“I myself have now slain all gods in the fourth act, for the sake of morality. Now, what is to become of the fifth act? From where am I to take the tragic solution? —should I begin to think about a comic solution?”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 153
One of the great misconceptions about Nietzsche is that he was a nihilist. People unfamiliar with him tend to associate his name with all that is miserable in life. He is used by popular culture to reinforce nonsensical attitudes of pessimistic hedonism and attacked by conservatives as the embodiment of those temperaments. However, this all relies on a reading of Nietzsche that is not just simplistic, but completely ill-conceived. His willingness to plunge into the depths of being, his praise of suffering, his destruction of our blissful ignorance, should not be mistaken for a wish to define life as misery. His intention is quite the opposite. By journeying through the suffering, Nietzsche wishes to demonstrate the true beauty of existence and (most revolutionarily) of suffering itself!
In the preceding chapter, Nietzsche’s skepticism thrust us into the unknown. What we once took for granted is now scattered in the wind. We have broken our foundations, and we are ill with dizziness. Nietzsche provides an eloquent illustration:
“We have burned our bridges behind us... Now, little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean… hours will come when you realize that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity. Oh, the poor bird that felt free and now strikes the walls of this cage! Woe, when you feel homesick for the land as if it had offered more freedom—and there is no longer any ‘land’” (section 124).
The idols we spent our whole previous existence molding ourselves to have been strangled by our own hands. We will miss them. Or, more accurately, we will miss having somewhere to plant our feet.
Some may argue that such a journey is pointless, that it will only bring anxiety and suffering. But is this not Nietzsche’s point? Never does Nietzsche say that all people are capable of following the skeptic’s path (though this does not exempt the herd from feeling the impact of God’s death). Rather, he is issuing a challenge: “Double pain is easier to bear / Than single pain: Do you accept my dare?” (rhyme 20). Nietzsche views pain as a critical necessity for self-actualization. We accept his dare because we strive towards a level of greatness where we are more than functions of a herd driven by error. Nietzsche writes, “We negate and must negate because something in us wants to live and affirm — something that we perhaps do not know or see as yet” (section 307). The negation is not merely its own sake, but for something higher within us that wishes to live a more extraordinary life, one more adventurous and rewarding to us than one where we remain in place.
The death of God necessitates the destruction of all foundations built from his existence. One such example is the sacredness with which we regard nature. In section 109, Nietzsche cautions against anthropomorphic conceptions of the universe. He writes,
“it is neither perfect nor beautiful, nor noble, nor does it wish to become any of these things; it does not by any means strive to imitate man. None of our aesthetic and moral judgments apply to it… Let us beware of saying there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is nobody who commands, nobody who obeys, nobody who trespasses. Once you know that there are no purposes [in the creation and functions of the universe] you also know there is no accident; for it is only beside a world of purposes that the word “accident” has meaning.”
The world, in short, is not human. Its operation is not dependent on our perceptions; it has no awareness of itself or any intent behind its operations. Even more disillusioning, there is no “world” at all! Every function of every particle (and every piece of every part of every function) is an individual, and the generalization of infinite bits into one operating whole is a concept that purely comes about from humanity’s limited capacity to understand the world.
Nietzsche’s purpose in engaging with these ideas is “the de-deification of nature,” the removal of theistic anthropomorphisms from our conceptions of the universe and life. Eventually, we can “begin to ‘naturalize’ humanity in terms of a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature” (section 109). In the broader scope of Nietzsche’s project, this means that after we have dispensed with “all these shadows of God” that “darken our minds,” we can redefine humanity with what we have left. The language Nietzsche uses to describe this new kind of nature is crucial to understanding his point. De-deification uproots the entire foundation of our understanding of nature, but it does not destroy nature itself. Instead, we find ourselves living amidst a New World, a place outside of the theistic cave we have lived our entire lives inside of, ripe with the wonders of the unexplored. Most exciting of all, we ourselves are “re-naturalized,” made a part of this land of wonder where myths of intelligent design no longer confine the true immensity of the universe.
On our new path, we will come to love the world in an entirely new fashion divergent from theological generalizations. We can appreciate processes, interactions, pieces, particles, or whatever we wish as things in themselves rather than constructions of God. In section 279, Nietzsche writes, “I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth!” Amor fati—translating to “love of fate”—testifies that the lack of a creator or preordained purpose does not spoil life. Instead, we look at nature as fate — the way the cards fall as necessitated by an infinity of chaotic reactions between individual particles. This kind of world, one which some anthropomorphically call “accidental,” does not have to be cold, as some would have us believe. Instead, the New World becomes ever more astounding to us. How remarkable this great chaos is! How bizarre and beautiful! Nevertheless, what makes this beauty so astonishing is that it is not made that way by any sort of God. The world is not beautiful in-itself, because it does not exist with any regard for our conception of it. Instead, it is we who seize the right to call life beautiful. Not God, not humankind, but human beings with their own unique forms of love and appreciation.
