Beyond Good and Evil | Page 8

do otherwise; philosophy is this
tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the
world," the will to the causa prima.
10. The eagerness and subtlety, I should even say craftiness, with which the problem of
"the real and the apparent world" is dealt with at present throughout Europe, furnishes
food for thought and attention; and he who hears only a "Will to Truth" in the
background, and nothing else, cannot certainly boast of the sharpest ears. In rare and
isolated cases, it may really have happened that such a Will to Truth--a certain
extravagant and adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambition of the forlorn hope--has
participated therein: that which in the end always prefers a handful of "certainty" to a
whole cartload of beautiful possibilities; there may even be puritanical fanatics of

conscience, who prefer to put their last trust in a sure nothing, rather than in an uncertain
something. But that is Nihilism, and the sign of a despairing, mortally wearied soul,
notwithstanding the courageous bearing such a virtue may display. It seems, however, to
be otherwise with stronger and livelier thinkers who are still eager for life. In that they
side AGAINST appearance, and speak superciliously of "perspective," in that they rank
the credibility of their own bodies about as low as the credibility of the ocular evidence
that "the earth stands still," and thus, apparently, allowing with complacency their
securest possession to escape (for what does one at present believe in more firmly than in
one's body?),--who knows if they are not really trying to win back something which was
formerly an even securer possession, something of the old domain of the faith of former
times, perhaps the "immortal soul," perhaps "the old God," in short, ideas by which they
could live better, that is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than by "modern
ideas"? There is DISTRUST of these modern ideas in this mode of looking at things, a
disbelief in all that has been constructed yesterday and today; there is perhaps some slight
admixture of satiety and scorn, which can no longer endure the BRIC-A-BRAC of ideas
of the most varied origin, such as so-called Positivism at present throws on the market; a
disgust of the more refined taste at the village-fair motleyness and patchiness of all these
reality-philosophasters, in whom there is nothing either new or true, except this
motleyness. Therein it seems to me that we should agree with those skeptical anti-realists
and knowledge-microscopists of the present day; their instinct, which repels them from
MODERN reality, is unrefuted . . . what do their retrograde by-paths concern us! The
main thing about them is NOT that they wish to go "back," but that they wish to get
AWAY therefrom. A little MORE strength, swing, courage, and artistic power, and they
would be OFF--and not back!
11. It seems to me that there is everywhere an attempt at present to divert attention from
the actual influence which Kant exercised on German philosophy, and especially to
ignore prudently the value which he set upon himself. Kant was first and foremost proud
of his Table of Categories; with it in his hand he said: "This is the most difficult thing
that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics." Let us only understand this
"could be"! He was proud of having DISCOVERED a new faculty in man, the faculty of
synthetic judgment a priori. Granting that he deceived himself in this matter; the
development and rapid flourishing of German philosophy depended nevertheless on his
pride, and on the eager rivalry of the younger generation to discover if possible
something--at all events "new faculties"--of which to be still prouder!--But let us reflect
for a moment--it is high time to do so. "How are synthetic judgments a priori
POSSIBLE?" Kant asks himself--and what is really his answer? "BY MEANS OF A
MEANS (faculty)"--but unfortunately not in five words, but so circumstantially,
imposingly, and with such display of German profundity and verbal flourishes, that one
altogether loses sight of the comical niaiserie allemande involved in such an answer.
People were beside themselves with delight over this new faculty, and the jubilation
reached its climax when Kant further discovered a moral faculty in man--for at that time
Germans were still moral, not yet dabbling in the "Politics of hard fact." Then came the
honeymoon of German philosophy. All the young theologians of the Tubingen institution
went immediately into the groves--all seeking for "faculties." And what did they not
find--in that innocent, rich, and still youthful period of the German spirit, to which
Romanticism, the malicious fairy, piped and sang, when one could not yet distinguish

between "finding" and "inventing"! Above all a faculty for the "transcendental";
Schelling christened it, intellectual intuition, and thereby gratified the