Notes on Nietzsche 07: Individual Responsibility

Book IV, The Joyful Wisdom

“Is it to your advantage to be above all compassionate? And is it to the advantage of the sufferers when you are so?”

We live in times where it is mandatory to suffer along with the suffering; any less simply gives you admission into the ranks of monsters. Compassion is the fashionable “virtue” of our times, and it is demanded that you should seek out victims in every crowd, to unload upon them the full force of your compassion and wrath upon the rest for not suffering with them. Indeed, the compassionate often get so swayed that they deem it more worth their while to join the ranks of victims, than to uplift them out of their victimhood.

“That from which we suffer most profoundly and personally is almost incomprehensible and inaccessible to everyone else: in this matter we are hidden from our neighbour even when he eats at the same table with us. Everywhere, however, where we are noticed as sufferers, our suffering is interpreted in a shallow way; it belongs to the nature of the emotion of pity to divest unfamiliar suffering of its properly personal character:—our "benefactors" lower our value and volition more than our enemies. In most benefits which are conferred on the unfortunate there is something shocking in the intellectual levity with which the compassionate person plays the rôle of fate: he knows nothing of all the inner consequences and complications which are called misfortune for me or for you!”

We make a distinction between me and not-me, between ourselves and the outside world, on the basis of subjective experience. The strongest subjective experience is pain. It is when we are suffering from intense painful experiences, whether physical or emotional, that we feel most alone in our pain. It is in intense physical pain that people fail to recognise their families; that people yearn for it to end, or for life itself to end; that they almost feel betrayed by everyone else that does not share their pain; that they feel least understood by their closest kin. Yet, the compassionate claim not only to understand, but to feel our tragedies better than we do! Leave our pain alone, we might say, except perhaps, our pain is now more theirs than it is ours, and we dare not make a claim upon the smallest part of it!

“The entire economy of my soul and its adjustment by "misfortune," the uprising of new sources and needs, the closing up of old wounds, the repudiation of whole periods of the past—none of these things which may be connected with misfortune preoccupy the dear sympathiser. He wishes to succour, and does not reflect that there is a personal necessity for misfortune; that terror, want, impoverishment, midnight watches, adventures, hazards and mistakes are as necessary to me and to you as their opposites, yea, that, to speak mystically, the path to one's own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one's own hell. The "religion of compassion" (or "the heart") bids him help, and he thinks he has helped best when he has helped most speedily!”

If it were left up to them, the compassionate would either want to do away with suffering altogether, or make the whole of humanity into a suffering population, which is in reality, no different from the former, for suffering cannot exist without its antithesis. This equalizing of people and their experiences encourages mediocrity at every level. Every art or skill learned by its performer is done so by inflicting cruelty upon oneself in physical or emotional form. It is when privation consumes us, that we strive to defeat it. In that sense, there is potential for nobility to spring from tragedy.

“If you adherents of this religion actually have the same sentiments towards yourselves which you have towards your fellows, if you are unwilling to endure your own suffering even for an hour, and continually forestall all possible misfortune, if you regard suffering and pain generally as evil, as detestable, as deserving of annihilation, and as blots on existence, well, you have then, besides your religion of compassion, yet another religion in your heart (and this is perhaps the mother of the former)—the religion of smug ease. Ah, how little you know of the happiness of man, you comfortable and good-natured ones!—for happiness and misfortune are brother and sister, and twins, who grow tall together, or, as with you, remain small together!”

Why must one not have to jostle, stripped of our armour, against the ills of existence? Why must one not have to brave the tragedies that befall us? How else do we expect to justify our existence? Why would we be entitled to strike special favour (or universal favour as the compassionate would fain have it) with Lady Fortuna? We forget perhaps, that we are no longer in Eden. And sweet-laden trees will not spring up before us that we need only outstretch our hands to pluck them off.

“How is it at all possible for a person to keep to his path! Some cry or other is continually calling one aside: our eye then rarely lights on anything without it becoming necessary for us to leave for a moment our own affairs and rush to give assistance. I know there are hundreds of respectable and laudable methods of making me stray from my course, and in truth the most "moral" of methods! Indeed, the opinion of the present-day preachers of the morality of compassion goes so far as to imply that just this, and this alone is moral:—to stray from our course to that extent and to run to the assistance of our neighbour. I am equally certain that I need only give myself over to the sight of one case of actual distress, and I, too, am lost!”

It is easier to cry with the sufferers than to uplift oneself of one’s own tragedies. Furthermore, the former confers upon one a certain moral distinction, and seeks to justify the shirking of the first of one’s responsibility, that is towards oneself. We are drawn towards taking action, that much stands to our credit, but why must we take the easier path of helping others, when our own poverty continually nudges us?

“Indeed, there is even a secret seduction in all this awakening of compassion, and calling for help: our "own way" is a thing too hard and insistent, and too far removed from the love and gratitude of others,—we escape from it and from our most personal conscience, not at all unwillingly, and, seeking security in the conscience of others, we take refuge in the lovely temple of the "religion of pity." As soon now as any war breaks out, there always breaks out at the same time a certain secret delight precisely in the noblest class of the people: they rush with rapture to meet the new danger of death, because they believe that in the sacrifice for their country they have finally that long-sought-for permission—the permission to shirk their aim:—war is for them a detour to suicide, a detour, however, with a good conscience.”

Let us not deceive ourselves that there is nobility in this kind of martyrdom. Will the virtuous exterior donned by us for the benefit of others deceive us too, despite the conviction we have over the knowledge of our own impulses? We must pick our battles to fight, and what battle is better to pick than the one being waged in our souls? Can we not quell our yearning for applause and lower ourselves so that we are not above the more unassuming task of silencing our own unrest? Numerous wars are fought every day in soul and society, but let us not forget where the foremost allegiance of this warrior lies. Let us come back to the home we left undefended.