Nietzsche, Platonic Myth and Poetry

In the preface of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche attributes to Plato the “most dangerous of all errors so far.” Nietzsche might thus seem to assign Plato the exclusive role of his enemy par excellence, but we shall see... [ view full abstract ]

In the preface of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche attributes to Plato the “most dangerous of all errors so far.” Nietzsche might thus seem to assign Plato the exclusive role of his enemy par excellence, but we shall see that this is not the case. Nietzsche relies on him far more than we may think. He plans to harness the “tension of the spirit” which Plato created in Europe through his influence on Christianity. “With so tense a bow we can now shoot for the most distant goals.” Nietzsche strings his bow with an arrow Plato gave him. Also in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche claims that philosophers have the duty to found and manipulate religions as a means to "educate" and "dominate" others. Yet it is Plato who, in Nietzsche’s opinion, both established the millennial domination of Christianity and explicitly introduced the concept of manipulating religion and myth for philosophic ends with the “noble lie.” Nietzsche seems to advocate exactly what caused him to blame Plato. I shall attempt to resolve this problem by showing that the nature of myths corresponds to a poetic instinct in the two philosophers, which causes Nietzsche to reactivate Platonic ideas and methods.