One might see the question put in different ways. First, if it is a matter of the activation of needs grounded in our creatureliness, does one obey the command of life when this form of the will is perhaps acknowledged either theoretically or practically to be the dominant and possibly even the only dominant one? Does the possibility of a glutton like Lucullus or of a Don Juan in the erotic field mean the possibility of a man who is really “seeing life,” as the phrase goes for such people? Are we really “living life to the full” when that activation is given that role? Again, can the economic outlook of a peasant of the old style, with its exclusive orientation to the satisfaction of needs, really do justice to the will to live when this is properly understood? Again, in individual and social life are there not obvious exaggerations of the will for satisfaction in this most primitive respect—exaggerations which no longer stand in any relation to the need that is to be satisfied, or, therefore, to the life-act to which the needs go back, so that we have a pointless enjoyment which no longer seems to be enjoyment but a stupid animality in which one cannot even admire the animal force? Again, are there not aberrant forms and corruptions of this will for satisfaction which, far from really satisfying the needs of hunger and love, threaten the life-act itself? We have in mind alcoholism and prostitution, and also the puzzling dilemma of so-called homosexuals. Yet the question of too little satisfaction arises as well as that of too much. It might be asked, e.g., whether the modern working class had to act as it did when one day, in distinction to the satisfied proletariat of an earlier age, it could no longer be content with the minimal existence allotted to it by employers but took mass measures to better its situation in the most primitive way. Again, if someone willingly—and this might mean with a weak will—stops taking what is needed by way of food or sleep, then, no matter how he may try to justify himself, this person will have to consider not only whether he can do this but also whether he should. And he who theoretically or practically accepts the great possibility of the voluntary celibacy that has often been practiced in the religious sphere, even though he do it for the kingdom of heaven’s sake, cannot evade the question (Luther, as is well known, put it with particular emphasis) how this arbitrary nonsatisfaction of the need of sex really relates to the command of creation regarding human life, in which this need is included. Whether the modern vocation of the hunger-virtuoso, or the skills pursued in India regarding the nonactivation of these primitive forces, are really possibilities and not perverse impossibilities in the light of the command, can hardly be a question any more; they resemble, in this respect, some of the forms of activation. But if ethics is to keep to the point, then even in face of the most striking impossibilities it must keep on putting questions, or rather showing that they are already put. It should not hand out either good or bad testimonies. It should not judge. Knowing the radical antithesis of good and bad, it should point to the command of God which alone can really and properly judge, and which will tell each of us what is good and bad.
Another noteworthy form of the will to live may be seen in the will to be healthy. Our life does not merely will to be lived, i.e., preserved directly from death. Nor does it will to be lived merely in satisfaction of those primitive needs. It wills to be lived also in the maintaining and achieving of its possibilities, in power. To be healthy is to be in possession of one’s physical and intellectual powers. It is to will what is necessary to achieve and assert these powers. It lies in the nature of the case that physical powers must constitute the direct object of this aggressive will, and intellectual powers the indirect object. Again it should be clear that in itself this will is neither good nor bad, but that the command is present here, too, with its question. The command enters in first where it is not perhaps considered that we owe our life that higher affirmation, the maintaining and activating of its possibilities. Are not air and light and water and mobility, etc., there to fulfill this higher affirmation, and is not hygiene, therefore, commanded of us? Perhaps concretely this or that diet? Perhaps this or that sporting activity? Perhaps prophylactically or in case of emergency the use of the services of a physician? May we leave these possibilities unused? We must ask this no matter what the answer may be. Nor can we answer lightly by boasting about the health of the soul apart from that of the body, as though man were not a unity of body and soul in which, to an uncontrollable extent, the whole is healthy or the whole is sick, and as though the boasting about the spirit might not easily be occasioned more by the indolence of the flesh than the vitality of the spirit. Not to speak of a resignation in principle to the possibility of sickness threatening our vital force and perhaps even our life—a resignation for which it might be hard to assume responsibility in face of the fact that Jesus constantly thought it necessary to set up against sickness the sign of the imminent kingdom of God in the form of his miracles of healing. A serious affirmation of life in this regard seems to be commanded, then, not only by creation but also by the hope of the resurrection. Yet the question of the command will also arise when people are perhaps too deeply concerned about what is good or not good for them, when sun, air, and water, the power of various herbs and fruits, the dynamism of hardened arm and leg muscles, and perhaps the possibilities of the medical art have become, in the consciousness of man, something like benevolent demons to which worship and belief are brought and which are served with a concentration and enthusiasm which make it seem dubious whether it really is a matter of the health of real man, i.e., the total man. May it be that concern for a very healthy body has given rise to a threat to the healthy mind? And should we not also consider whether it is perceived that what is always at issue is the health of the life which is not our own but is at the disposal of the Creator, so that health is unequivocally present only when his power of disposal is obeyed, which concretely might mean a strong indifference to the question of what is good for us, an intentional lack of concern about the desires of our dear body and our even dearer soul, a readiness to serve the same Creator with a suffering body and a suffering soul, not in strength but in weakness, not in health but in sickness, not living but dying? Resignation in face of sickness and the will to be healthy at all costs seem to be equally impossible in relation to the command. Both bravery in the upholding of health and bravery in surrendering it seem to be commanded in the same way by the command. That we live with force the life that is loaned to us is what it wills from us either one way or the other. We may rely upon the fact that its reality is unequivocal. Ethical reflection has rendered its service, however, when it has described this reality with approximate completeness.
We look higher when we understand the will to live as the affirmation of pleasure, as the will to be happy. It would make no sense, and would be a very superficial understanding of Kant, if we were not to apply the ethical question to this determination of the will to live too, but were to allow moral action to begin only where this determination is supposedly excluded. Supposedly, for a will to live in which it really is excluded exists only in books and not in real people. In all that we want we also want at least to be happy. Life wills to be lived intensively as well as extensivly. It wills to be lived as life and wonder, in its glory, in the whole unheard of beauty of its reality as this is grounded in the life of God. This is obviously in view when we are in the happy position of being able to confess with Hutten that it is a “pleasure” to be alive;10 [this] is in view whenever a person may be happy, knowing that happiness exists and can be his too. In distinction from health, happiness is the intensive enhancement of the affirmation of life. In itself the will to be happy, too, is neither good nor bad, but it is a very problematical will. Why should it not be good?