Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

IIUntimely Meditationsregard to how many good philosophers are needed. Secondly: itcompels those it has chosen to reside in a certain place, to live amongcertain people, to undertake a certain activity; they are obliged toinstruct every academic youth who desires instruction, and to do sodaily at certain fixed hours. Qu estion: can a philosopher reallyundertake with a good conscience to have something to teach everyday? And to teach it to anyone who cares to listen? Will he not beobliged to give the impression of knowing more than he does know?Will he not be obliged to speak before an audience of strangers ofthings which he can safely speak of only among his nearest friends?And speaking generally: is he not robbing himself of his freedom tofollow his genius whenever and wherever it calls him? - throughbeing obligated to think in public about predetermined subjects atpredetermined hours? And to do so before youths! Is such thinkingnot as it were emasculated from the first! Supposing one day he saidto himself: I can't think of anything today, at least not of anythingworthwhile - he would still have to present himself and pretendto think!bBut, you will object, he is not supposed to be a thinker at all, but atmost a learned presenter of what others have thought: and as to that,he will always have something to say his pupils do not already know.- But precisely this - to undertake to appear first and foremost asscholarliness - is the third perilous concession which philosophymakes to the state. Above all when it appears as knowledge of the historyof philosophy: for to the genius, who gazes upon things as apoet does, with pure and loving eyes, and cannot immerse himselftoo deeply in them, grubbing around in countless strange and perverseopinions is the most repugnant and inappropriate occupationimaginable. The learned history of the past has never been the businessof a true philosopher, neither in India nor in Greece; and if aprofessor of philosophy involves himself in such work he must atbest be content to have it said of him: he is a fine classical scholar,antiquary, linguist, historian - but never: he is a philosopher. Andthat, as remarked, is only at best: for most of the learned work doneby university philosophers seems to a classicist to be done badly,without scientific rigour and mostly with a detestable tediousness.Who, for example, can clear the history of the Greek philosophers ofthe soporific miasma spread over it by the learned, though not particularlyscientific and unfortunately all too tedious, labours of Ritter,Brandis and Zeller? I for one prefer reading Laertius Diogenes toZeller, because the former at least breathes the spirit of the186