NIETZSCHE: THE COURAGEOUS TRUTHFULNESS OF THE TRAGIC HUMAN BEING

Nietzsche praises tragedy above all for its courage in the face of the truth. Philosophers since Socrates believe, as the very term “philosophy” - “love of wisdom” - implies, that the truth is loveable, and hence that the truth about the world is beautiful and comforting.

They believe that the world is a cosmos rather than a chaos, that nature is friendly to man and welcoming of his longing for wisdom and justice and happiness, if he will only free his mind from the delusions of mere convention and live according to nature. But this belief, Nietzsche insists, is itself a delusion: “‘According to nature' you want to live?... what deceptive words these are! Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power - how could you live according to this indifference? Living — is this not precisely wanting to be other than this nature?” (1989, 15 — emphases in the text). Now philosophers, at least Socratic philosophers, cannot bear to face the cruel indifference of nature to our moral and philosophic longings. Although such philosophers may dimly recognize the harshness of the truth they ostensibly love — and hence though it may be true that “every philosophy was in its genesis a long tragedy” (1989, 37) — philosophers nonetheless recoil from that insight. Plato, for example, “is a coward before reality” (1954a, 558—9). Accordingly, philosophy unself-consciously and self-deceptively imposes its comforting moralities and ideals on chaotic nature and thereby “creates the world in its own image” (1989, 16). But the tragic human being faces the true chaos of the world unblinkingly, or at least as unblinkingly as is possible for a human being. For “it might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who would know it completely would perish, in which case the strength of a spirit should be measured according to how much of the ‘truth’ one could still barely endure” (49).

One might think that the tragic human being’s willingness to face such deadly truth is madness. Doesn’t such truthfulness destroy all possibility of human well-being and flourishing? As Nietzsche himself asks, “What in us really wants ‘truth’... Suppose we want truth: why not rather untruth? and uncertainty? even ignorance?” If nature truly is so thoroughly indifferent to us, must we not conclude that ignorance of this truth is “a condition of life and growth” (1989, 9, 101—2 — emphases in text)?

Nietzsche suggests, however, that, while facing the truth, a truth that may be “harmful and dangerous to the highest degree,” may cause one boundless suffering and misery, facing the truth, as the tragic man does, may therefore ennoble human beings (1989, 49). For “Profound suffering makes noble.”... “[I]t almost determines the order of rank how profoundly human beings can suffer” (220 — emphasis in text). The alternative to noble suffering, according to Nietzsche, is not noble contentment but rather “the universal green-pasture happiness of the herd, with security, lack of danger, comfort, and an easier life for everyone” (54). Nietzsche attacks those who follow “hedonism” and “eudamonism” as follows: “You want, if possible — and there is no more insane ‘if possible’ — to abolish suffering. And we? It really seems that we would rather have it higher and worse than ever. Well-being as you understand it — that is no goal, that seems to us an end, a state that soon makes man ridiculous and contemptible — that makes his destruction desirable. The discipline of suffering, of great suffering — do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far? That tension of the soul in unhappiness which cultivates its strength, its shudders, face to face with great ruin, its inventiveness and courage in enduring, persevering, interpreting, and exploiting mask, spirit, cunning, greatness — was it not granted to it through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?” (153—4 — emphases in text). Nietzsche suggests here that, through the anguish of facing the ugly and painful truth about the world and its indifference to man, and above all through the heroic sacrifice of happiness and well-being that such courageous truthfulness entails, the tragic human being affirms his humanity and makes himself noble.

Yet Nietzsche also suggests that the tragic human being is not shattered by the spectacle of cosmic indifference, but even ultimately takes pleasure from it. Indeed, “The tragic man affirms even the harshest suffering: he is sufficiently strong, rich, and capable of deifying to do so” (1968, 543).^{^[109]} The true experience of tragedy, then, is not pity for the tragic hero or terror that one might suffer the hero's fate or horror at the harsh indifference of the world to man; it is rather an austerely satisfying feeling of power and pleasure in one's courage to face and to affirm “the terror and horror of existence” (1967, 42). “Pleasure in tragedy characterizes strong ages and natures: their non plus ultra is perhaps the divina commedia. It is the heroic spirits who say Yes to themselves in tragic cruelty: they are hard enough to experience suffering as a pleasure” (1968, 450 — emphases in text).^{^[110]} “The psychology of the orgiastic as an overflowing feeling of life and strength, where even pain still has the effect of a stimulus, gave me the key to the concept of tragic feeling, which has been misunderstood by Aristotle... Not in order to be liberated from terror and pity, not in order to purge oneself of a dangerous affect by its vehement discharge — Aristotle understood it that way — but in order to be oneself the eternal joy of becoming, beyond all terror and pity — that joy which included even the joy in destroying” (1954a, 562—3 — emphasis in text). This tragic joy or satisfaction in not only observing but also in willing the suffering of others and of oneself amounts, Nietzsche acknowledges, to a pleasure in cruelty. “What constitutes the painful voluptuousness of tragedy is cruelty; what seems agreeable in so-called tragic pity, and at bottom in everything sublime, up to the highest and most delicate shudders of metaphysics, receives its sweetness solely from the admixture of cruelty.” Inasmuch as the world is indifferent to the deepest longings of our hearts and minds — for happiness and justice and wisdom — and inasmuch as the tragic human being not only has the courage to face the truth about the world, but also takes pleasure in facing that truth, the pleasure he takes must entail a pleasure in inflicting pain upon himself.

“Finally, consider that even the seeker after knowledge forces his mind to recognize things against the inclination of the mind, and often enough also against the wishes of his heart — by way of saying No where he would like to say Yes, love, and adore — and thus acts as a transfigurer of cruelty. Indeed, any insistence on profundity and thoroughness is a violation, a desire to hurt the basic will of the mind which unceasingly strives for the apparent and superficial — in all desire to know there is a drop of cruelty” (1989, 158—9). While Nietzsche, then, attacks the Socratic tradition of philosophy in the name of tragedy, he makes it clear that the core of the genuinely philosophic, truth-seeking experience is identical to the core of the experience of tragedy: the noble courage and strength to face the painful truth and the austere and even cruel pleasure in forcing oneself to face the truth.^{^[111]}

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Source: Ahrensdorf P.J.. Greek Tragedy and Political Philosophy: Rationalism and Religion in Sophocles Theban Plays.New York, "Cambridge University Press", 2009, -206 p.. 2009

NIETZSCHE: THE COURAGEOUS TRUTHFULNESS OF THE TRAGIC HUMAN BEING

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