Analysis Of Beyond Good And Evil By Nietzsche

794 Words2 Pages

For this essay I shall look at the claim made by Nietzsche: Nietzsche claims that psychology is “the road to the fundamental problems” ( Beyond Good and Evil, section 23 ). Reconstruct and assess Nietzsche’s argument for this. Nietzsche made this claim in his book called Beyond Good and Evil, through the course of this essay I will examine the argument that built up to Nietzsche finishing off part one of his book with the statement:
“For psychology is now once again the way to the fundamental problems”.
This statement makes me wonder why would Nietzsche make such a bold claim? Was it because he had a bad experience with a psychologist? Or was it just down to him thinking that maybe people should decide whether or not to let psychologists
Nietzsche made various radical claims over the course of his lifetime, from the claim ‘God is dead’ to the quote which we will be looking at ‘Psychology is the road to fundamental problems’. There are various fundamental problems in the world today, from questions like “What shall I have for lunch today?” when your fridge is full, to “Who should I vote for in the local elections?” when all of the people running for county council are really good. However for Nietzsche he believed that Psychology was the road to a fundamental problem.

This claim makes me think that Nietzsche is slightly contradicting himself because a couple of sentences before he made the claim he says:
“will it at least be allowed to demand in exchange that psychology again be recognised as the ruler of the sciences, for whose service and preparation the remaining sciences
Does he mean that Philosophy is a ‘love story’? I am led to believe that he does mean, and we are probably ‘introduced’ by Psychology to Philosophy. Nietzsche later goes on to state that the Christian culture is an inheritance, to which posterity will be judged by something that is ‘crackbrained and petty.’ This statement I disagree with, because I believe that Nietzsche is trying to find an ‘explanation’ to what he thinks Philosophy and Psychology is, but he seems to be a bit nihilistic towards Christianity.

To carry on the idea that Philosophy is something that we need to be cautious about, I would like to take you back to the earlier idea that was presented about ‘psychology is the Queen of all Sciences’. It is an interesting concept, and people may interpret the claim in various ways. A claim to describe what Nietzsche

Show More
Related

  • Freud's Attack On Christianity Essay

    782 Words  | 2 Pages

    of this essay is to identify the influence Marx and Nietzsche had on Freud’s critique of

    Read More

  • Essay Comparing Nietzsche And Martin Luther King

    567 Words  | 2 Pages

    However, Nietzsche’s idea of the powerful forcing their will on common people resonates with me. It is something we see in our modern society, wealthy people seem to have a higher influence over the average American. Examples of powerful people controlling others are found in politics, economy, media, and religion. Common people are lead to think in certain ways that the powerful need them to. Nietzsche said that people will only be equal as long as they are equal in force and talent, people who have a higher social group are more influential in decisions because average people look to them for information. The thing I do not agree with Nietzsche on his view as Christianity as a weakness because religion is a main cause of people’s decision

    Read More

  • On Religion: Rhetorical Devices

    930 Words  | 2 Pages

    Nietzsche uses an elevated level of diction to help him achieve his purpose, he uses Latin in many passages to make the reader look to the bottom of the page and thus think about what he is proposing. His combination of elevated diction along with deductive reasoning can sometimes lose the reader, but just as fast as the reader is lost Nietzsche offers forth a formula which helps the reader follow his thinking. Nietzsche believes that a person’s "virtue is the consequence of happiness," or that a person’s emotions are the product of their beliefs. Nietzsche’s uses consequence to mean something more like cause than effect. He interchanges monosyllabic and polysyllabic - in the form of metaphors - words in connotation to sometimes differ the reader from the beaten track of thinking. He believes in a set course "that he became ill, that he failed to resist the illness," for humans and that they cannot deter from it (this is very far left in a time of conservative Europeans, late 19th century). Even in his "formulas" Nietzsche’s meaning is not as straight forward as it seems. It seems that he believes that individuals genetically are means to an end, but this is more of a metaphor for humanity, or that humanity is their own means to an end.

    Read More

  • Nietzsche: Philosophizing Without Categorizing

    1233 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...d of a Buddhist koan, which is intended to break the hold of logic on the mind. However, rather than breaking the hold of logic on the mind, Nietzsche, with his jibing remarks, swashbuckling writing style, self-contradictions, and secrecy, is intending to break the hold of socially determined "masks," or Isms, from the perceptions of the new philosopher who will arise the day after tomorrow. Nietzsche shows us how to philosophize without Isms. The only question remaining is whether we are strong enough to take his advice.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Freudis And Nietzsche

    862 Words  | 2 Pages

    Both Freud and Nietzsche presented almost the same interpretations of human nature and the society they lived in. Though, the societies in which they lived in were different. Freud and Nietzsche’s thoughts may be similar, but human nature constantly changes. Freud is more aware, he examines into the past to find reasons that make life more civilized, however Nietzsche is more doubtful, he sees that humans should be led by a hero.

