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To tell the truth, there are so many varied dangers for the development of a philosopher today that we may well doubt whether this fruit can, in general, still grow ripe. The scope and the fortress building of the sciences have grown into something monstrous, and with these the probability that the philosopher has already grown tired while he is still learning or has stopped somewhere and allowed himself to "specialize," so that he no longer reaches his full height, that is, high enough for an overview, for looking round, for looking down . Or else he reaches that point too late, when his best time and power are already over, or he's become damaged, coarsened, degenerate, so that his glance, his comprehensive value judgment, means little any more. The very refinement of his intellectual conscience perhaps allows him to hesitate along the way and to delay. He's afraid of being seduced into being a dilettante, a millipede, something with a thousand antennae. He knows too well that a man who has lost respect for himself may no longer give orders as a man of knowledge, may no longer lead. At that point, he would have to be willing to become a great actor, philosophical Cagliostro and a spiritual Pied Piper, in short, a seducer. In the end it's a question of taste, even if it were not a question of conscience. Moreover, by way of doubling once again the difficulty for the philosopher, it comes to this: he demands from himself a judgment, a Yes or No, not about the sciences but about life and the worth of living - he learns with reluctance to believe that he has a right or even a duty toward this judgment and must seek his own path to that right and that belief only through the most extensive - perhaps the most disturbing, the most destructive - experiences, often hesitating, doubting, saying nothing. As a matter of fact, the masses have for a long time mistaken and misidentified the philosopher, whether with the man of science and ideal scholar, or with the religiously elevated, desensitized, "unworldly" enthusiast drunk on God. If we hear anyone praised at all nowadays on the ground he lives "wisely" or "like a philosopher," that means almost nothing other than "prudently and on the sidelines." Wisdom: that seems to the rabble to be some kind of escape, a means and a trick to pull oneself well out of a nasty game. But the real philosopher - as we see it, my friends? - lives "unphilosophically" and "unwisely," above all imprudently, and feels the burden and the duty of a hundred attempts and temptations of life - he always puts himself at risk. He plays the wicked game. . . .