#966 Patrick Hassan: Nietzsche's Struggle Against Pessimism

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of the Center. I'm your host as always Ricardo Lob. And today I'm joined by Doctor Patrick Hassan. He is a lecturer at the School of English Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University in the UK. His primary areas of interest are moral and existential philosophy. And today we're focusing on his book, Nietzsche's Struggle Against pessimism. So, Doctor Hassan, welcome to the show, it's a big pleasure to have everyone.

00:27 Patrick Hassan: It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

00:30 Ricardo Lopes: So let's start perhaps with this. Uh What is pessimism? I mean, when philosophers specifically talk about pessimism, what, what are they exactly referring to? When is there just one type of pessimism or are there varieties of pessimism?

00:49 Patrick Hassan: Good. Yeah. So I think it's really important to, to distinguish as you just did between how we might use this term colloquially and how philosophers use this term, right? So, um outside of academic philosophy, when people talk about pessimism, they usually mean something like it's a psychological disposition to maybe expect the worst, the worst to happen or to see the glass half empty as it were. Um But in philosophy, pessimism, it, it can be used in a variety of different ways, but it tends to be the view that life is not worth living or that nonexistence is preferable to existence. And this might be because whichever things we find to be the most valuable, like our, our ultimate values, values, which give us meaning and direction, which demand responses from us. These things are unrealizable or, or unreachable. Um So I think that's the definition which most people have in mind in, in philosophy, when they talk about pessimism. Um It's certainly the definition which became the de facto definition of pessimism in the 19th century, which we'll, we'll talk a lot about today, I'm sure. Um But yes, it i it probably is, is appropriate to just say that there are like a lot of philosophical terms, pessimism can be used to refer to a few different views. Um So this might be, for example, a historical thesis that is just a claim that um contemporary culture has fallen from some golden age or some ideal of humanity. Um So it was again in the 19th century, quite popular to think that the ancient Greeks in the fifth century was the pinnacle of human culture and society and creativity. Um All the Italian renaissance. Uh And that since then, we've degenerated and declined in various ways in, in political, moral, aesthetic domains. OK. So that, that's one version of pessimism is a historical claim that uh we've fallen from some ideal. And again, there's stronger versions of that too. So maybe the, the AAA claim about the future that we will continue to decline or degenerate in some way. And you see versions of this in a lot of contemporary discourse outside of academia that um for systemic reasons, perhaps there will be political catastrophe. Uh You see this in discussions of nuclear deterrence, for example, um political catastrophe with ongoing wars over resources, environmental catastrophe uh in climate change debates. So uh this kind of doomsayer predictive pessimism is, is again a kind of um view where the label pessimism might get used. Um Another version might be the a modal claim which is just the inversion of the Leibniz and claim that this is the best of all possible worlds, right? And actually, some pessimists have defended a view like this, that this is not just a, a bad world, but it's the worst of all possible worlds, right? Um So Schopenhauer, someone who we're gonna talk about probably in quite some detail. Um HAS it at least in one place in the second volume of his major work, the world has won representation offers us kind of inverted fine tuning argument for this view that this world is as bad as it possibly could be if it was to exist at all because of the the delicate nature of the elements which which um give rise to life. So that could also be described as pessimism. But Id, I do think that the primary position which people have in mind in philosophy, when they're talking about pessimism and which has generated most of the dispute has been this evaluative claim that life is not worth living um that the, the values that we endorse are unrealizable and so nonexistence is preferable to existence.

04:55 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm There, there are many interesting ideas there and uh let me just comment that for example, when it comes to the political side of things, as you mentioned briefly there. Yeah. Uh ON social media and elsewhere, nowadays, we see a lot of discourse particularly from people on the right wing, but sometimes also people on the left wing, the more traditionalist primitive types, uh sometimes even wanting to go back to the Roman Empire, not just the Rens, but even the Roman Empire and saying that we particularly in the West are all a bunch of the gens. But

05:35 Patrick Hassan: you're right. Yeah.

05:37 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah. Yeah. And then uh I mean, I, I guess that one thing that we might come back to later uh is that, I mean, uh it's interesting because when it comes to pessimism, sometimes people are referring to life or existence itself. But other times like in those particular political examples, they are referring more to particular kinds of cultural and social trends and not exactly about life as it is, let's say. Yeah,

06:10 Patrick Hassan: I think that's a good distinction. So um yeah, some of the most of the debates about pessimism in, in philosophy, in particular, in the 19th century were um focused upon this kind of much broader pessimism about life itself about um existence as such and our, our relation to the world as individuals. Um But I think you're right that there are these kind of more local versions of pessimism which are making claims about a particular um era, particular, particular kind of cultural um formation. Um And, and I think that you're right, this has leaked into um contemporary discourse in the, in the so called cultural wars. Um I do think you find it on in, in both left wing circles and right wing circles, but um you're absolutely right that, yeah, there's a, there's a dominant trend within um yeah, the particularly these right wing circles which harken back to a kind of bygone age, a kind of an age where um our values were realized and that we may or may not be able to recapture um in some way. But um yes, that could be the Roman Empire that could be sort of some period in the middle ages. It does vary depending upon one's one's values. But I mean, the, the precedent is set for that by figures in the 19th century, um particularly those like um Jacob Burkhardt, um Bach Hoven as well who were at Basel and were big influences upon Nietzsche who will come to talk about. Um So not just in, in the academic domain but also in the the cultural domain there. I mean, this is this kind of historical or cultural pessimism is running through uh a lot of Wagner and, and other cultural figures and artistic figures that had a profound influence uh and still have a profound influence on, on European thought.

08:09 Ricardo Lopes: So we're going to focus for obvious reasons on the 19th century here today because it's the century that Nietzsche lived in and uh his major influences, let's say, but do we know how old pessimism is in intellectual history? And of course, we're focusing here on Western intellectual history.

08:33 Patrick Hassan: Yeah, that's a good question. So, um there are elements of what we would consider pessimistic thought. Um YOU know, as a, as far back as the sort of third century BC. Um So, uh Heus of Cyrene uh was a philosopher who is reported to have pessimistic views um or at least elements of, of what we recognize as pessimism um in the middle ages. Uh You find uh even outside of, of the Western tradition, you find um Sufi poets in the Islamic world like Omar Khayyam, um Alma Ari have views which reflect the kinds of positions which those like Schopenhauer are developing in, in more sort of philosophically rigorous ways. Um And you will also find pessimistic thought. And again, this is something Copen tries to draw attention to. You'll also find strands of pessimistic thought, not necessarily in philosophers but in poets um in, in the vast literature produced by um uh those in, in, in the western tradition, also in, in various religious traditions as well. So famously, Schopenhauer thinks that, you know, pessimism is not a new thing at all. What he's trying to, to capture philosophically is a sentiment or a at least a hunch that there's something about the world which we should be regretting rather than celebrating. And he finds that, you know, entertained in the world's great religions. So early Christianity, in particular, the early church fathers, he reads Augustine as having a kind of pessimistic outlook. Um BUT also in non western traditions, most famously Buddhism, um he looks at Buddhism and, and, and sees the seeds for pessimistic thought that he's trying to draw out in a more philosophically robust manner. Um And as we, we'll probably talk about as well. I mean, a lot of these later pessimists also looked back to Socrates, right, controversially as a developer of this kind of pessimistic outlook, um as someone who thought of the material world as something that we need to be saved from, we need to be liberated from in some way. So there are um yeah, intellectual predecessors to pessimism as a philosophy, but it really comes to fruition as a, as a matter for philosophers to dispute um in the 19th century

11:12 Ricardo Lopes: and why the 19th century exactly? I mean, were there a specific circumstances back then? And I'm not talking about any specific kind of circumstances. It could have been social, political or simply intellectual. It could have been just in the intellectual realm for some reason that led to the rise of pessimism in two centuries ago.

