The Perception of Socrates' Ethics in F. Nietzsche's Moral Philosophy: Overcoming Metaphysics and its "Eternal Recurrence"

Kosorukova Aleksandra Andreevna Senior Lecturer; Department of Ethics; Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya str., 10k2 a.kosorukova@yandex.ru

Frolova Margarita Nikolaevna Student; Department of Ethics; Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 6 Miklukho-Maklaya str., Moscow, 117198, Russia 1132223181@rudn.ru

The figure of Friedrich Nietzsche and his philosophical ideas reveal and fully illustrate the crisis of European thought. Realizing the deep crisis of European culture and classical philosophy, Nietzsche explores the formation of the original origins of both the first and second phenomena. A critical mindset permeates Nietzsche's entire moral philosophy. It is an ethical concept that is based on a critique of previous ethical concepts, rational humanism, any kind of dogmatism and idealism. The metaphysical construct as a vivid expression of frozen abstract definitions also becomes the object of his criticism. After all, all the previous philosophy, in which Nietzsche sees inconsistency, is essentially connected with metaphysics. In metaphysics, Nietzsche criticizes the division of the world into illusory, meaningless and true, expedient: "Philosophers have a prejudice against illusory, changeability, suffering, death, physicality, feelings, fate and necessity, against the purposeless" ^{[1, p. 236]}.

Nietzsche draws a direct parallel of this kind of metaphysics with the phenomenon of morality: "Since the time of Plato, philosophy has been dominated by morality. Even among his predecessors, moral explanations strongly invade philosophy… The progress of philosophy has been delayed most of all until now by hidden moral motives" ^{[1, p. 238]}. Therefore, when criticizing metaphysical manifestations, Nietzsche primarily criticizes morality itself. According to the German philosopher, the justification and affirmation of morality through metaphysical justification should not be the task of philosophy. That is why Nietzsche speaks of overcoming metaphysics as the possibility of the birth of a new person who is not "constrained" by the dogmas of religion and morality. Since metaphysical thinking is based on moral judgments, which are expressed in binary evaluative thinking, according to Nietzsche, this should be abandoned.

Despite his radical criticism of the ideas of classical philosophy, Nietzsche does not fall out of the historical and philosophical tradition. His thinking was shaped by the influence of many philosophers, ranging from Socrates, Plato, Epicurus and ending with Goethe, Schopenhauer and Pascal. The German thinker absorbed some of their ideas and reflected them explicitly in his philosophical concept, something (for example, a critical mindset towards Socrates) was born as a result of contrasting thinking, critically skeptical conclusions.

The figure of Socrates as the founder of ethical rationalism

Socrates is rightly considered one of those thinkers in the history of philosophy who questioned the generally accepted model of life and thought about the moral model. Socrates considered the primary and fundamental task to be the care of the soul, everything else was secondary, and therefore not worth special consideration. He "neglected everything that the majority cares about – self-interest, household chores, military ranks, speeches in the national assembly, participation in government, conspiracies, uprisings" ^{[2, p. 106]}. Plato, who adopted the Socratic mindset and devoted an impressive number of pages to his teacher in his series of dialogues, "sought to show the role and significance of the thinker, who was the first among philosophers to undertake the study of the ideal and proclaimed the existence of the ideal as a reality no less authentic and valid than the existence of sensually perceived things" ^{[3, p. 14]}.

In contrast to the natural philosophical methods that prevailed up to that time, which were primarily aimed at the knowledge of cosmological principles, Socrates strove for knowledge that would be able to express the "human essence". Unlike the popular teachings of the sophists in his time, he faced a completely "different task", namely, to rethink established social ideas and beliefs "not in order to prove that there is no truth and cannot be, but only to show that there is no truth in them and that the truth needs to be look elsewhere" ^{[4, p. 126]}.

The famous Delphic saying "Know thyself" reveals the essence and deepest meaning of Socrates' ethical views. Xenophon, in his work, managed to grasp the Socratic interpretation of this Delphic commandment: "Whoever knows himself knows what is useful for him, and clearly understands what he can and what he cannot. By doing what he knows, he satisfies his needs and lives happily, rather than taking on what he does not know, does not make mistakes and avoids misfortune. Thanks to this, he can also determine the value of other people and, using them as well, benefits and protects himself from misfortune" ^{[5, p. 78]}. Thus, Socratic self-knowledge was associated with a person's awareness of his own autonomy, comprehension and further unfolding of his true essence as a free being guided by moral principles.

