Latest / The Philosophy Insights Collection / 06 - We Scholars - Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche

Transcript

06 - We Scholars - Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche · The Philosophy Insights Collection

0:01
Chapter six we Scholars two hundred four. At the risk that moralizing may also
0:13
reveal itself here as that which it has always been, namely resolutely Montreur ses
0:20
pays. According to Balzac, I would venture to protest against an improper and
0:27
injurious alteration of rank, which, quite unnoticed, and as if with the
0:32
best conscience, threatens nowadays to establish itself in the relations of science and philosophy.
0:40
I mean to say that one must have the right out of one's own
0:44
experience. Experience, as it seems to me, always implies unfortunate experience to
0:52
treat of such an important question of rank, so as not to speak of
0:56
color like the blind, or against science like women and artists. Ah,
1:03
this dreadful science sigh their instinct and their shame. It always finds things out.
1:11
The declaration of independence of the scientific man, his emancipation from philosophy is
1:19
one of the subtler after effects of democratic organization and disorganization. The self glorification
1:26
and self conceitedness of the learned man is now everywhere in full bloom and in
1:32
its best springtime. Which does not mean to imply that in this case self
1:38
praise smells sweet. Here also the instinct of the populace cries freedom from all
1:46
masters. And after science has, with the happiest results, resisted theology,
1:55
whose handmaid it had been too long, it now proposes, in its wantonness
2:00
and indiscretion, to lay down laws for philosophy, and in its turn to
2:06
play the master. What am I saying to play the philosopher on its own
2:12
account? My memory, the memory of a scientific man. If you please,
2:17
teams with the naivetes of insolence which I have heard about philosophy and philosophers
2:24
from young naturalists and old physicians, not to mention the most cultured and most
2:31
conceited of all learned men, the philologists and schoolmasters, who are both the
2:38
one and the other by profession. On one occasion, it was the specialist
2:45
and the jack horner who instinctively stood on the defensive against all synthetic tasks and
2:51
capabilities. At another time, it was the industrious worker who had got a
2:57
scent of otium and refined love uxuriousness in the internal economy of the philosopher,
3:04
and felt himself aggrieved and belittled thereby. On another occasion, it was the
3:09
color blindness of the utilitarian who sees nothing in philosophy but a series of refuted
3:16
systems and an extravagant expenditure, which does nobody any good. At another time,
3:24
the fear of disguised mysticism and of the boundary adjustment of knowledge became conspicuous.
3:31
At another time the disregard of individual philosophers, which had involuntarily extended to
3:38
disregard of philosophy generally in fine I found most frequently behind the proud disdain of
3:46
philosophy in young scholars, the evil after effect of some particular philosopher to whom
3:53
on the whole obedience had been forsworn, without, however, the spell of
4:00
his scornful estimates of other philosophers having been got rid of, the result of
4:05
being a general ill will to all philosophy. Such seems to me, for
4:12
instance, the after effect of Schopenhauer on the most modern Germany. By his
4:17
unintelligent rage against Hegel, he has succeeded in severing the whole of the last
4:24
generation of Germans from its connection with German culture, which culture, all things
4:30
considered, has been an elevation and a divining refinement of the historical sense.
4:36
But precisely at this point Schopenhauer himself was poor, irreceptive and un German to
4:44
the extent of ingeniousness. On the whole. Speaking generally, it may just
4:51
have been the humanness, all too humanness of the modern philosophers themselves, in
4:58
short, their contemptibleness, which has injured most radically the reverence for philosophy and
5:04
opened the doors to the instinct of the populace. Let It but be acknowledged
5:10
to what an extent our modern world diverges from the whole style of the world
5:15
of Heraclitis, Plato, Empedocles, and whatever else all the royal and magnificent
5:21
anchorites of the spirit were called, And with what justice an honest man of
5:28
science may feel himself of a better family and origin in view of such representatives
5:33
of philosophy, who, owing to the fashion of the present day, are
5:39
just as much aloft as they are down below. In Germany, for instance,
5:44
the two lions of Berlin, the anarchist eugen During and the amalgamist Edouard
5:50
von Hartmann. It is especially the site of those hotchpotch philosophers who call themselves
5:58
realists or positivists, which is calculated to implant a dangerous distrust in the soul
6:05
of a young and ambitious scholar. Those philosophers at the best are themselves but
6:13
scholars and specialists. That is very evident. All of them are persons who
6:18
have been vanquished and brought back again under the dominion of science, who at
6:26
one time or another claimed more from themselves without having a right to the more
6:31
and its responsibility, and who now creditably, rancorously and vindictively represent in word
6:42
and deed, disbelief in the master task and supremacy of philosophy. After all,
6:49
how could it be otherwise? Science flourishes nowadays and has the good conscience
6:57
clearly visible on its countenance, while that to which the entire modern philosophy has
7:02
gradually sunk, the remnant of philosophy of the present day, excites distrust and
7:09
displeasure, if not scorn and pity. Philosophy reduced to a theory of knowledge
7:17
no more in fact than a diffident science of epochs and doctrine of forbearance,
7:23
a philosophy that never even gets beyond the threshold and rigorously denies itself the right
7:30
to enter. That is philosophy in its last throes an end, an agony,
7:38
something that awakens pity. How could such a philosophy Rule two hundred five.
