Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

David Strauss, the confessor and the writerFor otheIWise it is almost to be feared that modern men will beable to get along without bothering overmuch with the ingredientsof Strauss's religious faith, just as they have in fact hitherto got alongwithout the principle of the rationality of the cosmos. Modernnatural science and study of history have nothing whatever to dowith the Straussian faith in the cosmos, and that the modern philistinedoes not need it either is shown by the description of his lifewhich Strauss himself gives in the section 'How do we order ourlife?' He is therefore right to doubt whether the 'carriage' to whichhis 'valued readers have had to entrust themselves meets everyrequirement' . It certainly does not meet them: fo r modern mantravels a lot faster if he is not sitting in this Straussian carriage - ormore correctly: he was travelling a lot faster long before this Straussiancarriage existed. So ifit be true that the celebrated 'minority that cannotbe ignored' of which and in whose name Strauss speaks really'sets great store by consistency', then they must be just as dissatisfiedwith Strauss the carriage-builder as we are with Strauss thelogician.But let us forget about the logician: perhaps the book really is wellfo rmed artistically, and conforms to the laws of beauty even ifit doesnot possess a well-thought-out logical plan. And it is only now, afterdetermining that he has not borne himself as a scientific, orderlyminded and systematizing scholar, that we arrive at the questionwhether Strauss is a good writer.Perhaps he conceived it as his task, not so much to frighten peopleaway from the 'old faith', as to lure them to the new philosophy oflife by depicting it in cheerful and lively colours. If he thought ofscholars and the educated as his first readers, he must have realizedfrom his own experience that, while they can be laid low with theheavy artillery of scientific proof, they can never by this means bebrought to surrender, though they fall prey all the more readily tolightly clad arts of seductions. 'Lightly clad', and that 'intentionally',is however what Strauss himself calls his book; his public panegyristsalso find it and describe it as 'lightly clad', as for example this onedoes in the following terms: 'The discourse moves fO IWard in apleasing rhythm and handles the art of demonstration with playfulease when it is engaged critically against what is old, as it does no lesswhen it seductively prepares and presents to both undemanding andexperienced palates the new things it brings. The arrangement ofsuch manifold and dissimilar material, where everything is to betouched on but nothing pursued at length, is well thought out; the43