Don’t ask, “Is my attitude toward life the right one?”—to that question there is no answer. Every attitude is as right as every other, all are a part of life. Ask instead, “Since I am as I am, since I have these particular needs and problems which seem to be spared so many others, what must I do in order to bear life, nevertheless, and if possible make something good of it?” If you really listen to your innermost voice, the answer will be something like this: “Since I am as I am, I should neither envy nor despise others for being different. I should not ask whether my being is ‘right,’ but accept my soul and its needs just as I accept my body, my name, my origins: as something given and inescapable, which I must say yes to and stand up for even if the whole world should oppose it.’”
—Hermann Hesse
Previous installments in this series:
Acceptance is an ambiguous word. In her seminal book, On Death and Dying, Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross described acceptance as one of the stages of grief observed in patients facing imminent mortality. She wrote, “Acceptance should not be mistaken for a happy stage. It is almost void of feelings.” This kind of acceptance in the negative sense, perhaps more aptly described as surrender or resignation, is not the kind of acceptance I will refer to here, and is antithetical to the positive kind of acceptance that Nietzsche intended with amor fati—an acceptance that is not void of feelings but rather is an impassioned affirmation of life: saying “yes” to life as it is and accepting one’s circumstances as they are.
Acceptance to Nietzsche didn’t mean just “moving on” from, or “making peace” with difficult experiences, undesirable events, and life changes. For him, acceptance meant facing the future with a defiant attitude— saying yes to new experiences and knowledge, constantly defining and refining our values and using them as a guide for making life choices, forging ahead along the journey toward (to use his term) becoming what we are. Life’s goal, to Nietzsche, is not to reach some stable and comfortable state and then to hold onto it. Rather, life’s goal is to constantly strive to overcome the person you are at a point in time: to use your powers, your talents, your intellect, your knowledge, your resources—your life—to see just how far you can go within whatever lifespan is afforded you, and to do so in acceptance that your life will eventually come to an end. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche wrote, “life itself confided this secret to me: ‘Behold,’ it said, ‘I am that which must always overcome itself.’”
Whereas the acceptance that Kübler-Ross described is passive in nature, the acceptance that Nietzsche promoted is active and assertive, manifesting in saying yes to life, even—especially—when it is difficult: saying “yes, I accept my fate; yes, I accept that life is not perfect or always fair; yes, I accept that life must come to an end; yes, I accept that what I think and do may not please everyone; yes, I accept that other people may have values and beliefs that are different from mine; yes, I accept my misfortunes as well as my pleasures; yes, I accept that I may not always get what I want; yes, I accept my limitations; yes, I accept my own unique personality and needs”—because all those things are in the nature of life. You can acknowledge and accept the negative aspects of life and live authentically, or you can live a partial life in denial of them.
True acceptance extends beyond just dealing with circumstances as they are. It extends also to our attitude toward time. Most people likely would agree that dwelling on negative aspects of the past (i.e., regret) or the future (i.e., trepidation) may unnecessarily spoil our experiences in the present. Few acknowledge that the same logic also applies to positive aspects of the past and the future. The same rationale that justifies avoiding regret also justifies avoiding nostalgia; and the same rationale that justifies avoiding trepidation also justifies avoiding hope. Both nostalgia and hope may be ways of alleviating suffering in the present by “borrowing” happiness from the past and future: from experiences we are not actually having (and perhaps may not end up having, or have had).
Despite seeming on their face like good things, nostalgia and hope are also ways of affirming dissatisfaction with things in the present. Acceptance of things as they are, good and bad, makes both nostalgia and hope unnecessary. Recognizing this fact, Marcus Aurelius admonished himself: “Do not disturb yourself by imagining your whole life at once. Don’t always be thinking about what sufferings, and how many, might possibly befall you. Ask instead, in each present circumstance: ‘What is there about this that is unendurable and unbearable?’ You will be embarrassed to answer.”
Marcus Aurelius was a disciple of Stoic philosophy. In a nutshell, Stoic philosophy is founded in the idea that the best way to live is according to the laws of nature, which, in turn, imply pursuing certain virtues (primarily courage, wisdom, justice, and temperance). A person who accepts the laws of nature as they are and lives virtuously can then escape or alleviate suffering by responding to misfortunes with equanimity—with the attitude embodied in my least-favorite expression in the English language: it is what it is.
