Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Schopenhauer as educatortowards it lightly; fo r he who has the furor philosophicus * within himwill already no longer have time fo r the furor politicust and will wiselyrefrain from reading the newspapers every day, let alone working fora political party: though he will not hesitate for a moment to be at hisplace when his fatherland experiences a real emergency. Every statein which anyone other than the statesman has to concern himselfwith politics is ill organized and deserves to perish by all thesepoliticians.Another great advantage Schopenhauer enj oyed was the fact thathe was not brought up destined from the first to be a scholar, butactually worked for a time, if with reluctance, in a merchant's officeand in any event breathed throughout his entire youth the freer air ofa great mercantile house. A scholar can never become a philosopher;fo r even Kant was unable to do so but, the inborn pressure of hisgenius notwithstanding, remained to the end as it were in a chrysalisstage. Hewho thinks that in saying this I am doing Kant an injusticedoes not know what a philosopher is, namely not merely a great thinkerbut also a real human being; and when did a schoar ever become areal human being? He who lets concepts, opinions, past events,books, step between himself and things - he, that is to say, who is inthe broadest sense born for history - will never have an immediateperception of things and will never be an immediately perceivedthing himself; but both these conditions belong together in thephilosopher, because most of the instruction he receives he has toacquire out of himself and because he serves himself as a reflectionand brief abstract of the whole world. If a man perceives himself bymeans of the opinions of others, it is no wonder ifhe sees in himselfnothing but the opinions of others! And that is how scholars are, liveand see. Schopenhauer, on the other hand, had the indescribablegood fortune to be able to see genius from close up not only in himself,but also outside himself in Goethe: through this twofold reflectionhe was aware of and wise to all scholarly goals and cultures fromthe ground up. By virtue of this experience he knew what the strongand free human being for which every artistic culture longs must belike; given this insight, how could he have had much desire left toinvolve himself with so-called 'art' in the scholarly or hypocritical*furor philosophicus: philosophical passiont furor politicus: political passion181