This task itself demands something different
–it demands that he/she create values.
Actual philosophers
are commanders and law-givers:
they say ‘thus it shall be!’
it is they who determine
the Wherefore and Whether of mankind,
and they possess for this task
the preliminary work of all philosophical laborers,
of all those who have subdued the past

–they reach for the future
with creative hand,
and everything that has been
becomes for them a means, an instrument,
a hammer.

Their ‘knowing’ is creating,
their creating is a law giving,
their will to truth is
—will to power.

Are there such philosophers today?
Have there been such philosophers?
Must there not be such philosophers?

Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche, aphorism 211, trans by R. G. Hollingdale

Monday February 12th and the morning is sunlit, a mild day for midwinter.  Vehicular traffic is moving briskly on Geneva’s State Street.

The Superbowl spectacle in Las Vegas recedes.  The Starbucks room is more quiet than usual.  Those who can are likely to be sleeping in.  The emotional expense of viewing a game enveloped by ritual and pageantry, commercial pitches passing like a slow moving train, and camera cutaways to celebrities in their unscripted moment of eating, screaming, listening to the voice in their heads, etc. taken together demands recovery.

So here I am on the morning after.  I return to the topic that interested me before the Superbowl silliness.  We must all return do we not?  The question is: return to what?

The quoted passage has to do with Nietzsche’s musings about philosophy and philosophers. A philosopher is not a scientist, not an artist, not a football player, not anyone paid to opine for a microphone or camera due to name recognition, influence.

Life continues on its metaled ways. And yet, and yet?

Must there not be such…

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I suggest a tune to orient us to the horizon as we journey on.  This one, Hungry Eyes by Eric Carmen will serve us well.  Wait for the saxophone solo close to the ending.  It sizzles!  Life sizzles!