Boston, Christmas Day 2025
I do not remember exactly when I wrote this. I think it was at around the same time I wrote my reiteration of the Birth of Tragedy and my Dionysia Metaphysica, 1989.
In my opinion, it is Nietzsche’s only exercise in dialectic. Everything else he wrote was definitely not dialectical. Everything else was anti‑dialectical, as much as it was anti‑morality and completely unmoralized.
But in this essay, he honors the tradition we know as Socratic dialectic and engages himself in the ancient arguments about being and becoming. This essay, for me, is a place where a philosopher may go and partake in something that only a few may engage in and with an utter disregard for those who cannot, to the point wherein ideas flow out like the birds at dawn. I found it very enjoyable in my youth. But I turned against dialectic very quickly, as soon as I began reading Nietzsche, which was full‑time when I was nineteen.
The most important thing to get out of it is Nietzsche’s thought process regarding Parmenides’ theory of the identity of thought and being, which Nietzsche utterly refutes and spits out. But his reasons for the refutation are far from merely dialectic. For Nietzsche, a process of inner growth, which he explicitly articulated as the precise manifestation that life assumes when it enters the human spirit — that process begins with Self.
But Nietzche saw the true value of Self in its mythical form, whereas Parmenides saw a greater value in its purely cerebral form. And that is the fundamental distinction between the two theories. That simple but far‑reaching difference between mythical Self and (what I sometimes also call) Platonic Self explains everything that Nietzsche meant when he wrote “God is dead.” For Nietzsche, the mythical Self stands in direct contrast with the Platonic Self that thinks precisely because mythical Self feels as much as it thinks. Mythical Self incorporates the entire sensate realm into itself while the Platonic Self loses its footing, and especially its connection with the entire spectrum of inner human nature that inheres in the sensate realm, and gets hopelessly lost in contemplative but entirely unmoving ideation. That is the fundamental difference between Nietzsche’s living Self and Plato’s thinking (or dead, as in “God is dead”) Self. That is the difference between mythical Self and conceived Self. One is living, as Nietzsche defines life, and one is not. More specifically, it is dead.
When you came right down to it, if there was no passion in life, then it was not worth living. The will was the only thing that made life worth living, nothing else. And passion comprises will very fundamentally. But Parmenides alternatively presented Self, which is a myth around which all the world revolves most conditionally, as a world that lacks passion. His was a highly contemplative world that discouraged passion as a disturbance. Nietzsche’s Self was the exact opposite, rooted very fundamentally in passion.
This major distinction that goes back to the dawn of Western thought, life as a state of being versus life as a process of growth, and the value of one over the other, is precisely what Nietzsche teaches – as an apprehension, not a concept – in his dithyramb called “Zarathustra’s Prologue,” which I argued initiates the reader into the drama, and which marks the transformation from reader into actor.
In its most fundamental form, that apprehension directs the instincts to look for life that begins in a passion, even a simple desire — but not a thought. Nietzsche says that life begins with a passion for Self, but not a concept of Self, rather, an instinct for Self. That is what “Zarathustra’s Prologue” teaches. And the drama that eventually follows from that simple, lonely desire is a dithyrambic drama that realistically follows the development of the will to power, which I call will to Self‑empowerment, with its eighty‑one practice lessons faithfully represented, as if in a mirror, in each of the eighty‑one dithyrambs.
In the following essay, Nietzsche presents an argument that is historic among philosophers, all the way back to the ancient Greeks, before Socrates and Aristotle.
And this is how it goes.
Chapter One
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
A Critique of Being and the Mode of Thought by which It Derives and An Argument for Becoming and the Mode of Thought by which It Derives
Abstract
In Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks [hereafter ‘Tragic Age], Nietzsche examines the historic dialectical argument spun out by the lineage of ancient Greek philosophers known as “the Seven Sages[1]” regarding the mysticism and the science that constitute the process of Becoming as well as the role played by Being within that process, and he refutes Parmenides’ twofold argument that Being and Becoming comprise a duality in which Being plays a just and primary role that is antipodal to the unjust and derivative role played by Becoming. The significance of this refutation is to redirect the course of Occidental philosophy insofar as philosophers ever since, especially the moralists, have premised their work on Parmenides’ argument. In addition, in his non‑dialectical and ancillary commentary on the development of this historic argument during ancient times and on the individual philosophers who carried it, Nietzsche also presents insight into the advantage of the intuitive mode of thought over the logical mode of thought in all philosophic inquiry. What follows in this reiteration comes in three parts: (1) the ancient argument, also known as the converse; (2) commentary on the initiation and development of the argument, also known as the commentary; and (3) a critique of Being and the logical mode of thought by which it derives and an argument for Becoming and the intuitive mode of thought by which it derives, also known as the critique.
