Part 65

The Greek culture of the Sophists had grown out of all the Greek instincts; it belongs to the culture of the age of Pericles as necessarily as Plato does not: it has its predecessors in Heraclitus, Democritus, and in the scientific types of the old philosophy; it finds expression in the elevated culture of Thucydides, for instance. And--it has ultimately shown itself to be right: every step in the science of epistemology and morality has confirmed the attitude of the Sophists.... Our modern attitude of mind is, to a great extent, Heraclitean, Democritean, and Protagorean ... to say that it is Protagorean is even sufficient: because Protagoras was in himself a synthesis of the two men Heraclitus and Democritus.

(Plato: a great Cagliostro,--let us think of how Epicurus judged him; how Timon, Pyrrho's friend, judged him----Is Plato's integrity by any chance beyond question?... But we at least know what he wished to have taught as absolute truth--namely, things which were to him not even relative truths: the separate and immortal life of "souls.")

429.

The Sophists are nothing more, nor less than realists: they elevate all the values and practices which are common property to the rank of values--they have the courage, peculiar to all strong intellects, which consists in knowing their immorality....

Is it to be supposed that these small Greek independent republics, so filled with rage and envy that they would fain have devoured each other, were led by principles of humanity and honesty? Is Thucydides by any chance reproached with the words he puts into the mouths of the Athenian ambassadors when they were treating with the Melii anent the question of destruction or submission? Only the most perfect Tartuffes could have been able to speak of virtue in the midst of that dreadful strain--or if not Tartuffes, at least detached philosophers, anchorites, exiles, and fleers from reality.... All of them, people who denied things in order to be able to exist.

The Sophists were Greeks: when Socrates and Plato adopted the cause of virtue and justice, they were Jews or I know not what. Grote's tactics in the defence of the Sophists are false: he would like to raise them to the rank of men of honour and moralisers--but it was their honour not to indulge in any humbug with grand words and virtues.

430.

The great reasonableness underlying all moral education lay in the fact that it always attempted to attain to the certainty of an instinct: so that neither good intentions nor good means, as such, first required to enter consciousness. Just as the soldier learns his exercises, so should man learn how to act in life. In truth this unconsciousness belongs to every kind of perfection: even the mathematician carries out his calculations unconsciously....

What, then, does Socrates' reaction mean, which recommended dialectics as the way to virtue, and which was charmed when morality was unable to justify itself logically? But this is precisely what proves its superiority--without unconsciousness it is worth nothing!

In reality it means the dissolution of Greek instincts, when demonstrability is posited as the first condition of personal excellence in virtue. All these great "men of virtue" and of words are themselves types of dissolution.

In practice, it means that moral judgments have been torn from the conditions among which they grew and in which alone they had some sense, from their Greek and Græco-political soil, in order to be denaturalised under the cover of being made sublime. The great concepts "good" and "just" are divorced from the first principles of which they form a part, and, as "ideas" become free, degenerate into subjects for discussion. A certain truth is sought behind them; they are regarded as entities or as symbols of entities: a world is invented where they are "at home," and from which they are supposed to hail.

In short: the scandal reaches its apotheosis in Plato.... And then it was necessary to invent the perfectly abstract man also:--good, just, wise, and a dialectician to boot--in short, the scarecrow of the ancient philosopher: a plant without any soil whatsoever; a human race devoid of all definite ruling instincts; a virtue which "justifies" itself with reasons. The perfectly absurd "individual" per se! the highest form of Artificiality....

Briefly, the denaturalisation of moral values resulted in the creation of a degenerate type of man--"the good man," "the happy man," "the wise man."--Socrates represents a moment of the most profound perversity in the history of values.

431.

Socrates.--This veering round of Greek taste in favour of dialectics is a great question. What really happened then? Socrates, the roturier who was responsible for it, was thus able to triumph over a more noble taste, the taste of the noble:--the mob gets the upper hand along with dialectics. Previous to Socrates dialectic manners were repudiated in good society; they were regarded as indecent; the youths were Warned against them. What was the purpose of this display of reasons? Why demonstrate? Against others one could use authority. One commanded, and that sufficed. Among friends, inter pares, there was tradition--also a form of authority: and last but not least, one understood each other. There was no room found for dialectics. Besides, all such modes of presenting reasons were distrusted. All honest things do not carry their reasons in their hands in such fashion. It is indecent to show all the five fingers at the same time. That which can be "demonstrated" is little worth. The instinct of every party-speaker tells him that dialectics excites mistrust and carries little conviction. Nothing is more easily wiped away than the effect of a dialectician. It can only be a last defence. One must be in an extremity; it is necessary to have to extort one's rights; otherwise one makes no use of dialectics. That is why the Jews were dialecticians, Reynard the Fox was a dialectician, and so was Socrates. As a dialectician a person has a merciless instrument in his hand: he can play the tyrant with it; he compromises when he conquers. The dialectician leaves it to his opponent to demonstrate that he is not an idiot; he is made furious and helpless, while the dialectician himself remains calm and still possessed of his triumphant reasoning powers--he paralyses his opponent's intellect.--The dialectician's irony is a form of mob-revenge: the ferocity of the oppressed lies in the cold knife-cuts of the syllogism....

