Health and great health: Nietzsche on overcoming sickness
type: CreativeWork
description: My dissertation was motivated by a desire to not only gain clarity in Nietzsche’s manifold use of the notion of sickness, but also to better understand the ideal of health that runs through his writings. Given this goal, I begin by identifying the primary kinds of sickness that animate Nietzsche’s critical project. Having identified three types of sickness in his writings, I then turn to offering an account of how Nietzsche attempts to address these forms of sickness. Finally, having completed the task of understanding health—which forms the three central chapters of the dissertation—I conclude by moving to what Nietzsche calls “the great health,” which can be understood as moving beyond mere health. In chapter one I identify three kinds of sickness—the sickness of bad conscience, the sickness of life negation, and the sickness of enervation—which I argue are the central to understanding Nietzsche’s critique of morality. According to this diagnosis, people suffer from several problems, including pervasive feelings of guilt and self-hatred, a tendency to devalue the world and life, and a false sense of human good that results in enervation. Nietzsche’s work can be read as an attempt to diagnose, understand, and address these problems. Chapter two begins my analysis of how Nietzsche works to treat the three forms of sickness identified in chapter one. I proceed by reconstructing an account of how to treat the first form of sickness, that of bad conscience, as well as the pervasive feelings of guilt and self-punishment that follow. Surveying several tentative ideas Nietzsche offers on how this problem might be addressed, I conclude by arguing that the path to a “good conscience” is paved via a kind of philosophical therapy, which aims to reorient how we look at guilt and failure, thereby initiating a psychic transformation. Chapter three turns to an examination of how to address the problem of suffering and meaninglessness, offering an account of how a person might lea…
abstract: My dissertation was motivated by a desire to not only gain clarity in Nietzsche’s manifold use of the notion of sickness, but also to better understand the ideal of health that runs through his writings. Given this goal, I begin by identifying the primary kinds of sickness that animate Nietzsche’s critical project. Having identified three types of sickness in his writings, I then turn to offering an account of how Nietzsche attempts to address these forms of sickness. Finally, having completed the task of understanding health—which forms the three central chapters of the dissertation—I conclude by moving to what Nietzsche calls “the great health,” which can be understood as moving beyond mere health. In chapter one I identify three kinds of sickness—the sickness of bad conscience, the sickness of life negation, and the sickness of enervation—which I argue are the central to understanding Nietzsche’s critique of morality. According to this diagnosis, people suffer from several problems, including pervasive feelings of guilt and self-hatred, a tendency to devalue the world and life, and a false sense of human good that results in enervation. Nietzsche’s work can be read as an attempt to diagnose, understand, and address these problems. Chapter two begins my analysis of how Nietzsche works to treat the three forms of sickness identified in chapter one. I proceed by reconstructing an account of how to treat the first form of sickness, that of bad conscience, as well as the pervasive feelings of guilt and self-punishment that follow. Surveying several tentative ideas Nietzsche offers on how this problem might be addressed, I conclude by arguing that the path to a “good conscience” is paved via a kind of philosophical therapy, which aims to reorient how we look at guilt and failure, thereby initiating a psychic transformation. Chapter three turns to an examination of how to address the problem of suffering and meaninglessness, offering an account of how a person might lea…
author: Schaaf, Eric Ryan
language: en
keywords: Nietzsche, morality
date published: 2018-03-13T15:48:38Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:37Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/99332