Philosophy - A Guide to Happiness: Nietzsche on Hardship

Documentary inspired and hosted by Alain de Botton, based on his book The Consolations of Philosophy

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[♪ dramatic music playing ♪]

Narrator: We all have dark
periods in our lives.

We all face difficulties
that seem insurmountable.

We all encounter setbacks,
and when we do,

we're often tempted
to throw in the towel.

Most philosophers have tried to help us
to reduce the amount that we suffer.

They've offered consoling advice
on how to make the pain go away.

But there was one philosopher with
a far more bracing take on the subject.

Friedrich Nietzsche believed that
all varieties of suffering and failure

were to be welcomed by
anyone seeking happiness.

We should regard them as
tough challenges to be overcome

in the same way as a climber
might tackle a mountain.

Almost alone among philosophers,
he thought it was an advantage

to have serious reversals in life.

He wrote, "To those human beings
who are of any concern to me,

I wish suffering, desolation, sickness,
ill treatment, indignities,

profound self-contempt,
the torture of self-mistrust,

and the wretchedness
of the vanquished."

And to understand
what Nietzsche meant,

it helps to scale one of his
favorite mountains,

Piz Corvatsch,
high in the Swiss Alps.

I'm now standing on the
top of Piz Corvatsch,

and the view is
extraordinary, sublime.

There's a complete
stillness in the air.

Clouds are just
drifting over us.

We can see clouds below us, and then,
through the clouds, villages and forests.

You feel like you're on
the top of the world,

and the air is curiously light, and
you feel a kind of elated feeling.

And I think that here we
can start to understand

why Nietzsche placed such an
emphasis on the tops of mountains.

It's at the very top of the mountain
that come the finest views,

but it's, of course, extremely
hard to get to them,

and this is symptomatic of his view,
that to reach anything that's worthwhile,

to reach anything
that's valuable,

you have to go through an
extraordinary amount of effort.

Friedrich Nietzsche certainly knew a lot
about effort, both physical and mental.

His life was one of
exceptional hardship.

He constantly struggled against illness:
dizziness, headaches, vomiting--

probably all symptoms of the syphilis he
picked up in a Cologne brothel as a student.

He was forced on a restless journey
around Europe in search of somewhere

where the climate wouldn't
upset his delicate constitution,

and the place that best agreed
with him was Sils-Maria,

high in the mountains in the
southeastern corner of Switzerland.

Nietzsche came here for the
first time in June 1879

and immediately fell in love
with the place.

"I now have Europe's best and
mightiest air to breathe," he wrote.

"Its nature is akin to my own."

He spent eight summers
in Sils-Maria,

living in this barely furnished
room rented from a farmer.

It was here that he
worked on some of his

most important books, including
"Thus Spoke Zarathustra,"

"Beyond Good and Evil,"
and "Twilight of the Idols,"

but his work enjoyed
little success in his lifetime.

Although he'd been made
a professor by the age of 24,

he was completely out of tune
with his colleagues

and was finally forced to
retire at the age of 35.

For the rest of his life,
he had very little money,

and the many books he worked
on here went largely unread.

He lived a life of routine.

He would rise at 5:00 in the morning,
write until midday,

and then take walks up the huge peaks
that necklace the village.

But he didn't just live
amongst the mountains

for the air and the nice views.
The landscape he saw around him

spoke to his deepest sense
of himself and his work.

"Philosophy," he declared, "is a voluntary
living in ice and high mountains."

Nietzsche's love life was as disastrous
as his professional career.

All his attempts to
seduce women were in vain.

Many were frightened
by his large mustache,

and he confessed to feelings
of appalling loneliness.

He wrote to a married friend:
"Thanks to your wife,

things are a hundred times
better for you than for me.

You have a nest together;
I have, at best, a cave."

Nietzsche immersed
himself in philosophy,

but his working life
was cruelly cut short.

He ended his days in madness,
having famously broken down

and embraced a horse
in Turin in 1889.

He returned to his boarding
house, danced naked,

thought of shooting the Kaiser,
and believed himself to be,

amongst others,
Jesus, Napoleon, Buddha,

the king of Piedmont,
and Alexander the Great.

He was bundled into a train to Germany
and put into an asylum,

where he was looked after by
his sister and his elderly mother

until he died 11 years later
at the age of 56.

A key lesson that Nietzsche's
life of hardship taught him

was that any
worthwhile achievement

was born out of constant
struggle and hard work.

