Another Existential Espresso essay or instagram post on Nietzsche by me is certainly nothing new. Or it might seem like that.
This time, I want to talk about Nietzsche’s moment of absolute brilliance, which I don’t see discussed anywhere when people talk or write about him. To me, this is one of the most underrated and overlooked ideas by Nietzsche. It made me realize how gifted he was at understanding human nature. I also saw his desire to inspire his readers to become more than they are. It was after reading it that I decided that I wanted to start studying Nietzsche’s works more seriously. And I haven’t looked back since, as can be seen from the amount of Nietzsche references in my writing.
To be fair, what I want to talk about is not actually a philosophical idea as we usually think about it. It is not Plato’s Theory of Forms, Kant’s Categorical Imperative, or Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence. It is "just" an aphorism in one of Nietzsche’s least famous works. But I would say, and that’s far from a controversial statement, that Nietzsche was at his best when expressing his ideas through aphorisms and metaphors.
To be more precise, what I will be talking about is the opening paragraph of an essay titled "Schopenhauer as Educator" from the book Untimely Meditations.
What I am going to do is quote the whole paragraph and then do my best to try to explain why it's still one of my favorite Nietzsche moments.
"A traveler who had seen many countries, peoples and several of the earth's continents was asked what attribute he had found in men everywhere. He said: ‘They have a propensity for laziness.’ To others, it seems that he should have said: ‘They are all fearful. They hide themselves behind customs and opinions.’ In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that there will be no second chance for his oneness to coalesce from the strangely variegated assortment that he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience—why? From fear of his neighbor, who demands conformity and cloaks himself with it. But what is it that forces the individual to fear his neighbor, to think and act like a member of a herd, and to have no joy in himself? Modesty, perhaps, in a few rare cases. For the majority it is idleness, inertia, in short that propensity for laziness of which the traveler spoke. He is right: men are even lazier than they are fearful, and their greatest fear is of the burdens that an uncompromising honesty and nakedness of speech and action would lay on them."
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