Abstract

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