this video is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website building platform. In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche makes the provocative case that arguments are tools used only by the weak. A man resorts to dialectics only when he has no other means to hand. On the surface, this sounds like a very strange statement for a philosopher to make, so let's dig a little deeper. Nietzsche's crusade against dialectics, against arguments, even against reason, finds its genesis in his critique of Socrates. He takes the opposite stance of the philosophical tradition, and rather than saying Socrates was a blessing for philosophy, he argues that Socrates was a curse, that his way of doing philosophy, which quickly became so influential as to be the way to practice philosophy, was detrimental to the Greek and, by extension, Western culture. In Nietzsche's words, Socrates created a tyrant out of reason. That is the essence of the Socratic Revolution; reason becomes the path to truth. Now everything needs to be proved, it needs to be convincingly argued.

is not logical. What is not rational can be discarded. What is the essence of a Socratic dialogue? Socrates pesters some Athenian noble, usually a politician or a general, someone who has acquired some standing and power in Athenian society, someone who has lived according to his instincts. He has not thought about his convictions or opinions. He's usually a man of action who just does. In the words of Socrates, he would live an unexamined life, going through life without standing still, taking pause, and asking why am I doing this. And then in comes Socrates and he asks them why, and the Athenian is irritated by this. No one likes to have their beliefs questioned, especially not if their beliefs have served them well in life. And Socrates discovers almost always that these convictions of the Athenians are either not based on anything at all or based on a flawed definition of something like justice, beauty, or the good. Now, in the versions of the dialogues that have come down to us through Plato, what usually happens is

that there is some kind of resolution where the dialogue partner of Socrates has this big Epiphany moment where he realizes that he has lived his life wrong, and he must concede to Socrates that he was right to question him. Of course, we can easily imagine an alternative history where this powerful Athenian Noble just brushes off Socrates and his insistence on demanding perfectly rational justifications for their behavior. Stop quoting philosophy to men with swords, something like that. That is, in essence, the problem that n sees with Socrates. His nickname even attests to it: the Gat fly of Athens. He wore this epithet With Honor, saying it was his job to pester and annoy Athenian High Society like a gat fly would bother a horse. But at this point, we must take a step backwards and zoom out a little bit because why would all of this be a problem in the first place. Indeed, throughout the history of philosophy, this arrival of Socrates on the Athenian scene was seen as a good thing.

Monumental shift in the history of Western Civilization, to the point where we speak of all the philosophers that came before Socrates as the pre-Socratics. Yet for n, this arrival of Socrates, the Socratic Revolution, the elevation of reason was a portant of something wicked, of a decline in culture, the vanquishing of good taste, in other words, of degeneracy. Before we get to that though, a quick word from our sponsor. Squarespace is an all-in-one website building platform. If you want to create a quick blog to keep track of your writing, or you need to make a personal portfolio, or manage a brand, it doesn't matter. Squarespace has you covered. If you're into literature and philosophy, a great way to integrate what you learn is to write about it. Within moments of setting up a Squarespace website, you can find the perfect blog template to do so. I'm also experimenting with Squarespace to create a website where I can post exclusive videos like the ones you see on screen now. The nice part is that it's

just drag and drop. You don't need any coding knowledge, and it's easy and intuitive to just get started using their fluid engine. There's also a huge library of extensions available to further customize your website to whatever you want. Check out squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com vist to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Thanks again to Squarespace for sponsoring this video. We must keep in mind that Socrates for nche was only a symptom. Greek culture had been in a steady decline long before Athens was ready to embrace the moralizing Socrates. He actually puts a question mark against all of ophy, against all wisdom. A vital culture, a confident culture, a culture of strength and of doing instead of thinking, needs no justification. There is simply no question. A confident, self-asserting culture like Golden Age Athens actually has no need for philosophy. After all, what is there to prove that Athens is virtuous, that its men are strong, and its

Empire large those things prove themselves. You need no logical arguments or ration reasons to show that. No says n philosophy descends upon a culture when it's ready when it's declined already when it questions its own mode of being does wisdom perhaps appear on Earth after the manner of a crow attracted by a slight smell of carryon. It's hard for us to wrap our heads around this because we live in a post-Socratic world. We are used to demand reasons for our convictions. We need to have a rational basis for our beliefs. We feel like it's almost most an obligation that when we do things we have good reasons and a good moral basis for doing those things, and we feel that people are justified in asking us for those reasons. Unbridled egoism in the vein of I do this because I want to or because I can is seen as a horrible reason to take any action, and in nich's view of History, this state of things is largely the fault of Socrates. Well, rather Socrates capitalized on it.