The concept of virtue in Socrates is formed as the main human quality. And this quality acquires concrete forms, namely, it is confirmed in the form of knowledge. The acquisition of any knowledge implies a certain reflection, and, therefore, reason is necessary for reasoning about virtue as knowledge. According to Socrates, it is the human mind that is necessary for the improvement of human nature, knowledge achieved through reason can transform personal existence. The rationalistic principle can allow a person to expediently use the acquired knowledge as a tool for character transformation. Thus, Socrates is the one who for the first time gives morality rationalistic characteristics, making it a purely rational phenomenon. It is this "revolution", the transition of morality into a rational field, and later not only morality, but in general the entire philosophical heritage, despite all the admiration of the prevailing part of philosophical researchers, according to Nietzsche, is a gross, even fatal mistake.

Nietzsche's Critique of Socratic Philosophy

Nietzsche's critical perception and creative reinterpretation of Socrates' philosophy can be found already in "The Birth of Tragedy...", where he describes the appearance of the figure of Socrates as a "theoretical man". Such an idea of man was alien to the Greek culture of that period, and the "theoretical man" in its framework, according to Nietzsche, looked awkward and out of place. The philosopher offers a more detailed consideration of the problem in his work "Twilight of Idols". Nietzsche made an attempt to comprehend the significance and influence of the figure of Socrates on the development of philosophical thought, and in an exceptionally positive and enthusiastic way that is not typical for many researchers.

Nietzsche argues that Socratic emphasis on self-knowledge becomes a kind of saving anchor and a means of neutralizing human passions. "Natural impulses want to become tyrants; we need to come up with another tyrant who would curb them, would be stronger than them..." What did Socrates do? He proposed his own means, his own language, which should save the Greeks" [...] ^{[6, p. 26]}.

According to Nietzsche's most important philosophical and cultural concept, the two principles of human nature - Apollonian and Dionysian – are in constant antagonism and complementarity. The trace of this interaction is reflected, first of all, in the field of the art of tragedy. The very nature of the Attic tragedy was radically different from other cultural phenomena, which in their essence were always the product of one of the principles: either Apollonian or Dionysian. As Losev writes: "Tragedy arises as the Apollinian flowering of Dionysian ecstasy and music"^{[7, p. 7]}.

The death of the Greek tragedy gives rise to a completely new phenomenon for the Greeks of that time, the concept of a "theoretical man". The theoretical man clearly illustrated the split that had arisen, the nature of which Nietzsche was so eager to comprehend. The philosopher takes the figure of Socrates into consideration as a vivid representative of this destructive process for Nietzsche. The internal struggle in the Apollonian-Dionysian opposition also affected the entire Greek society, as Nietzsche says as follows: "His (Socrates') case was in fact only an extreme case, only the most conspicuous of what was then beginning to become a universal disaster..." ^{[8, T.2, p. 569]}.

For Nietzsche, it is tragic art that is the true form of perception of the world. The philosopher believes that the desire of Socrates and ancient philosophy only for reason is not a return to the origins of virtue, it is a disease that "resists instincts" ^{[9, p. 570]}. The equalization of virtue with knowledge and happiness, which Socrates postulates, is also seen by Nietzsche as a total delusion, because in the understanding of the German philosopher, happiness is associated with the instinctive and "worldly" nature of man:. "While life is rising, happiness is equal to instinct" ^{[9, p. 567]}.

Thus, for Nietzsche, Socrates is the complete embodiment of a number of problems relevant to Greek society at that time. Starting from Socrates as the most vivid symbol of the disintegration of Greek culture, Nietzsche was able to consider a number of important questions not only about the development of philosophy in a historical context, but also about its self-determination. Using the example of a specific cultural and historical period and the "Socratic problems" and "cracks in being" that arose there, Nietzsche points to an internal problem of modern philosophy.

Nietzsche's pronounced sympathy for the Dionysian man has quite definite grounds: the spirit of Dionysianism fully correlates with life itself, dissolves into it. The French thinker J. P. writes about this in an interesting way. Deleuze, speaking about Dionysus and noting the overcoming of the individual in Dionysian: "..., he crushes the individual, leads him to a great catastrophe and plunges him into the primordial being. Thus, he reproduces the contradiction as the pain of individuation, but resolves both states in the highest pleasure, involving us in the superabundance of a one-of-a-kind existence or universal will" ^{[10, p. 52]}.

The dialectic of Socrates, the principle of individuation, embodied by the figure of Apollo, is a serious blow to the tragic perception of the world, tragedy. For Nietzsche, Dionysus is a symbol of the vital principle, affirming life and far from the logic of justifying it. Socrates, according to Nietzsche, opposes the tragic, separating it from the Apollonian, creating an artificial abyss, as well as changing assessments of the role of the Dionysian. "Whereas in all productive people instinct is an affirmative and creative force, and consciousness is a critical and negative force, in Socrates instinct becomes critical, and consciousness becomes creative" ^{[10, p. 56]}, Nietzsche writes about this, pointing to Socrates' opposition of idea and life.

