My quest for insight from Nietzsche continues. Today I began reading The Dawn of Day written in 1881. Beginning with The Dawn of Day Nietzsche’s ideas began to coalesce into a unified vision. As usual reading Nietzsche is like running full-out into the cold ocean surf. There is the shock of difference, the comfort and equilibrium of one’s customary headspace is upended. Then one slowly adjusts…

Of course I consider myself to be conventionally moral. But am I, moral that is? I have admired Socrates, that wily seducer of Athenian youth, for many years. His death as related by his pupil, Plato the playwright, rivals that of another widely revered figure’s passion story. I mean that of Jesus as the Christ. I recommend Plato’s account of Socrates passing, The Phaedo, If you’ve not yet had occasion to acquaint yourself with this most vivid story.

Socrates the crusader for reason, stands as one of the two historical figures which anchor the culture of the west. The other is Jesus as understood through the lens of Christianity. It has been argued that Socrates arguments had traction only because Athenian culture was in decline. Socrates and Jesus serve as twin anchors, two poles defining cultural development of the west.

Socrates advocated reason/facts/logic uber alles. The phrase, catchy enough for a t-shirt slogan is it not?  The reasoning individual, thinking for him/her self! Be yourself, think for yourself, every man’s opinion just as weighty as every other… The thoroughgoing individualism touches us, is reciprocated in many forms. That is us.

And into the recipe for our American 21st century we should add a good measure of “Jesus as one’s own personal savior.” As a one time an evangelical believer, I can never forget that formula! The language is standard issue for the Protestant Christian communities, from mega-churches to intimate Bible study groups, ascendant across the country. Eternal salvation as private property…  Little imagination is needed to see the intersection between “receiving Jesus into one’s heart for eternal salvation” and the individualism ideal.

Who would we nominate as a supreme example of individualism, one who maximizes personal advantage, one seeking personal happiness at all costs?

Who would be our poster boy, our stand-alone-guy who makes his own rules? What about this guy?

On the other hand, those moralists who,
like the followers of Socrates,
recommend self-control and sobriety to the individual
as his greatest possible advantage
and the key to his greatest personal happiness,
are exceptions

—and if we ourselves do not think so,
this is simply due to our having been brought up under
their influence.

They all take a new path,
and thereby bring down upon themselves
the utmost disapproval of all the representatives
of the morality of custom.
They sever their connection with the community,
as immoralists, and are,
in the fullest sense of the
word, evil ones.

In the same way, every Christian
who “sought, above all things, his own salvation,”
must have seemed evil
to a virtuous Roman
of the old school.

The Dawn of Day by Friedrich Nietzsche, pub. 1881, aphorism 9