Socratic DelusionThe first justificatory illusion listed by Nietzsche in the passage under consideration, the Socratic delusion, is historically the last; as I have indicated, Nietzsche attributes the death of tragedy to "the Socraticism of morality, dialectic, satisfaction [Genügsmakeit], and the equanimity [Heiterkeit] of the theoretical man" (BTSC:1). With the emergence of Socraticism, art and beauty are displaced within the hierarchy of cultural values, subordinated on the one hand to morality and goodness, on the other to theory (or science) and truth. In that this subordination remains in effect in Nietzsche's own time (as in ours), its examination is central to Nietzsche's non-antiquarian project: what does all science signify, viewed as a symptom of life? [...] Where is science going; worse yet, where did it come from? [...] Is the scientific spirit perhaps only a fear of, a fleeing from pessimism? A subtle last resort against -- the truth? And, in moral terms, something like cowardice and falsity? In non-moral terms, a ruse [Schlauheit]? Socrates, Socrates, was that perhaps your secret? (BTSC:1)
What is the secret? Art is generally supposed to be concerned with beauty, science with truth, and morality with goodness, yet Nietzsche suggests, directly, that science may be a defense against truth, an attempt to disguise the truth; he also suggests, indirectly, that morality may be a defense against goodness, an attempt to avoid acknowledging what true goodness would require. The mechanism that allows these defenses to work is a "new and unprecedented treasuring [Hochschätzung] of knowledge and insight." Clear evidence for the novelty of this valuation is provided by Socrates's admission of his own ignorance, and his amazement that others -- great statesmen, orators, poets, and artists -- are governed by instinct rather than by knowledge: "Only from instinct": with this expression, we touch the heart and midpoint of the Socratic tendency. With it, Socraticism condemns existing art as well as existing ethics: wherever he directs his examining glance, he sees the lack of insight and the power of delusion [Wahn]; from this lack, he concludes that what exists is internally perverse [verkehrt] and reprehensible [verwerflich]. (BT:13)
In condemning all that exists, including current art and ethics, Socrates condemns both what is and what has been; given this rejection of past and present, he can be "detained in life" only by the delusion that he can make the future radically different. He consequently views his own task as one of therapy; he is to "heal the wound of existence" by "correcting existence" (BT:13). This correction or healing is a practical project, but it requires a theoretical foundation: the replacement of custom by morality presupposes a replacement of instinct with knowledge. The result of the two replacements is a transformation of pessimism into optimism: Socrates is the prototype [Urbild] of the theoretical optimist who, with his already characterized faith in the fathomability [Ergründlichkeit] of the nature of things, ascribes to knowledge and cognition the force of a panacea, and conceives error as evil in itself. To penetrate into every ground [Grund] and to separate true cognition from semblance and from error strikes the Socratic man as the most noble human calling, indeed the only truly human calling. (BT:15)
The Socratic legacy -- hence, the functioning of the Socratic illusion -- is clearest in the paradigm [Typus] of a form of existence unheard of before Socrates: that of the theoretical man, who embraces Socrates's project, "to make existence appear comprehensible and thereby as justified" (BT:16), and thereby also Socrates's "profound delusion [Wahnvorstellung]," the "unshakable faith that thinking, following the guideline of causality, reaches into the deepest abysses of being, and that thinking is in a position not merely to know being, but even to correct it" (BT:15). The "essence of the spirit of science," then, combines "faith in the fathomability [Ergründlichkeit] of nature and in knowledge as panacea [an die Universalheilkraft des Wissens]" (BT:17). Life is worth living, for those possessed of this spirit, only because it is perfectible. |
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