Affirmation and Ambivalence

Abstract The Affirmation Argument begins with a Nietzschean premise according to which our choices are meaningful for us only if we can wholeheartedly affirm them. Yet when we are ambivalent we are not able to fully affirm our motives or choices considered individually or our lives considered as a whole. Therefore, the ambivalent life cannot be uniquely meaningful in the way it is possible for a wholehearted life to be. In response to this argument, this chapter first argues that given the significance we tend to attach to affirmation, it’s not clear why ambivalent affirmation wouldn’t be meaning-generating at least to some degree. It then argues that there are important cases in which an ambivalent affirmation of one motive over another is enhances meaningfulness.