PERENNIAL 73
How to Say Yes to Life — According to Nietzsche
Learning to Live
What does it mean to learn how to live? Where does one even begin? The existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once said, “Everything in the world has been figured out, except how to live.” My interview with Nate Anderson (author of In Emergency, Break Glass) discussed how to live — according to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
In the classic Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche wrote,
I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all… I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.
Similarly, the psychologist Viktor Frankl explained in his book Yes to Life (published after his death) that to say yes to life is meaningful and possible under all circumstances. Anderson writes, For…
