The Problem of Socrates
Original German
1 Über das Leben haben zu allen Zeiten die Weisesten gleich geurtheilt: es taugt nichts… Immer und überall hat man aus ihrem Munde denselben Klang gehört, - einen Klang voll Zweifel, voll Schwermuth, voll Müdigkeit am Leben, voll Widerstand gegen das Leben. Selbst Sokrates sagte, als er starb: "leben - das heisst lange krank sein: ich bin dem Heilande Asklepios einen Hahn schuldig." Selbst Sokrates hatte es satt. - Was beweist das? Worauf weist das? - Ehemals hätte man gesagt (- oh man hat es gesagt und laut genug und unsre Pessimisten voran!): "Hier muss jedenfalls Etwas wahr sein! Der consensus sapientium beweist die Wahrheit." - Werden wir heute noch so reden? Dürfen wir das? "Hier muss jedenfalls Etwas krank sein" - geben wir zur Antwort: diese Weisesten aller Zeiten, man sollte sie sich erst aus der Nähe ansehn! Waren sie vielleicht allesammt auf den Beinen nicht mehr fest? spät? wackelig? décadents? Erschiene die Weisheit vielleicht auf Erden als Rabe, den ein kleiner Geruch von Aas begeistert?…
2 Mir selbst ist diese Unehrerbietigkeit, dass die grossen Weisen Niedergangs-Typen sind, zuerst gerade in einem Falle aufgegangen, wo ihr am stärksten das gelehrte und ungelehrte Vorurtheil entgegensteht: ich erkannte Sokrates und Plato als Verfalls-Symptome, als Werkzeuge der griechischen Auflösung, als pseudogriechisch, als antigriechisch ("Geburt der Tragödie" 1872), jener consensus sapientium - das begriff ich immer besser - beweist am wenigsten, dass sie Recht mit dem hatten, worüber sie übereinstimmten: er beweist vielmehr, dass sie selbst, diese Weisesten, irgend worin physiologisch übereinstimmten, um auf gleiche Weise negativ zum Leben zu stehn, - stehn zu müssen. Urtheile, Werthurtheile über das Leben, für oder wider, können zuletzt niemals wahr sein: sie haben nur Werth als Symptome, sie kommen nur als Symptome in Betracht, - an sich sind solche Urtheile Dummheiten. Man muss durchaus seine Finger darnach ausstrecken und den Versuch machen, diese erstaunliche finesse zu fassen, dass der Werth des Lebens nicht abgeschätzt werden kann. Von einem Lebenden nicht, weil ein solcher Partei, ja sogar Streitobjekt ist und nicht Richter; von einem Todten nicht, aus einem andren Grunde. - Von Seiten eines Philosophen im Werth des Lebens ein Problem sehn bleibt dergestalt sogar ein Einwurf gegen ihn, ein Fragezeichen an seiner Weisheit, eine Unweisheit. - Wie? und alle diese grossen Weisen - sie wären nicht nur décadents, sie wären nicht einmal weise gewesen? - Aber ich komme auf das Problem des Sokrates zurück.
3 Sokrates gehörte, seiner Herkunft nach, zum niedersten Volk: Sokrates war Pöbel. Man weiss, man sieht es selbst noch, wie hässlich er war. Aber Hässlichkeit, an sich ein Einwand, ist unter Griechen beinahe eine Widerlegung. War Sokrates überhaupt ein Grieche? Die Hässlichkeit ist häufig genug der Ausdruck einer gekreuzten, durch Kreuzung gehemmten Entwicklung. Im andren Falle erscheint sie als niedergehende Entwicklung.
