There is an art of gliding on the surface: the art of living. This art requires a faith in life, an innocent faith in its forward movement, in its seductions and its 'metaphysical' delusions.
The impetus of Nietzsche's philosophy (the antennae of his 'cleanliness') lies in its ability to smoke this faith and these seductions out of their subterranean hideouts - bring them onto the surface, as if to show that a backward, almost atavistic movement belonged essentially to the forward thrust of life. As he says in his Ecce Homo, he gets hold of every secret: 'the abundant hidden dirt at the bottom of many a character'.
But perhaps the secret behind his secret is a mechanism which reveals his will to survival. Only by retracting life is he able to live, able to create. Only at this abysmal point of his philosophy his will to survive is revealed to be virtually indistinguishable from his will to create. At this point, where survival and creation coincide, and where need and abundance come together, we see the limits out of which Nietzsche's philosophy emerges: Nietzsche's very sterility. As a result, Nietzsche is obliged to appraise and pronounce judgments upon things about which a more naive and trustful faith chooses to remain silent. This shows Nietzsche's bad taste. (And is not Nietzsche's critique of all philosophy before him essentially directed against this philosophy's naivety and self-satisfaction, its 'good taste'?)
The impetus of Nietzsche's philosophy (the antennae of his 'cleanliness') lies in its ability to smoke this faith and these seductions out of their subterranean hideouts - bring them onto the surface, as if to show that a backward, almost atavistic movement belonged essentially to the forward thrust of life. As he says in his Ecce Homo, he gets hold of every secret: 'the abundant hidden dirt at the bottom of many a character'.
But perhaps the secret behind his secret is a mechanism which reveals his will to survival. Only by retracting life is he able to live, able to create. Only at this abysmal point of his philosophy his will to survive is revealed to be virtually indistinguishable from his will to create. At this point, where survival and creation coincide, and where need and abundance come together, we see the limits out of which Nietzsche's philosophy emerges: Nietzsche's very sterility. As a result, Nietzsche is obliged to appraise and pronounce judgments upon things about which a more naive and trustful faith chooses to remain silent. This shows Nietzsche's bad taste. (And is not Nietzsche's critique of all philosophy before him essentially directed against this philosophy's naivety and self-satisfaction, its 'good taste'?)
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