The mind-body problem asks a question that has fascinated philosophers for centuries: is the mind separate from the body, or purely physical?

Dualism holds that the mind is immaterial, while materialism asserts that mind and body share the same substance. These distinctions form the foundation of enduring debates in the philosophy of mind.

Substance Dualism: Descartes’ Mind-Body Divide

While arguments in favor of dualism have been made since at least the time of the Ancient Greek philosophers, modern dualism is widely considered to have emerged with René Descartes, who asserted that the mind is composed of something different from the physical matter of the body. In this view, the mind is made of mental substance while the body is made of physical substance.

This form of dualism is commonly referred to as substance or Cartesian dualism. However, it’s important to note that there are multiple perspectives on substance dualism, making Cartesian dualism the most accurate term when referring to Descartes’ ideas in particular.

One commonly referenced position in substance dualism is interactionism, which holds that the mind and body causally influence one another (Chalmers, 2002). For example, a racing heartbeat could lead to a mental state of anxiety, and vice versa. The biggest issue for interactionism is reconciling how a non-material mind can act upon a material body and how a material body could have any effect upon a non-material mind.

One method to deal with the seeming impossibility of a non-material mind causally acting upon a material body is to attribute its interplay to God. This is the view that Descartes ultimately espouses, making Descartes’ dualism an interactionist substance form. However, there’s also another form of dualism.

Property Dualism: How Mental States Emerge from the Brain

Epiphenomenalism holds that while the body can influence the mind, the mind cannot influence the body. This theory preserves our understanding of the laws of physics, such that some non-material objects cannot act upon a material one (Chalmers, 2002). This means that, according to epiphenomenalism, a racing heartbeat could induce a mental state of anxiety, but a mental state of anxiety cannot cause a heart to race.

This is a form of property dualism that proposes that, while the mind and body have different properties, there is only one substance: the physical. From these physical substances emerge mental phenomena, hence the name epiphenomenalism.

This position asserts that the mind and its accompanying mental activity are merely a side effect of the brain. The most difficult thing to reconcile in this form of property dualism is how mental states can have no effect on our bodies and, hence, on our behavior. It certainly seems that if you think, “I want to walk to the next room,” and you do so, your mental state of wanting to go to another room causes your subsequent action of walking to it.

Materialism & Behaviorism: Explaining the Mind Through Action

As noted above, epiphenomenalism poses problems for explaining behavior. One solution to this is materialist behaviorism. In materialism, no separate substance makes up the mind; there is only physical material in line with our current understanding of the universe.

Behaviorism (not to be confused with the behaviorism commonly referenced in psychology), as put forth by the philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1949), argues against dualism and ultimately concludes that dualists made a category mistake, ascribing some non-physical process to mental states.

To further elaborate on this supposed mistake, consider that while we can observe another person’s appearance, hear their voice, etc., we can never observe their thoughts. From that statement comes the conclusion that mental states are an internal process totally separate from our observable, physical world. But is this truly the case, or have mental states been confused with (as of right now) some unknown physical process?

Ultimately, Ryle’s behaviorism asserts that a mental state is associated with some behavior. For example, pain is the mental state associated with the behavior of wincing (Ryle, 1949).

An easy contradiction to this position is simply that people respond to the same thing differently. Person A might react to pain by wincing, while Person B remains stoic and shows no outward signs of distress. Someone might cry in response to sadness, while another cannot shed a tear. That said, materialism offers much more than just behaviorism.

Identity Theory: Are Mental States the Same as Brain States?

The identity theory was developed in the late 1950s, primarily by U.T. Place and J.J.C. Smart. In this theory, the mind and brain are the same, meaning mental states are identical to brain states.

The place used the example of seeing a green afterimage. This afterimage does not exist in the external world or literally in the brain. This leads to the phenomenological fallacy, which holds that because colors cannot be tied to brain processes, they are not a viable way to describe the mental state associated with the experience of color.

However, this amounts to equating descriptions of experiences with the phenomena themselves. How we commonly use language to talk about subjective experiences does not mean it accurately describes the process that produced said experience. In other words, just because we commonly talk about how we perceive things using similar terminology does not mean that those terms actually describe how our brains accomplish such perception.

Consider that the source of mental states can be discovered via scientific study. This aligns with modern neuroscience, which seeks to bridge mental states to neural activity via fMRI. For example, it is now known that the amygdala is the brain’s “fear center.” So, the identity theory appears to be a good contender for modern philosophy, but it is not without criticism.

The main objection to the identity theory is multiple realizability, which posits that mental states do not necessarily have a brain to exist. This ties in with the current debates about artificial intelligence and consciousness: Can a machine have a mind? If computers can create consciousness, then minds cannot be identical to brains, as they can be created using alternate methods.

Functionalism: Understanding the Mind as a System of Functions

In the 1960s, philosophers Hilary Putnam, David Armstrong, and David Lewis each developed distinct forms of functionalism, the view that mental states are functional states within a system of cognition. Putnam argued for machine functionalism, suggesting that mental states are functions of a computational machine, thereby allowing them to be multiply realizable (Chalmers, 2002).

In theory, something other than a brain could possess mental states. This brings to mind current debates about artificial intelligence and consciousness. However, functionalism is not constrained solely to the computational kind.

Armstrong (1981) advocated for analytic functionalism, which aligns more with the above-mentioned identity theory. He suggested that if we can discover a brain state that can be shown to cause pain, then that brain state is, in fact, pain. In this view, mental states are brain states.

Lewis (1972) takes Armstrong’s approach further, suggesting that our common statements about mental states, if compiled, explain what it is to be in a given mental state. For example, there are ways humans generally talk about the experience of pain, and if all these statements were combined, the result would be the actual definition of the mental state of pain itself.

A major criticism of functionalism is that it cannot explain the qualitative experience of having a mental state. These qualitative experiences are often referred to as qualia in philosophy. Perhaps one of the most famous examples comes from Thomas Nagel’s (1974) essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” which points out that even if we describe all the physiology behind a bat’s conscious experience, we’d still have no knowledge of what it is actually like to be one!

What Does the Mind-Body Debate Teach Us About Consciousness?

There are several ideas about what the mind is, how it works, and how it is even possible to have a mind in the first place. This article provides just a sample of the major theories in the philosophy of mind. As seen in the preceding content, the dualism-versus-materialism debate is much more complicated than simply comparing “the mind/soul is a separate entity from the body” and “all things, including the mind, are physical.” Many philosophers have put forth convincing and logical arguments, yet no one knows what the mind is today.

While the philosophy of mind’s biggest question is the hard problem of consciousness, this subspecialty explores many avenues.

References

Armstrong, D. M. (1981). The nature of mind. University of Queensland Press.

Chalmers, D. J. (2002). Philosophy of mind: Classical and contemporary readings. Oxford University Press, Inc.

Lewis, D. (1972). Psychophysical and theoretical identifications. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, p. 50. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048407212341301

Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review, p. 83. 

Place, U. T. (1956). Is consciousness a brain process? British Journal of Psychology, 47. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1956.tb00560.x

Ryle, G. (1949). The concept of mind. University of Chicago Press.

Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations is no ordinary philosophical treatise. Written by the 2nd-century AD Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, the “Meditations” was not an organized text edited for publication, but a collection of the emperor’s philosophical thoughts and reflections as he sought clarity, resilience, and patience while ruling Rome’s mighty empire. They were only discovered and published centuries after his death. A follower of Stoic philosophy, his words have been embraced as practical lessons on how to achieve goals, overcome obstacles, and live a good life. Let’s look at five of the emperor’s most important quotes from the Meditations and the wisdom they contain.

1. “The Obstacle is the Way”

“Our actions may be impeded… but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” (Meditations 5.20)

Marcus Aurelius frames obstacles as opportunities, suggesting that you should not get discouraged when you encounter a bump in the road. He suggests that obstacles can sometimes give us clarity on a better way to move forward, as they force us to keep digging. Obstacles can lead people to find inner strength and realize that they are capable of things they previously thought impossible. They also develop our character in the face of setbacks, helping people to become better human beings.

The author suggests that it is best to work with obstacles rather than resist them and to maintain a positive attitude when faced with difficulties. Instead of seeing obstacles as scary, they should be embraced as an opportunity to learn and grow. This is how you find the right path. If everything was easy, what’s the point of pursuing it anyway? It is the inner joy found while overcoming obstacles that contributes to a truly purposeful life.

2. “The Stars Can Help”

“To watch the course of the stars as if you revolved with them. To keep constantly in mind how the elements alter into one another. Thoughts like this wash off the mud of life below.” (Meditations 7.47)

Here, Marcus Aurelius suggests that when you are feeling overwhelmed, it is a good idea to put your problems in perspective. He encourages individuals to imagine themselves running with the stars while appreciating the universe with astonishment, to realize that their problems are not as significant as they imagine. This exercise can help to reduce negative thoughts and encourage a sense of humility.

The Stoic emperor also shares the reminder that change is the natural condition of the universe. He explains that nothing lasts forever; everything will transform. Remembering how seasons change, for example, or how the storm will sooner or later be replaced by the bright sun with its warm rays, is comforting. Anyone can benefit from keeping in mind that the adversity they are facing will end; change is inevitable.

3. “Do Less, But Better”

“If you seek tranquility, do less. Or (more accurately) do what’s essential—what the logos of a social being requires, and in the requisite way. 

