Saying yes to life even in its strangest and hardest problems

Saying yes to life even in its strangest and hardest problems…Not in order to be liberated from terror and pity, not in order to purge oneself of a dangerous affect by vehement discharge…but in order to be oneself, the eternal joy of becoming, beyond all terror and pity—that joy which included even the joy in destroying. (562-563)

We others, we immoralists,

Let us consider how naïve it is altogether to say: “Man ought to be such and such!” Reality shows us an enchanting wealth of types, the abundance of a lavish play and change of forms—and some loafer of a moralist comments: “No! Man ought to be different.” He even knows what man should be like, this wretched bigot and prig: he paints himself on the wall and comments, “Ecce homo!” But even when the moralist addresses himself only to the single human being and says to him “you ought to be such and such!” he does not cease to make himself ridiculous.

We others, we immoralists, have, conversely, made room in our hearts for every kind of understanding, comprehending, and approving. We do not easily negate; we make it a point of honor to be affirmers. More and more, our eyes have opened to that economy which needs and knows how to utilize all hat the holy witlessness of the priest, of the diseased reason in the priest, rejects—that economy in the law of life which finds an advantage even in the disgusting species of the prigs, the priests, the virtuous, What advantage? We ourselves, we immoralists, are the answer. (491-492)

The nonidentical is not to be obtained directly

The nonidentical is not to be obtained directly, as something positive on its part, nor is it obtainable by a negation of the negative. This negation is not an affirmation itself, as it is to Hegel. The positive which, to his mind, is due to result from the negation has more than its name in common with the positivity he fought in his youth. To equate the negation of the negation with positivity is the quintessence of identification; it is the formal principle in its purest form. (158)

the affirmation of power

In the darkened sky of the existence doctrine, however, no star is shining anymore. Existence is sanctified without the sanctifying factor. Of the eternal idea in which entity was to share, or by which it was to be conditioned, nothing remains but the naked affirmation of what is anyway—the affirmation of power. (131)

It is the essence of affirmation to be in itself multiple and to affirm difference

Affirmation, understood as the affirmation of difference, is produced by the positivity of problems understood as differential positings; multiple affirmation is produced by problematic multiplicity. It is of the essence of affirmation to be in itself multiple and to affirm difference. As for the negative, this is only the shadow cast upon the affirmations produced by a problem: negation appears alongside affirmation like a powerless double, albeit one which testifies to the existence of another power, that of the effective and persistent problem. (267)

The false genesis of affirmation

The false genesis of affirmation, which takes the form of the negation of the negation and is produced by the negative, is substituted for the complementarity of the positive and the affirmative, of differential positing and the affirmation of difference. (268)