The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza") — Nietzsche — John Shaqi
The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza")
Nietzsche · en
_Loss of Dignity._—Meditation has lost all its dignity of form; the
ceremonial and solemn bearing of the meditative person have been made a
mockery, and one would no longer endure a wise man of the old style. We
think too hastily and on the way and while walking and in the midst of
business of all kinds, even when we think on the most serious matters;
we require little preparation, even little quiet:—it is as if each of us
carried about an unceasingly revolving machine in his head, which still
works, even under the most unfavourable circumstances. Formerly it was
perceived in a person that on some occasion he wanted to think—it was
perhaps the exception!—that he now wanted to become wiser and collected
his mind on a thought: he put on a long face for it, as for a prayer,
and arrested his step—nay, stood still for hours on the street when the
thought "came"—on one or on two legs. It was thus "worthy of the
affair"!
7.
_Something for the Laborious._—He who at present wants to make moral
questions a subject of study has an immense field of labour before him.
All kinds of passions must be thought about singly, and followed singly
throughout periods, peoples, great and insignificant individuals; all
their rationality, all their valuations and elucidations of things,
ought to come to light! Hitherto all that has given colour to existence
has lacked a history: where would one find a history of love, of
avarice, of envy, of conscience, of piety, of cruelty? Even a
comparative history of law, as also of punishment, has hitherto been
completely lacking. Have the different divisions of the day, the
consequences of a regular appointment of the times for labour, feast,
and repose, ever been made the object of investigation? Do we know the
moral effects of the alimentary substances? Is there a philosophy of
nutrition? (The ever-recurring outcry for and against vegetarianism
proves that as yet there is no such philosophy!) Have the experiences
with regard to communal living, for example, in monasteries, been
collected? Has the dialectic of marriage and friendship been set forth?
The customs of the learned, of trades-people, of artists, and of
mechanics—have they already found their thinkers? There is so much to
think of thereon! All that up till now has been considered as the
"conditions of existence," of human beings, and all reason, passion and
superstition in this consideration—have they been investigated to the
end? The observation alone of the different degrees of development which
the human impulses have attained, and could yet attain, according to the
different moral climates, would furnish too much work for the most
laborious; whole generations, and regular co-operating generations of
the learned, would be needed in order to exhaust the points of view and
the material here furnished. The same is true of the determining of the
reasons for the differences of the moral climates ("_on what account_