Teddy Larkin

Osman Nemli
Phil 100
11/14/12
Nietzsche, 31-57
Maxims and Arrows, the first section in Nietzsches Twilight of the Idols, is a
random series of 44 aphorisms. One of the aphorisms, number 44, states: The formula of
my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal. I interpret this as meaning that Saying
yes to things that make you happy and no to things that dont will allow you to follow a
straight line, the most direct path, to your goal of happiness. Nietzsche establishes early
on in the next section, The Problem of Socrates, that the value of life cannot be estimated.
He mocks past philosophers and criticizes them for being depressing. He even claims that
Socrates could not have been correct because he was so ugly. He also tries to show that
philosophers from Socrates onwards use dialectical rationality as a tool to preserve their
authority
In the section titled: Reason in Philosophy, Nietzsche denies many of Plato's
ideas, specifically those focused on the world of the forms and the fallibility of the
senses. According to Nietzsche, if one is to accept a non-sensory world as superior and
our sensory world as inferior, then one is adopting a hate of nature and thus a hate of the
sensory world. Nietzsche indicates that since Christians believe in Heaven, which is in
concept similar to Plato's ideas of the world of forms and that Christians divide the world
into the heaven and the living world, they too hate nature.
In How the "True World" Finally Became Fiction, Nietzsche demonstrates the
process by which previous philosophers have fictionalized the apparent world, removing
the concept of the real world. He claims the idea of a real world has become useless, as it
provides no consolation or motive. He asks: What world is left? The concept of the real
world has been abolished, and with it, the idea of an apparent world follows.