Though we sometimes suppose
that success comes easily

and naturally to some people,
there was no such thing

as a straight path to the top
in Nietzsche's eyes.

"Don't talk about giftedness
or inborn talents," he wrote.

"One can name all kinds of very great
people who were not very gifted.

They acquired greatness,
They became geniuses,

and they did so by
overcoming difficulties."

It's a lesson that the
ballerina exemplifies.

Monica Perego is a principal dancer
with the English National Ballet.

Perego: It takes a lot
of work, also dedication.

It's a job that you
do for love, really.

Um, and basically, it's just a lot of
practicing the same step

over and over again
until you get it right,

and you make it
seem effortless.

And a lot of pain
in the body, of course,

because it's a lot of
strain for the muscles,

and, um, pain on the feet, obviously,
because you've got these

lovely pointed shoes on,
which, uh, look really nice,

but, um, they're quite
painful sometimes [chuckling].

de Botton: How much does it hurt?
I mean, it's hard to imagine.

Perego: Um, well, it depends.
You go through phases, really,

but you do get
a lot of blisters,

and you do get aches
and pains all the time.

-de Botton: All the time?
-Pelegro: Oh yeah, pretty much.

Especially backs and--
I mean, it's personal,

but backs and calves and--
that's the worst--

and of course,
blisters on the toes,

and, you know, um, yellow nails.
They sound disgusting! [chuckles]

de Botton: What's a yellow nail?

Perego: Well, basically,
a bruised nail-- toenails.

de Botton: Oh, oh, right.
Bruised toenails.

And do they bleed as well?
Do your feet ever bleed?

Perego: Uh, no-- well, yeah,
just with blisters.

I had actually two toenails
coming off as well.

de Botton: Goodness me.

Perego: And, for example, just-- we were
at the Royal Albert Hall in June,

and I'd been off sick for a while,
and I had to come back

and go straight into
"Swan Lake" rehearsal,

and so my feet weren't used to it,
so I had about ten blisters on my toes,

and I had to perform, you know,
with, like blood and, you know,

loads of paddings and try
to not feel the pain,

but, of course,
you always feel it.

de Botton: Nietzsche said
that without pain,

without going through pain,
there could never be any gain

and that anything that's
worthwhile doing in life

is going to take you through
some awful things.

Do you think that's right?

Perego: Um, it's right in our career,
for sure [chuckling], um, definitely,

because it is so straining, but the
satisfaction at the end of the performance

or at the end of someone's career,
it's so amazing that no aches and pain

would, you know, take that amazement
away from it, you know.

-de Botton: The pain was worth it?
-Perego: Oh, yes, definitely.

[♪ ballet music playing ♪]

Narrator: At the heart of
Nietzsche's philosophy

is a simple idea:
difficulty is normal.

We shouldn't panic or give up
when we experience it.

We feel pain because of the gap
between who we are at the moment

and the person
we could ideally be.

It's because we can't master the
ingredients of happiness straightaway

that we suffer as
much as we do.

But Nietzsche didn't think it
was enough just to suffer.

If hardship was all it took
in order to be fulfilled,

then all of us would be happy.

The challenge is to learn
to respond well to suffering,

perhaps to use it to create
something beautiful.

Friedrich Nietzsche was one
of the few philosophers

to speak of the virtues
of hardship and failure.

He thought that we could all
potentially benefit from them.

Paul Brown ran a drinks distribution
company outside Manchester

which went bankrupt last year.

He's now back in business,
but the experience of failure

changed his life for the better.

de Botton: --as a person? Do you think--
as you come in here every morning,

that you're slightly different because
you've had this experience?

Brown: Yeah.
Um, I'm in earlier, for a start.

Um, but, no, I don't--
I don't let the little problems--

I don't let them get
on top of me.

You know, it's a little problem,
you know. It'll go away.

You don't take it into--
into it's like massive, you know,

like it's the end of
the world, you know.

The end of the world happened,
you know, a couple of months ago,

and it failed, and suddenly,
there's a new world,

so the world hasn't
ended at all,

so you don't think the problem
is the end of the world, you know, so...

de Botton: So in a way, you don't panic
as much because you think,

"Well, I've been
through the worst;

the worst has happened,
and I came through it."

Brown: Yeah, yeah, you do, because,
you know, it's not as bad.

It really isn't as bad, you know, as
what everyone makes out, you know.

Failing is horrible!

I wouldn't like anyone to fail,
but have the experience of failing.

