Let me quote a relevant passage from my article "Nietzschean Themes in the Films of Charlie Kaufman" (which just appeared in The Philosophy of Charlie Kaufman, edited by David La Rocca for University Press of Kentucky):
The crisis of nihilism that he diagnosed has been brought about by the death of God, and the need to find a convincing alternative to immortality that can make an inherently finite life seem to be worth living.
That crisis is not all negative. The collapse of the Christian world view is brought about by what Nietzsche calls “active nihilism: “Nihilism, it is ambiguous: nihilism as a sign of increased power of the spirit: as active nihilism. Nihilism as decline and recession of the power of the spirit: as passive nihilism.”[i]<https://mail.lhup.edu/owa/?ae=PreFormAction&a=Reply&t=IPM.Note&id=RgAAAABpnGwWEtTTEbnBAAYphcgHBwCEJNLQOq%2fSEbl0AAYphcgHAAAAzUb0AAAbNU9Fg0GpSozcuo11BTABACIKTKGEAAAJ#_edn1> Active nihilism clears away the outmoded “Idols of the Marketplace” in order to prepare the ground for new, contemporary values. Passive nihilism shrinks from the chaos of existence and joins Schopenhauer in the search for resignation and acceptance. While ever an iconoclast,
Nietzsche meets the crisis head on by creating a new interpretation of the meaning of human existence, cast in terms of the vision of the future of the human race embodied in his Zarathustra, who speaks of the Eternal Recurrence, the Will to Power and the Overman.
Deleuze makes a great deal of this distinction in his book Nietzsche and Philosophy
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[i]<https://mail.lhup.edu/owa/?ae=PreFormAction&a=Reply&t=IPM.Note&id=RgAAAABpnGwWEtTTEbnBAAYphcgHBwCEJNLQOq%2fSEbl0AAYphcgHAAAAzUb0AAAbNU9Fg0GpSozcuo11BTABACIKTKGEAAAJ#_ednref1> Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (a compilation of unpublished notes), Part One “European Nihilism”, section 28.
Professor Daniel Shaw
Chair, Philosophy Department
Lock Haven University (570) 484-2052
Managing Editor, Film and Philosophy
"...woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young
to hope, to love---and to put trust in life"
Joseph Conrad's Victory
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