Introduction
I have already shown that Nietzsche often transforms things he admires into objects with which to articulate his philosophical insights and that an understanding of his work requires an interpolation of the text in which he presents his work.[2] In ‘Tragic Age, Nietzsche
Introduction to the Converse
The philosopher is a very rare human being. Even rarer is when several of them come together in a common effort
The Converse
Thales
All is water, which means all things are derived from one thing. But is the one thing a being or is it a process of becoming?
Anaximander
The one thing is a being. Thus, there is one supreme perfect being, but there is also a process of becoming. The two exist alongside each other. Because there is both being and becoming, lesser beings, which we call the Many, derive from the supreme and perfect being, which we call the One. The derivation is an illegal and aberrant emancipation. Accordingly, a demand for penance inheres in all becoming. Therefore, all growth is followed by disintegration, and the penance is paid.
Heracleitus
There is no Being and no duality. The one thing is a process of becoming.
Parmenides
There is a duality, but it is a unified duality.
The Discourse
Thales
All things are one thing. But is the one thing a Being or a process of Becoming?
Anaximander
It is true: all things are one thing. The one thing is a Being. It is primal and intransitory, without beginning and without end. All other things are temporal derivatives of the one Being and are a consequence of Becoming, which also exists alongside Being. Through Becoming, all other things come into the world from Being. But Becoming is an illegal and aberrant emancipation from Being, which causes all growth to be followed by disintegration, as its penance.
The quintessence of primal being is an absence of quality, not the presence of infinitude, and it is this absence that causes becoming.
But why is there a duality of Being and Becoming? Why is there not just one or the other? Because there is one, there is the other. If there were just Becoming, there might not be Being. But because Being is original, then there is also Becoming, and all Becoming is unjust. Becoming is a problem for Being.
Heraclitus
There is no duality of Being and Becoming. And there is no Being. There is only Becoming. “The one is the many.” Being is merely an illusion.
Becoming is not an objection to Being. Like Being, Becoming possesses order and certainty. Becoming should be judged by the good that can be found in its growth, not by the bad that is found in its disintegration. In either case, neither growth nor disintegration should be judged morally.
The world as a process of Becoming is much more perceptible to intuition than to concept.
Everything exists alongside its opposite. But there are no absolute opposites. Opposites continuously endeavor to separate and then unite – according to strict laws that are inherent in Nature, and their strife causes the process of Becoming. The ascension of one opposite over another in conjunction with concept creates the illusion of Being.
Justice reveals itself in the strife, the process of Becoming, not in the ascension of one or another opposite, not in apparent Being.
That which appears definite, certain, and permanent is simply the “quick radiance of victory in the struggle of the opposites.” In other words, being does not exist.
Desire and satiety drive growth and disintegration. In such a way, Becoming transforms the One into the Many: Desire drives the Many to One and satiety drives the One to Many.
In a world of Being, suffering and injustice are an objection to existence. But in a world of becoming, where contradiction runs into harmony, suffering and injustice are not an objection.
Becoming conforms to law in its process, but it is driven by caprice in its beginning and end. Thus, through Becoming, order arises out of chaos.
Parmenides
Parmenides categorizes all the opposites into two realms, existent and non‑existent, according to whether they are respectively positive or negative, and creates a duality. Becoming is driven by the attraction between opposites. Desire unifies contradictory elements and causes growth. And when the desire is satiated, inherent contradiction drives the same opposites apart and causes deterioration. In such a way, Becoming requires both good and bad elements. Thus, while there is a duality in Parmenides theory of Becoming, there is also a unity.
Motion
The Non‑Existent Problem
That which is is, and that which is not is not. Therefore, there are no negative, non‑existent qualities, and there is no duality. There is only Being and no Becoming.
