Nietzsche and the pursuit of meaning

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Somewhere Nietzsche wrote:
“Except for the ascetic ideal; man, the animal man, had no meaning up to now. His existence on earth had no purpose; ‘What is man for actually?’ This was a question without an answer;”

But who asks that question is my question. The common man farming his land, tilling the ground? Probably not. It is a very sophisticated question, this question about “meaning”. For the common man, God has very practical needs to fulfill, such as organizing victories, healings, bringing rain…but none of these activities by God give life meaning, it just makes life possible. I may have my victory and still ask:“For what?” But those who prayed for victory, those common men, were satisfied with victory. No interpretation, no meaning is needed for the joys and pleasures of success. It is defeat and failure that create the demand of meaning in lieu of success. The problem is not one of meaning or lack thereof but of power and lack of power and by “power” what I mean is “Control”.

Nietzsche adds:
"There was no will for man and the earth; behind every great human destinity sounded the even louder refrain ‘in vain!’ This is what the ascetic ideal meant: something was missing, there was an immense lacuna around man…suffering itself was not his problem but the fact that there was no answer to the question he screamed “Suffering for what?”

A great human destiny wasn’t the occasion for any refrain. Success blessess all. We, when happy, do not ask: “happiness for what?” or say, when happy:“I conquered everything…but in vain!”. But we ask for the meaning of our suffering indeed when we are suffering and are weary of success and say “in vain” because we have see how out of our control it all is. The answer:“For God!” solves nothing. The Problem of Suffering is one of reason, of cause and effect. We are hungry and we know the cause and also know how to end our suffering from hunger so there is no problem there: Reason provides us with control. But if we are sick with leprosy in an age of medical ignorance, then we suffer but we don’t know why, what caused it, what can remedy it, end it. We then invent God not to simply give meaning to our disease (“because it is God’s will…” else Job would not curse his birth), but in order to control and be able to do something about our disease than just resign to suffer. The creation of God allows man to believe that we are sick…as a punishment from God, or as instruction from God or as a means towards what is good…then we can change something and be healed, or appreciate what we may learn from it or endure through this tunel of pain in the assurance that something good which we cannot see from our perspective but nonetheless shall come, is near. However the central purpose is not learning or enduring but resolving and controlling. Job’s friends tried to give “meaning” to Job’s suffering, but what he demanded was control to be returned, as it should, to the righteous. Cause and effect: The Righteous ought not suffer- not suffering is caused by righteousness. Suffering is caused by unrighteousness- that is what we all want, a clear cut causal chain that is consistent and never violated. But life hardly ever plays fair with our reason, and when it doesn’t a little part of reality slips out of our control.
Attaching a cause to our disease is not enough to regain control. The cause has to be within our power. God is not within our power, so to speak but we can make covenants with God, transactions that are within our control. We can fulfill the requirements. We can be moral, we can pray, we can make a blood sacrifice… and these activities lead, indirectly, to a desired effect so that a measure of control returns. Even when the association is less than perfect, and we continue to be sick in spite of all our efforts it is still better to find reasons why that is so, thus creating new modes of control, than to simply admit that we have no control whatsoever.
How lucky am I that this God wants something from me…how lucky that what He wants is in my power to give…how lucky indeed.

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What is the meaning of existence? Nothing beyond what you create for yourself.

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My point is that most could care less about meaning. We could care less about Creating meaning. We don’t live off meaning. I think that modern society has made it into a bigger problem than it actually is. They have this idea:“God is what gives meaning to our lives”. But what I see in God and any other construct of the “ascetic ideal”, is hypotheses of power and control.

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So humans have an intrinsic need or desire to submit to a higher authority, whether it be God or Science(conceding that the laws of nature dictate every aspect of your being)?

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How are you a nihilist again? That post sounds more existential than anything…

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Nihilism can be existential if you let it be so.

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Hello Blacklung:

— So humans have an intrinsic need or desire to submit to a higher authority, whether it be God or Science(conceding that the laws of nature dictate every aspect of your being)?

We submit that we may control. We submit to God’s will that we may submit our reality through Him.

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You say: “It is a very sophisticated question, this question about “meaning”.” I disagree, I think it is the most basic question there is. What is sophisticated is its becoming conscious; in most cases the question as well as the answer are unconscious, instinctive.

Meaning can only be found in joy (or happiness, or however you wish to call it) - that is, in the feeling of power. Suffering is a feeling of a lack of power, of an imperfection of power. This seems meaningful, however, when it is regarded as the necessary consequence of overcoming a resistance - a resistance to one’s increase of power. The ascetic ideal promises power - that is its attraction.

I gotta go now. More later, perhaps.

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It is not an “intrinsic need”, whatever that is. It is a psychological tendency to suppose that existence is intelligent and personable, like us. It is hard to accept that human existence is only a brief, arbitrary event…something that only recently happened. Eternities will pass after it has happened…as if it never did happen. This isn’t bad as much as it might be shocking…for a moment. The tendency of the idealist is to hold onto the shock and try to convince himself that he is mistaken- you see the original position is one where meaninglessness is intuited first…as if it were terribly obvious. The task then for the idealist is to find a way to believe that his likeness (the intelligence and personality) is either eternal itself…or at least recurring. The idea of immortality is the manifestation of the latter alternative: each time there is a universe…there will be intelligent personalities. The former, the “eternal”, is the idea that not only are we intelligent and personable, but something else is too…out there in the universe…or the universe itself. The difference is here- there is the idea that God exists and we are “in” it (pantheism), and therefore possess the eternal nature of existence itself (there cannot be “nothing”), or, God does or does not exist- if he does, we have the capacity to “transcend” existence, if he does not, we at least believe we can recur (which in a sense is a kind of immortality)…so intelligence and personality in the universe is necessary.

