FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE: SOCRATES AND DECADENCE

Abstract

This paper thematizes the problem of characterization of Nietzsche’s Socrates as a decadent. It’s aim is to show that Nietzsche’s Socrates was not a decadent from the very beginning of Nietzsche’s thought, and that he “becomes” decadent only through introduction of decadence as a notion in Nietzsche’s mature thought. Special attention is dedicated to the chronology of emergence of the notion of decadence, and to Nietzsche’s defining of this notion, all of this in order to obtain an adequate horizon from which it is possible to understand Nietzsche’s Socrates as decadent. Also, this presentation insists that there is no possibility of good understanding of the notion of decadence exclusively through Nietzsche’s thematization of Socrates, and that only throughout development of decadence as a notion in Nietzsche's thought, does the figure of Socrates and it’s symbolical function gain a completely new position and meaning.