On Enjoying and Suffering the Passions
I'd recommend reading this chapter for yourself before continuing, as I could never explain this text as well as the the author himself. Regardless, I took a lot out of chapter 5, book 1 of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On Enjoying and Suffering the Passions. The consequences, those which we might predict the chapter to entail, seem massively understated in the discussion of Nietzschean philosophy; consequences which hinge on our understanding and comprehension of it (or lack there of). Nietzsche begins by claiming that our virtues(meaning here 'passion,') are in common with nobody-- only upon our (desire-to-have-)sureness of our virtue[,] do we name our virtue, which thus situates our virtue in common with other virtues and the people who hold them. This, is the danger which I believe Nietzsche predicted all-too-well.
There's multiple steps to really uncover what the chapter is saying here. To start I think it's best to imagine this metaphysically (although, it really isn't, but whatever): one might imagine our passions as a 'sphere of passion.' This sphere has everything that we're 'good at,' and we 'access' this sphere constantly. Our 'skills' belong in this sphere, in that if we had the passion of chess, for example, we would have the skills which play chess well, and as we played chess, we would get better at it (making more of our passion-sphere devoted to 'chess'). Even further, our skills are not equal to our passions. In the chess example, if we understood our passion as chess, then we would understand the skills to be 'chess-skills.' We then would identify these skills as solely chess skills, limiting our 'use' of the skills.
As a rather casual example, lets say we had a hammer, but in some bizarro universe, it was instead called 'the rock smasher.' Firstly, this understanding, more specifically the naming of the tool, will dictate how the tool is understood and utilized. To take this (admittedly ridiculous) example even further, we could say that in this alternate universe, people never developed 'architecture' or something (at least, in the senses which we understand them) as the concept of 'smashing tough-hard thing against 'nail'' was never conceived. Our passion is a 'tool' that is 'good at doing' our passion-sphere, but through naming one's passions, we dictate how the passion is conceived and realized, leaving it's potential then unfulfilled (which ties into the will-to-power and eternal return and so on and so forth). If someone was born and sent to 'chess-studying-school' (and even if we give the benefit of the doubt that this person's passion was actually good at 'chess'), they would not only be taught a particular understanding of chess, that which views certain rules, norms, strategies, or anything of the sort as 'correct' or even worse, 'fact.' This objectivity is often the biggest flaw of an activity's best participants: their inability to see the activity as nothing but a social-contract, limiting potentiality.
To elaborate further (via a frankly abstract example), lets imagine another universe where someone (a child, lets say) who found a soccer ball, but didn't know what it, or soccer, was. This person would play with the ball in all different ways, kicking it, throwing it, punching it or 'whatever-verb-you'd-like-to-put-here it.' If this person, now an adult, was then brought to our universe and taught and forced to play soccer, their relationship to the rules would be different to our own-- they may see the pass that Ronaldo wouldn't see, for example. This wouldn't just make them better at soccer (as they would have an 'un-named' passion (relative to us) which would have more actualized and realized potential. This is because both our and their passions are not soccer, instead our passions are a sphere of potentiality (through, or arguably as our being) which applies itself to the world. Thus, this person from a hypothetical soccer-less universe wouldn't have the understanding of the skills to soccer which would bind us (although society disguises rules as skills-in-them-selves ("dribbling," "passing/shooting," etc.)), so their 'being' in relation to the passion would be more 'universally applied' (resulting in creative/'naïvely genius' observations) as the 'un-named-soccer' would be understood as "outside" of the norms which 'soccer' regulates for.
This is not to say, however, that there are activities which can be understood outside (or perhaps a better word would be 'indifferent' rather than 'outside') of 'naming,' (maybe, a heartbeat(?)) as (and, thanks to ideology and language) it seems contemporarily that everything can be 'learned,' 'taught,' or marketed. If I were a smarter person, I'd be able to reference and connect some revelation about Bataille and how capitalism brought the end of 'sacrifice' (methodologically), or how this may be another example of Heidegger's idea of society's 'Eternal Return of the Ontotheology of the Will to Power[EROWTP]' (shout-out to my professor Dr. Iain Thomson for that vocab), or so on and whatever.
Anyhoo, my point is that nothing is outside of understanding (quite literally, too; ref. Heidegger); every idea, skill, or activity can be grouped, defined, and explained, no matter how simple it may seem-- breathing exercises, mindful-eating, and even the military tactic taught to recruits where one falls asleep in something like under 4 minutes, are all making things one might think of as apart of Aristotle's 'nutritive soul,' totally efficient, effective, and economical. The main cause here again is by its' naming,'(^1) which, as they exist in society, are also only 'useful/effective/efficient' to the 'passion' which is in that particular society.