Have the feeling of
the experience of failing,

at least, you know,
because that's horrible,

but to try not to fail, you know,
but everyone fails, I suppose, so...

de Botton: And yet, I don't know--
I mean, I always think--

I think this is something interesting
that Nietzsche says, is that

we sort of live in a culture where
failure's not spoken of.

It's like there are these
failures, and sort of,

"That's just this freakish thing
that happens to a few people,

and let's not talk about them."
And then the success,

but somehow the two are
not brought together,

and I think what's quite interesting
is to think in every life, even a good life--

you know, a successful life-- it's going
to involve some failure at some level.

Not necessarily a huge level,
but at some level.

Brown: Well, how would you be able to
judge your success if you haven't failed?

Yeah?

Narrator: Paul's experience,
in many ways, confirms

Nietzsche's analysis of
the benefits of failure.

However, Nietzsche's
point is more subtle.

He didn't think that having failed
was, in itself, enough.

All lives have failures in them.

What makes some
lives fulfilled as well

is the manner in which
failure has been met.

It's a surprising fact about Nietzsche
that for a time he wished to abandon

the bookish life in favor of
becoming a full-time gardener.

The plan never really came off,
but cultivating plants

taught him an important lesson.

Nietzsche thought that
we should look at

many of our problems
like gardeners.

Now, gardeners come across a lot
of plants with very ugly roots.

If we take this one,
I think it's a particular monster.

Look at that--
fairly ugly.

But what gardeners are able to do
is to cultivate something that looks,

initially, very ugly,
into something very beautiful.

Look at this--
rather stunning.

And Nietzsche thought
this was a kind of metaphor

for what we should do
in our own lives.

That is, take situations that look,
initially, very horrible, very dark,

and grow out of them
something beautiful.

There's something
very uplifting about

Nietzsche's botanical view
of our problems.

Even our most negative,
ugly, dark feelings

can be cultivated to
produce something fruitful.

but it's entirely up to us
to make this happen.

Envy, for example, might
just lead to bitterness,

but could, if properly trained,
spur us on to compete with a rival

and produce something wonderful.

Anxiety might make us panic, or it
might blossom into an accurate analysis

of what's wrong and
so to peace of mind.

And that's why Nietzsche wished
misfortune on his friends:

because he believed that hardship
was a necessary evil out of which,

if these friends were skilled, they might
be able to harvest beautiful things.

de Botton: Would you ever
wish failure on your friends?

Brown: No.
The feeling of failure, yeah.

de Botton: Feeling of failure?
Brown: The feeling of failure.

de Botton: Why?

Brown: Because the feeling
of failure is horrible,

and the feeling of making
it again afterwards

just puts it into context on how
bad it feels to fail, you know,

so the feeling afterwards
is so much better.

-de Botton: Have you ever been to Naples?
-Brown: No.

de Botton: Okay, well, Nietzsche went to
Naples, and Nietzsche says in order to

get great happiness from life,
in order to harvest great happiness,

you've got to live dangerously, he says,
and he advises you to build your homes

on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius,
which is a slightly reckless thing to do.

Reckless, but it's
a beautiful view.

You see the sea.
You get a wonderful view.

And that's kind of his--
you know, his idea,

that life's a risky business
and, um, no pain, no gain.

Brown: True, true, yeah.

You've got to take a chance
at some point, I think.

You know, because if you don't take a
chance, then how will you ever know?

I mean, the views could be absolutely
fantastic, but if you say to yourself,

"Oh, if it erupts, you know,
I'll have problems with a landslide,"

well, you'll never know whether
the views are that good,

and the views could, you know,
make up for that risk, that danger.

Narrator: If Nietzsche
gave some thought

to what some good responses
to problems might be,

he also castigated what were,
in his view, the disastrous ones.

One of the worst was
to head for the pub.

[glasses clinking, crowd chatting]

[♪ bluesy guitar music playing ♪]

One of the most striking facts
about Nietzsche is that

he hated drinking alcohol, and
this was more than just a personal taste.

He believed that anyone with
even the slightest interest

in being happy should never go
anywhere near a drop of alcohol.

As he put it, "All the more
spiritual natures should abstain

from alcohol completely.
Water always suffices."

Water, the Nietzschean drink.

To imagine there is benefit in
escaping our troubles once in a while

with an alcoholic drink or two,
is to misunderstand completely

the Nietzschean analysis of the
relationship between happiness and pain.

Happiness does not come
from escaping troubles;

it comes from cultivating them,
from turning them to your advantage.

Narrator: The last thing Nietzsche thought
we should do with our sorrows

is drown them.

