Philosophy is, by its very nature, something esoteric, neither made for the vulgar as it stands [für sich], nor capable of being got up to suit the v… - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

" "

Philosophy is, by its very nature, something esoteric, neither made for the vulgar as it stands [für sich], nor capable of being got up to suit the vulgar taste; it only is philosophy in virtue of being directly opposed to the understanding and hence even more opposed to healthy common sense, under which label we understand the limitedness in space and time of a race of men; in its relationship to common sense the world of philosophy is in and for itself an inverted world .21 When Alexander, having heard that his teacher was publishing written essays on his philosophy, wrote to him from the heart of Asia that he ought not to have vulgarized the philosophizing they had done together, Aristotle defended himself by saying that his philosophy was published and yet also not published. In the same way philosophy [now] must certainly admit [erkennen] the possibility that the people can rise to it, but it must not lower itself to the people. But in these times of freedom and equality, in which such a large educated public has been formed, that will not allow anything to be shut away from it, but considers itself good for anything – or everything good enough for it – in these times even the highest beauty and the greatest good have not been able to escape the fate of being mishandled by the common mob which cannot rise to what it sees floating above it, until it has been made common enough to be fit for their possessing; so that vulgarization has forced its way into being recognized as a meritorious kind of labour. There is no aspect of the higher striving of the human spirit that has not experienced this fate. An Idea, in art or in philosophy, needs only to be glimpsed in order for the processing to start by which it is properly stirred up into material for the pulpit, for text books, and for the household use of the newspaper public.