Die Anthropologen unter den Criminalisten sagen uns, dass der typische Verbrecher hässlich ist: monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo. Aber der Verbrecher ist ein décadent. War Sokrates ein typischer Verbrecher? - Zum Mindesten widerspräche dem jenes berühmte Physiognomen-Urtheil nicht, das den Freunden des Sokrates so anstössig klang. Ein Ausländer, der sich auf Gesichter verstand, sagte, als er durch Athen kam, dem Sokrates in's Gesicht, er sei ein monstrum, - er berge alle schlimmen Laster und Begierden in sich. Und Sokrates antwortete bloss: "Sie kennen mich, mein Herr!" -
4 Auf décadence bei Sokrates deutet nicht nur die zugestandne Wüstheit und Anarchie in den Instinkten: eben dahin deutet auch die Superfötation des Logischen und jene Rhachitiker-Bosheit, die ihn auszeichnet. Vergessen wir auch jene Gehörs-Hallucinationen nicht, die, als "Dämonion des Sokrates", in's Religiöse interpretirt worden sind. Alles ist übertrieben, buffo, Karikatur an ihm, Alles ist zugleich versteckt, hintergedanklich, unterirdisch. - Ich suche zu begreifen, aus welcher Idiosynkrasie jene sokratische Gleichsetzung von Vernunft = Tugend = Glück stammt: jene bizarrste Gleichsetzung, die es giebt und die in Sonderheit alle Instinkte des älteren Hellenen gegen sich hat.
5 Mit Sokrates schlägt der griechische Geschmack zu Gunsten der Dialektik um: was geschieht da eigentlich? Vor Allem wird damit ein vornehmer Geschmack besiegt; der Pöbel kommt mit der Dialektik obenauf. Vor Sokrates lehnte man in der guten Gesellschaft die dialektischen Manieren ab: sie galten als schlechte Manieren, sie stellten bloss. Man warnte die Jugend vor ihnen. Auch misstraute man allein solchen Präsentiren seiner Gründe. Honnette Dinge tragen, wie honnette Menschen, ihre Gründe nicht so in der Hand. Es ist unanständig, alle fünf Finger zeigen. Was sich erst beweisen lassen muss, ist wenig werth. Überall, wo noch die Autorität zur guten Sitte gehört, wo man nicht "begründet", sondern befiehlt, ist der Dialektiker eine Art Hanswurst: man lacht über ihn, man nimmt ihn nicht ernst. - Sokrates war der Hanswurst, der sich ernst nehmen machte: was geschah da eigentlich? -
6 Man wählt die Dialektik nur, wenn man kein andres Mittel hat. Man weiss, dass man Misstrauen mit ihr erregt, dass sie wenig überredet. Nichts ist leichter wegzuwischen als ein Dialektiker-Effekt: die Erfahrung jeder Versammlung, wo geredet wird, beweist das. Sie kann nur Nothwehr sein, in den Händen Solcher, die keine andren Waffen mehr haben. Man muss sein Recht zu erzwingen haben: eher macht man keinen Gebrauch von ihr. Die Juden waren deshalb Dialektiker; Reinecke Fuchs war es: wie? und Sokrates war es auch? -
7 - Ist die Ironie des Sokrates ein Ausdruck von Revolte? von Pöbel-Ressentiment? geniesst er als Unterdrückter seine eigne Ferocität in den Messerstichen des Syllogismus? Rächt er sich an den Vornehmen, die er fascinirt? - Man hat, als Dialektiker, ein schonungsloses Werkzeug in der Hand; man kann mit ihm den Tyrannen machen; man stellt bloss, indem man siegt. Der Dialektiker überlässt seinem Gegner den Nachweis, kein Idiot zu sein: er macht wüthend, er macht zugleich hülflos. Der Dialektiker depotenzirt den Intellekt seines Gegners. - Wie? ist Dialektik nur eine Form der Rache bei Sokrates?
8 Ich habe zu verstehn gegeben, womit Sokrates abstossen konnte: es bleibt um so mehr zu erklären, dass er fascinirte. - Dass er eine neue Art Agon entdeckte, dass er der erste Fechtmeister davon für die vornehmen Kreise Athen's war, ist das Eine. Er fascinirte, indem er an den agonalen Trieb der Hellenen rührte, - er brachte eine Variante in den Ringkampf zwischen jungen Männern und Jünglingen. Sokrates war auch ein grosser Erotiker.
