There’s a big misconception on what Nietzsche thought about… well, there’s a big misconception on almost everything Nietzsche said. This distortion come from 3 origins.
- The first is that some of his ideas weren’t clear enough for us to give them a single meaning, that’s the case of the eternal return, one of Nietzsche’s most important and dark concepts with numerous interpretations. This kind of problem is usual on philosophy.
- The second is that culture has taken his ideas (and the ideas of some other great philosophers) and used them as metaphors (what make these ideas even darker) or in a different way (cutting here and there and inserting where needed to force them fit another idea very different from the source), this is the case of the Nazi ideology and its relationship with Nietzsche, or fascism and Hegel.
- The third is the reader that supports or detracts “his ideas” but has never actually read them or even if he has, these hasn’t passed a process of examination and reflection with the help of a expert, a teacher, or someone who has some experience with philosophy.
So, was Nietzsche against scientific knowledge as a lot of people say? Well, the answer is that there’s no definitive answer. Nietzsche never says scientific knowledge is “bad” by itself.
Nietzsche usually critics the importance that society, or humans, have gave to scientific knowledge. This knowledge has taken us far from nature, from that relationship that we should have with earth, feelings, art, other humans, etc. For example, in today’s world, if you told your family you will become a painter many of them would rise their eyebrows and try to persuade you of choosing a more… profitable and respectable career.
Nietzsche thought we needed to understand the importance of all that, maybe of having a balance between these two aspects, which he represents as the figures of Dionysus and Apollo, but he doesn’t talk about that balance either.
Apollo represents harmony, serenity, equilibrium, coherence, reason, logic.
Dionysus represents chaos, confusion, risk, passion, maybe the impulse of life in a way.
It is important to understand that Dionysus and Apollo don’t battle against each other, but they complement, and even more, Apollo comes from Dionysus. Like this, is easy to see that Nietzsche can’t be against reason, but he realizes too about other aspects of the human being.
I hope we can discuss further on this topic soon.