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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   31924 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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There is no health as such, and all attempts to define such a thing have failed miserably. Deciding what is health even for your body depends on your goal, your horizon, your powers, your impulses, your mistakes and above all on the ideals and phantasms of your soul. Thus there are innumerable healths of the body; and the more one allows the particular and incomparable to rear its head again, the more one unlearns the dogma of the 'equality of men', the more the concept of a normal health, along with those of a normal diet and normal course of an illness, must be abandoned by our medical men. Only then would it be timely to reflect on the health and illness of the soul and to locate the virtue peculiar to each man in its health - which of course could look in one person like the opposite of health in another. Finally, the great question would still remain whether we can do without illness, even for the development of our virtue; and whether especially our thirst for knowledge and self-knowledge do not need the sick soul as much as the healthy; in brief, whether the will to health alone is not a prejudice, a cowardice and a piece of most refined barbarism and backwardness.

The Gay Science, Book Three, §120

No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.

-Socrates, or so I'm told.

Can these perspectives be reconciled?

There is no health as such, and all attempts to define such a thing have failed miserably.

Is there a good as such? Have not all attempts to define such a thing failed miserably?

...I think this argument relies for its persuasive power on either ignorance of or a peculiar axiomatic commitment to its evident results. I have in my life "enjoyed" variant and deviant forms of "health" at some length. Once upon a time, I did not care much about conventional notions of health, because I quite consciously did not particularly wish to live to advanced age. Now I contemplate that I am rather unlikely to live to hold my grandchildren, and rather likely to leave my wife a widow, despite all promises to the contrary, and I wish I had not been so foolish in my youth. I wish further that others had not been so cruel as to encourage my delusions.

Only then would it be timely to reflect on the health and illness of the soul and to locate the virtue peculiar to each man in its health - which of course could look in one person like the opposite of health in another.

Concrete examples would be really ideal here, and given the language, the higher-contrast, the better.

Can these perspectives be reconciled?

Sure.

Some men evidently accomplish a great deal without being "fit" in the physical sense. And that's perfectly fine for them. That is their "health". But we might still find it regrettable that there are opportunities they never explored, because in the general sense every choice involves forsaking other possibilities and there is always something regrettable in this despite its necessity.

One of the greatest lessons I took from Nietzsche is how to approach things with more nuance. Something can be good, and virtuous, and necessary, and regrettable. Something can be bad, and deleterious, and undesirable, and yet still necessary. You can mix and match.

Is there a good as such? Have not all attempts to define such a thing failed miserably?

There is such a thing as "the good", but it escapes any attempt to define it in terms of basic axioms or repeatable guidelines.

Once upon a time, I did not care much about conventional notions of health, because I quite consciously did not particularly wish to live to advanced age. Now I contemplate that I am rather unlikely to live to hold my grandchildren, and rather likely to leave my wife a widow, all promises to the contrary, and I wish I had not been so foolish in my youth.

You probably just made the wrong decision then. No one ever said that people couldn't just be wrong. There are innumerable healths, which means there are innumerable unhealths as well.

Concrete examples would be really ideal here

Concrete examples illustrating which part, exactly?

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