The General Journey Of The Philosopher Without Affectation

Émile Faguet, On Reading Nietzsche, tr. George Raaffalovich (New York, 1918), ch. I., Nietzsche Seeks Himself, pp. 1-2:

Often, if not always, while expressing his ideas, a philosopher merely analyzes his own character. Often, if not always, the philosopher's starting point is his own feelings. Then, gifted with the faculty of putting his feelings into thoughts, because he is a philosopher, he turns his feelings into ideas. Then, gifted with the synthetic faculty, he gathers all his ideas, which are but transformed feelings, into one general idea. Then perhaps, he looks around, perceives everything which, in the domain of ideas, thwarts and hampers his own general idea and criticizes it. His criticism is minute because he is a dialectician. It is bitter and bold because his general idea is at bottom nothing but a personal feeling to which he clings and even a passion which dominates him. Then, in the course of his critical operation, he discovers ideas which confirm his general thought and he welcomes them. His general thought becomes a system. Again, because he is honest, ideas come to him which contradict his system. He does not dismiss them, because he loves ideas for their own sake but he throws them on the margin of his intellect, or at least he does his best more or less to bring them into his own system. Finally, he reaches the conception—which most of the time, he cannot realize nor even embrace—of a system which would exceed his own and could include in its greater breadth all the ideas that have come to him, those that were hostile and those that were dear to him. He conceives a system beyond his own system, a general idea beyond his own general idea. This system he sketches. Of this idea he gets a glimpse. As a rule, especially if he dies young, he remains on the threshold of this Promised Land, which he leaves to others.

Sweet Pains

Henri Bremond, A Literary History of Religious Thought in France: From the Wars of Religion down to our Times, tr. K. L. Montgomery (Macmillan, 1928), vol. I., Devout Humanism, ch. XIV., Towards «Pure Love», pp. 298-99 (with the footnote of the author at p. 299):

The ancients, he [i.e., Charles de Saint-Paul] writes, 

gave Love wings to signify that it elevates and uplifts the spirit above the crouching and servile temper of those coarse souls who are insensible to its influence. His torch . . . shows that it kindles in souls many happy flashes and much excellent knowledge unknown to all who do not know him as he is; the daintiness of wooing instilled by him witnesses that nought is so refining as pure love. Love is represented as young, not because it is rash or to blame for any want of consideration . . . but rather to demonstrate that true and perfect love is immortal. His bow and arrows are typical . . . of the mighty effects of love on the spirits, impressions for which «wounds» is a misnomer . . . (for) they are accompanied with such sweetness of delight and pleasant pains that none who has experienced them but would ever prefer them to the soundness of perfect insensibility.1

1. Tableau de la Madeleine [Tableau de la Magdelaine en l'estat de parfaite amante de Jesus. Où se voient les exercices par lesquels on peut arriver à la gloire d'un semblable estat] (1628), pp. 12-17. This strange monk is moved and ravished by all things. «The organ,» he cries, «this admirable instrument, on which music appears as though upon a triumphal chariot» (p. 47). In another place he describes sucklings at their mothers' breasts. «It happens . . . that quite suddenly the humours (which the milk) sends to their brains cause their little eyes to close, putting them into a sweet languor, during which they do not let go the breast, but remain attached to it without other action than a slow and almost unconscious movement of their lips, with which they imperceptibly mouth the mother's bosom.» (p. 192.) 

