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After briefly introducing the problem of affective nihilism in Nietzsche and detailing a variety of its forms, I identify and investigate potential Nietzschean strategies for jump-starting the agency of the affective nihilist and overcoming affective nihilism. By attending to Nietzsche's own practices and recommendations, I locate strategies that might enable the affective nihilist to will and, eventually, to transform herself. The two strategies I investigate include (1) “living experimentally” by placing oneself in a variety of potentially stimulating climates and contexts and (2) undertaking particular practices of self-knowledge, especially the formation and reflection upon a personal narrative. Both of these strategies employ the production of affect in an individual to potentially energize one's will and stimulate one's drives.

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In this paper, I explore the sociality of emotional experience in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. Specifically, I describe four key mechanisms through which an individual's sociocultural context shapes her emotional experience on Nietzsche's view-emotional contagion as habitual affective mimicry, the production of emotions' felt character through the assimilation of dominant social beliefs and norms, affective interpretation à la Christopher Fowles, and the imposition of dominant notions of emotional appropriateness-fleshing out a dimension of Nietzsche's thought which is largely taken for granted but remains undertreated. After detailing these mechanisms, I argue that attending to the sociality of emotional experience in Nietzsche's thought is crucial not only for understanding key elements of his moral psychology (including certain of his reflections on freedom and self-transformation), but also for understanding his interpretation of nihilism as a psychological-affective phenomenon produced by the society to which one belongs. On Nietzsche's view, attending to the sociality of emotion helps individuals recognize the way in which the sociocultural contexts they inhabit might undermine their flourishing-and also helps them envision the conditions (especially sociocultural conditions) requisite for healthier, more empowering emotional lives.