Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifeits creator as one of the first philosophical parodists of all time; letus therefore sacrifice on his altar, let us sacrifice to him, the discovererof a true universal medicine, a lock of hair - to steal oneof Schleiermacher's terms for expressing admiration. For whatmedicine could be more efficacious against excess of historicalculture than Hartmann's parody of world-history?Expressed without the rhetoric, what Hartmann proclaims to usfrom the smokey tripod of unconscious irony amounts to this: hetells us it would be quite sufficient, fo r our time to be exactly as it is,to bring about, eventually, a condition in which people would findthis existence intolerable: which we truly believe. This dreadfulossification of our age, this restless rattling of the bones - such asDavid Strauss has naively described to us as the fai rest factuality - isjustified by Hartmann, not only from behind, ex causis efficientibus,but even from in front, ex causa finali; the rogue illumines our agewith the light of the Last Day, and it turns out that our age is a veryfine one, especially for him who wants to suffer as acutely as possiblefrom the indigestibility of life and for whom therefore that Last Daycannot come quickly enough. It is true that Hartmann calls the timeof life mankind is now approaching its 'years of manhood': but bythis he means the happy condition in wh ich all that is left is 'solidmediocrity', art is that which 'perhaps offers entertainment to theBerlin businessman of an evening', in which 'the age no longerrequires genius, because it would mean casting pearls before swineor because the age has advanced beyond the stage appropriate togeniuses to a more important one' - to a stage of social evolution,that is to say, at which every worker, 'having a workday which leaveshim adequate leisure fo r intellectual training, leads a comfortableexistence'. Rogue of rogues, you give voice to the longings of contemporarymankind: but you likewise know the spectre that willstand at the end of these years of manhood as an outcome of thatintellectual training in solid mediocrity - disgust. Things are alreadyin a visibly sorry state, but they will get very much sorrier, 'the Anti­Christ is visibly extending his influence wi der and wider' - but that ishow it must be, that is what it must come to, for the road we have takencan lead only to disgust with all existence. 'Let us therefore press theworld-process vigorously fo rward as workers in the vineyard of theLord, fo r it is the process alone that can lead to redemption!'The vineyard of the Lord! The process! Redemption! Who cannotsee and hear in this how historical culture, which knows only theword 'becoming', is here deliberately disguising itself as a parodistic109