NIETZSCHE AND THE PRESENT
23
examine every particular. Without allowing ourselves to be overpow–
ered, we must be open to inner transformation.
We must know what it means to associate with Nietzsche, and
we must know that
this
association leads to no conclusion. For
Nietzsche leads us into realms of philosophy which are anterior to
clear logical thought, but which strive toward it. They are some–
times fraught with immeasurable evil.
Nietzsche's thought processes are by no means easy to under–
stand. Superficial reading deludes and confuses. We must make our
way through his work in constant recollection, discovering the inter–
relations which are not adequately manifested in his dispersed judg–
ments. We must participate in the movements of self-transcendence
in Nietzsche's thinking.
Nietzsche can be appraised in two ways. According to one
estimate, he is significant for his finished achievement. He is the
author of a philosophy of this age, a philosophy which, whether true
or false, belongs to the future. It is efficacious and therefore his–
torically true. He is, for example, considered as the author of the
philosophy of the will to power, of the eternal return, of the
Dionysian view of life.
For an entirely different view, which we profess, Nietzsche's
significance has been to shake men's minds. His power to lead men
to the authentic problems and to themselves does not edify the
reader, it awakens him. The measure of this power lies in the fact of
his
own life: he was a victim of this age. He allowed himself to be
drawn wholly into a consuming care for humanity and for what was
to become of man. He listened to his friends Overbeck and Burck–
hardt and observed how they resisted these questions----even the
greatest men of his time seemed to him unshaken in their natural
composure and self-assurance, and hence not really engaged in the
course of contemporary history. They saw what was happening and
they foresaw what was to happen, hut they did not permit the horror
to penetrate to their innermost being, where new potentialities might
have been born.
Nietzsche is one of the three thinkers who belong to the nine–
teenth century but who did not attain to their true contemporary
significance until the twentieth century; whose influence dominates
