Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher, poet and cultural critic.
His philosophy, among which is the well-beloved theory of existentialism, which emphasizes
the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent, determining
their own development through acts of will.
Nietzsche turned out to be considered as one of the greatest thinkers of his time, and
his philosophy has shaped the field of philosophy in fundamental ways.
He has written many books, such as ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, ‘The Birth of Tragedy’,
‘Beyond Good and Evil’ and ‘Human, All Too Human.’
His theories are known for many life-changing thoughts and concepts, such as ‘God is Dead’
- the notion that urges to move philosophy away from religion and metaphysical thinking.
But what many do not know, as it is generally overshadowed by the greatness of Nietzsche’s
other philosophical work, is that Nietzsche also had opinions on romance, relationships
and marriage that can be incredibly helpful.
Especially in his lesser-known book, ‘The Gay Science’ or, sometimes translated as
‘The Joyful Wisdom’ where he discusses interpersonal relationships and romance.
Among the many things that we seek in life, such as happiness, moral guidance, self-fulfillment,
a purpose, and more we also desire a healthy romantic relationship.
Nietzsche would say a healthy relationship is all about friendship and great conversations.
Nietzsche has many times been criticized as a misogynist who over-described the so-called
nature of men and women, which is now often recognised as outdated.
Although he described the fundamental nature of men and women as inevitably conflicting,
making love more like war than peace, many modern readers of Nietzsche have argued that
Nietzsche’s claims about men and women are not actually reflections of his views, but
rather what he perceives society’s image of men and women to be.
In other words, he describes the image that gets pushed onto everybody.
It would make sense for this existentialist philosopher to draw attention to this in order
to encourage people to oppose to it, and to define themselves instead of letting themselves
be defined on the basis of their sex.
While we can never be certain whether or not this is true, what is clear is that he appreciated
women for who they were as people.
As for his own love-life: Nietzsche spent most of his life in love with one woman “Lou
Andreas-Salomé”.
He proposed to her on multiple occasions, but got rejected each time again.
However, his solitary existence did not turn him away from the concept of romance and love
- instead, he kept writing about love and relationships in insightful and passionate
ways.
Which is why in this video we have compiled four ways on how to have a healthy relationship
from the philosophy of Freidrich Nietzsche.
1.
Find someone whom you enjoy talking to
Nietzsche says “When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will
be able to converse well with this person into your old age?
Everything else in marriage is transitory.”
According to Nietzsche, one of the most important aspects of any healthy relationship is the
ability to converse well.
In real, deep conversations, people do not talk past or at each other, but truly with
each other.
In these sorts of conversations, they generate something new for the future.
He compares the conversationalist with a midwife, someone able to help deliver their partner’s
thoughts.
Nietzsche argues that conversation is not just important in your life in general, but
especially so within romantic relationships.
If you are not able to converse well with your loved one, your relationship might very
well not last.
Reasons for beginning a relationship with or even marrying someone have always varied
enormously.
People marry for looks, money, opportunity, etc, but none of these are very promising
bases for a relationship: what if someone grows old and loses their beauty or charm?
What if money gets lost, or opportunities vanish?
The storybook motivation behind marriage we’re told from childhood is: love.
But what does it actually mean to marry for “love”?
People often say something along the lines of the following: that it would be to marry
someone you feel strongly about, to marry someone you admire, to marry someone you want
to be near every day, or to marry someone you cannot stop thinking about.
However, what these people do not consider is that all these reasons might actually be
temporary.
How can you tell you will always feel strongly about a person?
Will you always admire them as much as you do now?
Will you ever get sick of them or need time apart?
Will you rally spend most of your days fantasizing about the person you’ve been waking up next
to for the past twenty years?
Perhaps.
But, more realistically, perhaps not.
And what would happen if that thing that you married your lover for has disappeared, however
temporarily?
There’s a good chance you might break up.
When it comes to a relationship between two people, Nietzsche says, the one quality that
one can rely most on to stay the same is the conversation.
So when you choose to marry someone, Nietzsche would advise you to ask yourself - do you
believe you are going to enjoy talking to your partner, right up into your old age?
Everything else in marriage is transitory, but most of the time you are together will
be devoted to conversation.
Although the topics of conversation might change throughout the year, the way a conversation
flows between two people will never alter all that much.
Conversations are always necessary to maintain a healthy relationship.
When you know you are with someone who listens to you, takes you seriously, speaks on the
same wavelength as you and is able to share their opinion while always respecting yours,
then all matters important to a relationship can be discussed.
When this is not the case, many questions or issues will never be resolved.
Any disagreement on how to live, how to handle boundaries or priorities, how to handle differences,
etc, might destroy a relationship in a single blow.
Good conversationalists are good partners, for they are able to maintain their relationship
and entertain each other, even when all else fails.
2.
