Nietzsche on Socrates, part 1
Aphorisms 1 though 5 of "The Problem of Socrates"
Introduction: Point of This Series
Allow me to recapitulate the point of this essay series. Philosophers have something to do in every age. They don’t philosophize and write books merely for their own “moral edification,” but to accomplish a task. That task has taken on a variety of names, but if you take a step back you can see that in each age philosophers have established the difference between the good and the bad. We today are in the habit of believing that it’s only in our advanced modern age that this distinction has fallen into disrepute and been maligned. That’s simply not true. In every age there are men who deny that life matters or has any purpose. Making men aware of the meaning of life, providing them with sufficient grounds for action and faith in one another, is an achievement. Philosophers make this achievement possible.
The norm is crass, low-brow, realpolitik where stupid tribal chieftains bicker with each other over meager piles of gold. BAP is always recommending the novels Nostromo by Joseph Conrad and The Comedians by Graham Greene. These are two very different novels (and BAP recommends them for different reasons) but they both give the reader a picture of typical politics in the Third World, where there is no concern for a common good or any high ideals. All motion in such societies is focused on extraction: from the ground or from other human beings. Little to nothing is built by the powerful. – In such places, you will find a concern for justice among the people being harassed and robbed by the powerful men, but you will never find any other concern for ideals. – This accounts for low-brow disbelief in any higher purpose to life. But there are thoughtful and extensively articulated reasons for denying any higher purpose. I have read things to the following effect:
“If there is no standard outside or above man, if life is in fact ruled by non-sense, then it does not matter if you do what is good or what is bad. There is no way of evaluating a life. If a man doesn’t like his life, it’s probably because he’s been misled to believe there is a higher meaning or standard. Whoever knows the truth about the essential meaninglessness of life can become content to live however they please. It is freeing to know that there are no rewards or punishments, and that no God cares how we live and die. Any anxiety over the question of meaning is misplaced.”
Contrary to this, Philosophers have always taught, because they have always known, that it is possible for a life to be a waste, or worse than a waste. In a variety of ways, philosophers have brought individual men and sometimes whole peoples to their senses, by persuading them that, in life, something noble is at stake.
It seems like history, as a stupid nonsensical phenomenon, with its dreary procession of one ideal and people after another, threatens to overwhelm all philosophical efforts on behalf of the animal man. Philosophers struggle to overcome the strong impression made by history. The last two great philosophers, Nietzsche and Strauss, appear to both have been refuted by history. Nietzsche attempted to prove that all philosophy hitherto was misleading and had finally been put on a right footing by him. Strauss taught that all ancient philosophy was complete, while everything after Machiavelli (and really after Ancient Greece) was historicist and represented incomplete philosophy. Strauss claimed to have recovered philosophy for the first time since it’s being obscured by Christendom and the Enlightenment.
In spite of these two monumental efforts, it’s still fair to ask if philosophy recovered from the blows of history. Maybe it stands a fighting chance today, but no sensible man thinks our society, or any institution in our society, is guided by philosophy or philosophers. I don’t believe there is even an academic department led by a philosopher.
To this end, I believe the urgent thing to do is show how philosophy has oriented every great Western regime, by seeing through some of the basic claims of those regimes. The variety in good political orders can be explained by the variety of obstacles in the different ages. But they are all good by the same standard. I think by showing this, we can counteract—at least for some people—the stupidity of history.
To show how philosophy approaches the different regimes, I have set down the two characteristic approaches used by philosophers, namely, dialectic and description. This was done in the previous two essays. All philosophers, ancient and modern, employ both, but ancient philosophy is more thoroughly characterized by dialectic than modern philosophy, i.e., by philosophy from Machiavelli to Nietzsche. I promised, after showing these two approaches, to then go through and apply them to several regimes. I’ll still do that, but first I wanted to work through Nietzsche’s “The Problem of Socrates” from Twilight of the Idols. This section is interesting because it shows why Nietzsche apparently rejects dialectics while at the same time recognizing its compelling power.
The Problem of Socrates
This section of Twilight of The Idols can be broken into three parts. In the first, Nietzsche sets out a criticism of Socrates ending with the question—how could someone like this get taken seriously by the noble Greeks (indeed, seduce them)? (aph 5). Nietzsche then explains the greatness of Socrates and hints at the power of dialectic. The section then finishes with Nietzsche condemning even this great power, claiming to have genuinely transcended so great a man as Socrates.
I’m going to cover the first part, aphorisms 1 through 5, in today’s installment.
Aphorism 1
In all ages the wisest have always agreed in their 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 Æsculapius.” 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?
