ART. TRA 0 I T ION. AND TRUT H
15
only the main thing is there, the love, the burning, being seized, then
it makes no difference whether you are a monk on Mount Athos
or an epicurean in Paris."
In their mature phase, both Nietzsche and Rilke refused to
praise either the monk or the epicurean. Far from merely praising
praise or believing in belief, both believed
in,
and praised, a particu–
lar kind of man and way of life. Both were inspired by their vision
of "a
new
greatness of man." And in section 212 of
Beyond Good
and Evil
Nietzsche argued that every great philosopher has been in–
spired by such a vision: He "has always found himself, and always
had to find himself, in opposition to his today." The great philoso–
phers have always been "the bad conscience of their time." Inspired
by their vision of "a
new
greatness of man," they have applied "the
knife vivisectionally to the very virtues of the time" and uncovered
"how much hypocrisy" and "how many lies were concealed under
the most honored type of their contemporary morality, how much
virtue was outlived." Nietzsche's own profuse criticisms too were in–
spired by a positive conception: "Today the concept of 'greatness'
entails being noble, wanting to be by oneself, being capable of being
-different, standing alone, and having to live independendy." Or as
he says toward the end of this passage: "Precisely this should '
be
called greatness: to be capable of being as manifold as whole, as wide
as full."
Clearly, Nietzsche is not praising indiscriminately for the sake
of praising. One must empty his extremely concrete conceptions of
their wealth of psychological detail before one can
claim
that they
are hollow abstractions and not "believable." In the process of do–
ing this--and Jaspers, for example, has done this in his two books
on Nietzsche-one is bound to lose sight of the intimate connection,
so accurately stressed by Nietzsche himself, between
his
positive con–
ceptions and
his
trenchant criticisms of modern man. That his stric–
tures are misunderstood when they are divorced from the vision that
inspires them, that is the theme of the chapter "On Passing By" in
which Zarathustra distinguishes himself from his ape by insisting:
"Out of love alone shall my despising and my warning bird fly up,
not out of the swamp." Zarathustra's comment on "The Despisers
of the Body" is no less applicable to Nietzsche and the philosophers
whom he admires: "It is their respect that begets their contempt."
