421.
I must set up the highest ideal of a philosopher. Learning is not everything! The scholar is the sheep in the kingdom of learning; he studies because he is told to do so, and because others have done so before him.
422.
The superstition concerning philosophers: They are confounded with men of science. As if the value of things were inherent in them and required only to be held on to tightly! To what extent are their researches carried on under the influence of values which already prevail (their hatred of appearance of the body, etc.)? Schopenhauer concerning morality (scorn of Utilitarianism). Ultimately the confusion goes so far that Darwinism is regarded as philosophy, and thus at the present day power has gone over to the men of science. Even Frenchmen like Taine prosecute research, or mean to prosecute research, without being already in possession of a standard of valuation. Prostration before "facts" of a kind of cult. As a matter of fact, they destroy the existing valuations.
The explanation of this misunderstanding. The man who is able to command is a rare phenomenon; he misinterprets himself. What one wants to do, above all, is to disclaim all authority and to attribute it to circumstances. In Germany the critic's estimations belong to the history of awakening manhood. Lessing, etc. (Napoleon concerning Goethe). As a matter of fact, the movement is again made retrograde owing to German romanticism: and the fame of German philosophy relies upon it as if it dissipated the danger of scepticism and could demonstrate faith. Both tendencies culminate in Hegel: at bottom, what he did was to generalise the fact of German criticism and the fact of German romanticism,—a kind of dialectical fatalism, but to the honour of intellectuality, with the actual submission of the philosopher to reality. The critic prepares the way: that is all!
With Schopenhauer the philosopher's mission dawns; it is felt that the object is to determine values; still under the dominion of eudemonism. The ideal of Pessimism.
423.
Theory and practice.—This is a pernicious distinction, as if there were an instinct of knowledge, which, without inquiring into the utility or harmfulness of a thing, blindly charged at the truth; and then that, apart from this instinct, there were the whole world of practical interests.
In contradiction of this, I try to show what instincts are active behind all these pure theorists,—and how the latter, as a whole, under the dominion of their instincts, fatally make for something which to their minds is "truth," to their minds and only to their minds. The struggle between systems, together with the struggle between epistemological scruples, is one which involves very special instincts (forms of vitality, of decline, of classes, of races, etc.).
The so-called thirst for knowledge may be traced to the lust of appropriation and of conquest: in obedience to this lust the senses, memory, and the instincts, etc., were developed. The quickest possible reduction of the phenomena, economy, the accumulation of spoil from the world of knowledge (i.e. that portion of the world which has been appropriated and made manageable)....