Rational Agnostic
Well-Known Member
I "discovered" Nietzsche's works a few months ago, and have been reading him as much as I can. As it happened, I discovered him at a time when I was going through a bit of depression and anxiety. Nothing too serious, just a "funk" I suppose. Reading Nietzsche fired me up about life again and brought me out of anxiety and depression unlike anything else ever could have. He had has some of the most profound insights about life that I have ever read. Whether a Christian, atheist, liberal, conservative, etc, there will likely be something in his works that provokes you to strong disagreement, or strong agreement, but it's impossible to read Nietzsche without having some strong reaction, which is why I recommend him for everyone. And his wisdom, and insights about embracing life are written better than any other writer I have read. Like this (Aphorism 341 from The Gay Science, Book IV):
The Heaviest Burden. What if a demon crept after you into your loneliest loneliness some day or night, and said to you: "This life, as you live it at present, and have lived it, you 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 you 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 you with it, you speck of dust!" - Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth, and curse the demon that so spoke? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment in which you would answer him: "You are a God, and never did I hear anything so divine!" If that thought acquired power over you as you are, it would transform you, and perhaps crush you; the question with regard to all and everything: "Do you want this once more, and also for innumerable times?" would lie as the heaviest burden upon your activity! Or, how would you have to become favourably inclined to yourself and to life, so as to long for nothing more ardently than for this last eternal sanctioning and sealing?
WOW. It's passages like this that never cease to amaze and inspire me. No other writer that I know of has managed to convey such power, determination, and optimism.
The Heaviest Burden. What if a demon crept after you into your loneliest loneliness some day or night, and said to you: "This life, as you live it at present, and have lived it, you 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 you 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 you with it, you speck of dust!" - Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth, and curse the demon that so spoke? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment in which you would answer him: "You are a God, and never did I hear anything so divine!" If that thought acquired power over you as you are, it would transform you, and perhaps crush you; the question with regard to all and everything: "Do you want this once more, and also for innumerable times?" would lie as the heaviest burden upon your activity! Or, how would you have to become favourably inclined to yourself and to life, so as to long for nothing more ardently than for this last eternal sanctioning and sealing?
WOW. It's passages like this that never cease to amaze and inspire me. No other writer that I know of has managed to convey such power, determination, and optimism.