Notes on Nietzsche 04: The Practicality of Philosophy

Book IV, The Joyful Wisdom

“The world always becomes fuller for him who grows up into the full stature of humanity; there are always more interesting fishing-hooks, thrown out to him; the number of his stimuli is continually on the increase, and similarly the varieties of his pleasure and pain,—the higher man becomes always at the same time happier and unhappier.”

Privation is one of the means through which human beings acquire perspective, for privation hurls one into the deep pit of hell. How deep we fall depends on the intensity of privation, but this abyss also offers one a foothold to climb back up after battling the monsters that spring from the deep and retrieving the treasure they guard. Of course, one can undertake this journey voluntarily, which is infinitely better than being shoved head first into the pit of hell when one least expects it. Reading history is one of the means to do it, for it lays out in story form all the inclinations of wickedness and mayhem that not only reside in man, but also rule him from time to time. Another way to dive into hell is to watch oneself very very closely, one’s past and present, for the sinful moments will make themselves known to you. Accept the worst you have done. Also accept that you may not have stopped where you did, had external forces not stood in your path of destruction. Tear down the defensive walls you have built, that keep your conscience at bay. But there are few who will take this descent out of volition, for who wants to subject one’s soul to the horror that dwells in the dark. Furthermore, this journey requires one to shed one’s virtuous generalised self deprecation, and specifically assign blame where it is due. 

A journey into the underworld, whether voluntary or otherwise, widens one’s emotional range: one is able to feel joy more intensely, but his sorrow also has more depth. This is why this theme is an archetypal one: the hero ventures out into the unknown, descends into the cave, slays the dragon, rescues the princess/ retrieves the treasure and emerges victorious. That’s the thing with cliches - they are so true that we find them false - we have forgotten why they are true. Jung has superimposed the symbol of the cave or the underworld with the unconscious. The forgotten world of instinct holds much wisdom, and only by silencing the mindless chattering of the conscious and its empirical truths, can one descend down to the mothers (for the cave is a symbol of the mother archetype), and retrieve invaluable bits of truth that aid in his transformation. On occasion, the mothers expel symbols that were once familiar but appear strange to the objective man.

“An illusion, however, is his constant accompaniment all along: he thinks he is placed as a spectator and auditor before the great pantomime and concert of life; he calls his nature a contemplative nature, and thereby overlooks the fact that he himself is also a real creator, and continuous poet of life,—that he no doubt differs greatly from the actor in this drama, the so-called practical man, but differs still more from a mere onlooker or spectator before the stage.”

The contemplative man Nietzsche speaks of here, is none other than Jung’s child-hero archetype. The child-hero is an embodiment of potential waiting to manifest itself in the world, as soon as he receives his call to adventure. The contemplative man regards the world carefully, but in doing so, he does not merely regard it; he sets up the value hierarchy that lesser men obey. 

“It is we, we who think and feel, that actually and unceasingly make something which does not yet exist: the whole eternally increasing world of valuations, colours, weights, perspectives, gradations, affirmations and negations. This composition of ours is continually learnt, practised, and translated into flesh and actuality, and even into the commonplace, by the so-called practical men (our actors, as we have said). Whatever has value in the present world, has it not in itself, by its nature,—nature is always worthless:—but a value was once given to it, bestowed upon it, and it was we who gave and bestowed! We only have created the world which is of any account to man!—But it is precisely this knowledge that we lack, and when we get hold of it for a moment we have forgotten it the next: we misunderstand our highest power, we contemplative men, and estimate ourselves at too low a rate,—we are neither as proud nor as happy as we might be.”

In accomplishing this formidable task, the contemplative man does not view himself as anything more than a spectator who observes the drama of human existence that plays itself out before him. But he is, in fact, the playwright. Without him, there would be no men, only stones. For without a value hierarchy, we wouldn’t know what to do or how to act. There would be no actualities, only possibilities. But as soon as we can distinguish good from better, bad from worse, we can navigate in the world and go about our lives, selecting superior actions over the rest. The practical man recognises the possibilities in the world, and the contemplative man (the philosopher) identifies which of the possibilities are more relevant. Since thought must precede action, perhaps philosophy isn’t just a bunch of ideas divorced from world realities after all.