On the very idea of 'justifying suffering'

Abstract

Many commentators have said that Nietzsche is concerned, either in all or in some parts of his career, with providing a kind of "theodicy", or with justifying or finding meaning in suffering. This article examines these notions, questioning whether terms such as "theodicy" or "justifying suffering" are helpful in getting Nietzsche's views into focus, and exploring some unclarities concerning the way in which such terms themselves are understood. The article discusses the notion of "aesthetic justification" in The Birth of Tragedy, arguing that here "justification" is used in the very loose sense of "enabling a positive attitude toward." Nietzsche's retrospective "Attempt at a Self- Criticism" is then examined, and it is argued that here Nietzsche does not endorse his earlier notion of aesthetic justification, but rather praises The Birth of Tragedy for its refusal to find a moral meaning in existence. This negative virtue is presented in explicit contrast to Schopenhauer's claim that the world has a moral meaning that metaphysics can discover. Schopenhauer rejects the optimistic moral meaning provided by theism, but replaces it with a pessimistic meaning: the world is in itself such that its non-existence would have been better. This shows that there can be meaning in existence that does not correlate with affirmation. The later Nietzsche rejects the "metaphysical need" along with theism, and reaches a position in which neither metaphysical optimism nor metaphysical pessimism is viable. But since suffering still seems to be an "objection to life," the later Nietzsche argues that suffering need not be seen as bad in itself, paying particular attention to The Gay Science, Section 338. To view suffering as bad in istelf is to miss suffering's potential to be part of whole "sequence and interconnection" in which there is psychological growth. The article concludes that, while Nietzsche's later position is continuous with the tradition of theodicy in seeking to relate suffering's value to some wider whole, it is also discontinuous with that tradition because it does not hold that suffering as such has a fixed normative value, that suffering as such has a meaning, that it happens for a reason, or that it is justified, let alone that the world's containing suffering is in line with our interests, or that we ought because of suffering to value our lives one way or another. On Nietzsche's view there is nothing that guarantees meaning or specific normative value to suffering just because it is suffering. In all these senses Nietzsche has moved away from the tradition of theodicy.

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ORCID for Christopher Janaway: orcid.org/0000-0002-9600-8837

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