Prior to the Enlightenment period, many individuals relied on God to spare man from igniting the evil spirit within their conscious. Whereas, the nineteenth century sparked a turning point in the ideology that characterized individuals as their own saviors. This idea stemmed from the Counter Enlightenment Movement. These Counter Enlightenment thinker’s believed that previous policies have damaged man, misguided individuals from fulfilling their true destiny. Intellectuals began to redefine the self and strip all external banisters from existence. The key for Counter Enlightenment thinkers was to reveal the damages of the Enlightenment period and offer a solution. During the Nineteenth century, two thinker’s emerged Nietzsche and Freud. The …show more content…
By understanding the principle of morality the philosopher attempts to outline a fictional history concerning the terms good and evil. Not only does Nietzsche question the history of these terms, but Nietzsche questions their value. In the first essay, ‘Good and Evil’, ‘Good and Bad’ Nietzsche desires to provide a historical background of the categories of good v. evil and display, there are no metaphysics in the universe because man created the force of evil, thus only humans can destroy the force. The theories of ‘evil’ and ‘bad’ emerge from the word ‘good.’ Originally the categories were divided in sections of good v. bad, which Nietzsche relates to historical figures. These categories are dependent on one another and cannot be separated. Furthermore, Nietzsche aims to show that by examining the meaning of the term ‘good’ in various languages, the word is used in the same context in spite of the language distinction. Most areas in their vocabulary relate the term ‘good’ with the color white, which infers a sense of purity and cleanliness. Nietzsche characterized the ‘good’ individuals in society to be spiritual noble aristocrats. These nobles were sophisticated individuals who were well respected in society due to their …show more content…
As opposed to Nietzsche, Freud believes that evil is fundamentally apart of humans and it cannot be eradicated, “his aggressiveness is introjected, internalized; it is, in point of fact, sent back to where it came from- that is, it is directed towards his own ego.” This reveals that the Ego and the Superego are dependent on one another. The Superego fuels the feeling of guilt, which corrupts the Ego. The principle of raissonement is ignited by the individual experiencing guilt. A French thinker known as, Lacan is recognized for bringing back the psychologist theory of sublimation, which explains the principle of guilt will suppress human desires. This policy of guilt in Freud’s ideology is located in the Superego, where individuals judge themselves for failing and feel remorse for their actions. There is no conscious because the force of evil is not a temptation to be feared, but a definition of self. This absence of conscious relates to the general will becoming a complete negative principle. If the Ego principle was not formulated then the individual would resort to evil tendencies. In relationship to Freud’s philosophy, he refer’s to the Id as instincts, which he believes are apart of everyone and have always been apart of humans from
According to Nietzsche, “the good” could be understood as” noble, the high-placed and the high-minded” and opposite of those would be “low-minded and plebeian” those would be ‘the bad” (Nietzsche, GM, pg. 11). According to Kain, this view was hold based on the class system (Kain, pg 124). If you are in the upper class and superior class it means that you are having more” power “and you are the one who everyone could “trust” therefore you are “the good” (Kain, pg.123). Kain is saying that this standpoint led masters to acknowledge their self (Kain, pg. 124). According to Kain, “the bad” were the others (Kain, pg 125). This viewpoint was not created by the slave but by aristocrats that had made such a notion who is “the good” and who is “the bad”, stated by Kain (Kain, pg. 125). According to Nietzsche, “the good” has nothing to do with being not egoistic (Nietzsche, GM, pg. 12). Nietzsche also adds, that ‘egoistic and unegoistic” actions started to become noticeable when aristocrats judgment of value degrade (Nietzsche, GM, pg. 12). Kain st...
