Student Publications Student Scholarship Spring 2017 Health and Sickness: An Examination of the Question of the Affirmation or Negation of Life in the Face of Suffering Frank M. Scavelli Gettysburg College Follow this and additional works at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/student_scholarship Part of the Comparative Philosophy Commons, Continental Philosophy Commons, and the History of Philosophy Commons Share feedback about the accessibility of this item. Scavelli, Frank M., "Health and Sickness: An Examination of the Question of the Affirmation or Negation of Life in the Face of Suffering" (2017). Student Publications. 569. https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/student_scholarship/569 This open access student research paper is brought to you by The uC pola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of The uC pola. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Health and Sickness: An Examination of the Question of the Affirmation or Negation of Life in the Face of Suffering Abstract In this thesis, I examine a line of thought that stretches from Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), who regarded his own work merely as an interpretation and continuation Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) philosophy, through Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who reacted to Schopenhauer’s negation of life with an affirmative philosophy, to Thomas Mann (1875-1955), who, operating from within this tradition, attempted a synthesis of it as well as a critical analysis of some of its aspects and their relation to seemingly-pathological fascistic sentiment he witnessed in the Germany of the 1920s and 30s. This line of thought deals with the essential question of Life. It addresses: questions of the relation of the body to the physical world; interpretations of bodily suffering, Death, and a sympathy with Death, called "Romanticism." Through this examination, I discuss, in order: Schopenhauer's system at length, as presented in The orldW as Will and Representation, and the bodily emphasis found therein; Nietzsche's philosophy, its essential character as being both a reaction to and inverse of Schopenhauerianism, exhibited in Nietzsche's identification of Schopenhauer's latent Romanticism as a "sickness" in The aG y Science, and his increasing focus on this idea of physiological-philosophical sickness in his later works -- which as a totalizing idea can be seen to encompass all his major notions, including the Will to Power and Amor Fati, for example; and finally Mann's work within this tradition, regarding a philosophical synthesis of it in The aM gic Mountain and in his address "An Appeal to Reason," given at the Beethovensaal the night following the 1930 German elections. Ultimately, and most importantly, this thesis asks: what is the meaning of physiological-philosophical health, in the exceptional sense of the term, and what is the consequence of its opposite, a sickness in respect to life itself? Keywords Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, health, suffering, Goethe, The aM gic Mountain, The orldW as Will and Representation, Will to Power, sickness, Romanticism, Kant, Kantianism, Schopenhauerianism Disciplines Comparative Philosophy | Continental Philosophy | History of Philosophy Comments Written as a Senior Thesis in Philosophy. Creative Commons License Creative ThiCommons works is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License. License This student research paper is available at The uC pola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/ student_scholarship/569 Scavelli 1 Health and Sickness: An Examination of the Question of the Affirmation or Negation of Life in the Face of Suffering A Thesis in Philosophy By Frank M Scavelli Thesis Advisor: Professor Gary Mullen Gettysburg College Department of Philosophy Scavelli 2 Prologue: Faust “FAUST:… (He opens the book and sees the symbol of the macrocosm.) What jubilation bursts out of this sight Into my senses – now I feel it flowing, Youthful, a sacred fountain of delight, Through every nerve, my veins are glowing. Was it a god that made these symbols be That soothe my feverish unrest, Filling with joy my anxious breast, And with mysterious potency Make nature’s hidden powers around me, manifest? Am I a god? Light grows this page – In these our lines my eyes can see Creative nature spread in front of me. But now I grasp the meaning of the sage: ‘The realm of spirits is not far away; Your mind is closed, your heart is dead. Rise, student, bathe without dismay In heaven’s dawn your mortal head.’ (He contemplates the symbol.) All weaves itself into the whole, Each living in the other’s soul. How heaven’s powers climb up and descend. Passing the golden pails from hand to hand! Bliss-scented, they are winging Through sky and earth – their singing Is ringing through the world. What play! Yet but a play, however vast! Where, boundless nature, can I hold you fast? And where you breasts? Wells that sustain All life – the heaven and earth are nursed. The wilted breast craves you in thirst – You well, you still – and I languish in vain? (In disgust, he turns some pages and behold the symbol of the earth’s spirit.) How different is the power of this sign! You, spirit of the earth, seem close to mine: I look and feel my powers growing, As if I’d drunk new wine I’m glowing, I feel a sudden courage, and should dare Scavelli 3 To plunge into the world, to bear All earthly grief, all earthly joy – compare With gales my strength, face shipwreck without care. Now there are clouds above – The moon conceals her light – The lamp dies down. It steams. Red light rays dash About my head – a chill Blows from the vaulting dome And seizes me. I feel you near me, spirit I implored. Reveal yourself! Oh, how my heart is gored By never felt urges, And my whole body surges – My heart is yours; yours, too, am I. You must. You must. Though I should have to die. (He seizes the book and mysteriously pronounces the symbol of the spirit. A reddish flame flashes, and the SPIRIT appears in the flame.) SPIRIT: Who calls me? FAUST (turning away): Vision of fright! SPIRIT: With all your might you drew me near You have been sucking at my sphere, And now– FAUST: I cannot bear your sight! SPIRIT: You have implored me to appear, Make known my voice, reveal my face; Your soul’s entreaty won my grace: Here I am! What abject fear Grasps you, oh superman! Where is the soul’s impassioned Call? And where the breast that even now had fashioned A world to bear and nurse within – that trembled thus, Swollen with joy that it resembled us? Where are you, Faust, whose voice pierces my domain, Who surged against me with his might and main? Could it be you who at my breath’s slight shiver Scavelli 4 Are to the depths of life aquiver, A miserably writhing worm? FAUST: Should I, phantom of fire, fly? It’s I, it’s Faust; your peer am I! SPIRIT: In floods of life and creative storm To and fro I wave. Weave eternally. And birth and grave, An eternal sea, A changeful life: At the roaring loom of the ages I plod And fashion the life giving garment of God. FAUST: You that traverse worlds without end, Sedulous spirit, I feel close to you. SPIRIT: Peer of the spirit that you comprehend Not mine! (Vanishes.) 1 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, From Faust: Part One 1790 This scene, early in Goethe’s Faust, takes place in the main character’s study. Faust is contemplating the different ideas of life and gazing at their symbols in his alchemical summoning book. Faust reacts in contempt to the first symbol, the macrocosm. The macrocosm signifies a vaguely metaphysical, pseudo-theological idea of the nature and meaning of life in which life has purpose: in which all is complete and balanced, as it is part of the whole. The macrocosm signifies that everything is composed of the same Oneness and has meaning thereby: one could say the macrocosm is, in essence, a picture of Spinozian pantheism. “All weaves itself into the whole, / Each living in the other’s soul. / How heaven’s powers climb up and descend. / Passing the golden pails from hand to hand! / Bliss-scented, they are winging / Through sky and 1 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Faust. Ed. and Trans. Walter Arnold Kaufmann. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961. Print. Page 103. Scavelli 5 earth – their singing / Is ringing through the world.” Taken as it is in the whole, the macrocosm is in essence an omnipresent, changeless, timeless idea of benevolent unity. Oppositely, the Earth Spirit is a figure of striving activity and ceaseless change: “…floods of life and creative storm / To and fro I wave. / Weave eternally. / And birth and grave, / An eternal sea…” In contrast to the macrocosm, which is explicitly a symbol of redemptive, affirmative meaning, the Earth Spirit has no inherent quality other than that which it simply is: ceaseless change and striving, the constant “fashion[ing of] the living garment of God” and its simultaneous, inexorable rending asunder. It is not coincidence that it appears to Faust as a terrible, consuming flame. Faust reacts in “abject horror,” and, quite literally, cannot bear the sight of this manifestation of the true essence of life. This thesis is an exploration of that fear, and of its overcoming. Introduction: Scavelli 6 In this thesis, we will examine a line of thought that stretches from Arthur Schopenhauer (1788- 1860), who regarded his own work merely as an interpretation and continuation Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) philosophy, through Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who reacted to Schopenhauer’s negation of life with an affirmative philosophy, to Thomas Mann (1875-1955), who, operating from within this tradition, attempted a synthesis of it as well as a critical analysis of some of its aspects and their relation to seemingly-pathological fascistic sentiment he witnessed in the Germany of the 1920s and 30s.