SB4. Nietzsche on the Origin of Philosophy and Tyranny in the Decay of Aristocratic Regimes

The ultimate origin of this identity is in what Nietzsche calls high culture, and which might be understood literally as the cultivation of human nature, a cultivation that is by necessity of long duration, strict, and difficult; a cultivation that might also go by the name of “regime.” ... Nietzsche goes so far as to compare Schopenhauer to Napoleon, another “classical man” who appeared, as he says, as an untimely and unexpected comet or meteor, totally out of place in an age of modern men and mediocrity. ...  the connection hinted at between Schopenhauer as the revival of classical philosophy and Napoleon as the revival of the classical statesman or tyrant, gives a clue about what Nietzsche understands to be the ground or prerequisite of both high culture and philosophy. That is, one must look past the rhetoric of assertion, manliness, Napoleonic greatness, and try to tunnel into Nietzsche’s statements to understand the riddle ... “the great, the uncanny problem which I have been pursuing the longest” is the problem of psychology of the “improvers” of mankind. ... Political truth means that it must have truth for the layman or for “the many,” or for the politically significant part of the regime. Politically effective truth is not the same as truth as such. Each has a sphere and dignity of its own.