7:48
The dangers that beset the evolution of the philosopher are in fact so manifold
7:55
nowadays that one might doubt whether this fruit could still come to maturity. The
8:01
extent and towering structure of the sciences have increased enormously, and therewith also the
8:09
probability that the philosopher will grow tired even as a learner, or will attach
8:16
himself somewhere and specialize, so that he will no longer attain to his elevation,
8:22
that is to say, to his superspection, his circumspection, and his
8:28
despection. Or he gets aloft too late when the best of his maturity and
8:35
strength is past, or when he is impaired, coarsened, and deteriorated,
8:41
so that his view, his general estimate of things, is no longer of
8:48
much importance. It is perhaps just the refinement of his intellectual conscience that makes
8:54
him hesitate and linger on the way he dreads the tempt to become a dilettante,
9:01
a millipede, a milla antenna. He knows too well that as a
9:07
discerner, one who has lost his self respect no longer commands, no longer
9:13
leads, unless he should aspire to become a great play actor, a philosophical
9:18
cagliostro and spiritual rat catcher, in short, a misleader. This is,
9:26
in the last instance, a question of taste, if it has not really
9:31
been a question of conscience. To double once more the philosopher's difficulties. There
9:37
is also the fact that he demands from himself a verdict a yea or nay,
9:45
not concerning science, but concerning life and the worth of life. He
9:50
learns unwillingly to believe that it is his right and even his duty to obtain
9:56
this verdict, and he has to seek his way to the right and the
10:00
belief only through the most extensive, perhaps disturbing, and destroying experiences, often
10:09
hesitating, doubting, and dumbfounded. In fact, the philosopher has long been
10:16
mistaken and confused by the multitude, either with the scientific man and ideal scholar,
10:22
or with the religiously elevated, de sensualised, desecularised, visionary and god
10:30
intoxicated man. And even yet when one hears anybody praised because he lives wisely
10:37
or as a philosopher, it hardly means anything more than prudently, and a
10:45
part wisdom that seems to the populace to be a kind of flight, a
10:52
means and artifice for withdrawing successfully from a bad game. But the genuine philosopher,
11:00
does it not seem so to us, my friends, lives unphilosophically and
11:05
unwisely, above all imprudently, and feels the obligation and burden of a hundred
11:13
attempts and temptations of life. He risks himself constantly. He plays this bad
11:20
game two hundred six in relation to the genius, that is to say,
11:31
a being who either engenders or produces both words understood in their fullest sense,
11:39
the man of learning, the scientific average man has always something of the old
11:45
maid about him, for like her, he is not conversant with the two
11:50
principal functions of man. To both, of course, to the scholar and
11:54
to the old Maid, one concedes respectability as if by way of indemnification.
12:01
In these cases one emphasizes the respectability, and yet in the compulsion of this
12:09
concession one has the same admixture of vexation. Let us examine more closely what
12:16
is the scientific man. Firstly, a commonplace type of man, with commonplace
12:22
virtues, that is to say, a non ruling, non authoritative, and
12:28
non self sufficient type of man. He possesses industry, patient adaptableness to rank
12:37
and file, equability and moderation in capacity and requirement. He has the instinct
12:43
for people like himself and for that which they require, for instance, the
12:50
portion of independence and green meadow, without which there is no rest from labor.
12:56
The claim to honor and consideration, which first and foremost presupposes recognition and
13:03
recognizability, the sunshine of a good name, the perpetual ratification of his value
13:09
and usefulness, with which the inward distrust which lies at the bottom of the
13:15
heart of all dependent men and gregarious animals, has again and again to be
13:20
overcome. The learned man, as is appropriate, has also maladies and faults
13:28
of an ignoble kind. He is full of petty envy, and has a
13:33
lynx eye for the weak points in those natures to whose elevations he cannot attain.
