Nietzsche in a nutshell: An interpretation of 'Twilight of the Idols

Friedrich Nietzsche is the philosopher of our age; as such his thought is deserving of careful and concentrated study. The death of God that is proclaimed in his writings is both a catastrophe and an opportunity, both debilitating and liberating, in short, it opens up the possibility of both the Last Man and the Superman. This dissertation is an interpretation of Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols, the work which Nietzsche himself says is "a very stringent and subtle expression of my whole philosophical heterodoxy " and contains his "philosophy in a nut-shell." Nietzsche's philosophical heterodoxy comprises both style and content. Eschewing a systematic presentation of his philosophic thought (e.g., in contrast to Hegel), Nietzsche expresses his insights both poetically and aphoristically. It is here that we first see "how to philosophize with a hammer" and, by implication, it is here that we first see the requirements of character that one must possess to philosophize in this manner. An overriding theme of Twilight is the philosopher, his activity, and how his nature makes him suited for it. Nietzsche's radical confrontation with the problem of Socrates, the exemplar of the traditional spirit of philosophy, culminates in a critical revision of the platonic image, a revision that clarifies the example of the first political philosopher and, thus, further refines our idea of the philosophic life and its relationship to and status within the city. Nietzsche, moreover, demonstrates how the improvement of mankind proceeds in a manner akin to the development of truth: man's nature is fixed and pruned so that he may survive, thus, all morality is anti-natural in the same way as all truth is erroneous. The philosophic and political coherence of Twilight of the Idols rests upon and grows out of Nietzsche's conception of nature, or rather, his conception of life understood as preservation-enhancement. The dissertation concludes that Nietzsche sees life as the ultimate criterion, meaning that one's reasoning and one's way of life, in the absence of God, in the final analysis, must square with the primacy of the existence of life so understood.