Sunday, December 21, 2008

Voices of Genius #1 - Nietzsche

For those of you who are plagued by doubts about the value of your quixotic wanderings around the internet; who wonder whether your consumption (or production) of blog posts amounts to so much dilettantism; and who harbor the guilty suspicion that the One True Way to knowledge must surely involve a more ascetic approach than lounging on the couch with your laptop - take heart! Flatter yourselves that Nietzsche's defense of his aphoristic approach to philosophy might be used to defend your own intellectual habits!

For I approach deep problems like cold baths: quickly into them and quickly out again. That one does not get into the depths that way, not deep enough down, is the superstition of those afraid of the water, the enemies of cold water; they speak without experience. The freezing cold makes one swift.


[The Gay Science, #381, Walter Kaufmann translation]

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