COMPARISON DISCARTES - NIETZSCHE

Nietzsche is one of the most controversial authors in the history of Philosophy. He speaks out
against the philosophical tradition in general, founded, according to him, by Socrates and Plato, and
which continues with Descartes and the entire rationalist tradition. Our comparison will
fundamentally focus on studying the points of disagreement between Nietzsche and Descartes.

We will begin by verifying the differences in terms of the epistemological scope. Descartes, like
Plato, considers reason as the only instance capable of guiding us to knowledge, to truth. Descartes
agrees with this assessment. The thinking substance (I, soul) possesses reason, which if guided by an
adequate method, will lead it to the knowledge of all the truths that it proposes. Descartes agrees
with Plato in despising the senses, and therefore, the body that houses them, considering them
incapable of leading us to the truth. Descartes rejects them, as unreliable, to build science.

Nietzsche, on the contrary, defends the senses. These never deceive us, showing us multiplicity,
change, movement, that is, becoming, they teach us reality. The one who deceives us with his
prejudice is reason. It transforms the testimony of the senses, converting it into concepts that make
us conceive things as endowed with unity, duration, essence, etc. Concepts supplant, and make us
forget, life. Reason mummifies reality. Language is reason's greatest ally in this fraud, since it
incessantly propagates concepts. To avoid this deception of language, Nietzsche proposes metaphor.
The absolute truth that Descartes believed in is impossible for Nietzsche. The truth is nothing more
than an error, caused by the way reason works, even if it is useful.

Nietzsche's conception of man is opposite to that of traditional philosophy. Descartes, like Plato,
identifies man with the soul. The soul is a thinking substance independent of the body, of the
material and sensitive. Since the body is a mechanism, if there were no soul there would be no
consciousness, no will, and no reason. The presence of the rational soul establishes the radical
difference between man and animals, which are automatons, machines lacking spirit. In the Treatise
of the Passions of the Soul , Descartes distinguishes actions from passions. Actions depend on the
will, passions are involuntary, they are perceptions, feelings, emotions caused in the soul by the
mechanical forces that act in the body. Man must be guided as far as possible, not by passions, but
by reason. The progressive mastery of reason makes him more free and master of his will. This is for
Descartes the most important characteristic of morality. Nietzsche, on the contrary, values the body:
its senses and its natural instincts, and affirms that instincts should guide our actions. The only
meaningful behavior is fidelity to the earth, to the body, to instincts and to the irrational.