Nietzsche’s meaning here is open-ended regarding the intellectual as human being. To make things simpler is a good, even necessary, activity in human life. In this sense, we are all thinkers. In our daily lives, we turn the endlessly varied and nearly infinite array of events and perceptions into something manageable and amenable to a practical trajectory throughout the day.
But, of course, simplification can also be motivated by something other than the practical necessities of life. Thinkers can sometimes make complex matters less complex for the underhanded purpose of omitting details inconvenient to an agenda they want to advance. In our time, evidence of intellectuals simplifying in order to distort is easy to find. Indeed, something about the situation of the intellectual in our time has increased this probability.
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