Which brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better. Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’

But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.” (Meditations 4.24)

Here, Marcus Aurelius suggests that we can gain more tranquility in life by doing less, by not doing the things that are not essential. This minimalism not only reduces stress, but gives us the capacity to do the things that matter better, increasing satisfaction.

This feels like a lesson for the modern world, a time when many people subscribe to the cult of productivity. We are often made to feel guilty if we are not doing something productive all the time. This need to be busy means that we often fill our lives with things that are unnecessary. Marcus Aurelius suggests that this leads us to waste time on things that don’t matter, and reduce our ability to engage with the things that do.

His advice is to be careful how we spend our time, eliminating things that are unnecessary and prioritizing the things that truly matter to us. In this way, we are valuing our time and energy in the most beneficial way. But he suggests that this approach should not only extend to what we do, but also how we think. Don’t waste time on judging others when you could be focused on your own challenges.

4. “Be Good”

“To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human. You can do it too, if you simply recognize that they’re human too, that they act out of ignorance, against their will, and that you’ll both be dead before long. And, above all, that they haven’t really hurt you. They haven’t diminished your ability to choose.” (Meditations 7.22)

This passage emphasizes the importance of forgiveness and understanding. Marcus Aurelius suggests that we try to feel sympathy for people who have wronged others and understand what is behind their actions. For example, if you encounter someone who is incredibly rude, it may be that you are meeting them on the worst day of their life, and stress is causing their behavior. Therefore, try to be empathetic before passing judgment.

Marcus Aurelius also talks about death in this passage. He is saying that both these people will die soon, so what’s the point of getting angry or upset? Some people might see this as pessimistic, but Marcus Aurelius is highlighting that whatever you are upset about won’t matter for very long.

The Stoic emperor also suggests that while another person’s actions might feel hurtful, their actions don’t control how we choose to respond. The freedom and responsibility of our response lies with us. This is one of the most powerful teachings of the Stoics: we choose our thoughts and actions, and therefore create the world in which we live.

5. “All is For the Best”

“He does only what is his to do and considers constantly what the world has in store for him—doing his best and trusting that all is for the best. For we carry our fate with us—and it carries us.” (Meditations 3.4)

Here, Marcus Aurelius talks about doing the tasks required of a person while staying curious and maintaining a positive attitude toward life. The individual is encouraged to care only about what will bring him to the achievement of his goals, one step at a time. He should not care about what others are doing unless people ask for his help.

While the emperor suggests focused action, he also promotes curiosity. When you stay curious and constantly strive to discover the world, you will start to notice the opportunities.

He also suggests embracing a positive attitude and expecting good things to happen. Even when faced with adversity, remember that something good will come out of it in the end. He suggests that a wise person understands that everything happens for a reason.

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius contain much more wisdom from Stoic philosophy. The Stoics believed in the importance of daily reflection and writing down philosophical teachings and principles to keep them in mind and live by them. This seems to have been Marcus Aurelius’ aim in writing his Meditations.

We often suppose that our thoughts and feelings are utterly private and concealed from the view of others. But for medieval philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, the so-called Angelic Doctor of the 13th century, the private fortress of one’s mind is without a ceiling and completely transparent to its Creator, who knows every being by knowing His own essence. Understanding the reasons behind this claim is critical to grasping the Scholastic universe and the connection between God and the human mind.

To Whom Is the Mind Hidden? Aquinas and the Interior Life

Descartes endeavored to prove the existence of other minds and the world by starting with what was inside his own mind, making the contents of the thinking subject the sole ground and proof of truth. Mill’s harm principle says nobody has the societal authority to interfere with one’s liberty so long as one is not bringing about immediate harm to others.

Both epistemic and political views yielded the modern notion of what might be termed “subjective individualism,” wherein knowledge becomes a function of the self, and the “political animal” of Aristotle becomes an isolated individual bereft of social existence. Such views, along with the naturally self-reflective or introspective nature of consciousness, wherein we can reflect upon ourselves and thoughts without limit, easily give rise to an illusion of mental privacy.

Bible Hub’s Topical Encyclopedia defines “divine surveillance” as the idea that “God is omnipresent and omniscient, continuously observing and knowing all things in the universe, including the actions, thoughts, and intentions of human beings” (Bible Hub, 2026). Aquinas agrees that divine surveillance is an essential and necessary feature of reality, being a logical consequence of God’s omniscience.

However, the “grossness of the body,” and the fact that we are prone to hiding our thoughts, make our minds unknown to others in this life (Aquinas, 2017, ST I, q. 57, a. 4). This comes with two qualifications.

First, such concealment is only temporary; when we have glorified, resurrected bodies, the “brightness of the body will show forth the quality of the soul” such that the soul’s interior qualities will be present to others, whereby we will come to know their minds.

Second, even now, we are not as mentally private as we might imagine, as our countenance, speech, and dispositions often unintentionally reveal our true feelings or inner thoughts. Aquinas adds that even a physician can detect emotions by analyzing a pulse, and that humans (along with the angels and demons with greater skill) can infer our mental states by observing our actions (Aquinas, 2017, ST I, q. 57, a. 4).

Surely, the Human Mind Is Not Hidden From God

But things are altogether different with God. God knows all of us without remainder. All aspects and modes of our dreaming lives and waking selves, both now and in the future, along with every thought of the heart and affection of the will, are laid bare before Him. All motions of the will, and all things, are indivisibly and simultaneously present to Him in His eternal life.

Even more, all things are pre-known to Him prior to their creation, for He knows all things as their first cause. And by knowing Himself, He knows all things as His effects, much as an architect sort of pre-knows a building by being the author of its construction plans.

One may think that this makes us God’s automata. But a fervent Thomist would respond that we are only free because God equipped us with the rational powers and conscious inclinations toward what is good, through which we can choose our ends from among the opposing terms of choice.

A world consisting only of measurable quantities, whose positions and momenta can be predicted exactly given an initial state, could never engineer us in this way. For if two substances share no attributes in common, one cannot produce the other, no matter how many combinations that substance might produce.

Why God Must Know Your Thoughts According to Divine Causality

Your intentions exist in your soul before you act on them, and you are their initiating cause. And God knows them as the first cause of the power to act, experience, or remember, at all. Your inner life, shaped by your thoughts, is even more intelligible to God than your body is.

This is because God knows things through their causes and essence, and your will and intellect are realized acts or essential movements of your soul, which your body then acts out. God’s “knowledge extends as far as His causality extends,” and this includes the created rational soul, its acts, and the power to act (Aquinas, 2017, ST I, q. 14, a. 13).

Aquinas’s metaphysics centers on his arguments for God. The Thomistic universe always traces back to the idea that all causal chains require a sustaining First Cause. Even an infinite series of causes, like a hypothetical perpetual motion machine made up of an endless number of gears and cogs, cannot explain its own existence or the originating source of its power.

Similarly, every secondary or accidental change in a series depends on the simultaneous, ongoing influence of an unmoved and noncontingent mover that is Pure Act, “fully real, complete and perfect” and “first in existence and being,” which constantly preserves the actualization of changes and the existence of contingent things within that system (Kreeft 1990, 23).

Human and Divine Knowledge

For Aquinas, we first apprehend things by assimilating within ourselves the form of the object through the action of our knowing powers upon sense data, which abstracts them to a level of immateriality. This allows us to understand the formal and differentiating essence (“whatness” or quidditas in Latin) of the thing.

God, however, knows forms as instantiated in particular things by being the productive principle of both form and matter. In this way, He necessarily knows individual things as they are in themselves by being their active principle and containing the likeness of all things within Himself (Aquinas, 2017, ST I, q. 14, a. 11).

In other words, the active/passive intellect split that exists in humans, through which we first receive the qualities of external objects via the senses and then use our intellectual powers to discover the essence within them, does not exist in God or angels. Unlike humans, they are not reliant on sense images and do not need to render things intelligible by mentally acting upon sensory qualities.

For God, all is known immaterially and instantaneously as a comprehensive whole within His purely active intellect. Indeed, “His intellect is His own existence” (Aquinas, 2017, ST I, q. 19, a. 1).

This includes God’s infallible knowledge of free future contingents without eliminating their contingency or freedom. Let us unpack this. Aquinas says that if Socrates is sitting, God sees Socrates sitting in the immediacy of His vision from eternity. This is a conditional fact, namely that “if S is sitting, then S is sitting”, not a logical necessity in which the opposite would be a contradiction. Further, knowing that Socrates will sit in such-and-such a circumstance does not amount to forcing him to sit. Socrates chooses to sit on his own, and God knows, outside of time, that he would freely choose to sit at that moment.

Freedom of the will excludes coercion in Aquinas’s view, but not the influence of a higher cause. God is the cause of our being able to move as voluntary causes. Furthermore, God being the most remote of causes, He can still produce contingent effects if the proximate or secondary causes (the created free acts of rational creatures and the effects of natural laws) are created to bring about effects in the world as contingent causes (Aquinas, 2017, ST I, q. 14, a. 13).

Can Angels or Demons Read Your Mind? The Limits of Created Beings

Aquinas devotes an entire section in Summa Theologiae to the study of angels.

Angels are superior intellectually to us and are by nature incorruptible, but finite. They cannot know future contingents that depend on free will, nor the secrets of the divine will, unless revealed to them. They know future events by understanding cause-and-effect relationships, as if they were astronomers who understood all the causal workings of cosmic events in a single intellectual act.

