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{"id":22316,"date":"2018-04-27T20:00:40","date_gmt":"2018-04-27T14:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/?p=22316"},"modified":"2018-04-26T20:56:59","modified_gmt":"2018-04-26T14:56:59","slug":"mummified-concepts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2018\/04\/mummified-concepts\/","title":{"rendered":"Mummified Concepts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

From Nietzsche\u2019s Twilight of the Idols<\/em><\/a>, on \u201creason\u201d in philosophy:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou ask me what all idiosyncrasy is in philosophers? . . . For instance their lack of the historical sense, their hatred even of the idea of Becoming, their Egyptianism. They imagine that they do honour to a thing by divorcing it from history\u00a0sub specie \u00e6terni,\u2014<\/i>when they make a mummy of it. All the ideas that philosophers have treated for thousands of years, have been mummied concepts; nothing real has ever come out of their hands alive. These idolaters of concepts merely kill and stuff things when they worship,\u2014they threaten the life of everything they adore. Death, change, age, as well as procreation and growth, are in their opinion objections,\u2014even refutations. That which is cannot evolve; that which evolves\u00a0is<\/i>\u00a0not. Now all of them believe, and even with desperation, in Being. But, as they cannot lay hold of it, they try to discover reasons why this privilege is withheld from them. \u2018Some merely apparent quality, some deception must be the cause of our not being able to ascertain the nature of Being: where is the deceiver?\u2019 \u2018We have him,\u2019 they cry rejoicing, \u2018it is sensuality!\u2019 These senses,\u00a0which in other things are so immoral,<\/i>\u00a0cheat us concerning the true world. Moral: we must get rid of the deception of the senses, of Becoming, of history, of<\/span>\u00a0falsehood.\u2014History is nothing more than the belief in the senses, the belief in falsehood. Moral: we must say \u2018no\u2019 to everything in which the senses believe to all the rest of mankind: all that belongs to the \u2018people.\u2019 Let us be philosophers, mummies, monotono-theists, grave-diggers!\u2014And above all, away with the\u00a0body,<\/i>\u00a0this wretched\u00a0id\u00e9e fixe<\/i>\u00a0of the senses, infected with all the faults of logic that exist, refuted, even impossible, although it be impudent enough to pose as if it were real!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"