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Video Description
How do human beings manage to live, given how much trouble life is? This lecture from Academy of Ideas pairs two very different answers to that question. Peter Wessel Zapffe thought we survive by numbing ourselves — with isolation, anchoring, distraction, and sublimation. Friedrich Nietzsche took a bolder path: turn the pain into art, and let beauty intoxicate you back into living. The video asks what happens when the usual defenses fail, and why the tragic insight of the genius may be inseparable from beauty’s most ecstatic moments.
Full Video Transcript
Many thinkers have proposed that human beings require emotional stimulants and psychological aids to mitigate the hardships and burdens associated with existence, and to provide an energizing conviction that life has worth.
Without such mechanisms, one is prone to slip into the sort of world-wariness expounded in the wisdom of Silenus.
Oh miserable ephemeral race, children of chance and suffering, why do you compel me to say to you what would be most beneficial for you not to hear?
here. What is best of all is utterly unreachable, not to be born, not to be, to be nothing,
but the second best for you is to die soon.
In this video we will examine the question as to why psychological mechanisms are needed
to cope with existence, and discuss what some of these mechanisms are. In the latter part
of the video we examine some of the consequences that arise in cases when these mechanisms
fail, paying particular attention to how this relates to the creative genius.
It is often suggested that it is not so much existence in and of itself that is difficult
to bear, not merely that we are children of chance and suffering, but the fact that we
are conscious of our troubled lot.
Apart from the fact there is no normal standard of health, wrote the Spanish philosopher Miguel
de Nemuno, nobody has proved that man is necessarily cheerful by nature, and further, man, by the
very fact of being man, of possessing consciousness, is, in comparison with the donkey or the crab,
a diseased animal.
Consciousness is a disease.
The suggestion that consciousness creates the existential crisis that the majority of
people spend their life fleeing from is a common theme among a number of thinkers.
In his essay The Last Messiah, the philosopher Peter Wessel Zapfe put forth a harrowing condemnation
of consciousness as the culprit which has imposed an excessive burden on the human race.
Whatever happened, a breach in the very unity of life, a biological paradox, an abomination,
an absurdity, an exaggeration of disastrous nature. Life had overshot its target, blowing
itself apart. A species had been armed too heavily, by spirit made almighty without,
but equally a menace to its own well-being. So there he stands with his visions betrayed
by the universe in wonder and fear. The beast knew fear as well, in thunderstorms and on
the lion’s claw. But man became fearful of life itself, indeed, of his very being. Some
Some may question whether the terrible truths of human existence are really that terrible,
or whether those who preach the tragic sense of life are merely sensitive souls prone to
exaggerated claims.
For if these terrible truths were really that tragic, wouldn’t more people believe in
the validity of Silenus’ wisdom, or at the very least act upon the guidance of Emile
Tauron and retreat to a faraway corner of the world in the realization that there is
nothing to be gained in this life?
If we really are but the children of chance and suffering of Silenus, why, in the words
of Zapfa, has mankind not long ago gone extinct during great epidemics of madness?
Why do only a fairly minor number of individuals perish because they fail to endure the strain
of living?
Zapfa thought he had found the answer.
Cultural history, as well as observation of ourselves and others, allow the following
answer.
Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness.
Zapffa identified three psychological, or more specifically repressional, mechanisms
by which individuals artificially limit the content of consciousness and protect themselves
from the despair that can ensue from becoming too conscious of the tragic sense of life
– isolation, anchoring, and distraction.
Zapffa defined isolation as a fully arbitrary dismissal from consciousness of all disturbing
and destructive thought and feeling.
Semiconsciously or unconsciously, individuals avoid thinking about the terrible truths of
human existence, utilizing various strategies to ensure tragic insights are kept as far
away from awareness as possible.
Zapfa called anchoring, which is a fixation of points within or construction of walls
around the liquid fray of consciousness, the happiest protection against the cosmos that
we ever get to know in life.
The earliest and primary anchoring point is the home and neighborhood one grows up in.
As this anchoring point loses its efficacy over time, individuals grasp onto other anchors
available to them in their personal and social life, such as one’s vocation, a political
party or a religious creed.
Such anchorings provide a sense of safety, familiarity and meaning, protecting one from
moods of existential disorientation and feelings of cosmic insignificance.
In distraction, a very popular mode of protection, one limits attention to the critical bounds
by constantly enthralling it with impression.
A quick glance at our culture of instant gratification, whereby individuals have constant access to
and constantly seek out mindless stimuli and entertainment, confirms Zoppa’s observation
that distraction is a popular means used by human beings to minimize their awareness of
the tragic nature of life.
Most of the time these mechanisms successfully fulfill their purpose of limiting the content
of consciousness.
The majority of people largely go through life without succumbing to extreme states
of world-wariness and with the conviction that although life is difficult, it has its
victories and is ultimately worth the effort.
But what happens when these mechanisms fail?
What happens when an individual becomes increasingly aware of the tragic sense of life?
Is such an individual fated to live in a constant state of despair?
If one looks deeply into life, is one also fated to suffer deeply?
