[gizajob]

I really dig Socrates, and his arguments. I also dig Nietzsche for pointing out “he was a buffoon who got himself killed”. Dialectics is useful up to the point you start going round in circles and that is as far as most ever get with it.

[N0b8ez]

Well, if we're taking the stories at face value, Socrates knew what he was getting himself into when he chose to die, even when he could have easily escaped. He died to prove a point. If Nietzsche thinks this is silly, it's one of those times he's at odds with his own philosophy.

> To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death of one's own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses: so that an actual leave-taking is possible while he who is leaving is still there

(Twilight of the Idols, 1888)

[gizajob]

Nietzsche thought that it was so obvious that he was going round corrupting the youth by showing people not to have a clue what they were talking about via using dialectics, that he knew what he was getting himself into long long before the whole “dying to prove a point (that he respected the laws of the Athenian state)”. He was purposefully using dialectics as a tool to show people up, and to show them “hey you thought you knew what virtue was?? Turns out you don’t know shit about virtue omfg?!?!” Whereas people did all know about virtue because it was a common thing they shared in their understanding of using the meaning of the concept. It didn’t need dialectics to reduce that definition to absurdio and prove that nothing conceptually was true or known in the Athenian state, and him doing this was causative of its downfall, and so he was no martyr for drinking the hemlock.

That really is Nietzsche’s angle on it if you care to go looking rather than cite him at me to disprove what I said. I think it’s in Will to Power but it’s been a while. You’ll also notice throughout that Nietzsche isn’t a dialectical thinker. He doesn’t go round in circles trying to find the antithesis of his polemics – he’s calling it how it is for him.

Edit: some of his perspective on Socrates is in Twilight - Google: Nietzsche Socrates Buffoon.