Focus more on cultivating friendship
According to Nietzsche, “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes
unhappy marriages.”
According to Nietzsche, friends want to bring out the best attributes in one another.
Nietzsche believes in the Aristotelian definition of friendship as ‘reciprocated goodwill’
- people who both want the best for each other.
So, in Nietzsche’s view friends are a source of mutual inspiration and cultivation.
A true friend will not hold back in their opinion and will criticize you, because any
friend who turns a blind eye to your faults or mistakes is a friend who does not care
enough to address it.
That said, they will also accept your criticisms of them without fuss, because they want to
grow and value your opinion in doing so.
In other words: friends are not there to just make you feel good, but they are there to
help you improve on yourself and hope for the same support from you.
This teamwork towards a certain end is what defines a truly successful relationship.
Any friendship that fails in these aspects will fail as a relationship sooner or later,
for friends that do not help each other grow will result in friends that end up resenting
each other.
This kind of bond is not only of great importance to friendship, but to romantic relationships
as well.
In other words: you should not only be your partner’s lover, but always make sure to
be their friend as well.
It is often believed that it is normal to be with someone for their lifestyle, job,
values, your chemistry - and sometimes even their status, wealth or looks.
But none of these things guarantee friendship.
Relationships that are based on all of these things and only lack sufficient friendship,
all too often end up broken or cold and resentful as partners.
So, in order to cultivate a lasting romantic relationship with another, you should cultivate
your friendship with them.
This means that as a lover, you should actively support your partner and help them grow.
Let’s take a look at Nietzsche’s conditions for being a good friend, to inspire you and
help you be the best friend you can be.
First, Nietzsche empathizes that friendship should exist of mutual joy, not merely mutual
suffering.
To be a true friend you should not just suffer over your friends’ or lovers' suffering,
but mostly relish in their joy with them.
For most of us, it is true that whenever you see someone you care about suffering, it hurts
you as well.
It is incredibly hard to see someone you love having a hard time.
Their pain, as some might say, in part becomes your pain as well.
And although empathy goes a long way in friendship, Nietzsche warns you not to test the quality
of your friendship merely by examining your friend's ability to suffer along with your
suffering.
Instead, Nietzsche says, true friendship should mostly be focused on mutual joy.
A true friend will be hurt to see you hurt, sure, but most of all they should be happy
to see you happy.
You are the best sort of friend if you are able to relish in your friend's happiness
and joy with them.
The celebration of good things instead of almost exclusively focusing on bad things
encourages growth and cultivation.
Secondly, a friend wants the best for their friend.
But ‘wanting the best’ is not always wanting what’s easiest or most comfortable.
Instead, Nietzsche argues that for someone to grow into their best self, they need to
be challenged and criticized.
So, if you want what’s best for your friends, you should not be afraid to argue with them,
share your true opinion, criticize them and not turn a blind eye when you disagree with
their views or actions.
To summarize this in Nietzsche’s own words, true friendship is the sort of relationship
that involves a shared, higher thirst for ‘an ideal love above them.’
They strive to be better, together.
And if all of this does not go for your romantic relationship, then it will never be as fulfilling
as a good friendship.
3.
Never promise everlasting love
In the words of Nietzsche, “One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter
are involuntary.
He who promises to love forever or hate forever or be forever faithful to someone is promising
something that is not in his power.”
‘Loving someone forever’ is a promise that we often make.
Nietzsche critiques this action for one simple reason: you cannot promise to love someone
forever, and thus these promises are meaningless.
In Nietzsche’s view, people do not tend to see love as it truly is: a feeling.
Feelings are something people have no control over.
You cannot decide what to feel and not to feel, but only whether to acknowledge the
feelings that you do have and how to react to them.
This means that when one promises to love another for a prolonged period of time, they
are making a promise they cannot guarantee.
If it is true that the one who made the promise does continue to love the other for the rest
of their lives, it is not due to their willpower or effort, but a coincidence or happenstance
at most.
If they do not continue to love the other for the rest of their lives, this means that
they have unintentionally broken a promise, something for which they can be blamed and
criticized.
To base your relationship on an empty promise is foolish, for it has no way to actually
support that relationship.
Furthermore, breaking a grand promise like that within a relationship will most likely
result in distrust and resentment.
It msy, at worst, be the end of the relationship itself.
This is because the breaking of a promise is often seen as a sign of carelessness, dishonesty
and betrayal - three things someone would never, ever want in a partner.But does this
mean that you have no control over whether a relationship can be maintained?
No.
Nietzsche has an alternative to offer: the promise to always act lovingly towards the
other.
While one has no control over feelings, one is always free and able to choose their actions.
So instead of promising to ‘always love’ another, Nietzsche proposes the promise of
‘always acting lovingly’ towards another.
In Nietzsche’s own words: ‘For as long as I love you, I shall render to you the actions
of love; if I cease to love you, you will continue to receive the same actions from
me, though from other motives.’
