Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationsthe hieroglyphics of universal life. And this is how ' Schopenhauer'sphilosophy should also always be interpreted at first: individually,by the individual only for himself, so as to gain insight into his OWl)want and misery, into his own limitedness, so as then to learn thenature of his antidotes and consolations: namely, sacrifice of the ego,submission to the noblest ends, above all to those of justice andcompassion. He teaches us to distinguish between those things thatreally promote human happiness and those that only appear to doso: how neither riches nor honours nor erudition can lift theindividual out of the profound depression he feels at the valuelessnessof his existence, and how the striving after these valued thingsacquires meaning only through an exalted and transfiguring overallgoal: to acquire power so as to aid the evolution of the physis and to befor a while the corrector of its follies and ineptitudes. At first only fo ryourself, to be sure; but through yourself in the end for everyone. Itis true that this is a striving which by its nature leads towards resignation:for what and how much is amenable to any kind ofimprovementat all, in the individual or in t generality!If we apply these words to Schopenhauer, we touch on the thirdand most characteristic danger in which he lived and which lay concealedin the whole structure and skeleton of his being. Every humanbeing is accustomed to discovering in himself some limitation, of histalent or of his moral will, which fills him with melancholy and longing;and just as his feeling of sinfulness makes him long for the saint inhim, so as an intellectual being he harbours a profound desire fo rthe genius in him. This is the root of all true culture; and if I understandby this the longing of man to be reborn as saint and genius, Iknow that one does not have to be a Buddhist to understand thismyth. Where we discover talent devoid of that longing, in the worldof scholars or that of the so-called cultivated, we are repelled and disgustedby it; for we sense that, with all their intellect, such people donot promote an evolving culture and the procreation of genius -which is the goal of all culture but hinder it. It is a state of petrifaction,equivalent in value to that routine, cold and self-laudatoryvirtuousness which is also farthest, and keeps itself far, from truesaintliness. Now, Schopenhauer' s nature contained a strange andextremely dangerous dualism. Few thinkers have felt with a comparableintensity and certainty that genius moved within them; andhis genius promised him the highest - that there would be no deeperfurrow than that which his ploughshare was digging in the ground ofmodern mankind. Thus he knew half his nature to be satisfied, its142