that Nietzsche’s work serves both as an analysis of nihilism and as the
fulfillment of nihilism, insofar as Nietzsche’s drive to truthfulness and
knowledge (spurred on by his prioritization of honesty) betrays his own
nihilistic moral commitments, especially his commitment to the value of
truth.
In many respects, Van Tongeren’s account is exceptionally illuminat-
ing. In addition to offering extensive historical context for Nietzsche’s
reflections on nihilism (18–19), he also helpfully traces the evolution of
the problem of nihilism in Nietzsche’s thought, from Schopenhauerian
pessimism (resulting from one’s inability to know an inherently illogi-
cal world); through nihilism as “intensified pessimism” involving either
(1) a belief in the meaninglessness of existence or (2) beliefs meant to
protect against this belief; through decadence as a fundamentally physi-
ological condition, an illness resulting from the chaotic plurality of cos-
mopolitan Europe. Van Tongeren’s account is thus not only rooted firmly
in Nietzsche’s historical moment; it seems also to leave room for many
manifestations of nihilism and for many different kinds of nihilists.
The definition of nihilism on which he eventually settles, however, is
problematic. First, as Matthew Meyer notes, the definition of nihilism
on which Van Tongeren settles omits another, perhaps more important,
feature of Nietzschean nihilism: his definition
leaves out any reference to the life and world-condemning judgment that
is a key feature of a number of passages, including the Lenzer Heide text,
in which Nietzsche discusses nihilism. It is one thing to recognize the
absurdity of life and the world and to be conscious of how it conflicts with
our desire to believe in some other world. It is another thing – and this
seems to be what Nietzsche is most concerned about – to condemn a world
so understood [emphasis mine]. (Meyer 2019)
As Meyer notes here, Nietzschean nihilism does not merely involve some
recognition of the world’s absurdity alongside a continued need for that
world to be less absurd. Rather, it necessarily involves a negation or con-
demnation of life. In the Lenzer Heide text, for example, Nietzsche notes
16 K. CREASY
that morality functioned as an antidote to nihilism, in part, because moral-

ity “prevented man from despising himself as man, from taking sides
against life [emphasis mine]” (KSA 12:5[71]). Though Nietzsche does
indeed describe how nihilism might result from needs “implanted [in us]
by centuries of moral interpretation” (KSA 12:5[71]) which we now find
ourselves unable to fulfill, this failure of fulfillment matters to Nietzsche
because of the consequences it has. Since “the value for which we endure
life seems [to us] to hinge on these [implanted] needs” (KSA 12:5[71]),
when those needs go unfulfilled, we instinctively devalue, denigrate, and
condemn life, understanding it as worthless and not worthy of enduring
(KSA 12:5[71]). Thus, Nietzschean nihilism does not merely consist in
an antagonism between a meaningless world and individuals’ needs for
meaning; it also (and, perhaps, more importantly) involves the negation
of life. Indeed, the fundamental problem with nihilism from Nietzsche’s
perspective seems to be that value is denied to something supremely valu-
able—existence, life itself—and that this harms our own form of life (as
will to power).
Additionally, though Van Tongeren is correct to identify an antagonism
fundamental to Nietzschean nihilism, the one he identifies is not suffi-
ciently broad to leave room for the wide-ranging variety of nihilisms—and
nihilists—Nietzsche includes in his texts. As we see above (and as Meyer
notes), Van Tongeren “seems to suggest that the antagonism [fundamen-
tal to Nietzschean nihilism] is between our longing to believe in some-
thing and the knowledge that we can no longer believe it” (2019). Insofar
as this definition of nihilism fundamentally frames nihilism as a conscious,
first-personal experience, it fails to account for many of those feelings,
beliefs, values, social institutions, and political configurations Nietzsche
deems nihilistic. “Nihilism” in Nietzsche designates more than individ-
uals’ consciously inhabited perspectives involving the absurdity of life; it
also designates (1) a variety of unconsciously inhabited perspectives and
(2) consciously inhabited perspectives that do not explicitly or outwardly
appear to involve the absurdity of life. Nietzsche designates ideologies,
institutions, and political configurations as nihilistic; he describes a wide
variety of emotions (or affects) as nihilistic, too. Indeed, even though
Nietzschean nihilism sometimes appears as a conscious, first-personal per-
spective inhabited by individuals, there are plenty of individuals Nietzsche
deems nihilists who either do not consciously experience the antagonism
referred to by Van Tongeren or do not experience the antagonism at all:
the devoted Christian serves as a case of the former, and the last man
a case of the latter. Unfortunately, then, Van Tongeren’s definition of

nihilism not only leaves out the problem of nihilism qua life-denial; it is
also far too narrow.
Nihilism as a Philosophical Claim:

Reginster on Nietzschean Despair
Perhaps the most well-known recent work on Nietzschean nihilism is
Bernard Reginster’s seminal text, The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on
Overcoming Nihilism. In this text, Reginster distinguishes between two
varieties of Nietzschean nihilism: nihilism as disorientation and nihilism
as despair. In both cases, Reginster insists that Nietzschean nihilism is,
most fundamentally, a philosophical position or claim: it appears either as
a meta-ethical claim about one’s values (in the nihilism of disorientation)
or as a more general value judgment about our world (in the nihilism of
despair). In short, Reginster’s account of Nietzschean nihilism presents
nihilism as a primarily cognitive phenomenon.
As mentioned above, while the nihilism of disorientation involves cer-
tain claims about one’s values, the nihilism of despair involves value judg-
ments about one’s world. For Reginster, nihilism as disorientation “results
from the endorsement of normative objectivism (the normative authority
of a value depends on its objective standing) and the rejection of descrip-
tive objectivism (there are no objective values)” (2006, p. 98). On this
account of nihilism, the nihilist understands their highest values to be
valuable (and authoritative) only insofar as they have “objective backing”
(Clark 2019, p. 373): insofar as they function as objective, absolute stan-
dards of good and evil. Nihilism as disorientation occurs, then, when an
individual recognizes that those values to which they have been com-
mitted—those standards of good and evil to which they have historically
referred for action guidance—are not in fact objective and absolute. This
realization plunges the individual into the nihilism of disorientation, in
which there is a “lack of normative guidance” (Reginster 2006, p. 8).
(Indeed, this can also occur at a socio-cultural, rather than individual,
level: if modern European culture were to generally endorse normative
objectivism and reject descriptive objectivism, this culture, too, could be
plunged into this nihilism of disorientation.) On such a view, “there is
nothing wrong with the world and something wrong with our values”
(34). In the case of Reginster’s nihilism of despair, on the other hand,
“there is nothing wrong with our values but something wrong with the
18 K. CREASY
world” (ibid.). According to Reginster, the problem in this case is that

