'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
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May 8, 2008
The void created by the death of God had, for Nietzsche, left human being still confronted by the incredible horror of life, by a profound suffering, just as it had his Greek and Christian ancestors. In Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future Nietzsche says:
The discipline of suffering, of great suffering – do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far? That tension of the soul in unhappiness which cultivates its strength, its shudders face to face with great ruin, its inventiveness and courage in enduring, persevering, interpreting, and exploiting suffering, and whatever has been granted to it of profundity, secret, mask, spirit, cunning, greatness -- was it not granted to it through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?
That horror of life and its suffering had already produced the ascetic ideal. For Nietzsche, the ascetic ideal, with its claim that human suffering has meaning, with its hatred of self and world, and the omnipresence of guilt, that has shaped Western man, is an historically determinate response to “metaphysical need,” the need to construe one’s life as meaningful, a form of “metaphysical comfort,” the belief that the pain that we endure in this life can be redeemed in an other-worldly domain of existence.
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| | Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:21 PM | Permalink |
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