Affirmation, Denial, Approval

While 'to affirm' often means 'to agree with', Nietzsche's 'Yes!' to his life, to Life in general, and to Eternal Recurrence, is Approval, rather than Affirmation.  The distinction exposes a significant equivocation in Schopenhauer's doctrine.  For, 'to deny' usually means either 'to gainsay' or 'to prevent', and, hence, is not quite the opposite of 'to affirm' that Schopenhauer makes it.  Furthermore, when Schopenhauer argues that 'Life is suffering, therefore it is to be denied', 'to deny' means neither of those, but, rather, 'to disapprove'  However, in the 'self-denial' and 'denial of the Will-to-Live' that he classifies as 'Asceticism', 'to deny' means 'to prevent', leaving unexplained the transition from disapproval to prevention that is central to his doctrine, Also left unaddressed is whether there is a meaning of 'to affirm' that corresponds, as its opposite, to 'to prevent', i. e. whether or not 'to affirm' can have causal efficacy.  The resolution of that uncertainty is crucial to any interpretation of Nietzsche's doctrine, since on it depends whether or not his various 'Yeses' have causal efficacy, and, thus, whether or not the doctrine is merely an epiphenomenal comedy, as # 1 of The Gay Science can be taken to imply.