"2. Even the bravest of us only rarely has the courage for what he actually knows..."

"3. To live alone you must be an animal or a god - says Aristotle. He left out the third case: you must be both - a philosopher..."

"10. Do not be cowardly towards your actions! Do not abandon them after the event - remorse is indecent."





Being cowardly towards our actions

Being cowardly away from our actions





In this post I'm going to explore three of the aphorisms most heavily weighted with psychological and existential implications from the chapter "Maxims and Barbs" inNietzsche, 1888I'll quote them one at a time, and try and make sense of each of them within Nietzsche's thought. All quotes are taken from chapters 10 & 23 ofed. Ansell Pearson and Large, Blackwell (pp. 456-468).Let us begin then:(p. 456)Obviously there are many meanings we can project onto this in light of the rest of Nietzsche's thought, so I'm going to try and tackle it in the most direct and literal sense here. Nietzsche is reminding us that the truth is often dangerous and challenging to our established worldview; we often know things or discover certain facts which force us to leave our comfort zone in a way we are genuinely unprepared for.I think perhaps this is best explained with a hypothetical:You are trapped in a room. An enemy army is working their way up the stairs to arrest, trial and execute you. You know, in virtue of the layout of the building, that your only hope for survival is to jump out the window, but you are on the seventh floor, and will most likely break your legs if you don't manage to fall properly, or grasp the building in order to climb down. The question Nietzsche is asking you, then, is "Do you jump, or do you hope you don't get executed?".Let us consider another truth which we know Nietzsche holds dear, from his introductory fable in the essay(1873) (ch 10 of the reader, p. 114):"Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. - One might invent such a fable, and yet still he would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature."Perhaps seen as a sign of Nihilism on Nietzsche's part (though on no account would I personally level that term as accurate here...), this fable tells us that Nietzsche holds the human race in no high status - on no pedestal - with regards to the content of the universe. We didn't matter before we were here, perhaps - and we will not matter once we are gone. This is a truth we all have access to in one form or another, but it would require a great deal of courage to embrace such a thing wholeheartedly, unashamedly and without regret. It is truths like these to which he refers in this aphorism.Moving on...(p. 456)First let's consider the Aristotle quote, and then Nietzsche's expansion. To live alone requires a certain strength; an ability firstly of non-dependence on others for your well-being. You don't require someone else to feed you, to shelter you, and to nurse you through illness. You also must be independent of social interaction; your psychological well-being must not depend on the reassurance, validation or education of another. Lastly, you must have no fear of death. For solitary animals, we might take it that all of these are the case. For Gods, independence is almost a necessary quality. So what is Nietzsche's addition, thisHumans are a social animal. Again, referring to, we know that Nietzsche believes that "the individual wants to maintain himself against other individuals" (p. 115), just like animals. But, unlike gods, the human "from boredom and necessity, man wishes to exist socially and with the herd; therefore, he needs to make peace and strives accordingly to banish from his world at least the most flagrant[war of all against all]" (p. 115). How can this second condition of man be reconciled with the necessity for solitude of independence attributed to gods and animals? The answer: philosophy. Only those who can think in a particular way, define their own meanings and standards and derive their own conclusions regarding their position can ever expect to maintain a practical sanity in these conditions. Philosophy for Nietzsche, then, must simultaneously lower the status of man to beast, but raise it to the status of gods; to be below man's civilized attitude, but above his need to be a part of a herd; a cow that is wise enough to live in solitude.Finally...What immediately strikes me about this aphorism is its congruence with the principle of: if we were to repeat every action, every mistake over and over for all eternity, surely it would be better to not have to repeatedly suffer the feelings of regret and remorse in each instance; we would want to take it in our stride, so that a greater quantity of our eternal actions are pleasant and resembling growth, progress. However, I don't want to get too tied up in this, since there are more practical and accessible applications for this aphorism.let's try and understand what the negative of this statement would be, so that we might come to understand why it's worth avoiding. What would it mean toones' actions? What would it be toone's actions? We have to consider two different time frames here. Once we have done this, it should be clear as to why regret and remorse concerning our actions is in poor taste.Firstly, we might be cowardly towards our actions before them: we might be afraid to do either what we want, or what we feel we ought to do; we might observe obstacles and challenges, consequences and results which pose a threat - a serious danger - to some aspect of our lives. As a result, we might act overly-timidly; acting with too greater caution to actually bring about the desired effect. Let us call thisAn example might be something like hitting a nail into a very soft piece of wood; we are afraid that if we strike the nail with the hammer all too hard, we will shatter the piece of wood, not only failing to achieve our goal but also destroying a valuable resource for our ends. To be cowardly towards this action then would be to either avoid hitting the nail in the first place, and thus guarantee we don't achieve our goal, or it might be the case that, in our timidness we strike the nail so softly that it completely fails to penetrate the wood at all. Should we continue striking in this manner, we will never get the nail into the wood, and our goal will be forever at a distance which we will never even begin to close.Both of these outcomes are bad, but perhaps there is something worse about the latter: rather than shying away from the act entirely, we expend energy and time trying to achieve a goal, all the while never having the courage to properly take the first step - like committing to trying to climb a mountain, but forever leaving one foot firmly on the ground. In short, wasting our time in an absurd and pitiful way, never overcoming an obstacle, never improving, and most certainly never edging even the slightest bit closer to our goal. At least with the former we might find ourselves free to act toward some different goal, with greater effect.Now let us consider this from the other temporal direction:the act after the event. Let's assume we weren't cowardly to start with, but were over-zealous, striking the nail so hard as to shatter the wood. We have made a fool of ourselves, and also destroyed our precious resource. Now we are ashamed of ourselves; we regret our actions; we feel remorse; we wish we hadn't acted in the first place. Let's call thisTo be able to truly escape our mistake would require one of two things: either that we could change the past and undo the mistake, or that we might erase it from history entirely, and start again. Both of these are impossible. The next best thing then is to forget the mistake; to pretend that it didn't happen - to run away from it. I think it's obvious as to why this would be to our detriment; if we were to forget, we would not remember how hard of a strike ishard; we might repeat our mistake, once again submitting ourselves to shame, once again feeling remorse, and once again forgetting, locking ourselves in a vicious cycle of failure and regret.Perhaps then this is precisely why Nietzsche's alternative title for Twilight of the Idols is: "How to Philosophize with a Hammer".