Aphoristic Writings, Notebook, and Letters to a Friend, by Otto ...

To G. about Naples. That he must go there. Writers, and people who cannot write.
Moreover, about the Farnese Hercules 34 . About himself. He has strength. My theory
of sickness.
Why do I write this to him? Out of duty, for no other reason.
My forced uprightness is extortion of freedom, substitution of God.
G. (the athlete): strength as an end in itself, without ethical goal (seeks sport and
physical exercise); that is how he sins, since he is not at all weak, (he may thus allow
that to be apparent to himself) and yet through this he can fall. For strength is the
consequence of Good (its means by which it can claim to have found itself), never an
end in itself.
*
*
*
For G.: Being on guard against foreign influence means that he no more lies in his
person than his imagination. I have imagination for myself, not myself for
imagination. I have the same with truth. The need for originality is thus weakness.
34 Statue from the Farnese Palace in Rome. [Trans]
*
43