Sanctus Januarius: A Nietzschean New Year Message

Portrait of St. Januarius, by Caravaggio (1607)

Granting himself the right to do so in accordance with popular custom, Nietzsche famously opens Book IV of The Gay Science, written in January 1882, with a new year's resolution:

"I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation ... I wish to be only a Yes-sayer." [276] 

This section, one that I often return to, might be regarded as an essential thought for me; fundamental to the philosophy of Torpedo the Ark which is all about having done with judgement and the assigning of blame, or subscribing to what Nietzsche elsewhere terms a hangman's metaphysic.

But, although a short and seemingly straightforward passage, one has to be careful not to misunderstand what Nietzsche is saying here: 

Firstly, he is absolutely not saying that life is beautiful and attempting to fob us off with a feel good philosophy built upon false idealism. For Nietzsche, life is monstrous and inhuman and what is necessary in things (that is to say, fateful), is what most people would describe as morally repugnant or evil. 

Secondly - and even more crucially - Nietzsche not only wants to see what is necessary in things as beautiful (even when, in fact, it's often repulsive or malevolent in nature), he wishes to affirm this aspect as belonging to what he terms an economy of the whole in which all things are entwined. 

Thirdly, to love fate is not merely to resign oneself to the facts; but, rather, to interpret the latter and struggle to find new perspectives and create new ways of living.

Saying Yes, in a Nietzschean manner, doesn't therefore mean one must become a nodding donkey; one's No is contained in this affirmation and one learns how to actively negate the negative simply by turning one's face with aristocratic disdain upon those things (including those people and those gods) who demand worship, obedience, and submission. 

Happy New Year to all readers.


See: Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), IV. 276. 

Just Say No

Viktor and Rolf: A/W 2008

 

'You're always so negative and critical', she said - rather ironically by way of criticism. Like many of the things that came out of her mouth, it wasn't entirely true. But, even if it were, so what?

For just as in saying yes to something in particular we automatically say no to everything else in general, in saying no to things - particularly things, ideas, or people which we once loved uncritically in the past - we say yes to the future and a strange new unfolding of the self. 

Nietzsche writes:

"When we criticize something, this is no arbitrary and impersonal event; it is very often evidence of vital energies in us that are growing and shedding a skin. We negate and must negate because something in us wants to live and affirm - something that we perhaps do not conceive as yet."

- The Gay Science, Book IV, 307.

To want to have done with judgement and make an affirmation of life as it is, does not mean depriving oneself of any means of distinguishing between modes of existence; nor does it mean renouncing one's critical faculty as born and developed not within the ideal realm of higher values, but within a beating heart that knows of love and hate.