Nietzschean philosophy gives us hope to constructively use our pain and not despair in the face of adversities. He believed that greatness is not inborn that it’s achieved by responding intelligently to the deficiencies we have, by exerting ourselves:
Don’t talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can name all kinds of great men who were not very gifted. They acquired greatness, became ‘geniuses’ (as we put it) through qualities about whose lack no man aware of them likes to speak all of them had that diligent seriousness of a craftsman, learning rest to construct the parts properly before daring to make a great whole. They allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.
Nietzsche’s philosophy can be read as an antithesis to the Indian Carvaka tradition. The Carvaka’s sole motive is to avoid pain, suffering and seek pleasure to the maximum. Whereas Nietzsche says to cut out every negative element would simultaneously mean choking of positive elements that might arise. It’s not very wise to avoid pain and deem it like it has nothing useful to teach us. We must not mistake thinking that he is asking us to dwell on suffering and actively pursue it, all that he is saying is that we must not fail to recognize what we owe to our difficulties. We believe, as Nietzsche put it ‘everything first-rate must be causa sui [the cause of itself].’
Yet ‘good and honoured things’ were, Nietzsche stressed, ‘artfully related, knotted and crocheted to … wicked, apparently antithetical things’. ‘Love and hate, gratitude and revenge, good nature and anger … belong together,’ which does not mean that they have to be expressed together, but that a positive may be the result of a negative successfully dealt with.
Of the Greek civilization he had said that It was not an outward manifestation of a serenity and order they felt within themselves and their society, the opinion of the great classicist Johann Winckelmann (1717–68), which was the accepted view at German universities. Far from it Nietzsche said that the Greek Civilization had arisen from the sublimation of the most sinister forces:
The greater and more terrible the passions are that an age, a people, an individual can permit themselves, because they are capable of employing them as a means, the higher stands their culture.
He was very much influenced and impressed by the culture of the antiquity:
They do not repudiate the natural drive that finds expression in the evil qualities but regulate it and, as soon as they have discovered sufficient prescriptive measures to provide these wild waters with the least harmful means of channeling and outflow, confine them to definite cults and days. This is the root of all the moral free-mindedness of antiquity. One granted to the evil and suspicious … a moderate discharge, and did not strive after their total annihilation. Fulfilment is reached by responding wisely to difficulties that could tear one apart:
All passions have a phase when they are merely disastrous, in which they draw their victims down by weight of stupidity– and a later, very much later one in which they marry the spirit, ‘spiritualize’ themselves… We no longer marvel at dentists who pull out teeth to stop them hurting.
Fulfilment or happiness may not come from comfort. It is by wrenching ourselves from the depths of our suffering and making a strong character of ourselves by facing and cultivating and not preventing or forestalling our difficulties that we may ultimately have a fulfilling existence:
If you experience suffering and displeasure as evil, hateful, worthy of annihilation, and as a defect of existence, then it is clear that [you harbour in your heart] … the religion of comfortableness.
It can be said in the way of criticism that there’s a glorification of pain, that it toughens you up. If we work now we don’t have to struggle in the future. Nietzsche makes no such promises. All he says is that we should not be demoralized by our difficulties, we should always try to take it up as a challenge and learn and grow something better out of them.
Nietzsche was against the dominant moral philosophy of his times: utilitarianism. Mill proposed that: [A]ctions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.
Happiness as the summum bonum of life was a British invention. It’s not in terms of happiness or pleasure that we can weigh the value of things. He deemed such a mode of thought to be naive and anyone who is aware of creative power and an artistic conscience will not opt for such a way of living. A fulfilled life can’t be attained painlessly or by living comfortably but by living dangerously:
The secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is – to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius!
Settling for what’s easy and denouncing what’s desirable because one doesn’t have the courage to endure the difficulties these goods demand is draining the life of its potential.
Author Bio: Aisha is a PhD scholar in Philosophy at the University of Delhi.
Curious and reflective by nature, she engages deeply with ideas through the Socratic method and draws on Stoic principles to inform her thinking. As an existential feminist, Aisha explores themes of freedom, responsibility, and authenticity in lived experience. She is an active contributor to the Philotreat community, known for her calm presence and thoughtful insights. For her, philosophy is not just an academic pursuit—but a meaningful way of life. Connect with Aisha on Linkedin!
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