Is Suffering Bad?” Derek Parfit and Nietzsche on Suffering

Document Type : Scientific-research

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modars

Abstract

Derek Parfit argues the central normative belief that “all suffering
is bad in itself” is held by all of us and known by intuition.
Furthermore, given the intuitive statue of this normative belief, he
argues that in ideal conditions everyone, including ordinary people,
thinkers and philosophers would agree on it. He, then, must show
that Nietzsche, famous for his claims about the goodness of
suffering, doesn’t fundamentally disagree with this belief. Parfit’s
take on the issue is so simplistic, in my view, showing that
Nietzsche’s relevant serious remarks can be reduced to an
instrumentalist view on suffering. After considering Parfit’s
paraphrases and interpretations of his arbitrary selection of
Nietzsche’s remarks, I will show that Nietzsche’s real view about
suffering should be understood under a psychological interpretation
of the will to power as a second order drive or desire for overcoming
resistance. Suffering itself is not anything except a resistance or an
obstacle against our first order desires to be overcome by our active
will to power, as an important constituent of it. And then the
normative belief that “at least some suffering is good” finds its
significance in Nietzsche’s philosophy, strongly contradicting
Parfit’s position about the intuitive statue of the belief

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References

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