This is related to my previous posts on cultural issues. Nietzsche is my favorite “philosopher,” so I did a little search of his books for entries on “boredom,” and/or “loneliness.” Here they are:
From: The Antichrist
pg. 12
In Christianity the instincts of the subjugated and oppressed come to the fore: here the lowest classes seek their salvation. The casuistry of sin, self-criticism, the inquisition of the conscience, are pursued as a pastime, as a remedy for boredom; the emotional reaction to one who has power, called “God,” is constantly nourished (by means of prayer); and what is highest is considered unattainable, a gift, “grace.” Public acts are precluded; the hiding-place, the darkened room, is Christian. The body is despised, hygiene repudiated as sensuality: the church even opposes cleanliness (the first Christian measure after the expulsion of the Moors was the closing of the public baths, of which there were two hundred and seventy in Cordova alone). Christian too is a certain sense of cruelty against oneself and against others, hatred of all who think differently; the will to persecute. Gloomy and exciting conceptions predominate; the most highly desired states, designated with the highest names, are epileptoid; the diet is so chosen as to favor morbid phenomena and overstimulate the nerves. Christian too is mortal enmity against the lords of the earth, against the “noble”—along with a sly, secret rivalry (one leaves them the “body,” one wants only the “soul”). Christian, finally, is the hatred of the spirit, of pride, courage, freedom, liberty of the spirit; Christian is the hatred of the senses, of joy in the senses, of joy itself.
pg. 30
The old God, all “spirit,” all high priest, all perfection, takes a stroll in his garden; but he is bored. Against boredom even gods struggle in vain. What does he do? He invents man—man is entertaining. But lo and behold! Man too is bored. God’s compassion with the sole distress that distinguishes all paradises knows no limits: soon he creates other animals as well. God’s first mistake: man did not find the animals entertaining; he ruled over them, he did not even want to be “animal.” Consequently God created woman. And
indeed, that was the end of boredom—but of other things too! Woman was God’s second mistake. “Woman is by nature a snake, Heve”—every priest knows that; “from woman comes all calamity in the world”—every priest knows that, too. “Consequently, it is from her too that science comes.” Only from woman did man learn to taste of the tree of knowledge.
[btw...Nietzsche was neither a misogynist, nor a Nazi sympathizer]
From: Twilight of the Idols
pg. 26
Sainte Beuve — Nothing of virility, full of petty wrath against all virile spirits. Wanders around, cowardly, curious, bored, eavesdropping — a female at bottom, with a female’s lust for revenge and a female’s sensuality. As a psychologist, a genius of médisance [slander], inexhaustibly rich in means to that end; no one knows better how to mix praise with poison. Plebeian in the lowest instincts and related to the ressentiment of Rousseau: consequently, a romantic — for underneath all romantisme lie the grunting and greed of Rousseau’s instinct for revenge. A revolutionary, but still pretty well harnessed by fear. Without freedom when confronted with anything strong (public opinion, the Academy, the court, even Port Royal). Embittered against everything great in men and things, against whatever believes in itself. Poet and half-female enough to sense the great as a power; always writhing like the famous worm because he always feels stepped upon. As a critic, without any standard, steadiness, and backbone, with the cosmopolitan libertine’s tongue for a medley of things, but without the courage even to confess his libertinage. As a historian, without philosophy, without the power of the philosophical eye — hence declining the task of judging in all significant matters, hiding behind the mask of “objectivity.” It is different with his attitude to all things in which a fine, well-worn taste is the highest tribunal: there he really has the courage to stand by himself and delight in himself — there he is a master. In some respects, a preliminary version of Baudelaire.
pg. 35, number 29
From a doctoral examination — “What is the task of all higher education?” To turn men into machines. “What are the means?” Man must learn to be bored. “How is that accomplished?” By means of the concept of duty. “Who serves as the model?” The philologist: he teaches grinding. “Who is the perfect man?” The civil servant. “Which philosophy offers the highest formula for the civil servant?” Kant’s: the civil servant as a thing-in-itself, raised up to be judge over the civil servant as phenomenon.
pg. 2, number 3
To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both — a philosopher.
