The Case of Wagner: Complete Works, Volume 8Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
The Case of Wagner: Complete Works, Volume 8
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883
3. It is accessible only to a few, and there should be a _police des
mœurs_ in charge of it--as there should be also in charge of bad
pianists who play Beethoven.
4. These few apply this antiquity to the judgment of our own time, as
critics of it; and they judge antiquity by their own ideals and are
thus critics of antiquity.
5. The contrast between the Hellenic and the Roman should be studied,
and also the contrast between the early Hellenic and the late Hellenic.
---Explanation of the different types of culture.
175
The advancement of science at the expense of man is one of the most
pernicious things in the world. The stunted man is a retrogression in
the human race: he throws a shadow over all succeeding generations.
The tendencies and natural purpose of the individual science become
degenerate, and science itself is finally shipwrecked: it has made
progress, but has either no effect at all on life or else an immoral
one.
176
Men not to be used like things!
From the former very incomplete philology and knowledge of antiquity
there flowed out a stream of freedom, while our own highly developed
knowledge produces slaves and serves the idol of the State.
177
There will perhaps come a time when scientific work will be carried
on by women, while the men will have to _create,_ using the word in a
spiritual sense: states, laws, works of art, &c.
People should study typical antiquity just as they do typical men:
_i.e.,_ imitating what they understand of it, and, when the pattern
seems to lie far in the distance, considering ways and means and
preliminary preparations, and devising stepping-stones.
178
The whole feature of study lies in this: that we should study only what
we feel we should like to imitate; what we gladly take up and have the
desire to multiply. What is really wanted is a progressive canon of the
_ideal_ model, suited to boys, youths, and men.
179
Goethe grasped antiquity in the right way: invariably with an emulative
soul. But who else did so? One sees nothing of a well-thought-out
pedagogics of this nature: who knows that there is a certain knowledge
of antiquity which cannot be imparted to youths!
The puerile character of philology: devised by teachers for pupils.
180
The ever more and more common form of the ideal: first men, then
institutions, finally tendencies, purposes, or the want of them. The
highest form: the conquest of the ideal by a backward movement from
tendencies to institutions, and from institutions to men.
181
I will set down in writing what I no longer believe--and also what I
do believe. Man stands in the midst of the great whirlpool of forces,
and imagines that this whirlpool is rational and has a rational aim in
view: error! The only rationality that we know is the small reason of
man: he must exert it to the utmost, and it invariably leaves him in
the lurch if he tries to place himself in the hands of "Providence."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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