Tragedy, Transcendence, and the Meaning of Being Human

  Nietzsche, Chamfort, Socrates, Jesus, and Blade Runner

 

Daily, the slings and arrows of outrageous - or really irritating - fortune arrive. How to respond? What to be - broken, bronzed, or radically open? I had occasion, quite by accident or perhaps serendipity, to reflect again on these questions recently. On Christmas Day, I reread the following quote in The Gay Science, by Nietzsche, in Part Two, aphorism # 95, purporting to be the last words of the French writer Chamfort to a friend: “Ah! Mon ami, je m’en vais enfin de ce monde, où il faut que le cœur se brise ou se bronze.” In English, we might say, “Ah, my friend, finally, I am about to leave this world where the heart must break or become bronze.” 

My mind interrogated this quote without any direction from me. Given that it was Christmas, a few quotations from the New Testament came to mind. I am happy to take wisdom, justice, and humanity wherever I find them. God knows, we are often lost and suffering. 

“Love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John) “Love thy neighbour as yourself.” (Matthew) “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." (Matthew). This quote always astounds me: how could a person become so wise and so... titanic in humility?

Then we have Jesus replying to Nicodemus’ question of how to be born again, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (John) And finally, what is the consequence of such radical love? “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (John)

As many know, one can interpret the words "Kingdom of heaven" or “Kingdom of God” and “peace” as referring not to a future event but to a present reality with the freedom of a radically open, non-egoistical understanding, available now to all of us. This same understanding, or something similar, is found in many religious traditions, such as Zen and Hinduism, as well as in some philosophical and poetic visions. 

As I mulled these questions over, I read Nietzsche's Aphorism #95 more closely and a bit about Chamfort on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is usually quite good, and I am happy to use it for a general overview of something, to study more carefully later. I will also use ChatGPT in the same limited way. As for the rest, it was critical to show my own human way in trying to move towards an answer here, if not a universal answer cast in bronze, at least a provisional answer to get me through the day.

Sébastien Chamfort (1741-94) was a French writer and aphorist and one of the models for Nietzsche’s use of aphorisms. According to Walter Kaufmann, editor and translator of The Gay Science, when the French Revolution began, Chamfort was "one of the first to storm the Bastille." However, he later spoke "as sarcastically" about the leaders of the Revolution as he had about the Royal Court, and was "arrested, released, and tried to kill himself before being rearrested," and died a few days later. 

Wikipedia adds more flesh to Chamfort’s last days, explaining, “He dictated to those who came to arrest him the well-known declaration “Moi, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort, déclare avoir voulu mourir en homme libre plutôt que d'être reconduit en esclave dans une maison d'arrêt ( "I, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort, hereby declare my wish to die a free man rather than to be brought (again) as a slave in a prison"). According to this version, he died in Paris the following year, after "suffering intensely." And it was just before his death that he stated his "sarcastic bon mot" to a friend. It is hard to imagine more unforgiving times for subtlety and wit.

My focus in this note is not Chamfort, as such, but his quote in Nietzsche’s aphorism. Let me, however, add one more element to this brief picture of a flawed and fascinating man from an essay in The Oxonian Review titled “Chamfort and the Failure of Irony,” by Nicholas Romanos. After discussing Chamfort's initial support of the Revolution, Romanos continues, “But, in the end, he saw through the Revolution as well, and its bloody excesses: the revolutionary motto Fraternity of death! He often said, meant nothing other than " Be my brother or I’ll kill you! ‘Those people’s fraternity is that of Cain and Abel.’”

The more one knows about Chamfort, the more one sees the subtlety of Nietzsche’s aphorism. I invite the reader to read it for themselves. To return to our beginning and Chamfort’s quote – universalised now as a potential principle of wisdom or understanding, I ask again: In this hard and often tragic world, must the heart break or become bronze? Or both? From my reading of history, literature, and current events, and from what I have seen with my own eyes, a breaking heart comes to all of us, sooner or later. By bronze, do we mean strength as a citadel, or as a prison? It is no surprise that the phrase "tender-hearted" is usually used to refer to the young. 

Perhaps there are other ways to see this quote, beyond the dichotomy of the breaking and the bronze, or before them. One way is that of Socrates. I hope to write a lot about this strange and wondrous man on this new blog. He may have had the strength of bronze, but he was also open to his city and its citizens. He was also radically open to justice and truth as he tried to understand them. His love of these things, of horizons beyond human frailty, beyond even one's death, helped him remain calm despite a death sentence, if we are to believe Plato. And, Plato would have been unlikely to fabricate a different Socrates in his trial and death than the one whom the Athenians themselves knew.

A second kind of transcendence is the love practiced by Jesus. We find such love everywhere, daily, side by side with corruption and tragedy. Let me illustrate its power with one tragic example. On October 22nd, 2014, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Corporal Nathan Cirillo, a veteran of Afghanistan, was shot in the back twice and killed while on ceremonial sentry duty at the National War Memorial by a man angry at the Canadian Government. In accordance with the custom at the time for ceremonial duties, Corporal Cirillo’s gun was unloaded. So far, there is no love here, only an angry and deranged killer, and a victim who had every right to defend himself had he been able. 

How could love enter such an awful situation? After Corporal Cirillo was shot, the killer fled, and several bystanders came to try to help. One was a nurse, and the second person was lawyer Barbara Winters. She cradled Cirillo's head and performed CPR. She later told CBC News in Canada (easily searchable on Google) that people around him were panicking, that no ambulance had yet arrived. She knew he could hear the chaos. So she spoke to Nathan Cirillo, saying repeatedly, “You are loved. Your family loves you. You're a good man. Your parents love you. All the people love you, everybody loves you.”

It is impossible to imagine anyone saying anything in those horrible moments of greater transcendent power. Ms Winters must be a special person. What else could equal or even transcend the absolute power of death?  

Let me refer to one further kind of transcendence beyond the broken and the bronze, which also may include both, before its final flight. In the first Blade Runner movie from 1982, starring Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer, there is a now-famous scene at the end, called the "Tears in Rain" speech. Ford's character, a former cop, Rick Deckard, “reluctantly” agrees to hunt down a group of replicants (synthetic humans) who had been bio-engineered to work essentially as slaves on space colonies by the powerful Tyrell Corporation. Several escape and return to Earth. Harrison Ford's character tracks them down and kills them. 

At the end of a fight with the replicant leader, Roy Batty, played magisterially by Hauer, Harrison Ford's character is hanging over the city, holding onto a corroded steel beam. Unexpectedly, Hauer's character returns from another building and crouches over Ford's character. What will he do? We have sympathy for him as a rebel leader fighting against enslavement. On the other hand, he is no saint and has killed mercilessly beyond what was necessary in his sojourn on earth. 

He wanted to find the chief engineer who designed him, his God, to see if his death sentence of obselance could be overturned. It could not. One can well imagine anyone being angry. Batty murders the scientist horribly by plunging his hands through the man’s eyeballs. So now, this same Roy Batty is standing over an exhausted cop trying to back up. What will happen?

Most of us know now, yet it remains a spine-tingling moment, even after several viewings. Ford's character can no longer hold onto the beam. He lets go and falls. At that moment, with supreme speed and power, Hauer's character reaches down and, with one hand that had a nail driven into it during the fight, lifts Ford's character to safety and throws him down. Then he kneels beside him and speaks. Here is the clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoAzpa1x7jU

I let the video speak for itself. Let me close with one of my favourite quotes related to Taoism, which seems to me to speak to our theme: “He whom the Gods wish to save, they give compassion.

Robert Girvan, December 31, 2025