Walter Kaufmann has suggested that in his use of the word Nietzsche might be indebted to Francis Bacon who used the concept of the idol in his philosophy.

In contrast to all these alleged representatives of cultural decadence, Nietzsche applauds Caesar, Napoleon, Goethe, Thucydides and the Sophists as healthier and stronger types.

The book states the transvaluation of all values as Nietzsche's final and most important project, and gives a view of antiquity wherein the Romans for once take precedence over the ancient Greeks, albeit only in the field of literature.

"[4] As an illustration of this principle in practice, Nietzsche explains that his own overcoming of pessimism occurred during a period of dramatic downturn in his health, writing that "it was during those years in which my vitality reached its lowest point that I ceased from being a pessimist: the instinct of self-recovery forbade my holding to a philosophy of poverty and desperation.

Philosophers such as Socrates or Plato, Nietzsche explains, shared a common physiological disposition to feel negatively about life, which reflected the decay of the superior Greek culture that preceded them.

Socrates, he believes, was ugly (a symptom or feature of his inner weakness and decadence) and was a product of the "lower orders" of society.

Nietzsche thought that the dialectic allowed weaker philosophical positions and less sophisticated thinkers to gain too large a foothold in a society.

Nietzsche's program valued instinct over reason, but because of Socrates and the dialectic, Greek culture now became "absurdly rational.

Ultimately, Nietzsche insisted, the value of life cannot be estimated, and any judgment concerning it only reveals the person's life-denying or life-affirming tendencies.

The section is divided into six parts: Nietzsche is not a hedonist, arguing that any passions in excess can "drag their victim down with the weight of their folly."

Taking a psychological turn, Nietzsche writes that people who want to exterminate certain passions outright do so mainly because they are "too weak-willed, too degenerate to impose moderation" upon their own selves.

Even with the anti-Christian sentiment that pervades his thinking, Nietzsche makes it very clear that he has no interest in eliminating the Christian Church.

Nietzsche concludes that insisting people ought to be one way and not another leads to a form of bigotry that devalues the goodness of human diversity, the "enchanting wealth of types."

Ultimately, Nietzsche concludes that it is "immoralists" such as himself who have the highest respect for inherent worth of individuals because they do not value one person's approach to life over any others.

[12] In the chapter The Four Great Errors, he suggests that people, especially Christians, confuse the effect for the cause, and that they project the human ego and subjectivity on to other things, thereby creating the illusionary concept of being, and therefore also of the thing-in-itself and God.

By removing causal agency based on free, conscious will, Nietzsche critiques the ethics of accountability, suggesting that everything is necessary in a whole that can neither be judged nor condemned, because there is nothing outside of it.

"[15] In this light, the concept of morality becomes purely a means of control: "the doctrine of will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is of finding guilty.

In this example, Nietzsche tells a fictional story of a priest who converts a man to Christianity, in order to keep him moral.

This system made an attempt of moralizing man by making regulations on even breeding of no more than 4 races, and thus dehumanizing the Tschandala who were outcasts.

Nietzsche attributes the decline he sees in the sophistication in German thought to prioritizing politics over the intellect.

Second, he is highly critical of opening colleges and universities to all classes of society, because when stripped of its "privilege," the quality of higher education declines.