Nietzsche on Scholars

Beyond Good and Evil summary

• Philosophy has been in decline for lack of respect of individual philosophers such as Eugen Duhring, and Schopenhauer. On the other hand, science is flourishing today with good conscience. Today’s world is lack of the philosophers like Heraclitus, Plato and whatever other names royal and magnificent hermits of the spirit had. The scholars declare his independence, and his emancipation from philosophy: the self-exaltation of scholars are in full bloom.
• A philosopher’s development is dangerous and the friuts (good) of philosophy is hard to get. The philosopher needs to demands of himself a judgement, a Yes or No to life and the value of life. He has a right and duty to such a judgement. He must seek his way to this right and faith only from the most comprehesive (perhaps most disturbing and destructive) expreiences, and frequently hesitates, doubts and lapeses into slience.
• The rabble praise a man “wisely” or “as a philosopher” when it really means the man is “prudently”. Wisdom to the rabble is a kind of escape, a mean and trick for getting well out of a wicked game. But the genuine philosopher lives “unphilosophically” and “unwisely” and above all imprudently.
• The scientific man is a type that is not authoritative, not self-sufficient. He has industriousness, patient acceptance of his place in rank and file, evenness and moderation in his abilities and needs, and instinct for his equals and for what they need. He attests constantly to his value and utility which is needed to overcome again and again the internal mistrust which is the setiment in the hearts of all dependent men and herd animals.
• Objective man is a mirror, and an instrument. He is accustomed to submit before whatever wants to be known, and without any other pleasure than that found in knowing and mirroring. He accepts everything that comes his way. He does not command, neither does he destroy. He is an instrument for measuring, but he is no goal, no conclusion, less a beginning, not a begetting, nor a first cause, nothing tough, self-reliant that wants to be master.
• For skeptic, Yes and No goes against his morality. He likes to treat his virtue to abstinence by repeating Socrates “I know that I know nothing”, or “Here I don’t trust myself”. The skepticism is developed when races or classes that have long been separated are crossed suddenly and decisively.
• There is a type of skepticism that is strong and warlike. This skepticism despises and nevertheless seizes; It undermines and takes possession; It does not believe but does not lose itself in the process; It gives the spirit dangerous freedome, but it is serveron the heart. Frederick the Great is a German who has this skepticism. The father of Frederick the Great suspects taht his own son is surrendering to hedonistic frivolity of clever Frenchmen. The father suspects that his son has a heart that no longer commands, no longer capabel of commanding. Owing to his father’s doubts, Frederick the Great grows his new type of skepticism.
• Philosophers, with the strong type of skepticism, employ experiments, often dangerous and painful ones. These philosophers have the certainty of value standards, the deliberate employment of a unity of method, the courage, the ability to stand alone and give an account of themselves. These philosopher smile agreeably and affirmatively to “the thought, which elevates me, must be true”, “A work, which delights me, must be beautiufl”, and “An artist, who makes me greater, must be great”.
• Philosophical labors and scientific men are different from philosophers. It may be necessary for the education of a genuine philosopher that he has also once stood on the steps which the scientific laborers of philosophy remain standing. Perhaps, the genuine philosopher must have been critic and skeptic and dogmatist and historian and poet and moralist and almost everything in order to pass through the whole range of human values and value feelings and to be able to see with different eyes and consciences, from a height and into every distance.
• What a philosopher is, cannot be taught. One must “know” it, from experience. From every high world one must be cultivated for it: a right to philosophy. Every one of his virtues must have been acquired, nurtured, inherited, and digested singly, and ready for great responsisbilities, and the loftiness of glances that dominate and look down.