Most commentators assume that the affirmation of life can be defined univocally, as an act the success of which can be assessed by means of the test of the eternal return in GS341; and, that the affirmation of life is synonymous with what Nietzsche calls amor fati, and thus singlehandedly encapsulates Nietzsche’s ethical ideal. I take issue with both assumptions and develop an alternative view. I argue that for Nietzsche there are two ways to affirm life ethically. The first is (...) unreflective and piecemeal. I propose a substantive modification to Bernard Reginster’s procedural approach by suggesting that life is affirmed each time an agent seeks to overcome, and succeeds in overcoming, resistance in the pursuit of a first order desire expressive of love for life – the last clause being mine. I further argue that even with this added clause this first form cannot defeat what Reginster calls the ‘normative core of nihilism’, namely the experiencing of suffering as an objection to life. I identify in Nietzsche’s later work a second form of ethical life affirmation: a holistic, ecstatic act, a Dionysian blessing which ‘calls good’ life as a whole and thus redeems it by making it fully desirable on erotic grounds. Yet even in its two ethical forms the affirmation of life does not suffice to define Nietzsche’s ethical ideal. The very perspective of life affirmation is limited because it remains beholden to the very framework Nietzsche sought to escape: the Christian overarching concern for redemption and preoccupation with theodicic narratives. By contrast, I argue that amor fati, as agapic love of life, affords Nietzsche with a distinct resource to go beyond theodicic prospects and examine its relation to the erotic love of life, which is at the core of both forms of ethical life affirmation. I offer a pluralistic reading of GS341, not simply as a test of life affirmation, but as articulating Nietzsche’s two ethical ideals, amor fati on the one hand, and the affirmation of life in both its forms, on the other. (shrink)

Hope is hard to characterise because of the exceptional diversity of its applications, to the point that one may wonder whether there is continuity between ordinary cases of hope and what is often called 'hope against hope'. In this paper, I shall follow the relatively small but growing literature on hope and examine propositional hopes, i.e. hopes of the form 'hoping that p', with a particular focus on recent work by Philip Pettit and Adrienne Martin. I shall do this first (...) by identifying a significant difficulty encountered by what has become known as the 'orthodox definition'. The OD defines hope by means of two necessary and sufficient conditions: A hopes that p if and only if A desires that p and A assigns to p a degree of probability between 0 and 1. On this definition, to hope is to desire an outcome we deem neither certain nor impossible. Note that the relevant probability assignment is subjective: the OD allows, for example, that children can hope for Father Christmas to visit them on Christmas Eve. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the relation between phenomenology and anthropology by placing Foucault?s first published piece, Introduction to Binswanger?s?Dream and Existence? in dialectical tension with The Order of Things. I argue that the early work, which so far hasn?t received much critical attention, is of particular interest because while OT is notoriously critical of anthropological confusions in general, and of?Man? as an empirico-transcendental double in particular, IB views?existential anthropology? as a unique opportunity to establish a new and fruitful relation (...) between transcendental forms and empirical contents. This is because IB focuses on a specific object,?Menschsein?, which is neither the transcendental subject nor an empirical being. Thus for the young Foucault existential anthropology occupies a fertile methodological middle ground between transcendental approaches and empirical forms of analysis. I first interpret anthropology in the light of phenomenology and defend the view that Menschsein is neither a transcendental structure nor a concrete particular, but as the instantiation of the first in the second. I argue that for anthropology to yield the full theoretical benefits Foucault claims for it, the particular cases of Menschsein examined in existential analysis have to be regarded as exemplary. I then read phenomenology back in the light of anthropology and examine how, for Foucault, the analysis of Menschsein in dreams benefits fundamental ontology by affording us a clearer view of some of the main existentiale than the focus on everyday waking experience in Being and Time. Finally, I turn to the limits and difficulties of this early position and my reading of it, and to their consequences for Foucault?s later view. (shrink)