I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Sunday Planning, I plan for the week ahead.
On ne peut penser et écrire qu’ assis (G. Flaubert). There have I got you, nihilist! Sedentary application is the very sin against the Holy Ghost. Only thoughts won by walking are valuable.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
The Flaubert quote means “One can only think and write while seated.”
I should be winning many thoughts this week as I walk the dogs in the morning and afternoon. I discovered by (literal) accident that I can’t walk both Bo and Sally at the same time. Don’t worry; I’m okay! But I’ve suffered yet another injury to my poor 58-year-old body, this time to my left hand.
Nietzsche’s walks in Sils Maria
Continental philosopher Nietzsche served as a professor of classical philology — the study of language in oral and historical sources that combines textural criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics — at the University of Basel from 1869 to 1879. He had to resign this position when his various bodily challenges that included myopia, migraines, indigestion and aftereffects of a horse riding incident left him unable to meet his responsibilities.
Living on a pension and with financial help from friends, he spent summers in Sils Maria in Switzerland and winters in Italian cities and sometimes Nice. In Sils Maria, a more than mile high village in the Alps near St. Moritz, he walked three to four hours twice a day, living the vita contemplativa.
With Nietzsche as an example, I’m going to gradually extend the length of the walks. When I walk Bo with his more tractable style I often listen to financial or philosophical podcasts which probably keeps me from winning any thoughts. But Sally requires peak situational awareness so that I can command her to heal should a person, dog, or golf cart pass by. Walking Sally is more mindful than thoughtful, so perhaps I should forego the podcasts with Bo to allow for more contemplation.
Nietzsche’s period as an independent philosopher from 1879 to 1888 (when he sadly suffered a mental breakdown and never recovered before dying in 1900 at age 55) was an extremely prolific period for him. He published a book or major section of a book each year beginning with Human, All Too Human in 1878 until 1888. This period saw him complete his masterpiece Thus Spoke Zarathustra in which he introduced core concepts such as the Übermensch, the will to power, and eternal recurrence via a poetic and prophetic narrative, not traditional and dry philosophical prose.
Nietzsche’s answer to nihilism
Nietzsche’s primary philosophical argument was with nihilism, the idea that nothing matters, or that our lives in the hear and now do not matter, that what ultimately has meaning is something else: a god in heaven and our lives in the hereafter, or some true Platonic reality that exists beyond our sense perceptions. His antidote to nihilism? The theory of eternal return, which he described in The Gay Science:
What if a demon crept after thee into thy loneliest loneliness some day or night, and said to thee: “This life, as thou livest it at present, and hast lived it, thou must live it once more, and also innumerable times; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh, and all the unspeakably small and great in thy life must come to thee again, and all in the same series and sequence—and similarly this spider and this moonlight among the trees, and similarly this moment, and I myself. The eternal sand-glass of existence will ever be turned once more, and thou with it, thou speck of dust!”—Wouldst thou not throw thyself down and gnash thy teeth, and curse the demon that so spake? Or hast thou once experienced a tremendous moment in which thou wouldst answer him: “Thou art a God, and never did I hear anything so divine!” If that thought acquired power over thee as thou art, it would transform thee, and perhaps crush thee; the question with regard to all and everything: “Dost thou want this once more, and also for innumerable times?” would lie as the heaviest burden upon thy activity! Or, how wouldst thou have to become favourably inclined to thyself and to life, so as to long for nothing more ardently than for this last eternal sanctioning and sealing?
There is debate as to whether Nietzsche believed in this idea of each moment of one’s life recurring again and again into eternity as literally true or whether it was simply a thought experiment designed to force one into full affirmation of one’s life’s unfolding.
Considering Nietzsche’s difficult life and the bodily discomfort he lived with for much of it, it’s all the more surprising that he should promote such a philosophy of affirmation. He was in part reacting to the pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy offered in The World As Will and Representation, where Schopenhauer writes “no satisfaction is lasting: it is always merely the starting point of a new striving.” He was also reacting to the nihilism he saw in Christianity, where ultimate meaning was found not in this human life, but in some divine plane that we might reach later.
Interesting that Schopenhauer deeply admired Buddhism and incorporated some of its core concepts such as suffering, desire, and letting go of attachment via renuncation into his pessimistic philosophy. Buddhism doesn’t affirm anything, does it? It just seeks to accept what is, mindfully. Yes, there is some thread of cultivating compassion in various forms. But it is not an approach that seeks a positive affirmation of life, like Nietzsche’s philosophy does.
The week’s plans
I have a blissfully open schedule this week, so I can focus on what I love best: reading and studying philosophy, blogging each morning, walking the dogs, maintaining my home and garden, and managing my income portfolio.
I’ve been painting a little too, and have considered whether I should submit a piece to the Women’s Caucus for Art Colorado Chapter’s member show. I have many recent pieces I like quite well. However, I’m also devoted recently to my vita negativa, in which I say “I would prefer not to” to those activities that take me away from my vita contemplativa.
I think, “maybe I could sell a piece” but the amount of money I’d possibly earn from sale of one artwork is minimal compared to the outlay of energy of getting the work to the show, participating in the opening and the closing artist talks, and getting my piece photographed.
Related: I did see in a recent newsletter from WCACO that artists in the group struggle with getting their pieces photographed well. This is potentially an opportunity for me because I have a high-end camera, lens, and lights for photographing paintings, and I have the knowledge to do it well, having completed professional photography coursework.
But again I think, “I would prefer not to.” I enjoy the splendidly simple and solitary life I’m building for myself, and I’m not really sure I want to dilute it in any way, even though helping people photograph their paintings could be very fun and lucrative.
I’ve started watching The Man in the High Castle, a dystopian tv show that asks, “what would happen if the Axis powers won World War II”? This complements my recent viewing of various war movies and shows. I want to better understand the reality of war, as we are in wartime as much as it seems to people in the U.S. that we are not. All Quiet on the Western Front from 2022 was tragic and horrifying. I’m thankful that trench warfare is a thing of the past.
So I move into May with a better and better idea of what midlife I want, with bodily challenges (my injured hand, my puckered macula) but also with a readiness to affirm this life I’m living, again and again.