Nietzsche on Learned Helplessness and Depression:
"If there are any drawbacks to being sick and weak, it is that these states wear down the true instinct for healing, which is the human instinct for weapons and war. You do not know how to get rid of anything, you do not know how to get over anything, you do not know how to push anything back, - everything hurts. People and things become obtrusive, events cut too deep, memory is a festering wound. Sickness is itself a kind of ressentiment. - The sick person has only one great remedy for this - I call it Russian fatalism, the fatalism without revolt that you find when a military campaign becomes too difficult and the Russian soldier finally lies down in the snow. Not taking anything else on or in, not reacting at all any more . . . The excellent reasoning behind this fatalism, which is not always just courage in the face of death, but can preserve life under the most dangerous circumstances, is that it reduces the metabolism, slows it down, a type of will to hibernation. Taking this logic a few steps further, you have the fakir who sleeps for weeks in a grave . . .Since any sort of reaction wears you out too quickly, you do not react at all: this is the reasoning. And nothing burns you up more quickly than the affects of ressentiment. Annoyance, abnormal vulnerability, inability to take revenge, the desire, the thirst for revenge, every type of poisoning - these are definitely the most harmful ways for exhausted people to react: they inevitably lead to a rapid consumption of nervous energy and a pathological increase in harmful excretions, of bile into the stomach, for instance. Ressentiment should be what is forbidden most rigorously for people who are sick - it is their great evil: and unfortunately their most natural tendency as well."
"The higher man is distinguished from the lower by his fearlessness and his readiness to challenge misfortune: it is a sign of degeneration when eudaemonistic valuations begin to prevail (-physiological fatigue, feebleness of will-)."
"The normal dissatisfaction of our drives, e.g., hunger, the sexual drive, the drive to motion, contains in it absolutely nothing depressing; it works rather as an agitation of the feeling of life, as every rhythm of small, painful stimuli strengthens it, (whatever pessimists may say). This dissatisfaction, instead of making one disgusted with life, is the great stimulus to life."
Nietzsche on Nutrition/Health/Biology:
"It is improbable that our "knowledge" should extend further than is strictly necessary for the preservation of life. Morphology shows us how the senses and the nerves, as well as the brain, develop in proportion to the difficulty of finding nourishment."
"Another question interests me in a much different way: the question of nutrition; the 'salvation of humanity' is much more dependent on this question than on any theological oddity. We can formulate it in rough and ready terms: 'what do you yourself eat in order to achieve the maximum of strength, of virtu in the style of the Renaissance, of moraline-free virtue?..."
"What, after all, is "useful"? One must ask "useful in relation to what?" E.g., that which is useful for the long life of the individual might be unfavorable to its strength and splendor; that which preserves the individual might at the same time arrest and halt its evolution. On the other hand, a deficiency, a degeneration, can be of the highest utility in so far as it acts as a stimulant to other organs. In the same way, a state of need can be a condition of existence, in so far as it reduces an individual to that measure of expenditure which holds it together but prevents it from squandering itself.- The individual itself as a struggle between parts (for food, space, etc.) : its evolution tied to the victory or predominance of individual parts, to an atrophy, a "becoming an organ" of other parts."
"Genius depends on dry air, on clear skies-that is, on a rapid metabolism, on the possibility of drawing again and again on great, even tremendous quantities of strength."
"The influence of climate on our metabolism, its retardation, its acceleration, goes so far that a mistaken choice of place and climate can not only estrange a man from his task but can actually keep it from him: he never gets to see it. His animal vigor has never become great enough for him to attain that freedom which overflows into the most spiritual regions and allows one to recognize: this only I can do."
"But German cooking in general - what doesn't it have on its conscience! Soup before the meal, overcooked meats, vegetables cooked with fat and flour; the degeneration of starchy foods into paperweights! Just add to this the almost brutal post-prandial drinking habits of the ancient, but by no means only the ancient, Germans, and you will also understand the origin of German spirit - from depressive intestines . . . German spirit is indigestion, it is never through with anything."
"The slightest sluggishness of the intestines is entirely sufficient, once it has become a bad habit, to tum a genius into something mediocre, something "German."
"I cannot recommend seriously enough that all spiritual natures give up alcohol entirely."
"Essential: to start from the body and employ it as guide. It is the much richer phenomenon, which allows of clearer observation. Belief in the body is better established than belief in the spirit."
"More and more decisively the question concerning the health of the body is put ahead of that of "the soul": the latter being understood as a state consequent upon the former, and the former at the very least as a precondition of the health of the soul."
"The entire conscious life, the spirit along with the soul, the heart, goodness, and virtue-in whose service do they labor? In the service of the greatest possible perfection of the means (means of nourishment, means of enhancement) of the basic animal functions: above all, the enhancement of life."
