After years of hearing about his radical theories, I am now finally reading the works of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. And I must say he was worth the wait. After 12 weeks of scoffing at the 'moral dilemmas' posed by the Ancient Greeks, and overlooking Mill's Utilitarianism as an impractical utopia, I was finally stopped in my (mental) tracks today by something Nietzsche said.
Nietzsche poses a question to his audience using an obscure concept called eternal recurrence (first posed to me, rather unconvincingly, by Schopenhauer): Imagine the life you are living, every moment you are experiencing, is going to repeat itself eternally. This exact life as you are leading it will happen to you again and again. Given this, is there something you would do differently?
The point of his question, in its clever disguise, was to make people analyze their life in this moment, this exact moment. So if you didn't have a past, and there was no tomorrow, would your current action, your current emotion, have any meaning?
As a relatively driven crowd of college students, we are always looking towards tomorrow. I wake up every morning so I can go to school. I go to school so I can get a degree. I get a degree in order to have a (potentially) successful career. This list goes on, one action always motivated by another, future goal. It culminates in having a comfortable, peaceful death. Is that it? Do we really postpone our happiness for the duration of our lifetime? Was Solon correct in saying "count no man happy until he is dead"? That is a rather depressing thought.
So I thought and I thought. I scoured my memories for moments in my life that had meaning just in themselves. Moments that, when stripped of their intentions (past) and consequences (future), I would happily repeat. Here are some of the contenders: eating ice-cream, having sex, going on bike rides, and sleeping.
Upon further analysis, I realized I eat to satisfy my hunger (future), and I will not eat if I am already full (past), so eating doesn't prevail. Bike rides are pleasurable to me, but partly because of that sore and satisfied feeling they give the next day, and partly because they are usually accompanied with an exciting destination, so biking doesn't hold either. The pleasure in sleep is contingent upon exhaustion from the previous day, so nor does that hold.
Now for sex. Well, there are two motivations for sex: orgasm and love; but there are no further motivations for either of those. I orgasm to orgasm. And I love to love. Well there it is, the ultimate meaning of my life is defined by love and orgasm.
Wait, what?! This is absurd. Surely Nietzsche, the man who questioned the existence of good and evil, wasn't such a romantic as to believe in living for love? Am I completely misinterpreting this or did Nietzsche have it all wrong and our lives aren't defined by moments?
I encourage you to think about the moments that define your life.
Questions, comments and criticisms are highly appreciated.
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