gave it its ultimate form. But again, we must repeat that Socrates was only a symptom. He was the metaphorical vulture who descended upon the rotting Cav of a declining culture. But the rot had already set in. So what rot, what degeneracy is n talking about exactly? Perhaps an example is in order to make things more explicit. We can't really point to a philosophical example precisely because of Socrates and his pervasive influence on philosophy. We need to go back to a moment in time before Socrates, during an age where Athens was delightedly pre-Socrates. We must therefore turn to history, and where better to turn than to Tod's chronicler of the pipian war, who sought to explain what drives countries to war and which justifications they gave for their Martian Ambitions. N said of toddies that he considered him the antidote to Plato, and we'll soon see why that is. Let's talk about the million dialogue. The the Melean dialogue is a dramatized version of the conversation between

Athenian emissaries and the ruling elites of the Greek island of Melos during the Peloponnesian War. Right away, we need to make a little side note here. Socrates was alive during the Peloponnesian War, and he even fought as a soldier in some of the battles. So, while it's technically not correct to look at the siege of Melos as an example of the Greek mindset before the time of Socrates, it's still quite instructive because Thucydides, better than anyone else, describes the still reigning mindset of the Greeks, the Athenians in particular, during times of war. The Melian Dialogue is still studied today as a prime example of realpolitik, of a political theory without illusions to ideology or higher principles, a politics based on the here and now, on the situation on the ground, motivated solely by self-interest and power. The island of Melos has been officially neutral during the Peloponnesian War so far. They claim to be descendants of the Spartans but are wisely staying out of the conflict.

purposely not picking aside, but Athens decides it's in their best interest to send a convoy to Melos and issue them an ultimatum: surrender willingly and pay tribute to Athens, or face annihilation. Thucydides relates the conversation that took place, taking some artistic liberty of course because he wasn't present himself during these talks, and he records Athens's reasons for their planned invasion. The Melians choose to die fighting, knowing very well that Athens is superior and will ultimately crush them, and that is exactly what happens. Athens completely annihilates the Melians, kills the men, and sells the women and children into slavery. They send a few hundred colonists to the island to repopulate it with Athenian stock. The Spartan ancestral line of the Melians is no more. One particular quote uttered by the Athenian emissary was immortalized in this exchange: the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must. So did it go with Melos. The Athenians come in guns blazing.

speak and tell the millions what's going to happen. They either surrender or get destroyed. And what's so unique about this exchange is that the Athenians won't even bother to come up with a fancy justification for their invasion. No, the Milons will be destroyed because Athens is strong and the millions are weak. That is the law of nature, and so will it be. We shall not trouble you with specious pretenses either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the meat or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us and make a long speech which would not be believed since you know as well as we do that right as the world goes is only in question between equals and power while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must for n this mindset is the quint essential presocratic Greek mode of being a confident assertive aristocratic and most of all unapologetic being in the world. This sentiment is later on echoed in the conversation when the

Athenians again speak of the right of the strongest to rule as an iron law of nature of the Gods. We believe and of men we know that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law or to act upon it. When made we found it existing before us and we shall leave it to exist forever after us. All we do is to make use of it knowing that you and everybody else having the same power as we have would do the same as we do. The Athenians in this conversation speak in terms of power of strong versus weak of real geopolitical aims of Empire of weapons and of Destruction. They don't come to the millions to try and convince them with reasons and arguments that they are correct that somehow the millions have provoked their aggression. They are not here to argue not here to talk philosophy to talk of high-minded ideals and Theory. They are coming after the Millions for the only reason that a

strong confident culture ever needs because they can. That is the essence of presocratic Greece. And in each's eyes, that is precisely what the Greeks lost when they became ready for the annoying gadfly Socrates. When the Greeks, those headstrong, life-loving, martial Greeks, surrendered all their strength to the abstract principles of reason with Socrates, a need for justification arises. Everything must now have a sufficient reason for being. So, and yes, in many ways, this relentless drive for justification is precisely the backbone of philosophy. Philosophy is about asking questions, demanding reasons, and it believes that through discussion and argument, we can become more reasonable, more rational, more truthful. But for Nietzsche, especially in the mature nature of Twilight of the Idols, this is already a sign of decay. Excessive doubt slinking into thought and endlessly looking for explanations and reasons is a sign of insecurity. The strong do not need a justification, just like the Athenians don't need a fancy justification either, real or imaginary, to invade Melos. They just do, they just act. We see this drive

