The Music-Making Socrates: Plato and Nietzsche Revisited, Philosophy and Tragedy

Rejoined.

Nietzsche close to Plato and Socrates. Myth and tragedy together. Nussbaum says is
not tragedy.

Woodruff is dealing with the relationship between Nietzsche and Plato by analyzing
their respective mixture of philosophy and tragedy in their writings. Woodruff
combats the traditional view of Plato as a hyper-rational and ultra-logical by
demonstrating that his dialogues are full of metaphors and myths and the creation
of tragic-comic philosophical dramas in which Socrates plays the role of hero. For
Nietzsche, Plato always remained an enigmatic and ambivalent figure; Woodruff
points out important similarities such as their acknowledgment of the limits of
philosophical reason and the need for tragic art. Woodruff supports this claim by
citing relevant excerpts from Plato in which Socrates realizes the need for art in his
life and how Nietzsche as well needed to recur to a multifarious literary style to
transfer his messages such as Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which combines both tragic
and comic elements. Woodruff engages with critics who have worked on this issue:
she shares the view with Nehamas of the inextricable link between Plato and
Nietzsches works; she disagrees with Nussbaum who thinks that the Socratic death
scene is not tragic theater. [background to my project.]

provides Nietzsches

Question assumptions about rationalism of Socrates Plato. Plato a fellow tragic

philosopher.
Plato from Platonism.
Plato, architect of hyper-rational and oppressive world.
When rescued, Plato appears as a consummate dramatist, an exploratory,
hermeneutic thinker who works through dialogue rather than dogma, who sees the
need for myth and metaphor.
Plato surprisingly close to Nietzsche.
Plato on deathbed.
Enigmatic, unclassifiable, and inexplicable
Opposition but emulation with Phaedo, and Symposium.
Poetry, after the Socratic critique, can only be readmitted to the city and the soul
when it has proved its moral and epistemological worth.
Socrates cultivate music.
Phaedrus, 176 inspired by nature and Eros.

the sublime as the artistic taming of the horrible, and the comic as the discharge of
the nausea of absurdity.

While Plato simultaneously creates tragic-comic philosophical dramas in which

Socrates plays the role of hero, as Zarathustra does for Nietzsche.

Intertwining of comic and tragic.

Socrates final scence, tragic art. Tragic theater.
Nuusbaum says no.
By creating a drama of suffering with a fatally flawed tragic hero, Plato suggests the
limitations of philosophical reason and detachment and the need for tragic art.

Both Plato and Nietzsche have a tragic sensibility, as I have tried to show: both are
acutely aware of the limitations of the human mind and the need for tragic art at
the limits of reason.

Early characterization of Socrates more in the mark.

Mythos and logos. Irony.

Comedy.

Notebooks
Nehamas, Socrates