The Herd
The true villain or antagonist in the philosophical literature of Nietzsche is that which he ungraciously terms “the herd.” This is basically the overwhelming bulk of members of society, perhaps as high as 99.9%. Imagery does the trick early on in situating their station:
“These animals do not know what yesterday and today are but leap about, eat, rest, digest and leap again; and so from morning to night and from day to day, only briefly concerned with their pleasure and displeasure, enthralled by the moment and for that reason neither melancholy nor bored. It is hard for a man to see this, for he is proud of being human and not an animal and yet regards its happiness with envy because he wants nothing other than to live like the animal”
In the Moment
In a consideration upon the possibility of enjoying happiness within the constraints of history, Nietzsche seizes upon imagery that poetically suggestive of carpe diem. The secret to happiness is to release it from the bounds of the past and without the temptation to admit it has to end. One must reach for the lofty peak of perfection while avoiding the dizzying possibility of falling:
“Whoever cannot settle on the threshold of the moment forgetful of the whole past, whoever is incapable of standing on a point like a goddess of victory without vertigo or fear, will never know what happiness is, and worse yet, will never do anything to make others happy.”
The Labor Market
Nietzsche bemoans the lot of young men whose exposure to historical knowledge results in something that sound more like it came from Marx. Collective, he refers to them as the labor market because they are trained almost from birth for a certain job and so are lost to the powerful influence of acquiring wisdom, which he terms ripeness. The bird imagery is almost jaw-dropping:
“One blinds some birds to make them sing more beautifully: I do not believe that today's men sing more beautifully than their grandfathers, but I do know that they are blinded early. But the means, the vile means used to blind them is much too bright, much too sudden, much too changeable light.”
The Construction of History
Nietzsche argues that history is constructed. And just like any architectural structure, the ability to understand and appreciate it is dependent upon the intellectual understanding of those viewing it. Whatis interesting about the way Nietzsche constructs his imagery to convey this is that he combines the irrational with the rational, the supernatural with the concrete:
“When the past speaks it always speaks as an oracle: only if you are an architect of the future and know the present will you understand it.”
