Due to the centrality of God in his philosophy, Thomas Aquinas is dismissed as an “idol” in the project of Friedrich Nietzsche. Aquinas, according to Nietzsche, builds his account of truth on religious presuppositions where “the effect of what is believed true is mistaken for truth” hence “falling entirely under the psychology of error” (Nietzsche). Aquinas treats religious doctrines as if they are outside the jurisdiction of reason. For Nietzsche, Aquinas mistakenly presents a view of the world that is neither objective nor able to be subjected to scientific analysis. These initial problems with Aquinas’ view noted by Nietzsche lead to contradictions in his positions. Nietzsche calls for a revaluation of all values, even after his assertion that we cannot perceive or know a phenomenon from the “outside” from an objective position, presents the problem that he then proceeds to do so in his work. Hence, his philosophy ultimately becomes either relativism or contradiction. For Nietzsche’s system to escape contradiction he must either admit to relativism, build a new epistemology, or recognize the same premises that systems such as Aquinas’ are built upon. Thus Nietzsche enters into the competition among other systems and validates the possibility of some other position’s correctness.
Aquinas takes the stance of asserting a single and objective standard of truth and right, judgment-truth as well as person-truth, is grounded in, the deepest truth which, according to the Bible, is God: “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14, 6). Though Aquinas does not argue that complete truth is divulged through reason alone, he does argue that human beings can discover the natural law through practical reason. Those who are able to re...
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...ns, he loses validity in his critique of objective thinkers such as Aquinas. His arguments’ inherent contradictions undermine his own assertions and do nothing to lessen the validity of objective claims to truth either. This is again not to agree with Aquinas, but to point out that Nietzsche is still working in a system correspondence in order to refute the correspondence theory of truth. Nietzsche’s primary contribution to ethical theory is the realization that we no longer truly believe in God, that we must confront the consequences of this moral and spiritual gap in our lives and look for something to replace Him. His writings contain criticisms of these new replacements such as skepticism, nihilism, feminism, democracy, utilitarianism and scientific positivism, but these criticisms I don’t believe justify the demarcation of ‘False’ by Nietzsche’s own standards.
Examining the two works against each other as if it were a debate makes it a bit clearer to compare. Aquinas, reveals his argument under the groundwork that there are essentially two methods of understanding the truth. One being that it can be surmised through reason an logic, and the other being via inner faith. On the surface at this point it could be argued that this ontological determination a bit less convoluted than Anselm, yet I tend to think it could be a bit more confusing. This is what leads him to the claim that the existence of God can be proven by reason alone or “a priori”. Stemming from this belief he formulated his Five Proofs or what he called the “Quinquae Viae”. The first of which is fairly simple based on the fact that something in motion had to have been moved. Agreeing that something set it in motion therefor there must have been a...
“On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” is an unfinished work written by Friedrich Nietzsche in 1873. In this work, Nietzsche takes an approach to explaining the truth in a way that we would all find very unusual, but that is merely the Nietzsche way. In this essay I will analyze how Nietzsche views the truth, as explained in “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense”
St. Thomas Aquinas presents five arguments to demonstrate the existence of God. However, this paper focuses on the fifth argument. The fifth argument is regarded as the Teleological Argument and states that things that lack intelligence act for some end or purpose. While the fifth argument satisfies God’s existence for Aquinas, some contemporary readers would argue that Aquinas neglects the laws of physics. Others argue that Aquinas allows a loophole in his argument so that the Catholic conception of God is not the only intelligent designer.
Thomas Aquinas’ many-sided theory of goodness is that it can be found in all things in some way, and Christopher Hughes deeply explores this in his reading Aquinas on Being, Goodness, and God.
When Nietzsche claims that God is dead he is not making an empirical claim about God’s existence, nor even merely about the state of belief in his existence. His claim is that the conceptual relationship between God and the ‘Truth’ fundamentally changed with the Enlightenment. Previously ‘Truth’ was understood via its relationship with God; Nietzsche argues that:
Matthew’s gospel is a morally sound guideline to being the perfect Christian. Be kind to your neighbors. Help the poor. Be meek and poor for you will inherit the earth. Nietzsche would spit on these “virtues.” He believes that the gospel is the word of the weak and unwanted. The meek will only make a difference if they band together and start a resentiment, which is when the meek revolt and turn against the “noble” or strong. This is the only way that the poor can gain any power in society. In Nietzsche’s eyes religion was the ultimate con on the human race. A few weak men’s ideas spawned a worldwide movement to suppress the strong and noble. This movement will hinder the innate instinct to gain power and be the strongest util man realizes he controls his fate and religion is a fantasy.
“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.
Scholars Press, Atlanta : 1991. Armand Maurer. Being and Knowing: Studies in Thomas Aquinas and Later Medieval Philosophers, Papers in Mediæval Studies, no. 10. Pontifical Institute of Mediæval Studies, Toronto : 1990. Thomas Aquinas.
Throughout the course Nietzsche’s lifespan his attitude towards truth and religion has shifted various times. He first left his Christian beliefs and changed his major from theology to Philology in order to search for truth. He did not want to have faith without knowing what he was having faith in beforehand. By his thirties Nietzsche started to interpret that people were making up myths and stories in order to keep themselves in denial from the truth of life, thus giving a different meaning. When Nietzsche starts writing “Beyond Good and Evil” Nietzsche again changes his views and describes truth as a woman and philosophers are truth’s unwanted men in her life who are going about her in all the wrong ways, asserting and
Both Abelard and Aquinas were the two leading followers of scholastics of their time. Summa Theologica and Sic et Non, to this day, are controversial ways man has looked for reason in finding the truth about God and the divine order of life. The views on the "natural world" were challenged without challenging the Christian faith, while being followers of the Christian faith.
It is my view that God exists, and I think that Aquinas’ first two ways presents a
Nietzsche proclaimed in The Gay Science, "God is dead: but given the way men are, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.-- And we -- we still have to vanquish his shadow, too."[1] The death he witnessed was the tide of atheism that has dominated science and philosophy since his time. This atheism invariably comes from one of two different backgrounds: Enlightenment science and Enlightenment morality.
Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae, stated that, “Man should not seek to know what is above reason.” His argument was, in very simple terms, that men need reason to understand all of God’s truths. Yet there are certain truths that are beyond reason which men can only understand through Divine Revelation, or faith. And sometimes there might be certain aspects of faith that one day reason might have been able to prove but only a few men would know and understand this, so it is necessary that all men know this through Divine Revelation and faith.
Aquinas and Augustine's showed their philosophies ,that were derived ancient philosophers, when they spoke of faith and reason, both of them tried to get there point out in there own way. Aquinas and Augustine both had one goal and and that was too prove that Christianity was somehow intertwined with philosophy and Both of them did just that, many people may or may not agree with these philosophies but it just depends on the type of person you are. Many people like to live off fact and know for certain, but like Aquinas and Augustine we all have our own philosophies, we choose what to believe and what not to believe. We are not machines nor are we controlled by one. We are after all humans and have free will, what we want to believe in is ours for the