13 - Nietzsche
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 July 2023
Summary
LIKE KIERKEGAARD’S, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE’S fundamental question concerns individual existence. Unlike Kierkegaard’s, it is a test of strength rather than of faith. Nietzsche (1844–1900) wants to know whether it is possible to say an unreserved ‘yes!’ to life, though he doubts that anyone is strong enough for this in his own day (A , ‘Preface’). In place of otherworldliness, other worlds where we have it all (even eternal life), Nietzsche wants to affirm this world and this life that we suffer in. This means ceasing to pretend that there is another world. Indeed, for Nietzsche, such otherworldliness is the very nihilism that has eaten away at the soul of European culture. The more truth has been linked with the elsewhere of eternity, the more mortal life has been cursed by its identification with falsehood. Even wise Socrates (who started this whole business of asking after what does not change) was tired of life and grateful for the balm of approaching of death – why else would his final act be to ask for a sacrifice to the Greek god of medicine? (TI , ‘Socrates’, 1) And as for Plato, his desire for death was surely even stronger, as Seneca (2007: 79) suggested in his Consolation to Marcia:
And great souls are never happy to linger in the body: they long to depart and to burst forth, and feel resentment at their narrow confines, accustomed as they are to roving on high over the universe and to looking down with scorn from their lofty seat on the world of men. This is what lies behind Plato’s cry that the man of wisdom makes death the focus of his whole mind, desires it and dwells on it in his thoughts and, because he yearns for it, passes through life striving for what lies beyond.
Why is it so difficult to affirm mortal, earthly existence? Nietzsche is unsure how to answer this question; unsure whether it is difficult for all people to affirm change, or whether it is a particularly European disease. No doubt it is a temptation of all mortals to cling to what does not change:
We have projected the conditions of our preservation as predicates of being in general.
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- QuestioningA New History of Western Philosophy, pp. 135 - 146Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2022