What Kind of “Life Affirmation”? Disentangling the Conflation of Spinoza and Nietzsche

Abstract

As we think about how to develop a life-affirming spirituality, we need to be attentive to the social perspectives from which we are speaking. This essay attempts a critique of the widespread conflation of Spinoza and Nietzsche in both mainstream research and poststructuralist interpretations. The assumption of a continuity of their concepts of power overlooks that the late Nietzsche took a sharp anti-Spinozian turn and introduced his “will to power” against Spinoza’s conatus. Whereas Spinoza’s potentia agendi designates a collective and cooperative capacity to act, Nietzsche’s “will to power” naturalizes the principle of domination. A spirituality inspired by Nietzsche’s philosophy can never get rid of its inherent “pathos of distance,” which manifests itself even in its most “leftist” forms as a celebration of social distinctions against ordinary people. Recourse to Spinoza can help redefine life affirmation in a democratic-socialist way, constituting a dynamic component of counterspirituality from below.

Key Words:

• Life Affirmation
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Potentia
• Benedict de Spinoza
• Will to Power

Notes

1 See Gramsci (Q10I§5, Q10II§41.I, Q11§12, Q11§67, Q13§1, 1975).

2 The English edition that translates the German Glaube (faith/belief) as “religion” is of course fundamentally flawed.

3 See also Losurdo (2004, 781, 798) and a book review by Rehmann (2007).

4 For a critique of this left-Nietzschean shift, see Rehmann (2004, 52–60). At the same time as Deleuze transforms Nietzsche in a kind of rejuvenated Spinoza, he submits Spinoza to a Nietzschean interpretation, inspired by life philosophy (Oittinen 1994, 65). As Karl Reitter (2011, 350) has shown, he replaces Spinoza's free community with Nietzsche's “strong individual” and thus gives his philosophy an “a-social turn.”

5 English Darwinism, which Nietzsche considers to be heavily influenced by Spinoza, stemmed from “poor and lowly folks who knew all too intimately the difficulty of scraping by”; also, it “exudes something like the stuffy air of English overpopulation, like the small people's smell of indigence and overcrowding” (Nietzsche 1999, 3:585).

6 For the significance of “anticipation” in Marxism and particularly in the philosophy of Ernst Bloch, see Rehmann (2012).

7 See the detailed philological studies of Brobjer (2004) and Sommer (2012).

8 See Reeling-Brouwer (2001) and Markard (2001).

9 See Pfeiffer (1970, 252, 286, 310). Cosima Wagner (quoted in Treiber 1999, 515) notes in her diary of 1 November 1876: “Dr. Rée pays us a visit in the evening, but his cold and blunt character does not appeal to us. On closer examination we find out that he must be an Israelite.”

10 According to Domenico Losurdo (2004, 823–5, 851–2, 877–8), the position of the late Nietzsche is to be analyzed in the framework of a transversal racialization (razzizzazione trasversale) directed immediately against the popular classes and the poor.

11 “If I don’t find this alchemist trick to transform these feces into gold, I am lost,” Nietzsche (1975, 312) writes in a letter of 25 December 1882.

12 See Nietzsche (1999, 3:585, 3:624, 5:43, 6:126, 6:184, 10:350, 11:226, 13:504, 13:537).

13 Similarly, for Frédéric Lordon (2014, 160), “There is no potestas that does not emanate from potentia (multitudinis)—but in the form of hijacking and to the advantage of the most powerful of master-desires, the desire of the sovereign.”

14 See Hardt and Negri (2000, 25–7, 2004, 108–10, 114). For a critique of the concept of “immaterial labor,” see Haug (2004).

15 Althusser (1976, 135) then specifies three characteristics of Spinoza's ideology-theory: “(1) Its imaginary ‘reality’; (2) its internal inversion; (3) its ‘center’: the illusion of the subject”; for a critical evaluation, see Rehmann (2014, 160–5).

16 See Gramsci (Q6§38, 1975).

17 See Nietzsche (1999, 5:207–8, 5:313–4) and compare also Nietzsche (1999, 13:258).

18 See Nietzsche (1999, 9:490, 12:92, 12:424, 13:360).

19 See, for example, Nietzsche (1999, 9:250, 11:75, 11:102, 11:547, 13:13, 13:220, 13:611).

20 See the critiques in Rehmann (2014, 165–78, 314–8) and in Kaindl and Rehmann (2008).

21 See Gramsci (Q11§12, Q15§22, 1975) and compare with Rehmann (2014, 126–31).

22 In a similar vein, Ted Stolze (2014, 569–70) has argued that Spinoza's concept of fortitude as one's internal power consisting of generosity and courage is an important building block for a Marxist ethics.

23 Landa (2013, 429–30) discusses this tendency with the example of Badiou's “Nietzschean Communism,” which he sees as characterized by a “transcendental disdain” against the masses that are considered as only superficially alive.

24 Of course, faith in these ancient usages is not an “innocent” and homogenous essence either; it can relate to both horizontal relations of reciprocity and friendship and to vertical relationships between authorities and subordinates.

25 Derrida's (1994, 168, 1999, 253) concept of faith is closely linked to what he describes as a nonreligious “messianicity without messianism” designating an opening to the future “without horizon of expectation.”