Title: Narratives of Love and Hate: Nietzsche on positive and negative moralities Abstract: Nietzsche distinguishes between moralities that prioritize negation and those that prioritize affirmation. Moreover, he claims that this negation/affirmation distinction applies at the level of individual identities: some define themselves through opposition, fixating on what they reject, whereas others orient toward what they conceive as good. While the negation/affirmation distinction plays a central role in several of Nietzsche’s arguments, it is philosophically puzzling. What does it mean to say that certain moralities prioritize negation, and why does Nietzsche associate these negative moralities with negative identities? I argue that we can answer these questions by examining Nietzsche’s account of how moralities introduce new narratives and concepts. These narratives consolidate, transform, and entrench affective structures. In certain cases, this reconfiguration generates identities that are constitutively negative: they are defined not by the pursuit of some determinate goal, but by the continuous expression of negative affects.
