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Single Idea 7159

[filed under theme 22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / d. Routes to happiness ]

Full Idea

Happiness with existence is only possible as happiness with illusion.

Gist of Idea

The only happiness is happiness with illusion

Source

Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[110])

Book Ref

Nietzsche,Friedrich: 'Writings from the Late Notebooks', ed/tr. Bittner,Rüdiger [CUP 2003], p.82

A Reaction

A characteristically tough remark! It is, of course, indefeasible, because if you claim to have happiness without illusion, Nietzsche brands you as another fool. But why should a gradual stripping of illusion totally destroy happiness?

The 78 ideas from 'Writings from Late Notebooks'

7149 Comprehending everything is impossible, because it abolishes perspectives [Nietzsche]
7147 Values are innate and inherited [Nietzsche]
7148 The 'I' is a conceptual synthesis, not the governor of our being [Nietzsche]
7157 We think each thought causes the next, unaware of the hidden struggle beneath [Nietzsche]
7158 Morality kills religion, because a Christian-moral God is unbelievable [Nietzsche]
7159 The only happiness is happiness with illusion [Nietzsche]
7151 Courage, compassion, insight, solitude are the virtues, with courtesy a necessary vice [Nietzsche]
7150 By developing herd virtues man fixes what has up to now been the 'unfixed animal' [Nietzsche]
7160 Christian belief is kept alive because it is soothing - the proof based on pleasure [Nietzsche]
7161 The essence of a thing is only an opinion about the 'thing' [Nietzsche]
7162 Morality can only be upheld by belief in God and a 'hereafter' [Nietzsche]
7163 Morality is merely interpretations, which are extra-moral in origin [Nietzsche]
7164 Not feeling harnessed to a system of 'ends' is a wonderful feeling of freedom [Nietzsche]
7152 With protoplasm ½+½=2, so the soul is not an indivisible monad [Nietzsche]
7154 We can't use our own self to criticise our own capacity for knowledge! [Nietzsche]
7153 We can't be realists, because we don't know what being is [Nietzsche]
7155 Consciousness exists to the extent that consciousness is useful [Nietzsche]
7156 Sense perceptions contain values (useful, so pleasant) [Nietzsche]
7165 Virtue is wasteful, as it reduces us all to being one another's nurse [Nietzsche]
7166 Man is above all a judging animal [Nietzsche]
7169 Is the perspectival part of the essence, or just a relation between beings? [Nietzsche]
7170 'Wisdom' attempts to get beyond perspectives, making it hostile to life [Nietzsche]
7171 Rationality is a scheme we cannot cast away [Nietzsche]
7167 Words such as 'I' and 'do' and 'done to' are placed at the point where our ignorance begins [Nietzsche]
7168 Modest people express happiness as 'Not bad' [Nietzsche]
7172 Existence without meaning or goal or end, eternally recurring, is a terrible thought [Nietzsche]
7173 Rights arise out of contracts, which need a balance of power [Nietzsche]
7174 Categories are not metaphysical truths, but inventions in the service of needs [Nietzsche]
7175 Philosophers find it particularly hard to shake off belief in necessary categories [Nietzsche]
7176 'Purpose' is like the sun, where most heat is wasted, and a tiny part has 'purpose' [Nietzsche]
7178 The utility of an organ does not explain its origin, on the contrary! [Nietzsche]
7179 Survival might undermine an individual's value, or prevent its evolution [Nietzsche]
7180 Darwin overestimates the influence of 'external circumstances' [Nietzsche]
7181 Pain shows the value of the damage, not what has been damaged [Nietzsche]
7177 Virtues from outside are dangerous, and they should come from within [Nietzsche]
7182 'Perspectivism': the world has no meaning, but various interpretations give it countless meanings [Nietzsche]
7183 'Subjectivity' is an interpretation, since subjects (and interpreters) are fictions [Nietzsche]
7189 Maybe there are only subjects, and 'objects' result from relations between subjects [Nietzsche]
7185 Replace the categorical imperative by the natural imperative [Nietzsche]
7186 There are no necessary truths, but something must be held to be true [Nietzsche]
7188 Logic tries to understand the world according to a man-made scheme [Nietzsche]
7193 Virtue for everyone removes its charm of being exceptional and aristocratic [Nietzsche]
7194 Experiencing a thing as beautiful is to experience it wrongly [Nietzsche]
7190 Our values express an earlier era's conditions for survival and growth [Nietzsche]
7191 What does not kill us makes us stronger [Nietzsche]
7192 Remove goodness and wisdom from our concept of God. Being the highest power is enough! [Nietzsche]
7199 It is dishonest to invent a being containing our greatest values, thus ignoring why they exist and are valuable [Nietzsche]
7201 Knowledge, wisdom and goodness only have value relative to a goal [Nietzsche]
7200 A combination of great power and goodness would mean the disastrous abolition of evil [Nietzsche]
7203 In heaven all the interesting men are missing [Nietzsche]
7204 The upholding of the military state is needed to maintain the strong human type [Nietzsche]
7195 If the world aimed at an end, it would have reached it by now [Nietzsche]
7196 Pessimism is laughable, because the world cannot be evaluated [Nietzsche]
7197 Pleasure needs dissatisfaction, boundaries and resistances [Nietzsche]
7198 Nihilism results from measuring the world by our categories which are purely invented [Nietzsche]
7209 There is no will; weakness of will is splitting of impulses, strong will is coordination under one impulse [Nietzsche]
7205 Altruism is praised by the egoism of the weak, who want everyone to be looked after [Nietzsche]
7206 Things are strong or weak, and do not behave regularly or according to rules or compulsions [Nietzsche]
7207 Counting needs unities, but that doesn't mean they exist; we borrowed it from the concept of 'I' [Nietzsche]
7208 Paganism is a form of thanking and affirming life? [Nietzsche]
7132 Philosophers should create and fight for their concepts, not just clean and clarify them [Nietzsche]
7133 There are different eyes, so different 'truths', so there is no truth [Nietzsche]
7134 Something can be irrefutable; that doesn't make it true [Nietzsche]
7135 'Freedom of will' is the feeling of having a dominating force [Nietzsche]
7129 Perception is unconscious, and we are only conscious of processed perceptions [Nietzsche]
7131 The intellect and senses are a simplifying apparatus [Nietzsche]
7130 Unity is not in the conscious 'I', but in the organism, which uses the self as a tool [Nietzsche]
7137 Is a 'philosopher' now impossible, because knowledge is too vast for an overview? [Nietzsche]
7138 The 'I' is a fiction used to make the world of becoming 'knowable' [Nietzsche]
7139 Explanation is just showing the succession of things ever more clearly [Nietzsche]
7140 Chemical 'laws' are merely the establishment of power relations between weaker and stronger [Nietzsche]
7141 A living being is totally 'egoistic' [Nietzsche]
7136 Morality is a system of values which accompanies a being's life [Nietzsche]
7142 All motions and 'laws' are symptoms of inner events, traceable to the will to power [Nietzsche]
7143 Consciousness is a 'tool' - just as the stomach is a tool [Nietzsche]
7145 Logic is not driven by truth, but desire for a simple single viewpoint [Nietzsche]
7144 Logic must falsely assume that identical cases exist [Nietzsche]
7146 Belief in the body is better established than belief in the mind [Nietzsche]