Chapter 57 The Philosophical Preface of the Tragic Age of Greece

Philosophy in the Age of Greek Tragedy original order one As for the characters from far away, as long as we know their purpose, it is enough to criticize them in general.We judge near persons by the means by which they attain their ends; we often disapprove of their ends, but like them for their means and manner of attaining them. Philosophical systems, perfectly true only in the eyes of their founders, are often a great error in the eyes of all subsequent philosophers, and a mixture of error and truth in the eyes of mediocrity.In any case, however, they are fallacies in the final analysis and must therefore be rejected.There are many who are against all philosophers, because philosophers have ends very different from their own, and philosophers are too far removed from them.

On the other hand, whoever loves great men loves grand systems of philosophy, even if they are utterly false: they contain, after all, a completely irrefutable element, a personal mood, color, by which one can To reproduce the image of the philosopher is like inferring the nature of the soil from the plants in a certain place.Perhaps it can always be said: "Such a way of life and of looking at human affairs has at any rate existed at one time and is therefore possible." The "system," or at least a part of the "system," is the soil Plants on…. I will outline the history of those philosophers, and I would like to extract only a certain point in each system, which is a fragment of what is called "personality," and thus that incontrovertible and indisputable thing that history is supposed to preserve.It was a starting point, with the goal of reclaiming and recreating those ancient renowns by comparison, so that the polyphony of the Greek nature might one day resound.The task is to elucidate that which we must always love, which we must always respect, which later knowledge cannot take from us, and that is the great man.