11:36 Patrick Hassan: Yeah, that, that's a really good question. And then of course, it's, it's, there's no uncontroversial answer to that. So let me, let me make a distinction here. So, uh at the time and I think still today, um there is a view that look pessimism as a philosophy is really a product of the social and economic circumstances of the 19th century. In Germany, the turmoil, the political turmoil um in terms of internal revolutions, the attempt for unification of, of the German states wars with, with surrounding countries, um cholera epidemics, economic crashes failure, the failure of kind of the previous enlightenment, optimism that really we could unite everyone and we could improve people's lives significantly. Um A lot of people have pointed to those, those facts and thought. Well, it's, it's not a coincidence that philosophical pessimism begins to be popular and begins to spread throughout society, not just at the academic level, but throughout society begins to be entertained and endorsed. At the same time as these, these events. It's a little bit too coincidental. So there has been at the time and still today, an attempt to reduce philosophical pessimism to really just a symptom of the social circumstances. I'm happy to go into a bit more detail about this, but I feel like that, that that's a little bit too simplistic. Um I think that the story has to be a little bit more complicated than that. Um There were features of the 19th century which were remarkably uh which gave ri rise to a lot of hope with people in Germany in the 19th century. The again, the uni final unification of the of, of Germany as a state in the 18 seventies, huge scientific advances. So I think the story is gonna be a little bit more complicated there. And Nietzsche definitely weighs in on this. I think what's more interesting is the intellectual circumstances which give rise to pessimism, right? So what you've got happening in the 19th century following on from, from the the latter half of the 18th century, where people start openly challenging arguments for the existence of God and the place of religious institutions um in society, right? So you had human cans pretty devastating critiques of the traditional arguments for the existence of God and of metaphysical speculation more broadly, right? That is speculation about unconditioned reality, that reality is not filtered through our experiences, skepticism about if, if we can have any kind of knowledge of, of those matters, you had also the explosion of progress in the empirical sciences and the and the the growth of interest in materialism, which is one of the the greatest philosophical disputes in the 19th century was over materialism, this idea that everything could be explained in terms of physical matter um that had implications for how we might be able to deflate or, or give reductionist accounts of things like the, the soul of free will of morality, God, all of these other things which we might have anchored our sense of meaning or value in um these, these kinds of things begin to affect people's consciousness. Um And really challenge where we get our values from. Um So, not only just the the explosion of progress in the empirical sciences and the the um the the criticism of the exist uh the arguments of the existence of God, but also you have the development of anthropology as well, right? So the discovery of massive cultural difference, which again, I think started to um become apparent in the 18th century and just continued on to the 19th century discovery of different cultural practices, which m which started to shape this idea that the values we have here in, in Europe or in, in northern Europe specifically might not be the correct ones. Um They might not be as so safe and secure as we thought, there's all this diversity of, of belief in, of beliefs and values, what accounts for that? Um And then of course, you also had the development of philological investigations into the nature of scripture, right, in investigating texts like the Bible as natural phenomenon, not as these divinely inspired um gifts from God, but rather as um sort of a mismatch of different traditions, often contradictory very human texts. Um And then lastly, of course, and certainly not least the development and um propagation of Darwinian evolution, right, which had profound effects in m in multiple ways, right? Not only that we could explain the origins and complexities and apparent um purposes in nature without appeal to a divine creator, but also just the pervasiveness um and systematic nature of suffering in the animal kingdom which humanity was then placed into not as something special, um not as something which has been given Dominion over life, but actually just as one species among others. So I think that all of this contributes to an intellectual context which starts to provoke people into thinking, OK, well, if these are the things we value, how have we come to value them? And are they actually reachable? Are they actually something that we can genuinely obtain? We've, as we've sort of sort of assumed that whatever we think is good and right in the world we can have. Um BUT people I think start challenging that in this intellectual context. And I think one fruitful way of um having a general gloss on this, which has been entertained by some, some people in the secondary literature is that pessimism as people like Schopenhauer developed, it was almost a reconfiguration of the traditional problem of evil, right? So it's no longer how could the world be so full of suffering, um, and have a, have a kind of all powerful and, and, and good God to, to allow this to happen. But more how could there ever be value or how could be anything good? Right, in a world which is so violent and, and, and so, um, seemingly hostile to our human interests. So, I think that might be one kind of nice general way of framing this as a kind of secularization of a traditional um problem problem of the Odyssey.

18:33 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. And of course, we're focusing here mostly on the intellectual side of things. But you also mentioned at a certain point, there are possibly some of the social and economic circumstances having played the role back then. And of course, I would imagine that if they haven't played any role at all, it would be very weird because it's not that ideas pop out of nowhere, right? I mean, people live in a particular social, political economic context and so on. And, and also I would imagine that another factor that would have played the role and would also help explain why it was specific philosophers having this tendency toward pessimism. And this is probably a point that Nietzsche would be happy to engage with is that they have their own psychological predispositions as well, right? I mean, shop and our uh if I remember his family history correctly, even at several ancestors who themselves committed suicide. So even from a clinical psychology slash psychiatric perspective. I guess that he probably was already a little bit innately predisposed toward, uh, pessimism. I mean, that, that's just a comment. But anyway.

19:52 Patrick Hassan: Sure. Sure. And, yeah, and I think this is, um, you're absolutely right that this was certainly a, uh, a popular way of trying to understand why this deeply provocative and counterintuitive view came to such prominence. Um, YOU start thinking, ok. Well, if this is, this is very, this is a very strange view. How could this have been produced? What kind of psychology leads to this kind of view? Um And particularly 19th century and since then, where there is a kind of, there's a tendency to psychologize and even pathologize a lot of our beliefs and values. This was particularly pronounced in the case of pessimism. And if and even other pessimists did this to Schopenhauer, they thought, wait a minute. Um This is a, this is a guy that um clearly has some kind of um you know, deep deeper neurosis or even pathological brain disorder or something like this. And this is what's leading him to have these views. Um And his, even his style of writing that you would claim gives a way that he was more um motivated by these, yeah, by personal resentment or uh you know, towards, towards, for his mother, for example, who he had a very kind of tense relationship with um his resentment towards maybe, yes, his, his father who who most likely committed suicide. Um These were thought to explain why he had these pessimistic views. Um And, and also the social circumstances, but Schopenhauer was aware of this though and he, he tried to get ahead of that by uh formulating particular arguments that he thought would force people to rationally engage with. Um And again, he writes a letter to one of his, one of his uh close friends towards the end of his career where he attacks um Ko Fischer's history of philosophy where Fisher tries to say that. Well, Schopenhauer's philosophy, his pessimism is really a product of its time. Um You know, if he lived a few centuries earlier, he would have, he would have been an optimist and Schopenhauer Ridic ridicules this and he's very angry and he says, you know, this person really does believe that if I was born sort of 40 years earlier, I'd be alive, NZ and optimist. Um YOU know, this is, this is how ridiculous uh the influence of Hegel's philosophy can be on people, right? Um And uh and he, he even gives reason. He says, look, uh the time that I was writing was actually one of optimism, it was one of hope. Um And yet still I offered AAA reasoned account for um his world view. So, yeah, I, I perhaps we'll come on to this later when we talk about Nietzsche. But um certainly, uh there is, there was a tendency and I think there still is a tendency to psychologize or, or pathologize um individual pessimists. Um And what is motivating them to defend this provocative view.