the world is inhospitable to the realization of our highest values (31).
Although this form of nihilism clearly has a phenomenological dimen-
sion—that is, the despairing nihilist experiences the affect of despair—
Reginster argues that it is fundamentally characterized by a specific “con-
viction,” a “belief that what is most important to us is unattainable” (28).
That is, Reginster defines the despairing nihilist as an individual who
supports “an ethical claim about the world, and our existence in it: ‘it
would be better if the world did not exist’ (WP 701)” (28). The despair-
ing nihilist is thus committed to a negative evaluative judgment about
the world in which she lives, rather than a negative judgment about her
values.
After presenting these two plausible interpretations of Nietzschean
nihilism, however, Reginster points out that these two kinds of nihilism
are fundamentally incompatible: indeed, “the devaluation of values
appears to undermine despair, since we have no reason to trouble our-
selves over the world’s being inhospitable to the realization of values we
consider devaluated” (34). In short, one cannot be both a disoriented
nihilist and a despairing nihilist. If one is a despairing nihilist, one finds
the world inhospitable to her values and is thrown into despair by this
fact. Yet if she also believed, as the disoriented nihilist would, that her
values are worthless, there would be no reason for her despair. As Gemes
neatly points out, nihilism as disorientation involves the belief that “there
are no ultimate values,” whereas nihilism as despair insists that “there are
ultimate values” and that these values are unattainable, given the consti-
tution of the world (462). Given this incompatibility, there is a choice
to be made. Reginster settles on nihilism of despair as characteristic of
Nietzsche’s overarching project of overcoming nihilism and affirming
life after demonstrating possible resources for overcoming nihilism as
disorientation in Nietzsche. On Reginster’s account, then, the “primary
form of Nietzschean nihilism is despair over the unrealizability of our
highest values” (54). Reginster thus characterizes nihilism as “an ethical
claim about the world, and our existence in it: ‘it would be better if the
world did not exist’” (28). Otherwise put, nihilism is a “philosophical
claim” (39), and as such, it “can be overcome only by distinctively
philosophical means, including philosophical arguments” (38).
After fleshing out his account of nihilism as despair, Reginster aims to
describe just how the nihilist is implicated in the denial of life. If nihilism
is philosophical despair, the question seems to be, where does the nega-
tion of life—with which Nietzsche is supremely concerned—show up?
According to Reginster, life-denial is a feature of values; specifically, the
negation of life is found in the nature of those moral values to which the
nihilist is committed. Yet there are several ways in which values can be
life-negating.1 First, Nietzsche characterizes a value as life-negating when
it “cannot be realized under the conditions of life in this world, and
therefore underwrites a condemnation, or a negation, of this life” (47).
Importantly, however, life-negating values may also be “directly intended
to condemn life” (46), or more explicitly “motivated by hostility to life”
(47). In this second sense, values are life-negating insofar as they were
“invented in order to condemn life in this world” (46): that is, they are
life-negating if they originate in an intentional attitude of life-negation.
Finally, Nietzsche characterizes values as life-negating when they are
“harmful to life” (47). When moral values “[undermine] the conditions
for [life’s] preservation and prosperity… by design” (47), Reginster
notes, Nietzsche designates such values life-denying. Importantly, how-
ever, Reginster believes the fundamental sense in which moral values are
life-denying is the first sense mentioned above: life-denying moral values
are those that “underwrite” (47) the condemnation of life insofar as they
cannot be realized, or actualized, in the world to which the individual
who holds those values belongs.2
According to Reginster, then, nihilism is a philosophical claim about
the world—that it ought not to exist—based on the world’s hostility to
the realization of my values. Life-negation is simply a feature of certain
moral values endorsed by the nihilist; it is a characteristic values have
when they (1) cannot be actualized in the world as it presently exists,
thus underwriting a condemnation of life; (2) originate in an attitude
that condemns life; or (3) necessarily result in a decline of growth or
power (those fundamental characteristics of life). Importantly, however,
the “core” sense in which moral values are life-denying is the first. To
1 Throughout this section on the negation of life, Reginster specifically describes ways
in which values might be life-negating from Nietzsche’s perspective. It seems to me,
however, that the descriptions he offers apply not only to life-negating values, but to
other life-negating phenomena, such as beliefs, ideologies, institutions, and practices. He
would have done better, in my view, to frame the negation of life more broadly. More
on this below.
2 Reginster calls this the “core notion of a life-negating value” (47).
20 K. CREASY
overcome nihilism, then, is to experience a radical change of mind, a

cognitive shift resulting from a revaluation of one’s “life-negating val-
ues” (267) that enables one “to recognize that those necessary aspects
of [life] ‘hitherto denied’ are ‘desirable for their own sake’” (267). One
holds values that are not life-denying—or life-negating—when one com-
mits oneself to values that can actually be realized in the world to which
one belongs.
This account of the problem of Nietzschean nihilism is an impres-
sive one, one with which several scholars contend in their own recent
interpretations of Nietzschean nihilism (Jenkins 2012; Katsafanas 2015;
Huddleston 2019; Clark 2019). In identifying a paradox between two
ways of framing nihilism and arguing compellingly for one interpretation
rather than another, Reginster’s contribution to existing scholarship on
the problem of Nietzschean nihilism is substantial. Additionally, in his
prioritization of nihilism as despair, it seems to me that Reginster rightly
claims that Nietzschean nihilism involves more than a meta-ethical claim
about my values. Indeed, Nietzsche appears much more concerned about
the way my values, ends, and interests interface with the world in which
I find myself.3 The problem of nihilism is indeed a problem about the
values we embody, the way we assess the world to which we belong, and
how the expression of my values is either inhibited or facilitated by my
world.
Significantly for my account, however, Reginster ultimately presents
the problem of nihilism as a fundamentally cognitive issue: it is most basi-
cally a problem with how the nihilist understands her world, expressed
in her claims about the world’s hostility to the expression of her values.
This way of framing nihilism is, as Gemes points out, “overly cognitive
[emphasis mine]” (2008, p. 462)—and thus, too narrow to apply to a
variety of phenomena Nietzsche understands as central to the problem of
nihilism. Though Nietzsche certainly describes various cognitive manifes-
tations of nihilism—and though the overcoming of nihilism must involve
rejecting a series of beliefs about the worthlessness of the world—there is
much more to the picture. The former nihilist who has overcome nihilism
does not merely have a change of mind—she must also have a change of
heart. That is to say, the former nihilist does not just think differently
3 For more on this, see Huddleston (2019) against nihilism as mere meta-ethics.
about her world and its worth; she feels differently about this world.4
Although Reginster acknowledges the phenomenological dimensions of
nihilism, he does not treat the psychological and physiological dimen-
sions of Nietzschean nihilism at sufficient length; in focusing on nihilism
as a primarily cognitive phenomenon, he undertreats a critical piece of
Nietzsche’s account.
Additionally, it seems to me that Reginster’s framing of life-negation—
his claim that the negation of life involves a condemnation of life, under-
written by the unrealizability of one’s values—circumscribes the phe-
nomenon of life-negation, or life-denial, too narrowly. For Nietzsche, that
life-denial characteristic of nihilism is not merely a feature of values, but
a feature of a variety of other beliefs, practices, affective states, and psy-
chophysiological configurations. Although Nietzsche indeed presents life-
denial as a feature of certain beliefs and values (especially as an explicit or
implicit premise crucial to the nihilist’s argument that this life is worth-
less), he also frequently presents it as a feature of social institutions (KSA
11:37[11]; GM III:12; KSA 12:2[127]), instincts (EH, “Books: BT,” 2),
and affective states (BGE 208). In short, Reginster’s framing of life-denial
as “nihilism’s hidden premise” (50), like his account of nihilism generally,
frames life-denial far too cognitively.
Furthermore, Reginster’s core criterion by which we ought to judge
a value as life-denying—whether that value can be “realized under the
conditions of life in this world” (45)—wrongly prioritizes this sense of
life-denial. Indeed, it seems to me that the second sense of life-denial
Reginster details, according to which life-denying phenomena are those
phenomena “harmful to life,” is at least as important to Nietzsche’s own
account of life-denial as the first. When Nietzsche says, for example, that
in socialism “life denies itself [das Leben sich selber verneint] and cuts
itself off by the roots” (KSA 11:37[11]), he is not claiming that our
world is hostile to the realization of socialism. Indeed, the problem Niet-
zsche finds with socialism is that it can be realized, and that its realization
would be harmful to life. We see this also in the way Nietzsche frames life-
denying affective states. For example, when Nietzsche claims that “pity
negates life, it makes life worthy of negation… pity is the practice of
nihilism” (A 7), he intends to emphasize the way in which pitying tends to
be harmful to life, power, and growth—not to claim that the affect of pity
4 As I indicate in a later chapter, it even happens in certain cases that this change in
feeling explains the change in mind.
22 K. CREASY
expresses a value that cannot be realized. Again, the problem is not that
we cannot pity, but that we can—and do. For Nietzsche, then, determin-
ing the life-negating tendency of a particular phenomenon—whether it be
a value or something else—requires one to attend to that phenomenon’s
tendency to turn against life itself. This is just as fundamental, or perhaps
even more so, as attending to whether or not a particular phenomenon
can be actualized in this world (potentially underwriting a condemnation
of this world if it cannot be). Determining whether a value is life-denying
or not requires one to assess whether or not that value is “hostile to life”
and “uses power to block the sources of power, [turning] the green eye
of spite on… physiological growth itself” (GM III:13)—and this is just
as important, or even more important, than assessing whether that value
might underwrite a condemnation of life due to its unattainability.
In sum, while Reginster offers a crucially important account of
Nietzschean nihilism, his focus on nihilism as a cognitive (and more
specifically, ethical) phenomenon is too narrow, and “overly cognitive”
(Gemes 2008): it does not account for many kinds of nihilisms and
nihilists Nietzsche describes (Huddleston 2019), and it fails to suf-
ficiently account for important non-cognitive aspects of Nietzschean
nihilism. Likewise, by framing life-denial as a characteristic of values,
he frames the negation of life far too narrowly and fails to account
for life-denying phenomena other than values, such as beliefs, social
practices, and more. Finally, and importantly, Reginster does not attend
sufficiently to Nietzsche’s account of life-denial as the obstruction or
degradation of life as will to power. Indeed, Reginster’s failure to give
priority to this sense of life-denial in Nietzsche perhaps leads him to miss
the way in which life-denial might in fact be constitutive of nihilism—not
only in its cognitive manifestations, but in its socio-cultural and affective
manifestations as well. I argue for this at much more length below.
Nihilism as a Failing-to-Value the Highest