9 Aber Sokrates errieth noch mehr. Er sah hinter seine vornehmen Athener; er begriff, dass sein Fall, seine Idiosynkrasie von Fall bereits kein Ausnahmefall war. Die gleiche Art von Degenerescenz bereitete sich überall im Stillen vor: das alte Athen gieng zu Ende. - Und Sokrates verstand, dass alle Welt ihn nöthig hatte, - sein Mittel, seine Kur, seinen Personal-Kunstgriff der Selbst-Erhaltung… Überall waren die Instinkte in Anarchie; überall war man fünf Schritt weit vom Excess: das monstrum in animo war die allgemeine Gefahr. "Die Triebe wollen den Tyrannen machen; man muss einen Gegentyrannen erfinden, der stärker ist"… Als jener Physiognomiker dem Sokrates enthüllt hatte, wer er war, eine Höhle aller schlimmen Begierden, liess der grosse Ironiker noch ein Wort verlauten, das den Schlüssel zu ihm giebt. "Dies ist wahr, sagte er, aber ich wurde über alle Herr." Wie wurde Sokrates über sich Herr? - Sein Fall war im Grunde nur der extreme Fall, nur der in die Augen springendste von dem, was damals die allgemeine Noth zu werden anfieng: dass Niemand mehr über sich Herr war, dass die Instinkte sich gegen einander wendeten. Er fascinirte als dieser extreme Fall - seine furchteinflössende Hässlichkeit sprach ihn für jedes Auge aus: er fascinirte, wie sich von selbst versteht, noch stärker als Antwort, als Lösung, als Anschein der Kur dieses Falls. -
10 Wenn man nöthig hat, aus der Vernunft einen Tyrannen zu machen, wie Sokrates es that, so muss die Gefahr nicht klein sein, dass etwas Andres den Tyrannen macht. Die Vernünftigkeit wurde damals errathen als Retterin, es stand weder Sokrates, noch seinen "Kranken" frei, vernünftig zu sein, - es war de rigueur, es war ihr letztes Mittel. Der Fanatismus, mit dem sich das ganze griechische Nachdenken auf die Vernünftigkeit wirft, verräth eine Nothlage: man war in Gefahr, man hatte nur Eine Wahl: entweder zu Grunde zu gehn oder - absurd-vernünftig zu sein… Der Moralismus der griechischen Philosophen von Plato ab ist pathologisch bedingt; ebenso ihre Schätzung der Dialektik. Vernunft = Tugend = Glück heisst bloss: man muss es dem Sokrates nachmachen und gegen die dunklen Begehrungen ein Tageslicht in Permanenz herstellen - das Tageslicht der Vernunft. Man muss klug, klar, hell um jeden Preis sein: jedes Nachgeben an die Instinkte, an's Unbewusste führt hinab…
11 Ich habe zu verstehn gegeben, womit Sokrates fascinirte: er schien ein Arzt, ein Heiland zu sein. Ist es nöthig, noch den Irrthum aufzuzeigen, der in seinem Glauben an die "Vernünftigkeit um jeden Preis" lag? - Es ist ein Selbstbetrug seitens der Philosophen und Moralisten, damit schon aus der décadence herauszutreten, dass sie gegen dieselbe Krieg machen. Das Heraustreten steht ausserhalb ihrer Kraft: was sie als Mittel, als Rettung wählen, ist selbst nur wieder ein Ausdruck der décadence - sie verändern deren Ausdruck, sie schaffen sie selbst nicht weg. Sokrates war ein Missverständniss; die ganze Besserungs-Moral, auch die christliche, war ein Missverständniss… Das grellste Tageslicht, die Vernünftigkeit um jeden Preis, das Leben hell, kalt, vorsichtig, bewusst, ohne Instinkt, im Widerstand gegen Instinkte war selbst nur eine Krankheit, eine andre Krankheit - und durchaus kein Rückweg zur "Tugend", zur "Gesundheit", zum Glück… Die Instinkte bekämpfen müssen - das ist die Formel für décadence: so lange das Leben aufsteigt, ist Glück gleich Instinkt. -
12 - Hat er das selbst noch begriffen, dieser Klügste aller Selbstüberlister? Sagte er sich das zuletzt, in der Weisheit seines Muthes zum Tode?… Sokrates wollte sterben: - nicht Athen, er gab sich den Giftbecher, er zwang Athen zum Giftbecher… Sokrates ist kein Arzt sprach er leise zu sich: "der Tod allein ist hier Arzt… Sokrates selbst war nur lange krank…"
Musean translation
A complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from the German in independent chapter tasks. Includes all 44 Maxims and Arrows and The Hammer Speaks.
