Pessimism, Ressentiment, Nihilism

Initially, his affirmation of Eternal Recurrence serves Nietzsche as an overcoming of Schopenhauer's Pessimism, but he subsequently deepens and broadens the diagnosis of the latter. He later goes on to isolate the psychological phenomenon 'Ressentiment', which is the vicarious revenge of the powerless against the powerful. In its most immediate manifestations, Ressentiment is directed against particular people, e. g. rulers, but Nietzsche conceives it to have more general targets, notably Life itself, e. g. as expressed in 'Life sucks', and 'I didn't ask to be born'. According to this deeper diagnosis, anti-naturalistic Philosophies, including Schopenhauer's, are, at bottom, vicarious condemnations of Life. Hence, Schopenhauer's Pessimism is an expression of Ressentiment, which, as such, remains a localized phenomenon. But Nietzsche's etiology further diagnoses it as a symptom of a more general contagion, 'Nihilism', which is more pervasively manifested in, especially, the enervating homogenization of the era. Thus, while his affirmation of Eternal Recurrence serves initially to overcome Pessimism, Nietzsche eventually conceives it as an antidote to Nihilism.