From: The Gay Science
pg. 327
…vengeance on intellect, and other backgrounds of morality – morality – where do you think it has its most dangerous and rancorous advocates? – There, for example, is an ill-constituted man, who does not possess enough of intellect to be able to take pleasure in it, and just enough of culture to be aware of the fact; bored, satiated, and a self-despiser; besides being cheated unfortunately by some hereditary property out of the last consolation, the “blessing of labor,” the self-forgetfulness in the “day’s work;” one who is thoroughly ashamed of his existence – perhaps also harboring some vices – and who on the other hand (by means of books to which he has no right, or more intellectual society than he can digest), cannot help vitiating himself more and more, and making himself vain and irritable: such a thoroughly poisoned man – for intellect becomes poison, culture becomes poison, possession becomes poison, solitude becomes poison, to such ill-constituted beings – gets at last into a habitual state of vengeance and inclination for vengeance…What do you think he finds necessary, absolutely necessary in order to give himself the appearance in his own eyes of superiority over more intellectual men, so as to give himself the delight of perfect revenge, at least in imagination? It is always morality that he requires, one may wager on it…
pg. 173, number 117
The Herd’s Sting of Conscience – In the longest and remotest ages of the human race there was quite a different sting of conscience from that of the present day. At present one only feels responsible for what one intends and for what one does, and we have our pride in ourselves. All our professors of jurisprudence start with this sentiment of individual independence and pleasure, as if the source of right had taken its rise here from the beginning. But throughout the longest period in the life of mankind there was nothing more terrible to a person that to feel himself independent. To be alone, to feel independent, neither to obey nor to rule, to represent an individual – that was no pleasure to a person then, but a punishment; he was condemned “to be an individual.” Freedom of thought was regarded as discomfort personified. While we feel law and regulation as constraining and loss, people formerly regarded egoism as a painful thing, and a veritable evil. For a person to be himself, to value himself according to his own measure and weight – that was then quite distasteful. The inclination to such a thing would have been regarded as madness; for all miseries and terrors were associated with being alone. At that time the “free will” had bad conscience in close proximity to it; and the less independently a person acted, the more the herd-instinct, and not his personal character, expressed itself in his conduct, so much the more moral did he esteem himself. All that did injury to the herd, whether the individual had intended it or not, then caused him a sting of conscience – and his neighbor likewise, indeed the whole herd! – It is in this respect that we have most changed our thinking.
pg 204, number 182
In Solitude – When one lives alone one does not speak too loudly, and one does not write too loudly either, for one fears the hollow reverberation – the criticism of the nymph Echo. – And all voices sound differently in solitude!
pg 282, number 341
The Heaviest Burden – What if a demon crept after thee into thy loneliest loneliness some day or night, and said to thee: “This life, as thou livest it at present, and hast lived it, thou must live it once more, and also innumerable times; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh, and all the unspeakably small and great in they life must come to thee once again, and all in teh same series and sequence – and similarly this spider and this moonlight among the trees, and similarly this moment, and I myself. The eternal sand-glass of existence will ever be turned once more, adn thou with it, thou speck of dust!” – Wouldst thou not throw thyself down and gnash thy teeth, and curse the demon that so spake? Or has thou once experienced a tremendous moment in which thou wouldst answer him: “Thou are ta God, and never did I hear anything so divine!” If that thought acquired power over thee as thou art, it would transform thee, and perhaps crush thee; the question with regard to all and everything: “Dost thou want this once more, and also for innumerable times?” would lie as the heaviest burden upon thy activity! Or, how wouldst thou have to become favorably inclined to thyself and to life, so as to long for nothing more ardently than for this last eternal sanctioning and sealing?
From: Beyond Good and Evil
pg 93, number 227
Our honesty, we free spirits–let us be careful lest it become our vanity, our ornament and ostentation, our limitation, our stupidity! Every virtue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to virtue; “stupid to the point of sanctity,” they say in Russia,- let us be careful lest out of pure honesty we eventually become saints and bores! Is not life a hundred times too short for us – to bore ourselves? One would have to believe in eternal life in
order to…