Angels understand things intuitively because God infuses the intelligible species into them, enabling them to grasp realities immediately by their nature rather than through the discursive, step-by-step reasoning of human thought. Lacking matter, each angel is distinct by virtue of being its own species.

Recall that neither angels nor demons, for Aquinas, can directly see into the human will or intellect, as the interior life of the soul is known by God alone. But angels, much like people, can sense changes in us and thereby understand our emotional states or states of mind. An angel likely knows when you are praying, just as a person might, but only God knows and hears your prayer and “knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8).

Aquinas does have an account of demonic agency, though. The devil can “incite to sin, either by offering an object of appetite to the senses, or by persuading the reason,” but he does not think a demon can ever force a person’s soul to consent to sin (Aquinas, 2017, ST I.II, a. 80, q. 1). This supports the idea that the buck stops with the individual where moral accountability is concerned.

The Comfort and Terror of Divine Transparency

There are some who think God’s all-seeing gaze is a threat to human freedom or autonomy. Kierkegaard wrote on being known by God extensively, showing how it demands exceptionless transparency in one’s relation with oneself and with God. This, in turn, requires rejecting self-deception, which, if left unresolved, leads to despair.

But for Aquinas, it means we are never alone, and it testifies to an active, loving, and providential God who sustains the soul in existence. For the Thomist, what is to be greatly amazed at is that God’s timeless knowledge of our free moral failings does not lead to exclusion but rather moves Him to reveal the depths of His love in Christ, so that the intimacy of being truly known and wholly loved is perfectly realized in one’s relationship with Him.

Sources

• Aquinas, T. (2017). Summa Theologiae (Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Trans.). https://www.newadvent.org/summa/
• Bible Hub. (2026). Divine surveillance. https://biblehub.com/topical/d/divine_surveillance.htm
• Kreeft, P. (Ed.). (1990). A Summa of the Summa: The essential philosophical passages of St. Thomas Aquinas. Ignatius Press.

The fact that you’re aware, or conscious, opens up one of philosophy’s greatest mysteries. Is consciousness something that just happens when brains become complex enough, like steam rising from hot water? Or is it altogether more profound: a fundamental part of the universe, akin to space and time? This debate attracts not only philosophers but also thinkers from fields such as neuroscience and quantum physics. If they can resolve it, we may finally understand more than just ourselves.

What Do We Mean by Consciousness?

Consciousness is an incredible and odd sensation of knowing something. It is responsible for making you enjoy the heat from sunlight and chocolate, or fret about an exam. These kinds of feelings are called qualia by philosophers: they are what it is like to be you.

There are two main types of consciousness. One is phenomenal consciousness. This refers to your individual, inner world of experiences: things that only you can see or feel. It is access consciousness, on the other hand, which allows your brain to do things with information. Like remembering a name, or focusing on a task at hand.

In the words of René Descartes, “I think, therefore I am.” When we reflect on our thoughts, he believed, we have proof of our existence. Contemporary science and philosophy take this notion further: What is the self that does the thinking? Is it a mere byproduct of brain activity, or is it something more?

This question is more than armchair semantics. The way we define consciousness has wide-ranging implications, from how we interact with artificial intelligence and animals to our place in the cosmos.  If consciousness ends up being another name for cleverly orchestrated neuronal activity, there may one day be a scientific explanation for it. But if being conscious turns out to be a fundamental feature of reality akin to space or time, then we have got a puzzle on our hands.

The Emergent View: Mind From Matter

According to the emerging perspective, consciousness is not a fundamental aspect of the universe. Rather, it emerges from complexity. Just as individual water molecules are not wet, but they start to feel wet when you put enough of them together.

A number of philosophers and scientists find this compelling. Daniel Dennett believes that brains are clever tricksters. They create consciousness because it’s useful for processing information.

Patricia Churchland thinks we will come to understand more about what consciousness is and what it does as neuroscience progresses. Indeed, doctors can now point to which parts of our brains light up on scans when we feel pain, see colors, or imagine eating pizza.

This view aligns with materialism, the notion that all things, including the mind, arise from physical matter. It is an optimistic stance, too. As we discover more about the brain, we come ever closer to accounting for consciousness. There is, however, a drawback. Even if we were able to chart all the activity in the brain, we would still be faced with the “hard problem”: why does all this brain activity feel like anything at all? Why is there an “inner movie”? This mystery continues to keep the discussion alive.

The Fundamental View: Consciousness as a Basic Feature of Reality

Consider this: What if consciousness isn’t something created by the brain but something it uncovers? This is the basic idea. Instead of being a byproduct of neurons doing their thing, consciousness could be a fundamental feature of the universe, like gravity or energy.

That’s where panpsychism comes in. Philosophers, including Philip Goff and Galen Strawson, think that even the tiniest particles might have very basic forms of consciousness. Not thoughts or feelings, just experience. It might sound weird, but the theory solves a huge mystery. Instead of explaining how dead matter can somehow become alive and aware, we can say it was never entirely non–conscious in the first place.

Additionally, there is idealism, a view most famously propounded by George Berkeley, which turns this on its head. He said that the physical world is here because of minds, not vice versa: if you look at it in one way, its core is mental. A modern take that both scientists and philosophers can get behind is Integrated Information Theory (IIT). This suggests that consciousness simply emerges when a system has a lot of integrated information, as human brains do, or maybe even other things, like complex computers.

What’s good about this idea? It tells you what all conscious things have in common. And what’s bad? There are no currently known ways to measure, test, or verify it. However, that does mean there’s still plenty left to find out and some rather odd implications to consider.

Consciousness in Machines: Emergent, Fundamental, or Illusion?

Is it possible for a machine to be conscious in the truest sense of the word, or can it only act that way? This question is discussed a lot nowadays. For example, it comes up when people talk about AI chatbots or human-looking robots that can chat with you, respond when you tease them, and express feelings like sadness or happiness.

One idea is that if consciousness emerges (as when you bring lots of simple things together, such as water drops forming an ocean), then perhaps yes. One day, we might be able to make machines so complex that they, too, will become conscious. But if consciousness is something basic and necessary for existence, a fundamental part of the way everything works, then things get more complicated. It could be argued that machines will never be able to have consciousness in this deep sense; they will only simulate it very cleverly.

Alan Turing proposed a test that questions whether it is possible for machinery to dupe mankind into believing it is human. However, there is a disparity between feigning awareness and the real deal. Sure, an automaton may declare: “I’m feeling great!” but does this imply sensation, or could its statement be merely well-coded lines doing a thoroughly persuasive job?

Such considerations lead us to ask: When we talk of consciousness, are we focusing primarily on behavior (including verbal statements and passing written exams)? Or does the notion require an entity that actually “feels” things in some sense as well? This remains unclear.

The Hard Problem and the Explanatory Gap

Why does red seem red? It’s the question that lies beneath the surface of philosopher David Chalmers’ celebrated “hard problem of consciousness.” It isn’t hard because it’s complex; it’s hard because it’s profound. Scientists can solve all the “easy” questions: how the brain handles sounds, how we respond to threats, and even how we concentrate. None of that answers the question of why there’s an internal experience or why we feel fear or perceive color, rather than act robot-like.

That’s the explanatory gap: the gap between brain function and lived experience. We have all the neural traces we can follow as someone enjoys chocolate, but still cannot explain what the pleasure feels like.

Emergent accounts have a problem here. How do the physical elements assemble to yield as vivid and personal a thing as a recollection or a dream? Basic positions propose that perhaps we can’t explain it because we’re starting from the wrong location. Perhaps consciousness isn’t caused at all; maybe it just exists.

Either way, the mystery remains. Consciousness isn’t about brains, it’s about being. Until we crack the hard problem, we’re left to ask: are we clever machines having a trick of consciousness? Or is the fact that we’re conscious the most real thing? It’s a problem that still keeps philosophers and scientists up all night.

Is a Synthesis Possible? Dual-Aspect and Future Theories About Consciousness

Suppose that mind and matter are not two distinct entities, but only two sides to the same coin. That’s the premise of dual-aspect monism, a theory that dates back to philosopher Baruch Spinoza. He was convinced that reality exists both physically (such as brains and neurons) and mentally (such as thoughts and feelings), and that these are two sides of the same coin. Now, thinkers are returning to this concept to close the gap between material science and the enigma of consciousness.

Others are looking to quantum physics. Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff have suggested that minute quantum occurrences in the cells in the brain may give rise to consciousness. It’s far-fetched and still in dispute, but it illustrates the way that people are venturing out of conventional science for explanations. Perhaps the real revolution will result from the integration of multiple frames. New theories may incorporate neuroscience, physics, and philosophy to understand how consciousness exists within the universe. Or we may need entirely new tools and frames of thinking that we have not yet created.

Consciousness isn’t about neurons or particles, although those do play a part in it. Consciousness is about being. In order to understand it really well, we might need to redefine not only reality as we study it, but reality as we define it. The mystery remains unsolved.

Imagine you could hear a family member who has died speak again or hold a conversation with them. You might think this only happens in science fiction—but technology may make it possible one day. As well as prompting profound questions about memory, identity, and what it means to be “alive” after death, the development of artificial intelligence that mimics individuals’ voices raises another issue: if we can create AI that appears to bring people back to life digitally, should we? And how might society change if it becomes normal?

