10
The enthusiasm and the delicacy - I might even say the cunning - with which people everywhere in Europe today go at the problem "of the true and the apparent world" make one think and listen - and whoever hears only a "will to truth" in the background and nothing else certainly doesn't enjoy the keenest hearing. In single rare cases such a will to truth, some extravagant and adventurous spirit, a metaphysical ambition to hold an isolated post, may really be involved, something which in the end still prefers a handful of "certainty" to an entire wagon full of beautiful possibilities. There may even be Puritan fanatics of conscience who still prefer to lie down and die on a certain nothing than on an uncertain something. But this is nihilism and the indication of a puzzled, deathly tired soul, no matter how brave the gestures of such virtue may look. But among stronger thinkers, more full of life, still thirsty for life, it appears to be something different. When they take issue with appearances and already in their arrogance mention the word "perspective," when they determine that the credibility of their own bodies is about as low as they rank the credibility of appearances which asserts that "the earth stands still," and, as result, in an apparently good mood, let go of their surest possession (for nowadays what do we think is more secure than our bodies?), who knows whether they don't, at bottom, want to win back something which people previously possessed with even more certainty , something or other of the old ownership of an earlier faith, perhaps "the immortal soul," perhaps "the old god," in short, ideas according to which life could be lived better, that is, more powerfully and more cheerfully than according to "modern ideas"? It's a mistrust of these modern ideas; it's a lack of faith in everything which has been built up yesterday and today; it's perhaps a slight mixture of excess and scorn, which can no longer tolerate the bric-รก-brac of ideas coming from different places, of the sort so-called positivism brings to market these days, a disgust of the discriminating taste with the fairground colourful patchiness of all these pseudo-philosophers of reality, in whom there is nothing new or genuine, other than these motley colours. In my view, we should, in these matters, side with today's sceptical anti-realists and microscopists of knowledge: their instinct, which forces them away from modern reality, is irrefutable - what do we care about their retrogressive secret paths! The fundamental issue with them is not that they want to go "back," but that they want to go away .With some more power, flight, courage, and artistry they'd want to move up - and not backwards.
