Beliefs of Friedrich Nietzsche

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Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 in Rocken, Germany and was raised to be Lutheran minister by a handful of women, but rejected the idea of becoming a minister after he lost his faith in God. In 1889, he became insane, and for the last eleven years of his life was taken cared of by his German Nationalist sister, and died in 1900. Friedrich Nietzsche was a modern philosopher of individualism, which he shows in his doctrine of the Will to Power. Nietzsche’s greatest concepts included: The Will to Power, the Superman, and the Eternal Recurrence. Nietzsche can be best described as “a radical aristocrat, a radical enemy of religion, and a prophet” (Warbeke, 366). In this essay, I will try to prove the Ubermensch’s will to power to overcome eternal recurrence.
Will To Power is will to life, to dominate and to reshape the world as one seems fit. According to Nietzsche, someone with the will to power like the Superman doesn’t conform to society rules, but creates his own rules to live by. Nietzsche was a disciple of Schopenhauer, but didn’t agree with his ideal of the Will to Live, but instead the Will to Power. The difference between Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s will is that Nietzsche’s will is life-affirming; and Schopenhauer’s is life-denying. The will to power is to inflict your will onto other, grow into a higher being, and self-preservation. “This is his doctrine of the Will to Power as a goal of life” (Peters, 358). Nietzsche believed that humans are weak; therefore they followed the religion of Christianity to guide them. In, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche speaks bout the will to power being the evolution from God into individualism.
“Man is something that must be overcome” in order to evolve to the Superman (Warbeke, 377)...

... middle of paper ...

...elieve it over and over. Nietzsche is an existentialist, in which his will to power acts as the Superman’s drive for greatness. Nietzsche’s Superman lives life to the fullest, and doesn’t comfort into society when he knows it’s wrong. Nietzsche’s Eternal recurrence challenges oneself to live for the moment, because the past cannot be changed.

Works Cited

Peters, Charles C. "FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND HIS DOCTRINE OF WILL TO POWER." The Monist 21.3 (1911): 357-75. JSTOR. Web. 09 Mar. 2014. .

Warbeke, John M. "Friedrich Nietzsche, Antichrist, Superman, and Pragmatist." The Harvard Theological Review 2 (1909): 366-85. JSTOR. 09 Mar. 2014 .

Nehamas, Alexander. "The Eternal Recurrence." The Philosophical Review 89 (1980): 331-56. JSTOR. 09 Mar. 2014
.

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