V. Bakusev, a researcher of Nietzschean thought about the matrix of European culture, emphasizes the importance for Nietzsche of the idea that the Greeks were the discoverers of the ideal as a conscious idea and those who elevated abstract logical thinking to the absolute. Thus, the mind, identified with the ideal, replaces reality, moreover, it becomes the source from which this reality begins to follow. "This understanding led them straight into the realm of illusion, and the values of illusory and reality were reversed in comparison with the actual state of affairs in the psyche" ^{[11, p. 11]}. The entire subsequent history of European thought in one way or another concentrates on the development of primarily abstract logical forms of understanding reality, and this inevitability in development was laid down, according to Nietzsche, primarily by Socrates himself and the great teachers of ancient Greek thought who followed him. Bakusev writes about this as follows: "the accelerated development of abstract logical thinking" occurs at the expense and to the detriment of natural mental integrity (painful splitting of human nature) for the purpose of predatory exploitation of life, that is, reserves of general mental energy, on the part of the "I" complex" ^{[11, p. 12]}.

The attitude of Lev Shestov, the most important researcher of Nietzschean criticism of rationalism, to Socrates can be seen in a large number of his works. Socrates' mind enslaves both the person himself and the entire creative component. In his opinion, the cult of the rationalistic tradition of Socrates should be abandoned. "We were all seduced by his wisdom, which still holds us captive" ^{[12, p. 37]}.

The similarity of Shestov's views with Nietzsche about Socrates lies in the disagreement between the opposition of the idea of life itself. J. speaks about a similar approach. Deleuze, calling the ancient Greek philosopher "the first genius of decadence" ^{[10, p. 56]}. Nietzsche's rejection of the figure of Socrates, namely the program of the "theoretical man" launched by him, which, according to the philosopher, had a disastrous effect on the phenomenon of thinking itself and its subsequent development, clearly indicate the denial by the German philosopher of the good influence of Socrates. But what if Nietzsche himself was subject to socratism? Ludwig Klages covers this topic in his book devoted to the study of both Nietzsche's philosophical views and his personality itself. Klages points out that Nietzsche's ardent skepticism was to some extent based on the Socratic mindset, just as, according to the philosopher, skepticism and Socratism are essentially something similar, namely "two different forms of manifestation of nihilism within the framework of rationality" ^{[13, p. 188]}.

In his early work "On Truth and Falsehood in an Extra-moral Sense," Nietzsche criticizes the prevailing idea of truth, but at the same time does not abandon its search. The theme of intellectual honesty as an opportunity to realize the limits of one's competence and bring judgments to a state of consistency with reason is a manifestation of Socratic philosophy in Nietzschean thought. But what is especially interesting is that Nietzsche himself has the term "intellectual conscience", which is very similar in nature to this "intellectual honesty". For Socrates, objective truth already initially resides in the human mind, therefore his Maieutics, as a method of philosophizing, is aimed at extracting hidden knowledge. The search for truth for Nietzsche does not lie in the realm of duty, in fact, as well as the call to reason is not a guarantee for obtaining the truth. Nietzsche defines intellectual conscience as follows: "I noticed in other pious people hatred of reason, and I was grateful to them for this: at least here at least an evil intellectual conscience gave itself away" ^{[14, p. 34]}. And further, "for the majority, there is nothing humiliating in simply believing in something and living according to it, without thinking much about the underlying causes, without weighing all the pros and cons, without bothering to search for any arguments" ^{[14, p. 33]}. The rationality condemned by Nietzsche is no longer so categorically rejected by him, on the contrary, the philosopher seems to see in it the need to get rid of any misconceptions. Isn't this a manifestation of the spirit of Socratic dialectics?

If for Socrates the criterion of knowledge is inextricably linked with reason, then for Nietzsche it lies in life itself. Since the phenomenon of life is the dominant force for the philosopher, it should determine cognition. Nietzsche's life is a manifestation of direct naturalness in man, the achievement of which is the ultimate goal of a mind attuned to an intellectual conscience. Nietzsche is certainly an existential thinker, his philosophy is permeated with the theme of vitality. Idealistic constructions, divorced from the realities of life, not correlated with human experience, in Nietzsche's understanding, are something ossified, dead and hardly having the right to exist.

