Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Note on the textattack upon the sovereignty of 'public opinion' as an arbiter oftaste, values and truth itself. (Ours, he reminds us in section 2 ofSchopenhauer as Educator, is 'the age of public opinion'.) Whereasthe slave of public opinion strives always to be 'timely', a declaredcritic of the same will instead flaunt his deliberate 'untimeliness'.As Nietzsche explains in section 8 of Strauss, public opinionprides itself on speaking with a single voice, thereby forcing anyonewho disagrees to adopt a posture of conscious opposition. IfStrauss's The Old and the New Faith can be described (as it isdescribed by Nietzsche) as 'timely', then Nietzsche's attack uponit has to be described as 'untimely'.There are also two other senses, both expounded upon byNietzsche in the foreword to the second Meditation, in whichthese texts might be considered 'untimely', and both are relatedto the perspective from which their author claims to conduct hiscritique of 'timely' ideas and institutions. In the first instance,Nietzsche writes as an 'untimely' author in the sense that hewrites as one who is well-acquainted and'1mbued with the spirit ofGreek antiquity. He even maintains that it is one of the chiefvirtues of his own discipline of classical philology that it can - orat least should - provide one with a much needed, 'classical' perspectiveon the present day. Observations made possible by sucha perspective are perforce 'untimely', because, as Nietzscheremarks in section 2 of Schopenhauer as Educator, modern menmust always appear wretched in comparison with the ancients.Second, his perspective on the present is 'untimely' preciselybecause of his urgent concern with the fu ture. Anyone as preoccupiedas Nietzsche with the possibility of a new cultural rebirth hasno choice but to be a 'fighter' not only against the past, but alsoagainst the present. (A similar point is made in the fourthMeditation in praise of Wagner's 'art of the future'.) Nietzsche'sown Meditations are therefore 'untimely' because in them he presumesto evaluate the present from the standpoints of both thepast and the future. But there is also, as already noted, a constantnote of transparent irony in this use of the term 'untimely', sincethe author believes that nothing is more needed by our own age -and thus nothing is more 'timely' than precisely the kind of'untimeliness' represented by these very texts, a point that isaffirmed in the concluding paragraph of Strauss.Finally, Nietzsche thought of himself as 'untimely' in another,more personal sense, the same sense in which every originalxlvi