Nietzsche has a reputation for being a pessimist. I’ve read some of his works, and I have to say that I disagree. Although I am not as learned as most Nietzsche scholars, what little I have read about him leads me to the following conclusion:
Nietzsche was the most optimistic man the world has ever seen. His philosophy is a philosophy of absolute and unabashed optimism about everything reality throws at you. I base what I say on his “yes” and “no” concepts. He would often talk about the way we assess things in life by these metaphorical “yes” and “no” labels. To say “yes” to something is to approve of it and accept it, whereas to say “no” is to disapprove and reject it. Nietzsche’s attitude towards these labels was consistent: the more "yes"s we dish out, the better - that is, the stronger our wills, the more capable we are to accept and embrace anything life throws at us.
I think this has the potential to come across as pessimistic in certain contexts. If one is to stay true to this philosophy, there’s going to be certain instances when one is going to have to approve of what would otherwise be condemned and rejected (such as genocide, human rights violations, sickness and disease, natural disasters). See, Nietzsche seemed to be saying that if it’s real, it must be good, and it is the failure of the human will to accept reality in its most authentic states that gives rise to moral “right” and “wrong” and ultimately to religion. Nietzsche figured that the problem with all religions and belief systems was that they tended to separate certain things about reality into classes of “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts”, “goods” and “bads”, “rights” and “wrongs”, etc. The problem with this is that it inevitably prevents one from ever accepting reality as it truly is, and thereby creating the rift between “is” and “aught” (which characterizes the central dilemma of the human condition).
As I say, this comes across as pessimistic to those who see Nietzsche throwing "yes"s to things which, in their minds, should be recognized as terrible and awful. Thus, it looks like Nietzsche likes that which is terrible and awful. A more accurate interpretation - the one I’m espousing in this post - is that Nietzsche liked everything (at least, he promoted this as an ideal). How much more optimistic can you get?
As I said, however, I’m no Nietzsche scholar, so I ask you, do you think this view is at all credible?
Though Nietzsche may have a reputation of being a pessimist, I think you adhere, in a way, to this reputation by simply reversing it. Nietzsche said the optimist was as much a decadent as the pessimist, and perhaps more harmful.
I think the words you’re looking for are “positive” and “negative”, or - in his own words - “Yea-saying” or “life-affirming” and “Nay-saying” or “life-negating”. The optimist is not a life-affirmer, but he has good hopes that life will get better, or that “all will end well” or the like; in this way, he is as much a life-negater as the pessimist, only the latter suspects that life will only get worse - even worse! - or that all will turn out badly or whatever.
…what if I told u that i feel that way? …i mean…
i accept the tragedies that life throws at me… the good and the bad…and nver think of suicide…but of gong on…no matter how bad my situation is cause i ca always gain power again and turn things around…
would u not believe me and say i only say this cause nietzsche said it?
His idea of the Eternal Recurrance demonstates this affirmation of life. He says “yes” to accepting this life again and again, with all it’s pain and suffering, as opposed to negation of this suffering.
His Optimism is definitely there! I’m not entirely sure he fully noticed it himself. He could be a dottish man sometimes!
He was quite pessimistic and serious in tone…I mean would Niezstche really live with Eternal Recurrence. Take his life for example…writing his books over and over again - Thus Spake Zarathustra again and again…Beyond Good and Evil again and again…masturbating over and over again…getting bouts of illness over and over again…being dumped by his bird over and over again…loosing his mind over and over again…futile really…he’d learn nothing…
over and over again.
You’d think he’d have tried Trampolining or started smoking some wild Javanese opium.
‘The Philosopher in his heart hath said - I am deadly serious - therefore I cannot write comedy.’
I’m not sure optimism is possible for Nietzsche. He was a determinist, claiming we have no freewill nor even responsibility for our own actions. He furthermore not only life but the Universe down to its atoms was ruled by the Will to Power, basically a process where the stronger asserts itself up and over the weaker. Life is and should be brutal and without guilt as we’re only tossed into the Universe in response to the inevitability of natural law. So the idea that things will “get better” seems to be absent in his philosophy. Even the arrival of the Overman or Superman is not meant to imply this cycle of Will to Power and determinism can be broken.
So insofar as you equate “life affirming” with optimism I’d agree he was an optimist. But I think that’s a bit of an oversimplification.
So it’s my conception of “optimism” versus Nietzsche’s own conception of himself. Fair enough.
Why would I not believe you? Why would I insist that you got it from Nietzsche?
Even if you did get it from Nietzsche, I’d say that your reasoning - that “no matter how bad my situation is cause i ca always gain power again and turn things around” - doesn’t quite sound Nietzschean enough. I don’t think the criteria Nietzsche had in mind for “yea-saying” was that “the ends justify the means”. This is the westerner’s/apollonian’s way of accepting tragedy - that so long as there was some sort of “net good” that comes out of it in the end, then the bad is acceptable. What doesn’t kill you only makes you strong, we say, and it is the “getting stronger” that makes it worthwhile. But I think what Nietzsche had in mind was that a true “yea-saying” individual is he who says yes to tragedy for being tragic. So would you still say yes to all the tragedy that life throws at you if you knew it would ultimately and irreversibly defeated you in the end?
