I have gradually come to realize what every great philosophy so far has been: a confession of faith on the part of its author, and a type of involuntary and unself-conscious memoir; in short, that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constitute the true living seed from which the whole plant has…
What goads us into regarding all philosophers with an equal measure of mistrust and mockery is not that we are struck repeatedly by how innocent they are – how often and easily they err and stray, in short, their childish childlikeness – but rather that there is not enough genuine honesty about them: even…
Saturday morning in Cleveland. It is unclear how much I will be able to write. A few minutes is available before our Tour Coach boarding time. Our night at the Hampton Inn was pleasant. One feature of our stay, from our second floor room we had a fine view of the front entrance of…
How inevitable every detail of my life has been, how channeled by prior events, some partially understood, most just opaque happenings that appear dumb, still no less impactful upon my life. Fortune and misfortune are how I would label the entire saga. I know that with some effort I could construct a list of…
“How could anything originate out of its opposite?Truth from error, for instance?Or the will to truth from the will to deception?Or selfless action from self-interest?Or the pure, sun-bright gaze of wisdom from a covetous leer? Such origins are impossible,and people who dream about such thingsare fools – at best. Things of the highest valuemust…
Supposing truth is a woman-what then? Is there not reason to suspect that all philosophers, in so far as they were dogmatists, have known very little about women? That if their aim was to charm a female, they have been especially inept and inapt in making advances to truth with such awful seriousness and…
I, the last disciple and initiate of the god Dionysus: and can I, at last, start to give you, my friends, a small taste of this philosophy, as far as I am permitted? In undertones, which would be best, since it concerns many things that are secret, new, foreign, strange, uncanny. Even the fact…
The genius of the heart, as it is possessed by that great hidden one, the tempter god and born pied piper of consciences, whose voice knows how to descend into the underworld of every soul, whose every word and every glance conveys both consideration and a wrinkle of temptation, whose mastery includes an understanding…
There is a way of asking for our reasons which makes us forget our best reasons but awakens in us a defiance of and a repugnance for reasons in general -a way of asking which makes us very stupid and a typical trick of tyrannical people! The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by…
The strongest knowledge (that of the unfreedom of the human will) is nonetheless the poorest in successes: For it always has the strongest opponent, human vanity. Human, All Too Human by Nietzsche, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Assorted Opinions and Maxims, aphorism 50 I entertain many opinions. The most durable opinion that possesses me lately…
