Sunday 17 December 2017

Creative Destruction: An Exegesis of Friedrich Nietzsche's 'David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer' (1873 essay)

Friedrich Nietzsche’s David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer is not really about David Strauss. The polemic’s target is first mentioned ten pages in, and nowhere in the introduction. Nietzsche’s focus is the difference between productive thinking and lazy thinking, or in his terms, the difference between ‘culture’ and ‘cultural philistinism’. The cultural mind seeks to improve itself, to seek that which is good outside of itself, and weed out that which is bad within itself. The cultural philistine’s mind, however, believes it does not need to improve itself, for everything within itself is good, and thus needs no weeding, while everything outside itself is misguided, and thus deserves no seeking.