Against Afuturistic Reading

Abstract

They even think that they have spent such days well, in a truly useful and worthy manner, these days spent in contemplation of the possible forms of the future. . . . They are calm and unworried enough to set out with the author on a long road whose endpoint only a much later generation will see. When the greatly agitated reader, in contrast, springs into action . . . we must fear he has failed to understand the author. —Friedrich Nietzsche, Anti-Education: On the Future of Our Educational Institutions