From: "John T. Duryea" <jtduryea-AT-dmv.com> Subject: Nietzsche and Rationalism Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 08:50:03 -0600 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. Twilight of the Idols, 10: "If one needs to make a tyrant of reason, as Socrates did, then there must exist no little danger of something else playing the tyrant. Rationality was at that time divined as a saviour; neither Socrates nor his 'invalids' were free to be rational or not, as they wished- it was de rigueur, it was their last expedient. The fanaticism with which the whole of Greek thought throws itself at rationality betrays a state of emergency; one was in peril, one had only one choice: either to perish or - be absurdly rational... The moralism of the Greek philosophers from Plato downwards is pathologically conditioned: likewise their estimation of dialectics. Reason = virtue = happiness means merely: one must imitate Socrates and counter dark desires by producing a permanent daylight - the daylight of reason. One must be prudent, clear, bright at any cost: every yielding to the instincts, to the unconscious, leads downwards..." I wonder if Nietzsche is not criticising here the entire European "Enlightenment", including Darwin and Marx among others? With the Imperium, philosophy, as such, disappears. John T. Duryea
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