According to Nietzsche, what was meant by being good fell directly upon the noble, the rich, and the privileged, “The judgment ‘good’ does not emanate from those to whom goodness is shown! Instead it has been ‘the good’ themselves, meaning the noble, the mighty, the high-placed and the high-minded, who saw and judged themselves and their actions as good” (Nietzsche 2:396). And what was meant by being bad oriented upon the commoners, the poor, and the undesirable. When determining good, bad, pure, and impure, it opens a door for the people living “undesirable” lives to subsume “ressentiment”—or resentment. Resentment is built from hate and aggression towards the poor man’s opposition, the noble man. In the face of hardships, the noble man believes he lives a generally happy life he thus lives presently, rid of anxieties; the noble man hardly sulks in disparities, but he also hardly learns from them. The poor man is forced to fester in his misfortune which also forced him to grow smarter than his counterpart; he cannot evade from present realities. Subsequently, what the noble man calls “good” is what the poor man deems “evil”. Such concepts fall into what Nietzsche considers the “Slave Morality” and the “Master Morality”. In a basic sense, the concept of the Slave Morality in relation to the
Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On the Genealogy of Morality” includes his theory on man’s development of “bad conscience.” Nietzsche believes that when transitioning from a free-roaming individual to a member of a community, man had to suppress his “will to power,” his natural “instinct of freedom”(59). The governing community threatened its members with punishment for violation of its laws, its “morality of customs,” thereby creating a uniform and predictable man (36). With fear of punishment curtailing his behavior, man was no longer allowed the freedom to indulge his every instinct. He turned his aggressive focus inward, became ashamed of his natural animal instincts, judged himself as inherently evil, and developed a bad conscience (46). Throughout the work, Nietzsche uses decidedly negative terms to describe “bad conscience,” calling it ugly (59), a sickness (60), or an illness (56); leading some to assume that he views “bad conscience” as a bad thing. However, Nietzsche hints at a different view when calling bad conscience a “sickness rather like pregnancy” (60). This analogy equates the pain and suffering of a pregnant woman to the suffering of man when his instincts are repressed. Therefore, just as the pain of pregnancy gives birth to something joyful, Nietzsche’s analogy implies that the negative state of bad conscience may also “give birth” to something positive. Nietzsche hopes for the birth of the “sovereign individual” – a man who is autonomous, not indebted to the morality of custom, and who has regained his free will. An examination of Nietzsche’s theory on the evolution of man’s bad conscience will reveal: even though bad conscience has caused man to turn against himself and has resulted in the stagnation of his will, Ni...
Nietzsche starts his explanation of the genealogy of morals by evaluating the origin of a version of the word “good”. He posits that what is good is described by the person it is most useful for, essentially that what is “good” is subject to the perspective of the person who is on the receiving end of the action. Nietzsche also provides an alternative view to its origin, he claims that instead of “good” being defined by the person who benefits from the action, rather that the noble and powerful have claimed the right to define their actions and values as “good”. Nietzsche defends this view by explaining the
Nietzsche begins his discussion of good and moral with an etymological assessment of the designations of “good” coined in various languages. He “found they all led back to the same conceptual transformation—that everywhere ‘noble,’ ‘aristocratic’ in the social sense, is the basic concept from which ‘good’ in the sense of ‘with aristocratic soul,’… developed…” (Nietzsche 909). Instead of looking forward at the achievement for morality, Nietzsche looks backward, trying to find origins and causes of progression. He ultimately comes to the conclusion that strength implies morality, that superiority implies the good man. The powerful nobles, through pathos of difference, construed plebeians and slaves as bad, because of their inferiority in every sense of the word. From this concept of the pathos of difference was born the priestly morality, wherein the nobles were construed in an altogether different and less favorable light.
Friedrich Nietzsche is recognized for being one of the most influential German philosophers of the modern era. He is known for his works on genealogy of morality, which is a way to study values and concepts. In Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche mentions that values and concepts have a history because of the many different meanings that come with it. Nietzsche focused on traditional ethical theories, especially those rooted in religion. Not being a religious man, he believed that human life has no moral purpose except for the significance that human beings give it. People from different backgrounds and circumstances in history bend morality's meaning, making it cater to the norms of their society. For example, the concept of what is "good" in the ancient Greek culture meant aristocratic, noble, powerful, wealthy, pure, but not in modern era. Meaning, in the past the term “good” was not applied to a kind of act that someone did but rather applied to the kind of person and background they had. Nietzsche’s project was to help expand one’s understanding by re-examining morality through genealogy of morality; helping one to be more aware of a potential confusion in moral thinking. He feels that the current values and concepts that have been instilled into a society are a reversal of the truth, forcing him to believe that one’s moral systems had to have been created within society. In the works of genealogy of morality, Nietzsche traces out the origins of the concepts of guilt and bad conscience, which will be the main focal point, and explaining its role in Nietzsche’s project against morality. It will be argued that guilt and bad conscience goes against Nietzsche’s role against morality because it can conflict with the moral co...
