With his theory Friedrich Nietzsche gave a sorrowful, mediocre, and secular world new meaning. The following essay will discuss the problems in society during the 1800’s and prove Nietzsche’s greatness in giving new meaning to the world. The essay then proves that it was by Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche’s deliberate tampering that Nietzsche’s Superman came to be a symbol of Nazi principles.
Friedrich Nietzsche opposed common values, which he believed distracted man from life. During Nietzsche’s period, imperialist nationalism or an increasingly questionable religion provided the only meaning to life. Nietzsche opposed both. He thought the idea of nationalism ridiculous, saying “only there, where the state ceases, does the man who is not superfluous begin….” Nietzsche held “disdain for the average mind, arguing that all ignorance, but especially Christian ignorance, does not result from deprivation as much as mankind's wilful aversion to genuine knowledge.” The religious values which prevented man from living life disgusted Nietzsche: ‘Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind… faith in "another" or "better" life.’ He stated that the Church “has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul." Nietzsche thought the values of nationalism and Christianity defiled everything that could potentially be strong and beautiful, and wanted to free the European culture from its tantalizing grip. Nietzsche further expressed his thoughts towards religion in his novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
God…was human work and human madness…. It was suffering and impotence- that created all after worlds...
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.... The aim should be to prepare a transvaluation for a particularly strong kind of man, most highly gifted in intellect and will. This man and the elite around him will become the ‘lords of the earth’.
This belief is shown throughout Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” by his consistent usage of Nietzsche’s phrase ‘lords of the earth’.
Friedrich Nietzsche tore apart the nihilistic mindset of Europe and gave it a new purpose. He combated the degradation of Europe’s moral foundation with his own theories, the Superman. The Superman is one who has overcome himself and follows no other values but those of his mind. He leads man, allowing a model for continual improvement of humanity until it can finally break free from its chains within eternal recurrence. However, Elizabeth twisted his work to influence the great evils of Nazism due to her financial needs and personal bias.
From The Birth of Tragedy, where Wagner's music represented the hope for the re-birth of pre-Socratic Greek culture to The Case of Wagner, where Wagner was the artist of German decadence par excellence, Richard Wagner always personified nineteenth century Germany for Nietzsche. By examining Nietzsche's relationship to Wagner throughout his writings, one is also examining Nietzsche's relationship to his country of birth. In this paper, I carry out such an investigation with a focus on the late period (the writings after Thus Spoke Zarathustra) in order to clarify Nietzsche's view of his own project regarding German (and by extension European) culture. I show that in the late period Nietzsche created a portrait of Wagner in which the composer was a worthy opponent; meaning someone with whom Nietzsche disagreed but viewed as an equal. Nietzsche himself took on several worthy opponents, and he claimed that in his battle with "these objects of resistance" he learned about himself. Wagner was such an object of resistance because he represented the disease of decadence which plagued the culture and from which Nietzsche emphasized his overcoming. The goal of this portraiture was to demonstrate on an individual level what could be done on a cultural level to revitalize the culture and make it healthy.
In philosophy “Nihilism” is a position of radical skepticism. It is the belief that all values are baseless and nothing is known. The word “Nihilism” itself conveys a sense of abolishing or destroying (IEP). Nietzsche’s work and writings are mostly associated with nihilism in general, and moral nihilism especially. Moral nihilism questions the reality and the foundation of moral values. Nietzsche supported his view on morality by many arguments and discussions on the true nature of our inner self. Through my paper on Moral Nihilism, I will explain 5 major arguments and then try to construct a deductive argument for each, relying on Nietzsche’s book II “Daybreak”.
Adolf Hitler’s political goals and social philosophies can be seen vividly through a brief excerpt of his autobiography/exposition entitled “Mein Kampf” or “My Struggles.” Hitler’s thoughts seemed to arise from a mind that blamed the German
Friedrich Nietzsche is an influential German Philosopher who is known for his writings, on Good and Evil, the end of religion in society, and the concept of “super man.” Nietzsche was born in 1844, in Röcken bei Lützen Germany. He published numerous works of philosophy, which includes Twilights of the Idols, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In 1880’s Nietzsche developed points of his philosophy. One of his famous statements is that “God is dead” which is a rejection to the Christian faith. Others were his endorsement of self-perfection throughout creative drive and a will to power, which brought his concept “super-man) which is an individual who strives to exist beyond conventional categories of good and evil. Nietzsche made a major influence on
He volunteered for the German army during World War I and became a prisoner and then a sergeant and received his iron cross and the cross of honor. He had other writing as well, for example: Mary and the Mocker, Einstein and the Poet, Die Feder stockt and a few others. Some works in progress are Seed of the Last Days, thinking back on philosophy and people. Another is Theology of Violence, which are his individual experiences with Goebbels, Hitler, Puis XII, and Mussolini. William Hermanns personal vow as an author started when he promised that if God saved him he would serve God for as long as he lived. This encourages him to write about man’s instinctive conscience through his own special involvements. Mr. Hermanns also does not believe in chance, but in coincidence and meaning of events that seem related. 1
For example, history will, one would hope, never forget the atrocity that was the Holocaust. The notion that a civilized nation could choose to hate one group so much, to the point of barbaric genocide, seems unconscionable to most. However, the anti-Semitism that prompted the Holocaust had a fairly long history in Europe as a whole. Nietzsche, though he wrote of rethinking or rejecting the values and beliefs of the society, held to a fierce anti-Semitic viewpoint. Nietzsche, in "Beyond Good and Evil," quotes Tacitus in saying that the Jews were born for slavery, and claims that Jews as a whole have inverted any and all proper values. Indeed, he seems to blame Judaism for what he would call the upside-down values of the world, saying:
For thousands of years, the Jewish People have endured negative stereotypes such as the "insects of humanity." As Sander Gilman pointed out, the Nazi Party labeled Jews as "insects like lice and cockroaches, that generate general disgust among all humanity" (Gilman 80).1 These derogative stereotypes, although championed by the Nazis, have their origins many centuries earlier and have appeared throughout Western culture for thousands of years. This fierce anti-Semitism specifically surfaced in Europe’s large cities in the early twentieth century, partially in conjunction with the growing tide of nationalism, patriotism, and xenophobia that sparked the First World War in 1914. Today, one often learns the history of this critical, pre-WWI era from the perspective of Europe’s anti-Semitic population, while the opposite perspective—that of the Jews in early twentieth-century European society—is largely ignored. Questions like: "How did the Jews view and respond to their mistreatment?" and "How were the Jews affected mentally and psychologically by the prejudices against them?" remain largely unanswered. Insight into these perplexing social questions, while not found in most history books, may be discovered in a complex and highly symbolic story of this era: "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka. Through the use of an extended metaphor, "The Metamorphosis" provides both a basic summary of the common views held against Jews and offers an insight as to what may be the ultimate result of Europe’s anti-Semitism. This work serves as a social commentary and criticism of early twentieth-century Europe. It fulfills two main functions: first, it provides an outline of the s...
We have grown weary of man. Nietzsche wants something better, to believe in human ability once again. Nietzsche’s weariness is based almost entirely in the culmination of ressentiment, the dissolution of Nietzsche’s concept of morality and the prevailing priestly morality. Nietzsche wants to move beyond simple concepts of good and evil, abandon the assessment of individuals through ressentiment, and restore men to their former wonderful ability.
To this day it remains incomprehensible to justify a sensible account for the uprising of the Nazi Movement. It goes without saying that the unexpectedness of a mass genocide carried out for that long must have advanced through brilliant tactics implemented by a strategic leader, with a promising policy. Adolf Hitler, a soldier in the First World War himself represents the intolerant dictator of the Nazi movement, and gains his triumph by arousing Germany from its devastated state following the negative ramifications of the war. Germany, “foolishly gambled away” by communists and Jews according to Hitler in his chronicle Mein Kampf, praises the Nazi Party due to its pact to provide order, racial purity, education, economic stability, and further benefits for the state (Hitler, 2.6). Albert Speer, who worked closely under Hitler reveals in his memoir Inside the Third Reich that the Führer “was tempestuously hailed by his numerous followers,” highlighting the appreciation from the German population in response to his project of rejuvenating their state (Speer, 15). The effectiveness of Hitler’s propaganda clearly served its purpose in distracting the public from suspecting the genuine intentions behind his plan, supported by Albert Camus’ insight in The Plague that the “townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences”(Camus, 37). In this sense “humanists” represent those who perceive all people with virtue and pureness, but the anti-humanist expression in the metaphor shows the blind-sidedness of such German citizens in identifying cruel things in the world, or Hitler. When the corruption within Nazism does receive notice, Hitler at that point given h...
“There are no truths,” states one. “Well, if so, then is your statement true?” asks another. This statement and following question go a long way in demonstrating the crucial problem that any investigator of Nietzsche’s conceptions of perspectivism and truth encounters. How can one who believes that one’s conception of truth depends on the perspective from which one writes (as Nietzsche seems to believe) also posit anything resembling a universal truth (as Nietzsche seems to present the will to power, eternal recurrence, and the Übermensch)? Given this idea that there is no truth outside of a perspective, a transcendent truth, how can a philosopher make any claims at all which are valid outside his personal perspective? This is the question that Maudemarie Clark declares Nietzsche commentators from Heidegger and Kaufmann to Derrida and even herself have been trying to answer. The sheer amount of material that has been written and continues to be written on this conundrum demonstrates that this question will not be satisfactorily resolved here, but I will try to show that a resolution can be found. And this resolution need not sacrifice Nietzsche’s idea of perspectivism for finding some “truth” in his philosophy, or vice versa. One, however, ought to look at Nietzsche’s philosophical “truths” not in a metaphysical manner but as, when taken collectively, the best way to live one’s life in the absence of an absolute truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense represents a deconstruction of the modern epistemological project. Instead of seeking for truth, he suggests that the ultimate truth is that we have to live without such truth, and without a sense of longing for that truth. This revolutionary work of his is divided into two main sections. The first part deals with the question on what is truth? Here he discusses the implication of language to our acquisition of knowledge. The second part deals with the dual nature of man, i.e. the rational and the intuitive. He establishes that neither rational nor intuitive man is ever successful in their pursuit of knowledge due to our illusion of truth. Therefore, Nietzsche concludes that all we can claim to know are interpretations of truth and not truth itself.
Friedrich Nietzsche and Mahatma Gandhi, two mammoth political figures of their time, attack the current trend of society. Their individual philosophies and concepts suggest a fundamental problem: if civilization is so diseased, can we overcome this state of society and the sickness that plagues the minds of the masses in order to advance? Gandhi and Nietzsche attain to answer the same proposition of sickness within civilization, and although the topic of unrest among both may be dissimilar, they have parallel means of finding a cure to such an illness as the one that plagues society. Nietzsche’s vision of spiritual health correlates directly with Gandhi’s image of industrialism and the self-sufficiency. This correlation prevails by highlighting the apparent sickness that is ubiquitous in both of the novels.
Nietzsche believed this to be a form of nihilism because mankind valued precisely what was halting his advancement. With this in mind, Nietzsche began his bold movement towards the revaluation of all values.
Friedrich Nietzsche, although not one of the “greatest” philosophers in the book, is still very important to the world that we live in today. With the ideas and theories that he was capable of producing in the short amount of time that he was alive is astonishing. He had many ideas that were predominant in the European world, but one of the ideas that was capable to spread more so to the English speaking countries was the idea that “God is dead”. With this idea Nietzsche was capable of challenging peoples mind; showing the population that there is more to you and I than we believe. His idea is simple yet so complex at the same time. You take out one variable, something that many rely on, and you set the world on fire.
Mankind’s origin was premeditated from God, formed from the dust of the earth, and made in His image and likeness. God confers with Himself and rouses Himself to make man in His own image and likeness (Bavinck 1). Because man is made in God’s image and likeness, he is set apart from any other creature or angel ever created. Man has a relationship with God that no other creature will ever have.