Friedrich Nietzsche’s David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer is not really about
David Strauss. The polemic’s target is first mentioned ten pages in, and
nowhere in the introduction. Nietzsche’s focus is the difference between
productive thinking and lazy thinking, or in his terms, the difference between ‘culture’
and ‘cultural philistinism’. The cultural mind seeks to improve itself, to seek
that which is good outside of itself, and weed out that which is bad within
itself. The cultural philistine’s mind, however, believes it does not need to improve
itself, for everything within itself is good, and thus needs no weeding, while
everything outside itself is misguided, and thus deserves no seeking.