In Plato, as in all men of excessive sensuality and wild fancies, the charm of concepts was so great, that he involuntarily honoured and deified the concept as a form of ideal. Dialectical intoxication: as the consciousness of being able to exercise control over one's self by means of it--as an instrument of the Will to Power.

432.

The problem of Socrates.--The two antitheses: the tragic and the Socratic spirits--measured according to the law of Life.

To what extent is the Socratic spirit a decadent phenomenon? to what extent are robust health and power still revealed by the whole attitude of the scientific man, his dialectics, his ability, and his severity? (the health of the plebeian; whose malice, esprit frondeur, whose astuteness, whose rascally depths, are held in check by his cleverness; the whole type is "ugly").

Uglification: self-derision, dialectical dryness, intelligence in the form of a tyrant against the "tyrant" (instinct). Everything in Socrates is exaggeration, eccentricity, caricature; he is a buffoon with the blood of Voltaire in his veins.

He discovers a new form of agon; he is the first fencing-master in the superior classed of Athens; he stands for nothing else than the highest form of cleverness: he calls it "virtue" (he regarded it as a means of salvation; he did not choose to be clever, cleverness was de rigueur); the proper thing is to control one's self in suchwise that one enters into a struggle not with passions but with reasons as one's weapons (Spinoza's stratagem--the unravelment of the errors of passion);--it is desirable to discover how every one may be caught once he is goaded into a passion, and to know how illogically passion proceeds; self-mockery is practised in order to injure the very roots of the feelings of resentment.

It is my wish to understand which idiosyncratic states form a part of the Socratic problem: its association of reason, virtue, and happiness. With this absurd doctrine of the identity of these things it succeeded in charming the world: ancient philosophy could not rid itself of this doctrine....

Absolute lack of objective interest: hatred of science: the idiosyncrasy of considering one's self a problem. Acoustic hallucinations in Socrates: morbid element. When the intellect is rich and independent, it most strongly resists preoccupying itself with morality. How is it that Socrates is a moral-maniac?--Every "practical" philosophy immediately steps into the foreground in times of distress. When morality and religion become the chief interests of a community, they are signs of a state of distress.

433.

Intelligence, clearness, hardness, and logic as weapons against the wildness of the instincts. The latter must be dangerous and must threaten ruin, otherwise no purpose can be served by developing intelligence to this degree of tyranny. In order to make a tyrant of intelligence the instincts must first have proved themselves tyrants. This is the problem. It was a very timely one in those days. Reason became virtue--virtue equalled happiness.

Solution: Greek philosophers stand upon the same fundamental fact of their inner experiences as Socrates does; five feet from excess, from anarchy and from dissolution--all decadent men. They regard him as a doctor: Logic as will to power, as will to control self, as will to "happiness." The wildness and anarchy of Socrates' instincts is a sign of decadence, as is also the superfœtation of logic and clear reasoning in him. Both are abnormities, each belongs to the other. Criticism. Decadence reveals itself in this concern about "happiness" (i.e. about the "salvation of the soul"; i.e. to feel that one's condition is a danger). Its fanatical interest in "happiness" shows the pathological condition of the subconscious self: it was a vital interest. The alternative which faced them all was: to be reasonable or to perish. The morality of Greek philosophers shows that they felt they were in danger.

434.

Why everything resolved itself into mummery.--Rudimentary psychology, which only considered the conscious lapses of men (as causes), which regarded "consciousness" as an attribute of the soul, and which sought a will behind every action (i.e. an intention), could only answer "Happiness" to the question: "What does man desire?" (it was impossible to answer "Power," because that would have been immoral);--consequently behind all men's actions there is the intention of attaining to happiness by means of them. Secondly: if man as a matter of fact does not attain to happiness, why is it? Because he mistakes the means thereto.--What is the unfailing means of acquiring happiness? Answer: virtue.--Why virtue? Because virtue is supreme rationalness, and rationalness makes mistakes in the choice of means impossible: virtue in the form of reason is the way to happiness. Dialectics is the constant occupation of virtue, because it does away with passion and intellectual cloudiness.