Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

-IOn the uses and disadvantages of history for lifesuch truthfulness that the distress, the inner misery, of modern manwill come to light, and that, in place of that anxious concealmentthrough convention and masquerade, art and religion, trueancillariest will be able to combine to implant a culture which correspondsto real needs and does not, as present-day universal educationteaches it to do, deceive itself as to these needs and therebybecome a walking lie.In an age which suffers from this universal education, to what anunnatural, artificial and in any case unworthy state must the mosttruthful of all sciences, the honest naked goddess philosophy, bereduced! In such a world of compelled external uniformity it mustremain the learned monologue of the solitary walker, the individual'schance capture, the hidden secret of the chamber, or the harmlesschatter of academic old men and children. No one dares venture tofulfil the philosophical law in himself, no one lives philosophicallywith that simple loyalty that constrained a man of antiquity to bearhimself as a Stoic wherever he was, whatever he did, once he hadaffirmed his loyalty to the Stoa. All modern philosophizing is politicaland official, limited by governments, churches, academies, customsand the cowardice of men to the appearance of scholarship; it sighs'if only' or knows 'there once was' and .does nothing else. Within ahistorical culture philosophy possesses no rights if it wants to bemore than a self-restrained knowing which leads to no action; ifmodern man had any courage or resolution at all, if he were notmerely a subjective creature even in his enmities, he would banishphilosophy; as it is, he contents himself with mod.estly concealing itsnudity. One may think, write, print, speak, teach philosophy - tothat point more or less everything is permitted; only in the realm ofaction, of so-called life, is it otherwise: there only one thing is everpermitted and everything else simply impossible: thus will historicalculture have it. Are there still human beings, one then asks oneself,or perhaps only thinking-, writing- and speaking-machines?Goethe once said of Shakespeare: 'No one despised outward costumemore than he; he knew very well the inner human costume,and here all are alike. They say he hit off the Romans admirably; butI don't find it so, they are all nothing but flesh-and-bloodEnglishmen, but they are certainly human beings, human fromhead to foot, and the Roman toga sits on them perfectly well.' N ow Iask whether it would be possible to represent our contemporarymen of letters, popular figures, officials or politicians as Romans; itsimply would not work, because they are not human beings but only85