21.11.25

Art and force of false interpretation

Curt Stoeving | 1894

All the visions, terros, states of exhaustion and rapture experienced by the saint are familiar pathological conditions which, on the basis of rooted religions and psychological errors, he only interprets quite differently, that is to say not as illnesses. Thus the daemon of Socrates too was perhaps an ear-infection which, in accordance with the moralizing manner of thinking that dominated him, he only interpreted differently from how it would be interpreted now. It is not otherwise with the madness and ravings of the prophets and oracular priests; it s always the degree of knowledge, imagination, exertion, morality in the head and heart of the interpreters that has made so much of them. For those men called geniuses and saints to produce their greatest effect they have to have constrained to their side interpreters who for the good of mankind misunderstand them.

Friedrich Nietzsche
1844 - 1900