Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Open Court, Vol. 50: Devoted to the Science of Religion, the Religion of Science, and the Extension of the Religious Parliament Idea; October, 1936
Professional philosophers are reluctant to consider Goethe and even Nietzsche as one of their clan. And in _a sense there are very good reasons for their attitude. The outstanding fact is that Nietz sche and Goethe are poet-philosophers. Neither is in sympathy with the'dialectic, critical, and analyzing method by which the phi losopher' proceeds to scrutinize all that is involved in a theory and to dissect all the consequences that will logically follow from it. It is quite true that they both pass through a period of hesitation in this respect: Goethe had his Kantian spell and Nietzsche turned rather Socratic in his second philosophic stage. But in their instinc tive youth as well as in their period of maturity they are emphatic in putting constructive synthesis above critical analysis. And what is worse - or better - is that they both believe implicitly in the su preme importance of intuition and instinct in order to arrive at this synthesis. Fiat vita, pereat veritas is Nietzsche's slogan in these two characteristic periods: if so - called philosophic truth tends to de stroy life, then by all means let us sacrifice that truth. If truth is to be reached, it is not by the one-sided application of reason which slowly builds up a logical system, but rather by intuitive Vision in which the whole of man has part, his senses, his imagination, his emotions and his intellect. Not that Goethe's and Nietzsche's thoughts are absolutely sudden and disconnected ?ashes of light, inspirations gleaned at random out of the air. In fact they often carry them with them for a more or less long period, sometimes for years, until at last they ripen into a peculiarly pregnant form and appear suddenly luminous and brilliant as a flame. All that is then required is not a long treatise, but a clear and short formu lation, in a style which is not dry and dialectic but emotionallv col ored and visionary, not slow moving and expansive but convincingly assertive, not punctiliously accurate and exhaustive, but revelling in the suggestive and stimulating paradox. Hence, both Goethe's and Nietzsche's philosophy is laid down in aphorisms, short essays. Condensed sayings, epigrams, symbolic poems. Hence also, their positive dislike of logically and laboriously worked out systems. Their philosophy is often clad in luxuriant metaphors, plastic images.
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