A Running Thread: Nietzsche, Freud, and Lacan in An Attempt at Self-Criticism §5

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Nietzsche’s Diagnosis: The Will to Perish

In §5 of An Attempt at Self-Criticism, Friedrich Nietzsche offers one of his most scathing critiques of Christian morality, describing it as a force that “from the very first… was, essentially and thoroughly, the nausea and surfeit of Life for Life” (Übelkeit und Überdruß des Lebens am Leben).[1] This morality, he argues, does not reject suffering—it rejects vitality itself. Nietzsche names this rejection in a series of powerful terms: the “will to perish” (Wille zum Untergang), the “will to disown life” (Wille zur Verneinung des Lebens), and an “instinct for annihilation” (Instinkt der Vernichtung).

These are not simply moral descriptors; they articulate a deeper ontological and psychological conflict. Morality, for Nietzsche, is not a counter-belief but a counter-valuation (Gegenwerthung)—a systematic devaluation of the instincts of life, a negation rooted in ressentiment.

Dionysus vs. the Eternal “No”

Nietzsche’s counterpoint to this nihilistic morality is the Dionysian: not merely a celebration of sensuality, but a radical affirmation of life in all its suffering and becoming. The Dionysian is an instinctual force of creation, a yes that stands against the “everlasting No” (ewigen Nein) pronounced by Christian moralism. This opposition is not merely ethical, but structural—it defines two ways of being in the world. The will to power (Wille zur Macht) emerges not as domination, but as affirmation, a counter-movement to the drive toward negation.

Freud and the Return of the Death Drive

This fundamental antagonism resurfaces in Sigmund Freud’s theory of the drives (Triebe). In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Jenseits des Lustprinzips), Freud introduces the death drive (Todestrieb)—a silent, self-destructive compulsion toward tensionless stasis, operating alongside Eros, the drive toward pleasure, life, and cohesion. This dual structure mirrors Nietzsche’s vision: Eros aligns with the Dionysian instinct for life (Instinkt des Lebens), while Thanatos echoes the Wille zur Verneinung.

Freud’s own admiration for Nietzsche’s insight is telling. In a letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé, he wrote: “Nietzsche had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any man who ever lived or was likely to live.”[2]  Freud intuited what Nietzsche articulated: that the psyche is shaped by an internal war between the affirmation of life and the pull toward its negation.

The Superego and the Voice of Prohibition

Freud’s concept of the Über-Ich (superego) deepens this resonance. The superego is the internalized voice of moral law, shaped by parental and societal prohibitions. It judges, condemns, and generates guilt—not unlike the Christian conscience Nietzsche describes. It is the psychic embodiment of the ewiger Nein, issuing verdicts not in the name of God, but of the Law. In this sense, Freud transforms Nietzsche’s metaphysical diagnosis into a psychoanalytic structure.

Lacan and the Law of the Father

Jacques Lacan radicalizes Freud’s framework by embedding it in language. His formulation of le nom du père (the name of the father) plays on the homophonic le non du père (the “no” of the father). This paternal interdiction institutes the symbolic order (ordre symbolique): it inserts the subject into language, law, and social reality. But it does so through a prohibition—the barring of jouissance, that excessive, transgressive pleasure that lies beyond the symbolic.

In Lacan’s logic, the subject becomes a subject precisely by submitting to this “No.” Desire itself is generated through this interdiction. “You may enjoy, but a little only” (tu peux jouir, mais un peu seulement).[3]  The symbolic restricts; it denies the plenitude of the Real. Like Freud’s superego and Nietzsche’s morality, Lacan’s Law institutes a structure of prohibition at the heart of subjectivity.

A Shared Structure of Denial

What runs through Nietzsche, Freud, and Lacan is a common topology: a recognition that life, instinct, or desire is invariably subjected to a force of denial. For Nietzsche, this is the Christian morality that calls life guilty; for Freud, the superego that represses desire; for Lacan, the symbolic order that installs the Law.

Nietzsche names this impulse “the most dangerous and ominous of all possible forms of a ‘will to perish’” (der gefährlichste und unheilvollste aller möglichen Willens zum Untergang).[4]  Freud analyzes how this will operates within, as compulsion and neurosis. Lacan shows how it speaks through us, shaping the very structure of language and desire.

Toward a Dionysian Affirmation?

And yet Nietzsche alone imagines an escape. While Freud and Lacan chart the inevitability of prohibition, Nietzsche dares to envision a transvaluation (Umwerthung). His Dionysian “yes” is not a regression to primal chaos, but an aesthetic affirmation—a life beyond guilt, beyond morality, beyond the Law. Whether such an affirmation can be sustained within a world structured by the “No” remains the enduring question.

Notes / References

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, “An Attempt at Self-Criticism,” §5. Original German: “die christliche Moral war von Anfang an ... die Übelkeit und der Überdruß des Lebens am Leben.”
2. Sigmund Freud, Letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé, 1917. In: Ernst L. Freud (ed.), Sigmund Freud: Life and Work, Vol. 3, p. 116.
3. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XVII – The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, trans. Russell Grigg (New York: Norton, 2007), p. 84.
4. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §5. Original German: “der gefährlichste und unheilvollste aller möglichen Willens zum Untergang.”