Thoughts out of Season, Part I: David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer - Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Thoughts out of Season, Part I: David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer - Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Strauss, David Friedrich, 1808-1874; Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883
things to remain as they are, and are too much concerned with their own
affairs to busy themselves with the care of the German mind. Moreover,
the units of this caste are too thoroughly convinced that their own
scholarship is the ripest and most perfect fruit of the age--in fact,
of all ages--to see any necessity for a care of German culture in
general; since, in so far as they and the legion of their brethren are
concerned, preoccupations of this order have everywhere been, so to
speak, surpassed. The more conscientious observer, more particularly
if he be a foreigner, cannot help noticing withal that no great
disparity exists between that which the German scholar regards as his
culture and that other triumphant culture of the new German classics,
save in respect of the quantum of knowledge. Everywhere, where
knowledge and not ability, where information and not art, hold the
first rank,--everywhere, therefore, where life bears testimony to the
kind of culture extant, there is now only one specific German
culture--and this is the culture that is supposed to have conquered
France?
The contention appears to be altogether too preposterous. It was
solely to the more extensive knowledge of German officers, to the
superior training of their soldiers, and to their more scientific
military strategy, that all impartial Judges, and even the French
nation, in the end, ascribed the victory. Hence, if it be intended to
regard German erudition as a thing apart, in what sense can German
culture be said to have conquered? In none whatsoever; for the moral
qualities of severe discipline, of more placid obedience, have nothing
in common with culture: these were characteristic of the Macedonian
army, for instance, despite the fact that the Greek soldiers were
infinitely more cultivated. To speak of German scholarship and culture
as having conquered, therefore, can only be the outcome of a
misapprehension, probably resulting from the circumstance that every
precise notion of culture has now vanished from Germany.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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