Values: Huddleston’s “Unifying Thread”
In “Nihilism: A Unifying Thread,” Andrew Huddleston convincingly
argues that Reginster’s account of nihilism fails to account for certain
forms of nihilism detailed by Nietzsche, “especially the sort we see in
Christianity, in a certain form of truth-seeker, and in the ‘last man’”
(Huddleston 2019, p. 9). In response, Huddleston presents a different
characterization of nihilism than that on offer from Reginster. Nihilism is

not a matter of whether or not my values can be realized; instead,
[w]hat unites nihilists… is what they are failing to value, substantively char-
acterized. They have come unmoored from the most important, meaning-
conferring values. Their valuational commitments are directed away from
the highest sorts of things, or connecting to them in only a weak fashion.
(13)
According to Huddleston, Nietzschean nihilism arises when individuals

fail to commit to those values Nietzsche holds in high esteem. In par-
ticular, nihilists fail to value “the higher aspects of life and the world”
(13). From a socio-cultural and historical perspective, then, the problem
of Nietzschean nihilism is that modern society—as it marches toward the
emergence of the last man—becomes more and more unmoored from
those highest values (14). The last man is the “nadir” of nihilism for
Huddleston because such a man not only fails to value a certain set of
highest values; he also finds no need for commitment to such values in
the first place.
Although he insists that what unites the main forms and instances
of Nietzschean nihilism is the failure of individuals to embrace those
“first-order evaluative commitments” Nietzsche himself holds, Huddle-
ston himself remains quite vague about just what these “most important,
meaning-conferring values” might be. In passing, Huddleston suggests
that those individuals Nietzsche designates as nihilistic fail to value excel-
lence (13), but he does not offer a robust characterization of that in
which excellence might consist. Although he expresses discontent with
the overly formal nature of other accounts of nihilism, his characterization
turns out to be, by and large, quite formal itself: the nihilist is someone
minimally committed to “those categories of meaning, value, and desir-
ability” who is not committed to the right type of values. In the selection
from his text above, he notes that “what unites nihilists… is what they
are failing to value, substantively characterized”—but Huddleston does
not offer such a substantive characterization.
Thus, Huddleston’s vagueness—though prudent for one attempting to
offer a “unifying thread” among all forms and instances of nihilism Niet-
zsche describes—results in a rather thin account of Nietzschean nihilism.
As such, it is unlikely to satisfy those attempting to understand either
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what the problem of nihilism is more substantively or what its overcom-

ing might look like. Although Nietzschean nihilism indeed involves a
failure to commit to the right type of values, it is unclear what values
these are, on Huddleston’s account. Additionally, although Nietzschean
nihilism involves a failure to celebrate “excellence” and to embrace “im-
portant, meaning-conferring values,” this failure might be better charac-
terized as a result of nihilism; such a failure is not constitutive of nihilism
itself.
Conclusion
Although the accounts on offer from Van Tongeren, Reginster, and Hud-
dleston are welcome additions to the scholarship on Nietzschean nihilism,
none of these offer a satisfying account of Nietzschean nihilism. Although
Van Tongeren helpfully situates the problem of Nietzschean nihilism in its
historical context, his account is too narrow, and fails to treat Nietzschean
nihilism as involving the negation of life. Although Reginster offers an
especially elucidating and thorough account of Nietzschean nihilism as a
cognitive phenomenon, he does not pay sufficient attention to its affec-
tive dimensions. And although Huddleston is sensitive to the affective
dimensions of nihilism in his examinations of its “main manifestations”
(4), his account is too vague. Huddleston’s vagueness likely reflects not
only his prudence (after all, one must not construe nihilism too narrowly
if one hopes to offer a single unifying thread among its main forms and
instances), but Nietzsche’s own lack of systematicity (Huddleston himself
correctly notes that “Nietzsche never produced a worked-out account of
nihilism” [3]). In spite of this lack of systematicity, however, I argue that
we can still glean a more specific concept of nihilism from Nietzsche’s
texts: one that accounts for its cognitive, affective, and socio-cultural
manifestations. Specifically, as I argue in the next chapter, nihilism in
Nietzsche should be understood as life-denial (or the negation of life [die
Verneinung des Lebens ] (BGE 4, 208, 259; A 7, 56; KSA 13:10[137],
13:15[13])). This understanding of Nietzschean nihilism both unifies
the manifestations of nihilism Huddleston mentions and offers a more
substantive characterization that helps make sense of nihilism as a
problem.
References
Clark, Maudemarie. 2019. “Nietzsche’s Nihilism.” The Monist 102 (3, July):
369–385.
Gemes, Ken. 2008. “Nihilism and the Affirmation of Life: A Review of and
Dialogue with Bernard Reginster.” European Journal of Philosophy 16 (3):
459–466.
Huddleston, Andrew. 2019. “Nihilism: A Unifying Thread.” Philosopher’s
Imprint 19 (11): 1–19.
Jenkins, Scott. 2012. “Nietzsche’s Questions Concerning the Will to Truth.”
Journal of the History of Philosophy 50 (2): 265–289.
Katsafanas, Paul. 2015. “Fugitive Pleasure and the Meaningful Life: Nietzsche
on Nihilism and Higher Values.” Journal of the American Philosophical Asso-
ciation 1 (3): 396–416.
Meyer, Matthew. 2019. “Review of Friedrich Nietzsche and European Nihilism.”
Accessed January 2, 2020. https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/friedrich-nietzsche-
and-european-nihilism/.
Reginster, Bernard. 2006. The Affirmation of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Riccardi, Mattia. 2018. “Psychological Nihilism, Passions, and Neglected Works:
Three Topics for Nietzsche Studies.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49 (2): 266–
270.
Van Tongeren, Paul. 2018. Friedrich Nietzsche and European Nihilism. Newcastle
upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
CHAPTER 3
Nihilism as Life-Denial
Introduction
In his work, Nietzsche describes a wide variety of nihilistic phenomena.
Nietzsche sometimes frames nihilism as involving an explicit belief in the
meaninglessness or worthlessness of the world (Reginster 2006); other
times, he describes it as involving beliefs that imply the worthlessness of
the world. Still other times, he seems to frame nihilism as a socio-cultural
phenomenon (Van Tongeren 2018) or a psychophysiological condition.
Given how different these manifestations of Nietzschean nihilism seem to
be from one another, one might ask why these phenomena ought to be
unified under a single term—nihilism—at all. Indeed, one may wonder,
as Huddleston does (2019), whether there is a sufficiently broad sense of
the term that can encompass all three.1 By thinking nihilism most broadly
as what Nietzsche calls life-denial or the negation of life [die Verneinung
des Lebens] (BGE 4, 208, 259; A 7, 56; KSA 13:10[137], 13:15[13]),
however, such a worry can be avoided. In fact, Nietzsche offers
each of the above components of nihilism as examples of life-denying
phenomena.
Nietzsche calls life-denying any phenomenon that either (1) involves
an explicitly or implicitly negative evaluation of life or (2) results in the
degradation of the will (BGE 208) or the mere preservation of weak forms
1 Thank you to Matthew Meyer for posing this question to me at the 2019 meeting of
Nietzsche in the Northeast.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37133-3_3
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of life (BGE 61; GM III:25). Since life must be understood as will to

