The value of life depends to a great extent on pure hazard

(translated from my Chinese blog)

This is my new project, “Nietzschean Philology”. In each installment, I’ll read a passage from Nietzsche’s original writings. By practicing text analysis, we can enhance our ability to understand the world.

"We Philologists" Section 1. Starting from the two main themes of classical linguistics and education, Nietzsche discusses how the specialization of education leads to premature decisions that result in foolish choices in life. He also explores the dilemma of choosing a career: it’s impossible for a person to know what kind of career they should pursue while actually engaging in that career at the same time. As a result, life becomes something determined purely by chance.

To what a great extent men are ruled by pure hazard, and how little reason itself enters into the question, is sufficiently shown by observing how few people have any real capacity for their professions and callings, and how many square pegs there are in round holes: happy and well chosen instances are quite exceptional, like happy marriages, and even these latter are not brought about by reason. A man chooses his calling before he is fitted to exercise his faculty of choice. He does not know the number of different callings and professions that exist; he does not know himself; and then he wastes his years of activity in this calling, applies all his mind to it, and becomes experienced and practical. When, afterwards, his understanding has become fully developed, it is generally too late to start something new; for wisdom on earth has almost always had something of the weakness of old age and lack of vigour about it.

For the most part the task is to make good, and to set to rights as well as possible, that which was bungled in the beginning. Many will come to recognise that the latter part of their life shows a purpose or design which has sprung from a primary discord: it is hard to live through it. Towards the end of his life, however, the average man has become accustomed to it--then he may make a mistake in regard to the life he has lived, and praise his own stupidity: _bene navigavi cum naufragium feci_ . he may even compose a song of thanksgiving to "Providence."

"We Philologists" 1, Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by J. M. Kennedy

Before discussing Nietzsche’s texts, a few points need to be clarified.

Firstly, as mentioned earlier, philology does not equate to language education, at least not in the context of contemporary language education. Readers must not mistakenly believe that this reading program will help improve their scores on language tests. That’s the role of professional tutoring agencies. They’re responsible for improving people’s scores; I’m not responsible for anything. They focus on test preparation; I simply enjoy reading. They get paid to do their job; I have neither the desire nor the ability to accept money from anyone to do anyone’s work.

I also hold a negative view regarding whether Nietzsche’s aphoristic style of writing can be used in the Chinese college entrance examination essays. As is well known, these exams of essays require a clear argument or thesis. And, with few exceptions, almost always only one possible argument or thesis is allowed. There’s no room for multiple viewpoints or perspectives, no matter how subtly they might be hinted at in the exam questions. Nietzsche, on the other hand, wasn’t skilled at presenting arguments at all. In fact, he aimed to undermine all seemingly solid values. What’s worse, Nietzsche’s approach forces one to consider multiple perspectives. Once you see the other side of things, it becomes difficult to return to the “positive” perspective required by the examiners.

Next is the issue of the Chinese people’s traditional view of morality. As I’ve mentioned, Nietzsche is someone who cannot be simply labeled as either good or evil, no matter from which perspective. But this is just the pedantic way of thinking of history enthusiasts like us. Anyway, the comments section* already has a verdict: Nietzsche “isn’t some kind of ‘good person’.” Once right and wrong are determined, everyone can go their own way. This is how Chinese people live. Everything must be judged from a moral perspective first; otherwise, it’s impossible to know how to live. Chinese people have their own ways of dealing with good people and good deeds, as well as evil people and evil deeds. They always adapt their behavior to the person they’re dealing with. Even when dealing with someone whose character is hard to determine, like a stranger or a foreigner, they try to “cultivate” that person by imposing Chinese cultural norms on them before trying to communicate. Of course, this is just me guessing. This illustrates how difficult it is for Nietzsche to be understood by Chinese people. I even suspect that the reason Zhou Guoping insisted on interpreting Nietzsche aesthetically is that the realm of aesthetics is more capable of accommodating the unfamiliar and the evil, thereby causing less harm to social order.

Nietzsche certainly “ isn’t some kind of ‘good person’.” But these days, who really is a “good person”? Who dares to say that someone is a good person? All idols have been destroyed (except those in the idol industry). Even those who are protected by the authorities are secretly rejected by the mass. Go ahead, read about your “good people” if you want. I’ll read about Nietzsche instead. We both have a bright future ahead of us.

