his historic consciousness he saves himself from the sublime in which
the Philistine succeeds by his "homeliness." No longer that enthusiasm
which history inspires--as Goethe was allowed to suppose--but just the
blunting of all enthusiasm is now the goal of these admirers of the
_nil admirari,_ when they try to conceive everything historically; to
them however we should exclaim: Ye are the fools of all centuries!
History will make to you only those confessions, which you are worthy
to receive. The world has been at all times full of trivialities and
nonentities; to your historic hankering just these and only these
unveil themselves. By your thousands you may pounce upon an epoch--you
will afterwards hunger as before and be allowed to boast of your sort
of starved soundness. _Illam ipsam quam iactant sanitatem non firmitate
sed iciunio consequuntur. (Dialogus de oratoribus, cap._ 25.) History
has not thought fit to tell you anything that is essential, but
scorning and invisible she stood by your side, slipping into this one's
hand some state proceedings, into that one's an ambassadorial report,
into another's a date or an etymology or a pragmatic cobweb. Do you
really believe yourself able to reckon up history like an addition
sum, and do you consider your common intellect and your mathematical
education good enough for that? How it must vex you to hear, that
others narrate things, out of the best known periods, which you will
never conceive, never!
If now to this "education," calling itself historic but destitute of
enthusiasm, and to the hostile Philistine activity, foaming with rage
against all that is great, is added that third brutal and excited
company of those who race after "Fortune"--then that in _summa_ results
in such a confused shrieking and such a limb-dislocating turmoil that
the thinker with stopped-up ears and blindfolded eyes flees into the
most solitary wilderness,--where he may see, what those never will
see, where he must hear sounds which rise to him out of all the depths
of nature and come down to him from the stars. Here he confers with
the great problems floating towards him, whose voices of course sound
just as comfortless-awful, as unhistoric-eternal. The feeble person
flees back from their cold breath, and the calculating one runs right
through them without perceiving them. They deal worst, however, with
the "educated man" who at times bestows great pains upon them. To him
these phantoms transform themselves into conceptual cobwebs and hollow
sound-figures. Grasping after them he imagines he has philosophy; in
order to search for them he climbs about in the so-called history
of philosophy--and when at last he has collected and piled up quite
a cloud of such abstractions and stereotyped patterns, then it may
happen to him that a real thinker crosses his path and--puffs them
away. What a desperate annoyance indeed to meddle with philosophy as
an "educated person"! From time to time it is true it appears to him
as if the impossible connection of philosophy with that which nowadays
gives itself airs as "German Culture" has become possible; some mongrel
dallies and ogles between the two spheres and confuses fantasy on
this side and on the other. Meanwhile however _one_ piece of advice
is to be given to the Germans, if they do not wish to let themselves
be confused. They may put to themselves the question about everything
that they now call Culture: is _this_ the hoped-for German Culture, so
serious and creative, so redeeming for the German mind, so purifying
for the German virtues that their only philosopher in this century,
Arthur _Schopenhauer,_ should have to espouse its cause?
Here you have the philosopher--now search for the Culture proper to
him! And if you are able to divine what kind of culture that would have
to be, which would correspond to such a philosopher, then you have, in
this divination, already _passed sentence_ on all your culture and on
yourselves!
PHILOSOPHY DURING THE TRAGIC AGE OF THE GREEKS
(1873)
PREFACE
(_Probably_ 1874)
If we know the aims of men who are strangers to us, it is sufficient
for us to approve of or condemn them as wholes. Those who stand nearer
to us we judge according to the means by which they further their
aims; we often disapprove of their aims, but love them for the sake of
their means and the style of their volition. Now philosophical systems
are absolutely true only to their founders, to all later philosophers
they are usually _one_ big mistake, and to feebler minds a sum of
mistakes and truths; at any rate if regarded as highest aim they are
an error, and in so far reprehensible. Therefore many disapprove of
every philosopher, because his aim is not theirs; they are those whom I
called "strangers to us." Whoever on the contrary finds any pleasure at
all in great men finds pleasure also in such systems, be they ever so
erroneous, for they all have in them one point which is irrefutable, a
personal touch, and colour; one can use them in order to form a picture
of the philosopher, just as from a plant growing in a certain place one
can form conclusions as to the soil. _That_ mode of life, of viewing
human affairs at any rate, has existed once and is therefore possible;
the "system" is the growth in this soil or at least a part of this
system....
I narrate the history of those philosophers simplified: I shall bring
into relief only _that_ point in every system which is a little bit
of _personality,_ and belongs to that which is irrefutable, and
indiscussable, which history has to preserve: it is a first attempt
to regain and recreate those natures by comparison, and to let the
polyphony of Greek nature at least resound once again: the task is, to
bring to light that which we must _always love and revere_ and of which
no later knowledge can rob us: the great man.
