Nietzschean consolation

With friends like this… “To those who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities– I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished.”

Thus spake Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), inevitably evoking the oft-repeated cliche that is in fact an accurate rendition of his main conviction: “what doesn’t kill me” etc. Thanks a lot, Fritz. (As a young grad student I considered myself a friend of Nietzsche, for a time, before sobering up from his distinctive brew of “will to power” and discovering better brands.)  It will surprise no one to learn that he had few close friends, during a life that consumed itself in self-serious, self-absorbed,  self-aggrandizing, self-conscious, finally self-parodying intensity. At the end (a dozen years before his death) he was writing things like Ecce Homo, “Why I am so wise, so clever, write such good books” etc., and it’s not clear all or even most of the late vainglory can be blamed on his syphilitically-deranged brain. It pretty clearly cannot be.

If we’re known by the company we keep, it is instructive to notice the company of self-avowed Nietzscheans. (Yes, this borders the ad hominem, but our boy would understand.) It includes a disproportionate number of brilliant but misanthropic types obsessed with their legacy, contemptuous of their contemporaries, certain they’d be appreciated by the ages, neglectful of the domestic side of life. Richard Wagner, H.L. Mencken and  Ayn Rand are names that pop instantly to mind. (It also includes Nazis. They misread him, of course. But if a Nazi were going to misread a philosopher, he’d be the one.) No such thing as a Nietzschean? ‘Fraid so.

But perhaps he wasn’t dead wrong when he criticized Christians, Kantians, Utilitarians and everyone else he perceived to be in service of ease  instead of the strenuous, difficult life from which he was convinced we gain the most. Fewer couches and beer and remote controls, more mountains to climb. (Doesn’t have quite the ring of “A yes, a no, a straight line, a goal,” but the thought is much the same.)

“If you refuse to let your own suffering lie upon you for even an hour and if you constantly try to prevent and forestall all possible distress… then it is clear that [you harbor in your heart] the religion of comfortableness. How little you know of human happiness…” You can’t be happy if you’re not prepared to suffer for it. Another cliche will not be denied here: “no pain, no gain.”

Alain de Botton: according to Nietzsche, “we all become Christians when we profess indifference to what we secretly long for but do not have; when we blithely say that we do not need love or a position in the world, money or success, creativity or health– while the corners of our mouths twitch with bitterness; and we wage silent wars against what we have publicly renounced.” On this scale, then, didn’t Nietzsche (the preacher’s kid) maintain a life-long flirtation with Christianity too?

“How would Nietzsche have preferred us to approach  our setbacks? To continue to believe in what we wish for, even when we do not have it, and may never… Resist the temptation to denigrate and declare evil cerain goods because they have proved hard to secure.” If you just invert the terms “good and evil,” you’re not beyond them.

Here’s the great sadness  and tragedy of this solitary mountain philosopher‘s life: he admired Epicurus , especially the Epicurean idea that happiness involves a life among friends. He really cut himself off, at the end of that trail. He never had the pleasure of a weekend packed with trick-or-treating,  Krispy Kreme-ing and dog-parking with a joyous 10-year old, World Series viewing,  etc. The quotidian did not map onto his “straight line” to the summit.

Too bad for him, even if good for those who are glad he wrote those books. But isn’t it selfish not to wish he’d been capable of  a more conventional happiness?

So if you go to dwell in the upper regions, be sure to keep in touch with your lowland pals.

Tags: Alain de Botton, Ayn Rand, H.L. Mencken, happiness, Nietzsche