Метафилософското значение на страданието във философията на Боеций, Платон и Ницше
The Metaphilosophical Meaning of Suffering in the Philosophy of Boethius, Plato and Nietzsche

Summary/Abstract: Within the following text our main goal is to offer a metaphilosophical reflection on the role of suffering within the philosophy of Boethius, Plato, and Nietzsche. By metaphilosophy we understand the discipline that is engaged with questions such as the following: "What is philosophy?", "How philosophy is done?" and "Why should we do philosophy? "Metaphilosophy is not a discipline that is on the "outside" of philosophy or even a sort of non-philosophical enterprise. The insight which it should provide comes from the "inside" of philosophy. It is based on the understanding that whenever we philosophize and offer explicit answers to philosophical questions, there exists an implicit layer containing our presupposed understanding of what philosophy is, how it works, and why it is meaningful to practice it. Therefore, within the discipline of metaphilosophy we investigate how philosophy conceives itself by asking how philosophy is done. Otherwise put, metaphilosophy is the thorough reflection on the ground/s of philosophy. For a reason specified above, a great deal of the metaphilosophical enquiry is based on methodological reflection.A favored metaphilosophical approach to which we will adhere is the one which Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattary elaborate in their book „What is philosophy?“ We also engage into some argumentation in defense of metaphilosophy and our usage of Deleuze and Guattari`s conception as a metaphilosophical one, thereby showing that there is no problem to consider their work as metaphilosophical in nature. We have noticed that within the literature on metaphilosophy Deleuze and Guattari`s approach is rather neglected. Our second aim, besides the one focusing on the role of suffering, is to evoke the interest towards Deleuze and Guattari in metaphilosophy.We take Boethius, Plato, and Nietzsche as authors whose starting point is namely suffering and thereafter expand on how suffering is integrated into their philosophies. A motive that is common to all of them is that philosophy should somehow cure us from suffering. We show that suffering, in relation to the opposition between convalescence and disease, could be a positive factor for the establishment of the philosophical enterprise. We focus mostly on Boethius and Plato because Nietzsche already explicitly claimed against Platonism that suffering and passion are by no means negative – for him they are constitutive, i.e positive, in regards to the creative process that characterizes Being, which Nietzsche calls "Will to Power". It would be satisfactory simply to indicate certain passages and motives within his thought that have the potential to establish a continuity with Boethius and Plato than a discontinuity.A third aim of our reflection or investigation, that will be outlined within the account of Boethius, consists in showing that Deleuze and Guattari`s own methodology in explaining philosophy enables us to think the possibility of "theistic" philosophy. We argue here against the claim of Deleuze and Guattari that Christian philosophy in order to be a legitimate philosophy has to be "atheistic". Our main argument is that the applicability of their methodology does not completely rule out the theistic element nor renders it a mere "transcendent illusion".What we find to be intriguing and intertwined with suffering is the fact that philosophy for these three philosophers is linked to crime, evaluation, and transgression. Philosophy is an act of transgressing and evaluating the conventional societal norms, which would entail that it be qualified as a criminal activity or subversion against political order. In regards to Boethius we see how in his „Consolatio philosophiae“ philosophy is condemned namely for its incongruity with the social order that is built on moral degradation and estrangement from truth. As far as Plato is concerned, by adhering to Georges Battaile`s conception of eroticism and Plato`s exposition of Eros in „Symposium“, we show that suffering and transgression have a lot to do with the dialectical movement of Eros, which emancipates us from the bodily prison and the shady world of the unphilosophical, i.e. untruthful and opinionated thought. In Nietzsche the eternally recurrent differentiation or transformation of everything undermines the vision of stability that comes with every order. This would mean that the transgressive movement is the will to overcome or, otherwise put, the Will to Power that is immanent to all of reality. The common thread between these three thinkers is that suffering, and transgression are eventually the same – adhering to the latter means adhering to the former and vice versa. If transgression is indispensable from philosophy and plays a positive role regarding the meaningfulness and conduct of philosophy, then this is equally valid about suffering too; for suffering turns out to be a positive condition for the possibility of philosophy. In this dialectical movement we see the value of philosophy regarding the transformation of our lives – an existential motive that puts Boethius, Plato, and Nietzsche on the same metaphilosophical plane.

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