Daybreak and Grand inspiration 217is merely superficial This is not a reductive process, but rather a demon-
stration of how all senses are engaged in the philosophical progression
of thought. It is easy to contend that thoughts are a collaborative effort
of body and life, but Nietzsche attempted to track down these processes
and elevate them wherever possible into the sphere of language and
consciousness. This attempt can succeed only if language is able to
stretch its wings, becoming free, mobile, and elastic in the process, fly-
ing over the broad landscape of humanity, constandy vigilant, but not in
search of prey. In Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche had called this form
of knowledge "free, feadess hovering" (2,55; HH I).
The meticulousness of love also comes into play. Love does not seek
to destroy what it has grasped by the very process of having grasped it,
but prefers to let it be. Of course, Nietzsche also saw love from the
opposite point of view and pronounced it a poor guide to knowledge.
In The Gay Science, he wrote: " The person under the skin' is an abomi-
nation and a horrifying thought for all lovers, a blasphemy against God
and love" (3,423; GS§ 59).
Love sometimes shuts its eyes, preferring not to dissect things and
people, but to leave them alone and grasp them in their living state. To
the will to knowledge that is in love with life, natural and mechanical
laws as well as anatomy and physiology present a potentially "horrify-
ing" assault on the living. Nietzsche claimed that we must go through
this sort of loveless knowledge as well. Radical thinking must also come
to terms with death because the knowledge that originates from uplift-
ing feelings cannot remain our sole source of knowledge. It is also
imperative to cool off and shed illusions, not in order to linger in the
zones of ice and lifelessness, but in order to pass beyond them and be
readied for new rebirths. We endure the winter so as to earn the spring.
We should not fear the night, because if we bear with it, it will reward us
with a new morning and an incomparable early morning light. Nietzsche
had concluded the first part of Human, All Too Human with a rhapsody
on the philosophical "wanderer" and his relationship to the night and
the coming morning. "Of course, a person like this," he wrote in apho-