Ecce Homo
Edvard Munch Nietzsche
I’ve been wanting to know about health and illness for days now. I meant to say “write” but my fingers typed “know”, and they didn’t lie. I haven’t been feeling well enough to write.
I could write about my history of illness, but it wouldn’t be fun for you or me. Let’s not forget that this blogging business—or the writing and reading of books generally, when they are not prescribed texts in educational institutions—depends on fun. Any expectation to be edified isn’t enough. You and I want to enjoy ourselves. On the other hand, I’m not an author of pulp non-fiction. I want to change your life, for it’s a way to change the world, if only a little. That’s how serious I am. Seriously.
Are we to talk of good health, or illness? Perhaps both: but let us not fall into the easy assumption that they are mutually exclusive opposites. One might harbour both at once, like Nietzsche, sufferer of the progressive ravages of syphilis:
I took myself in hand, I myself made myself healthy again: the precondition for this—every physiologist will admit it—is that one is fundamentally healthy. A being who is typically morbid cannot become healthy, still less can he make himself healthy; conversely for one who is typically healthy being sick can even be an energetic stimulant to life, to more life. Thus in fact does that long period of sickness seem to me now; I discovered life as it were anew, myself included, I tasted all good and even petty things in a way that others could not easily taste them—I made out of my will to health, to life, my philosophy . . . For pay heed to this: it was in the years of my lowest vitality that I ceased to be a pessimist: the instinct for self-recovery forbade to me a philosophy of indigence and discouragement . . . and in what does one really recognize that someone has turned out well! In that a human being who has turned out well does our senses good: that he is carved out of wood at once hard, delicate and sweet-smelling. He has a taste only for what is beneficial to him; his pleasure, his joy ceases where the measure of what is beneficial is overstepped. He divines cures for injuries, he employs ill chances to his own advantage; what does not kill him makes him stronger.
(Unedited extract from Ecce Homo, translated by R. J. Hollingdale, Penguin Classics. The “. . .” are not ellipses but author’s punctuation.)
Let us not be deluded about Nietzsche’s health. In the year he wrote the above words, “He experiences a delusive improvement in his health, and in the last quarter of the year is the victim of a morbid euphoria which is the immediate prelude to complete collapse.” (Op. cit: chronology of Nietzsche’s life.) Still, it’s an example of morbidity (in the medical sense) and positive health co-existing. And I think we all know—only too well—of long periods in our life in which we experience neither morbidity nor good health. So let us suppose they are not necessarily opposites.
Positive health is a state subjectively recognized. It’s when I feel able to meet life’s challenges with vigour, strength and fearlessness; clear in my head, energetic in my limbs and organs. I don’t need to go for medical tests to prove it. If I did, I might be told I have high cholesterol and blood pressure, in words whose immediate effect might be the opposite of therapeutic.
The fact that medical tests can show signs of illness when we don’t know anything is amiss, may cause us to think that doctors are the ones to tell us if we are fit or not. And if their tests don’t show anything wrong then they pronounce us fit, or perhaps suffering from depression, which they think of as “psychological”; so they suggest counselling. That is in UK, anyhow. Perhaps in other countries, where doctors are funded differently, they keep running more sophisticated tests till they find something significant, and then they prescribe a barrage of drugs and supplements, till the wheels of commerce have fully revolved and all parties are satisfied. But the patient is still not happy. “Oh, why didn’t you mention it? Here are some happy pills.”
I think I shall write—as a complete amateur, a mere untrained owner of a human body—about that in-between state where one lacks both glowing health and detectable morbidity: the state in which one seeks a witch-doctor, or as we say in the West, “an alternative practitioner”.
7 thoughts on “Ecce Homo”
sorry to hear you've not been feeling well, and hope that your efforts to find healing will be quickly answered in the affirmative.
I think this is very balanced and that frankly the culture is out of balance in not wanting to look at illness or death.
Thanks Hayden, it was only a 'flu thing and I made no efforts to find healing. just decided to dig it, take it easy, obey my body. I am not sure that I believe in finding healing any more. But this would be to pre-empt the continuing discussion.