Our worries are vital clues
telling us what's wrong with our lives

and pointing the way to
our ultimate improvement.

Nietzsche was born in the
tiny village of Röcken

in what used to be East Germany.

His father was the parson.

His deeply devout mother was herself
the daughter of a parson.

The philosopher adored his father,
and must have been deeply shocked

when he died suddenly when
Nietzsche was only four years old.

The loss was to haunt him
throughout his life.

One of his first actions when
he finally earned a little money,

after winning a court case
against a publisher,

was to buy a large headstone which
now covers his father's grave.

And on it, Nietzsche had inscribed
a quotation from the New Testament:

"Die Liebe hoeret nimmer auf."

"Love never ceases,"
a traditional Christian message.

Even though Nietzsche
loved his father deeply,

even though he's buried
in a Christian graveyard

right next to his father the pastor,
Nietzsche had the greatest reservations

about the kind of assistance
that Christianity brings us

when we're facing
difficulties and problems.

It's striking to visit the house
where Nietzsche was born,

right under the shadow of the
Lutheran church where his father preached,

completely unchanged
since he lived here.

Little Nietzsche must
have grown up

breathing an intensely
religious atmosphere.

So it's very surprising
to read the philosopher

and find out what he had to say
as an adult about his parents' religion.

"One does well to put gloves on
when reading the New Testament.

In the entire New Testament,
there is only one solitary figure

one is obliged to respect:

Pilate, the Roman governor."

and, "Quite simply, it's indecent
to be a Christian today."

Nietzsche was rather against
Christianity for the same reasons

as he was against
getting very drunk.

In the short term, going to hear
a service in a Christian church

may make you feel quite good
in the same way as getting very drunk

may make you feel quite good.

But in the long term, Christianity,
in Nietzsche's eyes, dulls pain,

and in this way, it also dulls the
energy that pain can give us

to overcome problems, and
so reach real happiness.

There are undeniably certain differences
between a pub and a church,

but Nietzsche insisted that
there were great similarities

between the consolation
available in both places.

It seemed to him that the
New Testament tried to make us

feel better by saying that many
things we thought of as problems

are not, in fact, problems at all,
but rather assets.

To anyone worried about being too timid,
the New Testament advises,

"Blessed are the meek, for
they will inherit the earth."

To anyone worried about not having
any friends, the New Testament says,

"Blessed are you when men hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you."

And to anyone who worries about
not having enough money

and who envies those who do, the
New Testament has these soothing words:

"It's easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle

than for a rich man to enter
the kingdom of God."

Nietzsche took such words
to be catastrophic.

Like alcohol, Christian
counsel might dull pain,

but it will also weaken
the resolve to overcome

the problem from which
the pain has arisen.

So how would Nietzsche
have preferred Christians

to behave when faced
with difficulties?

Chiefly, by not pretending
that they didn't want

the things that were
difficult to get.

Nietzsche had a
host of difficulties.

He was poor and sick and lonely,
but he never behaved in the way

that he had accused
Christians of behaving.

That is, he never declared that health
and wealth and love were bad.

He accepted that he didn't have them--
partly by choice, partly by circumstance--

but he did not deny his wishes.
He did not deny his pain.

And so it perhaps
comes as no surprise

to find in the parish records
of his burial here in Röcken,

that the church authorities
have written, beside his name,

the words "a known antichrist."

[♪ guitar music playing ♪]

Although his life was hard,
we shouldn't think

that Nietzsche was miserable
all of the time.

On the contrary, he often
talked about fulfillment,

particularly when he was
here in the mountains.

But, when he does
talk about fulfillment,

he's thinking of
something richer

than the sort of cozy well-being
we might imagine.

He writes sarcastically
about people

who are addicted to the
"religion of comfortableness."

He calls them "small, mean people
hiding in forests like shy deer."

But those of us who dare
to climb up above the tree line

will see the views
and breathe the air.

It's then that we'll
understand the benefits

of abandoning comfort
for true fulfillment.

As Nietzsche famously said:

"That which does not kill me
makes me stronger."

Like every philosopher
in this series,

Nietzsche was interested
in making people happy.

However, unlike every other
philosopher in this series,

he believed that extremes of pain
were a vital component

in reaching the kind of
happiness he had in mind.

Not everything which makes us
suffer is necessarily bad for us.

Not everything which makes us feel good
is necessarily actually good for us.

"To regard extremes of suffering as
an evil, as something to be abolished,"

wrote Friedrich Nietzsche,
"is the supreme idiocy."

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