Untimely Meditations 131bent on disclosure; Nietzsche, on advancement Stirner was determined
to demolish, whereas Nietzsche sought a new beginning.
Turning the goad of knowledge against knowledge implied that
knowledge had stopped deluding itself about the fact that it is itself a
protective device against the void. Knowledge that goes beyond its
boundaries not only senses these boundaries but also experiences feel-
ings of giddiness. As we have already learned, Nietzsche called this type
of supplementary knowledge "wisdom" or "Dionysian wisdom." How
does the totality appear to this "wisdom"?
First and foremost, it comes across as tumultuous becoming that is
always at its goal because there is no final goal. In addition, as we know
from the essay "On Truth and Falsehood in an Extramoral Sense," it
comes into view as a constellation in the universe on which some "clever
animals invented knowledge" (1,875; TF § 1)—for a brief period.
The great silence of the cosmos will ultimately put an end to the "his-
torical process" that was so confidendy devised. This prevailing tragic
mood forms the backdrop to a call for "fire, defiance, self-disregard, and
love" (1,323; HL § 9), which brings the essay "On the Benefits and
Drawbacks of History for Life" to its conclusion. The typical construct
of his later years is already coming to the fore, namely that stimuli and
thoughts get more reflexive as the will to immediacy intensifies.
Ultimately, almost any stimulus is connected to the formula "will to "
The will to cheerfiilness, the will to hope, the will to life, and the will to
affirmation—these are all preludes to the will to power. Nietzsche was
already at work on a "hygiene of life" (1,331; HL § 10) that features the
principle of mediated immediacy, which would recast the first nature
into a second nature. "We cultivate a new habit, a new instinct, a second
nature so that the first nature withers away" (1,270; HL § 3). This sec-
ond nature should relearn "the unhistorical and suprahistorical" (1,330;
HL § 10). The unhistorical is living immediacy, and Nietzsche defined
the suprahistorical as that "which grants existence the character of the
eternal with a fixed meaning" (1,330). It is therefore metaphysics. But
after everything we have heard about Nietzsche up to this point, it can