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What Do You Want?
Instead of making resolutions, this new year’s tell yourself the truth
This article is adapted from the forthcoming second edition of my book The Miracle Month.
On the eve of the new year, I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche: “Formula for our happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.”
“Formula for our happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.”
This is from Walter Kaufmann’s translation of Nietzsche’s The Antichrist, written in 1888 but considered sufficiently controversial so that its initial publication was delayed until 1895. It was not bluster when Nietzsche wrote in his preface, “Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me.”
Many of us are educated to think of “serious” philosophy as scholastic, logical, macro, and abstract. I dissent from that. Philosophy should govern next Tuesday.
Philosophy should govern next Tuesday.
In an 1898 lecture, William James challenged American philosophers to produce a philosophy of “cash-value, in terms of particular experience,” with his emphasis in the original. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote essays on the themes of “Wealth” and “Power,” speaking of such things not…
