Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationsmost vital of questions for philosophy appears to be to what extentthe character ofthe world is unalterable: so as, once this question hasbeen answered, to set about improving that part olit recognized as alterablewith the most ruthless courage. True philosophers themselves teachthis lesson, through the fact that they have worked to improve thevery much alterable judgments of mankind and have not kept theirwisdom to themselves; it is also taught by those true disciples of truephilosophers who, like Wagner, know how to imbibe from them anenhanced resolution and inflexibility but no soporific juices.Wagner is most a philosopher when he is most energetic and heroic.And it was precisely as a philosopher that he passed through notonly the fire of various philosophical systems without feeling fear,but also through the smoke of scholarly knowledge, and remainedloyal to his higher self, which demanded of him deeds in which hismanyfaceted nature participated as a whole and bade him suffer and learnso as to be capable of these deeds.4bThe history of the evolution of culture since the Greeks is shortenough, if one takes into account the actual distance covered andignores the halts, regressions, hesitatio.ns and lingerings. TheHellenization of the world and, to make this possible, the orientalizationof the Hellenic - the twofold task of the great Alexander ­is still the last great event; the old question whether a culture can betransplanted to a foreign soil at all is still the problem over which themoderns weary themselves. The rhythmic play against one anotherof these two factors is what has especially determined the course ofhistory hitheno. Here Christianity, for example, appears as a pieceof oriental antiquity, thought and worked through by men withexcessive thoroughness. As its influence has waned, the power of theHellenic cultural world has again increased; we experiencephenomena which are so peculiar they would hang in the air incomprehensibleto us if we could not look back over a tremendous spaceof time and connect them with their Greek counterparts. Thus thereare between Kant and the Eleatics, >:< Schopenhauer and Empedocles,Aeschylus and Richard Wagner such approximations and affinities#The Eleatics: the followers of the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides (bornabout 510 Bq. the first European metaphysician any of whose writings havesurvived.208