Alternatively nicknamed the “despotic logician” and “the whirlwind and turning point of so-called world history,” Socrates represents a radical starting point in the history of philosophy. For Friedrich Nietzsche, the father of rationalism proposes a vision of the world that is ultimately incapable of proposing life-affirming values. By identifying value only in what is logical, Socratism rejects everything that cannot be explained rationally. Nietzsche challenges this view for its inability to motivate a life-affirming interpretation of an existence that is, by definition, irrational. In a deathbed conversion, Socrates abandons his logically rigid ethics for one capable of embracing art. Nietzsche points out this musician Socrates as the unifier of two divergent worldviews – reason and myth – which, together, affirm life. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Nietzsche sees the musician Socrates as the founder of a tragic and rational culture. Faced with death, Socrates is unable to banish the tragedy of reason from his mind. He is finally converted to the saving power of that art against which he will protest for most of his life. An inclination of his conscience convinces him to let himself be seized by the drive towards art, which acts as a redemption for an otherwise irrational existence. Socratism wants virtue to be knowledge, and nothing else: so the virtuous man does not have to make room within himself or his search for art or myth, but rather acts as a dialectician. He follows knowledge to its limits out of logical necessity, for fear of committing a sin through ignorance. It is this dialectic that, in Nietzsche's eyes, motivates Aeschylus' works and their mechanical character, which results "with its usual deus ex machina", where even God must defend himself with argumentation. This marks a radical contortion of the tragic genre. The loss of value attributed to illusion reflects, for Nietzsche, the "disintegration of Dionysian tragedy". As Sorgner explains, Nietzsche understood true tragedy as needing “a Dionysian foundation, which means that it must be based on the intuition that the world is self-contradictory, that it is constantly changing, and that in the end we receive nothing. a further reward for all the pain we must endure during our lives…” For Nietzsche, the essence of tragedy is therefore the embrace of a rational contradiction. With the loss of this contradiction, tragedy fails to fulfill its cathartic promise for rational beings. Aesthetic Socratism, as embodied in the works of Aeschylus and those after him, attempted to rationalize this tragic notion to the point of distortion and, ultimately, ruin. But Nietzsche points out that Socrates must also rely on a myth to support his worldview, although he does not recognize it. The role of myth in rationalism is a kind of servile devotion to reason. Where reason and science reach their limits, the notion emerges that to know is to create and shape. In other words, he suggests that science “is capable not simply of understanding existence but also of correcting it.” Nietzsche calls this position “theoretical optimism,” which postulates that “the nature of things can be discovered.” The search for knowledge is understood as a sort of cure for the evil of existence. But this position is also a myth, an illusion, although he does not know it about himself. When knowledge approaches its limits, an existential problem arises: in particular, when the search for knowledge fails to provide a rational explanation for our existence. Here theSocrates the musician, when "to his horror he sees how logic curls up on itself within these limits and in the end bites its own tail." The saving power of knowledge as the only source of value, pursued as an end in itself, fails to produce results. The risk of nihilism requires a new type of knowledge, capable of embracing the illogical nature of existence. This "new form of knowledge breaks out, tragic knowledge, which needs art as protection and medicine to be endured". Knowledge of the irrational nature of existence is tragic. To proceed, to live, tragic knowledge requires a "medicine", a myth capable of affirming life. What is tragic about this form of knowledge is that it forms a myth that knows itself to be a myth and yet is understood to be a necessary illusion. Only an art form like music, capable of affirming a tragic existence, can protect Socrates from a nihilistic end. If theoretical optimism does not accept the help of the saving force of art, it turns in on itself, accomplishing its own destruction. Faced with imminent death, Socrates surprises even himself by allowing himself to be overwhelmed by the power of art. Uncertain about the meaning of the dreams that had recently tormented him, Socrates decides to satisfy his conscience. In these recurring dreams he finds himself instructed to write poetry and make art, and assumes that they apply to the art of philosophy, which he has practiced all his life. In the last days before his execution, Socrates wonders whether or not this dream is “inviting him to practice this popular art…poetry.” Socrates assumes that these dreams are a kind of encouragement, an encouragement to continue the practice of that ultimate art form, philosophy. But something inside him remains uneasy. Perhaps he misunderstood this dream and in reality it pushes him to practice "folk art". He explains his rationalization for following the questionable command of these dreams thus: “I thought it safest not to leave here until I satisfied my conscience by writing poetry in obedience to the dream.” Socrates reveals here that he did not feel entirely sure that he had conducted his life according to his personal theoretical optimism. He feels that the risk of not obeying the command to embrace art is too great and is forced to follow it. This incident leads Nietzsche to ask whether "the birth of an 'artistic Socrates' is something truly contradictory", or whether it represents a necessary step, towards which Socrates had moved despite his obsession with rationality. The fact that Socrates was so moved by this dream that he actually acted on it, despite his inability to provide any sort of logical understanding, indicates a sort of unacknowledged conversion for Nietzsche. As Zuckert says, “Socrates himself suspected that something was missing in his own activity.” Although Socrates does not understand why the dream compels him, he follows its command: whatever may have “stressed these exercises upon him,” Socrates tacitly admits that the things he does not understand “are not automatically unreasonable.” After all, there may be a place for art alongside philosophy. Nietzsche presupposes what Socrates must think of himself as he follows the commands of his mysterious dream: “Perhaps there is a realm of wisdom from which the logician is banished? Perhaps art can also be a necessary correlative and supplement to science?” Whatever his motivation, and whether he recognizes it or not, Socrates hesitates when the question of his soul, of his very salvation, seems to indicate that he must find a place among 'internal himself for music. As Woodruff says, the fact that Socrates “obeys the divine command to satisfy his conscience suggests the admission of a tragic flaw,.