This analogy describes better than any definition the meaning of self-affirmation in the philosophy of life: The Self has itself, but at the same time it tries to reach itself. Here Spinoza’s conatus becomes dynamic, as, generally speaking, one could say that Nietzsche is a revival of Spinoza in dynamic terms: “Life” in Nietzsche replaces “substance” in Spinoza. And this is true not only of Nietzsche but of most of the philosophers of life. The truth of virtue is that the Self is in it “and not an outward thing.” “That your very Self be in your action, as the mother is in the child: let that be your formula of virtue!” (II, 27.) Insofar as courage is the affirmation of one’s self it is virtue altogether. The self whose self-affirmation is virtue and courage is the self which surpasses itself: “And this secret spake Life herself unto me. ‘Behold,’ said she, ‘I am that which must ever surpass itself ” (II, 34).
By italicizing the last words Nietzsche indicates that he wants to give a definition of the essential nature of life. “. . . There doth Life sacrifice itself—for power!” he continues, and shows in these words that for him self-affirmation includes self-negation, not for the sake of negation but for the sake of the greatest possible affirmation, for what he calls “power.” Life creates and life loves what it has created— but soon it must turn against it: “so willeth my [Life’s] will.” Therefore it is wrong to speak of “will to existence” or even of “will to life”; one must speak of “will to power,” i.e. to more life. Life, willing to surpass itself, is the good life, and the good life is the courageous life. It is the life of the “powerful soul” and the “triumphant body” whose self-enjoyment is virtue. Such a soul banishes “everything cowardly; it says: bad—that is cowardly” (III, 54). But in order to reach such a nobility it is necessary to obey and to command and to obey while commanding. This obedience which is included in commanding is the opposite of sub-missiveness. The latter is the cowardice which does not dare to risk itself. The submissive self is the opposite of the self-affirming self, even if it is submissive to a God. It wants to escape the pain of hurting and being hurt. The obedient self, on the contrary, is the self which commands itself and “risketh itself thereby” (II, 34). In commanding itself it becomes its own judge and its own vietim. It commands itself according to the law of life, the law of self-transcendence. The will which commands itself is the creative will. It makes a whole out of fragments and riddles of life. It does not look back, it stands beyond a bad conscience, it rejects the “spirit of revenge” which is the innermost nature of self-accusation and of the consciousness of guilt, it transcends reconciliation, for it is the will to power (II, 42). In doing all this the courageous self is united with life itself and its secret (II, 34).
We may conclude our discussion of Nietzsche’s ontology of courage with the following quotation: “Have ye courage, O my brethren? . . . Not the courage before witnesses, but anchorite and eagle courage, which not even a God any longer beholdeth? . . . He hath heart who knoweth fear but vanquisheth it; who seeth the abyss, but with pride. He who seeth the abyss but with eagle’s eyes,—he who with eagle’s talons graspeth the abyss: he hath courage” (IV, 73, sec. 4). These words reveal the other side of Nietzsche, that in him which makes him an Existentialist, the courage to look into the abyss of nonbeing in the complete loneliness of him who accepts the message that “God is dead.” About this side we shall have more to say in the following chapters.