towards reason, even in the Athenian culture at the time. When we compare the place of the three great writers of tragedy Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides, who was great friends with Socrates, was, according to Nietzsche, obsessed with making his plays intelligible. We see this most clearly in certain dramatic tools that Euripides employs. First, there is the prologue at the start of the play. Usually, Euripides will have a character inform the audience of the broad strokes of what happened before the action, and in some cases, even this prologue will spoil the entire plot of the play itself. Euripides thought that if the audience was kept in too much suspense as to what would happen plot-wise, that they would be distracted from the poetry of his lines. Therefore, the plays of Euripides are marked by an excess of what we today would call exposition, that is, characters just explaining things. Second, Euripides is famous for his reliance on the Deus Ex Machina at the end of the play. The gods

will literally come down from from heaven and resolve the plots once and for all, ensuring the audience that the play was over completely, that the story of the characters had reached a definite finite conclusion. In n's reading, Ides was obsessed with spelling things out, bringing things forth into consciousness, making things explicit, making them intelligible. In other words, making them rational and providing reasons for the plot and the motivation of his characters. Depending on who you ask, this is actually the strength of Ides. Nowadays, many of his most famous plays, Meda for example, are praised for their psychological insight and the elaborate rationalizations that the characters come up with to justify their actions. He succeeded so much at doing this that Meda, a story of a mother who kills her own children, is even given sympathetic feminist readings nowadays. But as much as Ureides may have been a psychologist for n, this obsession with intelligibility showed precisely how Ureides was infected by the Socratic disease and the intimate friendship between the two men where it's attested.

that Socrates only bothered to show up to the theater if a play of Euripides was to be performed provides him with a historical basis for this accusation. Like Plato, Euripides undertook to show to the world the reverse of the unintelligent poet. His aesthetic principle that to be beautiful, everything must be known is, as I have said, the parallel to the Socratic to be good, everything must be known. Accordingly, we may regard Euripides as the poet of aesthetic Socratism. But N does not believe in these idian and Socratic idioms that to be beautiful and good, something must be known first. Crucially for N, instinct is enough to act before thinking, to act out of a sense of pride and superiority. Is there not wisdom in that also? Maybe not wisdom, but at any rate strength. Let's revisit the Socratic dialogue again and see what occurs exactly when the gadfly Socrates pesters these noble Athenians and relentlessly asks them for their reasons. He perceived to his astonishment that all these celebrities were without

a proper and accurate insight even with regard to their own callings, and practice them only by instinct, only by instinct. With this phrase, we touch upon the heart and core of the Socratic tendency. Socratism condemns therewith existing art, as well as existing ethics. Wherever Socratism turns its searching eyes, it beholds the lack of insight and the power of illusion, and from this lack infers the inner perversity and objectionableness of existing conditions. From this point onwards, Socrates believed that he was called upon to correct existence, to correct existence. With this little sentence, philosophy is born. Philosophical Socratism finds a flaw in existence itself. Nature, life, it all becomes problematized because in cruel naked nature, there is no justification for anything, and the lack of justification, the lack of a reason for things being so, is unendurable to the philosopher. He needs an explanation, and he will find one or invent one. With this, the philosopher puts a question mark against all existence, and therefore

against all life and nature. And here the trouble begins. It might not be immediately clear why demanding reasons or justifications is such a big deal. Isn't it uniquely human to question things, find the cause of things, to dig for first principles? For Nietzsche, it's anti-at in one very visceral way. The lion doesn't concern himself with ethics or rationality. He exhibits his strength, he hunts the gazelle and devours it. This drive for justification is totally absent in nature, where things just happen by instinct. By questioning things, we devalue them. Imagine if a lion stopped to think, Why am I devouring this gazelle? Is it right for me to kill this animal? Why am I chasing this lioness? Is it right for me to want to procreate? Animals don't concern themselves with such questions, and it would look pretty comical, not to say maybe a bit disturbing, if animals would behave in this way. Certainly, if a lion would visibly forego his instinct for the hunt, if he didn't bother to sleep with a

