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The 20 Minute Reading Group: Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil, Preface (Part 4)
Introduction
Once again, the goal is to read a few lines of Nietzsche well, to think through the issues and possibilities a text offers. I can't guarantee I'm right. I don't care if I'm right. I want to be thoughtful, and I want to hear from you.
We have discussed in Part 1 "Truth as a woman;" in Part 2, the ambiguous status of dogmatic philosophy; in Part 3, the monstrous form dogmatism takes and its double relation to Truth.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Preface (Part 4) - quoted from the Project Gutenberg edition
Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome, and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist error—namely, Plato's invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself. But now when it has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of this nightmare, can again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a healthier—sleep, we, WHOSE DUTY IS WAKEFULNESS ITSELF, are the heirs of all the strength which the struggle against this error has fostered. It amounted to the very inversion of truth, and the denial of the PERSPECTIVE—the fundamental condition—of life, to speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician: "How did such a malady attack that finest product of antiquity, Plato? Had the wicked Socrates really corrupted him? Was Socrates after all a corrupter of youths, and deserved his hemlock?"
Comment / Prompt
These lines precede the famous "Christianity is Platonism for the masses." That is an enormous discussion unto itself: it's quite a reading of human history, one that - despite any disagreements Nietzsche has with Hegel - treats history convincingly as the unfolding of an idea.
I want to focus on the text at hand. It is amazing in its own right. "Let us not be ungrateful to it," Nietzsche proclaims, meaning dogmatic philosophy, that which was considered monstrous just a few words ago.
Yeah, dogmatic philosophy could be horrific as a monster upon this Earth - I often think of Yeats' image of the Sphinx from "The Second Coming" when reading those sentences. But Nietzsche is here to tell us about the "worst," "most tiresome," and "most dangerous" of all dogmatist's errors: Plato's invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself.
How could the Good in Itself be such an awful error? And heck, what is the Good in Itself? To understand this, we need to recall Plato's theory of forms. If I see a chair in front of me, how do I know it's a chair? I know because mind has in it the idea of a chair, the ideal form of chair. This allows me to recognize all objects that are chairs; if there's a problem with identification, it is because mind knew everything once and will know everything again. For now, we do not live in a realm of pure being, but a realm of becoming.
The Republic contains the classic expression of the theory of forms. As shadows are to objects, mathematics are to the forms. Mathematical principles point to a reality that is just as abstract as it is real: there's no debate about what is true with them. Just like 2+2=4, there's a form of justice and, most importantly, a form of the good. The Good In Itself, which allows us to see Good everywhere. I don't need to go into detail with how Christianity fell in love with this, and turned the Good In Itself into no less than God.
Nietzsche calls this a "nightmare," risking losing some of his audience. Some people are going to be very off put by a denial of an absolute good. Don't we need it to be optimistic? Isn't it worth hoping for or believing in? In the place of this "good," he wants us to be awake - we whose task is wakefulness itself - and appreciate perspective. Perspective may deny the absoluteness of the good, but it brings back the human: what is good is relative to our needs. Moral reasoning doesn't start from telling someone what is absolutely good, but putting ourselves in someone else's shoes.
That sounds nice the way I just put it, but Nietzsche chooses to sound embittered and petty. "Did Socrates deserve to die for corrupting Plato," he jokes darkly. He also says that the struggle against the error of an absolute good creates a strength like there has never been before. Indeed, all those who have struggled against the error have given Nietzsche and his audience all their strength.
I'll suggest the following about Nietzsche's tone: it's meant to provoke us to a more fundamental question at the point where everything is on the line. "Did Socrates deserve to die?" - that's the question. What is worth sacrificing for, which ideas are dangerous for our time and beneficial for all time? What makes life worth living? It can't just be perspective, it can't just be wakefulness. The positing of an absolute good failed humanity. What was in the quest itself - what was, for a moment, beyond good and evil - that we have to recover?



