Summary: Twilight of the Idols

It is in the Twilight of the Idols that Nietzsche proposes a transmutation of all values: this question mark so black, so enormous [...] ¹.

It is about unmasking idols, i.e. false gods. Socrates and Wagner are two prime examples.

Nietzsche examines Socrates, and through him Platonic philosophy, from a novel perspective: that of the body. The question is not whether the ideas proposed by them are true or false, but whether they express a state of health of the body, or a weakening, a decadence of it.

Nietzsche's idea is that a weakening of the body, an illness, an impotence, can be the origin of a masked nihilism, which would be echoed in Platonic thought.

Nietzsche notes that Socrates, at the moment of his death, asks that a cock be sacrificed to Asclepius, the god of medicine. From this he deduced that Socrates regarded life as an illness, and that the God of medicine should be thanked when he was about to be delivered from this illness.

Nietzsche thus tries to show that behind the Platonic equation good=beautiful=goodness lies a real nihilism, a desire to die:

Ever since time immemorial, the wise have passed the same judgment on life: it is worthless... There must be something here sick ².

Thus it is no longer a question of examining the truth of Platonic thought, but of considering it as a symptom, a symptom of an illness: Judgements about life can never be true: they have no value other than that of being symptoms - in themselves such judgements are stupidities ³.

Life is tragic, because of its lack of meaning or because of all the painful events that come to affect us. Yet some people try, instead of admitting this reality and its tragic nature, which is the healthy reaction, to flee from it.

So they invent backworlds, other realities: from the Platonic realm of Ideas to the Christian paradise. It is in this second reality that happiness will be achieved, at last. Now this escape from the world into another illusory world, which does not exist, is the expression of a real nihilism, in the sense of abandoning the enjoyment of this world, and the struggle at the heart of it.

This flight is at the same time an -inappropriate- defensive reaction to the tragic nature of this world. Nietzsche uses the medical term idiosyncrasy, in order to designate this defence mechanism.

Morality is a defence reaction following impotence:

The worm recoils when you step on it. This is full of wisdom. By doing so, it lessens the chance of being stepped on again. In the language of morality: humility ⁴.

Socrates was aware of the nihilism at work within him. Nietzsche relates the anecdote of a physiognomist who told Socrates that he was a monster, hiding all the vices within himself, arousing the hilarity of those around him, who held him up as a model of virtue. Socrates simply replied: You know me, sir! ⁵. For Nietzsche, this was not an example of the famous Socratic irony but a moment of sincerity in which Socrates confessed the evil that was eating away at him.

This nihilism inverts values. Socrates invents the dialectic, the reasoning that seeks to demonstrate a theory. Yet what needs to be demonstrated in order to be believed isn't worth much ⁶.

The thoughts that imposed themselves by their natural beauty, their own authority, are driven out by vulgar ideas carried by demonstrations. This is the end of the aristocratic ideal: First and foremost it is a distinguished taste that is defeated; with dialectics, the people manage to get the upper hand.

While everywhere authority is still fashionable, everywhere where one does not reason but commands, the dialectician is a kind of bungler: he is laughed at, not taken seriously. Socrates was the bungler who was taken seriously ⁷.

¹ Le Crépuscule des Idoles, GF-Flammarion, Paris, 1985, trad. H. Albert, p.69
² p.81
³ p.82
⁴ p.76
⁵ p.83
⁶ p.84
⁷ibid.