22:54 Ricardo Lopes: So let's get into Nietzsche then and since we're talking about pessimism here specifically, when did Nietzsche first engage with pessimism philosophically?

23:05 Patrick Hassan: Good? Yeah. So I think he starts engaging with pessimism really in the 18 sixties when he becomes aware of Schopenhauer. And he, he really becomes obsessed with Schopenhauer. He sits down with the, with the world as one of representation and, and devours this text and, and really becomes an, an ardent schopenhauerian. I wouldn't say a wholly uncritical schopen Harian because there he writes a short essay in 1868 called on Schopenhauer, where he gives some pretty sophisticated criticisms of his metaphysics, but he certainly is, is thinks of himself as a Schopen Harian and intends to develop connections with other people uh interested in Schopenhauer and even to sort of propagate Schopenhauerian philosophy. Um And so he becomes exposed to, to pessimism there for the first time, he becomes sympathetic to it. Um He reads eventually other pessimists um like Eduard Von Hartmann, uh who was the, the probably the most famous pessimist during the pessimism dispute, the pessimist must strike of the, from 1860 to 1900. Mhm. Um And so he becomes, he, I think Nietzsche is sympathetic to, to pessimism. He's concerned about its implications. And I think that when he comes to write the birth of tragedy in 1872. Um He really does believe the descriptive component of, of Schopenhauer's world view, namely that suffering is ubiquitous. And it's, it's simply naive to think that we can significantly reduce suffering in the world. And he does think that if one seriously believes this, um one will be led to the, the view that life is not worth living, but it would be better if we were just not born in the first place. And like Schopenhauer, he sees elements of this entertained by the writers of Greek tragedy, right? Eur Euripides Sophocles. Um AND he's very concerned with in, in his early philosophy, he's very concerned with the implications of pessimism, right? What would, what would happen, what would be the consequences if we were to look honestly and deeply at the world um and see its suffering. And one of the things he thinks will happen is this danger of, of what he calls quietism. And this was, this was already a debate during a pessimism dispute that pessimism would lead to a kind of resignation or withdrawal from the world. A complete lack of interest in trying to improve people's lives. So what you'd get is a kind of unacceptable level of um conservative inertia, right? Where you, there's just no point in trying to improve anything. It's a kind of worst kind of apology for the status quo. This was the in the social domain. What a lot of people worried about pessimism. Um Nietzsche has a slightly different take on that. He's worried about quietism, but it's not from any moral position. He's not worried about, you know, how, how this would prevent improving people's lives and caring for the poor, but rather it would be a kind of existential paralysis. People would be gripped by the horror of existence and negate from this world. They would, they would turn away from it. They would have this kind of what he calls a Buddha like denial of the will. They'd be like Hamlet, they'd stare at the world in horror and be paralyzed. Um That's what he's concerned about. And I think his, in his early work and the birth of tragedy is really an attempt to find some way of resisting that implication.

26:47 Ricardo Lopes: Right? Mhm. But could we say that Nietzsche was a pessimist himself in any way, or at least that he had a pessimistic phase in his intellectual life?

27:03 Patrick Hassan: I think it would be fair um to say that he, in his early phase, he was a pessimist. And I think this is the sort of dominant view in the secondary literature as well that, that schopen Harian themes and, and particularly his pessimism is a sort of fundamental assumption or presupposition of the birth of tragedy. Um And he does accept this idea that suffering is ubiquitous and that this has profound implications for the value of life. And he takes it to be a truth. Right? Pessimism to be a, something that is verifiable. Ok. And that's a, that's a key point I think of his early. So

27:39 Ricardo Lopes: at least with the premises he agrees with.

27:44 Patrick Hassan: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. But at the same time I think that he is in some way still trying to resist pessimism. Right. And, and the way you could cash that out is to say it's really the implications of it, which he thinks um are quite literally life threatening, right? If you take this view seriously, um there is a, a, a big existential price to pay. Um And he's trying to figure out if there's some kind of, has there been any way of resisting the implications of this? And of course, he's looking to ancient Greek tragedy as something quite peculiar and spectacular. Um A sort of healthy way of looking at life, not through turning away and pretending that there's no suffering, but by staring it in the face and then somehow channel channeling the um energy or the sort of affirmative affect um dispositions that the, the, the ancient Greeks were able to channel um through witnessing all of this suffering and, and, and perceiving it in this, in this certain kind of artistic way. He's wondering if there's any way that that could be recaptured um in his modern day for the contemporary Europeans um of his day. Um And again, that's part of what the project of the birth of tragedy is, is really to try and trying to recapture that um if possible

29:10 Ricardo Lopes: recapturing some of the Dion Asian spirit. Right.

29:15 Patrick Hassan: Exactly. Yes. And he uses this kind of, he has this rapturous tone where he's using this terminology which of course horrified um his fellow academics in philology who are expecting a very kind of dry and boring uh kind of strict analysis of Greek tragedy where instead they got this almost uh religious um sort of approach to uh uh to, to, to the effects of Greek tragedy and this kind of cultural rejuvenation project that he's interested in, uh which really ruined his reputation among academic philologists. But um yeah, Nietzsche wasn't really concerned about that and he was, he was more concerned about how outside of academic philosophy, um pessimism is a genuine concern, right? It's not, it's not a problem that is reserved for people studying in the university, lecture theaters and libraries, right? This is a cultural issue. Uh And this brings out Nietzsche, not just as someone who in my view can engage with the intellectual discourse of the age, but also someone who is deeply concerned with the he, he's a culture critic at the end of the day, he's interested in how different cultural trends move in different directions and for what reasons and, and importantly, the existential implications of those. And I think that that's right, he's looking at the Ancient Greeks and thinking what kind of cultural circumstance, social circumstances produced this kind of healthy affirmative attitude towards life. How did they harness art to do that? And do we have any kind of cultural, um, apparatus to be able to do that same thing today?

31:01 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So, I would imagine. And that's something that you actually go through in the book that over the course of his intellectual life, Nietzsche, it changed a little bit over time, the views that he had on pessimism, right? So, uh but at the very beginning when he started engaging with pessimism, what were perhaps the main questions he grappled with? So we've already established here that at least with some of its premises he agreed with. But then what did they think were the most important questions to address regarding the possible consequences of pessimism?

