Twilight of the Idols

1
Twilight of the Idols

• Philosophy 1
• Spring, 2002
• G. J. Mattey

2
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

3
Nietzsches 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 ones power
• Endorsed noble values and condemned pity for
  the weak
• Claimed that there are only perspectives and that
  there is no real world

4
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?

5
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

6
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

7
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 Socratess character?

8
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

9
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

10
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
• Socratess suicide confirms that rationality is
  no cure for the underlying sickness of decadence

11
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

12
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

13
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

14
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
• Im afraid were not rid of God because we still
  believe in grammar

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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

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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

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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

18
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

19
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

20
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

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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

22
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 peoples qualities not
  us, and not an alleged God

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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

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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