The Concept of Digital Immortality: Beyond Physical Life

You’ve probably heard people talk about wanting to live forever. It’s an idea that comes up a lot in stories, religion, and philosophy.

For example, Plato thought that souls were eternal and would continue existing even after we die. Many cultures believe in some kind of life after death, too, whether it’s Ancient Egyptian ideas about pharaohs being reborn or modern spiritual practices.

Digital immortality is different. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to offer a new type of eternity: one where your data, memories, and maybe even things that make you “you” can be stored so that they survive outside of your body. This way of coming back from the dead doesn’t rely on having a soul—or needing a body at all, really.

Consider if there was a digital copy of someone you care about. This avatar can recall things you’ve said to it before and give advice—and it can even change as you interact with it more. It would be like they were still around, but only as a reflection of who they are.

This idea goes back centuries. French philosopher René Descartes was one of the first Western thinkers to explore deeply what links our minds (or “selves”) to our bodies. He argued for a kind of dualism: that there is a difference between your “self” and your physical being.

With digital immortality, too, the suggestion is that somehow, the essence of who we are could continue existing once we die—but now, it is in the digital realm. Yet this raises profound questions: Is such an existence authentic? Or might it be no more than a cleverly constructed imitation that gives only the illusion of life?

Personal Identity and Continuity: Who Are We in the Digital Realm?

When it comes to the identity of the person, the theory has been advanced by philosophers such as John Locke and Derek Parfit, among others, into a question as to what, in fact, makes you “you.” Locke implied that personal identity is a part of memory. If you remember the occurrence of some event, that continuity means you are the same person over time.

However, Derek Parfit elaborated on this view and went further to suggest that the question of identity may well be less fixed than one might feel. What he says is that personal identity does not need to be a question of unbroken succession between selves.

Perhaps what counts for something being me is just that I show a great deal of psychological continuity with it. That is, a sharing of thoughts, memories, traits, and so on.

Take these same conceptions of personal identity and transpose them onto the idea of a digital resurrection. If one is a digital copy, then can it really be somebody?

Imagine an AI impersonating your loved one, knowing their favorite stories, how they speak, and doing the little things they do.

According to Locke, there would not really be an actual identity despite the fact that it may seem that the AI “remembers” events or points in the life of the deceased. Parfit would ask whether having those features continuously is enough to call the AI the same person.

That would mean, for AI, a struggle to keep up with ever-changing self-feelings, desires, and even physical changes like growing old. A digital double may be able to emulate how somebody acts and thinks, but in no way does that make it their actual self since it is capable of doing no more than emulating continuity.

The Ethics of Digital Resurrection: Respect, Consent, and Rights

Digital revival presents the ultimate ethical dilemma; it is not really respectful, is it, to digitally recreate someone without their express consent? Imagine AI being able to revive your memories and personality, and maybe even more when you are long gone. This may be less problematic if the digital.

People such as Immanuel Kant have argued in extreme ways, pointing out how the autonomy and dignity of individuals are at stake. He would, therefore, most likely oppose any such resurrection on the ground that unless consent was given for this when alive, it could breach one’s autonomy.

One critical question is consent. Shouldn’t people have a right to decide before they die whether they want a “digital me” chatting away to their relatives after they’ve died? If they haven’t given permission, does anybody else have the right to authorize this?

Furthermore, if a digital entity were ever to become self-conscious or even develop emotions, a host of new moral issues would arise. Philosopher David Chalmers has speculated about the prospect of “digital consciousness” and whether future AI would deserve rights.

If we accept digital people as having rights—perhaps just to protect their image and self-esteem—we will be forced to rethink our practices. This can affect not only legislation but also morals and what we consider to be fair in a tech-run world.

Memory and Reconstruction: Can AI Truly Capture a Person’s Essence?

Immediately, there are profound philosophical and technical challenges to the ambitions of AI to mimic human beings. While AI systems readily gather vast factual memories—names, dates, preferences—they falter on that which philosophers call “experiential memory,” life’s deeply personal, subjective dimensions.

Try asking the AI to relive some treasured childhood memories. It may get the details perfect, including the location and what was happening, but could it ever convey the real emotions of joy, security, or maybe even wistfulness?

Consciousness is a sort of subjective experience, what philosophers such as Thomas Nagel have termed “qualia,” that reduces to data. At its very core, AI works through algorithms based on data. Perhaps that intimate insider view is always impossible to obtain.

Much of this can be teased out if we examine the ideas of Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher who holds less stock in facts and more in “being.” He may say that artificial intelligence does not possess the capacity to have such experiences as human beings do—those moments, feelings, and environments that mold and shape us in ways data cannot.

While an AI copy could mimic certain behaviors or decisions, it would be just a copy—a reflection in a mirror compared to a real person.

What makes one of them, their little unpredictable aspects, and how they grow emotionally or reflectively would be lost on an AI. It can seem as though it might approximate. But it can’t actually do these things the way human consciousness does—complex and full of life.

The Illusion of Presence: Can AI Replace the Experience of Loss?

Interacting with an AI version of a dead loved one raises some complex psychological and philosophical questions. It’s easy to see why people would be drawn to the idea: grieving is hard, and the idea of being able to “talk” to them again seems comforting. But can technology really replace them? Is it just an incredibly advanced imitation?

Martin Heidegger would disagree. He asserts that our relationship or affair with another person appears to be based upon more than recollections or conditioner behaviors.

What configures these relationships, according to him, is something he calls “being-toward-death,” an existential profoundness through which human life is characterized by being destined for an end.

While AI impersonating a dead person may cure loneliness, it also conceals this fact. According to Heidegger, if we do not fully accept the real death of a person, we have not authentically dealt with his/her loss.

Your emotional life may become confused if you start using AI as some sort of substitute for someone who has died, though it can converse about the past and convincingly mime some of the moments of a personality. That is because AI does not have emotions or real human relationships.

Think of it like watching a talking, moving photograph: comforting, sure, but not the same thing as having that person there with you, which can be hard work and make you feel all sorts of things.

Using AI in such a manner will probably paper over the grief, at least superficially, longer without coming to terms with the loss and living a life that looks forward rather than back.

The Future of Digital Resurrection: Hope, Fear, and the Quest for Legacy

The digital resurrection could mean that one day, we will be able to use AI to continue existing—in a sense, “live forever.” It raises important questions about how we think about legacy and death.

Lots of individuals want to leave an impression on the world. Throughout history, thinkers such as Aristotle have considered how best to achieve what they called “immortality” by creating something lasting, like great art or profound wisdom.

But digital resurrection offers a new kind of legacy—one that doesn’t just sit there but grows, interacts, develops, and perhaps even continues beyond the grave. Should we feel hopeful about this? Or does the prospect suggest humans are trying too hard to not face our own mortality?

From an ethical perspective, digital resurrection raises important questions. While it may provide solace for those who have lost loved ones, it could also mean that people never really die—and society will not have to face the reality of death.

Philosopher Ernest Becker argued in his book The Denial of Death that our anxiety and fear are often caused by humanity’s inability to accept mortality. Would digital resurrection deepen this denial or transform how we think about dying?

There are pluses and minuses to being able to digitally resurrect yourself. On one hand, your loved ones will always be able to access your memories.

On the other hand, does this mean breaking out of the natural cycle of life, death, and being remembered? Do we need as a society to decide whether this is truly living forever—or just an echo of having lived at all?

So, Can AI Bring Back the Dead?

Not quite. But it can create echoes, digital representations that may offer comfort, spark conversations, and even remind us of our loved ones. These recreations can store memories, mimic behaviors, and replicate voices—yet they lack true consciousness, depth, and unpredictability: the things that make us uniquely human.

Philosophers such as Heidegger and Parfit would likely say these digital entities are captivating but only shadows of a person, an illusion instead of a genuine presence.

While digital resurrection can soothe the pain of loss—it also prompts questions about legacy, ethics, and whether we’re accepting death itself. In a world where technology is redefining what it means to live—and die—the real value might lie in cherishing our relationships while they’re here.

Ultimately, AI can’t bring back the dead “back”—but it does invite us to think deeply about memory loss and what it means to truly “live on.”

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, known as Seneca the Younger, was a major figure in Ancient Roman philosophy. Like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, Seneca was a major proponent of Stoicism and often wrote about the value of philosophy in letters to his young friend Lucilius. An aging statesman at the chaotic court of the emperor Nero, Seneca turned to philosophy to manage his role as advisor to a complicated princeps and the constant threat of execution. Seneca explored how philosophy could be applied as a survival guide in his letters.

Who Was Seneca the Younger?

Seneca was born in Corduba in the Roman province of Hispania sometime around 4 BC, the son of the Roman Equestrian, writer, and rhetorician Seneca the Elder. He spent some of his early life in Roman Egypt and was educated in philosophy and rhetoric in Rome. He entered Roman political life as a quaestor and joined the Roman Senate, where he was known as an excellent public speaker.

Seneca was nearly forced to commit suicide by the emperor Caligula, who was jealous of his speaking abilities, and again under Claudius for suspected political intrigue. Instead, Seneca was banished to Corsica, where he remained until he was recalled to Rome to tutor the young prince Nero.

