Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationsand their perpetual bitter resentment of this constraiilt fills themwith volcanic menace. From time to time they revenge themselvesfo r their enforced concealment and compelled restraint. Theyemerge from their cave wearing a terrifying aspect; their words anddeeds are then explosions and it is possible for them to perish .bytheir own hand. This was the dangerous way in which Schopenhauerlived. It is precisely such natures as he who want love, who needcompanions before whom they can venture to be as simple and openas they are before themselves and in whose presence they can ceaseto suffer the torment of silence and dissimulation. If you removethese companions you create an increasingly dangerous condition;Heinrich von Kleist perished of not being loved, and the most terribleantidote to uncommon men is to drive them so deep into themselvesthat when they re-emerge it is always as a volcanic eruption. Yet therewill always be demi-gods who can endure to live, and live victoriously,under such terrible conditions; and if you want to hear their lonelysong, listen to the music of Beethoven.This was the first danger in whose shadCIA' Schopenhauer grew up:isolation. The second was despair of the truth. This danger attendsevery thinker who sets out from the Kantian philosophy, providedhe is a vigorous and whole man in suffering and desire and not amere clattering thought- an:d calculating-machine. Now we all knowvery well the shameful implications of this presupposition; it seemsto me, indeed, that Kant has had a living and life-transforminginfluence on only a very few men. One can read everywhere, I know,that since this quiet scholar produced his work a revolution has. taken place in every domain of the spirit; but I cannot believe it. For Icannot see it in those men who would themselves have to berevolutionized before a revolution could take place in any wholedomain whatever. If Kant ever should begin to exercise any wideinfluence we shall be aware of it in the form of a gnawing and disintegratingscepticism and relativism; and only in the most activeand noble spirits who have never been able to exist in a state of doubtwould there appear instead that undermining and despair of alltruth such as Heinrich von Kleist for example experience as theeffect of the Kantian philosophy. 'Not long ago', he writes in hismoving way, 'I became acquainted with the Kantian philosophyand I now have to tell you of a thought I derived from it, which I feelfree to do because I have no reason to fear it will shatter you so profoundlyand painfully as it has me. - We are unable to decidewhether that which we call truth really is truth, or whether it only140