Breves considerações sobre Nietzsche e os gregos

Abstract

With this brief reflection, we will also make some considerations about one of the first philosophical texts by the young Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). We will therefore discuss the book “Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks”. In this short but consistent text from 1873, our author presents not only a general view of the thought of the first Greek philosophers, who developed their ideas between the 6th and 5th centuries BC, but also presents an innovative interpretation of the birth of philosophy and the results obtained by it s thinkers. We can describe this original vision by stating that the philosophy produced by these philosophers presents itself in its purest and most grandiose manifestation, representing the passage from the Homeric world to the tragic universe. This position is based on a deep admiration and broad knowledge of Hellenic civilization, especially of its classical figures, both pre-Socratic and post-Socratic. His view of philosophy, as we shall see, will present the pre-Socratic philosophers – or, as he sometimes calls them, pre-Platonic philosophers – as a privileged field of thought to the detriment of the classical thought of Plato and Aristotle, given his assertion that philosophy will no longer achieve the same status it had in its pre-Socratic beginnings, falling into a profound crisis of values. Thus, his innovative point of view already indicates to us the controversial nature that will so characterize his mature thought. Without intending to delve into themes that will certainly appear in gestation throughout this text – and that will be developed in his later works, in which his philosophy will emerge with greater originality and robustness –, our objective is to try to understand his understanding of the nature of philosophy developed, according to Nietzsche, by these brilliant thinkers. Genius therefore has as its reference these inaugural figures of Greek thought, but, fundamentally, their experiences; in fact, it is this philosophical experience, according to our author, that built his glorious world through a trajectory that, starting with Thales and ending its cycle with Socrates, will only have resurfaced through his own philosophy.