/lit/ - Literature

>most important paragraphs ever written in philosophy, discuss
10
When one finds it necessary to turn reason into a tyrant, as Socrates did, the danger cannot be slight that something else will play the tyrant. Rationality was then hit upon as the savior; neither Socrates nor his "patients" had any choice about being rational: it was de rigeur, it was their last resort. The fanaticism with which all Greek reflection throws itself upon rationality betrays a desperate situation; there was danger, there was but 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 of dialectics. Reason = virtue = happiness, that means merely that one must imitate Socrates and counter the dark appetites with a permanent daylight -- the daylight of reason. One must be clever, clear, bright at any price: any concession to the instincts, to the unconscious, leads downward.

11

I have given to understand how it was that Socrates fascinated: he seemed to be a physician, a savior. Is it necessary to go on to demonstrate the error in his faith in "rationality at any price"? It is a self-deception on the part of philosophers and moralists if they believe that they are extricating themselves from decadence when they merely wage war against it. Extrication lies beyond their strength: what they choose as a means, as salvation, is itself but another expression of decadence; they change its expression, but they do not get rid of decadence itself. Socrates was a misunderstanding; the whole improvement-morality, including the Christian, was a misunderstanding. The most blinding daylight; rationality at any price; life, bright, cold, cautious, conscious, without instinct, in opposition to the instincts -- all this too was a mere disease, another disease, and by no means a return to "virtue," to "health," to happiness. To have to fight the instincts -- that is the formula of decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness equals instinct.

12

Did he himself still comprehend this, this most brilliant of all self-outwitters? Was this what he said to himself in the end, in the wisdom of his courage to die? Socrates wanted to die: not Athens, but he himself chose the hemlock; he forced Athens to sentence him. "Socrates is no physician," he said softly to himself, "here death alone is the physician. Socrates himself has merely been sick a long time."

>>19774511
checked. Adam Roberts The Thing Itself was pretty good if you like Kantian philosophy

How, after millennia of philosophy, does this guy just suddenly comes along and get EVERYTHING right? What he says is so obviously true, yet for somehow, thousands of years before Nietzsche, people are doing nothing more than quibbling over fictions, fantasies, bad conscience and competing moralities and value systems which aren’t facts at all, but rather just interpretations. Did it really just take one guy to BTFO them all with some rhetoric for them to be defeated

It’s yet another attempt for alienated Westerners to fill the void in their soul following the death of God. They strive for a religion or worldview that will give them meaning or fulfillment, or bring them a new comforting teleological metanarrative, or reason not to kill themselves, but their LARPs will always ring hollow. They can’t believe anything. This is fundamentally what the pagan revival attempts are at the core. They realize they need meaning and religion so they try everything under the sun, but never find what they’re looking for. It’s pathetic to watch.

>solves philosophy

>>18132193
Nietzsche.
>Le epic power fantasies.
>Incel.
>Wrote in aphorisms.
>Was considered a psued in his time.
He would be a tripfag with a minor cult following.

What authors do you need to be familiar with before you can read and understand what Nietzsche was trying to say?

>liberal bad
>christians bad
>just be urself
>also women dumb

brainlets will claim this is the greatest writer of the 20th century

>>13874540
>religion is dying and christianity is gay
>so just be really strong and stuff
Peterson is the modern nietzche of our day