If the wise sleep, and the sleepers are praised, who, then, is left to stay awake?
- We need a different kind of scholar. One who disturbs, who loses sleep, who risks their position.
- We need voices that confront, not conform; that speak when silence is comfortable. In a world that rewards sleep, the true act of resistance might be to stay awake
By Waqar Mehmood
In times of social crisis, one might expect the intellectuals of society, its academics, theorists, and educators, to be at the forefront, questioning, challenging, and demanding justice. Yet, more often than not, they are silent. Not out of ignorance, but from a cultivated comfort that Nietzsche, in his scathing parable “The Academic Chairs of Virtue,” exposes with merciless clarity. In this short text from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche mocks the type of academic who gains honor not by awakening minds, but by teaching people how to sleep better.
Nietzsche presents a wise man, celebrated for his moral teachings and revered by youths who sit before his “academic chair.” But what does this sage preach? Not truth, not struggle, not transformation, but sleep. Sleep is a metaphor for peace, obedience, and the careful avoidance of disturbance. “Respect and modesty in the presence of sleep!” he declares, turning virtues into tranquilizers and philosophy into a lullaby. Nietzsche’s irony is sharp: what masquerades as wisdom is merely the art of sedation. The wise man reconciles with himself ten times a day, laughs ten times, and finds ten truths, all in the service of good sleep. He honors even the crooked government, not out of conviction, but because unrest disturbs the stomach.
In times of humanitarian crisis, injustice, and political violence, where are the scholars? Where are the collective statements, the dissident voices, the public refusals to collaborate with oppressive systems?
This, Nietzsche reveals, is the secret desire of many who sit in academic chairs: poppy-head virtues that make life easier, not truer. What matters most is not what is just, but what allows one to rest. “To all those be lauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life.”
This critique echoes disturbingly in the modern academic world. The same names dominate panels and conferences. Universities have become echo chambers, where safety, civility, and respectability trump challenge, urgency, and courage. Those who publish the most often say the least. Those who theorize power are often the last to resist it.
In times of humanitarian crisis, injustice, and political violence, where are the scholars? Where are the collective statements, the dissident voices, the public refusals to collaborate with oppressive systems? Instead, we see a retreat into performance: keynote speeches that critique neoliberalism from within corporate-sponsored conferences, or journal articles about resistance written in inaccessible prose. The academy becomes a space where sleep is not only preached but institutionalized.
Nietzsche saw this coming. His parable ends with Zarathustra laughing quietly: these academic sages, with their forty thoughts and their rehearsed reflections, are already lying down. Not just physically, but intellectually and morally. Their time is past, he says. They will soon be fully asleep.
But what if we turned this critique into a call? What if, instead of sleep, the intellectual sought wakefulness? Not rest, but restlessness? What if the true academic chair was not a cushion, but a site of constant unease?
We need a different kind of scholar. One who disturbs, who loses sleep, who risks their position. We need voices that confront, not conform; that speak when silence is comfortable. In a world that rewards sleep, the true act of resistance might be to stay awake.
We need voices that confront, not conform; that speak when silence is comfortable. But in a world that rewards sleep, perhaps the true act of resistance is not even heard, only dreamt of.
And those who lie down too early? Nietzsche was right:
“Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to sleep.”
But cursed are they too, for they already lie.
The question remains:
If the wise sleep, and the sleepers are praised, who, then, is left to stay awake?
Read – Time-Wasting Machinery: The Bureaucratic Discipline of Higher Education
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Waqar Mehmood is an MPhil student in anthropology at Quaid-i-Azam University, currently researching informal apprenticeship and out-of-school children in Pakistan. His previous work focused on learning poverty and the effects of the 2022 floods on education. His research interests include education, socioeconomic mobility, and skill development, particularly in Sindh.
