Ulf
01-26-2009, 03:52 PM
PREFACE
SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman—what then? Is
there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so
far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand
women—that the terrible seriousness and clumsy
importunity with which they have usually paid their
addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly
methods for winning a woman? Certainly she has never
allowed herself to be won; and at present every kind of
dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien—IF, indeed,
it stands at all! For there are scoffers who maintain that it
has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ground—nay more,
that it is at its last gasp. But to speak seriously, there are
good grounds for hoping that all dogmatizing in
philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive and
decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble
puerilism and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand
when it will be once and again understood WHAT has
actually sufficed for the basis of such imposing and
absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have
hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of
immemorial time (such as the soul-superstition, which, in
the form of subject- and ego-superstition, has not yet
ceased doing mischief): perhaps some play upon words, a
deception on the part of grammar, or an audacious
generalization of very restricted, very personal, very
human—all-too-human facts. The philosophy of the
dogmatists, it is to be hoped, was only a promise for
thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology in still
earlier times, in the service of which probably more
labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than
on any actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its
‘super- terrestrial’ pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand
style of architecture. It seems that in order to inscribe
themselves upon the heart of humanity with everlasting
claims, all great things have first to wander about the earth
as enormous and awe- inspiring caricatures: dogmatic
philosophy has been a caricature of this kind—for
instance, the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, and Platonism in
Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must
certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome,
and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a
dogmatist error—namely, Plato’s invention of Pure Spirit
and the Good in Itself. But now when it has been
surmounted, when Europe, rid of this nightmare, can
again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a healthier—
sleep, we, WHOSE DUTY IS WAKEFULNESS
ITSELF, are the heirs of all the strength which the struggle
against this error has fostered. It amounted to the very
inversion of truth, and the denial of the
PERSPECTIVE—the fundamental condition—of life, to
speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato spoke of them;
indeed one might ask, as a physician: ‘How did such a
malady attack that finest product of antiquity, Plato? Had
the wicked Socrates really corrupted him? Was Socrates
after all a corrupter of youths, and deserved his hemlock?’
But the struggle against Plato, or—to speak plainer, and
for the ‘people’—the struggle against the ecclesiastical
oppression of millenniums of Christianity (FOR
CHRISITIANITY IS PLATONISM FOR THE
‘PEOPLE’), produced in Europe a magnificent tension of
soul, such as had not existed anywhere previously; with
such a tensely strained bow one can now aim at the
furthest goals. As a matter of fact, the European feels this
tension as a state of distress, and twice attempts have been
made in grand style to unbend the bow: once by means of
Jesuitism, and the second time by means of democratic
enlightenment—which, with the aid of liberty of the press
and newspaper-reading, might, in fact, bring it about that
the spirit would not so easily find itself in ‘distress’! (The
Germans invented gunpowder-all credit to them! but they
again made things square—they invented printing.) But
we, who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats, nor even
sufficiently Germans, we GOOD EUROPEANS, and
free, VERY free spirits—we have it still, all the distress of
spirit and all the tension of its bow! And perhaps also the
arrow, the duty, and, who knows? THE GOAL TO AIM
AT….
Sils Maria Upper Engadine, JUNE, 1885.
SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman—what then? Is
there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so
far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand
women—that the terrible seriousness and clumsy
importunity with which they have usually paid their
addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly
methods for winning a woman? Certainly she has never
allowed herself to be won; and at present every kind of
dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien—IF, indeed,
it stands at all! For there are scoffers who maintain that it
has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ground—nay more,
that it is at its last gasp. But to speak seriously, there are
good grounds for hoping that all dogmatizing in
philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive and
decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble
puerilism and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand
when it will be once and again understood WHAT has
actually sufficed for the basis of such imposing and
absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have
hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of
immemorial time (such as the soul-superstition, which, in
the form of subject- and ego-superstition, has not yet
ceased doing mischief): perhaps some play upon words, a
deception on the part of grammar, or an audacious
generalization of very restricted, very personal, very
human—all-too-human facts. The philosophy of the
dogmatists, it is to be hoped, was only a promise for
thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology in still
earlier times, in the service of which probably more
labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than
on any actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its
‘super- terrestrial’ pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand
style of architecture. It seems that in order to inscribe
themselves upon the heart of humanity with everlasting
claims, all great things have first to wander about the earth
as enormous and awe- inspiring caricatures: dogmatic
philosophy has been a caricature of this kind—for
instance, the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, and Platonism in
Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must
certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome,
and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a
dogmatist error—namely, Plato’s invention of Pure Spirit
and the Good in Itself. But now when it has been
surmounted, when Europe, rid of this nightmare, can
again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a healthier—
sleep, we, WHOSE DUTY IS WAKEFULNESS
ITSELF, are the heirs of all the strength which the struggle
against this error has fostered. It amounted to the very
inversion of truth, and the denial of the
PERSPECTIVE—the fundamental condition—of life, to
speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato spoke of them;
indeed one might ask, as a physician: ‘How did such a
malady attack that finest product of antiquity, Plato? Had
the wicked Socrates really corrupted him? Was Socrates
after all a corrupter of youths, and deserved his hemlock?’
But the struggle against Plato, or—to speak plainer, and
for the ‘people’—the struggle against the ecclesiastical
oppression of millenniums of Christianity (FOR
CHRISITIANITY IS PLATONISM FOR THE
‘PEOPLE’), produced in Europe a magnificent tension of
soul, such as had not existed anywhere previously; with
such a tensely strained bow one can now aim at the
furthest goals. As a matter of fact, the European feels this
tension as a state of distress, and twice attempts have been
made in grand style to unbend the bow: once by means of
Jesuitism, and the second time by means of democratic
enlightenment—which, with the aid of liberty of the press
and newspaper-reading, might, in fact, bring it about that
the spirit would not so easily find itself in ‘distress’! (The
Germans invented gunpowder-all credit to them! but they
again made things square—they invented printing.) But
we, who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats, nor even
sufficiently Germans, we GOOD EUROPEANS, and
free, VERY free spirits—we have it still, all the distress of
spirit and all the tension of its bow! And perhaps also the
arrow, the duty, and, who knows? THE GOAL TO AIM
AT….
Sils Maria Upper Engadine, JUNE, 1885.