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Full Idea
Man is necessity down to his last fibre, and totally 'unfree', that is if one means by freedom the foolish demand to be able to change one's 'essentia' arbitrarily, like a garment.
Gist of Idea
It is absurd to think you can change your own essence, like a garment
Source
Friedrich Nietzsche (Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks [1873], p.7), quoted by Brian Leiter - Nietzsche On Morality 2 'Realism'
Book Ref
Leiter,Brian: 'Nietzsche On Morality (2nd Edn)' [Routledge 2015], p.40
A Reaction
This is the big difference between the existentialism of Nietzsche and the more famous Sartrean approach, where the idea of being able to remake your essence is the most exciting and glamorous proposal. I'm with Nietzsche.
3635 | Essence must be known before we discuss existence [Descartes] |
6916 | For Kant, essence is mental and a mere idea, and existence is the senses and mere appearance [Kant, by Feuerbach] |
5650 | Reason is just abstractions, so our essence needs a subjective 'leap of faith' [Kierkegaard, by Scruton] |
14808 | Over huge periods of time human character would change endlessly [Nietzsche] |
20130 | It is absurd to think you can change your own essence, like a garment [Nietzsche] |
15572 | Being what it is (essentia) must be conceived in terms of Being (existence) [Heidegger] |
6868 | 'Existence precedes essence' means we have no pre-existing self, but create it through existence [Sartre, by Le Poidevin] |
3842 | Existence before essence (or begin with the subjective) [Sartre] |
6705 | Existentialism may transcend our nature, unlike eudaimonism [Graham] |
20733 | Our 'existence' is how we create ourselves, unconstrained by any prior 'essence' [Aho] |