Nietzsche, Truth, and the Horror of Existence

Edvard Munch: Friedrich Nietzsche (1906)

Extract from :

Nietzsche, Truth, and the Horror of Existence

Philip J. Kain

Santa Clara University

"King Midas hunted in the forest a long time for the wise Silenus…

When Silenus at last fell into his hands, the king asked what

was the best and most desirable of all things for man.

Fixed and immovable, the demigod said not a word, till at last,

urged by the king, he gave a shrill laugh and broke out into these words: '

Oh, wretched ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do you

compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear?

What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be,

to be nothing. But the second best for you is — to die soon.'"

Why is it best never to have been born? Because all we can expect as human beings is to suffer. Yet, still, this is not precisely the problem. In a passage most central to this article's interpretation of the horror of existence, and a passage found not in Nietzsche's early but in one of his very late writings (in Genealogy of Morals, III, §28), Nietzsche tells us that human beings can live with suffering, what they cannot live with is meaningless suffering — suffering for no reason at all.4 In Nietzsche's view, we are "surrounded by a fearful void…"

We live in an empty, meaningless cosmos. We cannot look into reality without being overcome. Indeed, in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche suggests that "it might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who would know it completely would perish…"

Moreover, it was not just intellectual reflection that led Nietzsche to a belief in the horror of existence. He lived it himself. In a letter of April 10, 1888, he writes:

"Around 1876 my health grew worse….There were extremely painful and obstinate headaches which exhausted all my strength. They increased over long years, to reach a climax at which pain was habitual, so that any given year contained for me two hundred days of pain….My specialty was to endure the extremity of pain…with complete lucidity for two or three days in succession, with continuous vomiting of mucus."

The following year, in Nietzsche Contra Wagner, he tells us how significant this suffering was for him:

"I have often asked myself whether I am not much more deeply indebted to the hardest years of my life than to any others.…And as to my prolonged illness, do I not owe much more to it than I owe to my health? To it I owe a higher kind of health, a sort of health which grows stronger under everything that does not actually kill it! — To it, I owe even my philosophy….Only great suffering is the ultimate emancipator of the spirit….Only great suffering; that great suffering, under which we seem to be over a fire of greenwood, the suffering that takes its time—forces us philosophers to descend into our nethermost depths…

Nietzsche's belief in the horror of existence is largely, if not completely, overlooked by most scholars. This article hopes to show that it had a profound effect on his thought, indeed, that his thought cannot be adequately understood without seeing the centrality of this concept. To begin to understand its importance, let us consider three different visions of the human condition.

The first holds that we live in a benign cosmos. It is as if it were purposively planned for us and we for it. We fit, we belong, we are at home in this cosmos. We are confirmed and reinforced by it. And our natural response is a desire to know it, to contemplate it, and thus to appreciate our fit into it. Let us call this the designed cosmos. Roughly speaking, it is the traditional view held by most philosophers from Plato and Aristotle through the medievals. And for the most part it has disappeared in the modern world — few believe in it any more.

The second vision backs off from the assumptions required by the first. This view starts with Francis Bacon, if not before, and it is the view of most moderns. Here the cosmos is neither alien nor is it designed for us. It is neither terrifying nor benign. The cosmos is neutral and, most importantly, it is malleable. What human beings must do is come to understand the cosmos through science and control it through technology. We must make it fit us. It does not fit us by design. We must work on it, transform it, and mold it into a place where we can be at home. We must create our own place. Thus, for such modern thinkers, we actually end up with more than the ancients and medievals had. We end up with a fit like they had, but we get the added satisfaction of bringing it about ourselves, accomplishing it through our own endeavor, individuality, and freedom. Let us call this the perfectible cosmos.

The third vision takes the cosmos to be alien. It was not designed for human beings at all, nor they for it. We do not fit. We do not belong. And we never will. The cosmos is horrible, terrifying, and we will never surmount this fact. It is a place where human beings suffer for no reason at all. Best never to have been born. Let us call this the horrific cosmos. This is Nietzsche's view. Nietzsche simply dismisses the first view, the designed cosmos, which few believe in anymore anyway. On the other hand, Nietzsche takes the second view, that of a perfectible cosmos, very seriously. He resists it with every fiber of his being. For Nietzsche, we must stop wasting time and energy hoping to change things, improve them, make progress — the outlook of liberals, socialists, even Christians, all of whom Nietzsche tends to lump together and excoriate. For Nietzsche, we cannot eliminate suffering and to keep hoping we can will simply weaken us. Instead, we must conceal an alien and terrifying cosmos if we hope to live in it. And we must develop the strength to do so. We must toughen ourselves. We need more suffering, not less. It has "created all enhancements of man so far…"

If we look deeply into the essence of things, into the horror of existence, Nietzsche thinks we will be overwhelmed — paralyzed. Like Hamlet we will not be able to act, because we see that action can "not change anything in the eternal nature of things." We must see, Nietzsche says, that "a profound illusion…first saw the light of the world in the person of Socrates: the unshakeable faith that thought…can penetrate the deepest abysses of being, and that thought is capable not only of knowing being but even of correcting it. This sublime metaphysical illusion accompanies science as an instinct…"

In Nietzsche's view, we cannot change things. Instead, with Hamlet we should "feel it to be ridiculous or humiliating that [we] should be asked to set right a world that is out of joint." One might think this silly. After all, isn't it just obvious that we can change things, reduce suffering, improve existence, make progress ? Isn't it just absurd for Nietzsche to reject the possibility of significant change ? Hasn't such change already occurred ?

We must admit, however, that even if we believe it will be possible to continuously reduce

suffering, it is very unlikely we will ever eliminate it. And if that is so, if there will always be some suffering, then it remains a real question whether it is not better to adopt Nietzsche's view, to face suffering, use it as a discipline, perhaps even increase it, so as to toughen ourselves, rather than let it weaken us, allow it to dominate us, by our continually hoping to overcome it.

But whatever we decide about the possibility or impossibility of reducing suffering, the question may well become moot:

"Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into

numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented

knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but

nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and

congealed, and the clever beasts had to die."

Whatever progress we might think we are making in reducing suffering, whatever change we

think we are bringing about, it may all amount to nothing more than a short and accidental moment in biological time, whose imminent disappearance will finally confirm the horror and meaninglessness of existence.

Nietzsche, of course, does not reject all forms of change. After all, he has a theory of will to

power and of the Übermensch. What he rejects is the sort of change necessary for a perfectible cosmos. He rejects the notion that science and technology can transform the eternal nature of things — he rejects the notion that human effort can end or significantly reduce physical suffering. Instead, he only thinks it possible to build up the power necessary to construct meaning in a meaningless world and thus to hide the horror of existence. The horror of existence cannot be eliminated. It can only be concealed.

We cannot dismiss Nietzsche's view simply because it goes counter to the assumptions of

Christianity, science, liberalism, socialism, and so forth. And we certainly cannot dismiss this view if we hope to understand Nietzsche. At any rate, for Nietzsche, we cannot eliminate suffering, we can only seek to mask it.

(....)

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