Twilight of the Idols

Philosophy 1

Spring, 2002

G. J. Mattey

Friedrich Nietzsche

• Born 1844• From Germany• Of poor health• Professor of Classics,

University of Basel (1869-1879)

• Friend, then enemy, of Richard Wagner

• Became insane in 1899• Died 1900

Nietzsche’s Contributions

• Delivered a radical critique of the practice of Western philosophy since Socrates

• Declared the death of God and celebrated the eternal recurrence of all things

• Argued for the affirmation of life• Understood human behavior in terms of attempting to

enhance one’s power• Endorsed “noble” values and condemned pity for the

weak• Claimed that there are only perspectives and that there is

no “real” world

Devaluing Life

• The wisest sages through the ages have had a negative attitude toward life

• Socrates proclaimed living to be a sickness that lasts a long time

• Is there something true in this attitude?

• Or does the attitude indicate something about the “wisest sages” who have it?

Declining Types

• Nietzsche hit on the thesis that the great wise men are declining types when researching Greek tragedy

• Socrates and Plato are symptoms of the decline of Greek culture

• The value-judgments made by philosophers cannot be true

• They are only symptoms of the condition of those who make them

• That condition has been one of decline

Socrates

• Socrates was ugly, and ugliness is a symptom of a decadent personality

• This can be seen in several ways– He admitted containing the bad vices and inclinations

within him– His use of logic was over-developed– He was nasty– He hallucinated the voice of a god

• He is an exaggeration, but beneath this is a dark underside

Morality

• For Socrates, reason = virtue = happiness

• This formula has been adopted by most of subsequent moral philosophy

• But it is “the most bizarre equation that there is”

• How did it arise from Socrates’s character?

Dialectic

• Socrates made people take dialectic, before considered disrespectable, seriously

• But dialectic is a resource of last resort, creating distrust and not convincing lastingly

• Perhaps dialectic was a form of revenge– Socrates puts the burden of proof on the

opponent and makes him look foolish

Rationality

• Socrates claimed to have mastered his many dark cravings

• The role of rationality is to play the tyrant against instinctive drives

• This explains the fanatical devotion to rationality after Socrates– The condition of Greek culture was that of an

anarchical play of conflicting drives

Futility

• The equation of virtue and happiness with reason is supposed to provide a bulwark against the dark forces

• But it is doomed to failure, as hyper-rationality is just another sickness

• “As long as life is ascending, happiness is the same as instinct”

• Socrates’s suicide confirms that rationality is no cure for the underlying sickness of decadence

Conceptual Mummies

• Philosophers have de-historicized the concepts with which they deal

• This takes the life from them and makes them conceptual mummies

• In particular, there is a prejudice against becoming and in favor of being

• This goes hand-in-hand with the degradation of the senses and the body

The Lie

• Apart from Heraclitus, philosophers have perpetuated the lie of “unity,” “thinghood,” “substance,” “duration”

• Reason adds the “true world” to the “apparent” world, which we know well through the senses

• Natural science accepts what is given to the senses and sharpens it

• Formal sciences have nothing to do with reality

God

• Philosophy has promoted as the “highest” concepts those that are most universal and empty– The good– The true– The perfect

• God, as the most real being, is the thinnest concept of all

Language

• Error results from the prejudice of reason • Reason derives its categories of reality from

language• Reflecting the subject-verb structure of sentences,

reason finds a world of substantial actors and their actions

• It finds certitude in its categories of substance, etc., and infers from this a divine origin

• “I’m afraid we’re not rid of God because we still believe in grammar”

Four Theses

• The “apparent” world only is real, and no other reality can be demonstrated

• The distinguishing marks of “true being” are the same as those of “nothing”

• Only revenge against this life causes us to fantasize another world

• The real/apparent dichotomy is a sign of decadence

The End of the “Real World”

• In Plato, the “real world” is thought attainable to the wise and virtuous

• In Christianity, its attainment is delayed• In Kant, it becomes merely a consolation• In positivism, it becomes pointless• Finally its existence is denied• If there is no real world, there is no

apparent world either

The Passions

• We act stupidly from our passions• The religious/philosophical response is to

destroy the passions and more generally, life itself

• Spiritualization of sensuality into love is a great triumph

• Another is the spiritualization of enmity• We need opposition to function properly

Healthy Morality

• All healthy morality is ruled by an instinct for life• Unhealthy morality is anti-life, and in religion it

makes God an enemy of life• But the revolt against life is built on a lie• Those who valuate life are living beings• Those who deny life do so as a response to the

condition of life, one of decline• “Immoralists” affirm the many types of life

Confusing Effect with Cause

• This error is “the genuine ruination of reason” – It bears the names “religion” and “morality”

• E.g., believing that a skimpy diet promotes health, when health promotes a skimpy diet

• In morality– Virtue is the effect of happiness, not its cause,– Vice is the effect of degeneracy, not its cause

False Causality

• Philosophers have held that the “I” has a “will” which causes actions based on antecedent motives

• But the “will” and the “motive” are mere surface phenomena of consciousness, and the “I” is a fiction

• “Things” are just projections of these “internal facts”

• This is how Kant found in “things” just what the “mind” puts in them

• The error also accounts for our belief in God

Imaginary Causes

• In our dreams, we think of our motives as causes of our thoughts

• But instead, they are merely the occasion of the revival of previous thoughts

• In the case of our common feelings, we demand a cause in something familiar, to soothe ourselves

• This excludes taking the alien as cause, even when it should be

• It is the foundation of morality and religion: bad feelings are from vice and good ones from virtue

Free Will

• “Free will” is a device of theologians to make people feel “responsible”

• Responsibility needs to be imputed for the purposes of domination and punishment

• So, each act had to be thought of as being the result of freely willing it

• “Immoralists” seek to banish the concepts of guilt and punishment

• Nobody is responsible for people’s qualities: not us, and not an alleged God

The Greeks

• Plato was an over-moralized “exalted swindle” who was really decadent

• His “ideal” of “the Good” is the stepping stone to Christianity, and alien to ancient Greek culture

• Courage in the face of reality, found in Thucydides the historian, best represents the hard factuality of the older Greeks

Dionysis

• The Platonic ideal of self-control represents that part of the Greek culture represented by Apollo

• Opposed to this is the explosive sensualism of the cult of Dionysis

• This cult celebrates all of life, especially sexuality, and even the pain of giving birth

• It is the basis of tragic poetry, which celebrates by destroying the highest types