Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T20:52:30.390Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Nietzsche on the Contest between Homer and Plato

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2022

Peter J. Ahrensdorf
Affiliation:
Davidson College, North Carolina
Get access

Summary

Nietzsche criticizes Plato for having praised the philosophic life in such a way as to deprive the active political and military life of the honor and vitality it enjoyed in the Greek culture founded by Homer and therefore seems to call for a reversal of the moral and political legacy of Platonism and Christianity and a revival of Homeric culture. But Nietzsche ultimately criticizes Plato more seriously, not for explicitly celebrating the philosophic life as the best way of life for a human being, but rather for presenting the philosopher as a champion of morality and religion and thereby obscuring the skeptical nature of the philosopher and he therefore seeks, through his rhetorical presentation of philosophy as emphatically opposed to morality and religion, to reintroduce the radical moral and religious skepticism of philosophy to a world that has lost sight of it.

Type
Chapter
Information
Homer and the Tradition of Political Philosophy
Encounters with Plato, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche
, pp. 247 - 305
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×