Being is indivisible because it is the only thing that exists. Nothing else exists that could divide it. Therefore, Being exists in the absence of space because space would be a second existent. And the presence of two existents requires a third which would separate them, and so on. But there is only one existent and that is Being.
Being exists in the absence of motion because it is the only thing that exists. Nothing exists to which it could move, nor does any thing exist that could cause it to move.
Therefore, all that exists is an eternal unity.
Anything which declares otherwise is an illusion and those illusions are created by your senses. The senses cause you to mistakenly believe that Becoming possesses Being.
Parmenides’ doctrine of Being was created out of a need to find peace – and especially certainty – in Being, and it is characterized by schematics and abstraction.
Parmenides’ argued the existence of peaceful and certain Being because he was able to think it. Thus, his conclusion postulating its existence “rests on an assumption that we have an organ of knowledge which reaches into the essence of things and is independent of experience.”
Aristotle argued against Parmenides’ doctrine of Being “that existence is never an intrinsic part of essence. One may never infer the existentia of being from the concept being – whose essentia is nothing more than being itself.” In other words, if Parmenides cannot point to his Being in Nature, then he cannot assert its existence. To assert the existence of a thing merely because one can conceptualize it is reckless. But Parmenides argued that everything which has existentia is an illusion created by our senses.
The Argument Against Conceptual Thought and For Intuitive Thought
There are two modes of thought by which the philosopher may do his work: dialectic and intuition. For Nietzsche, dialectic is sophomoric and inadequate, and intuition is far more superior.
Heraclitus’ regal possession is his extraordinary power to think intuitively. Toward the other type of thinking, the type that is accomplished in concepts and logical combinations, in other words toward reason, he shows himself cool, insensitive, in fact hostile. . . . Intuitive thinking embraces two things: one, the present many‑colored and changing world that crowds in upon us in all our experiences, and two, the conditions which alone make any experience of this world possible: time and space. For [time and space] may be perceived intuitively, even without a definite content, independent of all experience, purely in themselves. . . . [Heraclitus] repeatedly said of [time] that every moment in it exists only insofar as it has just consumed the preceding one, its father, and is then immediately consumed likewise. And that past and future are as perishable as any dream, but that the present is but the dimensionless and durationless borderline between the two. And that space is just like time, and that everything which coexists in space and time has but a relative existence, that each thing exists through and for an equally relative one. – This is the truth of the greatest immediate self‑evidence for everyone, and one which for this very reason is extremely difficult to reach by way of concept or reason.
Next, consider the example of a flying yet resting arrow.
“At each moment of its flight it occupies a position. In this position it is at rest. But can we say that the sum of infinitely many positions of rest is identical with motion? Can we say that rest, infinitely repeated, equals motion, which is its contrary? The infinite is here utilized as the catalyst of reality: in its presence reality dissolves. If the concepts are firm, eternal, and existent (remembering that being and thinking coincide for Parmenides), if in other words the infinite can never be complete, if rest can never become motion, then the arrow has really never flown at all. It never left its initial position of rest; no moment of time has passed. Or, to express it differently: in this so‑called, but merely alleged reality, there is really neither time nor space nor motion. Finally, even the arrow itself is an illusion, for it has its origin in the many, in the sense‑produced phantasmagoria of the non‑one. Let us assume that the arrow has true being. Then it would be immobile, timeless, uncreated, rigid and eternal – which is impossible to conceive. Let us assume that motion is truly real. Then there would be no rest, hence no position for the arrow, hence no space – which is impossible to conceive. Let us assume that time is real. Then it could not be infinitely indivisible. The time the arrow needs would have to consist of a limited number of moments: each of these moments would have to be an atomon – which is impossible to conceive. All our conceptions lead to contradictions as soon as their empirically given content, drawn from our perceivable world, is taken as an eternal verity. If absolute motion exists, then space does not; if absolute space exists, then motion does not; if absolute being exists, then the many does not. Wouldn’t one think that confronted with such logic a man would attain the insight that such concepts do not touch the heart of things, do not undo the tangle of reality? Parmenides and Zeno, on the contrary, hold fast to the truth and universal validity of the concepts and discard the perceivable world as the antithesis to all true and universally valid concepts, as the objectification of illogic and contradiction. The starting point of all their proof is the wholly unprovable, improbable assumption that with our capacity to form concepts we possess the decisive and highest criterion as to being and non‑being, i.e., as to objective reality and its antithesis. Instead of being corrected and tested against reality (considering that they are in fact derived from it) the concepts, on the contrary, are supposed to measure and direct reality and, in case reality contradicts logic, to condemn the former. In order to impose upon the concepts this capacity for judging reality, Parmenides had to ascribe to them the being which was for him the only true being. Thinking and that single uncreated perfect globe of existentiality were not to be comprehended as two different types of being, since of course there could be no dichotomy in being. Thus an incredibly bold notion became necessary, the notion of the identity of thinking and being. . . . [The fact that this notion of the identity between thought and being denies sensation any place in the world] guarantees better than anything else that this was a [notion] not derived from the senses.
