Nietzsche by Stefan Zweig

Author:Stefan Zweig [Zweig, Stefan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, History
ISBN: 9781782276371
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2020-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

VI

Transfiguration Towards the Self

The snake which cannot shed its skin, perishes. Likewise those spirits which are unable to change their concepts are no longer spirits.

Men of order, as blind as they may be before all that is original, possess an unfailing instinct for what is hostile to them; long before Nietzsche revealed himself to be an immoralist and the fire-raiser of their narrow enclosure of morals, they sensed in him an enemy: they had the measure of him before he did himself. He discomfited them, (no one mastered better than he ‘the gentle art of making enemies’) as the doubter type, the eternal outsider in all categories, the mongrel philosopher, philologist, revolutionary, artist, literary figure and musician – from the very first hour the specialists had despised him for his crossing of boundaries. Barely had the young philologist published his first work on the subject than the master of philology Wilamowitz (who stayed anchored to his academic position for half a century, whereas his charge proceeded to immortality) nailed him to the yardarm in front of all his colleagues for daring to exceed professional limits. The Wagnerians mistrusted him – and how justifiably! – for his impassioned panegyrics towards the master, the philosophers for his knowledge: even before he had emerged from the chrysalis of philology, even before his wings had formed, Nietzsche already had the experts ranged against him. Only Richard Wagner, genius and agent of change, cherishes this evolving spirit, this future enemy. But the rest sniff the air and sense a danger in his risqué manner and penchant for extremes. They sense a man who is wavering, unfaithful to his convictions, lost in that freedom without brakes that the most liberated of men practise towards all things and hence to their own self. And even to this very day his authority intimidates and makes them reticent, these specialists who would so much like to enclose ‘the lawless prince’ in a system, a doctrine, a religion or a message. They would like him to be like them, rooted in convictions, walled up in a conception of the universe, all that he dreads most. They would like to impose on this defenseless man a definitive position without contradiction, and place this nomad (he who conquered the infinite world of the spirit) in a temple, a dwelling place, he who never had such a shelter nor desired one.

But Nietzsche could not be caged in a doctrine, nor rooted in a conviction, and never in these pages has it been the intention to extract, in scholarly fashion, from one of the most moving tragedies of the mind, a cold ‘theory of knowledge’, for never did this fervent relativist of all values experience a prolonged attachment to any word that departed his lips, to any conviction of his conscience, to any passion in his soul and never did he feel bound by them. ‘A philosopher uses and consumes convictions,’ he responds haughtily to those sedentary spirits who proudly extol their character and their doctrine.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.