„A vision. Hours of instruction and meditation for adults, even the most mature, and such institutions visited without compulsion but in accordance with the moral injunction of the whole community; the churches as the meeting-places most worthy and rich in memories for the purpose; at the same time daily festivals in honour of the reason that is attained and attainable by man; a newer and fuller budding and blooming of the ideal of the teacher, in which the clergyman, the artist and the physician, the man of science and the sage are blended, and their individual virtues should come to the fore as a collective virtue in their teaching itself, in their discourses, in their method – this is my ever-recurring vision, of which I firmly believe that it has raised a corner of the veil of the future.” (Nietzsche)
Nietzsche saw what the modern age lost: the formation of the mature. School ends with youth, and after it a person is left alone with his own thoughts. Lifespan psychology now shows that maturity is not a completion but a continual reshaping. The loss of a shared rhythm, of hours of quiet and of a place of meeting is paid for in loneliness and scattered attention. Hadot showed that ancient philosophy was not a doctrine but a daily exercise of the soul. So Nietzsche longs for what humanity once had: a road walked together, every day.
But what he describes as a vision of the future has existed for nearly two thousand years. There are the hours of the day, vespers and matins, the times of instruction and silence, the churches as meeting places rich in memories, and „compulsion” is replaced by the quiet injunction of the community. And there is the very teacher in whom cleric, physician and sage are joined: the spiritual father, whom the Fathers call a physician of souls, and whom St. John Climacus’ Ladder places between doctor and shepherd.
The paths part at a single phrase: „festivals in honour of the reason that is attained.” A reason that celebrates itself needs a mirror. Evagrius places vainglory before pride precisely because it lives on another’s gaze. St. Maximus the Confessor names the root of this movement self-love (philautia): the mind worshipping its own light. Psychology recognizes it in the intellectual who weighs without end and never decides, having all the virtues of the mind and lacking measure. Discernment (diakrisis), which Climacus ranks above all else, is not gained by sharpness. It is received together with humility. The Psalm says: „in Thy light shall we see light” (Ps. 35:10 LXX). Man’s reason is not celebrated; it is shared in from the Logos, „the true Light, which lighteth every man” (John 1:9).
The teacher of the vision has five faces: cleric, artist, physician, scientist, sage. One Man has all of them without being an actor: Christ. He is the Physician: „they that be whole need not a physician” (Matt. 9:12). He is the Teacher: „Ye call me Master and Lord” (John 13:13). He is the High Priest (Heb. 4:14), the Wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24), and the Artist through whom „all things were made” (John 1:3). His method is His life: „I have given you an example” (John 13:15). This is why, in the Paterikon, the brethren went to the elder first to see him, and only then to hear him. Virtue becomes „collective” in teaching only when the one who teaches has himself become word. An ideal composed of five trades cannot be manufactured by pedagogy. It can only be received from the Person who holds them together.
Nietzsche believes he has lifted a corner of the veil. The Apostle says the veil is not lifted by a corner but taken away at once: „when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away” (2 Cor. 3:16).
The daily festival exists, and the church stands open. The question remains at which table a man sits: at the festival of the reason he has attained, or at the Table of the Word that is given.
