Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are

by John Kaag

“Each soul,” Emerson wrote in his lecture “Natural History of the Intellect,” “walking in its own path walks firmly, and to the astonishment of all other souls, who see not its path.”

“Companions, I need,” Zarathustra admitted, “and living ones—not dead companions or corpses I carry wherever I go. But living companions I need who follow me because they wish to follow themselves—and to the places whither I wish to go.”

Perhaps this sounds overly bleak, but Nietzsche, echoing Schopenhauer, believed that the ways in which most individuals sought to alleviate agony only deepened it in the end. Typical escapes—food, money, power, sex—are painfully transitory. Life goes only one way, into ever-steeper decline. This is true for all living beings, but humans have the unique powers of recollection and foresight, so they, unlike mere beasts, can relive the horrors of life and clearly envision their untimely demise. Of course, one can find distractions—politics, education, religion, and family life—but these do little to mitigate the painful effects of being human. These relationships and institutions are as fragile and unreliable as the lives that support them.

The emotions, according to Kant, more often than not led individuals astray by allowing them to confuse moral imperative with personal preference. When driven by their passions, individuals tended to overlook their moral duties and act irrationally.

According to Nietzsche, there are two forms of health: the futile type that tries to keep death at bay as long as possible, and the affirming type that embraces life, even its deficiencies and excesses.

Aesthetic experience could justify human existence but could also, just as easily, invalidate it. The mass production and consumption of art could be used to distract, mask, or blind an audience.

To be well-adjusted, for Nietzsche, is to choose, wholeheartedly, what we think and where we find and create meaning. The specter of infinite monotony was for Nietzsche the abiding impetus to assume absolute responsibility: if one’s choices are to be replayed endlessly, they’d better be the “right” ones. It might be tempting to think that the “rightness” of a decision could be affixed by some external moral or religious standard, but Nietzsche wants his readers to resist this temptation.

Of course you can choose anything you want, to raise children or get married, but don’t pretend to do it because these things have some sort of intrinsic value—they don’t. Do it solely because you chose them and are willing to own up to them. In the story of our lives, these choices are ours and ours alone, and this is what gives things, all things, value.