wisdom of Silenus

English

Noun

wisdom of Silenus (uncountable)

1. (philosophy) The idea that it is wisest for humans to have never been born, and having been born, it is wisest that they die soon.
   • 1869 AD, Friedrich Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy

     "There is an old legend that king Midas for a long time hunted the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, in the forests, without catching him. When Silenus finally fell into the king’s hands, the king asked what was the best thing of all for men, the very finest. The daemon remained silent, motionless and inflexible, until, compelled by the king, he finally broke out into shrill laughter and said these words, “Suffering creature, born for a day, child of accident and toil, why are you forcing me to say what would give you the greatest pleasure not to hear? The very best thing for you is totally unreachable: not to have been born, not to exist, to be nothing. The second best thing for you, however, is this — to die soon.” What is the relationship between the Olympian world of the gods and this popular wisdom? It is like the relationship of the entrancing vision of the tortured martyr to his torments. Now, as it were, the Olympic magic mountain reveals itself and shows us its roots. The Greek knew and felt the terror and horrors of existence: in order to be able to live at all, he must have placed in front of him the gleaming dream birth of the Olympians...In this way, the gods justify the lives of men, because they themselves live it — that is the only satisfactory theodicy! Existence under the bright sunshine of such gods is experienced as worth striving for in itself, and the essential pain of the Homeric men refers to separation from that sunlight, above all in the fact that such separation is coming soon, so that people could now say of them, with a reversal of the wisdom of Silenus, “The very worst thing for them was to die soon; the second worst was to die at all.” When the laments resound now, they tell once more of short-lived Achilles, of the changes in the race of men, transformed like leaves, of the destruction of the heroic age. It is not unworthy of the greatest hero to long to live on, even as a day labourer. Thus, in the Apollonian stage, the “Will” spontaneously demands to keep on living, the Homeric man feels himself so at one with living, that even his lament becomes a song of praise."