13:41
He is confiding, yet only as one who lets himself go but does
13:45
not flow, and precisely before the man of the great current, he stands
13:50
all the colder and more reserved. His eye is then like a smooth and
13:56
irresponsive lake, which is no longer moved by a rapture or sympathy. The
14:03
worst and most dangerous thing of which a scholar is capable results from the instinct
14:09
of mediocrity of his type, from the Jesuitism of mediocrity, which labors instinctively
14:16
for the destruction of the exceptional man, and endeavors to break, or still
14:22
better, to relax every bent bow, To relax, of course, with
14:28
consideration, and naturally with an indulgent hand, to relax with confiding sympathy.
14:35
That is the real art of Jesuitism, which has always understood how to introduce
14:41
itself as the religion of sympathy two hundred seven. However, gratefully one may
14:50
welcome the objective spirit, and who has not been sick to death of all
14:54
subjectivity and its confounded ipsisimosity. In the end, however, one must learn
15:01
caution, even with regard to one's gratitude, and put a stop to the
15:07
exaggeration with which the unselfing and depersonalizing of the spirit has recently been celebrated,
15:15
as if it were the goal in itself, as if it were salvation and
15:20
glorification, as is especially accustomed to happen in the pessimist school, which has
15:26
also in its turn good reasons for paying the highest honors to disinterested knowledge.
15:35
The objective man, who no longer curses and scolds like the pessimist, the
15:41
ideal man of learning, in whom the scientific instinct blossoms forth fully after a
15:46
thousand complete and partial failures, is assuredly one of the most costly instruments that
15:54
exist. But his place is in the hand of one who is more powerful.
16:00
He is only an instrument. We may say he is a mirror.
16:04
He is no purpose in himself. The objective man is, in truth a
16:11
mirror, accustomed to prostration. Before everything that wants to be known, with
16:15
such desires only as knowing or reflecting implies, he waits until something comes,
16:22
and then expands himself sensitively, so that even the light footsteps and gliding past
16:29
of spiritual beings may not be lost on his surface and film. Whatever personality
16:37
he still possesses seems to him accidental, arbitrary, or still oftener disturbing.
16:45
So much has he come to regard himself as the passage and reflection of outside
16:49
forms and events. He calls up the recollection of himself with an effort,
16:56
and not infrequently wrongly. He read confounds himself with other persons. He makes
17:03
mistakes with regard to his own needs, and here only is he unrefined and
17:08
negligent. Perhaps he is troubled about the health, or the pettiness and confined
17:15
atmosphere of wife and friend, or the lack of companions and society. Indeed
17:22
he sets himself to reflect on his suffering, but in vain his thoughts already
17:29
rove away to the more general case. And tomorrow he knows as little as
17:33
he knew yesterday how to help himself. He does not now take himself seriously
17:40
and devote time to himself. He is serene not from lack of trouble,
17:45
but from lack of capacity for grasping and dealing with his trouble. The habitual
17:52
complaisance with respect to all objects and experiences, the radiant and impartial hospitality with
18:00
which he receives everything that comes his way, his habit of inconsiderate good nature,
18:07
of dangerous indifference. As to yea and nay alas there are enough of
18:12
cases in which he has to atone for these virtues of his and as man
18:18
generally he becomes far too easily the Coppet mortuum of such virtues. Should one
18:25
wish love or hatred from him? I mean love and hatred as God,
18:30
woman and animal understand them. He will do what he can and furnish what
18:36
he can. But one must not be surprised if it should not be much,
18:42
if he should show himself just at this point, to be false,
18:45
fragile, questionable, and deteriorated. His love is constrained, his hatred is
18:53
artificial and rather unto de force a slight ostentation and exaggeration. He is only
19:03
genuine so far as he can be objective. Only in his serene totality is
19:08
he still nature and natural, His mirroring and eternally self polishing soul no longer
19:18
knows how to affirm, no longer how to deny. He does not command,
19:25
neither does he destroy Genet Mepri's press green. He says with Leibniz,
19:33
let us not overlook nor undervalue the pressue. Neither is he a model man.
