Interrogare la sfinge: Immagini di Platone in Nietzsche (1881–1887) by Francesco Ghedini (review)

A word of warning I would offer to those approaching this excellent book by Francesco Ghedini is that it cannot be read alone. For it is the latest, and perhaps not the last, chapter of a long and continuous study of the figure of Plato in Nietzsche’s work that Ghedini began more than a decade ago. In it, Ghedini deals with Nietzsche’s mature works from 1881 to 1887, searching out the images of Plato to be found in them and investigating their significance for Nietzsche’s philosophical trajectory. Ghedini begins, perhaps somewhat abruptly, with The Gay Science, proceeds to an exhaustive analysis of the period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, and ends with a brief consideration of Book V of The Gay Science and On the Genealogy of Morality. Nietzsche’s last writings are not considered, and the exclusion of the first works of the critical period, Human, All Too Human, and Daybreak, might not seem justified were it not that Ghedini considers the book a sequel to his previous works on the theme, Il Platone di Nietzsche. Genesi e motivi di un simbolo controverso (1864–1879) (Napoli: Esi, 1999) and “Il Platone di Nietzsche. Aurora” (Rivista di Storia della Filosofia 1 [2005]: 61–87).

Interrogare la sfinge (“Interrogating the Sphinx”) therefore proceeds where these previous works left off. In Il Platone di Nietzsche Ghedini dealt with the figure of Plato in the published works and the philological Nachlass of the 1870s, and particularly of the Basel period (his analysis of Nietzsche’s lectures on Plato, Plato amicus sed, is especially significant). The diachronic character and unity of argumentation in this first book were notable, and made possible by Ghedini’s concentration on specific works in which Nietzsche discusses Plato. In contrast, Interrogare la sfinge lacks this organic structure, since, as Ghedini himself admits, while Plato is explicitly present in the works and lectures of the 1870s, in the later writings it is necessary to retrace the “Sphinx” Plato, hidden between the lines. Furthermore, the Plato under consideration here is, in Ghedini’s opinion, “Nietzsche’s Plato,” and not necessarily the true Plato, a symbol rather than an accurate representative of Platonic philosophy. “Interrogating the Sphinx” thus means interpreting the multiple meanings of what Ghedini also calls the “hieroglyph Plato” in Nietzsche’s writings, explicating the dense references entwined in this paradigmatic figure and their critical value for Nietzsche’s philosophical path.

For Ghedini, there are three main topics around which Nietzsche’s interpretation of Plato develops. The first is that of Plato’s personality, a topic that carries over from the writings of the 1870s—Nietzsche dedicated his lectures on Plato to it. The complexity of Plato’s experiences and thought, the polymorphic character of his interests, and his aspiration to the mastery of knowledge in every field are the elements that make him, for Nietzsche, the archetype of the modern philosopher. The second topic, the most important in the works of the 1880s, is that of the political Plato, and the constitution of the ideal state in The Republic. Central to this second topic is the pedagogical question about the education (Bildung) of the young and of philosophers as political figures. The third topic is the dualism between the world of the senses and the world of ideas, which Nietzsche understands as a preliminary form or matrix of Christian philosophy.

This third topic was long considered the true focal point of Nietzsche’s interpretation of Plato. Nietzsche himself seems to lend support to this idea when he defines his philosophy as an “inverted Platonism [umgedrehter Platonismus]” (KSA 7:7[56], p. 199) that privileges the world of appearance. In contrast, Ghedini shows not only the critical elements of Nietzsche reception of Plato, but also the undeniable similarities between them. Plato is certainly a polemical target for Nietzsche, particularly as he was interpreted by later neo-Platonic...