The Value of Life 219spiritual drives, and their satisfaction will be striven for de-
spite the accompanying pain. The pursuit of happiness that
pessimism wishes to eliminate is quite nonexistent. We
perform the tasks we must because, once we have really
recognized their nature, it is in our very nature towant to
perform them.
Pessimistic ethics asserts that we can devote ourselves
to what we recognize as our life’s task only once we have
abandoned the pursuit of happiness. But no ethics can in-
vent any life tasks other than realizing what human de-
sires demand and fulfilling our ethical ideals. No ethics
can take away our pleasure in the fulfillment of our de-
sires. If the pessimist says, “Do not strive for pleasure,
you can never attain it, but strive for what you recognize
to be your task,” the response must be: “But this is how
human beings already are.” The claim that humans strive
merely for happiness is the invention of a philosophy
gone astray. We strive for satisfaction of what our essen-
tial nature desires, and we have in view the concrete ob-
jects of this striving and not some abstract “happiness.”
Fulfillment of such striving is a pleasure. When pessimis-
tic ethics demands that you strive, not for pleasure, but
for what you have recognized as your life’s task, it is
pointing to what humans by their naturewant. Human be-
ings do not need to be turned upside down by philosophy;
they do not need to throw away their nature in order to be
ethical. Morality lies in striving for a goal recognized as
just; and it is human nature to pursue the goal as long as
the pain involved does not cripple the desire for it. This
is the nature of all real willing. Ethics is not based on the