The confusion underlying the Culture- Philistine’s error may arise from the fact that, since he comes into contact everywhere with creatures cast in the same mould as himself, he concludes that this uniformity among all “scholars” must point to a certain uniformity in German education-hence to culture.

Mag wohl die Verwechselung in jenem Wahne des Bildungsphilisters daher rühren, dass er überall das gleichförmige Gepräge seiner selbst wiederfindet und nun aus diesem gleichförmigen Gepräge aller „Gebildeten” auf eine Stileinheit der deutschen Bildung, kurz auf eine Kultur schliesst.2 On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifeĭavid Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer as translated by A.1 David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer.Untimely Meditations (German: Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen) consists of four essays by Friedrich Nietzsche, composed between 18. He is wholly exterior, without kernel, a tattered, painted bag of clothes. There exists no more repulsive and desolate creature in the world than the man who has evaded his genius and who now looks furtively to left and right, behind him and all about him. For, otherwise, one ought to know that there is only one way of honoring them, and that is to continue seeking with the same spirit and with the same courage, and not to weary of the search. This, generally speaking, is precisely what has happened. In order to be able thus to misjudge, and thus to grant left-handed veneration to our classics, people must have ceased to know them. In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an assortment as he is: he knows it but he hides it like a bad conscience-why? From fear of his neighbor, who demands conventionality and cloaks himself with it. We are responsible to ourselves for our own existence consequently we want to be the true helmsmen of this existence and refuse to allow our existence to resemble a mindless act of chance. There exists in the world a single path along which no one can go except you: whither does it lead? Do not ask, go along it. No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.

Nietzsche untimely meditations