Argumenta Ad Hominem: Two Arguments Against Being
One Argument Based on the Mobility of Reason and Another Based on the Origin of Semblance, Both of which Expose the Falsehood Inherent in the Absolute Separation of Ideation and Sensation and in the Identity of Being and Thought
If the conceptual thought produced by reason is real then the Many and Motion must be a part of reality because reasoned thought is mobile, insofar as it moves from concept to concept and within a plurality of realities.
If the senses produce only fraud and semblance, and if truth proceeds only from the identity of Being and thought, then the senses are themselves a part of semblance because they do not coincide with thought and because the sensations they produce do not coincide with semblance.
But to whom or on what do the senses dissemble? Being unreal, how can they deceive? That which does not exist cannot even practice deceit. Therefore, the origin of illusion and semblance are an enigma and that enigma constitutes a contradiction.
From the mobility of reason follows the reality of motion and from the enigma regarding the origin of semblance follows the impossibility of Parmenidean semblance.
Again, take Parmenides argument on Being: “The existent alone has Being; the non‑existent has no being.” If motion has being, “then what is true of being in general and in all cases is true of motion: it is uncreated, eternal, indestructible, without increase or decrease.”
If Parmenidean semblance lacks being, insofar as something which does not exist cannot deceive or do anything else, then change (all becoming) does exist, or at least is protected from Parmenidean discard, in which case this world of change must necessarily be characterized as a sum of existent essentia, all of which exist simultaneously for all eternity. This argument too indicates that there is no Becoming, only a multiplicity of qualities, each of which have Being, including Motion. At each and every moment, all essentia in the world exist simultaneously, unchanged, undiminished, without increase, and without decrease. An eon later, the same is true; nothing has changed. And if the world looks totally different from time to time, it is not because of illusion or semblance; rather, it is because of motion. True being is sometimes moved this way and sometimes that way, through a multitude of change between chaos and order.
- Despite the argument presented here by Nietzsche, philosophers who came after Parmenides accepted the doctrine of Being and denied the possibility of Becoming in this world. Moreover, Thales’ doctrine of the origin of the Many in the One was also denied.
Anaximander
The like can never produce the unlike and change (i.e., the plurality of qualities, the Many) can never be explained out of a single existent (the One).
N: But if the world is in fact full of the many different qualities, then, if they are not semblance, they must have Being, which means they must be forever uncreated, imperishable, and always simultaneously existent.
This doctrine stands in direct opposition to Thales’ doctrine of the Many from the One insofar as it claims there is no One but only the Many, only a plurality of qualities, and never more, never fewer, and never newer qualities. All change is explicable as an effect of Motion. And Motion is truth, as Anaxagoras proved with his argument regarding the succession of idea in thought.
Anaximander’s doctrine disposes of Parmenides’ doctrine of one Being, which is dead and inert. In its place, there are now many Beings and they are all in motion.
The argument now proceeds to the question of the origin of Motion.
Does Motion leave the essentia of the Many untouched, in which case Motion is alien to the Many? Or does Motion adhere to the essentia of the Many?
The critical question here is: “if the Many exists, and it moves, what moves it?
Do the many Beings move each other? Does gravity move them? Or are there forces of attraction and repulsion inherent in the Beings themselves? Or does the impetus of Motion lie outside the many Beings? Specifically, when two things show succession, does the change originate in them? Or is there a third thing that moves them?