Again, I’m no Nietzsche scholar, so my take on this could be wrong. This is just an interpretation.
Did he say this? Or did he say that our will was only weak in comparison to the great Will to Power? Or was it that our will was an extension of the great Will, despite what we believed? I’m pretty sure he thought everyone and everything had a will - it was either thriving or broken.
Nietzsche is much to0 dynamic and shifty to label him an optimist or a pessimist. Take for example, his view of man, that he is so hopelessly reactive that he is doomed to stagnation and must be overcome. But then, take his overman, the ultimate in optimism, something that can overcome the reactive part of existence and create meaning and value out of thin air.
Nietzsche was neither a determinist nor a believer in free will, he denied the framework of causation…stopping the problem before it begins…
Nietzsche’s greatest joy was his eternal return, the adoption and love of all the suffering he went through. The eternal return has more depth than simply things happening over and over again, it is the completion of Nihilism, nihilism brought to its logical end. What’s left, is affirmation and joy.
There was no “doer doing the dee” for him, but he definately believe in determination insofar as you have no choice in what you do; it’s all been mapped out by the universe and natural law. No one is really responsible for their actions and therefore there shouldn’t be any guilt about it.
There is a difference between lack of free will and determinism, It’s not exactly clear where Nietzsche lies, but it is certain that he did not intend to be considered a Determinist, i.e. a human is simply another cog in the massive machine of history.
His reason for denying responsibility/guilt is more complex than you make it out to be, but I’ll leave it at that.
This is a denial of the subject as a grammatical fiction. There is no unitary being called “I”, but “you” are a dynamic relationship of forces. No mysticism involved.
Ooops…I meant “no doer doing the deed”. At any rate it wasn’t mystical, it was a statement that the doer and the deed were both merely effects of the mechanistic workings of the Universe.
Okay, I’ve had a couple Jim Beams tonight, so bear with me. I think in a sense Nietzsche did mean to imply we’re cogs. But, in typical Nietzschean paradox, he thought we should be masters, conquerors & explorers. The Universe was impartial and God was dead but that further reinforced the feeling of liberation we should feel with life. Now that might sound like freedom from determinism but it almost certainly wan’t. I think it’s freedom from the guilt some feel from their Will to Power.
The eternal return has more depth than simply things happening over and over again
I bet to differ. I’m not implying things repeating again and again is a bad thing. I’m just saying if Nieztsche truly applied this to his own life…he might have lived with more Yes…and possibly taken off his Suit!
I don’t know what is more life-affirming than writing beautiful prose for hours upon end when your body and mind are failing you, and you have to fight through horrible debilitating migraines to do it. In Nietzsche’s letters, we find a man who sincerely wants to bear his pain longer, so that he can document his beautiful and moving ideas for the future of mankind. It is wrongly assumed that since he was a hermit in the years prior to his breakdown, that he was a mean old curmudgeon who hated everything. This is quite incorrect, he was forced into seclusion by his disability, and if anything, one would have expected a lesser man to go into seclusion earlier. His desire to write down what he had to say, what he honestly believed would save mankind from itself, demanded of him that what little energy he had, was not wasted on travel and human interaction.
He was somewhat ascetic most of his adult life, but then again, to affirm oneself as a brilliant philosopher, isn’t asceticism demanded?
He was a man of Grand Intelligence, Grand Poetic Insight…but sometimes I wish he had literally danced a bit more…but that would have been unbecoming…we must affirm our life our pain in the ways we feel best justifies it…
I often take Niezstche far too personally:- forgetting that the real villans are CULTURE SOCIETY and HISTORY! not ‘individuals’
I’m not as familiar with Buddhism, but from what I understand no self is explained much the same way, but it also seems to be in direct contradiction with other Buddhist ideas, such as Karma and rebirth.
But Buddhism holds that according to Buddha himself, thinking that there is in fact a self or that there is no self are both incorrect. So perhaps the original question is wrong to compare Nietzsche’s denial of the subject with Buddhists no self. Whatever the case may be, there view of self is the way it is for mystical purposes.
Nietzsche was a reserved optimist.
He reacted against Schopenhauer’s Buddhist-like pessimism but had reservations concerning man’s fate.
Who else but an optimist would dream up a concept like the Overman?
His reservations must have made him believe that the fate of all great minds was the solitary existence of a free-spirit.
I think in a sense Nietzsche did mean to imply we’re cogs. But, in typical Nietzschean paradox, he thought we should be masters, conquerors & explorers. The Universe was impartial and God was dead but that further reinforced the feeling of liberation we should feel with life. Now that might sound like freedom from determinism but it almost certainly wan’t. I think it’s freedom from the guilt some feel from their Will to Power.