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object:1.02 - THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES
book class:Twilight of the Idols
class:chapter
author class:Friedrich Nietzsche
subject class:Philosophy

THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES



1

In all ages the wisest have always agreed in their V judgment of
life: _it is no good._ At all times and places the same words have
been on their lips,--words full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of
weariness of life, full of hostility to life. Even Socrates' dying
words were:--"To live--means to be ill a long while: I owe a cock to
the god sculapius." Even Socrates had had enough of it. What does that
prove? What does it point to? Formerly people would have said (--oh,
it has been said, and loudly enough too; by our Pessimists loudest of
all!): "In any case there must be some truth in this! The _consensus
sapientium_ is a proof of truth."--Shall we say the same to-day? _May_
we do so? "In any case there must be some sickness here," we make
reply. These great sages of all periods should first be examined more
closely! Is it possible that they were, everyone of them, a little
shaky on their legs, effete, rocky, decadent? Does wisdom perhaps
appear on earth after the manner of a crow attracted by a slight smell
of carrion?


2

This irreverent belief that the great sages were decadent types, first
occurred to me precisely in regard to that case concerning which both
learned and vulgar prejudice was most opposed to my view I recognised
Socrates and Plato as symptoms of decline, as instruments in the
disintegration of Hellas, as pseudo-Greek, as anti-Greek ("The Birth
of Tragedy," 1872). That _consensus sapientium,_ as I perceived ever
more and more clearly, did not in the least prove that they were right
in the matter on which they agreed. It proved rather that these sages
themselves must have been alike in some physiological particular, in
order to assume the same negative attitude towards life--in order to
be bound to assume that attitude. After all, judgments and valuations
of life, whether for or against, cannot be true: their only value lies
in the fact that they are symptoms; they can be considered only as
symptoms,--_per se_ such judgments are nonsense. You must therefore
endeavour by all means to reach out and try to grasp this astonishingly
subtle axiom, _that the value of life cannot be estimated._ A living
man cannot do so, because he is a contending party, or rather the very
object in the dispute, and not a judge; nor can a dead man estimate
it--for other reasons. For a philosopher to see a problem in the value
of life, is almost an objection against him, a note of interrogation
set against his wisdom--a lack of wisdom. What? Is it possible that all
these great sages were not only decadents, but that they were not even
wise? Let me however return to the problem of Socrates.


3

To judge from his origin, Socrates belonged to the lowest of the low:
Socrates was mob. You know, and you can still see it for yourself,
how ugly he was. But ugliness, which in itself is an objection, was
almost a refutation among the Greeks. Was Socrates really a Greek?
Ugliness is not infrequently the expression of thwarted development,
or of development arrested by crossing. In other cases it appears
as a decadent development. The anthropologists among the criminal
specialists declare that I the typical criminal is ugly: _monstrum
in fronte, monstrum in animo._ But the criminal is a decadent?[1]
Was Socrates a typical criminal?--At all events this would not clash
with that famous physiognomist's judgment which was so repugnant to
Socrates' friends. While on his way through Athens a certain foreigner
who was no fool at judging by looks, told Socrates to his face that
he was a monster, that his body harboured all the worst vices and
passions. And Socrates replied simply: "You know me, sir!"--


4

Not only are the acknowledged wildness and anarchy of Socrates'
instincts indicative of decadence, but also that preponderance of the
logical faculties and that malignity of the misshapen which was his
special characteristic. Neither should we forget those aural delusions
which were religiously interpreted as "the demon of Socrates."
Everything in him is exaggerated, _buffo,_ caricature, his nature is
also full of concealment, of ulterior motives, and of underground
currents. I try to understand the idiosyncrasy from which the Socratic
equation:--Reason = Virtue = Happiness, could have arisen: the
weirdest equation ever seen, and one which was essentially opposed to
all the instincts of the older Hellenes.


5

With Socrates Greek taste veers round in favour of dialectics: what
actually occurs? In the first place a noble taste is vanquished:
with dialectics the mob comes to the top. Before Socrates' time,
dialectical manners were avoided in good society: they were regarded
as bad manners, they were compromising. Young men were cautioned
against them. All such proffering of one's reasons was looked upon with
suspicion. Honest things like honest men do not carry their reasons
on their sleeve in such fashion. It is not good form to make a show
of everything. That which needs to be proved cannot be worth much.
Wherever authority still belongs to good usage, wherever men do not
prove but command, the dialectician is regarded as a sort of clown.
People laugh at him, they do not take him seriously. Socrates was a
clown who succeeded in making men take him seriously: what then was the
matter?


