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▶ How the Real World Became a Myth:    • NIETZSCHE: How the Real World Became ...  

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▶ Genealogy of Morals:    • NIETZSCHE Explained: The Genealogy of...  
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▶ Daybreak:    • NIETZSCHE Explained: DAYBREAK - Thoug...  

This video is meant to address some recurring themes in the comments of two videos we did earlier on Nietzsche’s critiques of Plato and Socrates respectively.

They’ve done pretty well and I highly recommend you check them out. Link in the description.

One common thread in these two videos centers around a word that comes back quite often in Nietzsche’s writings: weakness.

Nietzsche accused Plato of weakness because he is the prototypical philosopher who seeks refuge in a so-called Hinterwelt, a world of metaphysics that is ontologically removed from the material, physical world. Plato’s theory of forms is a great example of this Hinterwelt idea, and in Nietzsche’s view it is also the original one. Christianity’s Heaven, Kant’s thing-in-itself, and Schopenhauer’s Will, are, in Nietzsche’s view, not separate instances of different Hinterwelts, but rather evolutions of a general idea that started with Plato.

All of this to say, that for Nietzsche, dialectics, which is to say, having a discussion or an argument, is a sign of weakness.

On these two videos, the same type of comment pops up again and again. The main idea is always the same, so allow me to rephrase the general gist of them. These comments to read as follows:

“Nietzsche says arguing is for weak people but he spent his entire life writing books, which is just another way of making arguments. He himself is guilty of what he accuses others of doing. Doesn’t this make him weak as well?”

There are two charges here. The first is an accusation of hypocrisy. The second, is a charge of weakness.

Let’s look at the hypocrisy problem first.

There is definitely some truth to this: Nietzsche, especially in his later work, where the distinction between strong and weak becomes more important to his philosophy, thinks that arguing is a sign of decadence or weakness. The powerful don’t need to convince, they simply command.

But isn’t Nietzsche doing just that: trying to convince us of his philosophy?

Let’s take a closer look.

Should a philosopher practice what he preaches? Not all philosophers have the same answer to this question.