The camel, the lion and the child: what they mean according to Nietzsche’s philosophy

Looking for a way to simplify and divide man’s life into three different phases very characterized by their characteristics, The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche used the terms “camel,” “lion,” and “child” to do so.

Even if at first glance they do not seem to have any relationship, the truth is that they are three different levels ranging from the inability to define oneself and act on one’s own initiative to the maximum freedom of thought and action.

The camel, lion and child serve to represent the evolutionary state and level of consciousness that a person goes through throughout their life.

Being in the first evolutionary state, Nietzsche qualifies it as a “camel”, since one does not yet possess a own thinking ability and resembles that of the social and cultural group that surrounds it.

That is, the person It still doesn’t have its own identity and doesn’t question people or the context that surrounds it.. On the contrary, we follow them unconditionally without asking too many questions about them.

The next step is to begin to discover yourself in the face of need and doubt knowing who we are, where we come from and what our purpose in the world is. This path will lead people to discover what their essence is.

The chosen term can be associated with the idea of stop carrying an unnecessary burden, to become someone more independent and with more drive.

The last phase is that of the child, in which he finds maximum autonomy after having put aside the burdens that have accompanied him throughout his life.

Being a free being, people no longer follow the established guidelines dictated by their social group. In his opinion philosopherit means rediscovering the seriousness you had as a child while playing.

Some of Nietzsche’s most emblematic phrases

• The higher we climb, the smaller we seem to those who cannot fly.
• We bear a bad conscience more easily than a bad reputation.
• I would only believe in a god who could dance.
• I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
• Christianity is not to be adorned or embellished: it has waged deadly war on that type of superior man, it has extracted from those instincts, by distillation, the evil, the bad man – the strong man regarded as the typically reprehensible man, like a reprobate man.
• Where you can’t love more you have to go.
• The real world is much smaller than the imaginary world.
• From the school of the war of life. What does not kill me makes me stronger.
• Monkeys are too good for man to descend from them.
• Those who have something to live for are capable of facing all the hows.
• Only those who build the future have the right to judge the past.
• You should die with pride when you can no longer live with pride.
• I am distressed by the idea of ​​having my intelligence all to myself, because it is better to give than to have.
• I’m not a man, I’m a battlefield.