Twilight of the Idols

By Friedrich Nietzsche - Read: June 18, 2024 - Rating: 8/10

This book is a great introduction to Nietzsche's main ideas. It covers his criticism of Socrates, religion, and imposed moral ideals that are often blindly followed. His writing is quite provocative, containing many aphorisms that are deliberately meant to mock the absurdity of such ideals.

My Notes

Some insightful aphorisms from the book:

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

Life is at an end where the kingdom of God begins.

From life's school of war: what does not kill me makes me stronger.

There is no such thing as a moral phenomenon, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

Nietzsche introduces a new conception of truth and reality.

  1. The reasons why "this" world is the world of appearances show that this world exists, and that any other world does not.
  2. What we consider to be the truth is in fact an illusion that has given rise to a "truth-world".
  3. There's no point in talking about "another world", because it devalues the real world, the world of appearances, and it leads to an aspiration to an "other" life.
  4. Separating the world of "appearances" from the "real" world is a form of decadence, a declining life. The artist holds the world of appearances in higher esteem, because he says yes to everything that is terrible and problematic: the artist is Dionysian.