Nietzsche said it first: Socrates is an ugly pleb (2).  He “was the buffoon who got himself taken seriously” (2).  That sounds a little ad hominem to me, but my immediate query would be: what’s Nietzsche’s beef?  After all, Western philosophy wouldn’t be a thing without him, right?  As a Christian and because I like a lot of Aristotle’s and Plato’s views, it was easy for me to be immediately opposed.  However, as I was reading, I understood where he was coming from and how his words still affect society today.

In the excerpt we read from Twilight of the Idols by Friedrich Nietzsche titled “The Problem of Socrates”, Nietzsche begins with trashing Socrates and Plato and everything their philosophy advocated for.  To Nietzsche, trying to prove and quantify values such as reason, virtue, and happiness are foolishness.  After all, morality is a construct: something to make us feel better.  Every man should be free to choose his own “right” and his own “wrong” as he do does please.  Nietzsche spends a considerable amount of time on refuting the existence of morality, and that every man is merely “dominated by an instinct of life” (10).  That is just wholly depressing, really.  And what’s worse, Nietzsche’s influence very strongly shows up in today’s society.  It doesn’t take very long to find a person or post saying something along the lines of, “As long as you’re not hurting me or imposing your beliefs on me, you do you.”  The toughest thing is, it isn’t difficult to agree with that.

I was conversing with a friend at dinner, and she was telling me how she struggled to call others out on their wrongness.  She has no trouble standing up for what she believes in, but when it comes to telling others, “You really shouldn’t do that.” things become difficult.  It feels as if she is imposing, perhaps.  The truth is, the truth hurts.  It hurts to get called out and have to realize you have to make some changes to your way of thinking.  I am a firm believer that people are born with an inherent sense of morality; therefore, true rights and wrongs are neither debatable nor arbitrary.  Man is not a machine as Nietzsche likes to put it.  Our morals, our empathy, the ability to have so much trust in something beyond ourselves: these are the things that makes us human.  There is purpose here because there is something to look forward to after our time on Earth is over.  But this is a hope unknown to atheists like Nietzsche or agnostics that ride the fence.

When I was reading through the 125th aphorism of The Gay Science, I was taken aback at the really pretty narrative.  The analogies Nietzsche uses in The Gay Science are actually very nicely written.  However, it would be foolish not to touch on how sad and almost disturbing the story is.  The “Too Long; Didn’t Read” version is as follows:

a man wanders into a village asking where God is, and the villagers proclaim him a madman; there was no God.  They had killed him.

In some respects, I can understand with what Nietzsche is trying to say.  He strongly opposed the church because it frustrates him.  Having to submit to a higher authority no one can actually see can be a very difficult thing.  But… How much of what he says is what he literally believes anyway?  It hard to pin down how much of Nietzsche’s writing is his firm opinion and how much is purposeful rhetoric.  One thing is certain, though: he shook heads and hearts.  Perhaps that statement should be in the present tense.  Nietzsche had a grand influence on both psychology and religion, and society is still being impacted by him today.  The whole post-modernist view aligns very well with Nietzsche’s philosophy, though post-modernism does not fully adopt all of his views.  Even so, the lines between right and wrong are becoming blurry and the definition of evil is greyer than it has ever been.  And that is so frightening.