Nietzsche’s supposed argument by Parmenides against Anaxagoras’ argument for Motion:
- Take two essentia, each existent in itself with a totally different and independently absolute being, which is what Anaxagoras proposes.
- According to their nature, they can never collide or move each other or attract each other. There is no causality between them. They do not touch each other, disturb each other, or concern each other.
- Therefore, repulsion is as inexplicable as attraction because an absolute alienation precludes any exertion. So there can be no moving or being moved.
- Anaxagoras’ argument for Motion can only be saved by ascribing adherent Motion to Being. But adherent Motion would make all movement an illusion because independent and absolute Being precludes any manner of effect.
- Motion does not accord with essentia. Rather, Motion is forever alien to essentia. Eleatic essentia is an absolute and unmoved entity.
Speaking for Anaxogoras, Nietzsche counters Parmenides’ argument against Motion:
- Every existent occupies space. Therefore, two or more existents cannot occupy the same space. Therefore, existents must contend for the same space, and there must be collisions. This contest constitutes strife and this strife constitutes all Becoming.
- Inherent in the above argument is the premise that all existents are not wholly isolated and absolutely different. Rather, they share one quality: that which occupies space. In respect to this one quality, all existents were alike and equal. According, all change depends not on their differences but on their similarity (with regard to this one quality).
- The existence of collisions, which Anaxogoras argues, refutes his argument for the existence of wholly absolute and independent Beings.
Anaxogoras’ argument for the Many is refuted by his proposition that the number of Beings comprising the Many is infinite insofar as everything that is infinite has no Being. Therefore, the Many has no Being and does not exist.
Insofar as ideas show succession, they have Motion. Anaxagoras proposes that ideas move by their own exertion (i.e., they are not pushed nor is there anything outside the ideas that exerts itself on the ideas). Therefore, according to Anaxagoras, there is something that carries in itself the origin and the beginning of Motion. Moreover, idea move not only itself but something outside itself as well (e.g., the body).
Anaxagoras gives a name to the faculty of the ideas and calls it nous.
Anaxagoras concludes that there is something that carries in itself the origin and beginning of motion because ideas are not pushed and because there is nothing outside of idea that exerts itself upon idea, and yet idea clearly possesses motion.
Anaxagoras also attributes the movements of matter to the nous, insofar as the ideas can move the body
The most difficult question about motion to answer is that regarding its origin, which is called the causa sui, the first movement.
Causa sui exists between rest and motion, and, thus, constitutes a contradiction in terms.
The motion of causa sui as an aboriginal endowment is not feasible because all motion possesses direction. All motion is a condition, a relation.
But Anaxagoras’ Being, which is absolutely independent, is contradicted by the existence of motion, which necessarily refers to something else, another existent, insofar as it is going somewhere or exerting itself upon something else.
Anaxagoras’ nous is considered self‑moving and independent, an exception to the rule indicated by causa sui.
However, the effect of causa sui on nous was to separate nous from the body, which gave rise to the “eternal spirit.”
Nous had choice in movement. It could begin movement, and it could do so when it chose to. It could “stick to itself” or act upon the world.
Nous is considered the germination of all Becoming.
There was a time when nous exerted no influence upon the world. This time was the period of Anaxagorian chaos.
An accurate conception of Anaxagorian chaos is contingent upon a comprehension of Anaxagoras’ theory of becoming. In the beginning, it was not necessarily true that all parts of all things were utterly separated and mixed up. Rather, there may have been a partial separation of all parts and an irregular juxtaposition of those parts in chaos.
Anaxagoras’ theory of Becoming proposes that everything originates from everything. Accordingly, opposites arise from each other. All existents contain all parts, both similar and dissimilar (i.e., opposites). A preponderance of similar parts constitutes the identity we give it. The question then is “how does a preponderance of similar parts occur?” Answer: through motion, through Becoming.
Anaxagoras’ theory of Becoming is based on two assumptions: (1) All existents contain all parts, and (2) like adds to like.