1 In every age the wisest have judged life alike: it is worthless… Always and everywhere one has heard the same note from their lips—a note full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of weariness with life, full of resistance to life. Even Socrates said, as he died: “To live—that means to be sick for a long time: I owe a rooster to the savior Asclepius.” Even Socrates had had enough.—What does that prove? What does it point to?—Once one would have said (—oh, it has been said, and loudly enough, our pessimists leading the way!): “Here at any rate something must be true! The consensus sapientium proves the truth.”—Shall we still talk that way today? May we? “Here at any rate something must be sick”—that is our answer: these wisest of all ages, one should first look at them from close up! Were they perhaps, every one of them, no longer steady on their legs? late? shaky? décadents? Might wisdom appear on earth as a raven, inspired by a faint smell of carrion?…
2 This irreverent insight, that the great sages are types of decline, first dawned on me in precisely the case where scholarly and unscholarly prejudice stands most firmly against it: I recognized Socrates and Plato as symptoms of decay, as instruments of Greek dissolution, as pseudo-Greek, as anti-Greek (“The Birth of Tragedy,” 1872). That consensus sapientium—I grasped this better and better—proves least of all that they were right about what they agreed on: it proves instead that they themselves, these wisest men, agreed in some physiological respect, so as to take the same negative stance toward life—to have to take it. Judgments, value judgments about life, for or against, can in the end never be true: they have value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms—in themselves such judgments are stupidities. One must by all means stretch out one’s fingers and try to grasp this astonishing finesse, that the value of life cannot be assessed. Not by a living person, because he is a party to the dispute, indeed its very object, and not a judge; not by a dead one, for a different reason.—For a philosopher to see a problem in the value of life thus remains even an objection to him, a question mark against his wisdom, an unwisdom.—What? And all these great sages—they were not merely décadents, they were not even wise?—But I return to the problem of Socrates.
3 Socrates came, by origin, from the lowest of the people: Socrates was rabble. One knows, one can still see, how ugly he was. But ugliness, in itself an objection, is among the Greeks almost a refutation. Was Socrates a Greek at all? Ugliness is often enough the expression of a development that has been crossed, stunted by crossing. In the other case it appears as a development in decline.
The anthropologists among the criminologists tell us that the typical criminal is ugly: monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo. But the criminal is a décadent. Was Socrates a typical criminal?—At least the famous physiognomist’s verdict, which sounded so offensive to Socrates’ friends, would not contradict it. A foreigner who knew faces, passing through Athens, told Socrates to his face that he was a monstrum—that he harbored every vile vice and appetite within him. And Socrates answered merely: “You know me, sir!”—
4 Not only the dissoluteness and anarchy in his instincts, which he admitted himself, point to décadence in Socrates: the superfetation of the logical and that spite of the rickets-sufferer which marks him out point the same way. Nor let us forget those auditory hallucinations which, as the “daimonion of Socrates,” have been interpreted religiously. Everything about him is exaggerated, buffo, caricature; everything is at once concealed, full of ulterior motive, subterranean.—I am trying to grasp out of what idiosyncrasy that Socratic equation of reason = virtue = happiness derives: that most bizarre of all equations, which in particular has all the instincts of the older Hellenes against it.
5 With Socrates Greek taste swings round in favor of dialectic: what is really happening there? Above all, a noble taste is thereby defeated; with dialectic the rabble comes out on top. Before Socrates, dialectical manners were rejected in good society: they were considered bad manners, they exposed a man. The young were warned against them. And all such displaying of one’s reasons was distrusted. Respectable things, like respectable people, do not carry their reasons in their hands like that. It is indecent to show all five fingers. What first has to be proved is worth little. Wherever authority still belongs to good custom, where one does not “give reasons” but commands, the dialectician is a kind of clown: people laugh at him, they do not take him seriously.—Socrates was the clown who got himself taken seriously: what really happened there?—
6 One chooses dialectic only when one has no other means. One knows that it arouses mistrust, that it persuades little. Nothing is easier to wipe away than the effect of a dialectician: the experience of every assembly where speeches are made proves it. It can only be self-defense, in the hands of those who have no other weapons left. One must have to extort one’s rights: before that, one makes no use of it. That is why the Jews were dialecticians; Reynard the Fox was one: what? and Socrates was one too?—
7 —Is the irony of Socrates an expression of revolt? of rabble resentment? Does he, as one oppressed, relish his own ferocity in the knife-thrusts of the syllogism? Is he taking revenge on the noble whom he fascinates?—As a dialectician one has a merciless instrument in hand; with it one can play the tyrant; one exposes by winning. The dialectician leaves it to his opponent to prove that he is not an idiot: he makes him furious, and helpless at the same time. The dialectician strips his opponent’s intellect of its power.—What? Is dialectic in Socrates only a form of revenge?
