CHAPTER 2Schopenhauer and
the Will to Style
Self-examination · Philological diet · The Schopenhauer
experience · Thinking as self-transcendence · Transfigured
physis and genius · Doubts about philology · The will to
style · First encounter with WagnerJL HE TO UN G Nietzsche was hardly unaware of the problems that
came along with focusing so much attention on himself, since he had
already penned several sketches of his life and other reflections on him-
self in his diary. In 1868, he jotted under the heading "Self-Observation"
the following sentences: "It is deceiving / Know yourself. / By action,
not by observation. / ... Observation saps your energy: it corrodes and
crumbles. / Instinct is best." He paused and thought over what he had
written. Did self-observation really just impede and subvert? After
observing his self-observation, he realized that it had worked to his ben-
efit "Self-observation a weapon against influences from without," he
appended (/4,126).
Self-observation allowed Nietzsche to differentiate between internal
and external impulses, and to distinguish what he himself wanted from
what others wanted from him. But this clean division was not always
possible. Inherent in our own enigma is the fact that we do not always
know what we want. How can we recognize our own volition? Perhaps
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