I required, and still require, teaching. To be sure, though, I haven’t required proselytising–in fact, I’ve always been most adverse to it. I’ve required proselytising myself, indoctrinating myself, with ideas I myself found, or which found me, and which I myself chose and thereby honoured. So for me, “trying to uplift people here” means to put my ideas–by which I mean both the ideas I’ve chosen and made my own and those I myself thought of–out here. It’s like recreational fishing for men, for human beings, for potential philosophers, or at least for potential lovers of philosophy: a recreational fisherman does not use a net; he just puts his bait out there, waits until something bites, and then, if and when something does, tries to pull it up into the air and the light with the right measure of force and gentleness, patience and resolve. To be sure, that’s something I’ve needed to learn. And of course, it’s not merely recreational–at least not in the shallow sense. It’s re-creational:
[size=95]“Nietzsche often speaks of self-overcoming in terms of self-creation, and this fecund metaphor conveys his sense of the nomothetic [= legislative] influence of exemplary human beings. Great individuals are always artists in Nietzsche’s sense, for, in the course of their self-overcomings, they inadvertently produce in themselves the beauty that alone arouses erotic attachment. By virtue of their self-creation, exemplary figures come to embody ‘the great stimulus to life,’ unwittingly inviting others to join them in the pursuit of self-perfection.” (Daniel Conway, “Love’s labor’s lost: the philosopher’s Versucherkunst [= art of the (at)tempter]”.)[/size]