8 I have indicated what could repel in Socrates: all the more remains to be explained how he fascinated.—That he discovered a new kind of agon, that he was the first fencing master of it for the noble circles of Athens, is one point. He fascinated by touching the agonistic drive of the Hellenes—he introduced a variation into the wrestling bouts between young men and youths. Socrates was also a great erotic.
9 But Socrates divined more still. He saw behind his noble Athenians; he grasped that his case, his idiosyncratic case, was already no exceptional case. The same kind of degeneration was quietly preparing itself everywhere: old Athens was coming to an end.—And Socrates understood that all the world needed him—his remedy, his cure, his personal artifice of self-preservation… Everywhere the instincts were in anarchy; everywhere one was five steps from excess: the monstrum in animo was the general danger. “The drives want to play the tyrant; one must invent a counter-tyrant who is stronger”… When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates who he was, a cave of every vile appetite, the great ironist let fall one more remark, which gives the key to him. “That is true,” he said, “but I became master over them all.” How did Socrates become master of himself?—His case was at bottom only the extreme case, only the most conspicuous instance of what was then beginning to become the general distress: that no one was master of himself any longer, that the instincts turned against one another. He fascinated as this extreme case—his fear-inspiring ugliness announced it to every eye: he fascinated, as goes without saying, still more as the answer, as the solution, as the semblance of a cure for this case.—
10 When one needs to make a tyrant of reason, as Socrates did, the danger cannot be small that something else will play the tyrant. Rationality was divined at that time as a rescuer; it was not up to Socrates, or to his “patients,” whether to be rational—it was de rigueur, it was their last resort. The fanaticism with which all Greek thinking throws itself at rationality betrays a state of emergency: they were in danger, they had only one choice: either to perish or—to be absurdly rational… The moralism of the Greek philosophers from Plato on is pathologically conditioned; so is their esteem for dialectic. Reason = virtue = happiness means merely: one must imitate Socrates and set up, against the dark appetites, a permanent daylight—the daylight of reason. One must be clever, clear, bright at any price: every concession to the instincts, to the unconscious, leads downward…
11 I have indicated by what means Socrates fascinated: he seemed to be a physician, a savior. Is it necessary to point out, in addition, the error that lay in his faith in “rationality at any price”?—It is a self-deception on the part of philosophers and moralists to think that by waging war on décadence they are already stepping out of it. Stepping out lies beyond their strength: what they choose as a means, as a rescue, is itself only another expression of décadence—they change its expression, they do not abolish it. Socrates was a misunderstanding; the whole morality of improvement, the Christian too, was a misunderstanding… The most glaring daylight, rationality at any price, life bright, cold, cautious, conscious, without instinct, in resistance to the instincts—this was itself only a sickness, another sickness—and by no means a way back to “virtue,” to “health,” to happiness… Having to fight the instincts—that is the formula for décadence: so long as life is ascending, happiness is equal to instinct.—
12 —Did he himself still grasp that, this cleverest of all self-outwitters? Did he tell himself so in the end, in the wisdom of his courage toward death?… Socrates wanted to die:—not Athens, he himself took the cup of poison, he forced Athens to hand it to him… “Socrates is no physician,” he said softly to himself; “death alone is the physician here… Socrates himself has only been sick for a long time…”
Plain English translation
A complete machine-assisted Plain English translation made independently and directly from the German, not from the Musean edition or an existing English translation.
