A Philosophic Intermission

     Any fan of Jane Austen’s work would likely assume after reading Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, that she also read and admired his work. It is arguable that the actual title and subject matter of Sense and Sensibility seem to have been derived directly from Kant’s writing. As interesting as that might be however, I will not discuss that Jane Austen book today since I have done so already. 

     After many weeks spent digesting the deep ideas of the great philosophers and rhetors of ancient times, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense by Friedrich Nietzche seemed like the refreshing intermission of a five-act opera being sung in an unintelligible language. Immediately he begins by giving the boot to religion in his title. Next he attacks the philosophers as vainglorious. “And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his action and thought “(Nietzsche 1).

     Nietzsche appears to be a Darwinist and a realist. “The art of dissimulation, “ he says, “ reaches its peak in man” (Nietzsche 1). He describes dissimulation as the method employed by weaker men to preserve them selves from the physically stronger. These self-preservationist stratagems are a combination of verbal and social tricks and contrivances that appear in the guise of social convention. A literary example of that type individual would be the Veneerings in Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend. They flatter with false status and style and have no redeeming content of character.

     “Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions…”(Nietzsche 4), and men will always allow themselves to be deceived.  All men suffer he says, but the pragmatic, stoic, realist will not allow the dreaminess of idealism to ensnare him. He will be prepared for the storms of life by the simple expediency of a warm coat in foul weather and the ability to walk away from the storm.