Nietzsche: Where does it come from, this sickliness? For man is more sick, uncertain, changeable, indeterminate than any other animal, there is no doubt of that - he is THE sick animal: how has that come about? Certainly he has also dared more, done more new things, braved more and challenged fate more than all the other animals put together: he, the great experimenter with himself, discontented and insatiable, wrestling with animals, nature and gods for ultimate dominion - he, still unvanquished, eternally directed toward the future, whose own restless energies never leave him in peace, so that his future digs like a spur into the flesh of every present - how should such a courageous and richly endowed animal not also be the most imperiled, the most chronically and profoundly sick of all sick animals? Man has often had enough; there are actual epidemics of having had enough (as around 1348, at the time of the dance of death); but even this nausea, this weariness, this disgust with himself - all this bursts from him with such violence that it at once becomes a new fetter. The No he says to life brings to light, as if by magic, an abundance of tender Yeses; even when he WOUNDS himself, this master of destruction, of self-destruction - the very wound itself afterward compels him TO LIVE.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 09:23:44 +0000