I usually hate philosophy, but have downloaded some Nietzshe as audiobooks, partly to look for quotes for a book I am writing, and partly because I have always been meaning to get around to reading some of his work.
Of course with Nietzsche you know you're in for a rough ride. Take the quote below. It's a long quote but it hit me in the gut.
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The objective man,
who no longer curses and scolds like the pessimist, the IDEAL man of learning
in whom the scientific instinct blossoms forth fully after a thousand complete
and partial failures, is assuredly one of the most costly instruments that exist,
but his place is in the hand of one who is more powerful He is only an
instrument, we may say, he is a MIRROR—he is no "purpose in himself"
The objective man
is in truth a mirror accustomed to prostration before everything that wants to
be known, with such desires only as knowing or "reflecting"
implies—he waits until something comes, and then expands himself sensitively,
so that even the light footsteps and gliding-past of spiritual beings may not
be lost on his surface and film Whatever "personality" he still
possesses seems to him accidental, arbitrary, or still oftener, disturbing, so
much has he come to regard himself as the passage and reflection of outside
forms and events
He calls up the
recollection of "himself" with an effort, and not infrequently
wrongly, he readily confounds himself with other persons, he makes mistakes
with regard to his own needs, and here only is he unrefined and negligent
Perhaps he is troubled about the health, or the pettiness and confined
atmosphere of wife and friend, or the lack of companions and society—indeed, he
sets himself to reflect on his suffering, but in vain! His thoughts already
rove away to the MORE GENERAL case, and tomorrow he knows as little as he knew
yesterday how to help himself He does not now take himself seriously and devote
time to himself he is serene, NOT from lack of trouble, but from lack of
capacity for grasping and dealing with HIS trouble
The habitual
complaisance with respect to all objects and experiences, the radiant and
impartial hospitality with which he receives everything that comes his way, his
habit of inconsiderate good-nature, of dangerous indifference as to Yea and
Nay: alas! there are enough of cases in which he has to atone for these virtues
of his!—and as man generally, he becomes far too easily the CAPUT MORTUUM of
such virtues. Should one wish love or hatred from him—I mean love and hatred as
God, woman, and animal understand them—he will do what he can, and furnish what
he can. But one must not be surprised if it should not be much—if he should
show himself just at this point to be false, fragile, questionable, and
deteriorated.
His love is
constrained, his hatred is artificial, and rather UN TOUR DE FORCE, a slight
ostentation and exaggeration. He is only genuine so far as he can be objective;
only in his serene totality is he still "nature" and
"natural." His mirroring and eternally self-polishing soul no longer
knows how to affirm, no longer how to deny; he does not command; neither does
he destroy. "JE NE MEPRISE PRESQUE RIEN" [“I despise almost
nothing”]—he says, with Leibniz: let us not overlook nor undervalue the
PRESQUE!
Neither is he a
model man; he does not go in advance of any one, nor after, either; he places
himself generally too far off to have any reason for espousing the cause of
either good or evil. If he has been so long confounded with the PHILOSOPHER,
with the Caesarian trainer and dictator of civilization, he has had far too
much honour, and what is more essential in him has been overlooked—he is an
instrument, something of a slave, though certainly the sublimest sort of slave,
but nothing in himself—PRESQUE RIEN!
The objective man
is an instrument, a costly, easily injured, easily tarnished measuring
instrument and mirroring apparatus, which is to be taken care of and respected;
but he is no goal, not outgoing nor upgoing, no complementary man in whom the
REST of existence justifies itself, no termination—and still less a
commencement, an engendering, or primary cause, nothing hardy, powerful,
self-centred, that wants to be master; but rather only a soft, inflated,
delicate, movable potter's-form, that must wait for some kind of content and
frame to "shape" itself thereto—for the most part a man without frame
and content, a "selfless" man.
- BEYOND GOOD AND
EVIL: by Friedrich Nietzsche - Translated by
Helen Zimmern