No where, in all of Nietzsche’s work, In addition, in ‘Tragic Age, Nietzsche also Insofar as Becoming necessarily employs mysticism, in which logos is utterly absent, any dialectical inquiry into its process is bound to fail and will illumine only the mechanistic quality of the process. In addition, in ‘Tragic Age, Nietzsche annotates his examination of this historic argument with his commentary on the One must ask, therefore, why Nietzsche enters into this historical argument and then adds to it with his own logic when, in fact, he expresses nothing but disdain for both an interpretation of Becoming based on its supposed logos and the logical mode of thought by which all dialectical inquiry proceeds. I find no explanation anywhere. Moreover, I find no other instance, in all of his work, in which he engages in dialectic to argue anything. I can only imagine then that, given the high stature accorded this argument throughout the history of Occidental philosophy, he felt compelled to address it in its native tongue in order to refute once and for all the ascension of Being over Becoming, which he did, resoundingly. He finds actuality in Becoming and semblance in Being, and, while he accords a role for Being in the process of Becoming, it is an entirely transitory role.
In Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks [hereafter ‘Tragic Age], Nietzsche presents his interpretation of the historic dialectical inquiry into the process of Becoming and the role played by Being within that process as it the argument was spun out by a lineage of ancient Greek philosophers, from Thales to Anaximander. He also adds to the argument with his own dialectic, and ‘Tragic Age is the only instance in all of Nietzsche’s work in which he engages in dialectic, which makes it demonstrably notable. In addition, however, in ‘Tragic Age, Nietzsche also annotates the dialectic, both his own and that of the Seven Sages, with a judgmental commentary on the two modes of thought by which all philosophical inquiry proceeds. Specifically, he clearly shows disdain for logical thought and intuitive thought.
Overall, he refutes the argument for Being as a purely transitory element of Becoming, not an entity independent of Becoming and not its object. In addition, he has annotated the argument with his comments on the two logical and intuitive modes of thought by which philosophical inquiry proceeds. is the only instance in all of Nietzsche’s work in which he presents an exercise in dialectical thought. In this instance, the object of that thought is an inquiry into the nature of Becoming with an eye toward an understanding of the role played by Being and Motion in that process. Actually, the thought presented is Nietzsche’s take on the various contributions made by the Seven Sages
The philosopher is a very rare breed of human being, not just for the reach of his undertaking but for the scarcity of his number as well. Even more rare is when a lineage of philosophers will undertake the same undertaking, as when the Seven Sages undertook an inquiry into the process of Becoming. In his book, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, Nietzsche recalls that historic undertaking so as to analyze it, elucidate it, and, most importantly, to revive it and add to it.
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (PTAG) was not the first book I started on when I began reading Nietzsche. That was Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Z), but I did not understand one word of Z for a whole year. I also read much of the Will‑To‑Power (WP) and much of The Birth of Tragedy (BT). Along the way, I dabbled in this and that, and PTAG was one that I dabbled in. But when I finished BT twenty years later, I then turned to a reading of PTAG to a complete grasp of whatever Nietzsche was saying in it. What I found is his vision of the philosopher as a physician tending to a sick culture. This was the vision toward which Nietzsche began making his way, and he started with this book, PTAG. In order to succeed, he had to find the values by which to heal the sick culture. He found one value amongst the ancient Greeks, and that was tragedy, and he found the other value within himself. Through mystical intuition, a type of revelation that originates deep within, far beyond consciousness, he discovered the single force of nature within us that drives the process of life within us, and he called it the will‑to‑power.
An Attempt to Resume the Converse
A Role for Philosophy – or Not!
Nietzsche asks the question “What good can philosophy provide man?” Specifically, he states that, in order to justify a role for philosophy in life, one must show the good it does when a healthy people engages in it. He also points out that philosophy can do harm to an unhealthy people who engages in it. And that a people may enjoy good health absent the practice of philosophy, as the Romans did during their best period. But, and this is his most important question, where do we look to see a people whose health is disintegrating and find a philosophy that has restored their health?
