Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationsand even an inferior and degenerate culture cannot b thought of asfailing to exhibit a stylistic unity within which the manifoldphenomena which characterize it are harmonized, this confusionreigning in the deluded mind of the cultural philistine may wellorginate in i:he fact that, discovering everywhere identical reproductionsof himself, he infers from this identity of all 'cultivated'people the existence of a unity of style and thus the existence of aGerman culture. He perceives around him nothing but needs identicalwith and views similar to his own; wherever he goes he is at onceembraced by a bond of tacit conventions in regard to many things,especially in the realms of religion and art: this impressivehomogeneity, this tutti unisono* which no one commands but whichis always ready to break fo rth, seduces him to the belief that a culturehere holds sway. But systematic and oppressive philistinism doesnot constitute a culture, even an inferior culture, merely because itpossesses system: it must always be the antithesis of a culture,namely a permanendy estahlished barbarity. For that uniformitywhich is so striking in the cultivated pe0ple of Germany today is aunity only through the conscious or unconscious exclusion andnegation of every artistically productive form and the demand of atrue style. An unhappy contortion must have taken place in the brainof the cultural philistine: he regards as culture precisely that whichnegates culture, and since he is accustomed to proceed with consistencyhe finally acquires a coherent collection of such negations, asystem of un-culture, to which one might even concede a certain'unity of style' if it made any sense to speak of a barbarism with style.Ifhe is allowed to choose between a stylistically agreeable action andone of the opposite kind, he invariably elects the latter, and becausehe always does so all his actions bear the same negative stamp. It isprecisely this negative stamp which enables him to recognize thenature of the 'German culture' he has patented: whatever does notcorrespond to it he adjudges hostile and inimical to him. In this casethe cultural philistine does no more than defend himself: he denies,secretes, stops his ears, averts his eyes, he is a negative being even inhis hatred and hostility. The person he hates most of all, however, ishim who treats him as a philistine and tells him what he is: a hindranceto the strong and creative, a labyrinth for al i who doubt andgo astray, a swamp to the feet of the weary, a fetter to all who wouldpursue lofty goals, a poisonous mist to new buds, a parching desert"tutti unisono: everybody, together8