Friedrich Nietzsche and the milk of human kindness

[Green Sleeves]

Friedrich Nietzsche's wishes for his loved ones:

"To those human beings 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: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not - that one endures."

:shock:

Maybe he had a point though. What is learnt from a comfortable untroubled life? Is it worth striving for?

 

[arthurduncan]

No way it's the whole story but Nietzsche is the great modern critic of the comfortable and complacent life. His rhetoric is flowery and overblown, as was everything he wrote (see chapter in his autobiography called "Why I Am Dynamite"). So, yes there is something in this, even if I wouldn't put it the same way. How much of our lives is lurching from the repetition of work, to the repetition of home, to the repetition of another Hibs defeat and sacked manager. Who hasn't stood up at one time or another and said "fcuk this for a life!".

There is a completely different perspective in which this is self-indulgent nonsense and which values the simple pleasures in life. A philosopher like Hume liked to remind himself not to take himself too seriously and too talk of the pleasure of a game of billiards with his mates.

This is one of the great existential dilemmas - angst versus comfort.

 

[egb_hibs]

Friedrich Nietzsche's wishes for his loved ones:

"To those human beings 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: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not - that one endures."

:shock:

Maybe he had a point though. What is learnt from a comfortable untroubled life? Is it worth striving for?

I think you need a bit of rough with the smooth; over cosseting is no way to live, and I think brings unhappiness itself. That said, I'm not sure that Freddy hasn't overstated his case a little.

Still, that's the Germans for you.