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Nietzsche on Plato

From The Twilight of the Idols (“What I Owe to the Ancients,” section 2):

I am a complete skeptic about Plato….In the end, my distrust of Plato goes deep: he represents such an aberration from all the basic instinct of the Hellene, is so moralistic, so pre-existently Christian–he already takes the concept “good” for the highest concept–that for the whole phenomenon Plato I would sooner use the harsh phrase “higher swindle”….My recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thuycdides. Thucydides, and perhaps, Machiavelli’s Principe are most closely related to myself by the unconditional will not to gull oneself and to see reason in reality….

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