On the Genealogy of Morality (Chap. 4.10)

The same book, in Section 42, explains the system of values, the pressure of a system of values, under which the most ancient race of contemplative men had to live—a race that was despised exactly to the extent that it was not feared! Contemplation first appeared on earth in a disguised shape, with an ambiguous appearance, with an evil heart, and often with a worried head. There’s no doubt about that. For a long time the inactive, brooding, unwarlike elements in the instincts of contemplative people fostered a deep mistrust around them, against which the only way to cope was to arouse an emphatic fear of them. The ancient Brahmins, for example, understood that! The oldest philosophers knew how to earn meaning for their existence and their appearance, some security and background, because of which people learned to fear them. To look at the matter more closely, this happened because of an even more fundamental need, that is, the need to win fear and respect for themselves. For they discovered that inside them all judgments of value had turned against them; they had to beat down all kinds of suspicions about and resistance to “the philosopher inside them.” As men of dreadful times, they achieved this with dreadful means: cruelty against themselves, inventive self-denial—that was the major instrument of these power-hungry hermits and new thinkers, who found it necessary first to overthrow the gods and traditions inside themselves, in order to be able to believe in their innovation. I recall the famous story of King Vishvamitra, who, through a thousand years of self-torments, acquired such a feeling of power and faith in himself that he committed himself to building a new heaven, that weird symbol of the oldest and most recent history of philosophers on earth. Everyone who at some time or another has built a “new heaven,” found the power to do that first in his own hell. . . . Let’s condense all these facts into short formulas: the philosophical spirit always had to begin by disguising itself, wrapping itself in a cocoon of the previously established forms of the contemplative man, as priest, magician, prophet, generally as a religious man, in order to make any kind of life at all possible. The ascetic ideal for a long time served the philosopher as a form in which he could appear, as a condition for his existence—he had to play the role, in order to be able to be a philosopher. And he had to believe in what he was doing, in order to play that role. The characteristically detached stance of philosophers, something which denies the world, is hostile to life, has no faith in the senses, and is free of sensuality, which was maintained right up to the most recent times and thus became valued almost as the essence of the philosophical posture—that is, above all, a consequence of the critical conditions under which, in general, philosophy arose and survived. In fact, for the longest time on earth philosophy would not have been at all possible without an ascetic cover and costume, without an ascetic misunderstanding of the self. To put the matter explicitly and vividly: up to the most recent times the ascetic priest has provided the repellent and dark caterpillar form which was the only one in which philosophy could live and creep around. . . . Has that really changed? Is the colourful and dangerous winged creature, that “spirit” which this caterpillar hid within itself, at last really been released and allowed out into the light, thanks to a sunnier, warmer, brighter world? Nowadays do we have sufficient pride, daring, bravery, self-certainty, spiritual will, desire to assume responsibility, and freedom of the will so that from now on “the philosopher” is truly possible on earth? . . .