The eagerness and subtlety, I should even say craftiness, with which the problem of "the real and the apparent world" is dealt with at present throughout Europe, furnishes food for thought and attention; and he who hears only a "Will to Truth" in the background, and nothing else, cannot certainly boast of the sharpest ears. In rare and isolated cases, it may really have happened that such a Will to Truth—a certain extravagant and adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambition of the forlorn hope—has participated therein: that which in the end always prefers a handful of "certainty" to a whole cartload of beautiful possibilities; there may even be puritanical fanatics of conscience, who prefer to put their last trust in a sure nothing, rather than in an uncertain something. But that is Nihilism, and the sign of a despairing, mortally wearied soul, notwithstanding the courageous bearing such a virtue may display.
How should one cope with the world? It seems silly to think that we all view the world as, in some way, broken. How do we fix this broken world?
Historically, we've "fixed" the world using our "Will to Truth," which aims to discover certainties about the world. Truth is out there to be discovered. But why not aim for possibilities/uncertainty instead?
If we are set on defining the world as a certainty, then we are seeking some kind of stabilization; A way to prevent future possibilities. But if we were living a thriving life, why would we care for stability? Wouldn't we instead want to maximize opportunity?
We are so obsessed with certainty that some people rather opt for a "certain nothing." This is Nihilism and much of Nietzsche's philosophy is aimed at overcoming this.
It seems, however, to be otherwise with stronger and livelier thinkers who are still eager for life. In that they side AGAINST appearance, and speak superciliously of "perspective," in that they rank the credibility of their own bodies about as low as the credibility of the ocular evidence that "the earth stands still," and thus, apparently, allowing with complacency their securest possession to escape (for what does one at present believe in more firmly than in one's body?),—who knows if they are not really trying to win back something which was formerly an even securer possession, something of the old domain of the faith of former times, perhaps the "immortal soul," perhaps "the old God," in short, ideas by which they could live better, that is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than by "modern ideas"?
There are some that appear to side heavily against certainty. They give up the most certain things: appearance, their own bodies. But how do we know they aren't secretly tending towards something that is even more certain? A certain idealism?
Take for instance Plato. He denies the world's appearance as a false representation. Instead, the real world is the World of Forms, an idealistic realm of Truth. The same goes for Christianity. The faith professes this world to be full of sin. And we must repent in order to enter the real world: the kingdom of God. The common thread between these ideologies is the rejection of this world.
There is DISTRUST of these modern ideas in this mode of looking at things, a disbelief in all that has been constructed yesterday and today; there is perhaps some slight admixture of satiety and scorn, which can no longer endure the BRIC-A-BRAC of ideas of the most varied origin, such as so-called Positivism at present throws on the market; a disgust of the more refined taste at the village-fair motleyness and patchiness of all these reality-philosophasters, in whom there is nothing either new or true, except this motleyness.
The philosophers who deny the world (in search for some more perfect world), also deny modern philosophies, which assert new ideas about this world. They are so caught up in their own ideal systems that they feel disgust at the slightest indication of "reality."
Therein it seems to me that we should agree with those skeptical anti-realists and knowledge-microscopists of the present day; their instinct, which repels them from MODERN reality, is unrefuted... what do their retrograde by-paths concern us! The main thing about them is NOT that they wish to go "back," but that they wish to get AWAY therefrom. A little MORE strength, swing, courage, and artistic power, and they would be OFF—and not back!
These anti-realists condemn modern ideas because the modern ideas attempt to, in some way, assert truth about this world. But this world, to the anti-realists, is only an illusion. These thinkers don't wish to go back to a time during which God roamed the land. Instead, they wish to escape this world itself.
We will learn later that one of Nietzsche's aims is to assert this world.
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