Academic Research International     Vol. 2, No. 2, March 2012         PHILOSOPHER AND HIS TASK FROM NIETZSCHE’S PERSPECTIVE Dr. Khalid Jamil Rawat Iqra University, Karachi , PAKISTAN. khalidastro@hotmail.com , Dr. Wasim Qazi Iqra University, Karachi , PAKISTAN. whqazi@hotmail.com , Dr. Shams Hamid Iqra University, Karachi PAKISTAN. shamshamid@hotmail.com , ABSTRACT Philosophy was once considered as an authority that could guide and command people in various spheres of life. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, philosophy no longer enjoyed the place of an authority and science replaced it as the new authority. Nietzsche has criticized this change and asserted that philosophy as the study of whole being, should be restored to its proper place. Nietzsche expressed his ideas about the role of a philosopher in guiding a civilization, a century ago. His ideas about the role of a philosopher, who a philosopher is, what kind of difficulties lie between him and his tasks and what eventually is the task of a philosopher are very much needed in the 21st century and bear a universal meaning. This article reviews Nietzsche’s ideas on philosophy and philosopher in general. Keywords: philosophy, Nietzsche’s ideas, INTRODUCTION If, after reading the first chapter in Gadamer’s Truth and Method, titled, Transcending the Aesthetic Dimensions, one looks at Nietzsche’s description of who a philosopher is, or who the expert of Geisteswissenschaften is , one would be puzzled to find that Nietzsche has rested the authority of philosophy in the person and not in the method. This actually amounts to saving some place for philosophy as a metaphysical pursuit in modern day’s scientific world; a world that no longer finds a priori synthetic judgments meaningful. Gadamer, on the other hand has suggested that the authority of human sciences, in the course of history has shifted from the personal to the methodical, though he himself advocates that historical texts allow a person to encounter a truth regardless of the method with which this truth is arrived at. Viewing this way, even Apocalypses appear to present a truth that does not require verification in the modern sense; the truth presented here is to be appreciated regardless of the method followed in arriving at the knowledge presented in the text. However, Nietzsche’s approach can be contrasted with that of Husserl, who advocates that the authority of philosophy in modern times relies on its method alone. Nietzsche on the other hand considers philosophy as a personal achievement regardless of its ability to be tested or verified according to the modern standards of authentic knowledge. He wants to restore the notion of authority in philosophy.Not only that he claims that philosophical knowledge is a personal achievement, but he also severely criticizes positivism that provided a scientific model for the methodology in human sciences in the 19 th century. In order to know his position on the meaning of philosophical knowledge and the aims of this knowledge, for Nietzsche does not regard knowledge as an end in itself, let us see how he views philosophy. Nietzsche in his Beyond Good and Evil, in the section We Scholars, expressed his views on philosophy and its plight in his times, the dangers it was facing then, the commonplace misconceptions about it and the qualities that differentiate a philosopher from scientific and philosophical workers; two terms that were coined to differentiate a genuine philosopher from both scientists and those