The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza") — Nietzsche — John Shaqi
The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza")
Nietzsche · en
But an essentially mechanical world would be an essentially
_meaningless_ world! Supposing we valued the _worth_ of a music with
reference to how much it could be counted, calculated, or formulated—how
absurd such a "scientific" estimate of music would be! What would one
have apprehended, understood, or discerned in it! Nothing, absolutely
nothing of what is really "music" in it!...
374.
_Our new "Infinite."_—How far the perspective character of existence
extends, or whether it have any other character at all, whether an
existence without explanation, without "sense" does not just become
"nonsense," whether, on the other hand, all existence is not essentially
an _explaining_ existence—these questions, as is right and proper,
cannot be determined even by the most diligent and severely
conscientious analysis and self-examination of the intellect, because in
this analysis the human intellect cannot avoid seeing itself in its
perspective forms, and _only_ in them. We cannot see round our corner:
it is hopeless curiosity to want to know what other modes of intellect
and perspective there _might_ be: for example, whether any kind of being
could perceive time backwards, or alternately forwards and backwards (by
which another direction of life and another conception of cause and
effect would be given). But I think that we are to-day at least far from
the ludicrous immodesty of decreeing from our nook that there _can_ only
be legitimate perspectives from that nook. The world, on the contrary,
has once more become "infinite" to us: in so far we cannot dismiss the
possibility that it _contains infinite interpretations_. Once more the
great horror seizes us—but who would desire forthwith to deify once more
_this_ monster of an unknown world in the old fashion? And perhaps
worship _the_ unknown thing as _the_ "unknown person" in future? Ah!
there are too many _ungodly_ possibilities of interpretation comprised
in this unknown, too much devilment, stupidity and folly of
interpretation.—also our own human, all too human interpretation itself,
which we know....
375.