lioness. Despite showing outward signs of vigor, we would think that the lion was diseased somehow, that his sickness had overcome him. Is it not the same with humans, asks Nietzsche again? Doubt is the sign of unconfidence, of something that lost its footing. And let's reiterate again, the drive for justification needs doubt. It needs a moment of reflection where we stop and we think, Is this what I'm doing right? Is what I am thinking correct? Does a lion ask himself these questions? Did the Athenians before besieging Milos ask themselves these questions? Were they concerned with right and wrong, or did they act Beyond Good and Evil? Well, the correct terminology here would be Before Good and Evil. In the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche discusses the preoral stage of mankind when the first Proto-morality, so to speak, was formulated. This is not morality as we know the word today, where good is almost synonymous with altruistic or self-sacrificing. No, this is the first good, the original good, the good of the

master who takes the liberty to create his own values. The total opposite of what we would call good today, a triumph of strength and unashamed accumulation of power. It has been the good themselves, that is the aristocratic, the powerful, the high stationed, the high-minded, who have felt that they themselves were good and that their actions were good, that is to say, of the first order, in contrast distinction to all the low, the low-minded, the vulgar, and the plebeian. It was out of this pathos of distance that they first arrogated the right to create values for our own profit and to coin the names of such values. This is the original first morality, the infamous Master morality, the morality that delights in itself and in its own power, a morality that acts according to nature and instinct, that does not doubt itself, a morality that is unapologetically confident and self-assured. Later on, this master morality in Nietzsche's reading of history will become supplanted by its opposite, a slave morality, a morality born out of a negation, out of a saying.

of no denying at the outset all the values of the master class. In other words, morality born out of resentment, jealousy, a fantasy of the powerless to attain some kind of imaginary victory if a physical victory is not possible. And in this resentment, also philosophy is born. From this resentment, Socrates acted. When Socrates questions the noble Athenians, the masters of his time, the aristocracy of ancient Greece, he seeks to undermine their position and their high station. He seeks to bring them down, and he found the perfect tool to do so: the argument. With Socrates, we find the first inklings of slave morality rising through the ranks, seeking to overthrow master morality. And with Plato, his students, Christianity was silently being prepared, that ultimate victory of the low over the high. But we are not there yet. First, Socrates. How was Socrates an exponent of slave morality? Well, first of all, Socrates was not a noble Athenian. He was part of the mob, above all, and this is surprisingly relevant. Socrates was famously ugly. To judge from his origin.

Socrates belonged to the lowest of the low. Socrates was mob, you know, and you can still see it for yourself how ugly he was. But ugliness, which in itself is objection, was almost a reputation among the Greeks. Was Socrates really a Greek? This is most beautifully expressed in this painting, which pits Socrates against his student Alcibiades, Greek General and flamboyant Playboy who was by all accounts the most beautiful man in Greece. This picture is the perfect representation of what this is all about. Alcibiades, the powerful General, against Socrates, the powerless dialectician. Alcibiades who acts by instinct, who wages war, seeks power, betrays enemy and friend alike for his own benefit, who does not question, who sleeps with the wives of Kings, who is frequently reprimanded by Socrates for his leniti behavior. And yet things are never so simple. Socrates was a war veteran who at one point even saved the life of Alcibiades during the Battle of Potidaea in the run-up to the Peloponnesian War, and Alcibiades desired to be

a student of Socrates. He did not reject him but even embraced him. But for n all of this means that the DK was already setting in that the Greeks were already at a point to accept this Socratic seduction. The philosophers are of course the decadence of hos, the counter movement directed against the old and Noble taste, against the agonal Instinct, against the police, against the value of the race, against the authority of tradition. Socratic virtues were preached to the Greeks because the Greeks had lost virtue, irritable, cowardly, unsteady, and all turned to play s. They had more than sufficient reason to submit to having morality preached to them. Let's zoom out a bit again and see where we stand now. Nich's view is that dialectics is a tool used by the week in the absence of any real power or authority, instead of appealing to One's Own Strength, instead of delighting in one's own power. Socrates managed to convince the Greek ruling class of his day to voluntarily hand over their power and

put its source not in themselves and the delight of their own being, but into abstract principles of reason. From Socrates onwards, because I can and because I want to cease to be valid reasons for doing something or wanting something, we must, from this moment onwards, appeal to something outside of ourselves. In the case of Socrates, to reason. But this is a fundamentally weak position, and the fact that this weak position could become the dominant one at all is, for n, a sign that Greek culture was already in decline, already doubting itself, and outsourcing its morality to something beyond themselves. When we read the million dialogue, we don't root for the Athenians, we root for the milons. We feel like they deserve to win because the Athenians are power-hungry Machiavellians in this exchange, and we feel like the millions are owed a victory, that they are the good guys. That is because the slave revolt and morals was so successful that we are now living in its afterglow. The morality of the Athenians is totally alien to us.

