What Is The Critique Of Reason In Nietzschean Philosophy

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Critique of Reason Through a Nietzschean Lens Reason has arguably been the driving force behind most popular philosophies since the peak of the Greco-Roman era thousands of years ago. The works of philosophers of reason, like Plato, who Nietzsche fervently critiques, have laid the groundwork for many of his ideological successors to proving reason to be the ultimate goal of all philosophy - a way to explain the unknown world and utilize knowledge as a means to quantify and qualify existence. Reason, no doubt, is critical to philosophical thought; however, it’s reached a point where the questions reason poses overpower intuitive and emotional philosophizing that favors a deeper understanding of oneself, one’s desires, and one’s relationship …show more content…
Reason, in the sense it is used in this essay, is meant to describe the set of ideas that have guided the discipline of philosophy since the era of the Greeks, popularized by the works of Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato. These philosophers in particular have been crystalized in philosophy through the widespread adaption of “reason” as the ultimate form of higher thinking. Separate from reason, then, are emotions, which are generally regarded to be of lesser importance than reason, and are a main point of contention and criticism for the Greeks. It is this idealistic, romanticized, and highly exclusionary ideology of “reason,” as well as the fantasized “true world” – a world that is supposedly only reached through pure, intellectually rich reason – that drives these Nietzschean critiques. Likewise, the inability of the discipline of philosophy as a whole to reinvent itself without relying on this ideologically stale form of philosophy is another strong contention. However, this is not to say that reason, as its own philosophy, is unimportant or removable from the entire discipline of philosophy; however, the lack of real progress in philosophy, that does not stem from some branch of Grecian reason, is …show more content…
He says “There must be mere appearance, there must be some deception which prevents us from perceiving that which has being: where is the deceiver?’ ‘We have found him,’ they cry jubilantly; ‘it is the senses! These senses, so immoral in other ways too, deceive us concerning the true world.” (Twilight p. 13). This quote dramatically illustrates a group of philosophers who find that their senses – or what can be interpreted as emotions and passions – are deceiving them of the realities of a “true” world, as if they are the reason a “true world” is unknown. Because these philosophers tout reason as the superior intellect, emotions are inconsequential to obtaining insight into the idealized “true

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