LATER PREFACE
(_Towards the end of_ 1879)
This attempt to relate the history of the earlier Greek philosophers
distinguishes itself from similar attempts by its brevity. This has
been accomplished by mentioning but a small number of the doctrines of
every philosopher, _i.e.,_ by incompleteness. Those doctrines, however,
have been selected in which the personal element of the philosopher
re-echoes most strongly; whereas a complete enumeration of all possible
propositions handed down to us--as is the custom in text-books--merely
brings about one thing, the absolute silencing of the personal element.
It is through this that those records become so tedious; for in systems
which have been refuted it is only this personal element that can still
interest us, for this alone is eternally irrefutable. It is possible
to shape the picture of a man out of three anecdotes. I endeavour to
bring into relief three anecdotes out of every system and abandon the
remainder.
1.
There are opponents of philosophy, and one does well to listen to them;
especially if they dissuade the distempered heads of Germans from
metaphysics and on the other hand preach to them purification through
the Physis, as Goethe did, or healing through Music, as Wagner. The
physicians of the people condemn philosophy; he, therefore, who wants
to justify it, must show to what purpose healthy nations use and have
used philosophy. If he can show that, perhaps even the sick people
will benefit by learning why philosophy is harmful just to them. There
are indeed good instances of a health which can exist without any
philosophy or with quite a moderate, almost a toying use of it; thus
the Romans at their best period lived without philosophy. But where is
to be found the instance of a nation becoming diseased whom philosophy
had restored to health? Whenever philosophy showed itself helping,
saving, prophylactic, it was with healthy people; it made sick people
still more ill. If ever a nation was disintegrated and but loosely
connected with the individuals, never has philosophy bound these
individuals closer to the whole. If ever an individual was willing to
stand aside and plant around himself the hedge of self-sufficiency,
philosophy was always ready to isolate him still more and to destroy
him through isolation. She is dangerous where she is not in her full
right, and it is only the health of a nation but not that of every
nation which gives her this right.
Let us now look around for the highest authority as to what
constitutes the health of a nation. I he Greeks, as _the_ truly
healthy nation, have _justified_ philosophy once for all by having
philosophised; and that indeed more than all other nations. They could
not even stop at the right time, for still in their withered age
they comported themselves as heated notaries of philosophy, although
they understood by it only the pious sophistries and the sacrosanct
hair-splittings of Christian dogmatics. They themselves have much
lessened their merit for barbarian posterity by not being able to stop
at the right time, because that posterity in its uninstructed and
impetuous youth necessarily became entangled in those artfully woven
nets and ropes.
On the contrary, the Greek knew how to begin at the right time, and
this lesson, when one ought to begin philosophising, they teach more
distinctly than any other nation. For it should not be begun when
trouble comes as perhaps some presume who derive philosophy from
moroseness; no, but in good fortune, in mature manhood, out of the
midst of the fervent serenity of a brave and victorious man's estate.
The fact that the Greeks philosophised at that time throws light on
the nature of philosophy and her task as well as on the nature of the
Greeks themselves. Had they at that time been such commonsense and
precocious experts and gayards as the learned Philistine of our days
perhaps imagines, or had their life been only a state of voluptuous
soaring, chiming, breathing and feeling, as the unlearned visionary is
pleased to assume, then the spring of philosophy would not have come to
light among them. At the best there would have come forth a brook soon
trickling away in the sand or evaporating into fogs, but never that
broad river flowing forth with the proud beat of its waves, the river
which we know as Greek Philosophy.
True, it has been eagerly pointed out how much the Greeks could
find and learn abroad, in the Orient, and how many different things
they may easily have brought from there. Of course an odd spectacle
resulted, when certain scholars brought together the alleged masters
from the Orient and the possible disciples from Greece, and exhibited
Zarathustra near Heraclitus, the Hindoos near the Eleates, the
Egyptians near Empedocles, or even Anaxagoras among the Jews and
Pythagoras among the Chinese. In detail little has been determined;
but we should in no way object to the general idea, if people did not
burden us with the conclusion that therefore Philosophy had only been
imported into Greece and was not indigenous to the soil, yea, that
she, as something foreign, had possibly ruined rather than improved
the Greek. Nothing is more foolish than to swear by the fact that the
Greeks had an aboriginal culture; no, they rather absorbed all the
culture flourishing among other nations, and they advanced so far,
just because they understood how to hurl the spear further from the
very spot where another nation had let it rest. They were admirable
in the art of learning productively, and so, like them, we _ought_
to learn from our neighbours, with a view to Life not to pedantic
knowledge, using everything learnt as a foothold whence to leap
high and still higher than our neighbour. The questions as to the
beginning of philosophy are quite negligible, for everywhere in the
beginning there is the crude, the unformed, the empty and the ugly;
and in all things only the higher stages come into consideration.
