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Cont Philos Rev (2013) 46:115147
DOI 10.1007/s11007-013-9245-1
Ashley Woodward
Published online: 17 March 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract This paper critically examines Deleuzes treatment of the Nietzschean problem of nihilism. Of all the major gures in contemporary continental thought, Deleuze is at once one of the most luminous, and practically a lone voice in suggesting that nihilism may successfully be overcome. Whether or not he is correct on this point is thus a commanding question in relation to our understanding of the issue. Many commentators on Nietzsche have argued that his project of overcoming nihilism is destined to failure because of the afnity between the problem of nihilism and the logic of negation. While Nietzsche wants an absolute afrmation of life, Spinozas principle that all determination is negation, as well as Hegels dialectical conception of negation, suggest that afrmation free of negation is not possible. However, some commentators indicate that Deleuze successfully shows how overcoming nihilism is possible because his logic of difference allows for an afrmation which is not dialectically reappropriated by negation. This paper argues that beyond such logical considerations, there are metaphysical and existential reasons why Deleuzes interpretation of nihilism fails to show that it can be overcome. For Deleuze, the overcoming of nihilism hinges not just on a logic of difference, but on a radical interpretation of Nietzsches doctrine of eternal return as selective being. Drawing on recent scholarship and on Nietzsches own writings I argue that this is not a tenable interpretation, and also, more importantly, that the metaphysical and existential implications of this understanding of eternal return reinstate nihilism at the very point where it is supposedly overcome. Moreover, I argue that there are attendant ethical and political dangers to Deleuzes position on nihilism.
Keywords Deleuze Nietzsche Nihilism Eternal return Difference
A. Woodward (&)
The University of Dundee, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected]
Deleuze, Nietzsche, and the overcoming of nihilism
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116 A. Woodward
1 Introduction: the eternal return of nihilism?1
A centralif not the centralaspect of the Nietzschean heritage with which we still wrestle is the problem of nihilism, the unfolding of all the consequences of the event of the death of God, in all the registers in which the phrase signies. Part of the...