Topics Philosophers

Question One of Nietzsche's most cited statements is, to paraphrase, "That which doesn't kill me, makes me stronger". Seems to me that, despite common acceptance, this is flat out inaccurate. As one example, many people survive traumatic events and are hardly stronger, instead living sometimes nearly incapacitated lives with Post-Traumatic stress disorder. Or, those with diseases such as AIDS, diabetes, or any number of diseases that can be treated. Do Nietzschian philosophers still accept this quote? Is there some other interpretation of his statement that makes it useful?

Accepted:
February 25, 2006

Comments

The quote is from Twilight of the Idols, first section, and not quite accurate but close enough. To be sure, Nietzsche was not afraid to exaggerate, when he could get some rhetorical mileage out of it. Here, his point is not unrelated to the Darwinian idea that competition among species means that only those species or variants that are best adapted will survive. In the case of human beings, Nietzsche argues, I can change my way of life, habits, and so forth -- and these changes make me stronger in the sense that I am able to out-compete other humans (taking ‘compete’ in as broad a sense as possible). (Significantly, the same reasoning applies to groups of people with respect to other groups.) His point is supplemented by the observation that generally among animals (and, he would claim, among earlier human societies) the sick are not protected and cared for as we believe is just today. For a gazelle, say, being weakened is essentially the same as being dead. Today, we tend to think of this protection of the weakened as a great moral advance; Nietzsche, famously, denies this.Nietzsche proposes also some related ideas. For example, in a close analogy to your approximate quotation, he argues that art achieves its greatest creative leaps when it is constrained by numerous and even arbitrary restrictions. An example might be Michelangelo having to paint an existing Sistine ceiling, while also receiving instructions from the Pontiff. Accordingly, artistic ‘freedom’ is actually a recipe for artistic failure. Something to think about, anyway.