"I always believed that at some time fate would take from me the terrible effort and duty of educating myself. I believed that, when the time came, I would discover a philosopher to educate me, a true philosopher whom one could follow without any misgiving because one would have more faith in him than one had in oneself. Then I asked myself: what would be the principles by which he would educate you?—and I reflected on what he might say about the two educational maxims which are being hatched in our time. One of them demands that the educator should quickly recognize the real strength of his pupil and then direct all his efforts and energy and heat at them so as to help that one virtue to attain true maturity and fruitfulness. The other maxim, on the contrary, requires that the educator should draw forth and nourish all the forces which exist in his pupil and bring them to a harmonious relationship with one another. ... But where do we discover a harmonious whole at all, a simultaneous sounding of many voice in one nature, if not in such men as Cellini, men in whom everything, knowledge, desire, love, hate, strives towards a central point, a root force, and where a harmonious system is constructed through the compelling domination of this living centre? And so perhaps these two maxims are not opposites at all? Perhaps the one simply says that man should have a center and the other than he should also have a periphery? That educating philosopher of whom I dreamed would, I came to think, not only discover the central force, he would also know how to prevent its acting destructively on the other forces: his educational task would, it seemed to me, be to mould the whole man into a living solar and planetary system and to understand its higher laws of motion."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
“Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.2, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), pp. 130-131
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Friedrich Nietzsche
1844 – 1900
deutscher Philologe und Philosoph
637 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche →
Related Quotes
"There exists a right by which we take a man's life but none by which we take from him his death: this is mere cruelty."
"This is age of the masses, who prostrate themselves before everything built on a massive scale."
"The man whose task and practice is to investigate souls will use precisely this art in a number of different forms in…"
"Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity.…"
"That which does not kill you, makes you stronger."
"Låt inte gräset gro under fötterna."
"The homogenizing of European man ... requires a justification: it lies in serving a higher sovereign species that sta…"
"To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities…"
"There is only nobility of birth, only nobility of blood. When one speaks of "aristocrats of the spirit," reasons are …"
"The possibility has been established for the production of...a master race, the future "masters of the earth"...made …"