"Put briefly: perhaps the entire evolution of the spirit is a question of the body; it ·is the history of the development of a higher body that emerges into our sensibility. The organic is rising to yet higher levels. Our lust for knowledge of nature is a means through which the body desires to perfect itself. Or rather: hundreds of thousands of experiments are made to change the nourishment, the mode of living and of dwelling of the body; consciousness and evaluations in the body, all kinds of pleasure and displeasure, are signs of these changes and experiments. In the long run, it is not a question of man at all: he is to be overcome."
"Not "mankind" but overman is the goal"
"A little health now and again is the ailing person’s best remedy."
"Today we no longer know how to separate moral and physiological degeneration: the former is merely a symptom-complex of the latter; one is necessarily bad, just as one is necessarily ill. Bad: here the word expresses a certain incapacity associated physiologically with the degenerating type: e.g., weakness of will, insecure and even multiple "personality," inability to resist reacting to a stimulus and to "control" oneself, constraint before every kind of suggestion from the will of another. Vice is not a cause; vice is a consequence- Vice is a somewhat arbitrarily limited concept designed to express in one word certain consequences of physiological degeneration. A universal proposition such as Christianity teaches-"Man is evil"-would be justified if one were justified in taking the degenerate type as the normal type of man. But perhaps this is an exaggeration. To be sure, the proposition is correct wherever Christianity prospers and stays on top: for that demonstrates a morbid soil, a field for degeneration."
"My attempt to understand moral judgments as symptoms and sign languages which betray the processes of physiological prosperity or failure"
"Egoism is of as much value as the physiological value of him who possesses it. Every individual consists of the whole course of evolution (and not, as morality imagines, only of something that begins at birth). If he represents the ascending course of mankind, then his value is in fact extraordinary; and extreme care may be taken over the preservation and promotion of his development. (It is concern for the future promised him that gives the well-constituted individual such an extraordinary right to egoism.) If he represents the descending course, decay, chronic sickening, then he has little value: and the first demand of fairness is for him to take as little space, force, and sunshine as possible away from the well constituted. In this case, it is the task of society to suppress egoism (-which sometimes expresses itself in absurd, morbid and rebel-
lious ways), whether it be a question of individuals or of whole decaying and atrophying classes of people. A doctrine and religion of "love," of suppression of self affirmation, of patience, endurance, helpfulness, of cooperation in word and deed, can be of the highest value within such classes, even from the point of view of the rulers: for it suppresses feelings of rivalry, of ressentiment, of envy -the all too natural feelings of the underprivileged-it even deifies a life of slavery, subjection, poverty, sickness, and inferiority for them under the ideal of humility and obedience. This explains why the ruling classes (or races) and individuals have at all times upheld the cult of selflessness, the gospel of the lowly, the "God on the cross."
"If there are any drawbacks to being sick and weak, it is that these states wear down the true instinct for healing, which is the human instinct for weapons and war. You do not know how to get rid of anything, you do not know how to get over anything, you do not know how to push anything back, - everything hurts. People and things become obtrusive, events cut too deep, memory is a festering wound. Sickness is itself a kind of ressentiment. - The sick person has only one great remedy for this - I call it Russian fatalism, the fatalism without revolt that you find when a military campaign becomes too difficult and the Russian soldier finally lies down in the snow. Not taking anything else on or in, not reacting at all any more . . . The excellent reasoning behind this fatalism, which is not always just courage in the face of death, but can preserve life under the most dangerous circumstances, is that it reduces the metabolism, slows it down, a type of will to hibernation. Taking this logic a few steps further, you have the fakir who sleeps for weeks in a grave . . .Since any sort of reaction wears you out too quickly, you do not react at all: this is the reasoning. And nothing burns you up more quickly than the affects of ressentiment. Annoyance, abnormal vulnerability, inability to take revenge, the desire, the thirst for revenge, every type of poisoning - these are definitely the most harmful ways for exhausted people to react: they inevitably lead to a rapid consumption of nervous energy and a pathological increase in harmful excretions, of bile into the stomach, for instance. Ressentiment should be what is forbidden most rigorously for people who are sick - it is their great evil: and unfortunately their most natural tendency as well."
"The higher man is distinguished from the lower by his fearlessness and his readiness to challenge misfortune: it is a sign of degeneration when eudaemonistic valuations begin to prevail (-physiological fatigue, feebleness of will-)."
"The normal dissatisfaction of our drives, e.g., hunger, the sexual drive, the drive to motion, contains in it absolutely nothing depressing; it works rather as an agitation of the feeling of life, as every rhythm of small, painful stimuli strengthens it, (whatever pessimists may say). This dissatisfaction, instead of making one disgusted with life, is the great stimulus to life."
Nietzsche on Nutrition/Health/Biology:
"It is improbable that our "knowledge" should extend further than is strictly necessary for the preservation of life. Morphology shows us how the senses and the nerves, as well as the brain, develop in proportion to the difficulty of finding nourishment."
"Another question interests me in a much different way: the question of nutrition; the 'salvation of humanity' is much more dependent on this question than on any theological oddity. We can formulate it in rough and ready terms: 'what do you yourself eat in order to achieve the maximum of strength, of virtu in the style of the Renaissance, of moraline-free virtue?..."
