Most Wanted: Security
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 familiar.
And we philosophers
–have we really meant more than this
when we have spoken of knowledge?
What is familiar means what we are used to
so that we no longer marvel at it, our everyday,
some rule in which we are stuck,
anything at all
in which we
feel at home.
Look, isn’t our need for knowledge
precisely this need for the familiar,
the will to uncover
under everything strange, unusual, and questionable
something that no longer
disturbs us?
Is it not the instinct of fear that bids us to know?
And is the jubilation
of those who attain knowledge
not the jubilation over the restoration
of a sense of security?
–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 5, Section 355 by Friedrich Nietzsche