The first morality Nietzsche writes about is the master morality. Nietzsche defined master morality as the morality of the strong-willed. The people that fall under the category of master morality typically think of themselves as "the good,"which is defined as
In Beyond Good and Evil 21 Nietzsche argues that an autonomous agent requires being causa sui. The problem with this requirement is that nothing can be causa sui, Nietzsche says that, “the concept of a causa sui is something fundamentally absurd” (BGE 15) and because of this no one can be an autonomous agent. In the following line, Nietzsche asks, “Consequently, the external world is not the work of our organs?” If this is true, that causa sui is absurd and the external world is of our organs, then is it possible that we are autonomous agents or have any sense of agency and responsibility? Nietzsche would say so it seems.
Nietzsche repudiates the above view, saying that it is obvious that “the judgment ‘good’ does not stem from those to whom ‘goodness’ is rendered” (Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, page 10). Instead, Nietzsche considers morality as ultimately derived from strength and superiority, saying that “it was ‘the good’ themselves, that is the noble, powerful, higher-ranking, and high-minded who felt and ranked themselves and their doings as good, which is to say, as of the first rank, in contrast to everything base, low-minded, common, and vulgar” (10). In other words, morality is the strong simply being strong, exercising their own strength over those who are weak. Even on an etymological level,
Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 to Jewish Galician parents in the Moravian town of Pribor in the Austrian Empire (“Sigmund Freud” n. pag). During his education in the medical field, Freud decided to mix the career fields of medicine and philosophy to become a psychologist (“Sigmund Freud” n. pag). During his research as a psychologist, he conceived the Structural Model Theory, which he discussed in his essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The theory states that the human psyche is divided into three main parts: the id, ego, and super-ego (“Id, Ego, and Super-ego” n. pag). He concluded that the id was the desire for destruction, violence and sex; the ego was responsible for intellect and dealing with reality; and the super-ego was a person’s sense of right and wrong and moral standards (Hamilton, n. pag). Freud argued that a healthy individual will have developed the strongest ego to keep the id and super-ego in check (“Id, Ego, and Super-ego” n. p...
Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals can be assessed in regards to the three essays that it is broken up into. Each essay derives the significance of our moral concepts by observing
In addition to Freud’s stages of development his best-known concepts are those of the id, ego, and superego (Crain, p. 268). The id personality called ‘the unconscious” is the personality that focuses on maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain through reflexes and drives such as hunger or bladder tensions (Crain, pp. 268-269). The id concept is impulsive, chaotic and unrealistic.
Sigmund Freud created strong theories in science and medicine that are still studied today. Freud was a neurologist who proposed many distinctive theories in psychiatry, all based upon the method of psychoanalysis. Some of his key concepts include the ego/superego/id, free association, trauma/fantasy, dream interpretation, and jokes and the unconscious. “Freud remained a determinist throughout his life, believing that all vital phenomena, including psychological phenomena like thoughts, feelings and phantasies, are rigidly determined by the principle of cause and effect” (Storr, 1989, p. 2). Through the discussion of those central concepts, Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis becomes clear as to how he construed human character.
Sigmund Freud was a very prominent neurologist and is known as the father of psychoanalysis and being a prominent thinker of his time in the late nineteenth century to early twentieth century. His theory of human personality is a well-known theory of the nineteen hundreds. His theory, describes prominence of what is known as the id, ego, and superego. His theory largely differs from another well know thinker known as George Herbert Mead. Mead is well known for his theory of self. Mead’s theory is more accepted than Freud’s theory in today’s society due to the increase of knowledge of the human persona. I will analyze the differences in theories based on which theory allows for more free will in human beings.
Good versus evil is an eternal struggle, conflict, war, or a unification. Good exists while evil does as well, this is because without evil, there can be no such thing as good, and without good, there can also be no evil. The question exists that if there is an all-good & powerful God who is omniscient; omnipotent; omni-benevolent; then how can evil exist within such absolute terms?