Nietzsche advanced “sovereign man” in the name of cultural criticism, as a countermodel to the exhausted achievement-subject. That is why “sovereign man” is a man of leisure [Muße]. A hyperactive person would have disgusted Nietzsche: the “strong soul” keeps “calm,” “moves slowly,” and “has an aversion to what’s too lively.”28 Thus Spoke

deep tiredness rises to become a form of salvation, a form of rejuvenation.

After He created it, God declared the Seventh Day holy. That is, the day of in-order-to is not sacred, but rather the day of not-to, a day on which the use of the useless proves possible. It is a day of tiredness.

burnout represents the pathological consequence of voluntary self-exploitation.

Auto-exploitation is more efficient than allo-exploitation because a deceptive feeling of freedom accompanies it. The exploiter is simultaneously the exploited. Exploitation now occurs without domination. That is what makes self-exploitation so efficient. The capitalist system is switching from allo-exploitation to auto-exploitation in order to

Handke’s tiredness is not “I-tiredness”; it is not the tiredness of an exhausted ego. He calls it “we-tiredness” (15). I am not tired “of you,” as he puts it, but rather I am tired “with you”

The capitalist economy absolutizes survival. It is not concerned with the good life.30 It is sustained by the illusion that more capital produces more life, which means a greater capacity for living. The rigid, rigorous separation between life and death casts a spell of ghostly stiffness over life itself. Concern about living the good life yields

There are two forms of potency. Positive potency is the power to do something. Negative potency, in contrast, is the power not to do—to adopt Nietzsche’s phrasing, the power to say no.

The vita contemplativa is not a matter of passive affirmation and being open to whatever happens. Instead, it offers resistance to crowding, intrusive stimuli.