ABSTRACT
Nietzsche wants to challenge such priorities in the tradition, so much so that he is often taken to be simply reversing priorities by extolling sheer becoming and all its correlates. This is not the case, even though Nietzsche will often celebrate negative terms rhetorically to unsettle convictions and open up space for new meanings. In fact, Nietzsche exchanges oppositional exclusion for a sense of crossing, where the differing conditions in question are not exclusive of each
other, but rather reciprocally related. 1 Nietzsche suggests that "what constitutes the value of these good and revered things is precisely that they are insidiously related, tied to, and involved with these wicked, seemingly opposite things" (BGE 2). Rather than fixed contraries, Nietzsche prefers "differences of degree" and "transitions" ( WS 67). As we will see shortly, Nietzsche rejects the strict delineation of opposite conditions, but not the oppositional force between these conditions.2 He grants that circumstances of struggle breed in opponents a tendency to "imagine" the other side as an "antithesis;' for the purpose of exaggerated self-esteem and the courage to fight the "good cause" against deviancy ( WP 348). Yet this tendency breeds the danger of oppositional exclusion and its implicit denial ofbecoming's "medial" structure.3
