Nietzschean affirmation (German: Bejahung) is a concept that has been scholarly identified in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.
For nothing stands alone, either in ourselves or in things; and if our soul did but once vibrate and resound with a chord of happiness, then all of eternity was necessary to bring forth this one occurrence—and in this single moment when we said yes, all of eternity was embraced, redeemed, justified and affirmed.Walter Kaufmann wrote that Nietzsche "celebrates the Greeks who, facing up to the terrors of nature and history, did not seek refuge in 'a Buddhistic negation of the will,' as Schopenhauer did, but instead created tragedies in which life is affirmed as beautiful in spite of everything.
Jacques Derrida took interest in Nietzschean affirmation as a recognition of the absence of a center or origin within language and its many parts, with no firm ground from which to base any Logos or truth.
This shock allows for two reactions in Derrida's philosophy: the more negative, melancholic response, which he designates as Rousseauistic, or the more positive Nietzschean affirmation.
[7] In Gilles Deleuze's ontology, affirmation is defined as a positive power of a self-driven differentiation of forces that is opposed to the sublated interdependence of opposites of the Hegelian dialectic.