Nilsi

Inquire into Your Deepest Motivations (with Nietzsche)

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Following are some questions that Nietzsche posed to inquire into ones deepest motivations and values.

What I find so valuable in this set of questions is, that they get to the heart of many of the seldom questioned assumptions of contemporary psychology and psychiatry, such as:  good/healthy = being happy, being content, living a balanced life, being well adapted to society, etc.

These questions also nicely complement some of Leos inquiries into life purpose/values/happiness etc. which presuppose many of the answers that shall be questioned here:

  1. Do you desire to be more multifaceted or simpler in nature?
  2. Do you aspire to greater happiness or greater indifference to joy and sorrow?
  3. Do you wish to be more self-satisfied or more ambitious and relentless?
  4. Do you prefer to be gentler, more agreeable, and humane, or more „inhumane“?
  5. Do you aim to be more considerate or more ruthless?
  6. Do you seek to achieve a specific goal or avoid all goals (- as a philosopher might, perceiving in every goal a limitation, a corner, a prison, or folly)?
  7. Do you want to be more respected, or feared? Or perhaps even despised!
  8. Do you choose to be a tyrant, a seducer, a shepherd, or a sheep?

“Did you ever say Yes to a single joy? O my friends, then you said Yes to all woe as well. All things are chained and entwined together, all things are in love; if ever you wanted one moment twice, if ever you said: ‘You please me, happiness! Abide, moment!’ then you wanted everything to return!” - Friedrich Nietzsche
 

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