Eudaimonia

"Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman - a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping"

Friedrich Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra

In this aphorism, we are the tightrope walker. In the darkness behind us a beast. In our fearful imaginations we are pursued by it. In fact it has been dead for ages, and it is only a ghost that haunts us. Our historical memory, a human conscience.

Moment by moment we balance impossibly upon the world of objects. It is taut beneath our clinging feet. Along the way is uncertainty, and death. There is not an end to this rope as far as we can see. Before us, the blinding light of possibility. Its form for us to imagine. An apocalypse lurks behind some future moment, or something of such exceptional quality that our minds are not capable of its comprehension. This future is for us to decide.

The overman that is referred to in the quotation is not easily conceived. It would not be a culmination of human efforts, as it would not be terminal. Neither would it be some perfection of our species, biologically or intellectually or spiritually, as then that too would have to be overcome. The essence of this being exceeds our capacity to comprehend. It must be left as an uncertain and always distant beacon. How then would one chart a course to such an uncertainty? What Nietzsche suggested is that we have direct access to our nature, and to the nature of the world. This world must be our guide, and he pleaded with his readers to look no further for the clues to divining the way forward.

The critical concept is that what we know today as human civilization, is a way station along the path between our ancestral origins as a subconscious beast, to a high being beyond our current capacity to understand. It is this concept that replaces God in Nietzsche’s philosophy.

The concept of Eudaimonia, developed by the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, is a very similar idea. It literally means ‘benevolent spirit’. Aristotle defined it as ‘Living and doing well.’ Humble as it may seem, it is the greatest of all ideals. The final outcome of Virtue.

The Good (God) is the thing that we arrange our metaphysical furniture around. Good, like the fire at the center of our camp, or the television in the living room. Virtue is the gaze that we fix on this fire. According to the Greek philosophers mentioned above, we have a compass that reliably directs its needle to the good, and so inversely indicates its opposite. To them, this compass is a core element of our human nature. In this way the late nineteenth century German agrees with his progenitors the ancient Greeks.

In this age it seems critical that we envision ourselves on the way to somewhere. Our greatest danger; the stagnation of grim satisfaction. Our future is threatened by the profound nihilism of our era, that rejects progress in the name of ideological certainty, and dismisses hope as false.

It is not enough for us to resist the desire to annihilate, or defend ourselves from it when it threatens. We must offer a concept of greater power, that is not a reaction but a ‘first movement, a self propelled wheel’.

As we divest ourselves from particular outcomes, and empower ourselves by rejecting the notion of ideological certainty, we still must retain a vision for our future. A vision that allows us to exceed our expectations, and expresses our great potential. A vision that does not reflect the ancient fears and uncertainties that haunt our human conscience.