Philosophy in the Era of Greek Tragedy: Business Knowledge Translation Series

Author: (German) Nietzsche, translated by Li Chaojie
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-02-03
Features: For people who are distant from us, we only need to understand their purposes to judge them as a whole. For people who are close to us, we judge them based on the means they use to achieve their own goals: we often criticize their purposes but like them for the means or methods by which they fulfill their wishes. Only for their founders are philosophical systems entirely correct. For all subsequent philosophers, these systems are often a great mistake, and to those with less intelligence, they are a mixture of truth and error. But ultimately, these systems are a mistake, and thus can be discarded. Therefore, many criticize all philosophers because the philosophers' purposes differ from their own; philosophers are distant from them. Conversely, whoever likes great men will also like these systems. Even if they are completely wrong, they still have undeniable aspects, a personal tone and color. People can use this tone and color to obtain the portrait of the philosophers, just as one can infer the soil conditions of a place from its plants. In summary, this way of life, this way of viewing human affairs has existed and thus is possible: "systems" are the plants of this soil, or at least part of the system is like this. The author will briefly narrate the history of those philosophers: the author will only extract from each system that which constitutes a part of the "personality" that history must preserve, and which belongs to the undeniable and irrefutable. This is a beginning, aimed at regaining and reshaping those temperaments through comparison, so that the polyphonic music of Greek temperament can resound again one day. Its task lies in clarifying what we must always "cherish" and "revere," which is also what no subsequent knowledge can take away from us: this is the greatness of man.