Enjoying the view from Limbo
Friends.– No one has fewer natural friends than the tyrant, who is rivalled in this only by the philosopher — the former to the extent that he has reduced his soul to nothing but vested interests, the latter to the extent that he has expunged his soul of vested interests. The tyrant falls farthest away from the conditions that make true friendship possible;...
by Daren Jonescu · Published July 14, 2025 · Last modified July 16, 2025
If your most important contribution to the world was something you did for material gain, then you have not contributed anything of great importance to the world. The profit motive exists, and works well, but what profit motivates is not of a higher nature. Or rather, even the most potentially beautiful activity becomes pedestrian and merely practical to the extent that profit is...
What would it be like to have chosen only the most difficult paths? No safe routes, no comfort zones, no relaxing pastimes, no settling for the familiar, for what is “good enough,” or for “what works.” What would it be like to do, each day, only what seems most compelling, without regard for how it affects one’s daily tasks and practical goals? That...
To the extent that we are social animals, we all have an urge to help. The problem is that we also have a common weakness — perhaps, paradoxically, an expression of our lust for power — for confusing helping with “making the problem go away.” Nietzsche observes, in The Gay Science, that the “religion of pity” thrives on the self-important air of the...
A student sent me a text message this morning with the following question: “Would it be good for me to feel grateful to a person who gave me pain?” Without knowing the specific context she had in mind, I replied: “If the person gave you pain while trying to help you, then yes. If the person gave you pain while trying to harm...
It may not come. If it comes, it will bring disappointments, including the disappointment of reliving everything that disappoints you about today. Something will anger you. Someone will annoy or offend you. You will find yourself struggling to start a task you had hoped to undertake with enthusiasm, or you will start one but fail to complete it satisfactorily. You will fall short...
Reputation. The most important book in philosophy, Plato’s Republic, is at its core an elaborate answer to this question: Who will have the happier life, the completely just man who is hated, reviled, punished, and dies without a friend, or the completely unjust man who is loved, respected, rewarded, and dies with a hero’s reputation? It is necessary to remind yourself of this...
Pleasure ameliorates pain. Pain is a condition of growth. Therefore, pleasure either interrupts or thwarts growth. The only possible exception to this conclusion would be a pleasure that was specific to the process or achievement of growth itself. This latter pleasure — the pleasure that accompanies or rewards growth as such — would thus be the only pleasure consistent with the life impulse....
From Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. You want, if possible — and there is no more insane “if possible” — to abolish suffering. And we? It really seems that we would rather have it higher and worse than ever. Well-being as you understand it — that is no goal, that seems to us an end, a state that soon makes man ridiculous and...
A student who frequently writes to me about her efforts to overcome self-doubts and develop a more moderate, reasonable way of life, told me of an exchange she had recently with a friend who was trying to persuade her that she ought to be happier. The friend offered three specific arguments, which my student summarized as follows: 1. You have no disorder in...
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