For Nietzsche, the ancient Greeks possessed a truly robust health. Therefore, being the possessors of great health and having practiced philosophy, as they did, they forever justified a place in life for philosophy, for no other reason than for having practiced it, by virtue of their greatness. But, he argues, they did not know when to stop philosophizing, so that, when their health began to disintegrate, their philosophizing hastened – rather than halted – the disintegration of their health. However, what is more important about the ancient Greeks is not that they did not stop philosophizing at the right time but that they started it at the right time, at the peak of their good health. One does not, Nietzsche argues, begin philosophizing when trouble arrives. Rather, in comparing Man to a plant, one may say that the best philosophy flows forth when the plant has completed its ascent and produces its fruit, and it is the fruit that bespeaks the philosophy that produced it, not its beginnings or its various stages of growth. Therefore, in seeking to cull or extract the wisdom from a philosophy that successfully restored a culture from deteriorating health to growth, one should look for it in that fruit.
Nietzsche attributes to the Greeks the ability to assimilate into their culture the good things they found in other foreign cultures and the ability to develop those good things to an even greater good.
The very reason [the Greeks] got so far is that they knew how to pick up the spear where others had left it. Their skill in the art of fruitful learning was admirable. We ought to be learning from our neighbors precisely as the Greeks learned from theirs, not for the sake of learned pedantry but rather using everything we learn as a foothold which will take us up high, and higher than our neighbor.
One should not attempt to illuminate the good that a philosophy does by uncovering its beginnings because its beginnings lay in barbarism or chaos. Nor should one undertake an evaluation of a philosophy with an unrestrained thirst for knowledge, just for the sake of knowledge. The drive upon which an evaluation of philosophy proceeds must keep an eye on what is good and what is bad in the service of life as a criterion for evaluation.
Whatever the Greeks learned they then wanted to live through.
Nietzsche perceives an historic inquiry into the nature of being and becoming playing out over several centuries between Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and Socrates, a lineage of thought that begins with Thales and ends with Socrates. It is this inquiry that Nietzsche attempts to document in PTAG.
In seeking out the best culture in order to demonstrate the utility of philosophy within a culture, Nietzsche chooses ancient Greek culture because it was the only culture in which philosophy found a place to thrive. In other cultures, philosophy caused a disturbance of some manner. In ancient Greek culture, philosophy fit right in.
Nietzsche draws a distinction between those philosophers who preceded Plato and those who succeeded him. Those who preceded him, the Seven Sages, are clearly distinguishable from each other and each made a unique contribution to the “historic conversation,” but, after Plato, including Plato himself, philosophers are a mixture of the Seven Sages and are not unique themselves. Whereas the Seven Sages each sought salvation for the whole through philosophy, those who succeeded them, the mixed types, though they also sought salvation through philosophy, they sought it for the individual or for members of their sect or school. By secularizing philosophy, the mixed types removed her from the forefront of Greek culture and thereby exiled her.
When philosophy appears within a society that lacks culture, which Nietzsche defines as a unity of style in art, in religion, and in all the various endeavors through which life strives, then that society will not know what to do with philosophy and, in any case, lacking culture, philosophy will be politicized, brought into the norm. Without culture, philosophy cannot achieve its full potential nor can it play any role in life – because, without culture, there is no life.
The Converse, In Summa
The converse begins with Thales who, according to Nietzsche, claims that water is the origin out of which all things come into the world. Nietzsche makes three points regarding Thales claim: (1) it says something about the origin from which all things come into the world, (2) Thales articulated his claim in terms that were not allegorical, and (3) it expresses the thought that “all things are one.” Nietzsche argues that Thales’ claim is philosophical, not religious or scientific. He argues that Thales was not saying to seek absolution in the cleansing effects of the sea, nor was he saying earth and air derive from water. Rather, according to Nietzsche, Thales was saying that the world is one of becoming, utterly absent of being. On the first point, Nietzsche says, Thales’ claim is a religious statement. On the second, it is scientific, and, on the third, it is philosophical. Superstition and religion drove Thales to speculate on Nature. Science drove him to seek a substance with which Nature creates itself. And philosophy drove him
[1] Actually, though Nietzsche’s intent was to examine the entire argument as it was carried by Thales, Anaximander, Heracleitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, and Socrates, he ended with Anaxagoras. However, he took up the examination again in The Birth of Tragedy with Socrates (even though ‘Birth was published prior to ‘Tragic Age), and, in most respects, it may be said that he successfully ended his examination of this historic argument there, as I will show.
[2] See