power, the negative evaluation of life that life-denial involves is a negative
evaluation of life qua will to power. And indeed, as we will see, in each of
nihilism’s incarnations—in its socio-cultural, cognitive, and affective man-
ifestations—life is disparaged, degraded, or preserved only in its weakest
forms. Thus, I argue that Nietzschean nihilism must be understood, most
broadly, as life-denial.2
Importantly, as is the case with all judgments for Nietzsche, the
nihilist’s negative judgments of life and this-worldly existence are based
in negative evaluations at the level of her psychophysiological constitution
(that is to say, they are based in her drives and affects).3 Most basically,
then, Nietzsche characterizes a phenomenon as life-denying (be it an
ideal, individual, or ideology) when it involves negative judgments of
life or existence that are either (1) generated from a negative assessment
of life at the level of one’s drives and affects or (2) tend to produce
a negative assessment of life at the level of one’s drives and affects.4
Indeed, the same phenomenon—for example, Christianity’s belief in a
transcendent “beyond [Jenseits]” (A 62) through which life and existence
are justified—might function in both of these ways. Such a belief, after
all, both (1) results from a particular embodied, drive-based perspective
(ibid.) and (2) tends to lead to a negative evaluation of life, resulting in
either the weakening of the will (GM II:21, 22) or the preservation of
will-weakness, once one adopts and internalizes this belief.
In short, those beliefs, epistemic practices, socio-cultural practices, and
psychophysiological configurations Nietzsche deems nihilistic are desig-
nated as such because they are life-denying. Proceeding through each of
these allows us to see both (1) that insofar as a phenomenon functions
to negate or deny life, Nietzsche frames it as nihilistic and (2) that the
problem of nihilism is most fundamentally a problem of life-denial.
2 For Nietzsche, the disparagement of life also includes negative evaluations of this-
worldly existence and humanity itself.
3 This is similar to what John Richardson calls “no-to-life nihilism,” or “a ‘bodily’ stance
occurring beneath the level of consciousness and language [in which] one’s ‘physiological’
condition rejects or disvalues life” (forthcoming).
4 Note that here the “negative assessment” is of life as it actually is.
3 NIHILISM AS LIFE-DENIAL 29
Life-Denial as a Cognitive Phenomenon:

Beliefs (as Ideals), Judgments
of Life, and Epistemic Practices
Throughout his body of work, Nietzsche designates certain beliefs, judg-
ments, and epistemic practices as life-denying.5 According to Nietzsche,
beliefs that function as “radical repudiation[s] of value, meaning, and
desirability” (KSA 12:2[127]) can be either explicitly or implicitly life-
denying with respect to their negative evaluation of life. Below, I take a
closer look at those concepts and beliefs Nietzsche identifies as charac-
teristically life-denying, including (1) the belief in a “beyond”; (2) the
belief in a “higher purpose” through which life, humanity, and existence
are justified; and (3) the belief in the possibility of disinterested, objec-
tive knowledge (or “knowledge as such” (GM III:12)). In each of these
cases, Nietzsche describes a variety of implicitly life-denying beliefs—oth-
erworldly beliefs that devalue this-worldly existence—adopted by mod-
ern Europeans. Such beliefs are false, but they are specifically life-denying
insofar as they serve as ideals or standards against which individuals judge
or assess this world—thus functioning to devalue this-worldly existence.6
In addition to these implicitly life-denying beliefs, Nietzsche also describes
explicitly life-denying beliefs, including beliefs in the meaninglessness and
valuelessness of life and this-worldly existence. Such explicitly life-denying
beliefs follow, Nietzsche argues, when modern Europeans come to rec-
ognize the untenability of those implicitly life-denying beliefs mentioned
above.
After reviewing this series of life-denying beliefs, I look specifically at
those value judgments Nietzsche frames as life-denying. In the course
of this analysis, we will come to see that Nietzsche not only typically
describes a variety of values, virtues, and norms as implicitly life-denying;
he also claims that treating almost any ideal or value as universal can
be life-denying. Finally, I analyze those epistemic tendencies and prac-
tices that Nietzsche characterizes as life-denying, such as prizing objective,
disinterested knowledge over perspectival knowledge (TI, “Socrates,” 4),
overvaluing logic and reason (TI, “Socrates,” 10), and seeking out “ar-
ticles of faith” to which one can anchor oneself (Riccardi 2018, p. 266).
Nietzsche characterizes each of these life-denying beliefs, judgments, and
5 Again, I take the phrase “epistemic practices” from Riccardi’s work on psychological
nihilism (2018).
6 Thank you to Matthew Meyer for encouraging clarity on this point.
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epistemic practices either as nihilistic or as characteristic of the nihilist.

Understanding nihilism as a cognitive phenomenon, then, requires us to
understand the life-denying structures of these beliefs, values, and prac-
tices.
The Belief in a “Beyond”

Let us begin with the belief Nietzsche most frequently criticizes as life-
denying: the positing of a “beyond,” a life, world, or realm that exists
over and above this-worldly existence and is preferable to it. As we saw
in the Introduction, and as I will briefly review below, two obvious
sources of such a belief are Platonism and Christianity. In short, Niet-
zsche understands the Platonic and Christian traditions as implicitly life-
denying frameworks of belief, insofar as they establish a supremely valu-
able “beyond” over and above this life and world. In these traditions,
the “beyond” functions as an ideal against which this-worldly existence
is measured, and any world that does not measure up to this ideal is
cause for disappointment. As Nietzsche makes clear, however, there is no
beyond in terms of which this world can be justified, and in measuring
this world in terms of such an ideal, we devalue this-worldly existence
(KSA 13:11[99]). This life-denying ideal thus judges of “the world as it
is… [that it] ought not to be” (KSA 12:9[60]).
According to Plato’s two-world view, reality is composed of two sep-
arate (though linked) realms: the realm of empirical experience, or the
“world of becoming,” and the realm of intelligibility, or the “world of
being.” The world of empirical experience is not strictly “real”; it is a
mere copy or imitation of a separate, transcendent world: the world of the
Forms, a world comprised of paradigms for knowledge. It is this world
of the Forms, according to Plato, that constitutes reality proper, or the
“true” world. On the Platonic worldview, one only comes to know reality
as it actually is (instead of how it appears to be) when one becomes famil-
iar with the world of the Forms, a world entirely separate from one’s own.
Furthermore, one comes to know the Forms in Plato so that one may
come to live a virtuous life. On Plato’s system, the becoming-virtuous
and potential apotheosis of the individual (through the quieting of the
body and the acquisition of knowledge about the world of being) requires
the individual to rebuke this-worldly existence (the world of becoming)
in favor of a “true” world of being. It is hard to imagine a worldview that
invests more value in a beyond—but in Christianity, Nietzsche finds one.
Christianity borrows heavily from Plato, and Nietzsche has a specific

account of this Platonic inheritance: Christian metaphysics essentially par-
allels Plato’s metaphysical framework. According to Christianity, there is
a divine, heavenly world above and beyond the world of earthly exis-
tence, but only those individuals who deny the pleasures of this world and
profess faith in God gain access to this exceedingly valuable world (GM
III:11).7 Christianity builds on Plato’s notion of virtue as attainable only
through acquiring divine knowledge of another world. Like Plato, the
ascetic Christian tradition “relate[s] [human life] (together with all that
belongs to it, ‘nature’, ‘the world’, the whole sphere of what becomes and
what passes away), to a quite different kind of existence that it opposes
and excludes, unless it should turn against itself and deny itself: [here,]
life counts as a bridge to that other existence” (ibid.). Indeed, in his 1886
“Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” Nietzsche explicitly describes Christianity
and Christian morality as “disgust and weariness with life, which only
dressed itself up, only hid itself in… the belief in an ‘other’ or ‘better’
life. The hatred of the ‘world’…[and] a world beyond created so that the
world on this side might be more easily slandered, at bottom a longing for
nothingness, for extinction, for rest” (BT, “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,”
5).
In both Platonism and Christianity, then, the valuation of a “beyond”
implicitly devalues life and this-worldly existence. As Nietzsche argues in
the Antichrist , “[w]hen the emphasis of life is put on the ‘beyond’ rather
than on life itself, when it is put on nothingness —then the emphasis has
been completely removed from life” (43). Though one who believes in
a life or world over and above this-worldly existence “[does] not say
‘nothingness’: instead [saying] ‘the beyond’; or ‘God’; or ‘the true life’;
or nirvana, salvation, blessedness,” Nietzsche is clear that what appears
7 See also the 1886 preface to The Birth of Tragedy: “Christianity was from the begin-
ning, essentially and fundamentally, life’s nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed
behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in ‘another’ or ‘better’ life. Hatred of ‘the world,’
condemnations of the passions, fear of beauty and sensuality, a beyond invented the better
to slander this life, at bottom a craving for the nothing, for the end, for respite, for ‘the
sabbath of sabbaths’—all this always struck me, no less than the unconditional will of
Christianity to recognize only moral values, as the most dangerous and uncanny form
of all possible forms of a ‘will to decline’—at the very least a sign of abysmal sickness,
weariness, discouragement, exhaustion, and the impoverishment of life. For, confronted
with morality (especially Christian, or unconditional, morality), life must continually and
inevitably be in the wrong, because life is something essentially amoral—and eventually,
crushed by the weight of contempt and the eternal No, life must then be felt to be
unworthy of desire and altogether worthless…”
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to be “innocent rhetoric from the realm of religious-moral idiosyncrasy