Nietzsche begins by declaring a uniform agreement: all of the sages in the past have agreed, have evaluated life the same. And while agreement is usually a sign of truth (as is the case in mathematics and modern natural science) here it is not a sign of truth, but merely of a collective prejudice; the wise of all ages have shared a collective prejudice; the wise of all ages represent declining forms of life. Wisdom is suspect because wisdom appears during these times of decline, to specific kinds of men that arise during these times.
An unpublished note from Will to Power sheds further light on this thought.
Among philosophers, nothing is more rare than intellectual uprightness: they perhaps say the very reverse, and even believe it. But the prerequisite of all their work is, that they can only admit of certain truths; they know what they have to prove; and the fact that they must be agreed as to these "truths" is almost what makes them recognise one another as philosophers. There are, for instance, the truths of morality. But belief in morality is not a proof of morality: there are cases—and the philosopher's case is one in point—when a belief of this sort is simply a piece of immorality. (445)
For there to be a type of man called “a philosopher” there must be something that marks him out. How do philosophers recognize each other? Answer: All philosophers agree; they all have to prove a morality, i.e., they all have to distinguish between good and bad, as I say; but the basis of the proof, or the motive behind the proof, is immoral.[1] While the philosophers recognize each other from their shared knowledge about what must be proven; Nietzsche recognizes them from their shared motives. They are all recognizable in any event. Why do they have to prove anything?
Aphorism 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.
Nietzsche joins all of the other philosophers vis-à-vis their motives; he, like them, is an immoralist. His assessment of the philosophic type as an essentially decadent type is an “irreverent” observation. Nietzsche is bucking the tradition, to undermine the decadence of the tradition. He bucks tradition to reestablish excellence as a goal of man, i.e., to reestablish a good and bad in a pessimistic age.
All the philosophers agreed, but they were all wrong; they are all one in their decadence and that decadence, not knowledge, is the foundation of their agreement. They all judged life negatively, not because they knew the correct valuation of life but because they were all decadents. Indeed, all valuations of life are mere opinions, emanations from physiological facts: “judgments and valuations of life, whether for or against, cannot be true: their only value lies in the fact that they are symptoms.”
Nietzsche says life cannot be judged. Presumably, it cannot be judged because it’s impossible to get outside of it—what would we measure life against?
But that is not the reason Nietzsche gives; instead, he says that men cannot judge the value of life because they are partial, as if being partial blocked access to what is owed or what is valuable.
The wise men from time immemorial have disagreed on this evaluation of “partiality” and “impartiality”; Locke, demanding at all times a “impartial judge,” was undermining the basic fact of political theory, that the only truly just political ruler is wise. You cannot dispense with the need for wisdom with impartiality. Locke *taught* that you could.
By focusing the reader on the question of “impartiality,” Nietzsche qualifies his claim by indicating the nature of the claim. The claim is being made on the plane of enlightenment thought; knowledge comes through an ability to be objective, to accomplish those famous testable demonstrations. Claims to truth that benefit the claimant are either directly refuted by that fact, or are unbelievable until they produce a testable (i.e., impartial) demonstration.
What all this means: if life could not be judged or evaluated because we have nothing to measure it against, that would be one thing. That would mean we have no access to a measurement, no way of even forming a judgment. But as Nietzsche argues it: we may very well have access, but our partiality keeps us from seeing things clearly.
Nietzsche ends the aphorism saying, “Let me however return to the problem of Socrates.” As we will see in what follows, partiality was not a weakness or vice of Socrates; indeed, coldness to himself, impartiality, is a strength of Socrates that Nietzsche finds distasteful.
Aphorism 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 the typical criminal is ugly: monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo. But the criminal is a decadent? 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!”—
This attack on Socrates, because of his ugliness, is so heavily qualified that it’s hard and maybe impossible to locate a specific attack. “Ugliness can be the result of at least three things: thwarted development, crossed development, and decadent development. The criminal is ugly. How did his ugliness develop? Does Socrates’ ugliness have the same source? Maybe!” That’s the extent of the argument in this aphorism. Nietzsche ends with an anecdote that will, in a couple aphorisms, get retold and in such a way as to flatter Socrates rather than undermine him.
Aphorism 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.
Socrates shares something with the criminal, the source of their ugliness is decadence. We now see that the previous aphorism is worth more than a merely suggestive criticism of Socrates. It served to set out the possible causes of ugliness, and here we see which cause Nietzsche attributes to Socrates, namely, decadence. What is decadence? It is two things: wildness and anarchy of instincts and an overgrown logical faculty. It’s easy to see how a wildness of instincts would be found in criminals. But it is doubtful that an overgrown logical faculty is criminal or typically criminal.
