30
PARTISAN REVIEW
his integrity by this: he seemed to realize both sides of the dichotomies
we have discussed, but he always came back to reason and humanity.
Through
him
we can promote our own integrity, if we learn to recog–
nize the presence within us of the Other, the anti-rational that is
always ready to overcome us. What makes this Other so seductive
is that it is bound up with productive impulses, and that its reality in
the world seems far stronger than reason and humanity. I believe
that we can benefit by allying ourselves with Nietzsche against Nie–
tzsche, by repeating in ourselves his struggle with himself.
And it will serve our purpose to bring these three thinkers into
contact with one another, to correct them by one another. To follow
anyone of them as an authority is catastrophic. And to combine them
is impossible. They yield no tenable doctrine or edifice. They provide
no home. They put us into motion but they do not satisfy us.
How deeply the historical movement of the human consciousness
has been affected by Nietzsche cannot yet be estimated. But it is
certain that his maxims, gestures, demands have exerted a great
influence-particularly where the German language prevails. And
today any man who engages
in
philosophical thought must settle
his accounts with Nietzsche.
To dismiss Nietzsche with an inadequate knowledge of
him,
on
the basis of the absurdities which are easily picked out of his works,
is all too easy. But simply to follow him, to believe in him, is to
misunderstand him despite
his
repeated injunctions to the contrary:
"Follow not me but thyself."
To make Nietzsche our own we must first of all learn to think
philosophically, and this is never learned originally from Nietzsche
but from the great philosophers with the long breath of thought,
with the profound, firm insight of their fundamental and universal
knowledge. Once Aenesidemus-Schultze said to the young Schopen–
hauer in answer to a question about the study of philosophy: Plato
and Kant!-and that still holds good. Philosophical thinking re–
mains grounded in the tradition, it must be studied and practiced
through Plato and Kant and the other great philosophers. But this
study can scarcely achieve the force of actuality without Nietzsche,
or for that matter without Kierkegaard ,and Marx.
(Translated from the German
by
Ralph Manheim)