suddenly appears much less innocent when you see precisely which
tendencies are wrapped up inside these sublime words: tendencies hostile
to life” (A 7).8
Belief in a Higher Purpose

Nietzsche also frames belief in higher purpose (qua ideal) as life-denying
(GM III:28). Such a belief differs from belief in a “beyond” for Niet-
zsche, though many belief systems invested in a world “beyond” ours also
frame the attainment of some transcendent world as this world’s “higher
purpose.”
The belief in a higher purpose to which Nietzsche refers is a belief
in (1) a purpose (qua final cause or telos ) to the world as a whole, in
accordance with which the universe develops and (2) in which humanity
participates (that is, a purpose in which seemingly divergent human pur-
suits are unified, and toward which human pursuits either are or ought
to be directed) (KSA 13:11[99]).9 The belief in a higher purpose of
which Nietzsche is critical thus involves one’s belief in a global or all-
encompassing purpose that unifies human pursuits in one goal.10 A higher
purpose also (3) conditions the value of human pursuits in the same way:
those who believe in a higher purpose understand their principles, actions,
and purposes as valuable (or not) only with reference to this higher pur-
pose; such a view assumes that every individual’s actions can be judged
valuable (or not) by the same standard.11 According to Nietzsche, finally,
8 Babette Babich’s work productively investigates continued contemporary investments

in a notion of a beyond. For example, Babich suggests that humanity’s increasing “ab-
sorption in… virtual worlds” exemplifies a contemporary version of nihilism as life-denial
insofar as those who absorb themselves in virtual worlds devote themselves to an ideal-
ized world beyond this one (Babich 2007, p. 233n99). Additionally, in a 2017 article,
Babich pinpoints transhumanist thought as a contemporary ideology that implicitly deval-
ues life and this-worldly existence insofar as it celebrates a time beyond our own, in
which human beings will master and control themselves and their world. In that piece,
she argues convincingly that Nietzsche would reject such an ideology on grounds that it
is overly humanistic and life-denying (2007, pp. 115–116).
9 Such human pursuits can be knowingly or unknowingly directed toward such a
purpose.
10 See also Hatab (2006).
11 In his notes, Nietzsche remarks that “[w]e have, from an early age, placed the value
of an action, of a character, of a being, into the purpose [den Werth einer Handlung,
(4) the ways that individuals participate in this higher purpose will often
look the same. In many of the examples he offers, such purposes are tran-
scendent purposes, projected beyond this-worldly existence. But higher
purposes need not be transcendent; they need not involve the projec-
tion of ideals into a world beyond our own, toward which we ought to
be directed. Indeed, while many teleological conceptions of life and this-
worldly existence that Nietzsche designates life-denying frame the higher
purpose as some transcendent purpose—think, for example, of Christian-
ity’s invention of a god in whose divine plan humanity participates (an
understanding which posts human existence as a mere means to some
higher end)—this is not always the case. Indeed, Nietzsche believes there
exist a variety of life-denying conceptions of the “purpose” of life that
immanentize the ideal of a purposeful existence. Science’s optimistic belief
in the necessity of rational progress,12 as well as the “artist-metaphysics”
Nietzsche embraces in The Birth of Tragedy, are examples—and both can
be just as pernicious as those belief systems that invest in some transcen-
dent purpose.
On Nietzsche’s view, those who assume that human life participates in
some higher purpose or telos fail to recognize that this conception of telos
is a human invention and projection that falsifies this world. According
to Nietzsche, there is no such telos, no higher goal at which the universe
eines Charakters, eines Daseins in die Absicht gelegt, in den Zweck] for the sake of
which it was done, for the sake of which we acted, lived: this ancient idiosyncrasy of
taste finally takes a dangerous turn” (KSA 12:7[1]). Here we can imagine one example
of such a higher purpose: an understanding of “social progress” such as that subscribed
to by nineteenth-century ethnologists. On a nineteenth-century picture of social progress,
“primitive” societies advanced through a number of stages to eventually become “civi-
lized” societies, and this progression or advancement involved increases in social complex-
ity and cultural sophistication. On such a picture of social progress, the purpose of society
is ever greater civilization, and societies are understood as more or less valuable with
reference to this higher purpose: “more civilized” societies are “better,” more valuable
societies than “more primitive” ones. Furthermore, civilization is the purpose at which
these “more primitive” societies knowingly or unknowingly aim.
12 In KSA 12:9[130], Nietzsche enacts a “critique of modern man” which involves a
critique of “reason as authority; history as overcoming of errors; the future as progress.”
In KSA 12:2[127], Nietzsche remarks upon the “nihilistic consequences of contemporary
natural science (together with its attempts to escape into some beyond).” See also progress
as nihilistic in KSA 13:11[99]; “progress” as decadence in KSA 13:17[6]; and a general
critique of progress in KSA 13:15[8]. Nietzsche’s critique of this-worldly permutations
of a “higher purpose” is also in the background of Nietzsche’s critiques of “scientific
optimism” in his early notes—where he calls that “the laisser aller of our science” a
“national-economic dogma” involving “faith in an absolutely beneficial success” (KSA
7:19[28])—and in later reflections (BT, “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” 4).
34 K. CREASY
as a whole aims, or end toward which it advances. Indeed, according to

Nietzsche, “We have invented the concept ‘purpose’: in reality, purpose
is absent” (TI, “Four Errors,” 8). This theme frequently recurs in Niet-
zsche’s early and late works, in both his published works and notebooks.
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche notes that “it is we alone who have
devised cause, sequence, reciprocity, relativity, constraint, number, law,
freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we interpret and intermix this
symbol-world, as ‘being-in-itself,’ with things, we act once more as we
have always acted— mythologically” [emphasis mine] (BGE 21). On this
picture, any notion of purposiveness that purports to unify the aims of all
the world in a single telos posits a final cause to the universe and consists
in mere human invention and myth. Nietzsche cites this projection of a
final cause onto the world as one of the “four great errors” of humanity
from the Twilight of the Idols : what Nietzsche calls the “error of imaginary
causes” (TI, “Four Errors,” 4). In this excerpt, Nietzsche explains that
human beings invent various causes in order to give sense or meaning to
their feelings, actions, and lives. The invention of an “imaginary cause”—
and, in particular, higher purposes as final causes—answers the question
“why” and therefore provides humanity with rationale for their experi-
ences. This erroneous invention misleads humanity (TI, “Four Errors,”
6). We find an example of this in the Genealogy, where Nietzsche explains
that conceptions of God’s plan as a divine, higher purpose toward which
the world is directed—and an eternal afterlife as a divine, higher purpose
toward which human life is directed—developed and flourished because
humanity sought out an explanation for suffering (GM III:28).
Nietzsche understands the projection of this ideal onto reality as life-
denying because when one assesses the world as it actually is—that is,
a world devoid of higher purposes—with reference to this ideal, this
world comes up short (12:9[182]). Otherwise put, such an ideal implicitly
devalues this world and life. As we see in Twilight of the Idols , Nietzsche
is thus keen not only to argue for the falseness of this ideal, but to argue
that one ought to reject such an ideal as harmful and life-denying:
No one is responsible for a man’s being here at all, for his being such-and-
such, or for his being in these circumstances or in this environment. The
fatality of his existence is not to be disentangled from the fatality of all
that has been and will be. Human beings are not the effect of some special
purpose, or will, or end; nor are they a medium through which society
can realize an “ideal of humanity” or an “ideal of happiness” or an “ideal
of morality.” It is absurd to wish to devolve one’s essence in some end or