Yes, Paul, indeed the culture is out of balance! And you have identified two important symptoms. When the culture is out of balance, it's hard to be well . . .
More soon.
“…what does not kill him makes him stronger.”
Yes, it makes one psychologically or spiritually stronger. Enduring illness gives one endurance and develops character. One becomes long-suffering or patient to the point of being stoic, detached, and resigned. At least if one doesn't try to alleviate it by all means like painkillers, tobacco, alcohol, drugs and various escape techniques like prayer, faith-healing, voodoo, concentration and meditation. Enduring suffering is true meditation and leads to liberation. Scientifically speaking, the mind and body or body-mind produces the natural drugs to heal and alleviate pain. And repair the body thru rest and sleep.
But of course, there is no cure for syphilis at an advanced stage. And no cure for aging and death. At least in our present age.
I have never been the “picture of health” as they say. I have always felt an aversion to exercise for the sake of health alone.
I enjoy many forms of physical activity, but more for the experience, than for any health benefits derived from the act.
I guess that puts me at risk in some way, but overall I have had little to complain about. I look and feel younger than most of my friends my age, I don't get sick often.
I have noticed however, a strange correlation between my health, creative inspiration, motivation, and ultimately my creative outbursts.
I can go for a very long time without an idea, or without discovering that stimulus that inspires me to create. Once I get the bug, I am supremely motivated to get on with the work.
For some strange reason, just when I have prepared to begin, I often get sick. I have no idea why this happens. It happens often enough to be beyond coincidence.
I generally work through the sickness as I cannot ignore the inspiration and motivation. It is stronger than the message my body is sending me to rest.
Of course this is not without a price. The illnesses last longer, are probably more severe than they would be otherwise.
It is almost always in the form of a cold or flu.
My sinus passages were damaged when I was a senior in high school. I was sitting next to a fire when a burning ember flew into my mouth and lodged between my tongue and the place where one of my nostrils connects to the back of my mouth.
It burned the flesh there, and it resulted in permanent damage to my nasal cavity. I think this exacerbates my cold symptoms.
In any case, colds seem to hit me harder than they do for most people.
I have felt that in many ways this has inhibited me from deriving benefits from my creative exploits. But I have worked hard to avoid using it as an excuse. Perhaps there is some sort of deep seated psychological issue here. But I cannot be sure.
My experience here in the US is that if you have money, the kind of scenario you describe with passing along your case to various specialists until everyone is satisfied is a likely outcome.
However, for folks like me, who have basic HMO coverage, you are more likely to be provided only minimal attention. Other than prescription drugs, which supports the pharmaceutical co's., we are seldom passed along to any specialists unless we insist. This would cost the insurance companies, who are not interested in providing care as it would take away from their profits.
Normally we get a 10 or 15 minute consultation with a doctor and a prescription and that is the end of it.
It was actually my general practitioner that suggested I might have psychological symptoms. I went to him to complain about what was ailing me and he sent me off immediately to someone who specializes in head cases.
I think this Nietzche bit might be one of the first times I've ever heard of anyone taking an optimistic stance on sickness.
Hi, Vincent. Hope you're recovering nicely.
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We in the USA have insurance plans, and we have hype for those with no money, hype will get you little unless there is only a little wrong, if there is a lot wrong with you, hype gets you nothing, people die from cancer because they have no money, this is a constant fact in the USA. Compassionate Conservatism and Vampire Capitalism holding hands and kissing.
I agree much with Siegfried, figure out how to tune in to the body, it has a soul and it can talk to you, likewise the emotions, water body with a voice, and of course the others. The voices tho might not be verbal, might be intuitive or even come out of nowhere in your face (from outside, that power is there, but you know that…the universe?).
And something not taught, don't beg, give orders, seriously, lie down and talk to yourself, and INSIST on cooperative medicine from within, tell them what you can, and tell them to find out the rest, and get it done. Call it meditation, call it prayer, but don't beg and don't even be too nice, ask then order, it must be done. Humans Rule.
No matter your course Vincent, I wish you the best and soon!
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