The purification of nature is ultimately only a part of the re-evaluation of life. Life’s higher beings, in Nietzsche’s view, are those who are willing to challenge themselves, those who are always on a path of self-actualization, “human beings who are bent on seeking in all things for what in them must be overcome” (section 283). Higher beings are willing to leap into pursuits that seem impossible, but ultimately reinforce their strength as overcomers. Nietzsche continues,
“The secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is—to live dangerously!... Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer. At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!” (section 283).
The “dangerous” path that defines the existence of higher beings to Nietzsche is that of knowledge, not only of the world but of oneself. The pursuit of truth and knowledge has become an essential part of the human experience rather than a simple means of overcoming practical concerns. It makes us feel fuller, its depths adding new excitement and vigor to life. The world’s newfound riches, opened up by the death of God and found as we repeatedly overcome suffering and difficulty, become ours because we have taken them as prizes of our struggles.
Of course, Nietzsche does not ask us to remain blind to our shortcomings. A higher life fundamentally challenges us to overcome our limits, including those imposed by our vices. However, to thoroughly conquer those, a higher person is required to have faith in themselves. After all, how can a challenge be overcome if one lacks any hope to motivate them? Nevertheless, that in itself is not something easily acquired. Nietzsche writes, “Few people have faith in themselves. Of these few, some are endowed with it as with a useful blindness or a partial eclipse of their spirit (what would they behold if they could see to the bottom of themselves!), while the rest have to acquire it.” (section 284). Nietzsche draws a clear distinction between arrogance and confidence. The former is easily adopted by those who refuse to see anything terrible in themselves, people who fail to become higher beings because they do not believe there is anything to overcome from within. Therefore, they can never become greater than they already are. A higher being acquires faith through continuous conflict. They are continually looking inwards, trying to overcome themselves, trying to become more than they are.
A higher being is in a constant dialogue with themselves. “Everything good, fine, or great they do is first of all an argument against the skeptic inside them,” Nietzsche writes. “They have to convince or persuade him, and that almost requires genius. These are the great self-dissatisfied people” (section 284). While it seems contradictory to say that someone great must be dissatisfied with themselves, in reality, we would never be able to evolve if we were perfectly content. By questioning our abilities, we gain the will to prove our inner questioner wrong. Thus, criticism becomes constructive, pushing us to exceed our past selves and always emerge greater than before.
Of course, greatness is not merely about reaching some far-off peak. In life’s long journey, it would be impossible to enjoy our accomplishments if we only considered them means to higher ones. In section 253, Nietzsche says, “One day we reach our goal, and now point with pride to the long travels we undertook to reach it. In fact, we were not even aware of travelling. But we got so far because we fancied at every point that we were home.” First of all, do not mistake his words as saying there exists any ultimate end to our growth. Every challenge that we overcome contributes to our greatness. If, by the end of our lives, we have not accomplished some daunting task we had always looked towards, we should not dismiss ourselves as failures because of this. We are great because we have come this far, great because we have traveled each step, great because we push forward.
Thus, it would be laughable to call Nietzsche a nihilist and end the conversation there. Perhaps he is nihilistic in dispensing with the comfortable pretenses of meaning and purpose that define how so many live their lives. But there is no true nihilist who contends that this makes the world even more beautiful to us. Nor are there any who would embrace a new path where we, as individual arbiters of our universe, determine what we consider right, what we define as great and beautiful. Furthermore, there is no nihilist who, at the root of their very being, affirms the wonder of life.
We will conclude by introducing perhaps the most compelling concept of Nietzsche’s entire philosophy, something which appears for the first time in The Gay Science. He writes:
“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, and in the same succession and sequence… The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!’ Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine!’ If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, ‘Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?’ would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?” (section 341).
Is this not a terrifying burden to bear? That this ephemeral existence will repeat itself through infinity? Do not waste time! Get up, challenge the world, challenge yourself to become greater than you’ve ever been! Do not let the lulling sounds of loneliness write your infinity! Live, and live greatly! Spend your life becoming great, and you shall be great until the end of time.
References
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. Random House, 1974.