According to Nietzsche, the rationalistic tradition is nothing more than an expression of the same disease of degeneration. An expression of Socrates' illness was his turn to the dialectical method, which was described by the philosopher as "the last weapon, as revenge of the oppressed." "Before Socrates," Nietzsche writes, "dialectical manners were shunned in good society: they were considered bad manners, they compromised … What requires proof first has little value. Wherever authority is still among the good customs, where it is not "justified" but commanded, the dialectician is something of a buffoon..." ^{[9, p. 565]}. The reason for this ostentatious contempt for dialectics and proof as such, Nietzsche sees, along with the motives of the "revenge of the oppressed" (i.e., lack of freedom), also the danger of the "tyranny of thought". Dialectics, as Nietzsche further writes, "As a dialectic, you have a merciless weapon in your hands: with it you can become a tyrant; by winning, you compromise. The dialectician leaves it to his opponent to prove that he is not an idiot..." ^{[9, p. 565]}.

Nietzsche sees in dialectics, despite the fact that it is based on the unification of opposites, the inability to get along with tragic action. Dialectics (and evidence-based thinking in general) turns out to be too one-sided in its desire to streamline reality and justify it logically. "For who is able to ignore the optimistic element in the very essence of dialectics: it celebrates its triumph in every conclusion and can breathe only in an atmosphere of clarity, consciousness and coolness, this optimistic element, once embedded in tragedy, will eventually drown out all the zones where the Dionysian grows, and inevitably lead it to self-destruction, will lead to the point that it jumps straight into the petty-bourgeois drama" ^{[8, pp. 142-143]}. In this understanding of dialectics, Nietzsche's criticism of it is the criticism of metaphysics – the justifying and unambiguously regulating thinking that Nietzsche associates with the figure of Socrates.

Socrates' Ethics as a Question of Nietzsche's Metaphysics of Morality

The criticism of Socrates' philosophical views largely forms the key tenets of Nietzsche's moral philosophy. Considering these provisions in the key of the question of how much Nietzsche overcomes metaphysical features of thinking, and how much he leaves them, makes it possible to answer the question of the nature of the phenomenon of morality in the structure of Nietzsche's own thought. First, let's analyze what Nietzsche aims to overcome in Socratic ethics. Then we will identify other parallels between the ethical ideas of Socrates and the moral questioning of Nietzsche.

The first thing to begin with, when talking about Nietzsche's overcoming of Socratic views ("theoretical man"), is to overcome the separation of the Apollonian and Dionysian principles of culture in ethics. The Apollonian spirit, in which Nietzsche feels the "smell of decay," reduces, as he figuratively puts it, the fullness and exuberance of life into an illusion. The power of such a spirit, hidden in intelligence, undermines the foundations of life itself and has a detrimental effect on the creative, and therefore the creative component. Socrates' philosophy, permeated with an Apollonian mindset, becomes, according to Nietzsche, a destroyer of life and turns against itself. Instead of giving birth to a life-affirming thought, she questions and even takes the path of denying the phenomenon of life. In what way? He opposes it with "higher values", with which life must be correlated, otherwise, in the absence of comparison, life loses its active force and even undergoes devaluation.

The second position that Nietzsche seeks to establish in moral philosophy, in contrast to Socratic ethics, is a different understanding of the state of the search for truth. And although Nietzsche and Socrates are rather similar in the form of this idea (both speak of an endless search and refinement of concepts). However, Nietzsche emphasizes the insufficient correspondence of Socrates' thought to his own formula. Nietzsche sees (or wants to see) Socrates is as follows: the Socratic formula, which consists in correlating any belief with reason, provides a guarantee for its correctness and truth. However, a firm belief in the absolute truth generates a critical mindset regarding beliefs that differ in content. Nietzsche focuses on constant questioning, on the eternal search for truth, a person who is in a state of becoming is open to the world, and sees much wider and more, without stumbling on various kinds of beliefs that can give the impression of unconditional truths. "Beliefs are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies" ^{[8, vol. 1, p. 453]}. A person who is convinced that he has found a reliable way to find the truth, according to Nietzsche, is more than prone to delusion. Socrates' "culpability" in this mindset, i.e., the correlation of any phenomenon with the rationalist tradition is quite controversial, but his influence on the development of such an attitude by subsequent thinkers, which later becomes a kind of trend, is clearly traceable.

