Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

IntroductionPeter Gast at the very moment when he believed he had finallyfulfilled his earlier promise, that is, immediately after the completionof Part I of Zarathustra: 'It is curious: I wrote the commentaryprior to the text! Everything was already promised in Schopenhauer aseducator. But there was still a long way to go from "Human, All TooHuman" to the "Superhuman".'29 This and many other similarpassages strongly suggest that Nietzsche believed that inSchopenhauer and the other 'Untimely Ones' he had not onlypledged himself publicly to pursue a certain set of questions ('mytask'), but had also provided unmistakable public hints about howthese same questions were to be answered and how he intended toaccomplish his task.In fact, it is not difficult for a reader familiar with Nietzsche'slater works to find in the Untimely Meditations clear anticipations ofmany characteristically Nietzschean themes and theses, including,but by no means limited to: a global critique of various forms ofdualism (including that of the 'outer' and 'inner' selves, as well asthe metaphysical dualism of the 'real' abd 'apparent' worlds); adefinition of the 'genuine philosopher' (in contradistinction to 'the mere 'scholar' or 'academic labourer') as a creator of valuesand critic of both science and art; the presupposition of a hyperbolicKantian scepticism with respect to the limits of knowledge,coupled with an endorsement of an instrumental 'perspectivism'with respect to actual knowledge claims; an insistence that neitherscience nor morality is self-grounding and an appeal to 'life'itself as the highest standard or criterion of judgment; a recognitionof the need for various sorts of 'illusion' (uneasily coupledwith an insistence that intellectual integrity requires us to identifythese illusions as such); and a definition of 'culture' as 'unity ofstyle'.Some distinctively 'Zarathustrian' doctrines are also anticipatedin the Untimely Meditations, including: a critique of complacent'omnisatisfaction' (whether of the 'cultural philistine' or of the'last man'); an insistence that 'being oneself ' requires 'overcomingoneself'; an emphasis upon the personal and cultural importanceof positing an ideal of a 'higher' form of humanity; a recognitionof the creative and productive power of negation anddestruction; a clear awareness of the inescapably temporal and'this-worldly' character of the human condition; and even (espe-. cially in the second Meditation) some oblique play with the idea of'eternal recurrence' .xxviii