Dr. Seuss and Philosophy - Jacob M. Held [19]
Since Nietzsche isn’t about offering arguments but painting a picture of life that is laudable and positive, he often wrote in aphorisms—short yet profound and dense snippets. His style also made him one of the most oft-quoted philosophers around. You probably unknowingly know a handful of Nietzsche quotes yourself. For example, on pain and suffering, Nietzsche states: “The poison of which the weaker natures perish strengthens the strong—nor do they call it poison”;12 “There is a recipe against pessimistic philosophers and the excessive sensitivity that seems to me to be the real ‘misery of the present age’ . . . the recipe against this misery is: misery”;13 “There is as much wisdom in pain as there is in pleasure”;14 and most famously, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”15 Pain can be a great teacher, character builder, and often times our reaction to it, our complaining and whining that “life is hard,” is more illustrative of our spoiled natures than it is the unappealing nature of our existence. We need to see pain in the right light; we need to contextualize it and develop a proper attitude toward life, one of self-mastery, creation, and ultimately a kind of playfulness. Then, each individual failure, each accident will be redeemed within the greater context of a successful life, a life of one’s own making. An integrous life revalues the bumps and slumps and lurches insofar as they are part and parcel to a noble existence. Nietzsche sees himself as a redeemer of accidents. This notion is best illustrated through a thought experiment Nietzsche offers in The Gay Science.16
In aphorism 341, Nietzsche asks us to imagine the following scenario. What if some day or night, during your loneliest loneliness a demon fell upon you and decreed that your whole life up to that point, all its successes and failures, every detail would be relived by you over and over again for eternity. Herein lies Nietzsche’s notion of the eternal recurrence of the same. What would your reaction be? Would you curse him, or would you praise him? Would you fall to your knees weeping, or would you celebrate your good fortune? Your response is indicative of your view of life and whether you can redeem it in its totality even in your darkest hour.
This is a brutal test, one I am sure a great many of us would fail, if we were truly honest with ourselves. But Nietzsche isn’t for everyone. Although his view of life is meant for all of humanity, most people aren’t ready for him. So imagine your darkest hour, your loneliest loneliness. Imagine that darkest hour when things seem not only gloomy, but hopeless. Think of that dark hour when the compassion of others feels like pity and reinforces your own self-loathing. When you truly feel useless and death isn’t merely the inevitable end, but a quietude sorely longed for, if only it would come more quickly. A time when there is no room dark enough and no blanket heavy enough to make it all better. The kind of despair that results after you realize your spirit died years ago and left only a hollow corpse to carry out the mundane tasks of the day, dragged out of bed each morning by only some vague notion of duty. This is your darkest hour; this is when you see what you’re really made of. Can you muscle through and burst out the other end powerful and ready to take on the day, or do you cower, whimper, and whine and like a pessimist pray for the end? Can you declare it is all worth it, and you’d gladly do it all again because life is worth it? Or do you run and hide? What is nobler? What is more praiseworthy? Who do you want to be?
Today they can “cure” this kind of despair with pills. But before our culture of self-medication predominated Nietzsche demanded that people deal with their problems, the inevitable bumps and bruises of the human condition. Our desire for constant contentment has led us to become weak and cowardly and unable to envision or deal with this scenario and life in general. Nietzsche sees this despair as instructive. If in this darkest hour you can affirm your life and declare