Intellectual conscience#
Summary#
Nietzsche describes the intellectual conscience as a kind of cruelty that drives the courageous thinker to take things profoundly, variously, and thoroughly. This sublime tendency operates counter to the spirit’s natural propensity for simplification, disguise, and appearance. Every thinker who has sufficiently hardened his eye for introspection will acknowledge this cruel element within himself, though it might be more palatable to call it “extravagant honesty.”