Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part 1: Complete Works, Volume SixNietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part 1: Complete Works, Volume Six
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Human beings
THE ILLOGICAL NECESSARY.--One of those things that may drive a thinker
into despair is the recognition of the fact that the illogical is
necessary for man, and that out of the illogical comes much that is
good. It is so firmly rooted in the passions, in language, in art,
in religion, and generally in everything that gives value to life,
that it cannot be withdrawn without thereby hopelessly injuring these
beautiful things. It is only the all-too-naïve people who can believe
that the nature of man can be changed into a purely logical one; but
if there were degrees of proximity to this goal, how many things would
not have to be lost on this course! Even the most rational man has need
of nature again from time to time, _i.e._ his _illogical fundamental
attitude_ towards all things.
32.
INJUSTICE NECESSARY.--All judgments on the value of life are
illogically developed, and therefore unjust. The inexactitude of
the judgment lies, firstly, in the manner in which the material is
presented, namely very imperfectly; secondly, in the manner in which
the conclusion is formed out of it; and thirdly, in the fact that every
separate element of the material is again the result of vitiated
recognition, and this, too, of necessity. For instance, no experience
of an individual, however near he may stand to us, can be perfect, so
that we could have a logical right to make a complete estimate of him;
all estimates are rash, and must be so. Finally, the standard by which
we measure, our nature, is not of unalterable dimensions,--we have
moods and vacillations, and yet we should have to recognise ourselves
as a fixed standard in order to estimate correctly the relation of any
thing whatever to ourselves. From this it will, perhaps, follow that
we should make no judgments at all; if one could only live without
making estimations, without having likes and dislikes! For all dislike
is connected with an estimation, as well as all inclination. An
impulse towards or away from anything without a feeling that something
advantageous is desired, something injurious avoided, an impulse
without any kind of conscious valuation of the worth of the aim does
not exist in man. We are from the beginning illogical, and therefore
unjust beings, _and can recognise this_; it is one of the greatest and
most inexplicable discords of existence.
33.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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