Great Health

The great health is Friedrich Nietzsche’s term for a health that one “does not merely have, but also constantly acquires and must acquire, because one gives it up again and again, must give it up” (Nietzsche, 1887, The Gay Science, § 382). Nietzsche (1844–1900) develops the concept in the fifth book of The Gay Science, which appeared in 1887 in the expanded edition, and in Ecce Homo he calls the great health the “physiological precondition” of the Zarathustra type (Nietzsche, 1888, Ecce Homo, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” 2). Gwendolin Kirchhoff discussed the concept with her father, the philosopher Jochen Kirchhoff, at SYMPOSIUM; the conversation “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit” (Nietzsche and the Great Health) has been on her channel since 2024. The conversation is in German.

#What does Nietzsche mean by the great health?

The great health, in Nietzsche, is a health that one does not merely possess but must acquire anew again and again. In § 382 of The Gay Science a “we” speaks that calls itself “premature births of an as yet unproven future”: for a new goal, it says, it also needs a new means, “namely a new health, stronger, more cunning, tougher, bolder, merrier than any health so far” (ibid.). Whoever wants to experience for themselves the whole range of values and desiderata so far needs, according to Nietzsche, above all the great health (cf. ibid.). This “we” calls itself “Argonauts of the ideal”, often enough shipwrecked and damaged, but “dangerously healthy, healthy again and again” (ibid.).

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche writes that he knows no better and no more personal way to explain this concept than he already did in the fifth book of The Gay Science, and he quotes the section there once more (cf. Nietzsche, 1888, Ecce Homo, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” 2). He already uses the phrase in the preface to Human, All Too Human, which is signed “Nice, in the spring of 1886”: there, a surplus of plastic, healing, reproducing and restoring powers is called the sign of the great health (cf. Nietzsche, 1878, Human, All Too Human, Preface 4). In On the Genealogy of Morality he names a final, most self-assured wantonness of knowledge that belongs to the great health (cf. Nietzsche, 1887, On the Genealogy of Morality, II 24).

Already in the first edition of The Gay Science in 1882 he writes: “For there is no such thing as health in itself” (Nietzsche, 1882, The Gay Science, § 120). What health means even for the body depends, according to Nietzsche, on your goal, your horizon, your powers, drives and errors, and above all on the ideals and phantasms of your soul; “Thus there are countless healths of the body” (ibid.). The section bears the title “Health of the soul” (ibid.); only once the concept of a normal health is lost, Nietzsche writes, would it be time to reflect on the health and sickness of the soul (cf. ibid.).

#What role does illness play in the great health?

For Nietzsche, illness can be a means: the 1886 preface to Human, All Too Human describes a health that will not do without illness itself as a means and fishhook of knowledge (cf. Nietzsche, 1878, Human, All Too Human, Preface 4). In Ecce Homo he writes that for someone typically healthy, “being ill can even be an energetic stimulant to life, to more life” (Nietzsche, 1888, Ecce Homo, “Why I Am So Wise” 2). Of himself he says there: “Taken all in all, I was healthy; as a corner, as a speciality, I was décadent.” (ibid.). Of his long period of sickness he writes in the same section: “I discovered life anew, as it were” (ibid.); he made his will to health, to life, into his philosophy (cf. ibid.).

The preface to the second edition of The Gay Science, signed in autumn 1886, asks: “And as for sickness: would we not almost be tempted to ask whether we could do without it at all?” (Nietzsche, 1887, The Gay Science, Preface 3). Immediately afterwards it says: “Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit” (ibid.). The cultural historian Egon Friedell draws on this preface when he discusses the value of illness (cf. Friedell, 1927, vol. 1, p. 67). The entry Egon Friedell presents his excursus; a related entry is Antifragility.

At the start of the conversation Gwendolin Kirchhoff puts the sentence from Ecce Homo to her father as a question: what does Nietzsche mean when he says he made his philosophy out of the will to life, to health (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2024, “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit”, 00:28)? In his answer Jochen Kirchhoff recalls that Nietzsche was a gravely ill man who suffered headaches for days on end, had to vomit, and was always searching for a place where he could live (cf. ibid., 00:41–01:35). Health in Nietzsche, Jochen Kirchhoff says, means “not only physical health, bodily health, but also mental health” (ibid., 01:07).

#How does Jochen Kirchhoff read the great health?

Jochen Kirchhoff reads the great health as the yes that Nietzsche set against his no to his own time. Everything that was going on back then, Jochen Kirchhoff says, was for Nietzsche open or hidden nihilism, and against it Nietzsche asked where his yes was; that yes, he says, is the yes of health (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2024, “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit”, 02:18–03:02). As Jochen Kirchhoff presents it, Nietzsche considered Western culture finished and held that all values had to be revalued; then he had this impulse: “towards the great health, towards the great yes-saying”, away from the no-saying that, as Nietzsche believed, Christianity preaches (ibid., 15:43; cf. 15:27–15:52). For Jochen Kirchhoff this yes includes total affirmation: whoever affirms a moment absolutely has affirmed everything that led to it, all the suffering, errors and mistakes (cf. ibid., 18:02); that, he says, is also health, to affirm everything, suffering included (cf. ibid., 18:55).

