A young Nietzsche looking joyful in 1869
Image via The Mindless Philosopher
"The lowest animal can imagine the pain of others.
But to imagine the joy of others and to rejoice at it is the greatest privilege of the highest animals ..." [1]
Many English-speakers know the meaning of the German term Schadenfreude.
But very few know the antonymic term Mitfreude, coined by Nietzsche in 1878, and referring to the feeling of joy felt when learning of the happiness or good fortune of others [2].
Interestingly, Nietzsche also contrasts Mitfreude with Mitleid (pity) - and even Mitgefühl (compassion) - viewing an ethic of shared joy rather than shared suffering as more noble (and less Christian).
It is shared happiness, not shared pain, he argues, from which bonds of friendship best develop [3] and allow for a future democracy of joyful exuberance to develop [4].
Notes
The phrase used in the title of this post - 'Joy is deeper than the heart's agony' - is from section 8 of 'The Intoxicated Song', found in part 4 of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
[1] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, volume 2, part 1, section 62.
I am consulting R. J. Hollingdale's translation from the 1986 Cambridge University Press edition of this work, p. 228, but I have slightly modified it.
[2] Usually, in English, we use the term confelicity to describe this feeling, although this is not a word one hears very often.
[3] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, I. 9. 499.
[4] It might surprise some readers to discover that Nietzsche writes of such a future democracy; one that will create and guarantee as much independence as possible and which is in stark contrast to the model of liberal democracy founded upon a mixture of fear and herd morality (i.e., modern humanism). See Human, All Too Human, II. 2. 293.
Musical bonus: Killing Joke, 'We Have Joy', from the album Revelations (E.G. Records, 1982): click here for the 2005 digitally remastered version.
This post is for my frenemy Síomón Solomon.