31:44 Patrick Hassan: Yeah. Good question. So I, I think that um I in my view in that early period in the birth of tragedy, um he's really interested in trying to map out the possible responses to honest reflections upon uh uh upon the world about the nature of reality. So I, I should say as well just to make this the context uh for just to make this context more uh comprehensible, he's responding to pessimism in its most popular hedonic form, right? So it's all about suffering, right? The ubiquity of suffering, whether that is in principle reducible, um uh what kind of interpretations we could give to suffering, to give it some kind of meaning both of these questions I think he's interested in, right?

32:34 Ricardo Lopes: So just to clarify in its sed donic form, then that means that if people who, who espouse that kind of view would perhaps think that life would be, would be good or worth living if it was mostly or just about pleasure, happiness or something along those lines.

32:56 Patrick Hassan: That's right. Yeah. So th this is the form which I think dominates the pessimism dispute is that um life would be worth living if pleasure was some or satisfaction of desires, perhaps was something lasting and achievable and something which outweighed the, the pain and suffering which we experience. But for systematic reasons, the pessimists argue that's just not possible, right? We're always left in a, in a hedonic deficit where where there's just suffering and pleasure can never in principle outweigh it. Um And Nietzsche, it is because that was such that was the dominant view in the dispute. He's taking that as his starting point, I think. Um But he's also interested in the question of what kind of meaning we give to suffering, right? Can we conceive of it, of having some kind of um purpose that we maybe even just project to it some kind of narrative we can give for our struggles. I think that that's very prominent in his later work, but it it's still there in his early work. But um yes, so for Nietzsche, the primary questions, I think he's interested in the birth of tragedy are what are the implications of honestly looking at the world, seeing the ubiquity of suffering, the pervasiveness of suffering. Um What are the implications of that? And he starts off by saying that, you know, there's a number of possible responses people could have to this, right? They're not all gonna be, they might initially take their Hamlet's view of things, right? And be paralyzed with horror and disgust at the world. Um But there are a few different ways of, of responding to this like one for that he, he entertains. Um IS this idea that people would be so horrified that they would commit suicide or even perhaps um kill other people out of mercy, right? And he talks about this, it's this passage where he talks about the people would strangle others out of, out of, you know, their family members and friends out of mercy because they wouldn't want to put them through the misery of life. You know, he talks about how the Fiji Islanders do this and it actually recurs in his notebooks as well. He must have read some anthropological note about it, but this is perhaps one response to pessimism is suicide or perhaps even killing other people. Um And I think that this is actually a reference to Edward Von Hartmann who thought that ultimately, the later down the line, there would be a kind of what he calls a cosmic universal negation of the will where there would just be a collective resignation from life, a kind of ceasing of life um refusal to, to reproduce the end of humanity as we know it. So that, that's one thing that I think Nietzsche think there's a possibility if people start to take pessimism seriously. Um But the one that really interests him and the one that he thinks is culturally embedded is quietism, right? This, this idea that one would re just refrain from engaging with, with life at all. One would turn against their, their dispositions for, you know, uh desires for sex, for food, all of our fundamental desires, one would see them as um sort of lacking any value but almost evil, right? Producing suffering.

36:20 Ricardo Lopes: This quietism connect in any way to asceticism.

36:25 Patrick Hassan: Y Yes, I think it does for Nietzsche. Yes. So quietism um is the the practical form of that the practical manifestation of this kind of disposition is to cease indulging in your most fundamental dispositions or as as Nietzsche call it later hit their drives, right? So an aesthetic is someone who feels enlightened by their knowledge of the world. And as a result, their practical response is to do things like fasting, to abstain from what they see as the cause of their suffering,

36:59 Ricardo Lopes: a kind of behaviors that basically we would see among monks and people like that.

37:05 Patrick Hassan: Yes, generally. Yeah. And, and, and also Nietzsche shares schopenhauer's diagnosis of Buddhism as advocating this as a kind of pessimistic view, which sees asceticism as a um a, a positive thing, which is the result of a profound insight, an appropriate practical response, but they obviously just have a very different evaluation of that, right? Um So, so Nietzsche's primary concern, I think is how to try and avoid quietistic despair. And again, not, I think for the reasons that other people in the in the dispute were worried about quietism, namely as a moral or political problem, right? Where people thought that this would actually be, this would be an affront to morality uh because people would cease to engage in trying to improve the lives of their, their peers and fellow citizens and fellow humans. Um Nietzsche doesn't seem all concerned by that in the birth of tragedy, he's more concerned that this would have profound existential implications for the individual and the implications for cultures broadly as being a culture of, of despair and and um sort of uh yes resignation from from any endeavors for creativity or anything like this. So he contrasts that kind of quietistic response with the want, the sort of what he calls a Socratic response, which would be, this reflects just a modern kind of enlightenment view that actually suffering is an accidental feature of the world. And that with the right kind of development of scientific progress, social engineering, the use of technology, um good governance, we can eradicate most forms of material suffering and improve people's lives. Um There are a lot of people in the dispute who thought something like that. Um But Nietzsche thinks that this is hopeless for schopen haren reasons. He thinks that it's futile to try and eradicate. Suffering nature is intrinsically violent and unjust as he says, um And what you'll do, you'll maybe get rid of one form of suffering over here, but it'll just resurface as another form. Um And here's a few, few arguments for that. But um he ultimately thinks that this Socratic sort of rationalistic attitude to suffering is ultimately futile. So you're left either with quietism ultimately or hopefully. And this is the, the later parts of the text, some other alternative which tries to harness aesthetic experience and art in order to affect our, our dispositions or emotional dispositions towards the world to find suffering, not an objection to life, but something invigorating and life affirming. That's, that's his the third option which he's hoping to um give some credence to in the birth of tragedy.

40:04 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm So uh a book of his that you get into in your own book is human, all too human. So what kinds of arguments did they develop there against pessimism? Why is this book so important when it comes to understanding his approach to pessimism?

40:24 Patrick Hassan: Yeah. So, II, I think that the human all too human in the pessimism in the context of the pessimism dispute has been sort of unjustly overlooked really in terms of its importance because there are major changes there in Nietzsche's philosophical um position, which have huge ramifications for how he thinks of the attempts to evaluate life, generally, how we should think of suffering. Um What the role of science should be, what the role of religion should be. Um So he writes this book in 1878 and that, that's significant because it really, this is, he writes this at a time where he's really broken from his personal and philosophical allegiances to Wagner, who he at one time shared a enthusiasm for Schopenhauer and Schopenhauer in worldview with. And he also, you know, venerated Wagner for his potential ability to rejuvenate German culture in this affirmative way that he was describing in the birth of tragedy. He gives that up in 1878. And what you find there, particularly in the first book is a enthusiasm for the ability of the empirical sciences to offer knowledge. Um AND to um speak to some of the traditional concerns that, that, that, that occupied people in this, in the pessimism dispute. So the Empirical Sciences, right? Um NATO Wizen Shaft and the Natural Sciences. Um He, he thinks have the ability to completely reform how we think of the human, how the human being engages with the world and our place within the world. Um He comes to think of art, right? The artistic response to the world as, as you know, this idea that we need aesthetic experience to almost um give us a kind of useful illusion that actually things are beautiful and, and sublime. Um He, he comes to think of this as really a distraction from, from the root problem. Um And that science could in fact be harnessed to alleviate suffering to a significant degree. This is a massive change in his in attitude towards suffering. In my view. There's multiple passages where he thinks that, you know, religion and art share the same kind of defect in that they actually prolong um a kind of suffering in so far as they, what they do is really put a bandage over a a AAA kind of severed artery, right? They can kind of temporarily deal with it with this issue of existential dread in the face of suffering, but really, they don't get to the root of the the problem, they don't even get close to it. And this is where he thinks that understanding um the role of science and, and harnessing scientific power could in fact do this. Um So he's in a, a fairly kind of um hopeful um error of his thought where he really does think. So, you know what he was saying in the birth of tragedy was, was not right at all. But he he more directly goes after pessimism by harnessing what some people call a frame of reference argument, right? So what he tries to do is to say that hold on a minute, this whole pessimism dispute is premised upon a mistake. We can't give evaluations of life as such. That's just a, a wholly mistaken enterprise, right? Pessimists want to say life is itself a bad thing. Optimists want to say that life is itself a good thing. Um Nietzsche comes to think um that this is, this is a mistake and his argument is something like the following like can and the neo neo canteens, he thinks that our experience of the world is filtered through our sensory apparatus and our drives, right? Drives are these kinds of patterns or dispositions towards certain kinds of, yeah, patterns of behavior, um sort of a pressure to act in certain ways and affects are these kind of first personal experiences of those drives, right? So we have all of these various drives and each of things which are competing in various ways and they, they structure and or give a sort of orientation of our experience to the world. They reg you know, things register our attention more than others, depending upon the calibration of our drives. Everything we experience is almost filtered through this apparatus, this cognitive apparatus. Now, Nietzsche thinks this has quite big implications for how we think of values, right? So for him, uh values are going to be things which we have in accordance with our, with our drives, right? We'll have an experience of uh say we'll have a drive towards sex, for example, our X will sort of have a sort of positive or negative appraisal of this drive. And this the pattern of these, the stable pattern of these drives, he thinks give rise to our values, these, these kinds of things we take to be good or bad because our values are so deeply entwined with our psychology. And he thinks along with the neo canteens that we can't really ever get behind right? Reality, uh We can't understand reality outside of our drive orientation. Um We can't really say anything about unconditioned experience or the thing in itself, right? We can't really say anything about how, how, how reality or existence is as such. We only ever have our perspective of it. And of course, this gives rise to his later very famous perspective is which people have debated quite a lot about in. So

46:14 Ricardo Lopes: at least when it comes to Kan Metaphysics, he agrees with that distinction between the noon and the phenomenon

46:22 Patrick Hassan: at this point, he has a sort of naturalized version of that. Yeah. So he doesn't have the same canteen arguments, but he thinks that he can give a sort of physiological um psychological account of this same distinction that there, there might be some kind of thing in itself or unconditioned reality that might be different to how we, how we perceive things in the world. But we can't know that in principle because we're always working with this cognitive apparatus that we have everything everything is filtered through that. So he one way of interpreting here is a kind of naturalized Neo canteen. And he thinks this has big implications for evaluations of life as such because we just can't make those kinds of judgments. Our valuations are always prejudicial and idiosyncratic. And here he's drawing a lot upon the debates from Neo canteens like Langer uh who he, he read and, and very much admired um Vinal Band and also positivists like Algo Ding, right? They, they had this kind of idea that valuations are in some sense, impure or unjust. These are terms Nietzsche uses straight from during. Um And that because we have this p perspective or prejudicial perspective, when we're evaluating things, it just doesn't really make any sense to say life as such is good or life as such is bad, right? The whole pessimism dispute is premised on a mistake. And so this is a major turn away from the position of the birth of tragedy where he was quite happy to say that it's you can verify pessimism as something being true or false, right? There's a truth condition to it, I think in a in human or to human, we see him shift away from that quite dramatically because of his enthusiasm for the empirical sciences here, what they're able to achieve. Um And yes, the implications of that for thinking about human psychology in this, in this kind of more naturalistic fashion. Um So I think that's the, the major argument I think, which lays a foundation for a lot of what he wants to do in his mature work, this kind of frame of reference argument, which says that, you know, pessimistic valuations really, uh they don't, they're either incoherent um or they, they just make a claim that is just epistemic unavailable to us. And so the, the, the whole debate is, is premised upon a confusion.

48:49 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm So you probably already touched on this point. But one of the things that you point to in your book is one of his critics of pessimism was a psychological one, a psychological critic of pessimism. So what is it really about? What is he referring to there?

49:10 Patrick Hassan: Good. Yeah. So again, and this is something I try and emphasize in the book is that the this very famous kind of Nietzschean critique of various kinds of moralities um or evaluative outlooks in terms of the assertive psychology um in the context of the pessimism dispute, this is not an original argument of Nietzsche's, he's actually developing existing psychological criticisms um of pessimism. So the view is something like this and, and I think this frame of reference argument from human to human really does lay the groundwork for this because it allows him to say, well, ok, if pessimism is not really, if it's premised upon a confusion, what leads people to make these evaluations, right? And he eventually comes to this idea because of his drive psychology that when someone makes an evaluation about the world or any kind of um allegedly descriptive metaphysical view about the world, you know, that it's a manifestation of a contradictory will or, or whatever it is, um this can be explained in terms of one's moral values, right? So your metaphysical world, worldview, descriptive worldview can be explained in terms of the asserted moral world, uh moral values and those moral values can be explained in terms of the assertive psychology or even physiology, right? That's a classic Nietzschean strategy for approaching various kinds of, of worldviews. He comes to think of pessimism as constituted by at least two psychological dispositions, right? So the first one is, he thinks of pessimists as led to endorse their view to, to endorse this, this view of the world because they are they suffer from a kind of exhaustion or weakness of will, right? And the view is something like this, the human being is a battleground of various competing drives that are constantly vying for supremacy. They're pulling us in all these directions and this can cause a a large degree of suffering, especially if you lack the self control to sort of um calibrate these drives and refine them and sort of harness them for some kind of unified goal. He thinks that special kinds of people have the sort of strength of will to be able to do this. And he sort of gives examples like Goethe and Julius Caesar and Cesare Borger and whatnot. But most people are not able to do this. So what, what does a person in that kind of position? What is the phenomenal quality of, of this kind of um situation, right? Where you've got all these drives vying for supremacy. He thinks this is inevitably going to lead to a certain kind of, yeah, exhaustion, um kind of uh fatigue or painful frustration where you're at, the the person is just at the, at the whims of these various drives. Ok? Inevitably, he thinks this is going to lead to a an effective condition where you see life as a chore. Everything registers, registers to this person as a task to be done as a chore to be done. Another thing which produces this toil and yearning for peace. Ok? And he comes to have this view that this is one way in which pessimism can look very attractive and can lead the person in this position can be led to uh endorse this, this worldview that actually, yeah, life is, is, is the problem. Life is against me. Um And so it's a kind of vindication, right? Of this person's experience of the world that oh, it's, it's not because I'm particularly, you know, vulnerable or weak. It's because the world is deficient, right? It's, it's, it's, it's contradictory. It's, it's kind of faulty in some way. Um And so what he eventually thinks happened is that look this pain of exhaustion leads to what this very famous Nietzschean um concept of rezoning on. Right? This idea that someone who is harmed and becomes very vengeful and wants to take revenge on their perceived oppressor, but can't because they don't have the strength, they get this kind of bottled up, seething resentment. And Nietzsche thinks that something quite interesting can happen creatively when someone suffers from this most famously in the genealogy of morals. He thinks that this is a social condition where a particular class of people can be oppressed by uh sort of an aristocratic class and they can their res Ryon on towards that class can produce a new set of values in this context. He thinks that you can have ryste on not in a socially directed way but in a world directed way, right? So you have him on towards life itself and it sounds quite irrational. But this is exactly what Nietzsche thinks is going on with the psychology of these, these people is that they're pushed and pulled in all these directions. They suffer a result, they need someone to blame, but there's no one to blame. So they blame life itself. And this manifests as a sort of what philosophical pessimism is in niche's view is a sort of post hoc rationalization of those feelings of rossant t on you. They, these pessimists like Hartmann and Banter and Mainlander, all of the people that came after Schopenhauer. Um All of their philosophies are really just ways of coping with their, their conditions, right? Their conditions of weakness which produce these, this suffering which leads to resent him on. Ok. So he, he thinks that philosophical pessimism is a very elaborate and very clever sort of concoction for dealing with or satisfying these feelings of roon on. So that's one kind of psychological reduction he gives of pessimism in his mature work is that this really isn't a philosophy at all. You can, you can really explain philosophical pessimism as a product of one's psychology or physiology.

