Really, there is nobody living about whom I care much. The people I like\u00a0have been dead for a long, long time \u2013 for example, the Abb\u00e9 Galiani, or Henri Beyle, or Montaigne.<\/p>\n
He could have added another hero, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. These four\u00a0men were perhaps the richest clues for what Nietzsche came in his maturity to\u00a0understand by a fulfilled life.<\/p>\n
They had much in common. They were curious, artistically gifted, and sexually\u00a0vigorous. Despite their dark sides, they laughed, and many of them danced, too;\u00a0they were drawn to \u2018gentle sunlight,bright and buoyant air, southerly vegetation, the breath of the sea [and] fleeting meals of flesh, fruit and eggs\u2019. Several of them had a gallows humour close to Nietzsche\u2019s own \u2013 a joyful,\u00a0wicked laughter arising from pessimistic hinterlands. They had explored their
\npossibilities, they possessed what Nietzsche called \u2018life\u2019, which suggested\u00a0courage, ambition, dignity, strength of character, humour and independence\u00a0(and a parallel absence of sanctimoniousness, conformity, resentment and prissiness)<\/p>\n
Nietzsche\u2019s heroes had also fallen in love repeatedly. \u2018The whole movement\u00a0of the world tends and leads towards copulation,\u2019 Montaigne had known.<\/p>\n
And finally, these men had all been artists (\u2018Art is the great stimulant to life,\u2019 recognized Nietzsche), and must have felt extraordinary satisfaction upon\u00a0completing the Essais, Il Socrate immaginario, R\u00f6mische Elegien and De l\u2019amour.<\/p>\n
These were, Nietzsche implied, some of the elements that human beings naturally\u00a0needed for a fulfilled life. He added an important detail; that it was impossible\u00a0to attain them without feeling very miserable some of the time:<\/p>\n
What if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other \u2026 you have the choice: either as little displeasure as possible, painlessness in brief \u2026 or as much\u00a0displeasure as possible as the price for the growth of an abundance of subtle pleasures and joys that have rarely been relished yet? If you decide for the former and desire to diminish and lower the level of human pain, you also have to diminish and lower the level of their capacity for joy.
\nThe most fulfilling human projects appeared inseparable from a degree of\u00a0torment, the sources of our greatest joys lying awkwardly close to those of our greatest pains: Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people and peoples and ask yourselves whether a tree that is supposed to grow to a proud height\u00a0can dispense with bad weather and storms; whether misfortune and external resistance, some kinds of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, mistrust, hardness, avarice, and\u00a0violence do not belong among the favourable conditions without which any great growth even of virtue is scarcely possible.<\/p>\n
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The consolations of philosophy<\/strong><\/em> Really, there is nobody living about whom I care much. The people I like\u00a0have been dead for a long, long time \u2013 for example, the Abb\u00e9 Galiani, or Henri Beyle, or Montaigne. He could have added another hero, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. 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The people I like\u00a0have been dead for a long, long time \u2013 for example, the Abb\u00e9 Galiani, or Henri Beyle, or Montaigne. He could have added another hero, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. 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\nAlain De Botton<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"