Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationstransitions from one subject to another are especial i y skilful, andeven more admirable, perhaps, is the dexterity with which uncomfortablethings are pushed aside or buried in silence.' The senses ofsuch panegyrists are, as is apparent here too, alert not so much towhat an author can do as to what he wants to do. What Strauss wantsto do, however, is betrayed most clearly in his emphatic arid notwholly innocent recommendation of a Voltairean gracefulness in theservice of which he could have learned those 'lightly clad' arts ofwhich his panegyrist speaks - supposing, that is, that virtue can betaught and a pedant can ever become a dancer.Who cannot harbour reservations when for example he readsthese words of Strauss's on Voltaire (p. 219): 'as a philosopherVoltaire is not original, it is true, but in the main an elaborator ofEnglish researches: yet he proves to be altogether a master of hismaterial, which with incomparable dexterity he illuminates from allsides and thereby, without being strictly methodical, satisfies thedemands of thoroughness'. All the negative traits are in keeping: noone will maintain that as a philosopher itrauss is original or strictlymethodical; the question is whether we will also acknowledge that heis a 'master of his material' or concede to him 'incomparable dexterity'.The confession that the work is 'intentionally lightly clad'allows us to guess that incomparable dexterity was at any rateintended.Not to build a temple or a dwelling, but to set down a ummerhousesurrounded with horticulture - that was our architect'sdream. It almost seems, indeed, that even that mysterious feeling forthe cosmos was intended mainly as a means of aesthetic effect, like aview of an irrational element, the sea for instance, from within anelegant and rational terrace. The walk through the first section - thatis to say, through the theological catacombs with their obscurity andtheir convoluted and baroque ornamentation - was again only anaesthetic means of emphasizing by contrast the purity, brightnessand rationality of the section entitled 'What is our conception of theworld?': for immediately after that walk in the gloom and glimpse ofdistant irrational windings, we enter a hall with a fanlight; it receivesus with cheerful sobriety, there are celestial charts and mathematicalfigures on the walls and it is filled with scientific apparatus and cupboardslined with skeletons, stuffed monkeys and anatomicalspecimens. But we do not wholly recover our good humour until wepass through this hall and enter the full domestic ease and comfortof the occupants of our summer-house; we discover them with their44