Abstract

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche both sought a personal mode of engagement with their readers, and both were educated as to the possibility of such personal engagement as a result of their own respective encounters with the figure of Socrates. Both sought to achieve a replication of such personal engagement in their writings for future appropriation by their readers. To understand Kierkegaard and Nietzsche then, it is necessary to understand their respective views of Socrates and the manner in which these views influenced their subsequent philosophizing. ;For Kierkegaard, Socrates is the philosopher's John the Baptist. That is, Socratic irony is viewed by Kierkegaard as a reflection of the irony of human existence, which is that the apex of human achievement is the recognition on the part of each individual of his or her need for divine succor. For Kierkegaard there is no "going beyond" Socrates except by entrance into a relationship with God via Christian faith, an entrance which requires divine aid. Socratic irony is thus a propaedeutic to faith in Kierkegaard's view and not a merely negative dialectical moment. It is in this sense that Kierkegaard may be understood as a "Christian Socrates". ;Nietzsche's view of Socrates changed from an early vision of and hope for an "artistic Socrates" to a spectral image of Socrates as a protonihilist. In the end Nietzsche concluded that the Socratic pursuit of the truth is a deadly game which must be overcome in favor of a resurrection of the category of the divine on naturalistic and/or aesthetic grounds. Neither of these grounds is adequate to the task Nietzsche assigns them. ;Kierkegaard's view of Socrates is thus superior to Nietzsche's view of Socrates. Kierkegaard is able to appropriate what he sees as Socrates' essential contribution to philosophy into his own philosophical efforts with relative ease and consistency, whereas Nietzsche is forced by his own philosophical commitments to alternately embrace and then repudiate the Socratic posture. Both philosophers were seeking a Socratic encounter with the readers they hoped to attract, but only Kierkegaard can consistently call it by its proper name