“Has he got lost? Did he lose his way like a child? Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Emigrated?” No the madman says; “we have killed him – you and I. All of us are his murderers” This exchange encapsulates the aphorism that underpins much of Nietzsche’s thought; that “God is dead”. But what does this mean - What is Nietzsche telling us by claiming that we have murdered God? This essay is going to attempt to try and understand what Nietzsche argues has changed and what hasn’t with the death of God and to examine his critique of 19th century morality in the context of the 21st century politics and see if he offers a constructive alternative to the way we engage in political discourse.
When Nietzsche claims that
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“Modern pessimism is an expression of the uselessness of the modern world--not of the world of existence.” he argues. This means that pessimism isn’t the result of some objective truth about the world but about the world that we have created for ourselves. What Nietzsche offers us isn’t a substance of ‘Truth’, in fact that is specifically what he is avoiding and so often he is charged with nihilism and obliterating modernity without offering anything to replace it. In reality what he offers us is a method by which we can assert ourselves in a world where ‘Truth’ and morality and identity are contingent and changing and are routed in ourselves rather than in science. After he claims that we have killed god he implies we must become Gods ourselves for doing such a deed and this is precisely what he hopes – that we take the place of God and become the arbiter of our own …show more content…
This is Nietzsche at his most constructive, he is arguing for one to engage with one’s own ego and to shape and create one’s own identity. In a letter he urges us to "live above ourselves in order that we may be able to live with ourselves." . His concern is that we end up as one of the ‘herd’ he mocks so derisively where our values all congregate through sloth or slavishness or self
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.
“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”
In the novel Twilight (1988) by Elie Wiesel, the protagonist Raphael, a professor of mysticism, embarks on a quest to discover the relationship between madness and prophecy. This paper uses Wiesel’s Twilight as a focal point to examine the concepts of madness and prophecy from historical, literary, and philosophical perspectives. The paper also explores the relationship between a madman and a prophet. In Twilight, Raphael takes a scholarly adventure to the Mountain Clinic to
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.
Fridreich Nietzsche writes in The Gay Science "God is dead....And we have killed him," (99, Existentialist Philosophy) referr...
Nietzsche studies the etymological origins of the good and the bad, and how the dichotomy evolved into one between the good and the evil. Through the close study of the roots of the words and the meanings they take, he proposes that the good and evil as we know of now emerged from the struggles of the will to power of the ‘Nobility class’ who possess the master morality, and the will to power of the ‘Priestly class’ who are driven by the slave morality; however, Nietzsche thinks that both classes are limited, and we have to hope that the sovereign individuals will spring up in the future, who are superior to the two, and worthy of becoming alike.
First of all, from my interpretation of Nietzsche, modern humanity did not invent the idea of God. Rather the God had a functional role from his point of view. There is no doubt that, modern humanity had the idea of God, but in my opinion, this idea was like a heritage to the modern humanity from their ancestors. We should look at the earlier times of the history in order to understand the roots of the invention of God.
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.
...’s lack of a direct response to this apparent contradiction ensures that this matter will continue to be hotly debated well into the future. For this seemingly simple contradiction of positing truths when one has denied all absolute truths, Nietzsche gives a very complex and personal answer.
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.
But he objects to the values of the New Testament that shouldn't be linked to the Old Testament. They demote power. He sees religion as intensely nihilistic - it's all about denying life and being negative. Nietzsche feels that the New Testament is also like that. We have to go beyond this.
Prior to the establishment of the Abrahamic monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) religious justice was a muddled picture. In the polytheistic religions, gods each had their own interests, which often conflicted with the interests of other gods. “The belief in one god allowed the Abrahamic religions setup a fundamentally different dynamic in ethics; the dichotomous distinction between right and wrong.” (Stark, 2001). Human actions no longer served one god or another’s interests, they were now judged by the embodiment of all that was perfect and sacred; God.
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 conclusion, Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas and concepts have been criticized but at the same time praised throughout the years. They have caused many controversies starting by a statement he made claiming that “God was dead”. According to him, God was killed by technology and science, which became the new “God” in people’s lives. He believed that individuals belief didn’t allowed them to succeed and become powerful and wealthy. He believed in a concept of an overman, who was an individual that didn’t have a God or a religion impeding him from doing things society believed were evil. Nietzsche thought that the underman had its own morality known as master morality, which gave him the power to do things openly and without shame or fear.
All of Friedrich Nietzsche quotes were made before the age of 44. For the last 11 years of his life, he had no use of his mental capabilities. While many of Friedrich Nietzsche quotes were focused on religion, or the fallacy of it, it would be interesting to see what he would have written about later in his life and if his opinion would have changed. Although, the statement 'God is dead' did come from him, so there would likely have been no change in how he viewed religion. Many of his quotes are focused on human behavior and existence, and following are some that moved me.