19:40
He does not go in advance of anyone nor after either. He places
19:45
himself generally too far off to have any reason for espousing the cause of either
19:49
good or evil. If he has been so long confounded with the philosopher,
19:56
with the caesarean trainer and dictator of civil vilization. He has had far too
20:02
much honor, and what is more essential in him has been overlooked. He
20:07
is an instrument, something of a slave, though certainly the sublimest sort of
20:11
slave, but nothing in himself Presque rheienne. The objective man is an instrument,
20:18
a costly, easily injured, easily tarnished measuring instrument and mirroring apparatus,
20:26
which is to be taken care of and respected. But he is no goal,
20:30
not outgoing nor upgoing, no complimentary man in whom the rest of existence
20:37
justifies itself, no termination, and still less a commencement, an engendering or
20:45
primary cause. Nothing hardy, powerful, self centered that wants to be master,
20:52
but rather only a soft, inflated, delicate, movable potter's form that
21:00
must wait for some kind of content and frame to shape itself. There too,
21:06
for the most part, a man without frame and content, a selfless
21:10
man, consequently, also nothing for women. In Parenthesy two hundred eight,
21:22
When a philosopher nowadays makes it known that he is not a skeptic, I
21:27
hope that has been gathered from the foregoing description of the objective spirit. People
21:33
all hear it impatiently. They regard him on that account with some apprehension.
21:38
They would like to ask so many many questions. Indeed, among timid hearers,
21:45
of whom there are now so many, he is henceforth said to be
21:49
dangerous with his repudiation of skepticism. It seems to them as if they heard
21:56
some evil, threatening sound in the distance, as if a new kind of
22:00
explosive were being tried somewhere, a dynamite of the spirit, perhaps a newly
22:07
discovered Russian nihilinae, a pessimism bonnay voluntatis, that not only denies means denial,
22:17
but dreadful thought practices denial against this kind of good will, a will
22:25
to the veritable actual negation of life. There is, as is generally acknowledged
22:30
nowadays, no better soporific and sedative than skepticism. The mild, pleasing,
22:38
lulling poppy of skepticism, and Hamlet himself is now prescribed by the doctors of
22:45
the day as an antidote to the spirit and its underground noises. Are not
22:52
our ears already full of bad sounds, say the skeptics as lovers of repose,
23:00
and almost as a kind of safety police. This subterranean nay is terrible.
23:07
Be still, ye pessimistic moles. The skeptic, in effect, that
23:11
delicate creature is far too easily frightened. His conscience is schooled so as to
23:18
start at every nay, and even at that sharp decided yea, and feel
23:23
something like a bite. Thereby yea and nay they seem to him opposed to
23:30
morality. He loves, on the contrary, to make a festival to his
23:36
virtue by a noble aloofness. While perhaps he says with Montaigne what do I
23:42
know? Or with Socrates, I know that I know nothing? Or here
23:51
I do not trust myself. No door is open to me, Or even
23:56
if the door were open, why should I enter mediately? Or what is
24:03
the use of any hasty hypotheses? It might quite well be in good taste
24:08
to make no hypotheses at all? Are you absolutely obliged to straighten at once?
24:15
What is crooked? To stuff every hole with some kind of oakum?
24:19
Is there not time enough for that? Has not the time leisure? Oh?
24:25
Ye, demons, can ye not at all? Weight? The uncertain
24:29
also has its charms. The sphinx too is a Circe, and Circe too
24:36
was a philosopher. Thus does a skeptic console himself, and in truth he
24:41
needs some consolation, for skepticism is the most spiritual expression of a certain,
24:48
many sided physiological temperament, which in ordinary language is called nervous debility and sickliness.
