'Nietzsche and “The Problem of Socrates”\r'

'Without a doubt, Nietzsche was one of the big thinkers of his epoch.  He showed great incursion into some of the social ills that compriseed at his time and sought-after(a) to find ways in which to correct them.  want Marx, Nietzsche believed that, to some extent, the root of humannessy social ills came from the variability between the classes and with the depravity of those with wealth.  In the case of the â€Å" puzzle” of Socrates, Nietzsche moves somewhat beyond the typical Marxist tilt and questioned the wisdom of Socrates in other ways.  Although Nietzsche drew extensively from ancient texts to endure his arguments about Socrates, the stopping points to which he came were in tout ensemble(a) young in their record.\r\nFor his first argument, Nietzsche states that all sages bear concluded that life is devoid of positive content (Nietzsche par. 1).  To support this argument, he cites Socrates’ conclusion that life equals sickness.  Socrates, Nietzsche argues, was non just tired of life himself; kind of, his decadence was the signal of a decline in society himself.  non altogether was Socrates a â€Å"great erotic” (Nietzsche par. 8), and he was excessively an indication of how society itself was decadent.\r\nNietzsche goes on to argue that Socrates was non a wise man at all.  Although it is usual to admire Socrates for his deeply analytic mind, Nietzsche argues that it is the philosopher’s overindulgence in this particular deservingness that makes him decadent to begin with.  In fact, Nietzsche argues that Socrates was truly the confrontation of ein truththing that he was purported to be, and might not even be Hellenic at all.  To support these arguments, Nietzsche relies not only the texts that come from the time at which Socrates lived, but also on the writings of scientists, the â€Å"anthropological criminologists,” who argue that criminals argon typically u gly people.\r\nIn the eyes of Nietzsche, it appears that Socrates is not what he appears at first blush at all.  It is well known that Socrates came from the plebian class, but Nietzsche also argues against his ugliness, which appears in both writings on and sculptures of Socrates.  If Socrates was ugly and accomplished wisdom at the time during which Nietzsche lived was that criminals atomic number 18 ugly, is it not possible to argue that Socrates was not a great man, but, rather, a criminal?\r\nAnd, because criminals are typically decadent, it is not possible to support, at least by arguments of the times, the asseveration that Socrates was decadent as well?  If these things are true, and so Nietzsche brook feel justified in disceptation that Socrates was not a great man and that all of the philosophers that followed him finished the leadership of Plato were also symptomatic of all that was wrong with Socrates and with his form of reasoning.\r\nWhere Socrates fail s, in the mind of Nietzsche, is in his overwhelming need for and reliance upon reasoning.  Prior to Socrates, Nietzsche points out, tune in polite society did not exist in polite society.  In fact, Nietzsche argues, the argumentation that Socrates relied upon was the vanquishing of â€Å"a noble taste” in which people did not live solely by reason, but through personal responsibility and personal moral philosophy, through instincts, rather than reason.\r\nIt is through the writings that come down to this age, in which Socrates is depicted as an ugly man that is control solely by reason, that Nietzsche is able to draw his very modern conclusion: man without instincts is a unhealthy creature who has no desire to live.  Using this argument, Socrates did not bravely face his execution; instead, he precious to die because he was not true to his rude(a) human nature and, thus, had become infected with the decadence brought about by his over-reliance on logic, reason, and morality obligate from an exterior source.\r\nAll of Nietzsche’s reasoning, of course, is based on his own desires to support his own arguments.  It is not ticklish to trace a decline in Greek society over the centuries, but whether this decline is instanter correlated with the reason oblige by Socrates and subsequently by Plato it is impossible to say.  Rather, it appears that Nietzsche is making the argument to support his belief that human beings are involuntary creatures that are best when they are overflowing the restrictions imposed by society.\r\nSocrates’ form of reasoning, Nietzsche argued, was a last resort of a failing society.  This Socratic reasoning did not so much remove decadence from society as it did simply change that decadence into another form. The remotion of instinct from society’s grasp and, in fact, the actual opposition that society had to the instinctive nature of humanity, was the cause of the disease that Socrates personifiedâ€at least in Nietzsche’s opinion.\r\nAt the time that the ancients were writing in praise of Socrates, it was to their benefit to do so.  A brisk form of society was coming into being and Socrates was the harbinger of the kind of citizen that would populate it.  If Socrates was denigrated in writings during the time at which he lived, it was not because he was decadent or ugly, but because he challenged the society in which he lived.\r\nNietzsche, however, chose to interpret the writings that he canvass as proof that Greek society was in decline due to the rise of reason over instinct, which would thus support his argument that the ills and decadence of modern society sprang from the morals and reason that were being imposed upon the world.  In a very real sense, it can be argued that Nietzsche skewed the historical writings he studied to support his modern philosophical statements.\r\nNietzsche argues that as long as reason and external morality is imposed upon society, the people who live within it are diseased and devoid of reasons to live.  He indicates that all of the sages end-to-end the ages have come to this conclusion, including Socrates, who came to such a conclusion about his own right.  Nietzsche came to very different conclusions than those that were reached by the people upon whose texts he based his reasoning because of his rarified modern values upon the writings of these ancient texts.  By using his own reasoning and the reasoning suggested by then-modern scientists, Nietzsche supported his own agenda that argued against reason and for instinctive humanity.\r\nWork Cited\r\nNietzsche, F.  â€Å"The Problem of Socrates.”  18 Dec 2007. <http://forum.erraticwisdom.com/viewtopic.php?pelvic inflammatory disease=2943>.\r\n'