Nietzsche on the Knowledge of the Sufferer: A Contribution to the Philosophy of the Emotions

Abstract

Although the passions are important to Nietzsche, it is surprising the extent to which the topic is covered so little, and often superficially one might add, in the literature on him. In his writings we find thought-provoking treatments of a whole panoply of passions or emotions, including fear, hope, love, joy, pride, vanity, shame, sympathy, compassion, guilt, melancholy, and soon.1 In a note from 1880 Nietzsche indicates the importance the passions have for him by observing that without the passions the world is reduced to simply ‘quantity and line and law and nonsense’ (KSA 9:7 [226]).2 These are all things that, if this is all that existed, would rigidify life and turn it into something strictly mechanical, automatic, predictable, regular, and even boring.