Nietzsche and how he can be at the same time modernist and postmodernist

‒ 953 ‒ CAPÍTULO 56 NIETZSCHE AND HOW HE CAN BE AT THE SAME TIME MODERNIST AND POSTMODERNIST DANIEL HEREDIA Universidad de Sevilla 1. INTRODUCTION Nietzsche and Socrates. This are two names that the history of philosophy has been responsible for placing as opposites. Rather, it was Nietzsche who wanted to try to distance himself as much as possible from Socrates. In this work we will try to see how Nietzsche carries out his criticism of the Socratic position and how this brings him closer to what is known today as postmodernism; although we will also see how Nietzsche does not completely distance himself from modernism. To speak of sympathizers of Socrates is not to do so exclusively of those scholars who are immersed in his thought, but also of everyone who has adopted aspects of Socratic philosophy even without knowing it, so that this constitutes their way of understanding life in general. For Nietzsche this second section represents the life of Western Europe. Socrates transmitted his legacy to our continent and we fully accepted it. But what did that legacy contain? Nietzsche says the décadence (Nietzsche, 1973: 38). According to him, philosophy that comes from the works of Plato, in which the figure of Socrates is essential, resides the spirit of the end of the Greek world. Socratic philosophy arises as a response to the Greek way of life, therefore, it has the condition of being pseudo-Greek or anti-Greek (Nietzsche 1973: 38), but in no case is it Greek in the genuine sense. And what is that genuine sense of the spirit of Classical Greece? The reason. One of the aspects that characterizes Socratic reason is the incompatibility that it has with respect to the passions. The completely rational human being cannot be affected by what ‒ 954 ‒ passion, the corporeal, can tell him (her). In this way we are witnessing a dictatorial scenario in which reason acts as a tyrant and passions have been banished. For Nietzsche, all this had a manifestly ulterior motive. Socrates in the society in which he lived did not occupy a relevant position. He was a babbler who knew little about the merits that could be achieved in the Greece of the time. He was a resentful commoner who scathingly criticized aristocratic society with the frivolous and deceitful resource of dialectic, which did not direct indifference towards him, but rather the opposite (a fatal error taking into account the Nietzschean consideration). This served to Socrates to take advantage of this situation, since he warned that the Greek aristocracy was aware that the end of the golden age of their culture was coming to an end. What Socrates proposed saved the miserable man and at that moment there was no one more miserable than the Athenian. Faced with this situation, Greek society relies on rationality, since it would bring back the light that illuminated them. The passions, the instincts, the corporeal ultimately prevent us from taking that path towards luminosity, a kind of ascension that is reserved for rational beings. Nietzsche, however, sees in this ascension precisely the decadence he spoke of at the beginning. Believing that basing everything on cold, farsighted and conscious absolute reason to the detriment of the corporeal as a remedy for the Greek disease is the unequivocal symptom of the decadence to which Europe was condemning itself. Socrates bequeathed to Greece exactly the same thing that he obtained, his condemnation and his death. Europe seems to have been the victim of a kind of spell that included the curse of Socrates in the form of an Egyptian sarcophagus, which once they are discovered, the weight of said curse falls on those who occupied it. 2. METHODOLOGY This study aims to examine Nietzsche's philosophical framework in the context of modernism and postmodernism by employing a comparative and analytical approach. ‒ 955 ‒ I have tried to conduct an in-depth review of scholarly works discussing Nietzsche's ideas, the characteristics of modernism and postmodernism, and their philosophical implications. This will provide a comprehensive understanding of the key concepts and debates surrounding Nietzsche's classification. Then, I have analyzed Nietzsche's key philosophical concepts such as the will to power, eternal recurrence, perspectivism, and the death of God. Evaluate how these concepts align with or deviate from the principles of modernism and postmodernism. It was important to explore the historical context surrounding Nietzsche's writings and their reception. Consider Nietzsche's intellectual influences, interactions with contemporary thinkers, and the socio-cul- tural milieu of late 19th-century Europe. I have chosen to engage in a critical analysis of arguments supporting Nietzsche's classification as either a modernist or a postmodernist thinker. