The Joyful Wisdom · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
372.
_Why we are not Idealists._—Formerly philosophers were afraid of the senses: have we, perhaps, been far too forgetful of this fear? We are at present all of us sensualists, we representatives of the present and of the future in philosophy,—_not_ according to theory, however, but in _praxis_, in practice.... Those former philosophers, on the contrary, thought that the senses lured them out of _their_ world, the cold realm of "ideas," to a dangerous southern island, where they were afraid that their philosopher-virtues would melt away like snow in the sun. "Wax in the ears," was then almost a condition of philosophising; a genuine philosopher no longer listened to life, in so far as life is music, he _denied_ the music of life—it is an old philosophical superstition that all music is Sirens' music.—Now we should be inclined at the present day to judge precisely in the opposite manner (which in itself might be just as false), and to regard _ideas_, with their cold, anæmic appearance, and not even in spite of this appearance, as worse seducers than the senses. They have always lived on the "blood" of the philosopher, they always consumed his senses, and indeed, if you will believe me, his "heart" as well. Those old philosophers were heartless: philosophising was always a species of vampirism.
At the sight of such figures even as Spinoza, do you not feel a profoundly enigmatical and disquieting sort of impression? Do you not see the drama which is here performed, the constantly _increasing pallor_—, the spiritualisation always more ideally displayed? Do you not imagine some long-concealed blood-sucker in the background, which makes its beginning with the senses, and in the end retains or leaves behind nothing but bones and their rattling?—I mean categories, formulæ, and _words_ (for you will pardon me in saying that what _remains_ of Spinoza, _amor intellectualis dei_, is rattling and nothing more! What is _amor_, what is _deus_, when they have lost every drop of blood?...) _In summa_: all philosophical idealism has hitherto been something like a disease, where it has not been, as in the case of Plato, the prudence of superabundant and dangerous healthfulness, the fear of _overpowerful_ senses, and the wisdom of a wise Socratic.—Perhaps, is it the case that we moderns are merely not sufficiently sound _to require_ Plato's idealism? And we do not fear the senses because——.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.