this is part of what makes n so radical, and also difficult to understand sometimes. he's like a fish criticizing the water that we all live in. to really understand where he's coming from, we need to step outside the Fishbowl and look at things from a truly alien perspective. because we are 21st-century people, and this Revolt in morals has been 3,000 years in the making. consider, for example, the following passage: a man resorts to dialectics only when he has no other means to hand. people know that they excite suspicion with it, and that it is not very convincing. nothing is more easily dispelled than a dialectical effect. this is proved by the experience of every gathering in which discussions are held. it can only be the last defense of those who have no other weapons. would we really say that this is true nowadays? our entire culture is built around argumentation, rationality, providing good reasons, coming up with justifications. it's hard to imagine it was ever otherwise. and yet this over

reliance on argument and discussion is perhaps the first sign of decadence of decay of a culture and decline. It puts the origin of morality, the origin of goodness, outside ourselves. Things are not good and just because I deem them so, and that's it. No, we need things to be good somewhere else. There must be a reason somewhere out there waiting to be found. We are like those annoying children who keep asking their parents why, why, why, until at last our irritated parent responds with because I say so. The philosopher is that annoying child, and he would rather keep annoying his parent with another why and face punishment, than be content with the explanation of because I say so. And that is, of course, ultimately what happened to Socrates. He was punished for his insistence on asking questions, annoying questions, questions that could upset the reigning status quo, questions that were at danger of undermining the reigning culture of Athens; in other words, for corrupting the youth. Socrates died a martyr, and his method became the method

of practicing philosophy, and the great mission of Socrates to find reasons and justifications not in our own strength, but to find their Source elsewhere, thus continued unabated in the history of philosophy. Plato found the good literally in another world, in the world of ideas. Christianity found the good in God and in his kingdom of heaven. G found it in an abstract rational principle, the categorical imperative. Schopenhauer found it in the will, that strange Hidden World opposed to the illusory world of our day-to-day. Each of these philosophers and religions have in common that, just like Socrates, they seek the good elsewhere, they construct reasons and justifications on a foundation outside of themselves and human experience. They are not like the Athenians at Melos who do what they can because they are strong; rather, they're more like the weak millions who suffer what they must. They cannot find the strength within themselves to become their own value creators, and therefore they seek the answers elsewhere, in the world of ideas, in Heavenly dictates from God, in blind

adherence to an abstract categorical imperative, or by saying no to the world, and trying to deny the will. What n proposed instead was a return to and a surpassing of the Greek ideal, an ideal of strength, of confidence, in delight in one's own glory, a master morality where those with courage take matters into their own hands and become the creators of their own values. But is such a thing even possible? n seemed in two minds about this. Remember that even the Greeks were seduced by Socrates. As n said, we must surpass even the Greeks. Can we do so? Just look at how far we are removed, not just in time but in temperament, in pride, in confidence, from those old Greeks. If we are to surpass the Greeks and find our strength within and dare to create our own values, must we not take the place of God and become something more than human? n is famous for saying God is dead, but what is often left unquoted is that we have killed God. It's our fault. Reason finally cannibalized itself and

ate its own foundations away. We have become so adapt at putting everything into question that even God himself bled to death under our knives. And now the task has befallen us to construct something new. Our old values are dead, and we need to create new ones. Shall we not have to become Gods merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event, and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history hither to. This is where the Ubermench comes in, and he belongs to the Future. This is the core of Nietzsche's philosophy. It falls to the Ubermench, to the free spirits of the future, to create morality anew. A morality of strength, a morality that once more dares to be itself, that seeks no justification or defense beyond itself. A morality of radically finding all its roots and power within, that is not beholden to any outside standard of right and wrong, that is not confined to outside rules of what is reasonable or justified immorality.

that truly and well rejects the pettiness of argumentation. That dares to exert its own authority that needs no other legs to stand on. A morality that truly goes beyond good and evil. Thank you for watching. If you like what we do here, consider subscribing and liking the video. You can also join our patreon where we post exclusive material with a dozen or so exclusive videos already waiting for you if you join. A special thank you goes out again to our patreons for their generous supports that keeps the channel alive. Follow us on Twitter too if you're so inclined. And with that said, thank you for watching and we'll see you in the next one.

Nietzsche: Why Arguing is for Weak People

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