55:20 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. And what is the relationship then between pessimism and nihilism specifically? Because nihilism, I, I mean, of course, there's a relationship there and we're just about to talk about it, but Nietzsche also worried specifically about nihilism,

55:40 Patrick Hassan: right. That's, yeah, that's absolutely right. And, um, you know, in his mature works, in particular, um Nihilism becomes the, seems to be the central theme, right? He, he starts thinking of the pessimism dispute as something that really, people are spilling ink over. But really it, it's, it's a pointless endeavor. You can't convince someone with reasons out of their pessimism, it's futile. Um, YOU know, this is why he, he sort of almost reverts back to the aesthetic position of the birth of tragedy because, you know, you can't just like you can't treat a physi physiological disease like cancer or something by refuting it, right? You need to treat it in various ways So he thinks the the pessimism dispute as a philosophical phenomenon is a waste of time. And he starts to focus more effort on responding to nihilism. And, and again, this is an important point which I think is sometimes lost nihilism at the time. And I still think today did not have a generally understood fixed definition in the way that pessimism did. So during the pessimism dispute, it was well understood that this was the view that life is not worth living, right? Nihilism can be used in a variety of different ways and there's no kind of fixed de facto definition of that. And I think even Nietzsche uses it in a variety of ways. So I'll, I'll give you sort of one way of understanding the relation. So not, whereas pessimism is the view that look, there are genuine meaning conferring values. Um But it's just that the world is such that it doesn't allow us to realize them. Nihilism is the view that, that it's, there's nothing wrong with the world as such, but rather it's that there are no meaning conferring values, right? So it's a, it's a very different, a this version of Nihilism is a very different um d different position um with respect to the the existence of values, right? So Ni Nihilists typically think that whatever the values are, which give us meaning and demand our as ascension, demand our response to them. Um They just don't exist. And so we're left in this kind of position of um yeah, despair about uh despair about um the state of the world, right? So the the version of Nihilism, which I think Nietzsche is most interested in is not so much a cognitive belief. It's not necessarily a belief that there are no values, but it's more an affective condition. It's this condition that life is something that one feels revulsion or disgust at. And this provokes this practical response of resignation. So he describes, for example, Christianity as being a intrinsically nihilistic perspective on the world, right? And of course, Christianity thinks that there are genuine values. Um BUT it's just that they can't be, they can't be realized. But the the effective condition that the Christian has Nietzsche thinks is that they, they have this kind of disgust towards life with themselves, to with their most fundamental natures as sort of um striving and you know, particularly sexual beings. Um OUR most fundamental drives are demonized. These are claims. Um AND this is a kind of nihilism where we're disgusted by life. Our attitudes to life are are one of a completely negative appraisal we yearn for some kind of better world beyond. And in this case, the Christian version, it's, yeah,

59:14 Ricardo Lopes: it's basically a revulsion toward worldly things, right? I mean, because I the ideal is to go to heaven and then in heaven probably you can fully realize your values. I mean that that's actually something that also, um, that it's an idea that can't also add in the critique of practical reason. That, uh, I mean, when it comes to the antinomy of reason, one of them was that we can't be sure if, um, life is, uh, if there's life after death actually. But, uh, yeah, I mean, a according to his moral views, there had to be one because it was only in uh eternal existence. Let's say that we would be able to fully realize ourselves morally.

1:00:07 Patrick Hassan: That, that, that's right. Yeah, it's a practical question as he describes it, we have to sort of take it for granted that there could be because that's the only way that there could be a genuine meeting of the demand for value. Um And, and I think that again, this is one of Nietzsche's insights that there's, there's really not that much of a fundamental distinction between Christianity, um contemporary European morality canteen, um Metaphysics, uh Platonic Metaphysics, right? What all of these things have in common for Nietzsche and what makes them all Nihilistic is that they all have some conception of a better world beyond which both explains the value, the earthly value that uh uh uh sorry, the earthly world that we inhabit. And also not only does it explain it, but it evaluates it, right? It debases in, in Nietzsche's view, the material physical world that we inhabit, this becomes something that we're just waiting to leave and that we need salvation from, right.

1:01:07 Ricardo Lopes: It's a form of negation of life, at

1:01:10 Patrick Hassan: least to some extent. Yeah, I think that this is right that um you know, we become, we become disgusted with this life because we see it as subordinate to some kind of world behind or world beyond. Um THIS world that we experience. Yeah. So I think that that he comes to have an interest in nihilism partly as it as it's expressed through these kinds of worldviews, right? Um And this, this comes eventually to, to replace his interest in, in the, in philosophical pessimism. But the point I try and make in the book is that we can only really fully appreciate that point as it's a, as a as this has come to be as part of a sort of process in Nietzsche's thought through engaging with philosophical pessimism through debates which were already going on in the 19th century. Um This is how he gets to nihilism and, and to be fair, he there's even points in his, his writing in the, in the notebooks where he's just talks about pessimism as a preliminary form of nihilism, right? He sees it as a kind of early manifestation of this nihilistic position, which is primarily an effective kind of yeah, disposition or attitude towards life as something to be disgusted by. Yeah.

1:02:31 Ricardo Lopes: So earlier, we talked a little bit about hedonic pessimism. But what were Nietzsche's ideas about hedonism itself? And did they link it to pessimism in any way.