"What, after all, is "useful"? One must ask "useful in relation to what?" E.g., that which is useful for the long life of the individual might be unfavorable to its strength and splendor; that which preserves the individual might at the same time arrest and halt its evolution. On the other hand, a deficiency, a degeneration, can be of the highest utility in so far as it acts as a stimulant to other organs. In the same way, a state of need can be a condition of existence, in so far as it reduces an individual to that measure of expenditure which holds it together but prevents it from squandering itself.- The individual itself as a struggle between parts (for food, space, etc.) : its evolution tied to the victory or predominance of individual parts, to an atrophy, a "becoming an organ" of other parts."
"Genius depends on dry air, on clear skies-that is, on a rapid metabolism, on the possibility of drawing again and again on great, even tremendous quantities of strength."
"The influence of climate on our metabolism, its retardation, its acceleration, goes so far that a mistaken choice of place and climate can not only estrange a man from his task but can actually keep it from him: he never gets to see it. His animal vigor has never become great enough for him to attain that freedom which overflows into the most spiritual regions and allows one to recognize: this only I can do."
"But German cooking in general - what doesn't it have on its conscience! Soup before the meal, overcooked meats, vegetables cooked with fat and flour; the degeneration of starchy foods into paperweights! Just add to this the almost brutal post-prandial drinking habits of the ancient, but by no means only the ancient, Germans, and you will also understand the origin of German spirit - from depressive intestines . . . German spirit is indigestion, it is never through with anything."
"The slightest sluggishness of the intestines is entirely sufficient, once it has become a bad habit, to tum a genius into something mediocre, something "German."
"I cannot recommend seriously enough that all spiritual natures give up alcohol entirely."
"Essential: to start from the body and employ it as guide. It is the much richer phenomenon, which allows of clearer observation. Belief in the body is better established than belief in the spirit."
"More and more decisively the question concerning the health of the body is put ahead of that of "the soul": the latter being understood as a state consequent upon the former, and the former at the very least as a precondition of the health of the soul."
"The entire conscious life, the spirit along with the soul, the heart, goodness, and virtue-in whose service do they labor? In the service of the greatest possible perfection of the means (means of nourishment, means of enhancement) of the basic animal functions: above all, the enhancement of life."
"Put briefly: perhaps the entire evolution of the spirit is a question of the body; it ·is the history of the development of a higher body that emerges into our sensibility. The organic is rising to yet higher levels. Our lust for knowledge of nature is a means through which the body desires to perfect itself. Or rather: hundreds of thousands of experiments are made to change the nourishment, the mode of living and of dwelling of the body; consciousness and evaluations in the body, all kinds of pleasure and displeasure, are signs of these changes and experiments. In the long run, it is not a question of man at all: he is to be overcome."
"Not "mankind" but overman is the goal"
"A little health now and again is the ailing person’s best remedy."
"Today we no longer know how to separate moral and physiological degeneration: the former is merely a symptom-complex of the latter; one is necessarily bad, just as one is necessarily ill. Bad: here the word expresses a certain incapacity associated physiologically with the degenerating type: e.g., weakness of will, insecure and even multiple "personality," inability to resist reacting to a stimulus and to "control" oneself, constraint before every kind of suggestion from the will of another. Vice is not a cause; vice is a consequence- Vice is a somewhat arbitrarily limited concept designed to express in one word certain consequences of physiological degeneration. A universal proposition such as Christianity teaches-"Man is evil"-would be justified if one were justified in taking the degenerate type as the normal type of man. But perhaps this is an exaggeration. To be sure, the proposition is correct wherever Christianity prospers and stays on top: for that demonstrates a morbid soil, a field for degeneration."
"My attempt to understand moral judgments as symptoms and sign languages which betray the processes of physiological prosperity or failure"
"Egoism is of as much value as the physiological value of him who possesses it. Every individual consists of the whole course of evolution (and not, as morality imagines, only of something that begins at birth). If he represents the ascending course of mankind, then his value is in fact extraordinary; and extreme care may be taken over the preservation and promotion of his development. (It is concern for the future promised him that gives the well-constituted individual such an extraordinary right to egoism.) If he represents the descending course, decay, chronic sickening, then he has little value: and the first demand of fairness is for him to take as little space, force, and sunshine as possible away from the well constituted. In this case, it is the task of society to suppress egoism (-which sometimes expresses itself in absurd, morbid and rebel-
lious ways), whether it be a question of individuals or of whole decaying and atrophying classes of people. A doctrine and religion of "love," of suppression of self affirmation, of patience, endurance, helpfulness, of cooperation in word and deed, can be of the highest value within such classes, even from the point of view of the rulers: for it suppresses feelings of rivalry, of ressentiment, of envy -the all too natural feelings of the underprivileged-it even deifies a life of slavery, subjection, poverty, sickness, and inferiority for them under the ideal of humility and obedience. This explains why the ruling classes (or races) and individuals have at all times upheld the cult of selflessness, the gospel of the lowly, the "God on the cross."
