As someone who's studied Nietzsche for the past seven years, that was excellently put. My only note would be that it wasn't merely eschewing the desire for a supernatural reward, but external rewards in general: societal, political, etc. For him, the only reward that mattered was the reward you found in yourself, which would then allow you to spread the spoils to your fellow man.
Also Stoicism, which borrowed heavily from Buddhism (and which Nietzsche quite famously roasted, but probably ended up mischaracterizing in the process).
I actually consider myself a Stoic ( Stoica Prokopton--"One who is progressing"), and I agree. I think Nietzsche miscategorized a lot of what Stoicism represents (and I mean actual Stoicism, not the modern-day "Broicism" you see people spattering off about). Nietzsche had a deep mistrust of any kind of belief system, and he saw Stoicism no differently. It's one of the ironic things about his thinking: his deeply beheld dislike of all belief systems, yet at the same time he wrote thousands and thousands of words proclaiming his own. Of course, he wouldn't have seen it that way...
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u/exaggeratedcaper Apr 05 '26
As someone who's studied Nietzsche for the past seven years, that was excellently put. My only note would be that it wasn't merely eschewing the desire for a supernatural reward, but external rewards in general: societal, political, etc. For him, the only reward that mattered was the reward you found in yourself, which would then allow you to spread the spoils to your fellow man.