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It's easy to be a naive idealist. It's easy to be a cynical realist. It's quite another thing to have

no illusions and still hold the inner flame. To be a philosophical pessimist is to be acutely

aware of the tragic side of life and to believe that suffering overshadows joy that evil can defeat

good, that we are victims of fate and chance, and that

death always lurks. Many consider philosophical pessimism to be a depressing and life-denying

outlook that reflects an inability or refusal to acknowledge the positive aspects of life.

But according to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, there is a variant of philosophical pessimism that reflects the most life-affirming state that one can achieve.

Nietzsche called this a pessimism of strength, and in this video, we explore the nature of this pessimism and explain its relation to personal greatness.

In his autobiography, Nietzsche wrote,

Is pessimism necessarily a sign of decline, decay, malformation, of tired and debilitated instincts,

as was the case among the Indians and appears to be the case amongst us modern men and Europeans?

Is there a pessimism of strength? Is there an intellectual

predilection for the hard, gruesome, evil, problematic aspect of existence, prompted by well-being,

by overflowing health, by the fullness of existence? Is it perhaps possible to suffer precisely

from overfulness?

In this passage written in 1886, Nietzsche critically revisits his first book, the Birth of Tragedy, which he wrote 14 years prior.

One of Nietzsche's aims in the birth of tragedy was to provide philosophical consolation to those who possess Dionysian wisdom.

Dionysus was the ancient Greek god of suffering and tragedy, and Dionysian wisdom consists of an acute awareness of the darker realities of the human condition, such as suffering, meaninglessness, absurdity, tragedy, or as Nietzsche explains in the birth of tragedy, those who have achieved Dionysian wisdom

have looked truly into the essence of things, they have gained knowledge.

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