Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationsmanner of modern man? For he had seen something higher: adreadful scene in a supraterrestrial court in which all life, even thehighest and most perfect, had been weighed and found wanting: hehad seen the saint as judge of existence. We cannot determine at allclosely how early in his life Schopenhauer must have perceived thispicture of life in all its details and as he sought to reproduce it in allhis subsequent writings; we can · demonstrate that he saw thistremendous vision as a young man, and can well believe he hadalready seen it as a child. Everything he subsequently appropriatedto himself from life and books, from the whole wealth of the sciences,was to him hardly more than colouring and means of expression; heemployed even the Kantian philosophy above all as an extraordinaryrhetorical instrument through which he believed he couldspeak of that picture more clearly: just as he occasionally made useof Buddhist and Christian mythology to the same end. For him therewas only one task and a hundred-thousand means of encompassingit: one meaning and countless hieroglyphics with which toexpress it.IAmong the most glorious conditions of his existence was the factthat he was able, in accordance with his motto vitam impendere vero, *really to live fo r such a task and that he was oppressed by none of thepetty necessities of life: - how generously he attributed this circumstanceto the efforts of his father is well known; whereas in Germanythe theoretical man usually pursues his scholarly destiny at theexpense of the purity of his character, as a 'thinking ragamuffin',greedy for posts and honours, cautious and pliable, ingratiatingtowards those with influence and position. Of all the offenceSchopenhauer has given to numerous scholars, nothing has offendedthem more than the unfortunate fact that he does not resemblethem.8These, then, are some of the conditions under which the philosophicalgenius can at any rate come into existence in our time despite theforces working against it: free manliness of character, earlyknowledge of mankind, no scholarly education, no narrow patriotism,no necessity for bread-winning, no ties with the state - inshort, freedom and again freedom: that wonderful and perilous elementin which the Greek philosophers were able to grow up."vitam impendere vero: devote one's life to the truth182