other. We have invented the concept of “end”: in reality there is no end.
A man is necessary, a man is a piece of fatefulness, a man belongs to the

whole, a man is in the whole; there is nothing that could judge, measure,
compare, or sentence his being, for that would mean judging, measur-
ing, comparing, or sentencing the whole. But there is nothing besides the
whole. That nobody is held responsible any longer, that the mode of being
may not be traced back to a primary cause, that the world does not form
a unity either as a sensorium or as “spirit” — that alone is the great liber-
ation. (TI, “Four Errors,” 8)
On Nietzsche’s view, any framework for understanding the world that

includes a higher purpose toward which the universe is directed is con-
fused. There is no single justification for human existence, no one reason
that can explain the existence of humanity or the world in which we live.
There is no will that willed man’s creation, no one, fixed goal towards
which mankind aims or makes progress. Human beings must be explained
only in the same terms as the world to which they belong, according to
Nietzsche. Idealizing an inherently purposeful world qua a world with
some higher purpose implicitly devalues life.
Importantly, as noted above, Nietzsche does not understand belief in a
higher purpose as characteristic only of Platonic and religious interpreta-
tions of existence. Indeed, humanity’s need to justify or rationalize their
existence historically results in a number of other implicitly life-denying
interpretations that falsify the world by projecting a goal or purpose onto
it. In The Gay Science, Nietzsche explicitly derides such interpretations
for their reinterpretation of “the emphatically derivative, tardy, rare and
accidental… into the essential, universal and eternal” (GS 109); here, he
also remarks that those who believe in a goal toward which existence aims
have not yet realized that the world “is assuredly not constructed with a
view to one end” (ibid.). In this same aphorism, Nietzsche denounces
those who anthropomorphize the world by establishing some command-
ing and law-giving entity that directs the workings of the world and thus
can be praised or blamed for the agreeable or disagreeable nature of these
workings (GS 109). In all of these interpretations, humanity invents a
rationale for existence and this world that involves a universally applicable
justification for why things are the way they are.
We see this same mechanism outlined in Nietzsche’s critique of
progress from his 1888 notes, where he rejects notions of “progress” and
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“development” as illusions that assign a telos to the world and human-

ity that simply is not there. Nietzsche’s interpretation of “progress” as
an ideal according to which “everything that is in [time]… marches for-
ward”—elsewhere called the “future as progress”—reveals that even in
certain immanent interpretations of existence or life qua purposeful, we
fail to escape the nihilistic structure of a higher purpose. After all, any
notion of developmental “progress” assumes the possibility of a better,
more advanced world beyond our own, toward which our world aims and
through which our existence is justified13 (KSA 12:9[130]; 12:9[131];
13:15[8]).
13 Nietzsche’s own presentation of the overman in Thus Spoke Zarathustra should give
us pause here. After all, he insists that “the overman shall be the meaning of the earth”
(TSZ, Prologue, 3) and remarks that “Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a
rope over an abyss … what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.”
Nietzsche goes on to praise “[he] who justifies future and redeems past generations”
(TSZ, Prologue, 4). Nietzsche’s call for the overman in Zarathustra certainly sounds
like his proposal of a better, more advanced world which justifies our current aims and
existence! Indeed, Zarathustra even remarks that “I will teach man the meaning of their
existence—the overman, the lightning out of the dark cloud of man” (TSZ, Prologue,
7). What might make his account of the overman different than the accounts of higher
purpose which he critiques as false and life-denying? One thought is that what separates
accounts of higher purpose from Nietzsche’s account of the overman is the ambiguity
of the overman’s values and purposes. If the overman is to justify existence, Nietzsche is
famously vague about how he will do so. Unlike nihilistic conceptions of progress which
measure positive, forward-moving development with reference to one standard or ideal
(for example, social progress involves the becoming-civilized of societies, scientific progress
involves the acquisition of ever more knowledge, etc.), Nietzsche’s vagueness about the
content of the values the overman will create allows for a multiplicity of realizations
and standards, such that we cannot justify our current actions with reference to any
one or unify our pursuits in any one standard. Striving toward the overman will never
involve striving towards one pre-established standard, as it does in the cases of higher
purpose I discuss above. We see this also when Nietzsche remarks in this same section
of Zarathustra that “my happiness should justify existence itself!” (TSZ, Prologue, 3).
Here, one understands existence as justified by standards and values which emerge from
out of one’s own engagement in the world, one’s own “happiness.” If we read this idea
together with Nietzsche’s emphasis on the overman as the justification of existence, we see
the importance of actively justifying existence through the creation of new values situated
in one’s own interests and engagements. Yet on Nietzsche’s picture, this can only happen
through this-worldly engagements. On this picture, any life-affirming future-oriented goal
or purpose must emerge from out of the immanently grounded process of value creation;
no one purpose can be firmly fixed as “the purpose” which justifies all of existence. In
short, Zarathustra’s teaching of the overman as the “meaning of existence” need not
involve the fixation of a pre-established and unchanging standard through which existed
is justified.
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ORANGE-CHOCOLATE CHIP
COOKIES
Follow recipe for Chocolate
Chip cookies and add 1 tsp.
grated orange rind to the
shortening mixture.
The glamorous Toll House cookies ... first
introduced to American homemakers in
3-IN-1 JUMBLES
1939 through my series of radio talks on
Choco-nut ... coco-nut ... date- “Famous Foods from Famous Eating
nut. Places.”
Follow recipe above—and

divide dough into three parts. Choco-Nut: To one part, add ½ sq.
unsweetened chocolate (½ oz.), melted, and drop whole nutmeats
(½ cup) into it ... coating each thoroughly. Coco-Nut: To another part,
add ½ cup moist shredded coconut. Date-Nut: Leave third part plain
... and drop nut-stuffed dates (14) into it ... coating each thoroughly.
Each coated date and each coated nut makes a cooky.
GLAZED ORANGE JUMBLES

Double-orange flavor.... Sure to win favor.
Follow recipe above—mix into dough 1½ tsp. grated orange rind
and, if desired, 1 cup chopped nuts. Bake. While hot, dip tops of
cookies in orange glaze (⅓ cup sugar, 3 tbsp. orange juice, 1 tsp.
grated orange rind ... heated together).
BRAZIL OR PECAN JUMBLES

Follow recipe above—and stir into the dough 2 cups cut-up Brazil
or other nuts.
OLD-TIME CINNAMON JUMBLES

Made with buttermilk ... soft and cake-like.
“So easy ... that making them is a thrill for the girls in the Home Economics classes
each year,” according to Miss Sarah M. Knight of Buffalo, New York. And even her
little sixth-graders report making them with great success in their own homes!
Mix together thoroughly ...
½ cup soft shortening (part butter)

1 cup sugar
1 egg
Stir in ...
¾ cup buttermilk
1 tsp. vanilla
Sift together and stir in ...
2 cups sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

½ tsp. soda
½ tsp. salt
Chill dough. Drop rounded teaspoonfuls about 2″ apart on lightly

greased baking sheet. Sprinkle with mixture of sugar and cinnamon
(¼ cup sugar and 1 tsp. cinnamon). Bake until set but not brown.
temperature: 400° (mod. hot oven).
time: Bake 8 to 10 min.
amount: About 4 doz. 2″ cookies.
Party specialties in answer to requests.
COCONUT MACAROONS ( Recipe) Moist, chewy, chock-full of

coconut.
Beat until fluffy (only ½ min.) ...
½ cup egg whites
Stir in ...
1¼ cups sugar
¼ tsp. salt
½ tsp. vanilla
Blend in ...
2½ cups moist shredded coconut
Drop rounded teaspoonfuls 2″ apart on ungreased wrapping paper

on baking sheet. Bake until set and delicately browned. (Illustrated
directions at bottom of page tell how to remove macaroons from
paper easily.) They spread during baking, so when they come from
oven shape into mounds by gathering in edges with fingers.
temperature: 325° (slow mod. oven).
amount: About 2½ doz. 1½″ macaroons.
CHOCOLATE-COCONUT MACAROONS
Follow recipe above—and add 2 sq. unsweetened chocolate (2
oz.), melted.
CHERRY-COCONUT MACAROONS
Follow recipe above—and add ½ cup chopped candied cherries.
ALMOND MACAROONS
Soften with hands ...
1 lb. almond paste (bought from bakery or made from recipe

below)
Work in ...
2 cups sugar
¼ tsp. salt
4 tbsp. GOLD MEDAL Flour
⅔ cup sifted confectioners’ sugar
⅔ cup egg whites, unbeaten
Drop teaspoonfuls 2″ apart on ungreased wrapping paper on baking

sheet. Pat tops lightly with fingers dipped in cold water. Bake until set
and delicately browned. Remove from paper.
amount: About 5 doz. 2″ macaroons.
ALMOND PASTE (1 lb.)

