On the Future of our Educational InstitutionsNietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
On the Future of our Educational Institutions
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Education -- Philosophy; Educational change -- Germany; Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900 -- Views on education
"But set a genius--a real genius--in the midst of this crowd; and you
instantly perceive something almost incredible. It is as if this
genius, in his lightning transmigration, had entered into these
mechanical, lifeless bodies, and as if only one demoniacal eye gleamed
forth out of them all. Now look and listen--you can never listen
enough! When you again observe the orchestra, now loftily storming,
now fervently wailing, when you notice the quick tightening of every
muscle and the rhythmical necessity of every gesture, then you too
will feel what a pre-established harmony there is between leader and
followers, and how in the hierarchy of spirits everything impels us
towards the establishment of a like organisation. You can divine from
my simile what I would understand by a true educational institution,
and why I am very far from recognising one in the present type of
university."
[From a few MS. notes written down by Nietzsche in the spring
and autumn of 1872, and still preserved in the Nietzsche
Archives at Weimar, it is evident that he at one time
intended to add a sixth and seventh lecture to the five just
given. These notes, although included in the latest edition
of Nietzsche's works, are utterly lacking in interest and
continuity, being merely headings and sub-headings of
sections in the proposed lectures. They do not, indeed,
occupy more than two printed pages, and were deemed too
fragmentary for translation in this edition.]
FOOTNOTES:
[9] The reader may be reminded that a German university student is
subject to very few restrictions, and that much greater liberty is
allowed him than is permitted to English students. Nietzsche did not
approve of this extraordinary freedom, which, in his opinion, led to
intellectual lawlessness.--TR.
[10] Hegel's.--TR.
[11] A German students' association, of liberal principles, founded for
patriotic purposes at Jena in 1813.
[12] Weber set one or two of Körner's "Lyre and Sword" songs to music.
The reader will remember that these lectures were delivered when
Nietzsche was only in his twenty-eighth year. Like Goethe, he afterwards
freed himself from all patriotic trammels and prejudices, and aimed at a
general European culture. Luther, Schiller, Kant, Körner, and Weber did
not continue to be the objects of his veneration for long, indeed, they
were afterwards violently attacked by him, and the superficial student
who speaks of inconsistency may be reminded of Nietzsche's phrase in
stanza 12 of the epilogue to _Beyond Good and Evil_: "Nur wer sich
wandelt, bleibt mit mir verwandt"; _i.e._ only the changing ones have
anything in common with me.--TR.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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