The atheist gets beyond the shocking part.

Luckily for politicians, this psychological tendency to project human likeness onto the universe and believe a “God” exists provides ample opportunity to control and influence people more easily. It isn’t as if most of them are deviant atheists…most are too stupid to be atheist…but after the fact that belief in God has shown itself to be a very powerful moral authority, the use of religion is excused as an appropriate means to persuade people in making certain decisions.

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Thank you for the reply.
You raise some interesting points but I think where we do disagree is in the definition of Power. I associate “Power” with “Control”. Where I see the pursuit of meaning, I actually find the pursuit of control. “Meaning” is very ambiguous, but not power; that is why a meaningful life becomes associated with a life we feel has structure and order, or Control. Some say that to understand something is the same thing as justifying it, and there is some truth to that but also it is true that what we understand we hope also to control and that is the very motivation for human reason to seek to understand, laying down the very possibility of Power. Thus we look for meaning in our lives when that basic possibility for justification and possible control/Power, seems absent. Our overcoming of a resistance is our imposition of control over that which resists us.

I also like that you have identified consciousness as related to that sophistication I made mention of. Indeed, I think that pursuits for “answers” to questions like that of “evil” or “meaning” are contingent to a specific perspective…I am sure you will agree. Some are happy just to “eat and drink and be merry”. Others are too busy with the very pursuit of life, but a life they feel is well within their control. Means may not always reach to fill their ends but there are explanations for that outcome…no need to despair and ask for the meaning of it all. But there are persons who have too much time on their hands; for whom the means for life are provided for: Life for them is no longer a struggle, nor a method. But the wine, the women, the luxury, cannot give that feeling of happiness because they are unearned. No resistance to overcome, they come too easy and I think that is key. Somehow, though I am not sure, humans require Causality in their pursuit of happiness. Those that KNOW HOW they became satisfied, who worked for their satisfaction, are somehow better off than those who were priviledged from the get go and so find themselves as victims of another’s success and not of their own success. The Ascetic Ideal remedies this situation by providing a causal link, a diagnosis of lack and a course of actions to remedy, to solve that lack.This is giving them Causality and power and thus meaning in the resultant overcoming of the diagnosed lack.

All of this is to repeat again that “meaning” is not the issue; everywhere that the answer for that meaning has been attempted the begged question is “what for?”…to have life…to seek wisdom and knowledge…to do good and do the right thing…to love and enjoy life…All these activities are supposed to give meaning to life, but why do we need meaning in our lives?..Control.

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Hello panic:

— Luckily for politicians, this psychological tendency to project human likeness onto the universe and believe a “God” exists provides ample opportunity to control and influence people more easily.
O- Only because they hold a transaction to be in effect. They give something because they are convinced they will get something in return…a reward.

— It isn’t as if most of them are deviant atheists…most are too stupid to be atheist…
O- All of us are naturally atheist…some just go one god beyond…

— but after the fact that belief in God has shown itself to be a very powerful moral authority, the use of religion is excused as an appropriate means to persuade people in making certain decisions.
O- Again, religion is effective because it is a narrative of control.

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Structure and order do not make meaning, of course. I’m saying what gives (a sense of) meaning is the feeling of power (by whatever feel-good name). In some cases, liberation from structure and order arouses a feeling of power. The only way structure and order can give meaning is by the feeling of power they arouse.

Exactly. Understanding alone cannot justify anything. It is the feeling of power understanding may give us that can “justify” what we understand to us. In fact, there is no such thing as “understanding”; but we impose ourselves upon “something” and thereby render it “comprehensible”. We catch pieces of the flux in concepts like a tiger in a cage.

Yes, very good. But I’d like to note that it is not control but the feeling of control which makes meaning.

I recently observed that there can be no sense of beauty without a sense of meaning or significance. And Stendhal calls beauty “a promise of happiness”. From this I infer that what seems “meaningful” to us is what seems to promise “happiness” (the feeling of power) to us.

Ah, the problem of luxury. The thing is that, as life is will to power, there can never be ultimate satisfaction in life. I think any Epicurean would have to agree with Heraclitus when he says: “Sickness makes health pleasant and good; hunger, satiety; weariness, rest.” And yet, though most Epicureans would probably agree with this statement, I suspect few would actually affirm the fact. In this lies the difference between the Epicurean and the Dionysian. The Dionysian affirms also sickness, hunger, weariness, even death. Thus Nietzsche says:

"Zarathustra experiences himself as the supreme type of all beings; and once one hears how he defines this, one will refrain from seeking any metaphor for it.

— The soul, which has the longest ladder, and can go down deepest,

the most comprehensive soul, which can run and stray and roam farthest within itself,

the most necessary one, which plunges itself joyously into chance,

the soul in being, which dives into becoming, the possessing one, which [i]wants[/i] to want and desire —

the one fleeing from itself, which catches up with itself in the widest circles,

the wisest soul, to which folly speaks most sweetly,

the most self-loving one, in which all things have their current and counter-current and ebb and flow — —

But that is the concept of Dionysus himself."
[Ecce Homo, on Thus Spoke Zarathustra, section 6.]

Paradoxically, then, Dionysianism is essentially satisfaction with the endless cycle of sickness and health, hunger and satiety, weariness and rest, life and death. It is satisfaction with the great cosmic cycle, the “great year of Becoming”, to speak with Zarathustra. And ultimate meaning is to be found only in the promise of this ultimate happiness. This is why Zarathustra says the Overman is the meaning of the earth.

Oh, and to resolve the paradox: the ultimate dissatisfaction with existence belongs in this cycle, too - as does said satisfaction with all, including all dissatisfaction. Dionysianism also affirms its opposite!