1 In every age, the wisest people have passed the same judgment on life: it is no good… Always and everywhere we have heard the same note from their mouths—a note full of doubt, full of gloom, full of weariness with life, full of resistance to life. Even Socrates said as he died: “Living means being sick for a long time: I owe Asclepius the healer a rooster.” Even Socrates had had enough.—What does that prove? What does it point to?—In the past, people would have said (—oh, they did say it, loudly enough, with our pessimists leading the way!): “Something here must be true! The agreement of the wise proves the truth.”—Will we still talk like that today? Are we allowed to? “Something here must be sick”—that is our reply. These wisest people of all time deserve a closer look first! Perhaps none of them was steady on his feet anymore? Past his prime? Shaky? Decadent? Could wisdom appear on earth as a raven excited by a faint smell of carrion?…
2 This irreverent idea, that the great wise men are types of decline, first dawned on me in precisely the case where both learned and unlearned prejudice oppose it most strongly. I recognized Socrates and Plato as symptoms of decay, as tools of Greek disintegration, as falsely Greek, as anti-Greek (“The Birth of Tragedy,” 1872). That agreement of the wise—I came to understand this more and more—does least of all prove that they were right about what they agreed on. Instead, it proves that they themselves, these wisest men, had something in common physiologically that made them take the same negative attitude toward life—that forced them to take it. Judgments, value judgments about life, for it or against it, can ultimately never be true. They have value only as symptoms; only as symptoms do they matter—in themselves, such judgments are stupidities. We really must reach out and try to grasp this astonishingly subtle point: the value of life cannot be assessed. Not by a living person, because he is a party to the dispute, even its object, and not its judge; not by a dead person, for a different reason.—So when a philosopher treats life’s value as a problem, that itself counts against him. It puts a question mark over his wisdom; it shows a lack of wisdom.—What? All these great wise men—could they not only have been decadent, but not even have been wise?—But I return to the problem of Socrates.
3 By birth, Socrates belonged to the lowest class: Socrates was rabble. People know how ugly he was; you can still see it yourself. But ugliness, an objection in itself, is almost a refutation among Greeks. Was Socrates even a Greek? Ugliness is often enough the expression of development that has been crossed and held back by crossbreeding. In other cases, it appears as development in decline.
The anthropologists among criminologists tell us that the typical criminal is ugly: a monster in face, a monster in soul. But the criminal is decadent. Was Socrates a typical criminal?—At the very least, this would not contradict that famous judgment by a reader of faces, which sounded so offensive to Socrates’ friends. A foreigner who understood faces was passing through Athens and told Socrates to his face that he was a monster—that he harbored every evil vice and desire inside him. And Socrates answered only: “You know me, sir!”—
4 It is not just the admitted wildness and anarchy of his instincts that point to decadence in Socrates. So do the overgrowth of logic and that malice of someone with rickets that marks him out. Nor should we forget those auditory hallucinations that have been interpreted in religious terms as “Socrates’ divine sign.” Everything about him is exaggerated, clownish, a caricature; at the same time, everything is hidden, full of ulterior motives, underground.—I am trying to understand what personal peculiarity produced that Socratic equation of reason = virtue = happiness. It is the strangest equation there is, and in particular it has every instinct of the older Greeks against it.
5 With Socrates, Greek taste turns in favor of dialectical argument: what is actually happening here? Above all, an aristocratic taste is defeated; with dialectic, the rabble comes out on top. Before Socrates, good society rejected dialectical manners: they were considered bad manners, they exposed you. Young people were warned against them. Even presenting your reasons like that was distrusted. Respectable things, like respectable people, do not carry their reasons openly in their hands like that. It is indecent to show all five fingers. What first has to be proved is worth little. Wherever authority is still part of good manners, wherever people do not “give reasons” but give orders, the dialectician is a kind of clown. People laugh at him; they do not take him seriously.—Socrates was the clown who got people to take him seriously: what actually happened here?—
6 People choose dialectic only when they have no other means. They know it arouses distrust and does little to persuade. Nothing is easier to brush aside than the effect a dialectician produces: the experience of every gathering where people speak proves that. It can only be self-defense in the hands of people who have no other weapons left. You must be in a position where you have to force recognition of your right; otherwise you do not use it. That is why the Jews were dialecticians; Reynard the Fox was one. What? And Socrates was one too?—
7 —Is Socrates’ irony an expression of revolt? Of the rabble’s resentment? As an oppressed man, does he enjoy his own ferocity in the knife thrusts of logical deduction? Does he take revenge on the aristocrats he fascinates?—As a dialectician, you hold a merciless tool in your hand. You can play the tyrant with it; by winning, you expose the other person. The dialectician leaves it to his opponent to prove he is not an idiot: he makes him furious and helpless at the same time. The dialectician robs his opponent’s intellect of its power.—What? Is dialectic just a form of revenge in Socrates?
