“The Religious Character” would be an equally suitable translation of the title of this Part [das religiöse Wesen].
§45
Nietzsche begins by setting out the task, and the problem of that task. The task is to “hunt” down the range of human experiences so far, and its “as yet undepleted possibilities”. Immediately, the title of this Part, and the question of the philosopher of the future raised at the end of Part 2, make more sense. Future possibilities will reveal themselves at least partly in and through an understanding of the range “so far”. If only, Nietzsche writes, there were helpers and companions for this hunt, but there are none. Scholars may have good eyes and noses, but not for the “great hunt” and its dangers: there they lose “ihr Spürauge und ihre Spürnase” (their eye and nose for traces). In addition to hunting metaphors, the language also suggests the detective. One would have to have a profound, wounded, monstrous [ungeheurer] conscience for this task, and then also the malicious spirituality [boshafte Geistigkeit] that can arrange and put into formulas. We should note immediately that the being above and surveying below of this spirituality is not first and foremost a height characteristic of objective and abstractive science, but the height of the order of rank.
There is a little joke at the end of the section, as Nietzsche rewrites his description of the agreeable vice of curiosity in conventional religious language.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.