When Nero became emperor in AD 54, Seneca served as one of the 16-year-old’s advisors alongside his mother, Agrippina, and the Praetorian Prefect, Burrus. He is praised for guiding the young emperor through the first five good years of Nero’s reign, known as the Quinquennium Neronis. This involved judicial and tax reforms. Seneca also accumulated considerable wealth during this period.

Seneca’s political fortunes changed when Nero decided he wanted more freedom to act. He had his mother assassinated in AD 59. It was Seneca who composed Nero’s speech to the Senate accusing her of being a traitor to justify her death. Burrus then died in AD 62, leaving Seneca isolated in Nero’s sycophantic court. Seeing his perilous position, on multiple occasions Seneca asked to retire from public life, but Nero refused the request. Nevertheless, he played an increasingly less active role in politics and dedicated himself to his writing.

Finally, he was accused, on flimsy evidence, of involvement in the Pisonian conspiracy against Nero and forced to commit suicide in AD 65.

Seneca and Stoicism

Seneca was a Stoic philosopher, and although Stoicism is often associated with Ancient Rome, it originated in Hellenistic Greece. This was the period after Aristotle, when Athens came under Macedonian rule. It produced two great rival philosophical schools: Epicureanism and Stoicism.

Stoicism was founded by Zeno of Citium around 300 BC. It is a complete philosophical system which covers cosmology, ethics, and investigations in logic. A central Stoic belief is that the universe is composed of and ordered by “logos” or reason. This is taken to be both a form of matter in its smallest degree and as God, nature, fate, or providence. All human minds contain a nugget of reason, and the purpose of an individual life was to discover how to live in alignment with the purpose of the universal logos.

Living in Accordance With Stoic Virtues

The idea of logos was prominent among the Roman Stoics we are more familiar with today: Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. But Stoic ethics, with its emphasis on the cardinal virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom, became a more significant feature of Roman Stoicism. It provided a set of values around which Roman aristocratic life was organized.

In the early Imperial Era, in which Seneca was living and writing, Stoic ethics became a form of resistance to the oppressive Imperial regime. The emphasis on cultivating a life of inner virtue in accordance with logos meant focusing on individual responsibility and detaching from external goods that could be taken away at any time by a capricious emperor. This meant that many Stoics, who were often aristocrats themselves, held values which might clash with the emperor and his rule.

Virtue became of paramount importance. A person’s character and how they conducted themselves was all that was within their control. Inner virtue could not be taken away on an Imperial whim. It is these latter ideas of Stoic ethics that Seneca explores in his letter to Lucilius. Seneca was more interested in the question of how to live a good life than the complexities of metaphysics and logic.

It Is Vital to Study Philosophy

Writing in the last few years of his life, Seneca passionately advocates for the value of studying and applying philosophy to one’s life, and encourages Lucilius to do so as well. He gives several reasons for this.

He argues that the first promise of studying philosophy is “the feeling of fellowship, of belonging to mankind.” This comes during a discussion about not alienating people by being too different from them. Stoicism believes in the unity of all people and promotes cosmopolitanism, understanding that we are all equals, regardless of status. We are all part of nature, part of the logos.

In several letters, Seneca quotes Epicurus, despite Epicureanism being the main rival of Stoicism.  But Seneca was eager to learn wisdom, regardless of the source. He argues that wisdom and truth are for all people, regardless of where it comes from. Wisdom is common property. He agrees with Epicurus that being a slave to philosophy brings freedom, because philosophy and true understanding release us from suffering and bring ataraxia, or calmness.

Wisdom Brings a Happy Life

The crucial point for Seneca is that “no one can lead a happy life… without the pursuit of wisdom.” Seneca acknowledges that philosophy is not popular nor is it entertaining, but it is vital for learning how to live a deeper and more meaningful life. It shapes character, brings order to life, and gives guidance on how to act and what to do or not do in different circumstances. It keeps the ship balanced and on course.

Most of all, Seneca highlights that philosophy brings freedom from fear and worry. Because it has the task of uncovering truth in the human and divine worlds, it can offer counsel in times of trouble. We see reality for what it actually is, not for what others assume and tell us it is. And that is where the comfort lies.

Cultivating Resilience

Stoicism is noted for advocating equanimity even during the most trying challenges of life. As remarked earlier, Seneca lived in a particularly unstable era while the relationship between the emperor and the Senate was still settling. In his letters, Seneca often reflects upon the need to cultivate inner virtue and resilience to be free of worry.

Studying philosophy was key to this, but in addition, Seneca recommends facing fears and accepting mortality by focusing on the present moment.

Another of Seneca’s famous writings is On the Shortness of Life. He addresses similar themes in his latter, where he emphasises living each day fully and as if it were the last. He writes, “every day … should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our lives.”

Essentially, this is living with gratitude, knowing that one’s fortunes can quickly change. It also comes from living with virtue and acting from honorable motives.

In practical terms, Seneca recommends a form of ascetic training for people who live in fear of losing their wealth and status. He thought that in order to be resilient in times of crisis, it was necessary to practice this by simulating difficult circumstances. Once a month, a person should practice being poor by adorning rags, eating only bread and water, and sleeping rough. In this way, a person could realise that what they feared wasn’t so bad, and that it is inner virtue, not circumstances, that are the measure of a person.

We Are Troubled by Two Main Things

Seneca thinks that we are troubled by two main things. The first is remembering troubles in the past, and the second is worrying about things to come. Seneca aims to remove both of these from his thinking. The past is no longer a concern, and the future is not one yet.

When difficulties do arise, then a person “should put his whole heart into the fight against them.” The reward is not fame or fortune, but in “moral worth” and “strength of spirit.”

Significantly, Seneca says, “everything hangs on one’s thinking.” Trials and tribulations can be made better or worse depending on how a person thinks about them. It was the counsel of philosophy, not following the ideas of the crowd, that guided one into thinking in the right way.

Being Stoic in Facing Death

This extended to thinking about death, accepting it and not fearing it. Seneca argued that life is not incomplete if it is an honorable one. It was more important to be a “good man” than anything else, and once this was achieved, the rest was an extra. Death was but a transition to something else. Seneca says that “every journey has its end.”

Not long after writing his letters to Lucilius, Seneca had to confront death. He was ordered to commit suicide by Nero.

Much of Seneca’s life was a contradiction, but he appears to have met his death stoically, if somewhat dramatically. It was a staged event where he drank hemlock surrounded by his friends, emulating the death of Socrates.

This article has only touched on two key related elements of Seneca’s philosophy for living in the Letters from a Stoic. Yet, it is easy to see why Seneca appeals to us today. We face many of the same issues of the human condition, not least in understanding how to live a good life.

While he may have lived 2,500 years ago, Socrates is still one of the most quotable people who ever lived. A philosopher in 5th-century BC Athens, Socrates’ thoughts have shaped modern Western philosophy. He is often quoted in modern philosophical treatises and daily life. Here are some of his most famous quotes and what they mean, so you can recognize them when you see them, and maybe even quote him yourself!

1. “The Only True Wisdom Is in Knowing You Know Nothing”

What it means: Wisdom starts with admitting you don’t know everything.

Socrates was known for his relentless pursuit of knowledge and his willingness to question everything; even things most people took for granted. He knew that knowledge was not stagnant and that there was always more to learn. Therefore, wisdom meant not assuming you know everything and being open to new ideas and possibilities.

Imagine someone convinced they know everything about a subject. They might become complacent, closed off to new perspectives. By contrast, someone who acknowledges their lack of knowledge stays open, curious, and ready to learn. This willingness to question everything, including himself, set Socrates apart and laid the foundation for real intellectual growth and discovery.

2. “Prefer Knowledge to Wealth, for the One Is Transitory, the Other Perpetual”

What it means: Wealth fades, but wisdom endures.

This quote urges us to consider what really matters in life. For Socrates, that was knowledge. Once gained, it cannot be lost and only grows when nurtured. In contrast, wealth and material possessions are temporary. They are easily lost, and you certainly can’t “take it with you.” Moreover, it is knowledge that shapes your understanding and interactions with the world, which can be a catalyst for prosperity.

Consider a wealthy person who finds contentment only in material comfort. Without curiosity or a desire to learn, that comfort may feel hollow. In contrast, a person who values knowledge enjoys growth, fulfillment, and perspective, no matter their financial situation.

3. “An Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living”

What it means: A meaningful life requires reflection and self-awareness.

This is one of Socrates’ most famous challenges. It urges us to stop rushing through life without questioning why we act, think, or believe as we do. Socrates was relentless in questioning not just others but himself. He believed that without reflection, life loses its depth, and we lose the chance to understand ourselves.

Imagine walking through a beautiful garden but never pausing to look at the flowers. You miss the beauty because you never slow down to notice it. Self-examination is what allows us to connect experiences into a bigger picture, like fitting together the pieces of a puzzle to see the whole image.

4. “Wisdom Begins in Wonder”

What it means: Stay curious. Wonder leads to wisdom.

For Socrates, wonder was the spark that ignited learning. It’s the sense of awe and curiosity that makes you want to ask questions, explore ideas, and see beyond the obvious.

Think of a child seeing a rainbow for the first time. That moment of amazement inspires them to ask, “Why does this happen?” and “How?” Wonder encourages an open mind, challenges assumptions, and pushes us toward discovery. Socrates approached every conversation with that same curiosity. Without it, he wouldn’t have reached the profound insights we still study today.

5. “The Only Good Is Knowledge, and the Only Evil Is Ignorance”

What it means: Knowledge fosters good, while ignorance breeds harm.

