Sebastijan Pešec works in the project “Buddhism in the Himalayan Deserts: the Tradition of Yogis and Yoginis in Ladakh”. His interests include Vajrayana Buddhism, the Kagyu school, Daoism, Nietzsche's philosophy, ethics, environmental ethics, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of religion and the history of Ladakh area.

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Nietzsche’s valuation of suffering – Sebastijan Pešec

 

Nietzsche's thought is full of complementary opposites – a rare exception in European philosophy. He sees the pair of opposites – even though in perpetual infight – as something that should both be affirmed. We should not want to eliminate one side of the pair. This goes for suffering as well. We need suffering as a necessary source for growing stronger and overcoming ourselves. Nietzsche says that wanting to eliminate suffering is like wanting to eliminate bad weather. A society where suffering would be gone, would become decadent and soon die off. For Nietzsche the greater the resistance to will to power and thus the greater the pain, the greater pleasure and feeling of power comes from overcoming the resistance and pain. Pleasure for him is a kind of pain. All this can sound controversial and harsh in modern ethics, but the real question that Nietzsche gives us for contemporary times is, how much and what kind of suffering we truly need as individuals and as a globalized society – as humanity that is plagued with a plethora of crises. Suffering for Nietzsche cannot be simply labelled as evil. It is a concept that houses many valuations: it can be evil, good, useful, neutral etc.

 

3 Questions:

- What kind of suffering is useful for human flourishing and what kind is its opposite?

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- Where does Nietzsche positions suffering in the fourfold schema of good and evil, and good and bad?

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- Does the ideal overman reduce or increase the amount of suffering in the world?

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Links:

https://lifeworthliving.yale.edu/resources/nietzsche-on-the-discipline-of-suffering

https://thomashurka.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/nietzsche-perfectionist.pdf