Socrates#
Summary#
Socrates appears as a figure who dismissed popular opinion as mere “bugbears to frighten children” and valued intellectual integrity above material favors. In Nietzsche’s analysis, he is portrayed as a masterful dialectician and “plebeian” ironist who challenged the noble Athenians to justify their instincts with reason, introducing the moral problem of whether rationality should govern over instinct. His method of wicked irony cut ruthlessly into the pretensions of his age, making him the prototype of the philosopher as the “bad conscience” of his time.