24:57
It arises whenever classes which have been long separated decisively and suddenly blend with
25:04
one another. In the new generation, which has inherited, as it were,
25:11
different standards and valuations in its blood, everything is disquiet, derangement,
25:18
doubt, and tentativeness. The best powers operate restrictively. The very virtues prevent
25:25
each other growing and becoming strong. Equilibrium, ballast and perpendicular stability are lacking
25:33
in body and soul. That, however, which is most diseased and degenerated
25:40
in such nondescripts is the will. They are no longer familiar with independence of
25:45
decision or the courageous feeling of pleasure in willing. They are doubtful of the
25:52
freedom of the will even in their dreams. Our present day Europe the scene
25:59
of as senseless precipitate attempt at a racial blending of classes and consequently of races,
26:07
is therefore skeptical in all its heights and depths, sometimes exhibiting the mobile
26:12
skepticism which springs impatiently and wantonly from branch to branch, sometimes with gloomy aspect,
26:21
like a cloud overcharged with interrogative signs, and often sick unto death of
26:26
its will, paralysis of will? Where do we not find this cripple sitting
26:33
nowadays? And yet how bedecked, oftentimes how seductively ornamented. There are the
26:40
finest gala dresses and disguises for this disease, And that, for instance,
26:45
most of what places itself nowadays in the showcases as objectiveness, the scientific spirit,
26:55
lart, poor lart and pure voluntary mines is only decked out skepticism and
27:03
paralysis of will. I am ready to answer for this diagnosis of the European
27:08
disease. The disease of the will is diffused unequally over Europe. It is
27:15
worst and most varied where civilisation has longest prevailed. It decreases, according as
27:22
the barbarian still or again asserts his claims, under the loose drapery of Western
27:29
culture. It is therefore in the France of today, as can be readily
27:34
disclosed and comprehended, that the will is most infirm. And France, which
27:41
has always had a masterly aptitude for converting even the portentous crisis of its spirit
27:47
into something charming and seductive, now manifests emphatically its intellectual ascendency over Europe by
27:56
being the school and exhibition of all the charms of skepticism. The power to
28:02
will and to persist moreover, in a resolution, is already somewhat stronger in
28:08
Germany, and again in the north of Germany. It is stronger than in
28:12
central Germany. It is considerably stronger in England, Spain and Corsica, associated
28:19
with phlegm in the former and with hard skulls in the latter, Not to
28:23
mention Italy, which is too young yet to know what it wants and must
28:29
first show whether it can exercise will. But it is strongest and most surprising
28:34
of all in that immense Middle Empire, where Europe, as it were,
28:40
flows back to Asia, namely in Russia. There the power to will has
28:48
been long stored up and accumulated. There, the will, uncertain whether to
28:53
be negative or affirmative, waits threateningly to be discharged. To borrow their pet
29:00
phrase from our physicists. Perhaps not only Indian wars and complications in Asia would
29:07
be necessary to free Europe from its greatest danger, but also internal subversion,
29:15
the shattering of the empire into small states, and above all the introduction of
29:19
parliamentary imbecility, together with the obligation of every one to read his newspaper at
29:26
breakfast. I do not say this as one who desires it in my heart.
29:33
I should rather prefer the contrary. I mean such an increase in the
29:37
threatening attitude of Russia that Europe would have to make up its mind to become
29:44
equally threatening, namely to acquire one will by means of a new caste to
29:51
rule over the continent, a persistent, dreadful will of its own, that
29:56
can set its aims thousands of years ahead, so that the long spun out
30:00
comedy of its petty statism and its dynastic as well as its democratic, many
30:07
willedness might finally be brought to a close. The time for petty politics is
30:15
past. The next century will bring the struggle for the dominion of the world,
30:22
the compulsion to great politics two hundred nine. As to how far the
30:32
new warlike age on which we Europeans have evidently entered may perhaps favour the growth
30:38
of another and stronger kind of skepticism. I should like to express myself preliminarily
30:45
merely by a parable which the lovers of German history will already understand, that
30:52
unscrupulous enthusiast for big, handsome grenadiers, who as King of Russia brought into
31:00
being a military and skeptical genius, and therewith in reality the new and now
31:07
triumphantly emerged type of German. The problematic, crazy father of Frederick the Great
31:15
had on one point the very knack and lucky grasp of the genius. He
31:22
knew what was then lacking in Germany, the want of which was a hundred
31:26
times more alarming and serious than any lack of culture and social form. His
31:32
ill will to the young Frederick resulted from the anxiety of a profound instinct men
31:40
were lacking, and he suspected, to his bitterest regret that his own son
31:47
was not man enough. There, however, he deceived himself. But who
31:52
would not have deceived himself in his place? He saw his son lapsed to
31:57
atheism, to the esprie, to the pleasant frivolity of clever Frenchman. He
32:05
saw in the background the great blood sucker, the spider skepticism. He suspected
32:12
the incurable wretchedness of a heart no longer hard enough either for evil or good,
32:17
and of a broken will that no longer commands, is no longer able
32:22
to command. Meanwhile, however, there grew up in his son that new
32:29
kind of harder and more dangerous skepticism. Who knows to what extent It was
32:36
encouraged just by his father's hatred and the icy melancholy of a will condemned to
32:40
solitude. The skepticism of daring manliness, which is closely related to the genius
32:47
for war and conquest, and made its first entrance into Germany in the person
32:53
of the Great Frederick. This skepticism despises and nevertheless grasps, It undermines,
33:01
and takes possession. It does not believe, but it does not thereby lose
33:07
itself. It gives the spirit a dangerous liberty, but it keeps strict guard
33:14
over the heart. It is the German form of skepticism, which, as
33:19
a continued fredericianism, risen to the highest spirituality, has kept Europe for a
33:25
considerable time under the dominion of the German spirit and its critical and historical distrust.