1:02:44 Patrick Hassan: Yeah. Good. That's a good question. Um, SO certainly in the mature works, um, he is openly hostile to hedonism as an account of value. Right. So he takes positions which endorse a hedonic outlook. So utilitarianism and, and other views similar, um, to be not only sort of confused about human psychology, but also to be wrong headed about the kinds of things which are good and ought to be pursued. Um There's a question here about how this links up with Nietzsche's meta ethics. But I'll, I'll put that to the side just for the purposes of this. Um He comes to be highly critical of hedonism as a position in its own, right? But also as it, as it, its role um in legitimating pessimism, right? So he, he sees pessimists like Eduard Von Hartmann, Philip Mainlander. Um AND, and to an extent Schopenhauer as endorsing this idea that, well, pessimism is simply the matter that, you know, you look at the world. If there's more suffering than pleasure, then then it's bad. And it's just this kind of weighing game where you figure, figure out how much pleasure there is in the world. And he comes to really have a sort of disdainful attitude towards this and, but for different reasons, right? So one of the reasons I think he has a problem with hedonism is that he ch he tries to provoke his reader into looking at the, what the pinnacle of a hedonic life would be like someone who's experiencing maximal pleasure, doesn't have to struggle with any toil or anything like this. And he's trying to provoke in his reader a sense of disgust at that ideal. He says, you know, look at these kinds of people who would be, you know, basically like herd animals like cows in the field, just wandering around eating grass and, and grazing and not doing much. This really ought to provoke disgust if you have this artistic creative disposition. So I think that Nietzsche cares, he's inviting his readers or specific readers to care about the values, the perfectionist values, which I think Nietzsche himself cared about the most, which is artistic creativity, um achievement, overcoming obstacles tends to cash this out in terms of will to power. Um But he certainly thinks that pessimism and hedonism are, are related, right? This kind of, he sometimes describes it as sort of pessimism of sensibility. This kind of, well, if, if pessimism is really just weighing up pleasure and pain and you find the world wanting, um you know, this is no world view for someone who has the sort of artistic creativity, um these kind of protect perfectionist values that Nietzsche tends to entertain. Um So he attacks pa uh hedonism on these grounds that it's just not a suitable. Um EVEN the ideal of hedonism is not a life worth living um for the sort of i the admirable um human being, right? And he tends to try and try and provoke the reader into a just, you know, distancing himself from hedonism through affective means. So he harnesses again, revulsion and admiration, right? As elements that he wants to, to evoke in his readers to try and get them to steer away from these kinds of these kinds of outlooks. And so certainly he thinks hedonism is a important part of at least a form of pessimism um or the dominant forms of pessimism. But he really thinks that this is contrary to his conception of a, of a well lived life, which is one in terms of creativity.

1:06:30 Ricardo Lopes: Well, I would imagine that you would also not be very fond of utilitarians then.

1:06:36 Patrick Hassan: That's right. Yeah, he certainly has very little positive things to say about utilitarians and he particularly reserves his uh most potent scorn for Jon Stewart Mill um in this respect. So, I mean, there's a passage in there's 225 of beyond good and evil where he puts pessimism and utilitarianism in the same bracket in the same sentence, he dismisses it and sort of says, look, their attitude to suffering is, is despicable because as soon as suffering arises, they don't see any value in it. No, they don't see it as an opportunity for growth, for creativity. They want to s to stamp it out as soon as it, it rears its head. And this really does an injustice to suffering's power to be harnessed. Yeah, in creative achievement in various domains. So he says that the discipline of suffering, of great suffering has created all of the enhancements of man so far, he says in that passage, and um really his problem with hedonism and as you said, utilitarianism is that they have a kind of wholly mistaken understanding of how suffering arises and its causes, but also what its potential value can be.

1:07:43 Ricardo Lopes: So that is then the value that Nietzsche attributes to suffering in life in the later stages of his intellectual life.

1:07:53 Patrick Hassan: That's right. Yeah. So in the, in the mature works, um there's multiple passages where he's trying to invite the reader to see, to, to, to sort of completely change their attitude to suffering which we've inherited through, you know, thousands of years of conditioning in, in, in contemporary morality, right? Seeing suffering as an objection to life as something that we need to stamp out. He's inviting his readers to try and have a sort of quite radical cognitive shift to see suffering as a potential opportunity for growth as some kind of some kind of yeah, evaluative opportunity for achievement. Um And I I don't think that Nietzsche thinks this is something everyone can do. I think he's really thinks this is something that specific individuals will be able to achieve because it's not easy to look upon suffering as yeah, potentially a good thing and, and maybe even not just wholly instrumentally right? So many people think that suffering can help them achieve something, but it's still a regrettable feature like it would have been better to, you know, write the novel, you always wanted to write without the suffering and the toil that you went through. I think Nietzsche's even challenging that view and thinking that suffering is not just instrumental to great achievements, but it is actually constitutive of them. So part of what makes a great of a great achievement is the suffering, right? And the overcoming of the process of harnessing that suffering for a creative end. Um So yes, I think he's in the later works, trying to say that, you know, in the context of the pessimism dispute, suffering can have value and we can come to have an affirmative cognitive um shift, yeah, a cognitive shift in our effective attitudes towards life in a positive way by changing our attitudes towards suffering and seeing it as as having some value. And this is what he sometimes describes as a the pessimism of strength, right? The abi it's a kind of a kind of attitude, it's not a sort of um theory per se, but an attitude, the ability to see suffering as an opportunity as having potential value,

1:10:05 Ricardo Lopes: right? Mhm And I would imagine that when you refer there to the fact that he probably thought that it would only be certain kinds of people that would be able to deal with suffering in life in a positive productive way, let's say, uh, he would probably, uh, refer to people with certain, it would probably be people with certain psychological traits. Right. Because that's something that he, he talked about a lot. Right. I mean, you, you had to have a certain psychological predisposition toward, uh, life, moral values and so on to really be able to be, um, let's say someone that would understand Nietzsche's writings.

1:10:51 Patrick Hassan: That's right. I think this is just a general feature. His writing is that he, I mean, he constantly warns people against reading him. And this is quite a sort of strange feature as an author that he, he, he's constantly warning people saying this isn't necessarily for you, you know, you need to really think through whether this is what I'm saying is really getting through to you. And, and I think Nietzsche really does think that he's for people who share some of his dispositions and values. And that might be people who are suffering from some kind of false consciousness that, you know, think that maybe Christian morality might be, you know, they might be ensnared by it, but really they have this kind of psychological disposition to break free of that and be a more affirming life affirming individual. And I think Nietzsche's trying to tap into some of our psychological dispositions for that. Um And again, yeah, speak to some potential figures who could, could have this kind of strength of will really to calibrate their, the orientation of their drives in such a way that they could find life worth living in this very pragmatic sense. Right. So, it's not necessarily that it's, they'd find ra uh j life to be good in a sort of rational, rational way. But they're necessarily, they wouldn't necessarily have that, but they would come to see life as being worthy and beautiful and worthy. Yeah. Worthy of affirmation. Um, PURELY pragmatically. And I, yeah, I think, I think you're right that Nietzsche doesn't think that I think it doesn't think that everyone is capable of that. There has to be a kind of right? Psychological and uh yeah, psychological um um predisposition, predisposition or framework in place for that. Yeah.

1:12:34 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah. OK. So let's get into the last question of our interview here today. So we've already went through some of the main ideas, at least the ni had about pessimism. What about solutions and antidotes to pessimism according to him. What can we do about it? How can we approach it in a positive way?