Earlier I mentioned to imagine the passions as a 'metaphysical model,' yet I'd like to clarify that this idea is not metaphysical; Nietzsche loves to use metaphysical and spiritual language (as to why? I'll elaborate a different day), yet he's ultimately a believer in a complex web-of-understanding involving at least the will-to-power, the will-to-truth, and the will-to-lie, to name a few, in that calling something a cake, for example, is a lie, and the will-to-truth seeks to 'explain' that, where it realizes there is no table-- only the will-to-power (force acting against force; gravity, etc.).
That being said, this aforementioned model of the passions would at best, be contained within the self, which is encompassing the body and "I," and further, to branch out to a stranger idea of mine, 'watched' by the Phenomenological Perceptive Sense Experience(^2). The way this would apply to us today is that our PPSE would 'perceive' our passions ('as thought'), yet as our passions are (inexpressibly & limited(less)) within our self, how is our self separated from passion within our body? The answer is that our passion is our self, which is our body. As Nietzsche puts it, "the belly of being does not speak to humans at all, except as a human." All of our potentiality of expressibility (passion) is contained within our body, thus our body and self is our ultimate passion/virtue. As it follows that our passions are also our bodies (and self's), any expression of our body would also be an expression of our passion, which means that there's no action (assuming that all actions are physically contained) which would be outside of our nameless passion. When our passion is un-named, it is constantly applying itself to anything and everything through the body, which means one can only be good at a task, not bad. This might seem counterintuitive, as being 'bad' at a task is a more than common phenomenon in people, yet being 'bad' at a task is only such in that it lacks as much 'good' as the relative passion that one prioritizes in their life.
Finally, naming our passions feeds 'the herd.' For Nietzsche, the passions were put relative to society (the herd) once they were given a name, as mentioned at the very beginning. Once a passion has been named and situated in society, it can be compared, ignored, and so on (as I've explained to death already, it feels like (although if you have questions, please ask in the comments so I know what I need to flesh out)). For example, if I were to tell someone that I'm a 'communist,' they would immediately (and often subconsciously) be comparing me to every other self-proclaimed 'communist' they've met. They would then be able to fit my identity and self into a grid, which, if we wish to be good Nietzscheans, is bad. It limits our potential and expression, stifling our will-to-power and capping our ability to reach the heights.
Our self is the one thing unique to us: the phenomenon that perceives experience, the objects that we 'perceive,' and the "I" that understands the world we operate in may be universal, but our passion and self are only expressible through ourselves.
We could take this a few ways: firstly, on an individual level in that we must 'become' the best possible version of our selves as a duty to our selves (also in that we must be life affirming and love the will to power; to love the will to power we must pursue the will to power). However, I've interpreted Nietzsche's philosophy a little less individualist than people may have you to believe: we have a duty to be the best person we can be to ourselves. Nietzsche outlines that friends (Zarathustra's friend, to be specific; I read TSZ On The Friend to propose two friends: the hermit's friend, the herd, and Zarathustra's friend, the Overman) help us become our best person; our best is also our worst enemy. They know one's weaknesses and blind spots, but only because they know we can do better. The friend will still wish for our well being, and they might reach out their hand to save their enemy from falling only so in that they can they (both the enemy, but more importantly, the friend) can get stronger. It's a symbiotic relationship where one's success leads to the other's, which leads to a mutual interest in benefitting both.
The friend doesn't pity (except perhaps at a distance), as they know one can do better, and they certainly don't show pity out of some societal-moral obligation, but only out of self interest to be a better person. I'd like to borrow from Aristotle (and many-a-philosopher to come after him) in that he proposes that the pursuit of the best life (the virtuous life) goes hand in hand with the happiest life. Becoming our best self is the happiest life. It's also worth mentioning that only we (the individual; you(!))know whether or not we've reached our best life. The responsibility is entirely in your hands. To end this, there's a Sartre quote which might explain (in a beautiful fashion) what I'm trying to say here: "we must act out passion before we can feel it." Our self is all we have- lets make the most of it so we can become who we really are; let us free our passion from the bindings of the herd, and let it look down into the deepest valleys from the highest peaks and still be ashamed of how little it's achieved.
^1. Just to specify and elaborate a little bit more, the literal 'naming' isn't the crime, as the sounds/letters we use to represent the concept are arbitrary, but the understanding (usually (perhaps always)) which might also be formed by the society and it's EROWTP.
^2. I've since removed my idea of PPSE from this blog out of shame of having done metaphysics, something which I will elaborate on in the further in the future. I think what I wrote about nietsche here is still right (and its funny since nietzsche is essentially doing metaphysics here, too) so I'm gonna keep it up for now.
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