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A search of Nietzsche’s digitized published works (via http://www.nietzschesource.org) gives 33 instances of Geduld (patience) throughout those works (10 of those in The Gay Science), and not all of these are favorable since Nietzsche does criticize certain understandings (or misunderstandings) and uses of patience. Nietzsche also sometimes employs cognates of patience and impatience in a colloquial sense, to describe the manner in which a person waits (patiently or impatiently as the case may be). Thus Spoke Zarathustra contains several instances of this colloquial usage, in addition to a couple more clearly philosophical remarks about the value or nature of patience (one of which I mention in Section 3).
See, e.g. Robert Solomon, Living With Nietzsche (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Lester Hunt, Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue (London: Routledge, 1991); and Christine Swanton, “Nietzsche’s Virtue Ethics,” Stan van Hooft (ed.), The Handbook of Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Acumen, 2014), 105–117.
For exceptions to this general neglect, see Eamonn Callan, “Patience and Courage”, Philosophy 68 (1993): 523–539; Joseph Kupfer, “When Waiting is Weightless: The Virtue of Patience”, The Journal of Value Inquiry 41 (2007): 265–280; and Nic Bommarito, “Patience and Perspective,” Philosophy East and West 64 (2014): 269–286. I argue that patience warrants greater philosophical attention in Matthew Pianalto, “In Defense of Patience,” D. Gordon and D. Suits (eds.), Epictetus: His Continuing Influence and Contemporary Relevance (Rochester, NY: RIT Press, 2014), 89–104. Here, however, my attention is on the importance of patience for Nietzsche.
See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morality, Keith Ansell-Person (ed.), trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), First Essay, §14.
Hunt, op. cit., p. 113.
See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Bernard Williams (ed.), trans. Josefine Nauckhoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), §21, and Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morality, Third Treatise, §8.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §120. On this formulation, see Mark Alfano, “The Most Agreeable of All Vices: Nietzsche as Virtue Epistemologist,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (2013), pp. 767–790. See also Christine Swanton, “Outline of a Nietzschean Virtue Ethics,” International Studies in Philosophy 30 (1998): 29–38.
See Swanton, “Nietzsche’s Virtue Ethics.” See also Alfano, op. cit.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman (eds.), trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), §30.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter (eds.), trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), §368.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §260.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Adrian Del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 152.
Nietzsche, Daybreak, §452. See also Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), §61, where Nietzsche claims that the inability to wait is the cause of many tragedies.
The Biblical scholar William Barclay provides accounts of two different terms in the New Testament that are both sometimes translated from the Greek as patience: makrothumia and hupomonē. Makrothumia is patience with other people, as in the patient forbearance that Gregory identifies as “true patience,” and is closely associated with the Christian virtues of meekness and humility. On the other hand, hupomonē is patience with circumstantial adversity, and is closely associated with fortitude (courage) and perseverance. See William Barclay, New Testament Words (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974), pp. 143–145, 196–198.
Gregory (Pope Gregory I), Forty Gospel Homilies, trans. D. Hurst (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009), p. 305.
See Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II.2.136; Augustine, “On Patience,” trans. H. Browne in Philip Schaff (ed.), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 3 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1897), URL: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1315.htm; and Tertullian, “Of Patience,” trans. S. Thelwall, in A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, and A.C. Coxe (eds.), Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 3 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1895), URL: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0325.htm. See also David Baily Harned, Patience: How We Wait Upon the World (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1997).
Brian Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 152 (emphasis in original).
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §274.
Solomon, op. cit., p. 140.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §334.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “What the Germans Lack,” §6, in Nietzsche, The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman (eds.), trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
See Alfano, op. cit., on the importance of curiosity for Nietzsche.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man,” §19.
Nietzsche, Daybreak, §550.
Ibid., §550.
Nietzsche, Daybreak, §467.
See Alfano, op. cit., and Solomon, op. cit., and Christine Daigle, “Nietzsche: Virtue Ethics…Virtue Politics?” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 32 (2006): 1–21. Although there is no obvious exhaustive list of Nietzschean virtues, Nietzsche does offer two brief lists which might be taken to highlight some central cases, and courage is noted in both lists. In Beyond Good and Evil §284, he lists “courage, insight, sympathy, and solitude.” In Daybreak §556, the list is honesty (“toward ourselves and whoever else is a friend to us”), bravery (“towards the enemy”), magnanimity (“towards the defeated”), and politeness. On the apparent conflict between patience and courage, see Eamonn Callan, “Patience and Courage”, Philosophy 68 (1993): 523–539.
Gregory, op. cit., p. 305.
One might further compare Nietzsche’s patience to the kind of instrumental patience advised by Schopenhauer in Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life, Chapter V, §21, in Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume 1, trans. E.F.J. Payne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001).
This phrasing comes from Philippa Foot, “Virtues and Vices,” Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002): 1–18.
An early version of this paper was presented at the 2013 meeting of the Tennessee Philosophical Association. My thanks to Peter Antich for his thoughtful comments on that version and to the audience (including my friend David Kaspar) for helpful discussion. Thanks also to two anonymous referees for this journal whose suggestions helped me to sharpen the discussion at several points in the paper.
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Pianalto, M. Nietzschean Patience. J Value Inquiry 50, 141–152 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9503-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9503-z