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these arguments while considering alternative interpretations. This methodology provides a structured approach to investigating Nietzsche's place within the philosophical paradigms of modernism and postmodernism, facilitating a nuanced analysis and interpretation of his ideas. 3. DEBATE: AGAINST REASON Nietzsche is totally contrary to the European rationality inherited from Socrates. Reason is not only not what illuminates knowledge, but it is what condemns it irremediably. Reason is located in the coldness of the concept, in the unalterable, in what does not become, something that is not found in life. One of the fundamental questions for philosophy is that of Being. And what is Being? Since Parmenides was enlightened by the goddess and was able to compose her poem, we know that Being cannot become non-Being, that is, it cannot stop being, it cannot become. The misfortune was beginning. The Eleatics did not take long to condemn the senses, since they only perceive the future and with them it is not ‒ 956 ‒ possible to understand Being. Sensitivity not only cannot understand Being but they also deceive us, separating us from the illumination of the reason. Nietzsche will tell us that this has the same meaning as Egyptian mummification, so that something is maintained that has actually already died and that, of course, is no longer what it was, forcing it to remain despite its fleeting nature. Heraclitus would already realize this before Nietzsche when he said that the apparent world is the only one and that the true world is nothing more than a lying addition (Nietzsche, 1973: 46). But Heraclitus was not entirely right either. Heraclitus also understood that the senses could deceive us, but since these are the only ones that make us perceive, we have to know how to appreciate them as such. For Nietzsche, Heraclitus makes the mistake of defending that the senses lie to us, thus falling into the Parmenidean trap. They do not lie in any way, what we make of his testimony is what introduces the lie. That is to say, when we try to define, conceptualize, "mummify", with reason what the senses tell us, that is when the lie appears before us. What damage have our senses done to us? Why abandon the corporeal when it is not only an important part of obtaining true knowledge, but is also the only one responsible for said task? Reasonableness seems to have the necessary condition of acting alone because any mixture harms it, for this reason the notions of purity, immobility, perfection are essential to understand the genuine nature of reason. Nietzsche is proposing to opt for the opposite path, since he believes that it is reason that harms the senses, understanding that the former floods the latter with lying and empty superficialities. Nietzsche continues his provocation by highlighting the role of the nose as a means of knowledge. It is a provocation because the sense of smell has been cruelly attacked by the defenders of reason. A notable slip if one takes into account that it is capable of registering minimal differences in movement that are even outside the range of the spectroscope. This sense, this organ, the nose, which has been so vilified, is much more reliable than any concept, no matter how high it may be in that World of Platonic Ideas. ‒ 957 ‒ Nietzsche accepts the role of science (for many the maximum expression of conciliation between the perfectly rational and the world around us), but he only does so with those that take the senses into consideration. And what are those sciences that are not really sciences? He lists even these abortions, not-yet-science: metaphysics, theology, psychology, theory of knowledge, logic and mathematics (Nietzsche: 1973: 46). In these pseudosciences reality is not found, the absence of life is dramatically evident, therefore the knowledge obtained from them cannot be true. A medium that ignores life, that contradicts it, cannot guide us on our path to knowledge. Europe finds itself in an idiosyncrasy that is condemning it for its way of distorting things. Reason places as primordial, the first, the supreme concepts, precisely the concepts that are most empty. The causa sui, that which depends on nothing but itself, God, appears on the scene and his iron hand will guide us towards the path of truth, (not being real in any way!) How stupid have we Europeans have been by surrendering our lives to that enormous and dictatorial void! How stupid for deceiving ourselves with language (grammar)! How stupid for coming to believe [deeply] that this world that has been given to us [and which is the only one we are aware of] is a condemnation and therefore taking refuge in the Christian sheep! How much damage did Socrates and his curse! 