What role does pleasure have in the good life for Weil and Nietzsche?

[HossRyams]

I can't really pin down what pleasure has to do with the good life for either philosophy. In my recent SAC (an essay) I had to discuss the idea of pleasure in regards to Weil and I ended up saying it was irrelevant and that provided the individual fulfills their obligations and the needs of the soul etc. then they are living well. Can I just simply say it is irrelevant or having I missed something?

Not really sure what Nietzsche says on pleasure and I may need to refresh my memory on his view...

Thanks!

[Lolly]

Hi youshine,

I'm not (formally) studying philosophy but I believe that Nietzsche said that great joy comes from great suffering. For a good life we must shy away from neither. He scorned the claims to absolute truths and binary opposites which are evident within our lingual constructs ( I think this is what he talks about in 'Beyond Good and Evil') The world is in a state of flux, and we cannot depend on fixed terms such as " good', and 'evil' and indeed, 'pleasure' and 'pain' as rigid and definite. I think he also said that pleasure and pain were surface symptoms of our deeper drives, the will to power, etc. We suffer in our will to become greater human beings. This suffering is necessary; it is not something that should be pitied by others.  As such, he did not see suffering and pleasure existing in antithesis, with one more desirable than another for a fulfilled life.  Living a full life means we must embrace both.


Can someone please verify this? I feel like I could get more out of these books if I was doing philosophy as a subject ( and perhaps I would be more qualified to answer youshine's question). I could be way off the mark...Nietzsche is very interesting but difficult to read.

By the way, what is your opinion of Nietzsche? I find him fascinating but I also think that his philosophy is full of contradictions.

[FlorianK]

I kinda like Nietzsche's "The Madman".
Last Ethics class everyone of us had to read and act out this part:

Spoiler

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes.
"Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you.
We have killed him—-you and I.
All of us are his murderers.
But how did we do this?
How could we drink up the sea?
Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?
What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?
Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving?
Away from all suns?
Are we not plunging continually?
Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions?
Is there still any up or down?
Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing?
Do we not feel the breath of empty space?
Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?
Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning?
Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers
who are burying God?
Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition?
Gods, too, decompose.
God is dead.
God remains dead.
And we have killed him.

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?
What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled
to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?
What water is there for us to clean ourselves?
What festivals of atonement, what sacred gamesshall we have to invent?
Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?
Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us -
For the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all
history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners;
and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment.
At last he threw his lantern on the ground,
and it broke into pieces and went out.
"I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. [\spoiler]

It was just hilarious

[EvangelionZeta]

Hi youshine,

I'm not (formally) studying philosophy but I believe that Nietzsche said that great joy comes from great suffering. For a good life we must shy away from neither. He scorned the claims to absolute truths and binary opposites which are evident within our lingual constructs ( I think this is what he talks about in 'Beyond Good and Evil') The world is in a state of flux, and we cannot depend on fixed terms such as " good', and 'evil' and indeed, 'pleasure' and 'pain' as rigid and definite. I think he also said that pleasure and pain were surface symptoms of our deeper drives, the will to power, etc. We suffer in our will to become greater human beings. This suffering is necessary; it is not something that should be pitied by others.  As such, he did not see suffering and pleasure existing in antithesis, with one more desirable than another for a fulfilled life.  Living a full life means we must embrace both.


Can someone please verify this? I feel like I could get more out of these books if I was doing philosophy as a subject ( and perhaps I would be more qualified to answer youshine's question). I could be way off the mark...Nietzsche is very interesting but difficult to read.

By the way, what is your opinion of Nietzsche? I find him fascinating but I also think that his philosophy is full of contradictions.

Broadly speaking that's rightish, although I also never actually did VCE philo...then again, a lot of the teachers of the subject also disagree with one another :p

What do you find contradictory in Nietzsche, lolly?

[aphelleon]

Yep. Lollymatron, Nietzsche did talk a fair bit about the relationship between suffering and reward.



To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities — I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not — that one endures.

    Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, p. 481


In regards to the text studied by VCE philosophy, however, Youshine - 'The Genealogy of Morality'... Nietzsche talks about enforcing one's "will to power" over weaker beings in order to attain what we want. I suppose it doesn't refer to pleasure directly,  but he does refer to the "life-affirming" characteristics of the "noble morality" as the ideal way to live.
He also condemns those of the "slave morality", who cause the "happy", the "strong", the "successful" and the "powerful" to "doubt their right to happiness."

As for Weil, she holds pleasure in contempt, but rather asserts that one must focus their energy on fulfilling their "eternal obligations" to the "collective".