of primordial guilt, not the feeling of guilt about this or that
injury to others. You might lapse into a bleak feeling of guilt
or deep indebtedness occasioned by the immense suffering of
others, or yourself, or a heavy faith that consumes you, or all
of these together. But, as “the Greeks” showed, human beings are
not doomed by an unavoidable logic to live and act in such
negational ways. It is, rather, one possible response to the
travails of life among others, a tragic possibility to be fought
if and as you can mobilize the energy to do so. The Nietzschean
idea of “keeping aloft” expresses such an idea. One way to start
is by testing whether it is possible for you to live nobly
without insisting that life comes pre-equipped with infinite
debts and impossible obligations. For some can affirm the tragic
character of being without becoming bleak, while others cannot.
Let’s listen to things Nietzsche, in his later work, says about
the tragic character of existence, keeping the theme of
abundance in mind as we proceed:
This type of artists’ pessimism is precisely the opposite
of that religio-moral pessimism that suffers from the
‘corruption’ of man and the riddle of existence--and that
by all means craves a solution, or at least a hope for a
solution. The suffering, desperate, and self-
mistrustful..have at all times had need of entrancing
visions to endure life...The profundity of the tragic
Convention