We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers: and for a good reason. We have never sought ourselves - how then should it happen that we find ourselves one day? It has rightly been said: "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also"; our treasure is where the behives of our knowledge stand. We are forever underway toward them, as born winged animals and honeygatherers of the spirit, concerned with all our heart about only on thing - "bringing home" something. As for the rest of life, the so-called "experiences" - who of us even has enough seriousness for them? Or enough time? In such matters I'm afraid we were never really "with it": we just don't have our heart there - or even our ear! Rather, much as a divinely distracted, self-absorbed person into whose ear the bell has just boomed its twelve strokes of noon suddenly awakens and wonders, "what did it actually toll just now?" so we rub our ears afterwards and ask, completely amazed, completely disconcerted, "what did we actually experience just now?" still more: "who are we actually?" and count up, afterwards, as stated, all twelve quavering bellstrokes of our experience, of our life, of our being - alas! and miscount in the process... We remain of necessity strangers to ourselves, we do not understand ourselves, we must mistake ourselves, for us the maxim reads to all eternity: "each is furthest from himself," - with respect to ourselves we are not "knowers"...
-On the Geneology of Morality
NIETZSCHE
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment