ABSTRACT
The difference between the Nietzschean and the Platonic rhetoric provides us with the best way in which to formulate the difference between their fundamental doctrines. Nietzsche replaces the 'onto-logical' concerns of his predecessors with poetry or art, whereas Plato transforms the poetic presentation of ontology by the pre-Socratics into an unresolvable quarrel between poetry and philosophy. The Platonic dialogue is precisely between poetry and philosophy. The Nietzschean monologue, even as dramatically represented by the speeches and cryptic conversations of Zarathustra, is an acknowledgment of the triumph of poetry. The radical nullity of the superhuman 'cosmos' is the necessary condition for the elevation of human beings to the status of creative gods. This helps to explain Nietzsche's double rhetoric. The need to establish radical nullity must be the stepping-stone to the rhetorical inducement of creative intoxication. Plato avoids nihilism only if he can sustain the conversation between the poetry and philosophy.
