The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza")Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza")
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Philosophy
exercises this power on the basis of his histrionic capacity: for the
literary man is essentially an actor,—he plays the part of "expert," of
"specialist."—Finally _women_. If we consider the whole history of
women, are they not _obliged_ first of all, and above all to be
actresses? If we listen to doctors who have hypnotised women, or,
finally, if we love them—and let ourselves be "hypnotised" by them,—what
is always divulged thereby? That they "give themselves airs," even when
they—"give themselves."... Woman is so artistic....
362.
_My Belief in the Virilising of Europe._—We owe it to Napoleon (and not
at all to the French Revolution, which had in view the "fraternity" of
the nations, and the florid interchange of good graces among people
generally) that several warlike centuries, which have not had their like
in past history, may now follow one another—in short, that we have
entered upon _the classical age of war_, war at the same time scientific
and popular, on the grandest scale (as regards means, talents and
discipline), to which all coming millenniums will look back with envy
and awe as a work of perfection:—for the national movement out of which
this martial glory springs, is only the counter-_choc_ against Napoleon,
and would not have existed without him. To him, consequently, one will
one day be able to attribute the fact that _man_ in Europe has again got
the upper hand of the merchant and the Philistine; perhaps even of
"woman" also, who has become pampered owing to Christianity and the
extravagant spirit of the eighteenth century, and still more owing to
"modern ideas." Napoleon, who saw in modern ideas, and accordingly in
civilisation, something like a personal enemy, has by this hostility
proved himself one of the greatest continuators of the Renaissance: he
has brought to the surface a whole block of the ancient character, the
decisive block perhaps, the block of granite. And who knows but that
this block of ancient character will in the end get the upper hand of
the national movement, and will have to make itself in a _positive_
sense the heir and continuator of Napoleon:—who, as one knows, wanted
_one_ Europe, which was to be _mistress of the world_.—
363.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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