One of my 2022 creative projects is to write about Nietzsche’s concept of health.

I intend to work my way through his published works (roughly one book a month) and attempts to extract from each one how he approaches the idea of health. I hope that I can find a common thread to his philosophy of health, which I suspect is a bookend to the much larger project of a general philosophy of health.

I do this with some trepidation. Although the metaphor of philosophers existing on mountain tops speaking to each other over both time and distance (while we mere humans simply listen to them) is overused, if Nietzsche’s philosophy is a mountain, then it is K2—one of the highest and most dangerous mountains in the world. Today’s urban-poling philosophers beware: equally beloved by the far right and far left, he would have equal contempt for both.

But his approach to health is unique—cliffs and slopes well worth climbing, and a summit view well worth reaching.

I just need to watch out for crevasses.