33:35
Owing to the insuperably strong and tough masculine character of the great German philologists
33:40
and historical critics, who rightly estimated were also all of them artists of destruction
33:49
and dissolution. A new conception of the German spirit gradually established itself, in
33:55
spite of all Romanticism in music and philosophy, in which the leaning towards masculine
34:02
skepticism was decidedly prominent, whether for instance as fearlessness of gaze, as courage
34:09
and sternness of the dissecting hand, or as resolute will to dangerous voyages of
34:16
discovery two spiritualized North Pole expeditions under barren and dangerous skies. There may be
34:25
good grounds for it when warm blooded and superficial humanitarians crossed themselves before this spirit
34:34
se esprit fetaliste ieronique mephistophiliq, as Michelais calls it not without a shudder.
34:44
But if one would realize how characteristic is the sphere of the man in the
34:49
German spirit which awakened Europe out of its dogmatic slumber, let us call to
34:54
mind the former conception which had to be overcome by this new one, and
35:00
that it is not so very long ago that a masculinized woman could dare with
35:06
unbridled presumption to recommend the Germans to the interest of Europe as gentle, good
35:12
hearted, weak willed, and poetical fools. Finally, let us only understand
35:19
profoundly enough Napoleon's astonishment when he saw Gertha. It reveals what had been regarded
35:27
for centuries as the German spirit. Voila unom. That was as much to
35:34
say, but this is a man, and I only expected to see a
35:37
German two hundred ten. Supposing then that in the picture of the philosophers of
35:47
the future, some trait suggests the question whether they must not perhaps be skeptics
35:54
in the last mentioned sense. Something in them would only be designated thereby,
36:00
and not they themselves. With equal right, they might call themselves critics,
36:06
and assuredly they will be men of experiments. By the name with which I
36:12
ventured to baptize them, I have already expressly emphasized their attempting and their love
36:17
of attempting. Is this because as critics in body and soul, they will
36:24
love to make use of experiments in a new and perhaps wider and more dangerous
36:30
sense. In their passion for knowledge, will they have to go further in
36:35
daring and painful attempts than the sensitive and pampered taste of a democratic century can
36:40
approve of. There is no doubt these coming ones will be least able to
36:47
dispense with the serious and not unscrupulous qualities which distinguish the critic from the skeptic.
36:55
I mean the certainty as to standards of worth, the councious employment of
37:00
a unity of method, though wary courage, the standing alone, and the
37:06
capacity for self responsibility. Indeed, they will avow among themselves a delight in
37:13
denial and dissection, and a certain considerate cruelty which knows how to handle the
37:20
knife surely and deftly, even when the heart bleeds. They will be sterner,
37:27
and perhaps not always towards themselves. Only then humane people may desire.
37:32
They will not deal with the truth in order that it may please them or
37:37
elevate and inspire them. They will rather have little faith in truth, bringing
37:45
with it such revels for the feelings. They will smile those rigorous spirits when
37:51
anyone says in their presence. That thought elevates me, why should it not
37:55
be true? Or that work enchance me? Why should it not be beautiful?
38:01
Or that artist enlarges me? Why should he not be great? Perhaps
38:08
they will not only have a smile, but a genuine disgust for all that
38:13
is thus rapturous, idealistic, feminine, and hermaphroditic. And if any one
38:19
could look into their inmost hearts, he would not easily find therein the intention
38:24
to reconcile Christian sentiments with antique taste, or even with modern parliamentarism, the
38:34
kind of reconciliation necessarily found even among philosophers in our very uncertain and consequently very
38:42
conciliatory century. Critical discipline and every habit that conduces to purity and rigor in
38:51
intellectual matters will not only be demanded from themselves by these philosophers of the future.
38:58
They may even make a display thereof as their special adornment. Nevertheless,
39:04
they will not want to be called critics. On that account. It will
39:07
seem to them no small indignity to philosophy to have it decreed, as is
39:13
so welcome nowadays, that philosophy itself is criticism and critical science and nothing else
39:20
whatever. Though this estimate of philosophy may enjoy the approval of all the positivists
39:28
of France and Germany, and possibly it even flattered the heart and taste of
39:32
Kant, let us call to mind the titles of his principal works. Our
39:38
new philosophers will say, notwithstanding, that critics are instruments of the philosopher,
39:45
and just on that account, as instruments, they are far from being philosophers
39:51
themselves. Even the great Chinaman of Konigsberg was only a great critic two hundred
40:00
eleven. I insist upon it that people finally cease confounding philosophical workers and in
40:08
general, scientific men with philosophers, that precisely here one should strictly give each
40:16
his own, and not give those far too much these far too little.