He who in the place of Greek philosophy prefers to concern himself
with that of Egypt and Persia, because the latter are perhaps more
"original" and certainly older, proceeds just as ill-advisedly as
those who cannot be at ease before they have traced back the Greek
mythology, so grand and profound, to such physical trivialities as
sun, lightning, weather and fog, as its prime origins, and who fondly
imagine they have rediscovered for instance in the restricted worship
of the one celestial vault among the other Indo-Germans a purer form
of religion than the poly-theistic worship of the Greek had been. The
road towards the beginning always leads into barbarism, and he who is
concerned with the Greeks ought always to keep in mind the fact that
the unsubdued thirst for knowledge in itself always barbarises just as
much as the hatred of knowledge, and that the Greeks have subdued their
inherently insatiable thirst for knowledge by their regard for Life,
by an ideal need of Life,--since they wished to live immediately that
which they learnt. The Greeks also philosophised as men of culture and
with the aims of culture, and therefore saved themselves the trouble
of inventing once again the elements of philosophy and knowledge
out of some autochthonous conceit, and with a will they at once set
themselves to fill out, enhance, raise and purify these elements they
had taken over in such a way, that only now in a higher sense and in a
purer sphere they became inventors. For they discovered the _typical
philosopher's genius,_ and the inventions of all posterity have added
nothing essential.
Every nation is put to shame if one points out such a wonderfully
idealised company of philosophers as that of the early Greek masters,
Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles,
Democritus and Socrates. All those men are integral, entire and
self-contained,[1] and hewn out of one stone. Severe necessity exists
between their thinking and their character. They are not bound by any
convention, because at that time no professional class of philosophers
and scholars existed. They all stand before us in magnificent solitude
as the only ones who then devoted their life exclusively to knowledge.
They all possess the virtuous energy of the Ancients, whereby they
excel all the later philosophers in finding their own form and in
perfecting it by metamorphosis in its most minute details and general
aspect. For they were met by no helpful and facilitating fashion. Thus
together they form what Schopenhauer, in opposition to the Republic of
Scholars, has called a Republic of Geniuses; one giant calls to another
across the arid intervals of ages, and, undisturbed by a wanton, noisy
race of dwarfs, creeping about beneath them, the sublime intercourse of
spirits continues.
Of this sublime intercourse of spirits I have resolved to relate those
items which our modern hardness of hearing might perhaps hear and
understand; that means certainly the least of all. It seems to me
that those old sages from Thales to Socrates have discussed in that
intercourse, although in its most general aspect, everything that
constitutes for our contemplation the peculiarly Hellenic. In their
intercourse, as already in their personalities, they express distinctly
the great features of Greek genius of which the whole of Greek history
is a shadowy impression, a hazy copy, which consequently speaks less
clearly. If we could rightly interpret the total life of the Greek
nation, we should ever find reflected only that picture which in her
highest geniuses shines with more resplendent colours. Even the first
experience of philosophy on Greek soil, the sanction of the Seven Sages
is a distinct and unforgettable line in the picture of the Hellenic.
Other nations have their Saints, the Greeks have Sages. Rightly it has
been said that a nation is characterised not only by her great men
but rather by the manner in which she recognises and honours them. In
other ages the philosopher is an accidental solitary wanderer in the
most hostile environment, either slinking through or pushing himself
through with clenched fists. With the Greek however the philosopher is
not accidental; when in the Sixth and Fifth centuries amidst the most
frightful dangers and seductions of secularisation he appears and as
it were steps forth from the cave of Trophonios into the very midst of
luxuriance, the discoverers' happiness, the wealth and the sensuousness
of the Greek colonies, then we divine that he comes as a noble warner
for the same purpose for which in those centuries Tragedy was born
and which the Orphic mysteries in their grotesque hieroglyphics give
us to understand. The opinion of those philosophers on Life and
Existence altogether means so much more than a modern opinion because
they had before themselves Life in a luxuriant perfection, and because
with them, unlike us, the sense of the thinker was not muddled by
the disunion engendered by the wish for freedom, beauty, fulness of
life and the love for truth that only asks: What is the good of Life
at all? The mission which the philosopher has to discharge within a
real Culture, fashioned in a homogeneous style, cannot be clearly
conjectured out of our circumstances and experiences for the simple
reason that we have no such culture. No, it is only a Culture like the
Greek which can answer the question as to that task of the philosopher,
only such a Culture can, as I said before, justify philosophy at all;
because such a Culture alone knows and can demonstrate why and how the
philosopher is _not_ an accidental, chance wanderer driven now hither,
now thither. There is a steely necessity which fetters the philosopher
to a true Culture: but what if this Culture does not exist? Then the
philosopher is an incalculable and therefore terror-inspiring comet,
whereas in the favourable case, he shines as the central star in the
solar-system of culture. It is for this reason that the Greeks justify
the philosopher, because with them he is no comet.