4. MORE ASPECTS OF THE DEBATE: AGAINST MORAL What a melancholic scene. What an insignificant life the human being has chosen. Well there is still more. It remains to be seen how those defenders of reason treated the senses throughout history. Passions had to be killed (il faut tuer les passions) (Nietzsche, 1973: 53). If this was the premise to follow, the New Testament was constituted as the weapon to carry out such a crime, going so far as to say that "if your eye offends you, tear it out (Nietzsche, 1973: 53)." In the beatitude that Matthew relates, he says that it is better to lose your eye than to have your entire body (your Being) thrown into hell. Better what God's reason tells you than what your senses dictate, because these can only lead you towards eternal damnation. Even the idea of eternal is ‒ 958 ‒ meaningless in Nietzsche's philosophy. Where can we contemplate eternity if only becoming exists in the world? The only thing that is unalterable are the concepts developed by reason precisely. Although it may be ironic, everything seems to be a plan hatched by those who are not capable of keeping the senses under control, but rather are prisoners of them and for this very reason have the duty to annihilate them. This desire for sensory control does not come from the ascetics themselves, but from those who need to be so (Nietzsche, 1973: 55). This revolutionary amendment is the responsibility of morality, especially religion. With morality it is possible to appease the impious impulses of the senses. With it, sensuality became purified and became love (Nietzsche, 1973: 55), but it was also key to detecting the enemy. Reason has the need to act alone, so anyone who appears to be an enemy of reason must be eliminated. Nietzsche, still following Heraclitus, believes that contrariety, the opposite, the enemy is a necessity and for this reason he repudiates the "peace of the soul." In a certain sense we are faced with two types of morality, one that belongs to us as human beings (healthy morality as Nietzsche would say), governed by the instinct of life, which on its path encounters "duty" and "not-duty." All you need is an enmity (an opponent) to get away from that dilemma; and another that corresponds to the one that we have created and that is unnatural (Nietzsche, 1973: 56),, since it goes against that instinct of life. Even so, this second is the one that predominates thanks to the work of the Church. The word of God made it quite clear, put out your eye if you can fall, better than throwing your body into hell. Morality that goes against the instinct of life forces us to be what we are not, it does not allow us to appreciate life. We must condemn the senses, because they distance us from God, but in reality what happens is that by following the almighty we are condemning life. What religion has achieved with its condemnation is to make people believe that life can be determined as just and unjust (without accepting life as it is in itself!). To know this value of life you have to be located outside and inside life, something that is beyond the reach of the human being (Nietzsche, 1973: 57). Morality, therefore, forces us to repudiate life, to enter into decadence. ‒ 959 ‒ That is why it makes no sense that there are moralists, people who say: this is good, this is bad, this is normal... These types of people are so false and hypocritical and do so much harm to human beings that believing them makes anyone who believes them false and hypocritical. believe him. The Kantian morality of "you must", the great dragon that wants to subdue the lion that says "I want", has to be abandoned to become immoral, vital. 5. GOAL: GO BACK TO DIONYSUS What are we searching for? Where does Nietzschean discourse take us? Who in history could be our support if we decide to take the step towards a path towards life, in which reason does not contaminate us? We have to return to Rome. Greece was too rotten and immersed in the Socratic regime. Rome, on the other hand, gave birth to the figure of the poet Horace, who in his style radiated the energy of life that human beings should long for. This style has taught us to learn 75 , unlike what happened with the Greeks, who has ever learned to write from a Greek! (Nietzsche, 1973: 130). The Greek style does not invite learning, it is a style that is crude in structure and poor in content (even Plato's!). Plato normally stands out in his artistic side, his dialogues being first-class endorsements. Plato is not even the owner of his own style, but rather a poor collector of the seeds of the cynics and a "bungler" using dialectic, thus becoming a boring author (Nietzsche, 1973: 131). But we must not fool ourselves, what is most damaging about Plato is hidden in his core, in his moralistic, decadent vision, that vision that would give way to the Christian religion and that would bring to life hatred against himself. 