Nietzsche as Teacher

More important, I feel, than any particular aphorism or penetrating psychological and historical insight from Nietzsche is that he teaches us how to think. Much the same might be said of Bach; the patterns and complex symmetries of logical abstraction he defined and refined do not (only) instruct us in the use of any particular instrument or method so much as they teach us to play music, to truly understand the beauty of an experience, a memory and an expectation. Not quite “music (or philosophy and cognitive hyper-extension) as Platonic form”, but in that general ball-park.

In regards to a mind prepared to stand alone and bear the inevitable psychological and social burdens, there is no other way to any kind of enduring or significant truth. We are all so easily swept away in tides of conventional, popular or otherwise lowest-common denominator thinking; though rare gems of insight occasionally percolate out of these things, if you seek your own path through the forest of facts you are far more likely to obtain or invoke something truly beautiful.

Nietzsche, among others, is probably as popular as he is misunderstood but I take the breadth and depth of misrepresentation to be a tribute to the subtlety and insight of his words.