40:22
It may be necessary for the education of the real philosopher that he himself should
40:28
have once stood upon all those steps upon which his servants, the scientific workers
40:34
of philosophy, remain standing and must remain standing. He himself must perhaps have
40:39
been critic and dogmatist and historian, and besides poet and collector and traveler and
40:49
riddle reader and moralist and seer and free spirit, and almost everything in order
40:55
to traverse the whole range of human values and estor, and that he may
41:01
be able, with a variety of eyes and consciences to look from a height
41:07
to any distance, from a depth up to any height, from a knook
41:13
into any expanse. But all these are only preliminary conditions for his task.
41:20
This task itself demands something else. It requires him to create values. The
41:28
philosophical workers, after the excellent pattern of Kant and Hegel, have to fix
41:34
and formalize some great existing body of valuations, that is to say, former
41:40
determinations of value, creations of value which have become prevalent and are for a
41:46
time called truths, whether in the domain of the logical, the political,
41:52
moral, or the artistic. It is for these investigators to make whatever has
42:00
happened and been esteemed hitherto conspicuous, conceivable, intelligible, and manageable, to
42:07
shorten everything long, even time itself, and to subjugate the entire past,
42:15
an immense and wonderful task, in the carrying out of which all refined pride,
42:21
all tenacious will can surely find satisfaction. The real philosophers, however,
42:29
are commanders and law givers, They say, thus shall it be? They
42:36
determine first the whither and the why of mankind, and thereby set aside the
42:42
previous labor of all philosophical workers and all subjugators of the past. They grasp
42:49
at the future with a creative hand, and whatever is and was becomes for
42:54
them thereby a means, an instrument, and a hammer. Their knowing is
43:01
creating. There creating is a law. Giving Their will to truth is will
43:08
to power. Are there at present such philosophers? Have there ever been such
43:15
philosophers? Must there not be such philosophers some day? Two hundred twelve?
43:25
It is always more obvious to me that the philosopher, as a man indispensable
43:30
for the morrow and the day after the morrow, has ever found himself,
43:36
and has been obliged to find himself in contradiction to the day in which he
43:40
lives. His enemy has always been the ideal of his day. Hitherto all
43:47
those extraordinary furtherers of humanity, whom one calls philosophers, who rarely regarded themselves
43:54
as lovers of wisdom, but rather as disagreeable fools and dangerous interrogators, have
44:01
found their mission. Their hard involuntary imperative mission. In the end, however,
44:08
the greatness of their mission in being the bad conscience of their age.
44:15
In putting the vivisector's knife to the breast of the very virtues of their age,
44:20
they have betrayed their own secret. It has been for the sake of
44:23
a new greatness of man, a new untrodden path to his aggrandizement. They
44:30
have always disclosed how much hypocrisy, indolence, self indulgence, and self neglect,
44:37
how much falsehood was concealed under the most venerated types of contemporary morality,
44:44
how much virtue was outlived. They have always said, we must remove,
44:49
hence to where you are least at home. In the face of a world
44:54
of modern ideas which would like to confine every one in a corner in a
45:00
specialty, a philosopher, if there could be philosophers nowadays, would be compelled
45:06
to place the greatness of man, the conception of greatness, precisely in his
45:12
comprehensiveness and multifariousness, in his all roundness. He would even determine worth and
45:20
rank according to the amount and variety of that which a man could bear,
45:24
and take upon himself, according to the extent to which a man could stretch
45:30
his responsibility. Nowadays, the taste and virtue of the age weaken and attenuate
45:37
the will. Nothing is so adapted to the spirit of the age as weakness
45:42
of will. Consequently, in the ideal of the philosopher, strength of will,
45:47
sternness, and capacity for prolonged resolution must specially be included in the conception
45:54
of greatness with as good a right as the opposite doctrine, with its ideal
46:00
of a silly, renouncing, humble, selfless humanity, was suited to an
46:06
opposite age, such as the sixteenth century, which suffered from its accumulated energy
46:13
of will and from the wildest torrents and floods of selfishness. In the time
46:20
of Socrates, among men only of worn out instincts, old conservative Athenians,
46:27
who let themselves go for the sake of happiness, as they said, for
46:31
the sake of pleasure, as their conduct indicated, and who had continually on
46:37
their lips the old pompous words to which they had long forfeited. The right
46:43
by the life they led. Irony was perhaps necessary for greatness of soul.