These other motives would be respect, the intrinsic value the relationship brings to
your life, care, kindness, or anything like it.
So when the love is gone, either temporarily or permanently, one keeps up a healthy relationship
by treating their partner with care and kindness.
This is not, as some might want to call it, lying, for one can be honest and clear about
their feelings while still behaving in such a way.
Additionally, neither is it lying to yourself.
Nietzsche says treating anyone you care about - even if you do not love them anymore - in
the loving way you are used to treating them should come easily and naturally to you - especially
if your future with them seems worth it to you.
As soon as it does not come easily anymore, probably when you find your feelings for someone
have soured so much that you cannot keep your promise of always treating them lovingly,
then you can be reasonably sure your relationship is over.
But until then, you should appreciate your partner and your relationship together enough
to maintain it and await what it might bring in the future.
In many cases, the future for relationships such as these is still rosy and full of love.
4.
Be a little selfish
In our final quote from Nietzsche for this video, he says “The demand to be loved is
the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.”
Selfishness plays a very central role in Nietzsche’s philosophy and he spent a lot of time defending
selfishness against its bad reputation.
According to Nietzsche, it is essential for both self-growth and the success of healthy
relationships.
For self-growth, because, in order to successfully achieve any goal, Nietzsche is convinced that
one must tend to their own needs first.
One can never define themselves if they are not allowed to embrace their own personal
needs, wants and goals.
Nietzsche says there is room for ‘good conscience, spirit, cheerfulness, beauty and sensitivity’
in selfishness.
Selfishness is also necessary for love, because if one is not selfish in love, one cannot
truly love at all.
Most of us often see love as the opposite of being selfish.
Loving somebody, and helping and caring for those you love is often considered to be inherently
selfless.
However, when we love the way we commonly do, by seeing our partner in a brighter light
than the rest of the world, admiring them more than any other, and giving them special
treatment, we are, in fact, being selfish, from a certain point of view.
In Fact we also ignore our own wants and needs, and expect our beloved to do the same.
This may result in dropping a personal hobby in order to make more time for your spouse
or partner, or picking up more chores than would be fair.
It may also result in ignoring it when your partner crosses a boundary just to ensure
that they stay with you, and exclusively with you.
And so, in Nietzsche’s view, loving another is akin to having possessions, and thus greed
and love might actually be one and the same.
However, there's a big chance none of this behavior would truly make anyone happy and
resentment is prone to build up in situations like these.
In order to enjoy a monogamous romantic relationship, your relationship should be uniquely yours
and your partners to benefit from, selfishly excluding the rest of the world.
Acknowledging this selfishness does not mean acknowledging a flaw, however, for this is
a core ingredient of a happy relationship.
So, when we call love selfless, we are deceiving ourselves and others, which creates an unhealthy
image of love.
When we feel like love must be exclusively selfless, we also ignore our own wants and
needs, and expect our beloved to do the same, but like all things, relationships are about
finding your balance as a couple that sits in the mutual space between selfless and selfish.
In fact, according to Nietzsche, in order to become truly selfless, one would have to
cease to care for their beloved and instead treat them as they did before they knew each
other.
They would have to eliminate any special attention and devotion towards them, likewise their
jealousy and feelings of envy.
Nietzsche beautifully illustrates this in his poem ‘Without Envy.’
“Without Envy His look is free of envy; hence you laud him;
He does not notice whether you applaud him; He has the eagle's eye for what is far,
He does not see you, he sees only stars.”
In this poem, Nietzsche illustrates someone who does not feel envy and compares it to
not caring at all.
The man in the poem does not notice the praise or love he gets from those around him and
instead is occupied only by his own fantasies and unreachable idealisations… the “stars”
of the poem.
Envy is a reactive feeling that shows our awareness of our surroundings and our insight
in who we want to be.
By not feeling it, the man in the poem is entirely passive.
The implication is that in order to avoid this feeling of envy, one must avoid any interpersonal
relationships whatsoever - we have to stop caring.
But love is all about care.
Thus, when we love in a typically monogamous way, we have to admit to being a little selfish.
The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions indeed, but in order
to love and be loved, to experience the happiness of a fulfilling relationship, one has to acknowledge
and embrace this side of themselves.
If a healthy romantic relationship is based on the principle of an equal partnership it
naturally follows that we should always consider our own needs, wants and boundaries equally
and alongside those of our partners, not perpetually selflessly neglecting your desires to make
your partner happy.
A relationship in which our wishes are ignored is unsustainable.
Indeed, attempting to be purely selfless when it comes to relationships would lead to denying
the very thing that makes love work.
We all are a little selfish in love, and it’s only when we truly understand and embrace
that fact, that we can truly find real, sustainable love and happiness.
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Thanks so much for watching.