Twilight of the Idols: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer by Friedrich Nietzsche. Short summary

5 seconds

The work includes Nietzsche’s musings on the problem of Socratic philosophy, the inanimate mind and philosophers like inanimate mummies, questions of morality, and the 4 great delusions.

1 minute

In the first chapter, the philosopher discusses the problem of Socrates. He considers him the wisest man and healer of vices in ancient Greece. Later he refutes these claims. Socrates was not wise because he questioned the meaning of life. Nietzsche considers his judgments about the value of life to be nonsense.

He calls Socrates a decadent and a harbinger of civilization’s demise. He was a healer of vices because he himself had them. One physiognomist considered him the worst criminal. Socrates agrees with this, but says that he was able to rid himself of his vices. He puts the worst tyrant against them, the mind. Like the mind killing the living, Socrates’ philosophy ruined civilization.

In the second chapter, Nietzsche calls reason and philosophers inanimate mummies. They kill everything that came before, just as Socrates put reason at the center of the universe. Philosophers derive higher concepts, which are also detached from life and deprived of their skeletons.