German philosopher and cultural critic (1844-1900#timeline/ce19), famous for his criticisms of traditional European morality, religion and conventional philosophical ideas associated with modernity.
He was rejected by a number of women, didn’t get along with his family and in response to his general isolation grew a moustache and took long daily walks. For years his books didn’t sell, his mental health broke down entirely in his forties and he died later in his fifties.
He believed that the central task of philosophy was to teach us how to “become who we are” through discovering our highest potential and remaining loyal to it.
Own up to Envy
Nietzsche recognised envy as an integral part of life. However, generally we tend to feel ashamed of being envious as envy is associated with evil. We hide the feeling of envy from ourselves and others.
He argued that any modern world (which for him meant any time after The French Revolution) cannot contain this logical inconsistency. Democracy and the end of the old feudal-aristocratic age had, in Nietzsche’s eyes, created a perfect breeding ground for envious feelings, because everyone was now encouraged to feel that they were equal to everyone else.
Nietzsche argued that there is nothing inherently wrong with envy, it’s about how we handle it. He argued that envy is a subconscious signal of what we really want and in order to achieve greatness we must learn how to cope with them.
We should learn to study our envy forensically, keeping a diary of envious moments, and then sift through episodes to discern the shape of a future, better self.
The envy we don’t own up to will otherwise end up emitting what Nietzsche called ‘sulphurous odours.’ Bitterness is envy that doesn’t understand itself.
Don’t be a Christian
Nietzsche resented Christianity for “protecting” people from their envy since the religion emerged in late Roman Empire in the minds of timid slaves who lacked the guts to get hold of what they really wanted and so they stuck with a philosophy that made their cowardice into a virtue.
“I call Christianity the one great curse, the one intrinsic depravity… In the entire New Testament, there is only person worth respecting: Pilate, the Roman governor.” F. Nietzsche
They had therefore fashioned a hypocritical creed denouncing what they wanted but were too weak to fight for – while praising what they did not want but happened to have.
In the Christian value system, sexlessness turned into ‘purity’, weakness became “goodness,” submission to people one hated “obedience” and, in Nietzsche’s phrase, “not-being-able-to-take-revenge” turned into “forgiveness.”
Christianity amounted to a giant justification for passivity and a mechanism for draining life of its potential.
Never Drink Alcohol
He hated alcohol for the very same reasons that he scorned Christianity: because both numb pain, and both reassure us that things are just fine as they are, sapping us of the will to change our lives for the better.
“There have been two great narcotics in European civilisation: Christianity and alcohol.” F. Nietzsche
A few drinks usher in a transient feeling of satisfaction that can get fatally in the way of taking the steps necessary to improve our lives.
“What if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other. You have a choice in life: either as little displeasure as possible, painlessness in brief or as much displeasure as possible as the price for an abundance of subtle pleasures and joys.”
Nietzsche argued that if we are finding things difficult, it is not necessarily a sign of failure, it may just be evidence of the nobility and arduousness of the tasks we’ve undertaken.
God is Dead
Nietzsche’s dramatic assertion about the demise of God is not, as it’s often taken to be, some kind of a celebratory statement. Despite his reservations about Christianity, Nietzsche did not think that the end of belief was anything to celebrate. Whilst arguing that religious beliefs were false he observed that there were some areas where religion proved beneficial to the functioning of our society. Giving up on religion would mean that humans would be left to find new ways of supplying themselves with guidance, consolation, ethical ideas and spiritual ambition. This is tricky.
Nietzsche proposed that the gap left by religion should ideally be filled with Culture (philosophy, art, music, literature): Culture should replace Scripture.
He admired the way the Greeks had used tragedy in a practical, therapeutic way, as an occasion for catharsis and moral education.