Along with the three repressional mechanisms outlined by Zapfe, he also posited the existence
of a fourth remedy against the pain of existence, that being sublimation.
Sublimation differs in kind from the other three remedies in that it is a matter of transformation
rather than repression. Via sublimation, the individual harnesses the large amounts of
energy associated with being overcome by the pain of living and utilizes such energy to
fashion creative works of beauty. Through stylistic or artistic gifts can the very pain
of living at times be converted into valuable experiences. Positive impulses engage the
evil and put it to their own ends, fastening onto its pictorial, dramatic, heroic, lyric
or even comic aspects. Zapfa’s mechanism of sublimation, which he called the
rarest of protective means, is similar to Nietzsche’s advice for those higher
humans whose disposition renders them unable to utilize the repressional
mechanisms which protect the masses from world wariness. For such higher humans
who distinguish themselves from the lower by seeing and hearing and
thoughtfully seeing and hearing immeasurably more, Nietzsche recommends
using art as a means of revitalization from the suffering that results from
looking deeply into life. The truly serious task of art is to save the eye from gazing
into the horrors of the night, and to deliver the subject by the healing balm of illusion
from the spasms of the agitations of the will. Nietzsche considered art as such a highly
effective antidote to tragic insight because it induces what he called Rausch, a German
word translated as rush or intoxication. For one to create any work of beauty, or truly
appreciate beauty in art or nature, one must first enter into a state of Rausch. For there
to be art, for there to be any aesthetic doing and seeing, one physiological precondition is
indispensable, Rausch. Rausch must first have enhanced the excitability of the whole machine,
else there is no art. Rausch is a rare and unique state, categorized by Nietzsche as one of the more
powerful of experiences possible for human beings. When an aesthetic phenomena stimulates such a
state, the individual is vaulted into a higher mode of being, one categorized by power-strength
and an intoxication which mirrors the excitement of sensuality.
Art reminds us of states of animal vigor.
It is on the one hand an excess and overflow of blooming physicality
into the world of images and desires,
on the other, an excitation of the animal function
through the images and desires of intensified life,
an enhancement of the feeling of life, a stimulant to it.
It is because beauty stimulates states of roush,
the feeling of increased strength and fullness,
that Nietzsche heralded art as the great stimulus to life for those higher humans
whose tragic insight is keen and sensitive.
But what is interesting is the degree to which tragic insight into the nature of life
is needed in order to stimulate states of Roush.
Could it be that the more aware one is of the terrible truths,
the more one will experience the rapturous and ecstatic state of Roush?
A look into the nature of genius will offer insight into this question.
It has long been known that many geniuses throughout history
whose creative powers seem to dwell high above mere mortals, have struggled with pathological
states. Seneca stated that no genius has existed without a touch of madness, and Aristotle claimed
those who have become eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, and the arts have all had
tendencies toward melancholia. More recently, Dean Keith Simonton, in his book Origins of Genius,
summarized numerous studies which have established empirically a connection between psychopathological
states and creativity. Perhaps at least some of the pathological states common among geniuses
is stimulated by their inability to use the repressional mechanisms outlined by Zapfa,
resulting in a hyper-awareness of the horrors of the night. This would explain why the lives
of so many geniuses were constituted by periods of severe melancholy, suffering, and inactivity,
followed by rapturous and productive states of creativity and ecstasy, i.e. Rausch. Without
Without access to the repressional mechanisms that keep most individuals on a relative even
psychic keel day in and day out, the only way such individuals could persevere in life,
after spending so much time staring into the abyss, is to break free from their despair
in an almost superhuman state of joy and power.
Nietzsche, one such genius, spent much of his life in extreme states of suffering, writing
”I am more of a battlefield than a man.”
He suffered physically due to his weak disposition and extreme migraines, as well as emotionally
due to his self-imposed solitude, and psychologically due to his complete lack of recognition among
his peers. And above all else, he suffered from spending so much time gazing into the
horrors of the night. Yet he also reached peaks unknown to all but a select few.
The intensities of my feeling make me shudder and laugh, he wrote. Several times I could
not leave the room for the ridiculous reason that my eyes were inflamed. From what? Each
time I had wept too much on my previous day’s walk. Not sentimental tears, but tears of
I sang and talked nonsense filled with a glimpse of things which put me in advance of all other men if
Confronting the tragedy of life opens one up to experiencing states of Roush
Maybe the majority of individuals by utilizing repressional mechanisms to protect themselves from tragic insights
Also, confine themselves to a narrow range of experience whereby the rapturous state of Roush the great stimulus to life is
Rarely if ever experienced by protecting oneself from the terrible truths of human existence
one may also be protecting oneself from experiencing life more fully, deeply, and joyfully.
In the words of Dunamuno,
And the supreme beauty is that of tragedy,
the consciousness that everything passes away,
that we ourselves pass away,
and that everything that is ours and everything that environs us passes away,
fills us with anguish.
And this anguish itself reveals to us the consolation of that which does not pass away,
of the eternal, of the beautiful.
Source: Academy of Ideas