American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

Volume 82, Issue 2, Spring 2008

A Change in Thomas Aquinas’s Theory of the Will
Solutions to a Long-Standing Problem

In the present article I wish to discuss the positive aspect of Nietzsche’s thought. This includes the attempt to avoid the nihilism of a simple inversion of Platonism and the fact that for Nietzsche, critical/genealogical philosophy is always subordinate to the will to affirm existence “as it is.” In this regard, I will be drawing especially on the work of Gilles Deleuze, whose Nietzsche and Philosophy remains the canonical defense of the positive in Nietzsche’s thought. In the second part of the paper, however, I will argue that the “higher morality” generated by this position is essentially “otherless.” While this critique is not in itself devastating, I will go on to argue that this ethic ultimately generates a paradox in Nietzsche’s thought against which the will to affirmation is finally destroyed.