Nietzsche and the Evolution of Philosophical Thought

Nietzsche's Critique of Western Philosophy: From Ancient Greece to Modernity

For both Parmenides and Plato, Nietzsche betrays the spirit of Greek philosophy, i.e., the investigation of nature initiated by Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, based on observation and experimentation.

Parmenides and the Rejection of Sensory Experience

On the one hand, Parmenides created a new philosophy, logic, based on being as a supreme principle and deductive method. For Nietzsche, this is pure speculation without taking into account experience. Parmenides affirms and denies that the senses provide real knowledge as it relates to the world of appearances made by changing things on which you cannot have true, exact knowledge. True knowledge can only be achieved through reason. Nietzsche preferred Heraclitus's philosophy based on evolution and not being. Heraclitus accepts that things are constantly changing and appreciates sensitive knowledge while recognizing that it produces the illusion that things are always the same length and unit despite time.

Plato's Dualistic Worldview

On the other hand, Plato attempts to integrate the philosophy of Heraclitus and Parmenides, for they divide the world into two: the world of sense (through the senses) and the intelligible world (through reason). Nietzsche believes this is the biggest mistake of Plato's philosophy, which will have negative consequences:

• Christian Philosophy: Division between mortal life and eternal life
• Philosophy of Descartes: Division between body and soul
• Kant's Philosophy: Division between the world of phenomena and the noumenal world

Nietzsche believes that the errors of metaphysics are due to the lack of historical sense of the philosophers, who do not know that language also has a history. Nietzsche believes that Socrates is a traitor to the spirit of Greek culture as by the creation of rationalist moral philosophy and culture change. In Homer's works is the heroic conception of life, which Nietzsche admires. Socrates opposes and preaches a rationalist moral. The rationalism of Socrates is that knowledge is the only way to reach virtue and that virtue alone gives happiness. Nietzsche thinks the opposite: we must live by instincts and passions to be happy, that joy gives strength to act and of these operations is the Socratic rationalism. This was inherited by Christian philosophy and Kant. Nietzsche believes that the death of God implies the end of moral rationalism which opens the possibility of moving to the culture of the new man, and there will be a general moral for mankind.

Nietzsche's Modern and Contemporary Influences

In the modern age, Nietzsche's sympathies are on the side of enlightened thinkers like Voltaire and even more so with the empiricism of Hume against Descartes. Hume's thought is present in Nietzsche in his critique of the self or soul, the role of the senses, and his negation of substances and necessity merely as a psychological habit. Nietzsche criticized the philosophy of Kant, considering it a sophisticated form of Platonism, but found their mark on the Kantian idea of the impossibility of attaining knowledge of reality itself (the metaphysical). Nietzsche radicalized this approach by asserting that all knowledge is mediated by the peculiarities of subjectivity (Perspectivism).

Already in the nineteenth century, Nietzsche has in common with members of the "Hegelian Left" (Feuerbach and Marx even more) their rejection of religion to understand that it overrides human freedom and consider God as an invention without any basis in reality. His criticism was, however, drawn to positivist science and socialist movements. But the most important influence is that of the irrationalist metaphysics of Schopenhauer, whom he read and admired deeply. Schopenhauer defended the existence of the "will to live" as a metaphysical principle governing all the events and objects of the phenomenal world and maintained a pessimistic position to reality. Nietzsche rejected this pessimistic view, but his concept of will to power, while not identical to the notion of will in Schopenhauer, keeps a true likeness.

In contemporary philosophy: Nietzsche is valued primarily as the discoverer of the forgeries of consciousness and is included in the group of so-called philosophers of suspicion, along with Marx and Freud. With the latter author, he saves important similarities, particularly the role that both lead to the irrational (the instincts and the unconscious) in the human world.