6

A man resorts to dialectics only when he has no other means to hand.
People know that they excite suspicion with it and that it is not
very convincing. Nothing is more easily dispelled than a dialectical
effect: this is proved by the experience of every gathering in which
discussions are held. It can be only the last defence of those who have
no other weapons. One must require to extort one's right, otherwise one
makes no use of it. That is why the Jews were dialecticians. Reynard
the Fox was a dialectician: what?--and was Socrates one as well?


7

Is the Socratic irony an expression of revolt, of mob resentment?
Does Socrates, as a creature suffering under oppression, enjoy his
innate ferocity in the knife-thrusts of the syllogism? Does he wreak
his revenge on the noblemen he fascinates?--As a dialectician a man
has a merciless instrument to wield; he can play the tyrant with it:
he compromises when he conquers with it The dialectician leaves it to
his opponent to prove that he is no idiot: he infuriates, he likewise
paralyses. The dialectician cripples the intellect of his opponent. Can
it be that dialectics was only a form of revenge in Socrates?


8

I have given you to understand in what way Socrates was able to repel:
now it is all the more necessary to explain how he fascinated.--One
reason is that he discovered a new kind of _Agon,_ and that he was the
first fencing-master in the best circles in Athens. He fascinated by
appealing to the combative instinct of the Greeks,--he introduced a
variation into the contests between men and youths. Socrates was also a
great erotic.


9

But Socrates divined still more. He saw right through his noble
Athenians; he perceived that his case, his peculiar case, was no
exception even in his time. The same kind of degeneracy was silently
preparing itself everywhere: ancient Athens was dying out. And Socrates
understood that the whole world needed him,--his means, his remedy, his
special artifice for self-preservation. Everywhere the instincts were
in a state of anarchy; everywhere people were within an ace of excess:
the _monstrum in animo_ was the general danger. "The instincts would
play the tyrant; we must discover a counter-tyrant who is stronger than
they." On the occasion when that physiognomist had unmasked Socrates,
and had told him what he was, a crater full of evil desires, the great
Master of Irony let fall one or two words more, which provide the key
to his nature. "This is true," he said, "but I overcame them all." How
did Socrates succeed in mastering himself? His case was at bottom only
the extreme and most apparent example of a state of distress which
was beginning to be general: that state in which no one was able to
master himself and in which the instincts turned one against the other.
As the extreme example of this state, he fascinated--his terrifying
ugliness made him conspicuous to every eye: it is quite obvious that he
fascinated still more as a reply, as a solution, as an apparent cure of
this case.


10

When a man finds it necessary, as Socrates did, to create a tyrant out
of reason, there is no small danger that something else wishes to play
the tyrant. Reason was then discovered as a saviour; neither Socrates
nor his "patients" were at liberty to be rational or not, as they
pleased; at that time it was _de rigueur,_ it had become a last shift.
The fanaticism with which the whole of Greek thought plunges into
reason, betrays a critical condition of things: men were in danger;
there were only two alternatives: either perish or else be absurdly
rational. The moral bias of Greek philosophy from Plato onward, is the
outcome of a pathological condition, as is also its appreciation of
dialectics. Reason = Virtue = Happiness, simply means: we must imitate
Socrates, and confront the dark passions permanently with the light
of day--the light of reason. We must at all costs be clever, precise,
clear: all yielding to the instincts, to the unconscious, leads
downwards.


11

I have now explained how Socrates fascinated: he seemed to be a
doctor, a Saviour. Is it necessary to expose the errors which lay in
his faith in "reason at any price"?--It is a piece of self-deception
on the part of philosophers and moralists to suppose that they can
extricate themselves from degeneration by merely waging war upon it.
They cannot thus extricate themselves; that which they choose as a
means, as the road to salvation, is in itself again only an expression
of degeneration--they only modify its mode of manifesting itself:
they do not abolish it Socrates was a misunderstanding. _The whole
of the morality of amelioration--that of Christianity as well--was
a misunderstanding._ The most blinding light of day: reason at any
price; life made clear, cold, cautious, conscious, without instincts,
opposed to the instincts, was in itself only a disease, another kind
of disease--and by no means a return to "virtue," to "health," and to
happiness. To be obliged to fight the instincts--this is the formula of
degeneration: as long as life is in the ascending line, happiness is
the same as instinct.


12

--Did he understand this himself, this most intelligent of
self-deceivers? Did he confess this to himself in the end, in the
wisdom of his courage before death. Socrates wished to die. Not Athens,
but his own hand gave him the draught of hemlock; he drove Athens to
the poisoned cup. "Socrates is not a doctor," he whispered to himself,
"death alone can be a doctor here.... Socrates himself has only been ill
a long while."


[1] It should be borne in mind that Nietzsche recognised two types of
criminals,--the criminal from strength, and the criminal from weakness.
This passage alludes to the latter, Aphorism 45, p. 103, alludes to the
former.--TR.





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