Mere vitality, according to Jochen Kirchhoff, tells us little about a person; perfect health, he says, can also lead to stupidity and dullness (cf. ibid., 10:56–11:16). The mentally healthy person, he says, is not always also the physically healthy one: “The healthy can also be ill” (ibid., 29:07). Jochen Kirchhoff adds: “That does not mean that I affirm illness” (ibid., 29:43); a basic health, he says, has to be there (cf. ibid., 30:20). The strongest power Nietzsche attributed to himself, according to Jochen Kirchhoff, is self-overcoming (cf. ibid., 26:45). There are also situations, Jochen Kirchhoff says, in which one has to overcome oneself and only then comes to oneself; that is not hostile to life (cf. ibid., 28:02).

#How is the great health related to nihilism?

The great health is related to nihilism through an adversary of the will to live that Gwendolin Kirchhoff names in the conversation. The will to be alive, not only to survive but also to flourish, is not considered on its own in Nietzsche, she says; there is “yet another, opposing antagonist” (Kirchhoff, G., 2024, “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit”, 10:04). Nietzsche, according to Gwendolin Kirchhoff, was firmly convinced that certain thoughts suppress bodily vitality, and he felt this in himself too; he believed he could gain his health by shaking off these thoughts (cf. ibid., 10:15–10:30). Jochen Kirchhoff says in the same conversation that Nietzsche saw the will to power antagonistically: there are two antagonistic wills, the inexhaustible, procreating will to life and the will to nothingness (cf. ibid., 11:38–12:14).

What Nietzsche sees in the nihilistic will, according to Gwendolin Kirchhoff, is a depressive impulse that embitters or suppresses the impulses of life (cf. ibid., 19:13). Later in the conversation she sums up: the will directed against life either somehow wants to dominate life on its own terms or in some form produces depression or suppressed life impulses (cf. ibid., 24:35–24:46). Against it, Gwendolin Kirchhoff goes on, Nietzsche set the great affirmation and amor fati, in the extreme image of eternal recurrence, and held that if one affirms everything, not a single depressive or life-denying spot is present in a person (cf. ibid., 24:46–25:04). How Nietzsche frames nihilism as a diagnosis of his time is traced in the entry Nihilism. The concept of ressentiment in the Genealogy of Morality is presented in the entry Ressentiment. How Nietzsche frames the love of fate is traced in the entry Amor Fati; Zarathustra’s teaching of the overman is traced in the entry Übermensch.

#What does the great health mean for your own life?

For one’s own life, Jochen Kirchhoff turns the question of affirmation into questions to oneself: “What do I affirm? And how far does my affirmation go?” (Kirchhoff, G., 2024, “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit”, 25:22). Out of sheer noes a yes must always take shape, he says; one must never get stuck in the no (cf. ibid., 26:01).

For philosophical conversation, this entry suggests taking up the great health as a question rather than a finding: not whether you are healthy, but where you affirm, where you keep saying no, and whether your no flows into a yes anywhere. Part of this is the question whether you are looking for a health you have once and for all, or for one you have to keep acquiring. Such a conversation decides nothing about physical illness. It asks about one’s relation to what befalls one.

The entry Nietzsche presents Nietzsche as a diagnostician of cultural decline; a related entry is Philosophy of Life.

#Sources

• Nietzsche, F. (1887). Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (“la gaya scienza”). New edition with Book Five; first edition 1882. Quoted from zeno.org, http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Nietzsche,+Friedrich/Die+fr%C3%B6hliche+Wissenschaft (Preface 3; § 120; § 382). English translations our own.
• Nietzsche, F. (1888). Ecce homo. Wie man wird, was man ist. First published Leipzig: Insel 1908. Quoted from Projekt Gutenberg-DE (“Why I Am So Wise” 2; “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” 2).
• Nietzsche, F. (1878). Menschliches, Allzumenschliches. Ein Buch für freie Geister. Preface (Nice, spring 1886), section 4. Quoted from Project Gutenberg.
• Nietzsche, F. (1887). Zur Genealogie der Moral. Second essay, § 24. Quoted from zeno.org.
• Friedell, E. (1927). Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit. Vol. 1. Munich: C. H. Beck. Quoted from the 28th–32nd printing, Munich: C. H. Beck 1954 (p. 67).
• Kirchhoff, G. (2024). “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit – Ein Gespräch mit Jochen Kirchhoff – SYMPOSIUM” [Video, German]. YouTube, 19 October 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS8vCl4BkvI (conversation partner: Jochen Kirchhoff).