8 I have indicated what could make Socrates repellent; that makes it all the more necessary to explain why he fascinated people.—One reason is that he discovered a new kind of contest and was its first fencing master for the aristocratic circles of Athens. He fascinated people by touching the Greeks’ drive to compete—he introduced a variation into the wrestling match between young men and adolescent boys. Socrates was also a great master of erotic love.
9 But Socrates guessed still more. He saw behind his aristocratic Athenians; he understood that his case, his peculiar sort of case, was no longer an exception. The same kind of degeneration was quietly preparing itself everywhere: old Athens was coming to an end.—And Socrates understood that everyone needed him—his remedy, his cure, his personal trick for preserving himself… Everywhere the instincts were in anarchy; everywhere people were five steps away from excess: the monster in the soul was the common danger. “The drives want to play the tyrant; we must invent a counter-tyrant who is stronger”… After that reader of faces had revealed to Socrates what he was—a cave full of every evil desire—the great ironist added a remark that gives us the key to him. “That is true,” he said, “but I became master of them all.” How did Socrates become master of himself?—His case was basically only the extreme case, only the most striking example of what was then starting to become everyone’s plight: no one was master of himself anymore; the instincts were turning against one another. He fascinated people as this extreme case—his frightening ugliness proclaimed it to every eye. Of course, he fascinated them still more as an answer, a solution, an apparent cure for this case.—
10 If you need to make reason a tyrant, as Socrates did, the danger that something else will play the tyrant must be considerable. At that time people hit on rationality as their savior. Neither Socrates nor his “patients” had any choice about being rational—it was compulsory, it was their last resort. The fanaticism with which all Greek thought throws itself into rationality betrays a desperate situation. People were in danger; they had only one choice: either go under or—be rational to the point of absurdity… The moralism of the Greek philosophers from Plato onward is caused by sickness; so is their high opinion of dialectic. Reason = virtue = happiness means only: we must copy Socrates and set up a permanent daylight against the dark desires—the daylight of reason. We must be clever, clear, bright at any cost: every surrender to the instincts, to the unconscious, leads downward…
11 I have indicated why Socrates fascinated people: he seemed to be a doctor, a savior. Do I still need to point out the error in his belief in “rationality at any cost”?—Philosophers and moralists deceive themselves when they think that waging war against decadence already takes them out of it. Getting out is beyond their power: what they choose as a remedy, as salvation, is itself just another expression of decadence. They change its expression; they do not get rid of it. Socrates was a misunderstanding; the whole morality of improvement, including Christian morality, was a misunderstanding… The harshest daylight, rationality at any cost, a life that is bright, cold, cautious, conscious, without instinct, resisting instincts—this itself was just a sickness, another sickness, and certainly no way back to “virtue,” to “health,” to happiness… Having to fight the instincts—that is the formula for decadence. As long as life is on the rise, happiness equals instinct.—
12 —Did he himself finally understand this, this cleverest of all self-outwitters? Did he tell himself this at the end, in the wisdom of his courage to die?… Socrates wanted to die—it was not Athens but he who gave himself the cup of poison; he forced Athens to give him the cup… “Socrates is no doctor,” he said quietly to himself: “death alone is the doctor here… Socrates himself was just sick for a long time…”
About this section
The Problem of Socrates is part of Twilight of the Idols by Friedrich Nietzsche. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is chapter 3 of 12 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
Open the work page for the full contents, every edition, and the download links, or go back to Explore to browse other complete works in the European tradition. The reader keeps your place when you are signed in and lets you compare the original with each translation, one edition at a time.