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37 LECTURE THREE [XI 47] The purely poetic viewpoint, as we have named the first one, and the philosophical, as we will moreover name the second viewpoint—not that we held it for particularly philosophical, that is, worthy of a philosopher, but rather because it gives a philosophical content to mythology—these two viewpoints , to which we were at first led in a natural and unsought way, we have initially investigated and have had each express itself in its particular presupposition ; this happened to give us the advantage that some factualities were discussed in advance, factualities to which we do not need to again return, which now can be presupposed as something already ascertained. But for precisely this reason that which is common to both is not yet thrown into relief, and still less has it been judged.1 Now, the particular presuppositions of each one could be found to be untenable and yet could remain common to them and be considered as a possible foundation of a new attempt. In order to finish completely with the two main views it will be necessary, accordingly, to bring into focus just that in which both agree, and also submit that to judgment. Now, at the very least, it is not difficult to recognize the first presupposition shared by both: this is, that mythology in general is an invention. However , it must be decided if this generality is also to be abandoned, or if the error perhaps lies merely in this: that the one view sees only poetic invention in mythology, the other, only a philosophical one. Above all, however, it is to be noticed [XI 48] that in themselves neither of the two really excludes the other entirely. The purely poetic view actually acknowledges a doctrinal content , albeit one merely accidental and unintended; the philosophical view cannot be without that which is poetic, but to the philosophical the poetic is now rather that which is more or less artificial, and thus simply accidental in another way. Now, the former, the mere accidentalness of every doctrinal content, which doctrinal content the purely poetic explanation solely leaves as a remainder , is already contradicted by the systematicity in the sequencing of the lineage of the gods, the sepulchral seriousness itself, which characterizes some parts of the history of the gods. For we do not at all want to think hastily that mythology really governed as the doctrine of the gods [Götterlehre], that it imperiously determined the entire behavior and the entire life of the peoples, which in any case would have to be explained. However, still more than this accidentalness in the one explanation, it is the coarse deliberateness—which the other explanation places in the first emergence—that repels us. How happily in particular one would like to save the philosophers assumed by Heyne the double occupation of first procuring the content and then especially having to seek the form or wording again. How right it might then seem to ask if—by retaining the general presupposition that mythology is in general an invention—those two elements may not be brought nearer to each other, if both explanations might be elevated to a higher place by drawing them into one, and if the opposition which we feel vis-à-vis each particular explanation may be overcome through a blending of both. After all, it can even be asked in general if poetry [Poesie] and philosophy are as separate from each other as they are assumed to be in both explanations, if there does not occur a natural affinity, an almost necessary, mutual force of attraction between both. One must know, after all, that no less a general validity and necessity is required of truly poetic forms than is from philosophical concepts. Admittedly, in having the present era before one’s eyes, only a few exceptional masters have succeeded in instilling a universal and eternal meaning in the figures—whose material they were only able to take from accidental and transient life [XI 49]—and in investing them with a form of mythological authority. Yet these few are also the true poets, and the others are in reality only so in name. On the other hand, philosophical concepts are not supposed to be merely general categories; they should be actual, determinate essentialities.2 And the more they are, the more they are endowed by the philosopher with actual and individual life, then the more they appear to approach poetic figures, even if the philosopher...

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