All earlier people found it much more likely that wherever there is madness there is also a grain of genius and wisdom — something ‘divine’, as one whispered to oneself. Or rather: as one said aloud forcefully enough. ‘It is through madness that the greatest good things have come to Greece’, Plato said, in…
A patient in a large hospital room with many beds complains to the doctor about the constant noise other patients are making, which is driving him crazy. The doctor replies that nothing can be done, one cannot forbid the patients from expressing their despair, since they all know they are dying. The first patient…
Morality is nothing other than obedience to customs, of whatever kind there may be; customs, however, are the traditional way of behaving and evaluating. In things in which no tradition commands there is no morality; and the less life is determined by tradition, the smaller the circle of morality… The free human being is…
…the despairing and salvation-thirsty heart to which the madness whispers: ‘Behold thou art the lamb that beareth the sins of God.’ –the error lies not only in the feeling ‘I am accountable’, but equally in that antithesis ‘I am not, but somebody has to be.’ —This is, in fact, not true: The philosopher has…
It is absurd to praise and blame nature and necessity. In the same way as he loves a fine work of art, but does not praise it, because it can do nothing for itself; in the same way as he regards plants, so must he regard his own actions and those of mankind. He…
We do not complain of nature as immoral because it sends a thunderstorm and makes us wet, — why do we call those who injure us immoral? Because in the latter case we take for granted a free will functioning voluntarily; in the former we see necessity. But this distinction is an error. Thus…
How far the perspectival character of existence extends or indeed whether existence has any other character than this; whether existence without interpretation, without sense, does not become “meaninglessness”. Whether on the other hand, all existence is not essentially actively engaged in interpretation –that cannot be decided even by the most industrious and most scrupulously…
How far the perspectival character of existence extends or indeed whether existence has any other character than this; whether existence without interpretation, without sense, does not become “meaninglessness”. Whether on the other hand, all existence is not essentially actively engaged in interpretation –that cannot be decided even by the most industrious and most scrupulously…
I take this explanation from the street. I heard one of the common people say, “he knew me right away.” Then I asked myself: What is it that the common people take for knowledge? What do they want when they want “knowledge”? Nothing more than this: Something strange is to be reduced to something…
…we could think, feel, will, and remember, and we could also “act” in every sense of that word, and yet none of all this would have to “enter our consciousness”. The whole of life would be possible without, as it were, seeing itself in a mirror. Man… as the most endangered animal, he needed…
