Nietzsche saw his life's work as an announcement...incomplete. He was a herald. Anyway, this is a great, and extended, quote by him from the 2nd essay in his
On the Geneology of Morals:
"The attainment of this goal would require a
different kind of spirit from that likely to appear in this present age: spirits strengthened by war and victory, for whom conquest, adventure, danger, and even pain have become needs; it would require habituation to the keen air of the heights, to winter journeys, to ice and mountains in every sense; it would require even a kind of sublime wickedness, an ultimate, supremely self-confident mischievousness in knowledge that goes with great health; it would require, in brief and alas, precisely this
great health!
Is this even possible today?-- But some day, in a stronger age than this decaying, self-doubting present, he must yet come to us, the
redeeming man of great love and contempt, the creative spirit whose compelling strength will not let him rest in any aloofness or any beyond, whose isolation is misunderstood by the people as if it were flight
from reality-- while it is only his absorption, immersion, penetration
into reality, so that, when he one day emerges again into the light, he may bring home the
redemption of this reality: its redemption from the curse that the hitherto reigning ideal has laid upon it. This man of the future, who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also from that which was bound to grow out of it, the great nausea, the will to nothingness, nihilism; this bell-stroke of noon and of the great decision that liberates the will again and restores its goal to the earth and his hope to man; this Antichrist and antinihilist; this victor over God and nothingness--
he must come one day.--"
First of all, this passage is thoroughly soaked in the Nietzschean, and it is therefore in great danger of misunderstanding. There are several words and phrases that evoke pages, even books of his philosophy. A keen eye will also catch several words that inspire entire schools of thought in 20th century Continental philosophy.
Mainly, what I wanted to convey is both the pure artistry and dexterity of the prose, but more importantly the hoping, even pleading thrust of the issue. One can hear Nietzsche begging at the end. Here, Nietzsche is more honest than he often is in the published works. Nietzsche here is not the Nietzsche who later says, "I am no man-- I am dynamite!" This is the "all-too-human" Friedrich Nietzsche...this is the Nietzsche who wrote in a letter:
"My existence is an
awful burden-- I would have dispensed with it long ago, were it not for the most illuminating tests and experiments I have been conducting in matters of mind and morality even in my state of suffering and almost absolute renunciation-- the pleasure I take in my thirst for knowledge brings me to heights from which I triumph over all torment and despondency. On the whole, I am happier now than I have ever been in my life."
What is so striking about Nietzsche the artist and the man, as opposed to Nietzsche the philosopher and antichrist, is how he can powerfully juxtapose in the heart of the reader the depths of sadness and despair with the heights of power and hope. This is a philosopher who declared to say "Yes," to be a "Yes-saying" philosopher, but this is a man who cried
please from within. I want to say yes to him from the heights, but I sink with him into the
please...
The artist, according to Nietzsche, is one who challenges humanity with the immediate and sensual metaphor set against the whole rigid edifice of forgotten metaphors we have come to call "concept," "truth." The artist confuses man so that he no longer knows if he is in waking or dreaming. Has there ever been a philosopher who has so powerfully confounded the spectator like Nietzsche? When I read Nietzsche I tumble with him, I try to keep up with the dialectic, and I feel him laughing at me from beyond the grave...but ultimately, and you may not take me seriously, I forget if I am waking or dreaming. Nietzsche finishes with a denial of the embrace...he inspires anxiety, but the kind of anxiety that produces heightened fear and empowerment...
