Friday, March 29, 2013

Character and Laziness

In Schopenhauer as Educator, Nietzsche briefly proposes that the source of conformist behavior is "laziness", without further examination of the latter.  Now, Laziness is lack of Effort, and, as has been previously analyzed here, Effort, is spontaneous, nascent motility that exceeds any of its antecedents.  Thus, for example, Effort initiates novelty with respect to preceding repetitious behavior, and, hence, to social conformism, and to personal habit, alike.  But Character is Habit.  So, at this stage of his career, Nietzsche does not seem to recognize that presumed 'innate fixed' individual Character can be, as much as Conformism on his diagnosis is, an instance of Laziness.  In particular, he misses that Schopenhauer, probably unwittingly, implicitly agrees with that diagnosis, when arguing that the one unequivocal fixed, intelligible Character of his system, i. e. the Will-to-Live, can, with effort, be undone.

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