CLEANING THE SLATE

The importance of keeping an open mind is recognized by every serious thinker, and with original thinkers it happens by instinct… or should I say by definition? An open mind is a clean mind: clean of preconceptions, biases and prejudices; clean of errors, and, error being a synonym of sin, thus, clean of sin. I am deliberately using the clean of… form, to emphasize that clean is a synonym of free. So, a clean mind is a free mind, and this is truly worth something.

But we are not done yet. An open, clean, and free mind is a child’s mind, and “except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3.) Converted is an obvious synonym of cleansed, made clean… Glory to them who strive to make the world clean, and, on the other hand, shame on those who wish to improve the world by attempting to warp its mind and will, and, as a result, pollute it even further, rather than help make it clean.

…The preceding preamble was intended to highlight the meaning of the following lines in Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo (Preface #1-3) so very important to our understanding of the subject of the present section (which is Nietzsche himself!), that they must be quoted extensively, although in excerpts:

Seeing that before long I must confront humanity with the most difficult demand ever made of it, it seems indispensable to me to say who I am. One should know it, for I have not left myself “without a testimony.” But the disproportion between the greatness of my task and the smallness of my contemporaries has found expression in the fact that one has neither heard nor even seen me. I live on my own credit; it is perhaps a mere prejudice that I live…

Under these circumstances I have a duty against which my habits, even more the pride of my instincts are revolting at bottom, namely, to say, Hear me! For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else.

I am for example by no means a bogey, or a moralistic monster, I am actually the very opposite of the type of man who so far has been revered as virtuous. Between ourselves, it seems to me that exactly this is part of my pride. I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus;-- I should prefer to be even a satyr, rather than to be a saint. But one should really read this essay. Perhaps I have succeeded; perhaps this essay had no other meaning than to give expression to this contrast in a cheerful and philanthropic manner.

The last thing I should promise would be to improve mankind. No new idols are erected by me; let the old ones learn what feet of clay mean. Overthrowing idols, my word for ideals, that comes closer to being part of my craft. One has deprived reality of its value, of its meaning, of its truthfulness, to precisely the extent, to which one has mendaciously invented an ideal world.

The true world and the apparent world-- that means: the mendaciously invented world and reality. The lie of the ideal has so far been the curse on reality; on its account, mankind itself has become mendacious and false down to its most fundamental instincts-- to the point of worshipping the opposite values of those that alone would guarantee its health, its future, the lofty right to its future.

Those who can breathe the air of my writings know that it is an air of the heights,-- a strong air. One must be made for it. Otherwise, there is no small danger one may catch cold in it. The ice is near, the solitude is tremendous, but how calmly do all things lie in the light! How freely does one breathe and how much does one feels beneath oneself!

Philosophy, so far as I’ve understood and lived it, means living voluntarily among ice and high mountains --seeking out everything strange and questionable in existence, everything placed under a ban by morality. Long experience, acquired in the course of such wanderings in what is forbidden, taught me to regard the causes that, so far, have prompted moralizing and idealizing, in a very different light from what may seem desirable: the hidden history of the philosophers, the psychology of the great names, came to light for me.

This excerpt is perhaps too long, but every word in it is golden, and, like nothing else, it brings out the very essence of Nietzsche’s spirit. He is the epitome of freedom, the cleaner of the slate; overthrowing the idols, and thus cleansing the human mind of all its acquired impurities, biases, and superstitions, as the first step of becoming “as little children” of Jesus Christ, or --- as Nietzsche’s own “creative child.”