With this bold statement, Socrates reframed the idea of good and evil. To him, goodness came from understanding, while ignorance led to harm. Knowledge enlightens our minds, broadens our perspectives, and helps us make rational, ethical decisions. Ignorance, on the other hand, breeds prejudice, injustice, and division.

Think of how misinformation can spread, fueling stereotypes or even violence. Enlightenment dispels these shadows and replaces them with empathy, fairness, and truth. For Socrates, real knowledge wasn’t just knowing facts. It was knowing yourself, your values, and the world you live in.

6. “Be as You Wish to Seem”

What it means: Your external behavior should be in line with your internal moral character.

Most people worry about their reputation, so how they seem to others. Socrates suggests that the focus should be on their character, who they really are. Trying to project an image without substance behind it requires constant maintenance, deceit, and performance. Embodying the quality directly eliminates the need to perform.

If you want people to think you are honest, be honest. If you want people to view you as wise, seek wisdom. If you want to be regarded as a reliable friend, act reliably.

7. “He Who Is Not Content with What He Has Would Not Be Content with What He Would Like to Have” 

What it means: Contentment should be an attitude, not measured in numbers.

If satisfaction depends on obtaining the next goal, promotion, or possession, acquiring it won’t fix the underlying restlessness. The goalposts simply move. Once you reach what you thought would make you happy, a new desire immediately fills the void.

Someone who cannot find peace in their present state will carry that same habitual dissatisfaction into any future scenario, no matter how abundant.

8. “To Find Yourself Think for Yourself”

What it means: You must decide what is right and important yourself, rather than relying on groupthink.

In ancient Greece, society relied heavily on tradition, religious dogma, and public consensus. Socrates argued that passively accepting societal opinions leads to living a “life on autopilot.” To know who you really are, you must strip away borrowed beliefs and decide what you believe based on reason.

This statement is often used in reference to modern tragedies, where harmful government policies are passed, and people accept them, standing by and doing nothing as tragedy unfolds. It is dangerous to accept something as right just because it comes from an authority or “tradition.”

1888 was a productive year for German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. He managed to complete Twilight of the Idols, Antichrist, and Ecce Homo. Nietzsche was always an enigmatic writer, but these works were particularly eccentric. A year later, he suffered a complete mental breakdown that resulted in two stays in psychiatric facilities. Little is actually known about Nietzsche’s mental health and, in particular, how his health affected his work. In this article, we look at how much store we ought to place in Nietzsche’s health in our reception of these works.

How Chronic Illness Forced Nietzsche to Quit His Professorship

In 1869, at the age of 24, Friedrich Nietzsche was appointed professor of philology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. It was an extraordinarily young age to become a tenured professor. The previous year, he had met and become friends with the German composer Richard Wagner and his wife, Cosima. In 1870, he presented Cosima with a gift of a manuscript he had written that, with Wagner’s encouragement, he would later publish as The Birth of Tragedy.

The Birth of Tragedy (1872) was not well received by his academic contemporaries. Today, the text is read and appreciated by Nietzsche scholars and philosophers but remains an odd work of classical philology. After this, Nietzsche published a series of essays, some of which were collected under the title Untimely Meditations (1873-1876). His next publication was Human, All too Human, a collection of aphorisms released in 1878. It was the last piece of work Nietzsche would do while still a professor at Basel.

He had always suffered with headaches and stomach problems, but towards the end of the 1870s things got so bad Nietzsche could no longer work at the university. He did not stop writing, however, and carried on working as an independent philosopher. Between 1879 and 1888, he produced almost a book a year.

These included some of his most famous work, such as Daybreak (1881), The Gay Science (1882), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), Twilight of the Idols (1888), The Antichrist (1888), and Ecce Homo (1888). 

In 1889, Nietzsche experienced a mental breakdown from which he never recovered. He lived for another ten years, under the care of psychiatric doctors and his sister. The cause and true nature of his illness – and how it affected his work – is still a hotly debated and controversial issue today.

Nietzsche’s Mental Collapse in Turin

Nietzsche arrived in the large northern Italian city of Turin in 1888. By all accounts he enjoyed his brief time living there. Even his notoriously bad migraines seemed to have eased. It was also a productive period for Nietzsche during which he worked on the manuscripts of Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and Ecce Homo. However, the good times were not to last.

The story goes that on January 3rd, 1889, while out on one of his daily walks, Nietzsche came across a man brutally whipping a horse. Shocked by the violence, he ran between man and horse, and throwing his arms around the animal’s neck began to sob uncontrollably. He then collapsed.

As Nietzsche lay in the street, he supposedly began whispering ‘Richard my friend’ over and over again. After he was taken home, he spent the next forty-eight hours lying catatonic on a couch.

This story is now famous, but how much of it is actually true?

It is certainly true that in 1889 Nietzsche suffered from a complete mental collapse that required hospitalization. His good friend Franz Overbeck, a man with whom Nietzsche had maintained continuous correspondence for years, arrived in Turin shortly after Nietzsche’s breakdown and helped arrange treatment in a psychiatric clinic in Basel. But Overbeck came to Turin after he and others had received bizarre letters from Nietzsche, so bizarre as to merit a trip to Italy to check on his friend. There was no mention of the incident of the whipped horse at the time.

Indeed, the first accounts of Nietzsche attempting to stop a man beating a horse came eleven years after the supposed incident. Had the incident actually occurred, we would expect it to have been discussed in correspondence between Nietzsche’s friends, family and doctors.

How Should We Understand Nietzsche’s Mental Health?

In 1914, long after Nietzsche’s death in 1900, his medical records were stolen. They detailed his condition and behavior while he was a patient in a mental institute in Jena. Fifteen years later these records were published in a German newspaper.

How Nietzsche’s private medical history came to be public information is a convoluted story, but thanks to what today would be a scandalous data protection failure, we know a great deal about his illness. Perhaps, more than we ought to know.

Graphic details of a philosopher’s mental illness during a time of acute crisis and occurring a year after his last publications serve little purpose in helping us understand his work. The same goes for attempts to try and diagnose Nietzsche’s condition after the fact and attempts to work out the cause(s) of his illness.

Doubtless, it is useful in historical studies of clinical psychiatry to consider whether or not Nietzsche’s mental illness was a product of syphilis (unlikely), an inherited condition passed down from his father (also unlikely), or a brain cancer (quite likely). However, these speculations do little to help us deal philosophically with his texts.

Should we then ignore Nietzsche’s mental illness as irrelevant to philosophical inquiry?

There are question marks hanging over how much store those interested in Nietzsche’s philosophical works should put in the state of his mind in the last years of his life. Indeed, even those with an interest in biographical details of a thinker’s life might not find too much value in his unproductive final years. However, Nietzsche scholars cannot totally ignore the impact his mental health problems have on the reception of his work.

Two things ought to concern us: the possible influence of Nietzsche’s deteriorating mental health on his philosophical output and the publication of texts after his mental collapse.

The Effect of Nietzsche’s Mental Health on His Work

The fact that we actually know little about Nietzsche’s mental health means that it is difficult to gauge how much of his work might have been affected or influenced by his condition.

One theory concerning Nietzsche’s mental health is that he experienced a brief episode in 1889 in which he suffered a psychotic break that was followed by a debilitating physical illness which robbed him of rational thought. On this view, Nietzsche’s “madness” lasted about a year, beginning around the time of his collapse in Turin, and resulted in two stays in a psychiatric hospital. His later problems were caused by his physical health.

A second theory is that Nietzsche always had health problems, mental and physical, from which he suffered to varying degrees and that it was towards end of his life that his psychological problems became unmanageable.

Which of the two we find more convincing has an important impact on how we receive Nietzsche’s philosophical work.

If he was prone to psychological unbalance throughout his life (perhaps caused by physical illness), then we can expect this to have influenced his writing. And, if it is true that his mental health deteriorated over time, his latter work should be more greatly affected. However, if Nietzsche’s psychosis first occurred in January 1889, then his work prior to that would not be affected by his illness.

There is no question that at some point towards the final decade of Nietzsche’s life he suffered from severe mental illness. It was during this period that he wrote his so-called “Madness Letters.” These letters contained bizarre content and were signed “Dionysus” and “The Crucified One.” The problem is that there is similarly strange material in Nietzsche’s last works.

Should we dismiss these as the product of a mind divorced from reality?

Difficult Passages in Nietzsche’s Work (of Which There Are Many)

Consider the following passage taken from Ecce Homo, Nietzsche’s philosophical memoir written a year before his mental collapse. It is from a chapter entitled ‘Why I am so clever’ on the subject of hot drinks.

No snacking, no coffee: coffee darkens things. Tea is only good in the morning. Small quantities, but strong; tea is very bad for you and will make you sick all day if it is even a little too weak. Everyone has their own standards here, sometimes between the narrowest and most delicate boundaries. In a very agaçante climate you should not start with tea: you should start an hour earlier with a cup of thick, oil-free cocoa. – Sit as little as possible; do not believe any idea that was not conceived while moving around outside, – with your muscles in a celebratory mode as well. All prejudices come from the intestines. – Sitting down – I have said it before – is a true sin against the Holy Spirit.

What is Nietzsche trying to say here? It is hard to tell if he is genuinely talking about how to take tea (for some reason) or making a philosophical point.

