Honor Project

Essay on Nietzche

Student Name: Dapo Ibrahim

Student ID: 23578108

PHL 11 – INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY

Honors Project ESSAY - DUE: FRIDAY DECEMBER 21st, 2018

Essay: Question:

Nietzsche conceives of his long essay Götzen-Dämmerung (Twilight of the Idols) as “a great declaration of war” but also as “a recreation, a spot of sunshine, a leap sideways into the idleness of a psychologist” (“Preface”, p. 1). How does this apply to his criticisms of Socrates in “The Problem of Socrates”? In particular, regarding our poor hapless Socrates, on what does Nietzsche declare war? And how would ‘recreation’, a ‘spot of sunshine’ and this ‘leap sideways into idleness’ (to paraphrase) serve to pose (perhaps) an altogether ironic contrast to the life and goals of Socrates—and to the Socratic life in general? In other words, is Socrates, in Nietzsche’s view, living in opposition to a life of recreation, idleness, etc.? What does Socrates miss out in life, if so? Explain.

Response To Essay Question:

Nietzsche conceives his long essay “Twilight of the idols” as “a great declaration of war” and as a “recreation, a spot of sunshine” a leap sideways into the idleness of a psychologist. This stems from the fact that Nietzsche does not refer to himself as one of the western philosopher but rather as a psychologist who sees as issues from different perspectives. He is well known for most of his provocative statements such as “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”, “God is dead and we have killed him”. But when we look into his ideology

Y, we’ll discover a thinker that's intimately enchanting who sees equality and most importantly sees what most early philosophers, Christians, and thinkers couldn’t see and would most probably disagree with.

In the essay “Twilight of the Idols” Nietzsche when he used the word “Idol” is not talking about the worship of wooden gods or stone or gold images of a god. Nietzsche is talking about idolatry that afflicts Christian Europe in the 1800s. He’s talking about the worship of false gods but not false gods that come in any physical image or form but he’s talking about the worshiping of the false idea of God. And he tells us he’s going to philosophize with a hammer. He tells what that means, that he is using the hammer more like a tiny hammer he uses to tap an idol very gently to see how it sounds and if it rings hollow, then he knows its just an idol and that it's just another empty idea of God.

Now, what does it mean for an idea of God to be idolatry? It is an idea of God that we created and it becomes what we’re worshiping instead of worshiping God himself. Nietzsche is looking at this in one direction as a psychologist. He’s looking at the enlightenment, post-enlightenment and Christian ideas of God that are empty ideas of God, and he thinks they need to be critic and we need to get rid of these ideas od God. His goal is the atheist goal which is to purify the European culture of all these derogatory religions.

Nietzsche who was very familiar with the works of Socrates argued that Socrates was in fact engaged in a project that was very different than what his peers and the people of Athens thought he was engaged in. For example, considering a classic Socratic dialogue - The Phaedo, Socrates endeavors with several others to determine whether the soul is immortal by using reason and by employing their cognitive faculties, and getting them to reason in ways that will yield truth about the subject of the immortality of the soul. That's at least what Socrates supposedly was doing. But according to Nietzsche who had a very original take on what Socrates was doing, Socrates in fact wanted power. Socrates really by means of his method of the reason was seeking to dominate the opinions of his peers and neighbors in the city of Athens. Socrates sought in fact to get inside their heads to control their opinions, to take charge of their views with his own in order to replace their thinking with his own insight. Socrates supposedly got his peers and neighbors to believe that he was embarking on an objective quest by means of reason to achieve truth, but in reality, Socrates was doing something far more deceptive which was to make his peers to think that he was using reason to achieve truth. While in fact, using the method of reason and the idea of truth is a way of controlling the opinions of others.

Nietzsche famously is not a fan of the idea of the concept of truth. He is a psychologist who believes that there is no privileged perspective on certain topics. Rather there are different perspectives that are capable of being offered on different philosophical topics and Socrates’ perspective was just one perspective. Thus, Nietzsche believes that what Socrates is doing is actually pedaling a lie about the nature of truth namely that there is a privileged perspective.

Finally, Nietzsche of course in holding that there’s no privilege, there’s just different perspective is making a claim that might seem at first glance to be inconsistent with his assertion that what Socrates is doing in using reason to achieve truth is a deceptive and malicious kind of activity. Socrates, in Nietzsche’s view, was living in opposition to a life of recreation and idleness.

This in my own opinion is true that Nietzsche is making a value judgment about Socrates but at the same time in fairness to Nietzsche, it is important for us to recognize for us that Nietzsche is just offering a particular perspective on Socrates and not necessarily a perspective that Nietzsche considers to be any better than any other perspective on Socrates’. Therefore In that sense, Nietzsche is telling a story rather than purporting to have a definitive clause on Socrates.

Reference:

Nietzsche Twilight of the Gods