NIETZSCHE and The GREEKS - Why He HATED Socrates

Nietzsche’s critique of Socrates is fundamentally about his rejection of life itself, symbolized by Socrates' obsessive pursuit of rationalism over instinct.
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While Socrates famously embraced the idea that "the unexamined life is not worth living," Nietzsche believed this ideal betrayed the chaotic, instinctual forces that truly drive human existence. Socrates’ dialectical method, which aimed to subdue life’s mysteries through logic and reason, represented, in Nietzsche's eyes, an escape from life’s inherent contradictions.

Socrates, described as physically ugly by his contemporaries—Plato, Aristophanes, and others—becomes, for Nietzsche, an emblem of deeper moral and spiritual ugliness. His unattractive appearance is a metaphor for the ugliness of his philosophy: a life-denying rationalism that elevates reason over instinct. For Nietzsche, Socrates hated life, seeking liberation not in embracing the vitality of existence but in imagining a detached, eternal soul free from the bodily "temptations, instincts, and sufferings" that define human life.