- widespread influence of the greatest importance in the entire Western tradition
- physical ugliness? Nietzsche : “it is significant that Socrates was the first Hellene to be ugly”
- Socrates was not only ugly, but a dissimulator as well. Nietzsche wrote: “everything in him is concealed, ulterior, subterranean”.
- Socrates wrote nothing, engaging only in dialogue
- Socrates became the prosopon, or mask, of personalities who felt the need to take shelter behind him.
- Socrates, the eternal interrogator, used skillful questions to bring his interlocutors to admit their ignorance.
- Plato’s Socratic dialogues
- Kierkegaard was aware of the Socratic character of his method
- There is indeed a relationship comparable to that between Plato and Socrates here: Nietzsche was speaking of an ideal Wagner and an ideal Schopenhauer, who were really nothing other than Nietzsche himself.
Source: Philosophy as a way of life