Friedrich Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols expanded on the problem of the preponderance of reason in ancient Greek society, an issue he first broached in The Birth of Tragedy. The radical idea that Socrates was symptomatic of a declining Greek society based on the deification of rationality was almost unique among Enlightenment thinkers. Reaction to the idea in The Birth of Tragedy, in fact, was so negative among German academics that Nietzsche himself vacillated in his support, referring to the work as “impossible” and “embarrassing” in a preface to the second edition before returning to the notion in his later works. The antipathy of his peers is not surprising given that he took aim at such pillars of Western thinking as Plato, Socrates, even Christianity. Though originally widely refuted at the time of writing, themes related to the conflict between the rationality on one hand and the power of the senses on the other, were revisited time and time again by his successors.

According to the author, proponents of Nietzsche’s work would most likely agree that     

A. human reason is infallible whereas the senses decay along with the body and are therefore subservient to the mind
B. there is a conflict between Socrates and traditional Christian thought
C. Nietzsche had little influence on later thinkers     
D. privileging reason over the senses had a deleterious effect on Greek society at the time of Socrates
E. Nietzsche found Plato to be embarrassing