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