46:47
The wicked Socratic assurance of the old physician and plebeian who cut ruthlessly into his
46:53
own flesh, as into the flesh and heart of the noble, with a
46:59
look that said, plainly enough, do not dissemble before me. Here we
47:04
are equal at present. On the contrary, when throughout Europe the herding animal
47:10
alone attains to honors and dispenses honors, when equality of right can too readily
47:16
be transformed into equality and wrong, I mean to say, into general war
47:22
against everything rare, strange and privileged, against the higher man, the higher
47:28
soul, the higher duty, the higher responsibility, the creative plenipotence, and
47:35
lordliness. At present, it belongs to the conception of greatness to be noble,
47:39
to wish to be a part, to be capable of being different,
47:44
to stand alone, to have to live by personal initiative. And the philosopher
47:50
will betray something of his own ideal when he asserts he shall be the greatest,
47:54
who can be the most solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent,
48:00
the man beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues and of
48:06
superabundance of will. Precisely this shall be called greatness, as diversified as can
48:13
be, entire as ample as can be full, and to ask once more
48:19
the question, is greatness possible? Nowadays? Two hundred thirteen. It is
48:30
difficult to learn what a philosopher is, because it cannot be taught. One
48:37
must know it by experience, or one should have the pride not to know
48:42
it. The fact that at present people all talk of things of which they
48:46
cannot have any experience is true. More especially, and unfortunately, as concerns
48:52
the philosopher and philosophical matters. The very few know them are permitted to know
49:00
them, and all popular ideas about them are false. Thus, for instance,
49:07
the truly philosophical combination of a bold, exuberant spirituality which runs at presto
49:14
pace, and a dialectic rigor and necessity which makes no false step, is
49:19
unknown to most thinkers and scholars from their own experience, and therefore should anyone
49:27
speak of it in their presence, it is incredible to them. They conceive
49:31
of every necessity as troublesome, as a painful, compulsory obedience and state of
49:37
constraint. Thinking itself is regarded by them as something slow and hesitating, almost
49:45
as a trouble, and often enough as worthy of the sweat of the noble.
49:51
But not at all as something easy and divine, closely related to dancing
49:55
and exuberance. To think and to take a matter seriously arduously, that is
50:05
one and the same thing to them. Such only has been their experience.
50:10
Artists have here perhaps a finer intuition, they who know only too well that
50:16
precisely, when they no longer do anything arbitrarily and everything of necessity, their
50:22
feeling of freedom, of subtlety, of power of creatively fixing, disposing,
50:30
and shaping reaches its climax. In short, that necessity and freedom of will
50:37
are then the same thing with them. There is in fine a graduation of
50:43
rank in psychical states, to which the graduation of rank in the problems corresponds.
50:50
And the highest problems repel ruthlessly everyone who ventures to near them without being
50:57
predestined for their solution by the loftiness and power of his spirituality. Of what
51:04
use is it for nimble every day intellects, or clumsy honest mechanics and empiricists
51:10
to press, in their Plebeian ambition close to such problems, and, as
51:15
it were, into this holy of holies, as so often happens nowadays.
51:22
But coarse feet must never tread upon such carpets. This is provided for in
51:28
the primary law of things. The doors remain closed to those intruders, though
51:34
they may dash and break their heads. Thereon. People have always to be
51:38
born to a high station, or more definitely, they have to be bred
51:44
for it. A person has only a right to philosophy, taking the word
51:50
in its higher significance, in virtue of his descent. The ancestors the blood
51:57
decide here. Also, many generations must have prepared the way for the coming
52:02
of the philosopher. Each of his virtues must have been separately acquired, nurtured,
52:09
transmitted, and embodied. Not only the bold, easy, delicate course
52:15
and current of his thoughts, but above all, the readiness for great responsibilities,
52:21
the majesty of ruling, glance and contemning look, the feeling of separation
52:27
from the multitude with their duties and virtues. The kindly patronage and defense of
52:32
whatever is misunderstood and calumated, be it God or devil. The delight and
52:39
practice of supreme justice, the art of commanding, the amplitude of will,
52:45
The lingering eye, which rarely admires, rarely looks up, rarely loves.
52:54
End of Chapter six