Nietzsche's Struggle against Pessimism

On what grounds could life be made worth living, given its abundant
suffering? Friedrich Nietzsche was among many who attempted to
answer this question. While always seeking to resist pessimism,
Nietzsche’s strategy for doing so, and the extent to which he was
willing to concede conceptual grounds to pessimists, shifted dramatically
over time. His reading of pessimists such as Eduard von
Hartmann, Olga Plu¨macher, and Julius Bahnsen – as well as their
critics, such as Eugen Du¨hring and James Sully – has been underexplored
in the secondary literature, isolating him from his intellectual
context. Patrick Hassan’s book seeks to correct this. After closely
mapping Nietzsche’s philosophical development on to the relevant
axiological and epistemological issues, it disentangles his various
critiques of pessimism, elucidating how familiar Nietzschean themes
(e.g., eternal recurrence, aesthetic justification, will to power, and his
critique of Christianity) can and should be assessed against this
philosophical backdrop.