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.By choosing to affirm existence in general, one commitsoneself to affirming all of it indiscriminately and equally.Of course,one need not become unaware of, or insensitive to, differences inquality thereby; one can accept imperfect situations wholeheart-edly, recognizing them for the limited conditions that they are.Butthey will be differences that make no overriding difference to one saffirming attitude.Just as Nietzsche s  ugliest man  the murderer of God  couldnever overcome his guilt, because, despite the fact that he had killed God, God-related values continued to persist in hismemory, Nietzsche does not appear to have stepped significantlybeyond the constraints of life-affirmation into his own perceivednoontime daylight of existence-affirmation.144 He was able to movefrom the traditional moral view to a life-affirming view, wherein thedistinction between good and evil dissolved, so as to arrive at astandpoint  beyond good and evil. He was not, however, clearlyable to move non-ambivalently and completely from a life-affirming to an existence-affirming view, so that the distinctionbetween health and sickness dissolved, and it would be possible toaffirm all existence, whether it was healthy or sick.Nietzsche madethe transition from traditional morality to life-affirmation, but hecontinued to vacillate uneasily between the life-affirming view andthe existence-affirming view, for he never stopped writing about thesick aspects of life, and never stopped being irritated by these108Embracing life versus embracing existenceimperfections.Nietzsche appears to have ended his career withsome measure of frustration and dissatisfaction, because the sick-ness of the world, and probably of his own deteriorating body aswell, continued to vex him.Existence-affirmation and the world s perfectionOn the more positive face of things, Nietzsche s existence-affirmingdiscussions take us beyond his more discontented remarks towardsa more thoroughly joyful outlook.When the doctrine of eternalrecurrence is understood through health-affirming or  flourishing-affirming eyes, the recurrence of the sick does become a point ofdifficulty.145 When the doctrine is understood through existence-affirming eyes, though, then whatever happens is interpreted as anaffirmative occasion, and sickness presents no obstacle.SometimesNietzsche assumed this latter attitude as well, even in his final yearof intellectual activity, when his intellectual collapse was imminent:My formula for greatness in people is amor fati: that a person wantsnothing different  not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.It isnot simply to cope with what is necessary, still less to hide it & butlove it.146Even at this moment I can see my future  an expansive future! & Ido not want in the slightest, that anything become different than it is;147I myself do not want to become different.Zarathustra is a dancer -: like one, who has the hardest, most horribleinsight into reality, and who has thought the most  abysmalthought, without having it be an objection to existence, not even toits eternal recurrence.Moreover, one who finds a ground therein, tomake himself into an eternal Yes to all things,  the awesome,unbounded Yes and Amen.  I still carry my beneficent affirmation148into all abysses  But once again, that is the concept of Dionysus.Such existence-affirming remarks are inspiring, but in general, it israre to find Nietzsche lovingly reaching down to everyone who issick, weak, and dying, as Jesus did.When we encounter Nietzschesaying  yes to existence as a whole, or affirming eternal recurrence109NIETZSCHEin a way that is not tinged with a distaste for the recurrence of theweak, his affirmation tends to reside at a very high, and noticeablydistanced, level of abstraction, where he affirms not the details  notthe scars, the breakdowns, the nauseas, the failures  but the cosmicrecycling process in general.Nietzsche asserts that he loves  eter-nity, which is to say that he loves the entire world as  world-in-general, and he does not typically assert, as a rule, that he loves theinfinitely detailed world.149 And this abstract style of world-affirma-tion is a slightly disappointing departure from Nietzsche s generallydiscriminating and nuanced approach to his subjects.In his exis-tence-affirming moments, he tended to speak only generally, just ashe spoke generally of  life itself in The Birth of Tragedy when hedescribed the joyous nature of life-affirmation.His existence-affirming remarks are comparably indeterminate:O how could I not lust for eternity, and for the ring of all weddingrings  the ring of recurrence?I have not yet found the woman from whom I d like to have chil-dren, but it would be this woman that I love: because I love you, oeternity!Because I love you, o eternity!150This is a thought-provoking paragraph, and it is cited by somescholars as signifying Nietzsche s overcoming of the disgust he felton considering the recurrence of the rabble, of the weak, and of thesick.151 Here, Nietzsche professes to love existence as a man loves awoman, and he loves the particular cyclical style of existence further idealized here as a wedding ring  as a person would findattractive the personality of his or her beloved.There is much that isromantic and dreamy about Nietzsche s love of existence, and hisexpressions of existence-affirmation convey an ecstatic quality.With respect to his association between eternity and woman,though, his attitude remains comparatively unrealistic, in contrastto the more down-to-earth kind of love Shakespeare expressed inSonnet 130:My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun;Coral is far more red, than her lips red;If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;110Embracing life versus embracing existenceIf hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.I have seen roses damasked, red and white,But no such roses see I in her cheeks,And in some perfumes is there more delightThan in the breath that from my mistress reeks.I love to hear her speak, yet well I knowThat music hath a far more pleasing sound;I grant I never saw a goddess go My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.And yet by heaven I think my love as rareAs any she belied with false compare.152Shakespeare s characterization of his beloved is more existentially-guided and realistic, and it highlights how Nietzsche, even in hisefforts to affirm existence, sometimes willfully idealized andsmoothed over the warts to the point where his existence-affirmationwas perfected enough, ecstatic enough, and comforting enough to bebearable [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]