Philosopher#
Summary#
Nietzsche portrays the philosopher as fundamentally different from the scholar or scientific man, arguing that every great philosophy is an involuntary autobiography revealing its creator’s moral impulses. The genuine philosopher lives in necessary contradiction to his age, serving as its bad conscience by putting the vivisector’s knife to contemporary virtues. Philosophers of the past distinguished between exoteric and esoteric teachings, viewing things from above rather than below, and the true philosopher remains essentially a recluse whose writings conceal as much as they reveal.