zweckmaeszigkeit

Updated: May 1, 2025

All pleasure, we read, comes from the perception of Zweckmaeszigkeit, that is, the quality of being adapted to the furtherance of an end. Since man is meant to be happy and naturally seeks happiness, human suffering affects us primarily as a 'maladaptation', and so gives us pain. But in this very pain our reason recognizes a higher 'adaptation', since we are incited by it to activity.

Calvin Thomas - The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller