THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS

In addition to criticising the German culture of the time.

Nietzsche also takes aim at prominent French, British, and Italian cultural leaders who he believes exhibit similar characteristics. Nietzsche praises Caesar, Napoleon, Goethe, Thucydides, and the Sophists as being stronger and healthier than all of these claimed representatives of cultural decadence. The book describes Nietzsche's final and most significant endeavour as the transvaluation of all values and presents a perspective of antiquity in which the Romans, if solely in the area of literature, triumph over the ancient Greeks. Twelve sections make up the book.

Many of Plato's theories, particularly those related to Being and Becoming, the world of forms, and the fallibility of the senses, are rejected by Nietzsche. More specifically, he rejects Plato's position that one should deny the senses. This is a sign of personal decadence, which goes against Nietzsche's ideas of human brilliance. Nietzsche uses the term "decadence" to describe a loss of vigour and a celebration of weakness. According to Nietzsche, if one adopts a hatred of nature and subsequently a hatred of the sensory world—the world of the living—by accepting a non-sensory, unchangeable world as superior and our sensory world as inferior. According to Nietzsche, only a weak, ill, or ignoble person would hold such a belief.