    Read More

  • Nietzsche's Moral Analysis

    1405 Words  | 3 Pages

    Enter here The ear splitting crackle from a whip is heard as a master shouts orders to a slave. This to most people would make them comfortable. The idea of slavery is one that is unsettling to most people. This is because most people feel it is unmoral or morally wrong to own another human being. However Nietzsche would not necessarily believe this because he did believe in a morality that fits all. Ethics and morality are completely objective and cannot be one set of rules for everyone. Ethics and morality that are more strictly defined are for the weak, the strong do not need a set of rules because they can take care of themselves.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Morality By Nietzsche

    1203 Words  | 3 Pages

    For him, “life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of what is alien and weaker, suppression, hardness, imposition of one’s own forms, incorporation and at least, at its mildest, exploitation.” That is to say, our desire for power is unavoidable and an inherent part of our nature. On the other hand, the abnegation from “injury, violence, and exploitation and placing one’s will on a par with that of someone else” (instead of propagating one’s own will over others’) is “a will to the denial of life [and] a principle of disintegration and decay.” If one considers life and the act of living itself as the will to power, then master morality’s affinity to honour strength and self-promotion would be the more compelling morality for Nietzsche. This is not precisely the case however, as master morality lacks a certain subtlety as opposed to the act of enslaving oneself, which can be an “indispensable means of spiritual discipline and cultivation.” In any case, Nietzsche’s appreciation of the advantages of master morality is not as intuitive of a sentiment as it is to other modern

    Read More

  • Nietzsche Philosophical Ideas About The Nature Of Human Behavior Research Paper

    1224 Words  | 3 Pages

    Firstly, Nietzsche stated that life is death in the making and all humans should not be determined by an external force rather, he believed that humans should have the incentive to think for themselves. Nietzsche claimed the future of a man is in his own hands. Simultaneously, humans are phased with struggles in the attempt to self-create themselves. Nietzsche proceeded with his argument affirming

    Read More

  • A True War Story: Nietzsche And O Brien

    1256 Words  | 3 Pages

    Nietzsche believes that the way intellect works is to deceive people. They naturally play that role in order to keep a secret or to restrict sharing information with another person. In other words he means people lie in order to not share the agreed upon lie. He says, “…individuals so far wants to maintain himself against other individuals, he will under

    Read More

  • Nietzsche's Critique of Religion

    1196 Words  | 3 Pages

    This confirms Nietzsche's negative view of religion / Christianism. Nietzsche said that religion shouldn't How can religion not be an 'end-in-itself' for religious believers? A counter-argument to this would be to say that religion as an instrument is not a religion.

    Read More

  • Nietzsches The Will to Power

    1030 Words  | 3 Pages

    Friedrich Nietzsche was on the cutting edge of sociological and philosophical theory when he lived in the latter part of the Nineteenth century. His ideas and theories about the world around him inspired some of the most recognized schools of thought in the modern world(or post-modern as it is seen). His post-humous work The Will to Power is the culmination of his life's work and allows for all who read it to understand the genius behind one of the greatest thinkers of all time. In The Will to Power, Nietzsche explains how the will is the controlling device each of us, and that the true will should only be used on oneself and not to take advantage of or injure another. Nietzsche seeks all who read it to understand how this is the true exercise of will and how the world has been run down by people using their will in the wrong way.

    Read More

  • Nietzsche's Ascetic Ideal

    1273 Words  | 3 Pages

    When reading Nietzsche, we can pick up from him that he was very educated often better than most philosophers. Or so he thought. Although he had a very poor outlook on his culture and everyday society, he had very strong opinions when it came to humans and their actions. He made strong assumptions whether people agreed with him or not. An assumption such as, he believed most philosophers and researchers were not as educated as he was, which we pick up in his writings. Nietzsche’s main goal in his essays are to educate those on morality. First, Nietzsche believed that specific words and human actions have evolved over time to things they were never intended to become. Nietzsche

    Read More

  • Nietzsche’s Take On Religion

    654 Words  | 2 Pages

    Nietzsche attacks religion for its stance against of healthy instinctive values and the intolerance and complacency that religion breeds.(Nietzsche 52) Nietzsche believed that the Christen morality prevented us from reaching our full potential as human beings(Janaway). Nietzsche most classical explanation for how this repressing of healthy values, such as passion and ambition occurred is the slave revolt. In this theory he states that the priestly classes of the ancient world invented an evaluative system for the downtrodden, according to which what their masters considered virtues, such as pride and strength are evil(Milgram 93). A result of this is this pervasive feeling of self guilt when our natural instincts provoke such feelings from within us, which has a negative impact on our mental health (Janaway).

    Read More

  • History of Psychology

    1357 Words  | 3 Pages

    In this essay I am looking at where Psychology as a discipline has come from and what affects these early ideas have had on psychology today, Psychology as a whole has stemmed from a number of different areas of study from Physics to Biology,

    Read More

  • Choosing Psychology as a Career

    1552 Words  | 4 Pages

    Psychology is the study of the mind, its biology, and behavior of the individual. The father of psychology, Wilhelm Wundt, used objective measurement and controlled analysis to find and emphasize separation between psychology and philosophy (McLeod). Wundt opened the Institute for Experimental Psychology at the University of Leipzig in Germany in 1879, using his background in physiology to study reactions and sensations (McLeod). There is no doubt that he, along with the later help of Sigmund Freud, launched what is now modern psychology. Psychology and its research help the world understand the inner workings of the mind and how it affects everyone around us.

    Read More

More about Analysis Of Beyond Good And Evil By Nietzsche

Open Document