There are two things we must be cognizant of when considering the impact of Nietzsche’s illnesses on his philosophy.

Firstly, we should be careful not to ignore the fact that illness can inform a person’s philosophical understanding of the world. It would be a mistake to dismiss all of Nietzsche’s later philosophy as nothing but the product of a disturbed mind, even if he was mentally ill at the time. Insights are insights no matter their origins.

But at the same time, it is crucial that we do not glamorize or downplay the enormous toll that illness can take or read more into ‘poetical’ madness than there actually is.

Nietzsche’s Work Published After His Mental Collapse

Nietzsche spent from 1893 to the end of his life under the care of his sister. Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche is a controversial character.

Before coming to look after her brother, she had been married to Bernhard Förster, a far-right activist and antisemite. Together they had attempted to create a settlement in Paraguay for like-minded Aryan supremacists. The plan failed, and Förster eventually took his own life. For a while, Elizabeth tried to run the settlement but returned home when she heard her brother was ill.

With Nietzsche entirely incapable of managing his affairs, something had to be done about his recently completed texts and works in progress. His friends Franz Overbeck and Peter Gast chose to withhold publication of The Antichrist and Ecce Homo due to their shocking content. Elizabeth compiled The Will to Power from Nietzsche’s unpublished notes and writings.

There is much controversy over the place of The Will to Power in Nietzsche’s official canon. Firstly, he did not write the book himself, but more importantly, Elizabeth has been accused of changing and editing the text to make Nietzsche’s work appear to support her own racist and antisemitic views.

In recent times, however, some critics have argued that the changes she made were not motivated by a political agenda but by an effort to avoid embarrassment over some of the things Nietzsche had written.

It is a fact that Nietzsche’s ideas were distorted and he was for a time unfairly associated with Nazism. Adolf Hitler was purportedly a fan, thanks largely to Elizabeth’s efforts. When she died in 1935, Hitler even attended her funeral. Whether or not Nietzsche’s sister was motivated by far-right political beliefs or merely to promote her brother’s work as widely as possible, we must take her involvement into account when assessing Nietzsche’s The Will to Power.

Nietzsche’s Death

In the last two years of his life, Nietzsche suffered strokes that left him partially paralyzed and unable to talk. In August 1900, he went down with pneumonia and suffered another stroke. Nietzsche died on August 25th, aged fifty-five.

In our reception of Nietzsche’s final works, in particular The Will to Power, we must take his final tragic years into consideration, but only in the fact that he was not in a position to approve or disapprove of their publication. Here the role played by his sister and carergiver, Elizabeth, must be taken into consideration.

However, there seems little reason for concern that his previous texts were negatively affected by his mental health problems.

His last two works seem strange, but we saw that even his first published work, The Birth of Tragedy, was considered odd by his contemporaries. But it is also clearly lucid, and its author obviously knows what he is attempting to achieve. Later in his life, Nietzsche came to regret the tone of the work, but he stood by the ideas expressed within.

Publication of his last works, Antichrist and Ecce Homo, was delayed by friends who knew Nietzsche and his philosophy extremely well. However, this was due to the shocking subject matter rather than doubts about the author’s sanity. In addition, both texts rely upon arguments and polemics Nietzsche had previously worked through years previously before apparently suffering from mental health issues.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that even if Nietzsche did suffer from mental health issues during the writing of any of his works, this ought not to affect too strongly our reception of them. Nietzsche acknowledged his physical health as contributing to his understanding; his mental health probably contributed too.

Emil Cioran was a complex and troubled thinker. He was plagued by insomnia and obsessed with failure. In his works, he often expressed the idea that human existence was somehow one big mistake. Yet despite this, or as Cioran would say because of this, he wrote some of the most profound (and witty) works of philosophy addressing such things as suffering, the human condition, and the absurdity of life itself.

Who Was Emil Cioran?

Emil Cioran was born in 1911 in what is today known as Rășinari, Romania. At the time, Resinár, as it was then known, was in the Kingdom of Hungary. The young Cioran was brought up in a very religious household. His father was an Orthodox priest, and his mother was the head of a women’s Christian organization. As a teenager in college, Cioran identified as an agnostic, and later one of his works would be banned in Spain for its perceived atheism and even blasphemy.

Cioran’s college years were spent in Romania, where he studied literature and philosophy at the University of Bucharest. It was here that he met and became friends with the Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade and the French-Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco. During his studies, the young Cioran developed a passion for writers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

In 1933, Cioran won a scholarship to the University of Berlin and while there witnessed the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. He would return to Romania in 1936 with some disconcerting views concerning the regime (discussed below).

In addition to his native Romanian, Cioran had a strong command of German and could read German philosophy in the original. Later in life, after moving to France, he wrote solely in French.

His first published work was the prize-winning On the Heights of Despair, published in Romanian in 1934. After that, Cioran published several more texts in his own language until his A Short History of Decay (1949), which was published in French by Gallimard.

Cioran’s Reclusive Life and Forgotten Death in Paris

When Cioran moved to France, he did so without plans to get a job… ever. As a PhD student, he could live on his scholarship and eat all his meals in the cheap university cafeteria. His desire to live without employment was not motivated by a desire to devote all his time to study and the pursuit of knowledge. Of course, it meant that he also had no intention of completing his doctorate.

It was a plan that could have worked. Unfortunately for Cioran, the rules in France changed, limiting the age of all students to no older than twenty-seven. And so, Cioran was forced by necessity to seek another way of getting by. Remaining true to his commitment never to work for a living, he spent the rest of his life mostly relying on the help of others to survive.

While living in Paris, Cioran met his lifelong companion, a Frenchwoman named Simone Boué. The couple set up home and lived, largely in seclusion, in the Latin Quarter. Boué, like Cioran, suffered from chronic insomnia, and it is easy to imagine the two of them awake and alone together at night while everyone in the city was sleeping.

In the early 1990s, Cioran started exhibiting the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. He and Boué made a suicide pact, but in a tragic irony caused by his condition, this pact was forgotten. Cioran died in 1995. Boué was found drowned two years later. The cause of her death, whether suicide or accidental, remains unknown.

Cioran and a Flirtation With Fascism

A regrettable aspect of Cioran’s past is his flirtation with fascism and praise for Hitler and the Nazis, Italian fascism, and the fascist Iron Guard in his native Romania. It was a period in Cioran’s life that he soon came to regret and quickly became a source of embarrassment for him.

There is sometimes a temptation to downplay the enthusiasm of philosophers and thinkers who were early supporters of fascism. Such figures include the German philosopher Martin Heidegger; the English novelist D. H. Lawrence; the American poet Ezra Pound; the Norwegian writer and Nobel Prize winner Knut Hamsun; and the historian Mircea Eliade, Cioran’s friend.

Cioran could not have known about the atrocities to come, but he was well aware of the Nazis’ use of political violence. Indeed, he wrote approvingly of the infamous Night of the Long Knives. He went on to support the Iron Guard after returning to Romania but disapproved of their violence.

By the 1970s, he was referring to his dalliance with fascism as the worst folly of his life and a sickness.

Cioran and Failure

We have been discussing one of Cioran’s major failings, his support for fascism. Another of his failings may be a lack of ambition, unwillingness to work, and a tendency to rely on others. A lifelong insomniac, we might even say he failed at sleep!

Of course, there were many successes in Cioran’s life too. He won prestigious accolades, and he would not be the subject of many books and articles had he not succeeded in producing important and valuable insights.

Indeed, we only need to read the titles of Cioran’s texts to see what a wonderful command of language he possessed (writing in a foreign language, no less). Adding to the intrigue is the fact that he concerned himself almost exclusively with nihilistic themes. As well as an intriguing thinker, Cioran was a very funny writer.

As a philosopher, then, Cioran was not a failure. However, one of his major contributions to philosophy is his work on the idea of failure. He believed people do not really understand the value of failing.

The way he saw it, failure plays an essential part in helping us understand who we really are.

In his texts, we often find the idea that our existence is characterized by failure and that life itself is a fundamental mistake. Nihilistic as this sounds, something interesting is going on here. If Cioran thinks failure has value and that life is a failure, then he must think life has value as well.

Cioran’s Nihilism

Cioran’s work is often associated with the concept of the absurd. There are many different conceptions of the absurd, and philosophers make their own use of the idea, but what they share is the idea that life itself may be meaningless.

Note, there is nothing in itself absurd about the belief that life is meaningless. For a belief or situation to be absurd, there must be some kind of contradiction. When philosophers talk about the absurd – and not just something in general being absurd – they are referring to the contradictory idea that life is meaningless but at the same time something we ought to value intensely.

Why would people believe that life is meaningless and what does that actually mean?

It is an ancient idea that life itself has no purpose and, as a result, no value. This is expressed in Greek mythology through the myth of Silenus and his terrible wisdom. Silenus, when asked what the best thing is for human beings, replied “to have never been born.” The second best thing, he adds, is to “die as soon as possible.” His message is clear: life is not worth the effort.

Nietzsche, a great influence on Cioran, once claimed that all the rest of Greek mythology was an attempt to overcome Silenus.

It is important to remember that we are not talking about individual lives that for specific reasons are not worth living. Unfortunately, there are some people for whom their lives might not be worth the pain and suffering they endure. Our focus is on all human life, not the unfortunate few.

