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GRE 40- Verbal Question 19-20

Friedrich Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols
expanded on the problem of the preponderance
of reason in ancient Greek society. an issue he
first broached in The Birth of Tragedy. The radical
idea that Socrates was symptomatic of a decline
Greek society based on the deification of ratio-
nality was almost unique among Enlightenment
thinkers. Reaction to the idea in The Birth of
Tragedy, in fact, was so negative among German
academics that Nietzsche himself vacillated in
his support, referring to the work as "impos-
sible" and "embarrassing" in a preface to the
second edition before returning to the notion in
his later works. The antipathy of his peers is not
surprising given that he took aim at such pillars
of Western thinking as Plato, Socrates, even
Christianity. Though originally widely refuted at
the time of writing, themes related to the con-
flict between the rationality on one hand and the
power of the senses on the other, were revisited
time and time again by his successors.

Question 20
According to the author, proponents of Nietzsche’s work would most likely agree that
human reason is infallible whereas the senses decay along with the body and are therefore subservient to the mind
there is a conflict between Socrates and traditional Christian thought
Nietzsche had little influence on later thinkers
privileging reason over the senses had a deleterious effect on Greek society at the time of Socrates
Nietzsche found Plato to be embarrassing
20. D The passage tells us that Socrates was an example of the type of thinking that led to a decline in Greek society. His thinking deified rationality, or put it on top. Later on in the passage we are told that there is a conflict between rationality and the senses. Thus, the author implies that Nietzsche felt that Socrates’ excessive rationality was a problem. The answer is choice (D).

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