Thoughts Out of Season, Part IINietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Thoughts Out of Season, Part II
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
History -- Study and teaching; Schopenhauer, Arthur, 1788-1860
rough, blind instincts and desires, or to turn them to the service of
a clever egoism. In fact they are beginning to think, with Edward von
Hartmann, of "fixing themselves with an eye to the future in their
earthly home, and making themselves comfortable there." Hartmann
calls this life the "manhood of humanity" with an ironical reference
to what is now called "manhood";--as if only our sober models of
selfishness were embraced by it; just as he prophesies an age of
graybeards following on this stage,--obviously another ironical
glance at our ancient time-servers. For he speaks of the ripe
discretion with which "they view all the stormy passions of their
past life and understand the vanity of the ends they seem to have
striven for." No, a manhood of crafty and historically cultured
egoism corresponds to an old age that hangs to life with no dignity
but a horrible tenacity, where the
"last scene of all
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."
Whether the dangers of our life and culture come from these dreary,
toothless old men, or from the so-called "men" of Hartmann, we have
the right to defend our youth with tooth and claw against both of
them, and never tire of saving the future from these false prophets.
But in this battle we shall discover an unpleasant truth--that men
intentionally help, and encourage, and use, the worst aberrations of
the historical sense from which the present time suffers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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