[1] _Cf._ Napoleon's word about Goethe: "Voilà un homme!"--TR.
2
After such contemplations it will be accepted without offence if I
speak of the pre-Platonic philosophers as of a homogeneous company, and
devote this paper to them exclusively. Something quite new begins with
Plato; or it might be said with equal justice that in comparison with
that Republic of Geniuses from Thales to Socrates, the philosophers
since Plato lack something essential.
Whoever wants to express himself unfavourably about those older masters
may call them one-sided, and their _Epigones,_ with Plato as head,
many-sided. Yet it would be more just and unbiassed to conceive of
the latter as philosophic hybrid-characters, of the former as the
pure types. Plato himself is the first magnificent hybrid-character,
and as such finds expression as well in his philosophy as in his
personality. In his ideology are united Socratian, Pythagorean, and
Heraclitean elements, and for this reason it is no typically pure
phenomenon. As man, too, Plato mingles the features of the royally
secluded, all-sufficing Heraclitus, of the melancholy-compassionate and
legislatory Pythagoras and of the psycho-expert dialectician Socrates.
All later philosophers are such hybrid-characters; wherever something
one-sided does come into prominence with them as in the case of the
Cynics, it is not type but caricature. Much more important however is
the fact that they are founders of sects and that the sects founded
by them are all institutions in direct opposition to the Hellenic
culture and the unity of its style prevailing up to that time. In
their way they seek a redemption, but only for the individuals or at
the best for groups of friends and disciples closely connected with
them. The activity of the older philosophers tends, although they were
unconscious of it, towards a cure and purification on a large scale;
the mighty course of Greek culture is not to be stopped; awful dangers
are to be removed out of the way of its current; the philosopher
protects and defends his native country. Now, since Plato, he is in
exile and conspires against his fatherland.
It is a real misfortune that so very little of those older philosophic
masters has come down to us and that all complete works of theirs are
withheld from us. Involuntarily, on account of that loss, we measure
them according to wrong standards and allow ourselves to be influenced
unfavourably towards them by the mere accidental fact that Plato
and Aristotle never lacked appreciators and copyists. Some people
presuppose a special providence for books, a _fatum libellorum;_ such
a providence however would at any rate be a very malicious one if it
deemed it wise to withhold from us the works of Heraclitus, Empedocles'
wonderful poem, and the writings of Democritus, whom the ancients put
on a par with Plato, whom he even excels as far as ingenuity goes,
and as a substitute put into our hand Stoics, Epicureans and Cicero.
Probably the most sublime part of Greek thought and its expression
in words is lost to us; a fate which will not surprise the man who
remembers the misfortunes of Scotus Erigena or of Pascal, and who
considers that even in this enlightened century the first edition of
Schopenhauer's "_The World As Will And Idea_" became waste-paper. If
somebody will presuppose a special fatalistic power with respect to
such things he may do so and say with Goethe: "Let no one complain
about and grumble at things vile and mean, they _are_ the real
rulers,--however much this be gainsaid!" In particular they are more
powerful than the power of truth. Mankind very rarely produces a good
book in which with daring freedom is intonated the battle-song of
truth, the song of philosophic heroism; and yet whether it is to live a
century longer or to crumble and moulder into dust and ashes, depends
on the most miserable accidents, on the sudden mental eclipse of men's
heads, on superstitious convulsions and antipathies, finally on fingers
not too fond of writing or even on eroding bookworms and rainy weather.
But we will not lament but rather take the advice of the reproving and
consolatory words which Hamann addresses to scholars who lament over
lost works. "Would not the artist who succeeded in throwing a lentil
through the eye of a needle have sufficient, with a bushel of lentils,
to practise his acquired skill? One would like to put this question to
all scholars who do not know how to use the works of the Ancients any
better than that man used his lentils." It might be added in our case
that not one more word, anecdote, or date needed to be transmitted to
us than has been transmitted, indeed that even much less might have
been preserved for us and yet we should have been able to establish the
general doctrine that the Greeks justify philosophy.