75 It can be seen that in the work of Horace, for example in The Art of Poetry, the Roman poet sets a series of guidelines to follow if one wants to write in the most perfect way possible, a desire for teaching that is more than palpable. Although it is not a work that presents a system, its instructive character towards the most perfect Arts can be detected. After all, it is still paradoxical that Nietzsche finds in Horace a figure to follow, since, as we say, his work pursues perfection, clarity and unity (concepts, all of them, condemned by himself). But it is also no less true that the perfection that the Roman poet seeks is intended to be found in Nature. I will talk more about the paradox of Nietzschean thought in the next point, when I try to position the German thinker within the modern and postmodern doctrine. ‒ 960 ‒ Greek life made it possible for Plato and his teacher Socrates to be taken seriously. A desperate refuge was sought in the Platonic ideal because it promised to save the irritable, fearful and fickle Greeks (Nietzsche, 1973: 133). The lively Greece surrendered itself to death without knowing it, which came with the cornucopia of the height of ideas and its faithful cerberus of morality. There is no room for the living, for the real, for the immoralists, Greece has succumbed and there is no turning back. Is there really not one? Nietzsche finds in the conception of the god Dionysus the way to live more fully, to live in the instinctive way of the true Hellene, the aristocrat. With Dionysus we could have been saved from the path of the ideal lie. Faced with the Apollonian, which represents rationality, the pure and the light of truth; the Dionysian, for its part, symbolizes the irrational, the drunkenness and the excessive. Socratic contamination has caused the figure of Dionysus and everything he could have given us to be misunderstood. To understand that the rites of worship to Dionysus, those orgiastic and excessive rites, as an accident, as something that the Greek did when he had nothing else to do (Nietzsche, 1973: 134), is to understand in a very bad way what they really meant. Believing that the rites were repeated again and again simply because the Greek was bored is typical of a crude and superficial analysis. The true reason for the Dionysian rituals is to guarantee eternal return to life. Where else can human beings experience life more, be more instinctive than at excessive parties? At the party, the secrets that sensuality and sexuality hold are unleashed. With these, the highest and solemn feelings are provoked as a consequence of procreation (Nietzsche, 1973: 135), which brings with it the engine of all future and growth, pain (Nietzsche, 1973: 135). Feeling pain is feeling being alive, with pain life arises and life ends. To refuse the excessive, the sexual, to give birth as a blessing and not as a punishment because it brings us pain, is to accept the Christian ideal, which vilely condemns these very human aspects, perhaps too human, to enter the kingdom of God. Understanding life in its harshness, facing it and accepting it as it is without the slightest intention of avoiding it in the Socratic way is what Nietzsche taught us since The Birth of Tragedy, to transvalue all values. ‒ 961 ‒ Tragedy and the cult rites of Dionysus bring us life as it is in itself and bring it to us eternally. 6. CONCLUSION: MODERNITY OR POSTMODERNITY After what has been discussed, it is worth asking whether Nietzsche belongs to Modernity or postmodernity. The question is pertinent because his thought has a more than close relationship with both doctrines, since by context he belonged to one and the other is even considered his precursor. Does Nietzsche belong to Modernity? If there were a resounding answer to this question, I would not consider trying to place it within one doctrine or another. What we can do is try to see what features of his philosophy can be identified with those of Modernity. In the Nietzschean style, the spirit of breaking with the times is widely manifest. Nietzsche tries to throw off the veil of Western Europe, which was woven, in his consideration, by Socratic philosophy. The anti-Greek philosophy of Socrates and Plato has nursed European culture, and it is now stunted and malnourished by that sterile milk and finds itself at a crossroads where it has to choose between living or continuing to die. Well, if we look towards Modernity we will also find that desire for rupture, although obviously not with a discourse as sharp as Nietzsche's. Stopping at the figure of Descartes, for example, we find a thinker who intends to begin the path of philosophy again, since he considers that the different authorities who have led the way in this task have made improper use, thus causing that what we have inherited does not constitute knowledge on which we can trust. In the Discourse on Method he says that as a first step to begin his philosophy he should not admit anything as true if he did not know with evidence that it is true (Descartes, 2011: 114), thereby inviting him to doubt everything he had learned if it was not presented as evident. The methodical doubt is present and Modernity would find in this thinker, if not the first exponent of it (since there are countless theories that Modernity began before), then the most relevant.