--- date: '2023-11-30' description: the man that was most mistakenly understood id: Nietzsche modified: 2026-06-05 15:08:28 GMT-04:00 seealso: - '[[thoughts/Philosophy and Nietzsche|Deleuze interpretation of Nietzsche]]' tags: - philosophy - philos1aa3 title: Nietzsche's Life created: '2023-11-30' published: '2023-11-30' pageLayout: default slug: thoughts/Nietzsche permalink: https://aarnphm.xyz/thoughts/Nietzsche.md generator: quartz: v4.6.0 hostedProvider: Cloudflare baseUrl: aarnphm.xyz full: https://aarnphm.xyz/llms-full.txt --- _1844-1900_ Reading notes on _Twilight of the Idols_ (1889), with related passages from _The Gay Science_, _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ and _Beyond Good and Evil_. ## Problem of [[thoughts/Socrates|Socrates]]. > Maybe something wrong with this? What drives Socrates from this demands with reasons and knowledge? What are the motives? The question is about the need for rational control. Nietzsche reads the Socratic formula as $\text{reason} = \text{virtue} = \text{happiness}$. He treats this as a response to conflicting instincts: reason becomes their ruler because they can no longer govern themselves. His term _decadence_ names that disorder and the remedies it demands. This is Nietzsche’s interpretation of Socrates, rather than an established account of his psychology. (_Twilight_, “The Problem of Socrates,” §§4, 9-11.) The lecture formulation “An unexamined life is not worth living. Only Knowledge alone makes life worth living” joins Socrates’ claim about examination to a stronger claim about knowledge. The first has its source in Plato’s _Apology_ 38a; the second needs an argument. Nietzsche’s challenge is to ask what kind of life needs that promise. The same question applies to [[thoughts/Plato|Plato]]‘s preference for stable being over becoming. Nietzsche asks what motivates a philosopher to treat change and the body as obstacles to truth. A motive can explain a commitment while leaving its truth unsettled. Discovering a need for reassurance would not, on its own, refute an argument. In “The Problem of Socrates,” §2, Nietzsche argues that the value of life as a whole cannot be estimated. Nietzsche’s reason is that a living judge is already a participant in life, while the dead cannot judge. A verdict on life as a whole therefore lacks the disinterested standpoint it claims. This leaves room to judge particular lives, commitments and acts. Life is still unfolding; a global verdict pretends to have finished it. ## God is Dead Nietzsche asks what happens to the commitments built around belief in God. In _The Gay Science_ §125, the madman announces God’s death to people who already disbelieve in God. Their disbelief has arrived before an understanding of its consequences. Section 343 identifies the event as the loss of credibility of the Christian God and asks what happens to the European morality supported by that belief. It also describes the prospect of new inquiry with excitement. The further question in §344 concerns the unconditional value of truth. Scientific inquiry tests its claims, yet the decision to pursue truth at any cost is itself a commitment. Nietzsche asks whether that commitment retains the older faith that truth is divine. This challenges an inherited justification for valuing truth; it does not announce that scientific results have stopped being reliable. _Nihilism_: the loss of authority of the values by which a life was directed. The problem remains after an argument against God’s existence succeeds: which commitments survive, and what supports them? How do we have a duty to truth? Does atheism settle that question, or leave it open? #### From _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ In “The Tree on the Mountainside” (also translated “The Tree on the Hill”), Zarathustra distinguishes the noble person’s wish to create from the good person’s wish to preserve what already exists. The youth’s danger is becoming a bitter mocker who has given up that wish to create. The warning against becoming “a churl” in the lecture reader belongs to this passage. Mere opposition to accepted goodness supplies no new aim. #### Morality as Anti-Nature The target of this _Twilight_ chapter is a treatment of passion: trying to remove desire because it can lead to harm. Nietzsche contrasts this with giving a passion a more developed form, as sensuality can become love and hostility can become a productive relation to an opponent. His claim concerns how desires are cultivated. It offers no guarantee that following a desire will be good. (§§1-3.) The lecture phrase “Obstacles that are good for us: Becomes who we are” belongs with this question. Some resistance can develop a capacity; whether a particular obstacle does so needs to be shown. Calling suffering necessary for growth would leave that distinction out. Nietzsche’s criticism of equality and democracy is related, with its own argument. He thinks an ideal centred on shared security and comfort can suppress the development of exceptional people. The “herd” names a pattern of shared valuation and pressure to conform. It is a polemical description of a kind of society, rather than a definition of every human association. (_Beyond Good and Evil_, §§44, 202.) The worry behind my [[singularity.canvas|singularity]] shorthand is a single moral standard imposed on people with different capacities and aims. Nietzsche’s response is hierarchical: he denies that one morality benefits everyone equally. That judgment needs defending. Difference alone cannot establish which differences deserve authority. [[thoughts/John Stuart Mill|John Stuart Mill]] is also a target, named among Nietzsche’s adversaries in “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man,” §1. _Beyond Good and Evil_ §228 attacks English utilitarianism for treating its own conception of welfare as a universal goal. Mill’s defence of individuality gives them a point of contact; their standards for evaluating a life remain different. Nietzsche’s objections extend beyond Kantian duty. “Morals compromise creativity” is the lecture summary. The useful question is which moral demand blocks which activity, and why that activity should take priority. Reversing every accepted judgment would leave the argument unfinished. ## What I Owe the Ancients This heading names a chapter of _Twilight of the Idols_. _The Birth of Tragedy_ (1872) is an earlier work that the chapter revisits. Greek tragedies in the lecture: - Aeschylus, _Oresteia_ - Sophocles, _Oedipus the King_ - Euripides, _Bacchae_ > Why do we enjoy tragedies? Why do we enjoy watching people suffer? > “All becoming and growing - all that guarantees a future - involves pain.” (282) Nietzsche connects this claim to procreation and the Dionysian mysteries in “What I Owe the Ancients,” §4. In §5, tragic affirmation means being able to affirm existence while confronting destruction and suffering. Enjoying a tragedy need not amount to wanting the depicted suffering to happen. Neither does this account show that every actual injury benefits its victim. > “Art is worth more than truth.” This belongs with Nietzsche’s later reflections on _The Birth of Tragedy_, collected after his death in _The Will to Power_, §853 IV. That compilation is an editorial arrangement of notebooks, rather than a book he completed. The comparison concerns art’s power to sustain an affirmation of existence. The lecture’s final contrast is that science supplies no purpose in itself, while art can create values. Knowing how something happens leaves open what to make of it. The further question is how a created value earns commitment. Incompleteness of our experience leaves that question open; it does not establish that life has no value. ### sources - Nietzsche, [_Twilight of the Idols_](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52263/52263-h/52263-h.htm): “The Problem of Socrates,” §§2, 4, 9-11; “Reason in Philosophy,” §§1-2; “Morality as the Enemy of Nature,” §§1-3; “Things I Owe to the Ancients,” §§4-5. Chapter titles vary by translation. The retained page numbers refer to the lecture reader. - Nietzsche, [_The Gay Science_](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52881/52881-h/52881-h.htm), §§125, 343-344; this translation is titled _The Joyful Wisdom_. - Nietzsche, [_Thus Spoke Zarathustra_](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm), Part I, “The Tree on the Hill.” - Nietzsche, [_Beyond Good and Evil_](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4363/4363-h/4363-h.htm), §§44, 202, 228. - Nietzsche, [_The Will to Power_](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52915/52915-h/52915-h.htm), §853 IV, a posthumous notebook compilation.