Nietzsche's Idols

670 Words2 Pages

The term “idols”, for Friedrich Nietzsche, is abstract, permanent and self-identical concepts of philosophers. In Nietzsche’s Twilight of Idols, he highlights how philosophers are deprived of history, change and life; a possibility of true appreciation for life itself, which he sees as a process of nothing but growing and decaying. Nietzsche points how being a philosopher is comparable-even almost seen as- to being sick. He talks about how people tend to deny the wise by seeing and labeling them as someone who is to not be associated with or simply denying their teachings and theories. In an excerpt, in the very beginning of his “The Problem of Socrates”, he mentions how most philosophers has seen life identically-“it is good for nothing”. …show more content…

This would lead for the philosopher to doubt and not trust his senses which would lead him to uncertainty and error. Secondly, Nietzsche gives praise to Heraclitus for being an exception among philosophers and actually upholds the primacy of becoming and change-as should. We attribute skepticism and doubt to our immediate perception (of our senses) then certainty and truth to the conceptual structure of our senses. Thirdly, Nietzsche begins to give praise to the senses- which he mainly focuses on the sense of smelling (the nose). He refers to it as the “most delicate instrument at our disposal; it can register minimal differences in motion which even the spectroscope fails to register.” Nietzsche seems to think that relying on sense is good science for him-refining and extending their abilities. Furthermore, Nietzsche criticizes pre-sciences such as metaphysics, psychology, and epistemology-and even formal science- saying reality makes no appearance at all and finds no value in the …show more content…

His first proposition is where he claims that the reasons philosophers provide a designated and apparent ground for reality-and a different version of reality is “absolutely indemonstrable”. The second proposition is about distinguishing about the “true beings of things” and the marks of its nonbeing-which is the “nothing.” He says that the true world has been constructed by continuously questioning and contradicting the actual world, thus making the “true world” merely a moral optical illusion. Furthermore, in his third proposition, he implies that it would make no sense to tell fables and false claims about another world other than the world that we are in. He thinks that these theories gives us the impression of avenging ourselves on life “with the phantasmagorias of “another”, better life.” Lastly, in his fourth and last proposition, he makes a point about dividing the world into a “true” and “apparent world”, whether that be because of religious values or something else, is a sign of declining and rejecting

Open Document