Nietzsche and Plato on the Judgment that “Being Is Good”

“Why, exactly, is it better to be than not to be?” Nietzsche saw with great clarity that the “death of God” – that is, the collapse of all previous theological and philosophical groundings for the sheer value of existence – had made the question of that value inescapable for modern man. Through his doctrine of the eternal return of the same, Nietzsche believed himself to have given a definitively modern grounding to the value of existence, free of any taint of “Platonism.” My paper investigates whether this is true – whether Nietzsche did, in fact, find a new way to say “Yes” to being or whether he, like everyone else, must ultimately “Platonize” to some degree as soon as we ask why it is good to be and to think.