It is worth noting here that Strauss’ evaluation is almost diametrically opposed to Nietzsche’s.
Socrates’ philosophizing seems to affect his whole life in every respect. He is the philosopher with a divine mission. Everything belonging to him—his eyes, his nose, his gait, his marriage, and last but not least, his death—has a symbolic significance. He lived in every respect what he said or thought. His deeds are as important as his thoughts. There is a unique harmony between his thoughts and his deeds. (The Socratic Question)
Like Nietzsche, Strauss sees something philosophical in Socrates’ looks. Unlike Nietzsche, Strauss believes this is all something divine rather than shockingly demystifying and demoralizing in the Nietzschean sense. The connection between Socrates’ physiognomy and his philosophizing is, for Strauss, a divine sign. Whereas for Nietzsche it is a cause of suspicion. I return to Nietzsche’s analysis.
Finally, thirdly, on top of Socrates’ anarchic instincts and overgrown logical faculty, there is his Daemon, the “auditory hallucinations.” Nietzsche really thinks that was done in poor taste. Socrates is a buffoon and developed a buffoonish teaching, namely, the identity of reason, virtue, and happiness.
I will say here, and this question will come up again in aphorisms 10 and 11, that the Socratic equation isn’t “reasons = virtue” but that “knowledge = virtue.” I assert here that Nietzsche is playing on an ambiguity, but I cannot prove this beyond an assertion at this point. Reason, we will see in 10, doesn’t mean “knowledge” so much as it means “the right amount,” i.e., a reasonable man will know the right amount of pleasant things and pleasure. Reason becomes moderation, which is a kind of knowledge but not knowledge itself. But more on this later.
Socrates is a buffoon. He is ugly. His ugliness is a result of decadence. This decadence has its origin in his anarchic instincts, overgrown logical faculty … and his “divine inspiration.” Socrates’ decadence is somewhat put on—Nietzsche does not believe in the Daemon, or at least does not believe in its “religious interpretation.” Socrates is either crazy or an actor.
How can this strange man, with this strange teaching, be understood? That’s the question Nietzsche poses for himself here. How did Socrates come to be? He’s not a man of his time; he’s un-Greek. And his nature seems full of inconsistencies: his nature is buffoonish but also extremely delicate and hidden.
This is Nietzsche’s question. But he will soon start to ask a different question.
Aphorism 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?
Nietzsche states how Socrates changed the Greek taste. Socrates wasn’t of the Greeks in the previous aphorism, he changed them. How? By making them interested in dialectics. They start to prize dialectical ability whereas before they had despised it. These valuations are not specifically Greek. All healthy people despise dialectics because they are suspicious of reasons.
People who give a bunch of reasons must be hiding something or covering something up. If there is a moral question, the man who talks the most is the least trustworthy. And if a man has to talk himself into doing the right thing, he must be ill somehow, i.e., weak. And if there is some claim that needs proving, i.e., isn’t obvious, it can’t be a good thing. Good men in a good regime already acknowledge legitimate claims and honor good deeds. Attempts to persuade men suggests that something is amiss. A nobleman in a good regime doesn’t trust moral philosophy because it presupposes he doesn’t know, or that one of his peers wouldn’t know, what should be done. Therefore, to noblemen, a dialectician is a sort of clown. He’s exerting so much effort at proving what needs not be proved. He looks like an earnest dolt. If you’ve read Pride and Prejudice, the character Mary most resembles this.
Nietzsche’s question now changes. He was interested in understanding Socrates. Now he becomes interested in how this clown got himself respected by the noble Greeks.
We will take up this problem next time. I will cover the rest of “The Problem of Socrates” in my next installment. After that, I will be able to approach the three regimes that have predominated in the West. The end goal being, again, the correct approach to the history of political philosophy.
[1] I note here, for a specialist, that Nietzsche’s use of the words “moral” and “science” change between the unpublished W2P notes and their published form in Twilight. All that matters for our purposes here… the reason I quote the unpublished notes is for a more general clarification on the following points: (1) All philosophers agree. (2) They show their agreement in certain proofs that they see in each other’s books. (3) This agreement has to do with good and evil or good and bad; (4) while the philosophers prove something here, their proof is at odds with their inner motive. ---- Aside from these points, the specialist should note that Nietzsche’s specific concern for “science,” as an investigation into things like the moon, and of “morality,” as a focused concern on human things,--these concerns, stated this way in the W2P notes, are alien to the published form of these notes.