Grind 2 cups blanched almonds, thoroughly dried (not toasted),
through finest knife of food grinder. Then grind twice more. Mix in 1½
cups sifted confectioners’ sugar. Blend in ¼ cup egg whites,
unbeaten, and 2 tsp. almond extract. Mold into ball. Let age in tightly
covered container in refrigerator at least 4 days.
WHEATIES-COC’N’T
MACAROONS
Follow recipe above—
except, in place of 2½ cups
coconut, use 2 cups wheaties
and 1 cup coconut. Bake 12 to
15 min.
PEANUT MACAROONS
Thin, wafery.
Remove paper with baked
Beat until lemon-colored (5 macaroons on it. Lay a wet towel
min.) ... on the hot baking sheet. Place
paper of macaroons on towel and
1 egg (large) let stand 1 minute. Steam will
loosen macaroons. Slip off with
Gradually beat in ... spatula.
⅔ cup sugar
1 tsp. water
Mix together and gently fold in ...
1 tbsp. GOLD MEDAL Flour

⅓ tsp. salt
⅓ tsp. baking powder
Add and mix just enough to blend in ...
1⅓ cups finely ground roasted peanuts (1 cup shelled, brown

husks removed)
Drop teaspoonfuls 2″ apart on ungreased wrapping paper on baking

sheet. Bake until set and delicately browned. Remove from paper
immediately.
amount: About 3 doz. 2″ macaroons.
refrigerator COOKIES Mix when
convenient ...
HOW TO MAKE REFRIGERATOR COOKIES (preliminary steps on

pp. 14-15)
1 Press and mold with hands into a 2 Wrap in waxed paper ... twisting
long roll, even and smooth, and as big ends to hold the roll in shape. Or
around as you want your cookies to press into a waxed cardboard carton
be. (butter or ice cream carton).
3 Chill roll of dough until it is firm 4 Slice with a thin knife, very sharp, to
enough to slice easily. To speed up insure neat slices with uncrumbled
chilling, place in freezing edges. Return unused dough to
compartment. refrigerator so it can remain stiff.
REFRIGERATOR COOKIES ( Recipe)

Melt-in-the-mouth, rich, and crispy.
1 cup soft shortening

½ cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar
2 eggs
Sift together and stir in
2¾ cups sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

½ tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt
*2 to 3 tsp. cinnamon
*Or use 1½ tsp. vanilla (add with eggs).

Mix thoroughly with hands. Press and mold into a long smooth roll
about 2½″ in diameter. Wrap in waxed paper, and chill until stiff
(several hours or overnight). With a thin, sharp knife, cut in thin
slices ⅛″ to ¹⁄₁₆″ thick. Place slices a little apart on ungreased baking
sheet. Bake until lightly browned.
amount: About 6 doz. 2½″ cookies.
★ NUT REFRIGERATOR COOKIES

Nut-lovers really go for these cookies.
Follow recipe above—and mix into dough ½ cup cut-up blanched
almonds or black walnuts or other nuts.
DATE-NUT REFRIGERATOR COOKIES

Follow recipe above—using both cinnamon and vanilla. Mix into
dough ½ cup finely chopped nuts and ½ cup finely cut dates.
ORANGE-ALMOND REFRIGERATOR COOKIES

Follow recipe above—but omit cinnamon. Stir 1 tbsp. grated
orange rind into shortening mixture. Mix into dough ½ cup cut-up
blanched almonds.
CHOCOLATE REFRIGERATOR COOKIES

Follow recipe above—but omit the cinnamon. Blend 2 sq.
unsweetened chocolate (2 oz.), melted and cooled, into the
shortening mixture.
for an elegant dessert: Make a roll by
arranging the chocolate or ginger cookies (see
p. 23) side by side with sweetened whipped
cream between. Spread whipped cream over
top and sides of roll. Chill 6 to 8 hr. Slice
diagonally for gaily striped servings.
... slice and bake when convenient.
GINGER REFRIGERATOR COOKIES

Gingery favorites in jig-time!

1 cup sugar
2 eggs
½ cup black molasses
4½ cups sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. ginger (3 tsp.)
Mix thoroughly with hands. Press and mold into a long, smooth roll
(several hours or overnight). With thin, sharp knife, cut in thin slices
⅛″ to ¹⁄₁₆″ thick. Place slices a little apart on ungreased baking sheet.
Bake until lightly browned.
★ NEW NORTHLAND COOKIES

Crunchy, flavorful shortening-savers.
Languid days on the St. Lawrence; the pink, rocky cliffs and blue icebergs of
Labrador; and afternoon tea on deck. Such are the memories these cookies bring
to Ruth G. Anderson of our Staff who brought back the recipe after a cruise to the
Northland.
6 tbsp. soft shortening (part

butter)
1 cup brown sugar
Stir in ...
¼ cup cold water

1 tsp. soda
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. cinnamon
Mix in ...
½ cup cut-up blanched almonds
Mix thoroughly with hands. Press and mold into a long smooth roll
Bake until lightly browned. Remove from pan immediately.
Snip off and bake ... for unexpected guests.
★ PETTICOAT TAILS
Richly delicate and dainty.
This recipe was brought from
France to Scotland by Mary,
Queen of Scots. The French
name “Petits Gateaux Tailles”
means—“little cakes cut off.”
But the name came to be
pronounced as it sounded to
the Scotch and English
—“Petticoat Tails.”
1 cup soft butter

1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar
1 tsp. flavoring (vanilla, almond, wintergreen or rose)

¼ tsp. salt
about 2″ in diameter. Wrap in waxed paper, and chill until stiff
Bake until lightly browned.
OATMEAL REFRIGERATOR COOKIES

Nice and chewy, with a molasses-lemon tang.
Voted the best oatmeal cooky ever tasted ... when sent to our
Recipe Contest by Mrs. J. A. Gmeinder of St. Paul, Minnesota. The
distinguishing molasses-lemon
flavor was an idea from Mrs.
Richard Nugent, Brooklyn, New
York.
½ cup soft shortening

½ cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar
1 egg
1½ tsp. grated lemon rind
1½ tbsp. molasses
½ tsp. vanilla
⅞ cup (¾ cup plus 2 tbsp.) sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

½ tsp. soda
½ tsp. salt
Mix in ...
1½ cups rolled oats
(several hours). With thin, sharp knife, cut in thin slices ⅛″ to ¹⁄₁₆″
thick. Place slices a little apart on ungreased baking sheet. Bake
until lightly browned.
PRETTY FOR PARTIES
to make Petticoat Tails match your color scheme: Tint the dough with
a few drops of red food coloring and use rose flavoring for a pink
party. Use wintergreen
flavoring and a few drops of
green coloring for a green
party.
miscellaneous COOKIES Popular through
the years ...
SNICKERDOODLES
Fun to say ... to sniff ... to eat!
Pat Roth of our Staff said, “It’s one of my happy childhood memories. My mother
would be baking when we came home from school and we would have
Snickerdoodles hot out of the oven with a glass of milk.”

