Nietzsche relished the irony of this because he abhorred professional philosophers as a class. For him, abstract systems were of no use; what counted was critical self-awareness: the ability to pry into one’s own motivations and yet to accept oneself as one was. This is why he loved the aphorists La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère, as well as their forefather Montaigne. He called Montaigne ‘this freest and mightiest58 of souls’, and added: ‘That such a man wrote has truly augmented the joy of living on this earth.’ Montaigne apparently managed the trick of living as Nietzsche longed to do:
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