Nihilism and the Absurd

Nihilism, the belief that life is without meaning, purpose, or value, is not in itself an absurd position. However, it raises the question for those professing a nihilistic worldview: why do they continue with life if it is worthless?

Continued existence is a struggle, and life for everyone is marked by suffering to various degrees. There have been people throughout human history, and there will continue to be, who think their own lives not worth living. These individuals might be very ill and facing the prospect of unbearable pain and suffering; or those that choose to sacrifice their own lives so that others might live. Martyrs of all kinds have given their lives for causes they believe to be of greater value than their own existence.

None of these are examples of nihilism. Indeed, every kind of self-sacrifice described above is carried out because the individuals involved believed life to have value. Even in cases of self-euthanasia, it is chosen because a person’s individual life is deemed to fall short of how normal life ought to be.

Nihilists are not concerned with individual lives but with life itself. For them, all human existence is meaningless and without value. And so, the question remains: why do nihilists not just commit suicide?

One simple answer is that if all life is meaningless and without purpose, then there is no good reason for a person to do anything, and this necessarily includes suicide. For a nihilist, taking one’s own life (in response to the idea that life has no value) would be a meaningless action that serves no purpose.

Now, Cioran is not a nihilist. As we have seen, he believes that life is characterized by failure and is itself a mistake. But, for him, this is what gives life value.

The Value of Insomnia and Failure

Cioran said that what separates human beings from other animals is that humans are the only species that experiences insomnia.

Anxieties and other negative emotions are exacerbated by insomnia. This is especially so at night while the insomniac lies awake alone with their thoughts. But it is this isolation and heightening of awareness that, according to Cioran, gives value to insomnia.

When a person lies awake at night, unable to sleep, it is not their successes and achievements that come to mind but their failures and regrets. With nothing else to do and without the anesthetizing effect of sleep, they are forced to confront them. The more failures and regrets they have to dwell upon, the more profound their reflections will be. Insomnia forces people to spend their nights philosophizing while everyone else around them sleeps.

For Cioran, the failure to sleep, coupled with failure in life, makes people more interesting. Surely he got this right. If we are honest, do we not find other people’s failures and their responses to them far more interesting than hearing about their successes?

In our own lives, is it not our failures that we keep returning to in our minds while our successes are often overlooked and forgotten?

And finally, is it not a desire to overcome failure that pushes us to keep striving in life?

For Nietzsche, the greatest achievement for a human being was to become a “yes-sayer” to life. And, therefore, the highest praise he could bestow upon an individual would be an acknowledgment that they say yes to life. Nietzsche says of Raphael, with reference to his masterpiece the Transfiguration, that the Italian Renaissance painter “said yes, and did yes.” However, Nietzsche also believed that Christianity was the ultimate force of nay-saying. It is strange then that a painting of Christ’s transfiguration so inspired him.

Raphael’s Famous Painting

Raphael was commissioned to paint the Transfiguration in 1517 by Cardinal Giulio de Medici, who would later become Pope Clement VII in 1523. It was to be an altarpiece for a cathedral in the southern French town of Narbonne, where Medici held the office of archbishop.

Raphael died in 1520 before the completion of the Transfiguration. Speculation and conjecture were rife on how much of the final painting was actually done by Raphael and how much was completed by his assistants. However, during a cleaning of the painting in the 1970s, it was discovered that only some of the figures on the lower left-hand side of the work were finished by studio assistants; the rest was all Raphael’s own work.

Medici elected not to send the Transfiguration to France but decided instead to place it in the church of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome. It stayed there until 1797, when Napoleon, on campaign in Italy, took the painting back to Paris. Napoleon greatly admired Raphael, considering him the greatest artist in the world and his Transfiguration the greatest work of art. This is significant as Napoleon was Nietzsche’s most respected political figure. In his texts, he mentions the former French emperor approximately 150 times, frequently invoking him as a symbol of immense human will, though his ultimate philosophical assessment of Napoleon remained deeply complex and ambivalent.

Twilight of the Idols

Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with a Hammer, was published in 1889. That same year, Nietzsche suffered a mental collapse from which he never recovered.

The chapter we are concerned with here is “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man.” Section eight of “Skirmishes” does not reference Raphael directly but rather introduces an approach to life that Nietzsche explicitly associates with the artist. He calls the section “Towards a psychology of the artist.”

Nietzsche begins by claiming intoxication is a prerequisite for art. He is not just referring to drink and drugs but to intoxications of all kinds. Some of the things he lists include sexual excitement, any strong emotions, the performance of great skill, and intoxication brought on by the climate. What all these forms of intoxication have in common is that they are experienced, he says, as “a feeling of fullness and increasing strength.”

This feeling of fullness leads artists to idealize things. This is a process, Nietzsche says, whereby the artist imposes themselves upon things, forcing out of them their main features while weeding out all that is small and inconsequential.

In section nine, Nietzsche goes on to talk about artists who achieve this state. For him, these are the only genuine artists. There are people claiming to make art that are even hailed as artists, but for Nietzsche, only those imbued with the type of intoxication he spoke of in section eight are the real deal. He goes on to make a rather odd statement that there have been no Christian artists. To which he adds:

“Don’t try to be clever and throw Raphael or some homeopathic nineteenth-century Christian at me as a counter-example: Raphael said yes, Raphael did yes, which means that Raphael was no Christian…”

Saying Yes to Life

Throughout Nietzsche’s works, we witness his struggle to be what he calls a “yes-sayer” to life. In Gay Science 276, for example, he says: “all in all and on the whole: someday I wish to be only a Yes-sayer!” Historical figures that Nietzsche admires are all yes-sayers.

In Twilight of the Idols “Skirmishes” 49, Goethe, probably Nietzsche’s favorite writer and author of The Sorrows of Young Werther, is said to have said “yes to all.” It is interesting to note that Napoleon, the second-most-cited historical figure in Nietzsche’s works, also loved The Sorrows of Young Werther, taking a copy with him on his campaigns.

Napoleon was also responsible for a great deal of death. Nietzsche has no problem with “yes-sayers” saying no to things that endanger the affirmation of life. Consider the following from the preface of his Will to Power:

“I teach that one must say ‘no’ to everything that weakens and exhausts. I teach that one must say ‘yes’ to everything that strengthens, promotes the accumulation of power, and [increases] pride.”

Nietzsche admires those who say yes to all things, which includes saying no to anything that opposes “yes-saying.”

The Birth of Tragedy

The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music was first published in 1872. The work was born out of two lectures Nietzsche delivered on Greek drama. Here’s what Nietzsche has to say about Raphael and the Transfiguration in this work.

“In his Transfiguration, the lower half with the possessed boy, his despairing bearers, and the helplessly fearful disciples, shows us the reflection of the eternal original suffering, of the sole ground of the world: ‘appearance’ here is the reflection of the eternal contradiction, of the father of things. Now, out of this appearance rises, like the scent of ambrosia, a new vision-like world of appearance, which remains invisible to those caught in the first world of appearance—a brilliant hovering in purest bliss and painless contemplation through beaming, wide-open eyes. Here we have before our eyes, rendered in the highest symbolism of art, that Apollonian world of beauty and its substratum, the horrific wisdom of Silenus, and we understand their reciprocal necessity intuitively.”

When Nietzsche talks of the Apollonian, he is, of course, referring to the Greek god Apollo. For him, “Apollonian” captures the idea of certain qualities this god was supposed to possess. Nietzsche is thinking of such things as calmness, cheerfulness, reason, and logical thinking.

Nietzsche contrasts the Apollonian spirit with the Dionysian. What exactly Nietzsche means by the Dionysian is complex and evolved greatly over time; however, we can understand the “Dionysian” as capturing the traits associated with the god Dionysus. These include intoxication, impulse, and emotion.

Nietzsche believed that Greek tragedies were imbued with both the Apollonian and the Dionysian. These two drives exert themselves against each other and together help the artist create works of profound beauty.

Let us put all this together, with reference to Raphael’s Transfiguration.

Nietzsche’s Reception of Raphael’s Transfiguration

Nietzsche took great inspiration from Raphael’s Transfiguration. He must have felt a profound sense of beauty (as he understood it) on viewing the painting. Beauty for him, we remember, is not found in the world but given by human beings.

Something about beauty he also believed was that “people find beauty in everything that throws their image back at them.” (Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes” 19). What Nietzsche must have seen in Raphael’s work was, in some way, himself. And indeed, he saw the affirmation of his own idea of the struggle between the Apollonian and Dionysian.

We saw that Nietzsche considered Raphael a true artist and that, for Nietzsche, intoxication is an essential prerequisite of art. He believed that Raphael had a driving passion to use his artistic power to reveal the main features of life while paring away that which is small and inconsequential. To Nietzsche, this is what makes Raphael a yes-sayer to life.

His Transfiguration is then a giant yes to life for all who can see, to see. Raphael, through his work, counters the terrible nay-saying wisdom of Silenus.

What then of Nietzsche’s curious statement, mentioned above, that Raphael could not be a Christian (because Christians cannot create art)? Nietzsche believed art must say yes to life, but that Christianity as a religion was thoroughly nay-saying with regard to life. Like most of Nietzsche’s views, his position on Christianity is complex and nuanced.

His comments on Raphael and Christianity are useful for giving us a better idea of his esteem for the artist and his work. For Nietzsche, to be a yes-sayer to life is the highest achievement, and to call someone a yes-sayer the highest praise.