Back to the main topic. “We Philologists” isn’t one of Nietzsche’s officially published works. It was written in 1874 and published posthumously. It belongs to the section of his works related to philology. By comparing it with Nietzsche’s chronology of works, one can get a sense of the issues that occupied Nietzsche during that period.

1868 “Homer and Classical Philology”

1872 “On the Future of Our Educational Institutions”

1872 “The Birth of Tragedy”

1873 “Philosophy in the Age of Greek Tragedy”

1874 “Schopenhauer as an Educator”

Two themes stand out: classical philology and education. It’s reasonable to assume that “We Philologists” was also inspired by these two themes. At that time, Nietzsche was still in the first half of his academic and personal life. Nietzsche was born in 1844 and died in 1900. By 1889, he had already become mentally ill. He wrote his first major work, “The Birth of Tragedy”, at the age of 28. “We Philologists” was written when he was 30 years old. There were still 15 years left before he became mentally ill. In other words, he was on the verge of entering the second half of his life. What he wrote about people realizing too late that they had wasted their first half of life on the wrong pursuits, and only in the second half of their lives, or even at the moment of death, do they realize what they truly should have pursued, likely reflects his own fears regarding possible mistakes in choosing his career. What if his true purpose in life wasn’t classical philology, but something else entirely?

So, he needs education, and his “ability to understand things” needs to be fully developed, so that he can figure out where his life and career should lead him as soon as possible. He goes on to say: “Our task is essentially to improve and correct those things that were messed up from the very beginning.” The original word used is “the task”; I’ve translated it as “life’s task”. But the precise meaning should be “the only task for me”. And by “that which was bungled in the beginning”, he undoubtedly refers to the education we receive during our childhood. As early as the 19th century, education began to become more specialized. As a result, education and career choices became tied together too early. You don’t even know whether you really love, say, civil engineering. You don’t even understand what it means, yet you start preparing to dedicate your entire life to it at a young age. Your potential is trapped. In ancient Greece, education was the opposite of specialization. It was meant to allow a person’s abilities to develop in all directions. It wasn’t until a person reached their thirties or even later that this kind of holistic education was completed, and only then was a person considered capable of making wise choices about their life. But again, this applied only to Greek citizens. Citizens didn’t need to participate in the division of labor, because they didn’t need to labor at all—that was the role of slaves.

The concept of classical liberal education has continued into the modern era, existing as part of what’s known as liberal arts education. But today, it seems to be little more than a name without any real meaning. What Nietzsche really cared about wasn’t so much the impact of this educational system on society—he paid little attention to society at all. What interested him more was how individuals develop within society, or how their development is hindered. And all of this happens in the name of education.

Nietzsche hardly ever considered society at all, as can be seen from the first sentence. According to modern sociological principles, after identifying a mismatch in human resources, sociologists would immediately ask how this mismatch can be corrected or alleviated, thereby improving overall social efficiency. Nietzsche never even thought about this issue. For Nietzsche, social mechanisms were simply given realities that had to be accepted by the individual. He focused solely on how individuals should respond to these realities. Sometimes, I suppose, he didn’t even know how to respond himself. In such cases, he resorted to criticism as a means of mocking those who refused to confront the tragedies of their own lives. In other words, he was just complaining.

Nietzsche mentioned "reason" several times. What he meant was that it’s impossible to make rational decisions regarding one’s own life. Life cannot be optimized. By the time one possesses the wisdom to optimize life, it’s already too late. Nietzsche mocked those Enlightenment thinkers who hoped to improve human nature and society by rational design. Such efforts are meaningless at the level of human life, and therefore impossible to succeed at any level related to human beings.

The end of the first paragraph reveals Nietzsche’s true deepest fear: what if there’s a fundamental conflict between our ability to understand and our ability to act? It seems impossible to simultaneously understand what we ought to do (which requires understanding) and actually carry out that action (which requires action). All we can do is take a gamble, acting without proper understanding. Only when we’re older and have gained the necessary understanding can we discover whether our gamble was successful or not. There are countless goals in the world, and the chances of succeeding in any particular goal are extremely slim. In essence, this means that the value of life depends largely on pure luck. No matter how great one’s efforts may be, they won’t be able to resolve this problem.

Here, we can already glimpse Nietzsche’s later doctrine of eternal recurrence: To metaphysically resolve the dilemma between understanding and action, the most straightforward approach is to try thousands or millions of times. Assuming that life is repeated countless times, then eventually, you just might hit the jackpot some day, right?

* The last post received a comment literally saying that “Nietzsche isn’t some kind of ‘good person’.”