BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Joyous Science’ by Friedrich Nietzsche

‘Joyous Science’: that implies the Saturnalia of a spirit which has patiently withstood a long, terrible pressure – patiently, strictly, coldly, without submitting, but without hope – and which is now suddenly overcome with hope, the hope of health, the giddiness of recovery.

-   Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘The Joyous Science’

It is quite ignorant to approach Nietzsche as simply a Nihilist or an Existentialist, for these labels lend one to assume him as a pessimistic atheist. Away with these terms now, and let us banish all these associations for they are furthest from the truth! Have we not learnt from our current gender crisis that what we make others call us does not substantialise, and neither does it make real, what we want to be called?

This book then, 'The Joyous Science’, is one of the most uplifting and edifying reads I have met with yet. So full of energy and life lies in Nietzsche’s prose that it gives a fresh vibrance and a fullness to his meanings. What this has shown to us is that originality does not come from the uniqueness of one’s message – time is too old and everyone is postmodern now! – but from the energy and power with which the message is brought.

And so what is it that Nietzsche teaches us? That the past is gone, and all pain is for the good. To dwell on the past and to long for an end to pain is only to induce idleness, weakness, sorrow and inaction. The ‘Joyous’ science then is the embracing of suffering in the desire for wisdom, to acquire a lasting happiness. It is about realising that we are only distracted in the absence of pain. True introspection, true sincerity and so therefore true joy is only then found in hardship. It will remind us how authentic we are towards life!

Finally, that the most essential may not be left unsaid: one comes back out of such abysses, out of such severe infirmity, and out of the infirmity of strong suspicion – reborn, with skin shed; more ticklish, more mischievous, with a finer taste for delight, with a more delicate palate for all good things, with a more blithesome disposition, with a second and more dangerous innocence in delight, at the same time more childish and a hundred times more sophisticated than before.

That is, we love life and see it is as such a marvellous gift only through suffering, through an immersion in the present and not with an insatiable, melancholic nostalgia! And I was careful not to speak of the word hope. For we do not merely hope for the suffering to end, or hope that it ‘will’ end – we are too intelligent for that! Real hope is neither an expectancy or an anxious wistfulness: a true hope does not wait for something to happen, but is actually not concerned about what will happen at all. So in the case of hardship, one does not hope for it end, but is present with it at every moment, learning and becoming more ‘profound’ through it, as Nietzsche tells us.