Modern heartbreak and new exemplars

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Nietzsche responded to modern heartbreak, the crisis of love that followed the popularization of modern science. Science had cut man loose from traditional authorities, offering political liberty and the vertigo of spiritual rootlessness. It cast aspersions on love of any object beyond the senses and beyond the self, while proving incapable of quickening either society or souls.Rousseau and Nietzsche sought to effect these dynamics by offering new ways of being true and of loving, concentrating on the two activities most important to the Christian tradition even while attempting to overcome that tradition. Both tried to revitalize an understanding of philosophy as a way of life rather than a mode of argumentation, even while they offered different ethical prescriptions. Rousseau issued a call to be sincere and beneficent; Nietzsche, a call to be honest and overcome pity.Nietzsche's psychic ideal consisted of a never-ending cycle of plenitude and squandering. Although some interpreters have stressed only one of these two psychic moments, I argue Nietzsche combines both, uniting self-discipline and a commitment to dispersal and plurality.While many interpreters have stressed the role of psychic wholeness in Rousseau's thought, I point to the role of psychic effervescence, an ideal that comes to the fore in his autobiographies. Rousseau made rhetorical use of wholeness, but only to control the effervescence of the sociable soul.Neither sought to "solve" the problem of modern heartbreak. Rousseau thought it would always be with us, while Nietzsche believed it a necessary reminder that all was not well with modern life. Both presented psychic dynamics suggesting humans should learn to live with heartbreak rather than to attempt to abolish it.In their autobiographical work, Rousseau and Nietzsche turned to the soul for a standard to guide modern human life. Each discovered a psychic dynamic that characterized the flourishing soul, and each offered their reader a number of 'spiritual practices' to help them develop healthy souls. If the soul could not be oriented by some public object of love, it could be saved from deepest heartache by being led to approximate a given dynamic.

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