In fact, these philosophers [of the future] admit to taking pleasure in saying no, in dissecting, and in a certain level-headed cruelty that knows how to guide a knife with assurance and subtlety, even when the heart is bleeding. They will be more severe (and perhaps not always with themselves alone) than humane people…
I understand this poem was found in T. S. Eliot’s papers. It appears to have been written in the last years of his writing career. The poem is a composition of poems which were previously written and published. Near to the end of a journey one sometimes is able to understand how once seeming…
If you hear anyone praised these days for living “wisely” or “like a philosopher” it basically just means he is “clever and keeps out of the way.” To the rabble, wisdom seems like a kind of escape, a device or trick for pulling yourself out of the game when things get rough. But the…
…but someone with an uncommon eye for the overall danger that “humanity” itself will degenerate, someone like us, who has recognized the outrageous contingency that has been playing games with the future of humanity so far – games in which no hand and not even a “finger of God” has taken part! – someone…
…a new type of philosopher and commander will be needed for this someday, and whatever hidden, dreadful, or benevolent spirits have existed on earth will pale into insignificance beside the image of this type. The image of such leaders hovers before our eyes: – may I say this out loud, you free spirits? The…
We who have a different faith –, we who consider the democratic movement to be not merely an abased form of political organization, but rather an abased (a diminished) form of humanity, a mediocritization and depreciation of humanity in value: where do we need to reach with our hopes? – Towards new philosophers, there…
People in Europe [America] clearly know what Socrates claimed not to know, and what that famous old snake once promised to teach, – people these days “know” what is good and evil. Now it must sound harsh and strike the ear quite badly when we keep insisting on the following point: what it is…
How much or how little danger there is to the community or to equality in an opinion, in a condition or affect, in a will, in a talent, this is now the moral perspective: and fear is once again the mother of morality. When the highest and strongest drives erupt in passion, driving…
For as long as there have been people, there have been herds of people as well (racial groups, communities, tribes, folk, states, churches), and a very large number of people who obey compared to relatively few who command. So, considering the fact that humanity has been the best and most long-standing breeding ground for…
No mother doubts at the bottom of her heart that, in the child, she has given birth to a piece of property; no father questions his right to subject the child to his own ideas and valuations. In fact, there was a time (among the ancient Germans, for instance) when it seemed fair that…