Education And Killing Originality

Émile Faguet, The Cult of Incopmetence, tr. Beatrice Barstow (New York, 1914), ch. XI., Attempted Remedies, pp. 185-187:

The precocious development of early talent and originality is the thing which strangely terrifies these examination-maniacs. They have a horror of the man who teaches himself. They have a horror of any one who ventures to think for himself and to enquire for himself at twenty-five years of age. They want, like an old hen, to mother the young mind as long as possible. They will not let it find its own feet, till very late, and till, as the scoffer might well say, its limbs are absolutely atrophied. I do not say that they are wrong. The man who has taught himself is apt to be a vain, conceited fellow who takes pleasure in thinking for himself, and has an absolute delight in despising the thoughts of others. It is, however, no less the fact, that it is among these self-taught men that we find those vigorous spirits who venture boldly beyond the domain of human science and extend its frontier. The question then is which is best, to favour all these troublesome self-taught people in the hope of finding some good ones among them, or by crossing and worrying them to run the risk of destroying the good as well as the bad. I am myself strongly in favour of the first of these alternatives. It is better to let all go their own way, even though pretenders to originality come to grief, a thing that matters very little. Minds that are truly original will develop themselves and find room for the expansion of all their powers.

But here,—take note how the democratic spirit comes in everywhere—the question of numbers is raised. Ten times more numerous, I am told, are the pretenders to originality whom we save from themselves by discipline than the true geniuses whose wings we clip.

I reply that, in matters intellectual, questions of figures do not count. An original spirit strangled is a loss which is not compensated by the rescue of ten fools from worse excesses of folly. An original spirit left free to be himself is worth more than ten fools whose folly is partially restrained.

Nietzsche has well said: «Modern education consists in smothering the exceptional in favour of the normal. It consists in directing the mind away from the exceptional into the channel of the average.» This ought not to be. I do not say that education should do the opposite of all this. Oh no, far from that. It is not the business of education to look for exceptional genius, or to help in its creation. Exceptional genius is born of itself and it has no need of such assistance. But even less is it the business of education to regard the exceptional with terror, and to take every means possible, even the most barbarous and most detailed, to prevent it as long as possible from coming to the light.

Education ought to draw all that it can out of mediocrity, and to respect originality as much as it can. It ought never to attempt to turn mediocrity into originality, nor to reduce originality to the level of mediocrity.

Rerum Fragor

Gur Zak, Petrarch's Humanism and the Care of the Self (Cambridge, 2010), Intro., pp. 1-4:

. . . here was the palace of Evander, there the shrine of Carmentis, here the cave of Cacus, there the nursing she-wolf and the fig tree of Rumina with the more apt surname of Romulus.

Starting thus with the description of the mythical origins of the city, Petrarch then continues his journey in space and time, advancing mostly linearly through the ages of Roman history, from these mythical origins through the glory of the Empire and early Christianity to the time of Constantine. He then concludes this short chronicle, lamenting not only that what is left from the glory of Rome is mere ruins but also that the significance of the ruins is mostly forgotten: “For today who are more ignorant about Roman affairs than the Roman citizens?” Ignorance, he adds, that is in turn complemented by the “flight and exile” (fugam exiliumque) of the many virtues that flourished in bygone times.

Promising to return to this complaint at another time, Petrarch then brings the discussion back to himself and invites Giovanni to recall how they used to stop at the baths of Diocletian, weary of the long excursion, and to enjoy there the “healthy air, the unimpeded view, silence and desired solitude.” Alone at the baths, the noises of the outside world ceased to bother them—“we did not discuss business at all, nor household problems nor public affairs”—and with the “fragments of the ruins” (ruinarum fragmenta) still in front of their eyes they turned their gaze to higher matters, discussing history and moral philosophy, the arts and their authors and principles. . . . 

Mutata sunt omnia—everything is changed—Petrarch declares, including his own talent, experience, and mood. The words he spoke at that perfect moment of solitude are therefore forever lost: time passed, leading him away from the moment of presence he enjoyed at the baths, and has taken with it also the words he used at that time. The description of the ruins of Rome thus becomes a metaphor of Petrarch’s own self: like the glorious city, he himself is subjected to the ravages of time, constantly changing, leaving behind only fragments—scattered memories and words retained in the minds of the two interlocutors that cannot, as he insists, invoke the past in full. The subjection to the passage of time, Petrarch therefore implies, is a subjection to a constant sense of absence and loss.

