Tuesday, October 21, 2003
"They kill, they stuff . . . they worship."
"You ask me about the idiosyncrasies of philosophers? . . . There is their lack of historical sense, their hatred of even the idea of becoming, their Egyptianism. They think they do a thing honour when they dehistoricize it . . . when they make a mummy of it. All that philosophers have handled for millennia has been conceptual mummies; nothing actual has escaped from their hands alive. They kill, they stuff, when they worship, these conceptual idolaters. . . . Now they all believe, even to the point of despair, in that which is. But since they cannot get hold of it, they look for reasons why it is being witheld from them. 'It must be an illusion, a deception, which prevents us from perceiving that which is: where is the deceiver to be found?' - 'We've got it,' they cry in delight, 'it is the senses! These senses, which are so immoral as well, it is they which deceive us about the real world."
- F. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
- F. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
