Nietzsche and Plato: philosophical comparison

Nietzsche & Plato

Response

Do you see connections to our time, our lives (your life?) in the Nietzsche or Plato writings?

I think that Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" demonstrates how people are always filled with a sense that what they are living isn't really what they want to be doing -- that real happiness, truth, or fulfillment is just around the corner, but one's current existence is a 'lie.' I do not think that most people are searching for Truth with a capital T, though, but for personal truth. An example of this permanent sense of dissatisfaction might be of someone who goes to the right schools, goes into the profession his parents have selected for him, and feels at age twenty-five as if he has been manipulated by false images and tied down by forces beyond his control. He feels as if he should be happy, based on what he has been told is an authentic existence, but he does not feel as if his life and accomplishments are real or even that he 'owns them' because he never had a chance to 'find himself.' Nietzsche's statement that God is dead could be paralleled with a contemporary sense that old, past ideals are dead -- like people felt that the idea of American greatness is dead, or their sense of immortality is dead after seeing a loved one die, or someone their own age die. But this sense of a death of nationalism, or one's personal belief is different than Nietzsche's statement because no ideology has kind of hold Christianity did upon the world when Nietzsche wrote in 19th century Europe.

Response 2

Do you think we reached a point where we no longer need God?