Nietzsche sharply criticized the Greek tradition's over-emphasis on reason in his Die Götzendämmerung (Twilight of the Idols) (1889). Reliance on abstract concepts in a quest for absolute truth, he supposed, is merely a symptom of the degenerate personalities of philosophers like Socrates. From this Nietzsche concluded that traditional philosophy and religion are both erroneous and harmful for human life; they enervate and degrade our native capacity for achievement.
Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche
A 19th-century literary masterpiece, tremendously influential in the arts and in philosophy, uses the Persian religious leader Zarathustra to voice the author’s views, in...
