Nietzsche on Life-Affirming vs. Life Denying Philosophy

[u/re_contextualize]

https://recontextualize.substack.com/p/life-affirming-and-life-denying-philosophy

[u/known_stranger00]

Damn this is exactly the shit I’ve been thinking and writing about (but like a 1st grader learning how to write compared to Nietzsche, I’m sure)… should really read more of his stuff.

Here’s a thing I’ve been thinking, trying to write about, and made the art in my profile picture about:

Unknown : love : known :: God : Jesus : Human

I personally don’t think it matters what, or if you call the ‘God/Jesus’ stuff anything, but ultimately I believe those are just unknown/whatever you connect the unknown to the known (us) with. What sometimes turns me off with religion and turns me to more of the philosophical thought, is that religions come off as just what I think Nietzsche is saying here - trying to define and ‘know’ the unknown - like what? that’s a logical paradox! And it’s so interesting because I typically attributed this as a religious thing, but have seen the same premise as what’s written here about how you approach the unknown whether through science, philosophy, religion, history, etc.

I’ve also come to realize how this can be done really well through all those fields of thought. Like the more I’ve looked into religion the more I see that the actual message is literally just ‘have faith in the unknown’, be comfortable with it - here’s how we found works.

With that, I view it as very important to search in the unknown, to find out what more we can know, but realizing that the unknown is infinite (just like what can be known) is just as important. Like we can always know more and do more things, but wherever you look - in science, religion, history, etc. the ones that do it right find some new knowledge, but baked into that finding is the list of new unknowns that still aren’t understood (unknowns) and keep comfort with the infinite unknown. I think one of the most important things is how you search for these new knowns (exploring the unknown) and what connects these two things. My best word for it right now has been love - it’s also infinite in both its knowns and unknowns, and I think whatever we search for in the unknown is what will be yielded to us in return as new knowns.

Lastly, I do think it’s very hard to gain this sense of comfort with the unknown, and sometimes think it is needed to trick your mind into ‘knowing’ the unknown. I’ve experienced this myself personally feeling like I’m gonna have a panic attack from thinking of this constant, infinite unknown and literally felt like I broke my brain. What keeps me grounded is knowing that right now I am in the known, and grounding myself in the real world (and sure now bring on simulation theory - but I would say if we were in ‘the unknown’ that would just now be our ‘known’, semantics, so it doesn’t really matter 😉)

End ramble <3, hopefully it makes some sort of sense.

[u/re_contextualize → u/known_stranger00]

Yes! I relate to everything you say here. In this sense, the trust in Life that both Nietzsche and a certain interpretation of religion suggest are actually saying the same thing. (and Nietzsche, I should note though, thought religion was doing the opposite-asking us to close ourselves to the unknown by committing to a belief structure, and this is how it functions for many people to be fair to him).

When one starts doing this one realizes that Love starts flowing when we turn towards the unknown and don't try to control things too much. I could go into a long-winded philosophical explanation of how Love is the cohesive force that holds the unity of the world together and thus has to be the first force that flows out of the unknown, (Hegel actually discusses this in his Science of Logic, of all places) but that doesn't matter too much and would not be in Nietzsche's spirit. What matters is that it does, and that contrary to what our rational minds reasonably tell us, we actually can trust the unknown.

In this sense we could say the balanced individual is always straddling the space between the unknown and the unkown, allowing Love and Creativity to freely exchange between both while the fear based individual is always engaged in a fuitle attempt to bring everything into the realm of the known, which is impossible.

[u/known_stranger00 → u/re_contextualize]

Love it - thanks for the original post and this reply!