1½ cups sugar
2 eggs

2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. soda
½ tsp. salt
Chill dough. Roll into balls the size of small walnuts. Roll in mixture
of 2 tbsp. sugar and 2 tsp. cinnamon. Place about 2″ apart on
ungreased baking sheet. Bake until lightly browned ... but still soft.
(These cookies puff up at first ... then flatten out with crinkled tops.)
GOLD COOKIES
Really awfully good ... and they use up those extra egg yolks!
½ cup soft shortening
1½ cups sugar
4 egg yolks
Stir in ...
2 tbsp. milk
1 tsp. vanilla

½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
Chill dough. Roll into balls the size of walnuts ... then roll balls in a
mixture of ¾ cup finely chopped nuts and 2 tsp. cinnamon. Place 3″
apart on ungreased baking sheet. Bake until golden brown ... but still
soft.
★ MOLASSES CRINKLES
Thick, chewy, with crackled, sugary tops.
When served at Mrs. Fred Fredell’s in St. Paul, Minnesota, they were so delicious I
begged the recipe. Thanks to her, thousands of homes have enjoyed these spicy
cookies.
¾ cup soft shortening

1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
¼ cup molasses

2¼ cups sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour
2 tsp. soda
¼ tsp. salt
½ tsp. cloves
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ginger
Chill dough. Roll into balls the size of large walnuts. Dip tops in
sugar. Place, sugared-side-up, 3″ apart on greased baking sheet.
Sprinkle each cooky with 2 or 3 drops of water to produce a crackled
surface. Bake just until set but not hard.
temperature: 375° (quick mod. oven).
WASHBOARDS
Coconut-taffy bars.
1 cup soft shortening (half butter)

2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
Stir in ...
1 tsp. soda dissolved in ¼ cup hot water

1 tsp. vanilla

1½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
Mix in ...
1 cup moist shredded coconut (cut up any long shreds)
Chill dough 2 hr. Roll into balls the size of walnuts. Place 2″ apart on
ungreased baking sheet. With fingers, flatten each ball into a 1½″ ×
2½″ oblong ¼″ thick. (And we do mean ¼ inch!) Press each cooky
lengthwise with tines of floured fork in washboard effect. Bake until
lightly browned.
amount: About 5 doz. 2″ × 3″ cookies.
BAR COOKIES Perennial favorites ...
cut in squares or bars.
HOW TO MAKE BAR COOKIES (preliminary steps on pp. 14-15)
1 Spread dough in 2 Cut into squares or

3 Remove from the pan
greased pan and bake as bars when slightly
with a wide spatula.
directed. cool.
BROWNIES ( Recipe) Chewy, fudgy squares ... everyone loves

them!
Melt together over hot water ...
2 sq. unsweetened chocolate (2 oz.)

⅓ cup shortening
Beat in ...
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
¾ cup sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
Mix in ...
½ cup broken nuts
Spread in well greased 8″ square pan (8 × 8 × 2″). Bake until top has
dull crust. A slight imprint will be left when top is touched lightly with
finger. Cool slightly ... then cut into squares.
temperature: 350° (mod. oven).
amount: 16 2″ squares.
CHOCOLATE-FROSTED BROWNIES
“Lickin’ good!” ... youngsters say.
Follow recipe above—and spread cooled bars or squares before

cutting with
MARIE’S CHOCOLATE ICING

Melt over hot water 1 tbsp. butter and 1 sq. unsweetened chocolate
(1 oz.). Blend in 1½ tbsp. warm water. Stir and beat in about 1 cup
sifted confectioners’ sugar (until icing will spread easily).
DAINTY TEA BROWNIES

Picturesque ... very thin. A highlight of the silver teas at a Minneapolis church.
Follow recipe above—except chop nuts finely and spread dough
in two well greased oblong pans (9 × 13 × 2″). Sprinkle with ¾ cup
blanched and finely sliced green pistachio nuts. Bake 7 to 8 min. Cut
immediately into squares or diamonds. Remove from pan while
warm.
PLANTATION FRUIT BARS

Little sugar and shortening ... but delicious. Sent to us by Mrs. Charles Willard of
Chicago.
¼ cup soft shortening
½ cup sugar
1 egg
½ cup molasses
Stir in ...
½ cup milk

1½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. soda
½ tsp. salt
Mix in ...
1 cup broken nuts

1 to 2 cups cut-up raisins or dates
Spread in greased oblong pan (9 × 13 × 2″). Bake. Cool slightly ...

spread with Lemon Icing (see below) and cut into bars.
temperature: 350° (mod. oven).
amount: 4 doz. 1″ × 2″ bars.
LEMON ICING (for Plantation Fruit Bars)

Gradually beat ½ cup sifted confectioners’ sugar into 1 stiffly beaten
egg white. Add dash of salt, ¼ tsp. lemon extract.
Confection-like squares for special entertaining.

The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche Thinking Differently Feeling Differently 1St Ed Edition Kaitlyn Creasy Full Chapter

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The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche Thinking Differently Feeling Differently 1St Ed Edition Kaitlyn Creasy Full Chapter

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The Problem of Affective Nihilism in

Nietzsche: Thinking Differently, Feeling

ISBN 978-3-030-37132-6 ISBN 978-3-030-37133-3 (eBook)

Cover illustration: Contributor: Joerg Metzner/Restless Photography/Alamy Stock Photo

This article, too, is used by permission of The Pennsylvania State Uni-

2 What Is Nietzschean Nihilism? 13

4 Before Affective Nihilism, Understanding Affect 63

5 The Problem of Affective Nihilism 87

6 Affective Nihilists, Weak Agents 107

7 Cognitive Nihilism, Affective Nihilism, and Their

8 Overcoming Affective Nihilism 137

UM Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge

As Bernard Reginster argues in his seminal text The Affirmation of

© The Author(s) 2020 1

and The Antichrist (1888), the problem of nihilism in Nietzsche is more

Outline of the Book

examining the problem of Nietzschean nihilism generally. First, I explain

both re-establish goals toward which she is directed by somehow stimu-

Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Nihilism

world of the Forms—not the sensible world of earthly existence—func-

The death of God, as the implausibility of the Judeo-Christian God in

5 Ironically, he comes to this realization by way of his own to truth as an “impulse to

such thing as progress (KSA 13:15[8]). Various systems of morality pur-

these beliefs—gives the problem of nihilism he describes a very particu-

What Is Nietzschean Nihilism?

© The Author(s) 2020 13

Huddleston’s account is overly broad. By aiming to offer “a unifying

Nihilism as the Antagonism of Absurdity:

reader contending with nihilism. Given the singular nature of nihilism’s

that morality functioned as an antidote to nihilism, in part, because moral-

a case of the latter. Unfortunately, then, Van Tongeren’s definition of

Nihilism as a Philosophical Claim:

world” (ibid.). According to Reginster, the problem in this case is that

overcome nihilism, then, is to experience a radical change of mind, a

Nihilism as a Failing-to-Value the Highest

characterization of nihilism than that on offer from Reginster. Nihilism is

According to Huddleston, Nietzschean nihilism arises when individuals

what the problem of nihilism is more substantively or what its overcom-

© The Author(s) 2020 27

of life (BGE 61; GM III:25). Since life must be understood as will to

Life-Denial as a Cognitive Phenomenon:

epistemic practices either as nihilistic or as characteristic of the nihilist.

The Belief in a “Beyond”

Christianity borrows heavily from Plato, and Nietzsche has a specific

to be “innocent rhetoric from the realm of religious-moral idiosyncrasy

Belief in a Higher Purpose

8 Babette Babich’s work productively investigates continued contemporary investments

as a whole aims, or end toward which it advances. Indeed, according to

of morality.” It is absurd to wish to devolve one’s essence in some end or

A man is necessary, a man is a piece of fatefulness, a man belongs to the

On Nietzsche’s view, any framework for understanding the world that

“development” as illusions that assign a telos to the world and human-

Follow recipe above—and

GLAZED ORANGE JUMBLES

BRAZIL OR PECAN JUMBLES

OLD-TIME CINNAMON JUMBLES

½ cup soft shortening (part butter)

Sift together and stir in ...

2 cups sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

Chill dough. Drop rounded teaspoonfuls about 2″ apart on lightly

Party specialties in answer to requests.

COCONUT MACAROONS ( Recipe) Moist, chewy, chock-full of

½ cup egg whites