The third characteristic (combining the first two), in which Nietzsche "blames" Socrates, is the spirit of decline, nihilism. Nietzsche sees in Socrates all the symptoms of the concept of "decadence". He reproaches Socrates' resistance to the "tragic worldview", the opposition of reasonableness in relation to active life, the belittling of its significance in favor of compliance with higher values and unconditional truth. According to Nietzsche, nihilism is understood here as the most general "problem" of Socrates. The answer to the nihilism imputed to Socrates, in Nietzsche's thought, is the idea of self-overcoming, self-growth of the will to power ^{[15, p. 414]}. The will to power is seen as an instance of overcoming the "theoretical man", while Nietzsche's attention to the will as an extra-theoretical, even irrational, principle in man is the most important difference between the ethical views of the two thinkers.

The above-mentioned structures of Socrates' thought, which Nietzsche designates as an object of overcoming, nevertheless contain already what Nietzsche, willingly or unwittingly, continues in his thought. In the case of the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy, Nietzsche, accusing Socrates of forgetting the second principle, seeks to recreate the image of the lost unity. And if Socrates, according to Nietzsche, is responsible for the absolutization of the Apollonian to the detriment of the Dionysian, then it is legitimate to ask whether Nietzsche does not use a similar, but reverse absolutization of the Dionysian, which does not tolerate the system in Nietzsche's thought so much that Dionysus himself turns out to be "crucified" (destroyed himself?) in one of Nietzsche's self–definitions.

In the case of the idea of eternal becoming, a parallel arises with the image of endless progress in truth, which became a textbook for understanding the most important basis of Socrates' thought about knowledge and virtue. "I only know that I know nothing," is the so-called third axiom of Socratic thought, along with the thesis of Eudaemonism and the identification of virtue and knowledge ^{[16, p. 92]}. Nietzsche, perhaps more than anyone else in the history of European philosophical thought, echoes the structure of the eternal formation of truth in Socrates. And if a powerful tradition of rationalistic ethics grows out of this thesis, then the idea of Nietzsche's eternal becoming, at least, may, if not be the basis of the rationalistic in the ethics of modernity, then at least it may coexist with it.

As for the third "point of overcoming" Nietzsche's Socratic nihilism, the intersections of the two previous metaphysical structures of thought are also visible here: the unity of the opposites of vitality and rationality, as well as eternal becoming. Nihilism as a Nietzsche theme can be interpreted not only from the point of view of a value-destroying vital impulse. But, for example, as K. Jaspers sees, nihilism in Nietzsche's philosophy can express "1) the aspect of criticism of the universally significant, universal in man, and as a result – the emphasis on the individual existential plan of existence of morality; 2) the aspect of overcoming the limitations of moral assessments through the positive acceptance of a rich range of their forms in formation" ^[17]. And if we do not limit metaphysics as a structure of thought only to questions about generally significant categories, then Socrates and Nietzsche have in common the search for an existential way of giving birth to the truth about morality (Socrates's Maieutics, Nietzsche's aphoristic style), and overcoming the limitations of moral assessments as something formulaic, formal, frozen.

Conclusions and results

Nietzsche's critical argumentation in relation to the philosophical views of Socrates was considered as the basis for the key provisions of Nietzsche's moral philosophy, in particular in terms of its connection with the question of metaphysics. The foundations of Nietzsche's perception of Socratic ethical thought were analyzed, the key points of disagreement and Nietzsche's postulation of the need to overcome them were identified.

In the variety of perceptions of Nietzsche's criticism of Socrates, the key points were highlighted, which in general form the basis of what Nietzsche wanted to overcome in Socrates' "theoretical man". At the same time, it was revealed what can be understood as a continuation of Socratic ideas in Nietzsche's concept of morality.

Summarizing the above-mentioned provisions of Nietzsche's moral philosophy and his project of overcoming metaphysics based on the material of Socratic ethics, it is necessary to note the following consequences of this project. In contrast to many works that analyzed the perception of the figure of Socrates in Nietzsche's general philosophical views, the focus of the work is to consider the question of Socrates' influence on the emergence of European nihilism (the loss of the Dionysian, tragic beginning of culture as the basis for the loss of higher values). Hence Nietzsche's idea of Socrates as the creator and exponent of the "theoretical man". It was analyzed how the image of Socrates as an "educator", the founder of rationalistic morality, is criticized by Nietzsche as the source of the emergence of a new hypostasis of human existence - the "theoretical man". In this regard, the influence of Nietzsche on the formation of the concept of man through overcoming the theoretical man is shown. The idea of self-overcoming was considered as a generalizing idea, which can be designated as one of the most important features of Nietzsche's moral philosophy. Given the obvious parallelism with Socrates' endless search for knowledge, it can be concluded that in this idea Nietzsche overcomes the theoretical man himself. This idea also underlies the structure of thought about the will to power, which, in the case of its self-growth, is understood by Nietzsche as the basis not only of being, but of a better being, and therefore of morality in its highest sense.