1:12:57 Patrick Hassan: Good. Yeah. So one of the things I, I try and get out in the book and I think it's quite interesting is that the mature Nietzsche, his answer to this question is really a coming back full circle to the project uh or at least the fundamental essence of the project in, in the birth of tragedy, right? So he, I think one of the things he tries to do is to say that, ok, it, it's hopeless trying to convince pessimists, um, out of their pessimism with reasons and arguments for the reasons that we've talked about. Um, WE need to instead try to engage their psychological and emotional faculties. This is the only way that you can free, at least with the people with the, the psychological predisposition to, to, to do something else. Um,

1:13:44 Ricardo Lopes: I guess that's also another one of the reasons why he wrote the way he did.

1:13:50 Patrick Hassan: Right. Absolutely. I think it's impossible really to divorce his philosophical views from his stylistic uh approach because you're not gonna find, you know, standard form arguments and, and, you know, deductive inferences necessarily in Nietzsche precisely because he thinks they're not really gonna have the purpose, they're not gonna serve the purpose. Um

1:14:12 Ricardo Lopes: It's basically to try to engage with your emotions, your psychology more directly.

1:14:18 Patrick Hassan: That's right because he, he's of the view, which is a lot of empirical evidence to support these days is that you're far more likely to change your mind and be jolted out of your views through engagement with your emotional faculty. So he'll deploy um techniques like trying to shame you or just, you know, disgust you or entice you into admiring something which contemporary morality says you really shouldn't because he knows that this has far more of a profound effect, right? Good. So, so he, with that view in mind, he thinks that, you know, what, what, what is one very profound way? Uh 11 profound kind of human experience uh which can be induced uh through human creativity. Um And that's aesthetic experience and experience of art in particular, right? So he thinks that aesthetic experience um is interest his version of it is interesting because it's quite anti Schopenhauerian, right? So for Schopenhauer, our aesthetic experience is will this contemplation of some platonic idea or form? Right. So you, you what's pleasure about, about aesthetic experience is that you're temporarily released from the pressure of willing, right? So willing is painful and suffering and striving and all that. Uh WHEN you see something beautiful, you sort of look at the Mona Lisa, for example, you forget your ordinary self as a striving individual and you're pure, purely contemplating, right? And that the pleasure of it is from the relief of that suffering. Nietzsche doesn't have that view at all, right? He actually associates aesthetic uh experience with um a sort of activation of the will, right? He describes it as a form of intoxication, right? Rausch uses this term, it's almost like a yeah, like a a like a drug rush or something like this, you become in your will, becomes enticed and excited and stimulated. And he thinks that why is this important? Because if you present features of the world which in individually look ugly and and revolting, right? Like suffering if you present them in a way which can make them appear beautiful. It gives you this kind of distorted perspective, right? Um Which is, which is strange because it's not like it's, it's the painting or whatever depicting the scene of suffering is distracting you from suffering. In fact, many of these paintings can be very gory and, and, you know, horrific. So you're, you're confronted with it, but it's presented in such a way through, through artistic finesse and skill that it's enticing and stimulating to the will. And so what he thinks is going on is that aesthetic experience can almost sort of bring you back to affirming life because it, it, it, yeah, invigorates your will, it stimulates it rather than tries to suppress it. Um And so aesthetic experience for him is gonna be crucial in combating pessimism. Um BECAUSE not only would it maybe present things which we typically take to be objectionable in sort of a beautiful manner, but it will actually have a physiological effect, right? And this is this is if that's what gives rise to pessimism, ultimately, that's gonna be the way that you combat it by invigorating the will, finding your, so trying to sort of effectively reattach your will to life, right? Finding it as something beautiful. And of course, for the strongest types of people, he thinks that they will be able to take up a kind of aesthetic perspective on life in some kind of stable, broad, broad manner, right? And I think that this is again, probably only gonna be reserved for the few. But um something which he, he, he um thinks is i it is a possible way of responding to, to pessimism. Yeah,

1:18:12 Ricardo Lopes: great. So I think this is probably a good point to wrap up our conversation on and the book is again, Nietzsche's struggle against pessimism. Of course, I'm leaving a link to it in the description box of the interview and Doctor Asan just before we go apart from the book, would you like to tell people where they can find you and your work on the internet?

1:18:34 Patrick Hassan: Uh Yeah, sure. So you can find uh links to my work on the department page at Cardiff. Um I also have a website which is just Patrick hassan.com and there's a list of, of lots of my research there. Um I also have an Academia edu page so feel free to, to have a look at my papers there and feel free to reach out with any, any questions or if you just wanna chat about anything you find there?

1:18:57 Ricardo Lopes: Great. So look, I really loved our conversation and the book and I hope that my audience goes out and runs and buys it because it's a very good book. And I, I am also very fond of Nietzsche's philosophy, of course. So thank you so much again for taking the time to come on the show.

1:19:15 Patrick Hassan: Thank you very much for having me. It was, it was a real pleasure to talk to you. Thank you.

1:19:20 Ricardo Lopes: Hi guys. Thank you for watching this interview. Until the end. If you liked it, please share it. Leave a like and hit the subscription button. The show is brought to you by N Lights Learning and development. Then differently check the website at N lights.com and also please consider supporting the show on Patreon or paypal. I would also like to give a huge thank you to my main patrons and paypal supporters, Perera Larson, Jerry Muller and Frederick Suno Bernard Seche O of Alex Adam Castle Matthew Whitting B no wolf, Tim Ho Erica LJ Connors, Philip Forrest Connelly. Then the Met Robert Wine in Nai Zuk Mar Nevs called Hofi, Governor Mikel Stormer Samuel Andre Francis for Agns Ferger Ken Herz and La Jung Y and the K Hes Mark Smith J. Tom Hummel s friends, David W and the de Ro Ro Diego, Jan Punter Romani Charlotte, Bli Nicole Barba, Adam Hunt, Pavlo Stass, Nale Me, Gary G Alman Sam of Zaypj Barboza, Julian Price Edward Hall, Eden Broner Douglas Fry Franka Gilon Cortez or Solis Scott Zachary FTW Daniel Friedman, William Buckner, Paul Giorgino, Luke Loki, Georgio Theophano Chris Williams and Peter Wo David Will Di A Cost. Anton Erickson Charles Murray, Alex Shaw, Marie Martinez, Coralie Chevalier, Bangalore Fist, Larry Dey Junior, Old Eon Starry Michael Bailey. Then Spur by Robert Grassy Zorn, Jeff mcmahon, Jake Zul Barnabas Radis Mark Kemple Thomas Dvor Luke Neeson, Chris to Kimberley Johnson, Benjamin Gilbert Jessica. No, Linda Brendan Nicholas Carlson Ismael Bensley Man, George Katis Valentine Steinman, Perros, Kate Von Goler, Alexander Albert Liam Dan Biar Masoud Ali Mohammadi Perpendicular J Ner Urla. Good enough, Gregory Hastings David Pins of Sean Nelson, Mike Levin and Jos Net. A special thanks to my producers is our web, Jim Frank Luca, Toni, Tom Veg and Bernard N Cortes Dixon Benedikt Muller Thomas Trumble, Catherine and Patrick Tobin, John Carlman, Negro, Nick Ortiz and Nick Golden. And to my executive producers, Matthew Lavender, Si Adrian Bogdan Knits and Rosie. Thank you for all.