Gonna start of with this is a more of sharing a personal experience with the internet (screaming into the void) and not a heavy academic analysis or such. anyways,
AFTER reading the books of these two I conclude that Epictetus's solution is what was missing in my own and Nietzsche's conundrum. I feel like philosophy book likes to repeat itself in different ways.
What does Nietzsche seek? to become a man who lives on his own virtue, which are synthesized by himself and his experience, to not retreat to gods or mentality alike. But why does he suffer? Why do I suffer?
Personally I relate to him a lot. The feeling of inner righteousness and stubbornness against the world. But the world do not yield do they? At the end of the day we are not god are we? So we retreat into our own mind to create in live in some sort of abstract idealization of the world, only to have it routinely shattered.
This is, in this context, what is commonly referred to as an Ni-Fi loop in MBTI, both me and him are INTJ e5 so we are quite in the same boat. Internal perfectionism and such. So how do we go from here. I think the solution lies in the philosophy of the ancient greeks.
Epictetus, a lame old man ISTJ, also uses Fi, but they are far more worldly. What wisdom does he offer? To look what is in your hand. To see what is within your control. If you have virtue, then you act on it, and if circumstances are impossible, then you should not be sad or angry that you cannot act on it, because it makes no difference. Epictetus reminds us to look at the objective world and what could or could not be done. In other words, Te function. (in which Nietzsche ALSO talked about, but it is not as prominent as his internal world/ideals)
Perhaps it is precisely hardship, impossibility that makes people come to the realization as the more self-aware people did. It forces us to look within ourselves, because reality sucks.
So yes, this is kind of more of a blog, a personal experience rather than some academic philosophy thing. I think that's dumb anyways. What use is knowledge without application?
Comments
Displaying 0 of 0 comments ( View all | Add Comment )