“Just as Darwinian adaptationists assume that every biological phenomenon must be explained in terms of natural selection (no matter how unconducive to reproductive fitness it may appear initially), so too Nietzsche assumes that whatever explains “life” must also explain these particular instances of life which appear hostile to it. "'Life against life,'" Nietzsche says is a "self-contradiction" that "can only be apparent; it has to be a sort of provisional expression, an explanation, formula, adjustment, a psychological misunderstanding of something, the real nature of which was far from being understood" (GM III:13). … The crux of Nietzsche’s explanation turns on three claims:
(1) Suffering is a central fact of the human condition.
(2) Meaningless suffering is unbearable and leads to "suicidal nihilism" (GM III:28).
(3) The ascetic ideal gives meaning to suffering, thereby seducing the majority of humans back to life.”

"The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Recovering Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud"

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Brian Leiter13

American philosopher and legal scholar 1963

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