I would like to kindly address an answer to Mr.

Spencer Klavan concerning his article “Socrates

and Pre-Truth Politics” published in the last issue.

I want to start pointing out the obvious: Nietzsche -like God- is dead. I have no doubts that if
he wouldn’t be as dead as he is he would definitely defend himself from the accusations of this
article but given his –like God– mortal condition I feel the need to play the part of his advocate
in this matter. The accusations against Nietzsche are nonetheless accusations to hermeneutics
of suspicion and critic of ideology and in this case there’s a notable amount of representatives
alive.

We should start confronting Nietzsche himself. Nietzsche hated Socrates but they were not as
different as the German claimed: not in vain “Der tolle Mensch” was not actually the Madman
even though this concept has been translated almost universally in such a way. There are
innumerous concepts we could try to use for it –the one who disturbs or the one who
troubles– but none of them would be as close to the real meaning of what or who “Der tolle
Mensch” was: he was the new Socrates. Is there such an essential difference between Socrates
–who put the question in the center of his philosophical method– and Nietzsche –who taught
us to suspect unconditionally all those interpretations based in inadmissible assumptions–?
We shouldn’t be confused in this point by a title of a book: Beyond good an evil is not really an
attempt to go beyond good an evil but precisely to establish –especially– a new good. And
moreover, in Nietzsche’s philosophy what is bad is not relative at all but absolutely clear.

But we should start by a fundamental difference not between Nietzsche and Socrates but
between Socrates and Plato. Is highly surprising that the author had used Phaedo as a starting
point for what he claims is the Socratic foundation of the Truth. Like in most of Plato’s mature
dialogues we can easily read Plato’s subconscious and notice this fundamental difference
between both of them. In this dialogue Socrates is in jail about to be executed and some of his
closer friends try to convince him to perform an escape that would be easily put into practice.
But Socrates renounces and then comes his speech, which is not his but Plato’s. But are those
beliefs in the possibility to know “things that are always the same way” the reason why he
renounce to save his life? No they are not and here comes their difference: the mature Plato is
not interested in politics anymore –precisely since his master’s death– and he more or less
despise the common people. But not his master, who decides to die not despite the social
conventions but because of them: he was a citizen and as citizen he had to respect the polis
will. If there’s no truth, then the truth is whatever we construct –I don’t think Nietzsche’s point
of view would be too far from this–.

Once Plato is separated from his master, we shouldn’t close our eyes neither to some
extremely weak Plato’s formulations of the Truth. In the Republic, for instance, Plato –from
Socrates mouth– is confronted by Thrasymachus and can’t provide us with a satisfactory
essential and ideal response to Thrasymachus claim that “justice is nothing other than the
advantage of the stronger”. Who would deny nowadays that there is no essence of justice?
Who would deny that justice is not made by a particular social class and never against the
advantage of that social class?

On the other hand, it seems a bit puerile to accuse Nietzsche of denying facts. This has been a
constant accusation which origin is located on his most famous statement: “there are no facts,
only interpretations”. The same accusation that Jacques Derrida had to face from his
statement: “there is no outside-text”. A serious philosopher has to go further than statements
to discuss –especially when is facing a great philosopher–. Nietzsche’s philosophy is no more
than an extraction of the consequences of the evolutionist biology of his time. He read
Linnaeus, Lamarck and Darwin and he never dared to deny that evolution was a fact but –as
Marx proved it– evolution theory was an interpretation. Darwin mixed the 19th century English
social values into his facts to develop his Theory of Evolution but just the fact of evolution was
true. His natural selection has been criticized, denied and redefined by all sorts of biologists
from anthropology to sociobiology because the Theory is in itself an ideological point of view.
But not just so called postmodern philosophers know this: Kant distinguish between
philosophy of nature and philosophy of morals, and Aristotle warn us explicitly about trying to
find objectivity always in the same way for different objects, being clear for him that we can
just get the objectivity that the object provides us with.

I want to finish talking about infanticide. I reproduce Mr. Klavan’s sentence: “Such eternal
realities don’t change depending on how we see them; moreover, they lend their properties to
the things and events in the world around us. That lets us confidently make assertions such as
‘infanticide is wrong’ or ‘two and two make four’”. Again –I want to use Kant’s terms not to use
“relativist” terms– we mixture philosophy of nature and philosophy of morals. We mix
whatever is true not depending on how we say it and whatever is true just within a social
context. I agree, believe it or not: infanticide is wrong. And raping children is wrong too. But I
want to tell two unpleasant and uncomfortable stories: the Etoro tribe in Papua New Guinea
believes that kids need to be “filled” with sperm before they become mature enough to have
social relationships. For that reason, the Etoro male children are systematically “supplied” with
sperm when they are children. The second story comes from Albert Camus’ play Les justes. In
this play we find a group of Russian terrorists that plan to assassinate the Tsar. When
everything was ready, some of the terrorists cancel the plan in the last moment because there
were two kids in the Tsar carriage. They claim that infanticide is a horrendous atrocity that will
turn them into something no better than the Tsar himself but other members of the group
claim that because of the Tsar other children are dying out of hunger in a daily basis and
therefore, two infanticides in order to avoid hundreds of them is a cheap prize to pay.

What would Nietzsche think about these situations? Clearly, his hermeneutics of suspicion will
not allow him to stop in an empty nihilism or a general relativism such as “every culture is
different and we should respect those who rape children for their beliefs”. If Nietzsche was an
Etoro he would immediately question the origin of the belief and identify the ideological
metaphysical inadmissible assumption that have conformed this belief. In the second case, he
would question how exactly the death of the Tsar would improve people’s lives. Exactly for the
same reason he wouldn’t accept that Obama was born in Kenya. That’s precisely the very core
of his genealogy: going backwards trying to question ourselves constantly where is the origin
of our beliefs located is not denying the truth but precisely the condition of possibility of an
eventual –if this is possible– Truth. But we should always keep our feet on the ground knowing
that facts –natural facts to avoid misunderstandings– exist. Our tragedy as humans consists in
this: the vast world –social world to avoid misunderstandings– that we created is groundless.
Nobody else but us can build the Truth. And even further: we have to impose it; we have to
fight for it: if we are so convince that we will eventually find the universal and essential Truth
that we don’t build the Truth ourselves within a community then someone else like Trump or
Le Pen will do it instead of us. And if we can’t find the essential and universal Truth –which
again, I’m sorry but I can’t be optimistic about this project– we will be at least a bit freer from
Lies. Even Plato would agree with it. For sure Aristotle and Socrates would be.