Nietzsche rejected this view and considered living according to Stoic virtues as a “fossilized” way of life: a way of life suggesting that, once you have shaped your life according to the prescribed virtues, you have no further reason to continue to change and evolve, just persist and turn a stiff upper lip to life’s adversities. In contrast, Nietzsche didn’t think that alleviating suffering is sufficient reason to stop us from pursuing our innate “will to power”—the drive to “discharge” our strengths, even against suffering, and even if it causes us additional suffering. In The Gay Science, he asked poignantly, “Is our life really painful and burdensome enough to make it advantageous to exchange it for a Stoic way of life and petrification?”
Hermann Hesse expressed this attitude more poetically in his novel Steppenwolf. He wrote, “My happiness fills me with content and I can bear it for a long while yet. But sometimes when happiness leaves a moment’s leisure to look about me and long for things, the longing I have is not to keep this happiness forever, but to suffer once again, only more beautifully and less meanly than before.”
Albert Camus built upon Nietzsche’s ideas to create his own theory of rebellion. Rebellion, according to Camus, is different from insurrection. Insurrection is violent and destructive in nature, but rebellion is peaceful and creative: it is the way individuals who accept the negative aspects of life can find purpose in a meaningless world by rebelling against them. One way to rebel against suffering, according to Camus, is by creating art. In his book, The Rebel, he wrote:
Art is the activity that exalts and denies simultaneously. “No artist tolerates reality,” says Nietzsche. That is true, but no artist can get along without reality. Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world. But it rejects the world on account of what it lacks and in the name of what it sometimes is. Rebellion can be observed here in its pure state and in its original complexities. Thus art should give us a final perspective on the content of rebellion.
According to Camus, rebellion is (or can be) an artist’s way of responding to the negative aspects of life without denying their reality—accepting reality as it is, for what it is, and rebelling against it in acts of creation. Rather than being in denial of negative aspects, finding solace in hoping for a better future, or facing suffering with equanimity as the Stoics suggest—Camus suggested instead finding purpose in peaceful, creative rebellion against the negative aspects of life—defying them by creating an alternate reality in art that negates them. He wrote:
Art is an impossible demand given expression and form. When the most agonizing protest finds its most resolute form of expression, rebellion satisfies its real aspirations and derives creative energy from this fidelity to itself. Despite the fact that this runs counter to the prejudices of the times, the greatest style in art is the expression of the most passionate rebellion.
Art can arrest the passage of time and thus rebel against decay and mortality. Art can express beauty and gentleness and thus rebel against a world rife with ugliness and violence. Art gives artists the capacity to create their own world that is within their control, and thus rebel against the real world where we are at the whims of chance. Art can assert subjective meaning in a world devoid of objective meaning. “In art,” Camus wrote, “rebellion is consummated and perpetuated in the act of real creation.” In short: accept reality for what it is—don’t deny it—but instead of succumbing to nihilistic despair, choose to make life meaningful by rebelling against meaninglessness by creating an alternate, meaningful reality in artistic work. But don’t confuse this created reality with actual reality. As he put it, “The artist reconstructs the world to his plan.”
Camus specifically stated that art should not be a mere reproduction of reality, but a different, personal reality, stylized and created by an artist. “Whatever may be the chosen point of view of an artist,” he wrote, “one principle remains common to all creators: stylization, which supposes the simultaneous existence of reality and of the mind that gives reality its form. Through style, the creative effort reconstructs the world, and always with the same slight distortion that is the mark of both art and protest.” This is why Camus opposed both extremes of art: pure realism, and pure abstraction. The former has no form of rebellion, the latter is rebellion to a point of complete denial of reality—of life. Instead, he proposes that great art must be somewhere in between. As he put it:
When stylization is exaggerated and obvious, the work becomes nothing but pure nostalgia; the unity it is trying to conquer has nothing to do with concrete unity. On the other hand, when reality is delivered over to unadorned fact or to insignificant stylization, then the concrete is presented without unity. Great art, style, and the true aspect of rebellion lie somewhere between these two heresies.
Proceed to Part IV: Nature and Music
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