But time is not the only cause of the poet’s sense of fragmentation and loss. Society has a part in this experience as well: it was the perfect solitude of the baths, detached from the cares of the world, that allowed him to step, as it were, out of time, and freely reflect on higher matters, and it is the “din of business matters” (rerum fragor) that is now impeding his spirit from retrieving the state of mind he then enjoyed. The diachronic fragmentation is thus accompanied in the letter by the synchronic dismemberment imposed by society. As Petrarch declares near the end of the letter, it is only in solitude that he “belongs to himself” (Ibi enim, non alibi, meus sum).

The reference to solitude as the one state in which Petrarch can feel that he fully belongs to himself suggests that the sense of fragmentation and flux in the letter is accompanied by a feeling of exile. Just as Rome is exiled from her own golden age—the time to which the ruins allude—and to which she might return if she would only begin to “know herself,” so Petrarch is exiled from the state of wholeness that he might regain by returning to solitude. The experiences of exile and fragmentation, as this letter exhibits, are intrinsically intertwined in Petrarch’s mind: it is the loss of a mythical state of presence and bliss, according to him, that is responsible for his current sense of disintegration and flux.

Significantly, for Petrarch the return to the safe haven of solitude, to himself, is characterized above all by writing—his ability to write what he truly wishes: “only there and not elsewhere I belong to myself. There lies my pen which at present rebels everywhere I go and refuses my orders, because I am preoccupied with burdensome matters. Thus, while it is constantly busy when I have plenty of leisure, it prefers to have leisure when I have much to do, and almost like a wicked and insolent servant, it seems to convert the fervor of the master into its own desire for rest.” His return from exile to himself, Petrarch therefore implies here, is above all a return to his vocation as a writer

How Things Get Spoiled: Vermoralisierung

Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, 2nd essay, §7 (tr. Horace B. Samuel):

. . . it should be shown specifically that, at the time when mankind was not yet ashamed of its cruelty, life in the world was brighter than it is nowadays when there are pessimists. The darkening of the heavens over man has always increased in proportion to the growth of man's shame before man. The tired pessimistic outlook, the mistrust of the riddle of life, the icy negation of disgusted ennui, all those are not the signs of the most evil age of the human race: much rather do they come first to the light of day, as the swamp-flowers, which they are, when the swamp to which they belong, comes into existence—I mean the diseased refinement and moralisation, thanks to which the "animal man" has at last learnt to be ashamed of all his instincts. On the road to angelhood (not to use in this context a harder word) man has developed that dyspeptic stomach and coated tongue, which have made not only the joy and innocence of the animal repulsive to him, but also life itself:—so that sometimes he stands with stopped nostrils before his own self, and, like Pope Innocent the Third, makes a black list of his own horrors («unclean generation, loathsome nutrition when in the maternal body, badness of the matter out of which man develops, awful stench, secretion of saliva, urine, and excrement»).1 Nowadays, when suffering is always trotted out as the first argument against existence, as its most sinister query, it is well to remember the times when men judged on converse principles because they could not dispense with the infliction of suffering, and saw therein a magic of the first order, a veritable bait of seduction to life.

1.  A reference to Cardinal Lotario dei Segni's De Miseria Condicionis Humane (1194-5).

Philosophy: A Rare Plant

Friedrich Nietzsche, Wille zur Macht, §420 (tr. A. M. Ludovici):

I do not wish to convert anybody to philosophy: it is both necessary and perhaps desirable that the philosopher should be a rare plant. Nothing is more repugnant to me than the scholarly praise of philosophy which is to be found in Seneca and Cicero. Philosophy has not much in common with virtue. I trust I may be allowed to say that even the scientific man is a fundamentally different person from the philosopher. What I most desire is, that the genuine notion "philosopher" should not completely perish in Germany. There are so many incomplete creatures in Germany already who would fain conceal their ineptitude beneath such noble names.

