Life-affirming

If something is life-affirming it means it has a positive and healthy attitude towards living. It is the opposite of being "life-denying". To affirm means to agree or to say something is good.

This is also called "Nietzschean affirmation" after the German thinker Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche wrote that a person is life-affirming only if they  life the way it is. This means to love their life even when it hurts or isn't comfortable. Nietzsche wrote that the best people will say yes to living, even if they would have to live the exact same life on Earth over and over. He wrote that if anyone truly affirms even just one moment then they affirm everything in life. If someone "has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event—and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed." According to Nietzsche, Christians are not life-affirming.

 Related pages 
 Optimism

 References 

Category:Philosophical concepts