Plato and Nietzsche: Contrasting Philosophies
Plato established a contrast between two worlds, while Nietzsche posited that the world of thought and truth was the ideal, something to be pursued and achieved. Nietzsche proposes in his vitalist anthropology, a front man of culture and society. This man must be creative, engaging in an ongoing effort, and must create their own values. For Plato, man is fundamentally an ethical organization, above the scientific. He leaves the anthropological view of classicism, in which there is a social hierarchy. Like Nietzsche, Plato shows a preference for the aristocracy, but neither advocates for an aristocracy of blood or money. In Plato’s case, it is an aristocracy of knowledge (the wisest and most generous are the ones who should govern the ideal society, divided into rulers, guardians, and producers). In Nietzsche’s case, it is an aristocracy of the creators of new values (the superman is governed by the master morality, proper to high spirits, which, oddly, are those affirming earthly life).
Nietzsche’s thought is characterized as an irrational vitalism, while Plato’s is more of a rational idealism. According to Nietzsche, with Socrates and Plato began the historical dominance of all that is logical and rational; that is, the decline and error began. Therefore, the ingenuity of existence is lost. Socrates, with his desire to seek reasons, to define his intellectual and moral equivalence, makes the most extravagant that exists, according to Nietzsche, and puts reason in place of life. Platonic metaphysics does nothing but entrench this error with his conception of reality and the existence of two worlds: the world of Ideas and the sensible world. The sensible world is characterized by change, mutation, imperfection, and impermanence, but it is not real. It is only an imperfect appearance or imitation of the world of Ideas. According to Nietzsche, this is just egipticismo, as Plato believes he has found the Truth, which is not accessible through the senses but only through reason, when he kills reality.
Reality is terrible: suffering, pain, struggle, death, and constant change make life difficult. But the solution is not to invent another world and deny this one, the earth, the only one that really counts. It is the weak in spirit, those who cannot bear it, who create another world unlike this terrible one, a world where everything has been eliminated, where there is no change, no destruction, no death: the world of Ideas of Plato or the Paradise of the Christian God. Christianity, according to Nietzsche, is only Platonism for the people. Christianity has inverted values, as Platonism did. It has created a slave morality that fosters resentment against life and mean values. In the face of this, Nietzsche promotes master morality, characteristic of the superman, moral improvement, and affirmation of life, typical of high spirits. To do this, God and the values he represents (truth/absolute values of any kind) must die. Only with the death of God is it possible for man to live.
Another error of Platonic metaphysics is the use of concepts that are too general, too detached from reality, too abstract or empty (being, essentially, perfect…). The concepts in and of themselves are misleading because they claim to be used to express what reality is. However, reality is plural, concrete, moving, and changing, and concepts are general and abstract. Therefore, according to Nietzsche, concepts do not serve to express what reality is. Instead, he appeals to metaphor. Only metaphor serves to express the complex and changing reality; it requires interpreting the world and therefore is more faithful to it.