Growing Older And Lonelier

Friedrich Nietzsche, a Letter to Herr Ob. Reg. R. Krug, November 16, 1880 (tr. A. Ludovici): 

With what wistful eyes you will look back upon your life to-day. We grow older and therefore lonelier; the love that leaves us is precisely that love which was lavished upon us like an unconscious necessity not owing to our particular qualities, but often in spite of them. The curtain falls on our past when our mother dies; it is then for the first time that our childhood and youth become nothing more than a memory. And then the same process extends; the friends of our youth, our teachers, our ideals of those days, all die, and every day we grow more lonely, and ever colder breezes blow about us. . . .

Alone Am I

Christine de Pisan or Cristina da Pizzano (± 1363 – ± 1431), Ballade XI. (translation found in William A. Nitze's and E. Preston Dargan's book, A History of French Literature, 1922):

        Alone am I, alone I wish to be,
        Alone my sweetest friend hath left me here,
        Alone am I, in my sole company,
        Alone in sorrow bent, and without cheer.
        Alone am I in langurous disgrace,
        Alone far more than wanderer from God's grace,
        Alone, without a friend, the world I face. . . .

        Seulete sui et, seulete vueil estre,
        Seulete m'a mon douz ami laissiée;
        Seulete sui, sanz compaignon ne maistre,
        Seulete sui, dolente et courrouciée,
        Seulete sui, en langueur mesaisiée,
        Seulete sui, olus que nulle esgarée,
        Seulete sui, sanz ami demourée. . . .

The Road Through The Dialogues

Albinus, The Introduction of Albinus to the Dialogues of Plato, tr. George Burges, ch. 8 (found in: The Works of Plato, Bohn's Classical Library, 1908, vol. VI., pp. 319-20):

He then, who is, according to nature, well born, and according to age is in the season for philosophizing, and according to a predilection, for the sake of exercising himself, is proceeding to reasoning, and he, who, according to a habit, has been previously initiated in instruction, and has been drawn aside from political circumstances, will begin from the Alcibiades [of Plato] to be well-turned by the inclination of intellect, and to know of what thing it is needful to make for himself a care, and, as it were by a beautiful pattern, to see who is the philosopher and what is his pursuit, and upon what suppositions his discourse is carried on. (Such a person) must enter upon the Phædo next in order; for in it (Plato) states who is the philosopher, and what is his pursuit; and upon the supposition of the soul being immortal he goes through the discourse relating to it. After this it would be requisite to enter upon the Republic. For, commencing with the earliest instruction, he delineates the whole of education, by making use of which a person would arrive at the possession of virtue. But since it is requisite for us to be versed in the knowledge of things divine, so as to be able, by possessing virtue, to be assimilated to them, we shall enter upon the Timæus; for by entering upon this account relating to Nature, and on the so-called theology, and the arrangement of the Universe, we shall clearly have a recollection of things divine.

. . . For as it is necessary to become a spectator of his own soul and of things divine, and of the gods themselves, and to obtain the most beautiful mind, he must cleanse out the false opinions of his conceptions. For not even have physicians deemed the body capable of enjoying the food brought to it, unless a person shall have previously cast out what was in it in the way of an obstacle. But after the cleansing out, it is requisite to excite and call forth the sentiments, imparted by nature, and to cleanse out these too, and to exhibit them pure, as principles. In addition to this, through the soul being thus previously prepared, it is necessary to introduce into it its peculiar doctrines, according to which it may be perfected; now these relate to physics, and theology, and morality, and statesmanship. . . .

Absolute Self-Abnegation

Oscar Browning, A Short History of Education, edt. W. H. Payne, 1897, p. 55:

Pestalozzi [Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi], on the other hand, was completely and entirely devoted to education. His greatest merit is that he set an example of absolute self-abnegation; that he lived with his pupils, played, starved, and suffered with them; and clung to their minds and hearts with an affectionate sympathy which revealed to him every minute difference of character and disposition.

 

Pestalozzi with the Orphans in Stans, 1879, done by Konrad Grob, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung.