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Nietzsches Guide to Better Living – The Atlantic

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Kaag, the philosophy-department chair at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, began experimenting with what might be called first-person philosophynot desiccated fodder for arcane journals but robust inquiry into what he calls the stuff of everyday lifein his 2016 book, American Philosophy: A Love Story. Mingling romance and scholarship, Kaag related how he stumbled onto the private library of a 20th-century philosophical eminence, then out of a miserable marriage and into the arms of his now-wife, the Kantian philosopher Carol Hay. As Kaag and Hay worked to preserve the librarys holdings, they didnt find consolation, exactly. Instead, they grappled with transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and pragmatists like William James. Along the way, they came to regard love as a challenge rather than a balm. In Hiking With Nietzsche, Kaag describes the draw of Nietzsches marital ideala union that embodies the will of two to create the one that is more than those who created it, never lapsing into one long stupidity.

Kaags latest work represents another effort to restore philosophy to its former relevanceto tether it to the mess of daily experience. Hiking With Nietzsche explores two related but distinct reckonings with the blandishments of modern life, Kaags and Nietzsches. Kaag is fascinated by the idea of decadencewhich Nietzsche first broached in The Birth of Tragedy, and which would preoccupy him for the rest of his life: Is it perhaps possible to suffer from over-abundance? he asked. Is there perhaps such a thing as neuroses of health? Blending biography, intellectual history, and personal essay, Kaag follows three related journeys: Nietzsches evolution from adolescent upstart to middle-aged iconoclast, Kaags youthful attempt to retrace Nietzsches footsteps through the Swiss Alps, and Kaags adult effort to retrace his own retracing, this time with Hay and their 3-year-old daughter in tow. The result is not just an approachable introduction to Nietzsches thought. Kaags book is also, despite its cloying title, a confirmation that philosophy thrives when it provides an antidote to the wholesome doldrums of sanity.

Nietzsche, born in 1844, led the kind of maladjusted life that contemporary therapies and self-help books are designed to rehabilitate. He was a lonely, awkward young man whose attempts to participate in the drunken revelries so prevalent at his two alma maters, the University of Bonn and the University of Leipzig, were short-lived and half-hearted. He actually didnt like beer, Kaag reports. He liked pastries. And he liked studyinga lot.

Nietzsches academic career was marked by a number of dazzlingly early successes. At 24, he was the youngest tenured faculty member at the University of Basel. But by 28, he had been demoted from wunderkind to pariah, thanks in large part to the publication of his first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872). More a work of creative interpretation than a piece of faithful exegesis, the debut departed sharply from accepted philological method, infuriating Nietzsches colleagues. It argued that two aesthetic tendencies vied for dominance in ancient Greece: the Dionysian, a primordial blurring of the borders dividing self and world, and the Apollonian, a rationalist paradigm that positioned art as an ordered alternative to the havoc of life. Though Nietzsche regarded these two forces as mutually enhancingand he lauded tragedy for wedding themhis real allegiance lay with the Dionysian, as his life and work went on to attest.

The hostility that The Birth of Tragedy spawned among philologists solidified Nietzsches break with academic culture. In 1879, when he was 34, declining health compelled him to leave his post in Basel, and he wandered the Alps and nursed his chronic headaches for the next decadehis most miserable and most productive. His sole serious romantic interest, the author Lou Salom, rebuffed him brutally, declining his three marriage proposals. (Salom, whom Nietzsche once described as the smartest person Ive ever met, had an enviably literary love life: She rejected not just Nietzsche but also the writer Paul Re, and she conducted a long-standing affair with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.)

In 1889, Nietzsche suffered the dramatic breakdown that would debilitate him until his death 11 years later: Upon catching sight of a man flogging a horse in a public square in Turin, the story goes, he threw his arms around the animals neck, burst into tears, and crumpled to the ground. He had already displayed signs of volatility before this collapse. According to Kaag, Nietzsche began to sign his letters Dionysus in 1888, and he had a troubled relationship with food throughout his life, ricocheting from one extreme diet to the next. As he grappled with the specter of decadence, his austere and itinerant life represented a rejection of the indulgent spirit dulling the haute bourgeoisie of fin de sicle Europe.

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Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes (Author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

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Start by following Friedrich Nietzsche.

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. Friedrich Nietzsche

That which does not kill us makes us stronger. Friedrich Nietzsche

I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you. Friedrich Nietzsche

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. Friedrich Nietzsche

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them! Friedrich Nietzsche

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness. Friedrich Nietzsche

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. Friedrich Nietzsche

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star. Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed. Friedrich Nietzsche

In heaven, all the interesting people are missing. Friedrich Nietzsche

There are no facts, only interpretations. Friedrich Nietzsche

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends. Friedrich Nietzsche

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. Friedrich Nietzsche

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. Friedrich Nietzsche

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time. Friedrich Nietzsche

When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago. Friedrich Nietzsche

No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone. Friedrich Nietzsche

The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind. Friedrich Nietzsche

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. Friedrich Nietzsche

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time. Friedrich Nietzsche

Man is the cruelest animal. Friedrich Nietzsche

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. Friedrich Nietzsche

Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man? Friedrich Nietzsche

Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood. Friedrich Neitzsche

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings -- always darker, emptier and simpler. Friedrich Nietzsche

Faith: not wanting to know what the truth is. Friedrich Nietzsche

The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night. Nietzsche

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Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes (Author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

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Nietzsche Quotes: Truth and Knowledge

Posted: July 29, 2018 at 8:41 am


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There are no facts, only interpretations.

from Nietzsche's Nachlass, A. Dantotranslation.

Enemies of truth.-- Convictions are moredangerous enemies of truth than lies.

from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.483,R.J. Hollingdale transl.

Linguistic danger to spiritual freedom.--Every word is a prejudice.

from Nietzsche's The Wanderer and hisShadow,s. 55, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

Man and things.-- Why does man not see things?He is himself standing in the way: he conceals things.

from Nietzsche's Daybreak, s. 483, R.J.Hollingdale transl

Mystical explanations.--Mystical explanations are considered deep. Thetruth is that they are not even superficial.

from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.126,Walter Kaufmann transl.

Metaphysical world.-- It is true, there couldbe a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardlyto be disputed. We behold all things through the human head andcannot cut off this head; while the question nonetheless remainswhat of the world would still be there if one had cut it off.

from Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human, s.9,R.J. Hollingdale transl.

Just beyond experience!-- Even great spiritshave only their five fingers breadth of experience - justbeyond it their thinking ceases and their endless empty space andstupidity begins.

from Nietzsche's Daybreak, s. 564, R.J.Hollingdale transl

What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors,metonyms, and anthropomorphisms -- in short, a sum of humanrelations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellishedpoetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm,canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions aboutwhich one has forgotten that is what they are; metaphors which areworn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost theirpictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for asyet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that itshould exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors -in moral terms, the obligation to lie according to fixedconvention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all...

'On truth and lie in an extra-moral sense,' TheViking Portable Nietzsche, p.46-7, Walter Kaufmann transl.

Truth.-- No one now dies of fatal truths:there are too many antidotes to them.

from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.516,R.J. Hollingdale transl.

What are man's truths ultimately? Merely hisirrefutable errors.

from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.265,Walter Kaufmann transl.

Because we have for millenia made moral, aesthetic,religious demands on the world, looked upon it with blind desire,passion or fear, and abandoned ourselves to the bad habits ofillogical thinking, this world has gradually become somarvelously variegated, frightful, meaningful, soulful, it hasacquired color - but we have been the colorists: it is the humanintellect that has made appearances appear and transported itserroneous basic conceptions into things.

from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.16,R.J. Hollingdale transl.

The reasons for which 'this' world has beencharacterized as 'apparent' are the very reasons which indicate itsreality; any other kind of reality is absolutelyindemonstrable.

from Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols, ch.3,s.6, Walter Kaufmann transl.

The total character of the world, however, is in alleternity chaos--in the sense not of a lack of necessity but a lackof order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever namesthere are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms...Let us beware ofattributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: itis neither perfect nor beautiful, nor noble, nor does it wish tobecome any of these things; it does not by any means strive toimitate man... Let us beware of saying that there are laws innature. There are only necessities: there is nobody who commands,nobody who obeys, nobody who trespasses... But when will we ever bedone with our caution and care? When will all these shadows of Godcease to darken our minds? When will we complete our de-deificationof nature? When may we begin to "naturalize" humanity interms of a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature?

from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.109,Walter Kaufmann transl..

We have arranged for ourselves a world in which wecan live - by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects,motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faithnobody could now endure life. But that does not prove them. Life isno argument. The conditions of life might include error.

from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.121,Walter Kaufmann transl..

Over immense periods of time the intellect producednothing but errors. A few of these proved to be useful and helpedto preserve the species: those who hit upon or inherited these hadbetter luck in their struggle for themselves and their progeny.Such erroneous articles of faith... include the following: thatthere are things, substances, bodies; that a thing is what itappears to be; that our will is free; that what is good for me isalso good in itself.

from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.110,Walter Kaufmann transl..

Origin of the logical.-- How did logic comeinto existence in man's head? Certainly out of illogic, whose realmoriginally must have been immense. Innumerable beings who madeinferences in a way different from ours perished; for all that,their ways might have been truer. Those, for example, who did notknow how to find often enough what is "equal" as regards bothnourishment and hostile animals--those, in other words, whosubsumed things too slowly and cautiously--were favored with alesser probability of survival than those who guessed immediatelyupon encountering similar instances that they must be equal. Thedominant tendency, however, to treat as equal what is merelysimilar--an illogical tendency, for nothing is really equal--iswhat first created any basis for logic.

In order that the concept of substance couldoriginate--which is indispensible for logic although in thestrictest sense nothing real corresponds to it--it was likewisenecessary that for a long time one did not see or perceive thechanges in things. The beings that did not see so precisely had anadvantage over those who saw everything "in flux." At bottom, everyhigh degree of caution in making inferences and every skepticaltendency constitute a great danger for life. No living beings wouldhave survived if the opposite tendency--to affirm rather thansuspend judgement, to err and make up things rather thanwait, to assent rather than negate, to pass judgement rather thanbe just-- had not been bred to the point where it becameextraordinarily strong.

from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.111,Walter Kaufmann transl..

Cause and effect: such a duality probably neverexists; in truth we are confronted by a continuum out of which weisolate a couple of pieces, just as we perceive motion only asisolated points and then infer it without ever actually seeing it.The suddenness with which many effects stand out misleads us;actually, it is sudden only for us. In this moment of suddennessthere are an infinite number of processes which elude us. Anintellect that could see cause and effect as a continuum and a fluxand not, as we do, in terms of an arbitrary division anddismemberment, would repudiate the concept of cause and effect anddeny all conditionality.

from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.112,Walter Kaufmann transl..

To renounce belief in one's ego, to deny one's own"reality" -- what a triumph! not merely over the senses, overappearance, but a much higher kind of triumph, a violation andcruelty against reason -- a voluptuous pleasure that reachesits height when the ascetic self-contempt and self-mockery ofreason declares: "there is a realm of truth and being, butreason is excluded from it!"But precisely because we seek knowledge, let us not be ungratefulto such resolute reversals of accustomed perspectives andvaluations with which the spirit has, with apparent mischievousnessand futility, raged against itself for so long: to see differentlyin this way for once, to want to see differently, is nosmall discipline and preparation for its future "objectivity" --the latter understood not as "contemplation without interest"(which is a nonsensical absurdity), but as the ability tocontrol one's Pro and Con and to dispose of them, so that oneknows how to employ a variety of perspectives and affectiveinterpretations in the service of knowledge.Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on guard against thedangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a "pure, will-less,painless, timeless knowing subject"; let us guard against thesnares of such contradictory concepts as "pure reason," absolutespirituality," "knowledge in itself": these always demand that weshould think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eyeturned in no particular direction, in which the active andinterpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeingsomething, are supposed to be lacking; these always demandof the eye an absurdity and a nonsense. There is only aperspective seeing, only a perspective "knowing"; and themore affects we allow to speak about one thing, themore eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing,the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our"objectivity," be. But to eliminate the will altogether, to suspendeach and every affect, supposing we were capable of this -- whatwould that mean but to castrate the intellect?

from Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Morals, sIII.12, Walter Kaufmann transl.

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Nietzsche Quotes: Truth and Knowledge

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Friedrich Nietzsches Religion and Political Views | The …

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Friedrich Nietzsche was born in Rcken in what is now Germany and grew up there and inNaumburg, Germany. He died of stroke, pneumonia and insanity in Weimar, Germany in 1900.

Nietzsche was originally quite religious. His father was a Lutheran minister and Friedrich studied theology at the University of Bonn. During his studies, however, he learned of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and became a staunch atheist.

That is the Nietzsche we are now familiar with, the creator of the now-famous quote:

God is dead We have killed him.

Nietzsche was quite critical of religionand Christianity in particular. According to Nietzsche, religion was a shield with which mankind protects itself from fear and anxiety over his mortality, insignificance and confusion. Influenced by Darwin, Nietzsche posited that a new kind of human will eventually emerge, far greater than any current manifestation. He called this new human the Overman or Superman, or in German, the bermensch. He wrote:

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the Overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment

In place of Christian ethics, Nietzsche simply felt that people should do whatever makes them happy. However, as evolution and nature dictates, those stronger people (such as the Overman) can do what they want and the weaker folks have to deal with it. It was his Master and Slave philosophy.

There is not truth to Nietzsche, only subjectivity. There is no justice or equality, only power and weakness.

Nietzsche is often associated with the Nazi ideology. And, it is true that Hitler and his cronies were quite fond of Nietzsches philosophy. Think about it: A philosophical justification for the idea that one person (or race of people) is stronger, better, smarter and more powerful than others. And action, violent or otherwise, is completely sanctioned by the ethics of said philosophy. Nietzsches book, Will to Power, reads:

The possibility has been established for the production of international racial unions whose task will be to rear a master race, the future masters of the earth a higher kind of man who, thanks to their superiority in will, knowledge, riches, and influence, employ democratic Europe as their most pliant and supple instrument for getting hold of the destinies of the earth, so as to work as artists upon man himself.

Sounds like the Nazi Aryans, doesnt it? Needless to say, Nietzsche was not an advocate of Democracy. The good politicians, he said, divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies.

However, Nietzsche wasnt an anti-semite and by the end of his life, in his madness, he was calling upon all of Europe to attack Germany.

Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most interesting, controversial and possibly clearest thinkers in western history. His philosophy still attracts adherents and the curious to this day. He is considered one of the fathers of a still-popular philosophical movement called existentialismthat, at the end of the day, is an optimistic philosophy centered around the idea that people are free and in control of their own destiny. It is up to them to have the good lifeand they are perfectly capable of doing it.

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Friedrich Nietzsche – Home | Facebook

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Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born in Rcken, Saxony, Prussia on this day in 1844.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monst...er. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."--from BEYOND GOOD & EVIL by Friedrich Nietzsche

BEYOND GOOD & EVIL: PRELUDE TO A PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE is one of the most remarkable and influential books of the nineteenth century. Like Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which had immediately preceded it, Beyond Good and Evil represents Nietzsches attempt to sum up his philosophybut in less flamboyant and more systematic form. The nine parts of the book are designed to give the reader a comprehensive idea of Nietzsches thought and style: they span The Prejudices of Philosophers, The Free Spirit, religion, morals, scholarship, Our Virtues, Peoples and Fatherlands, and What is Noble, as well as chapter of epigrams and a concluding poem. This translation by Walter Kaufmannthe first ever to be made in English by a philosopherhas become the standard one, for accuracy and fidelity to the eccentricities and grace of style of the original. Unlike other editions, in English or German, this volume offers an inclusive index of subjects and persons referred to in the book. Professor Kaufmann, the distinguished Nietzsche scholar, has also provided a running footnote commentary on the text.

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A Primer of the Philosophy of Nietzsche | The Art of Manliness

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Friedrich Nietzsche introduced several ideas into Western philosophy that have had a huge influence on the culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. Existentialism, postmodernism, and poststructuralism have all been touched by Nietzsches work.

His impact isnt just seen in academic philosophies, though, but also in the way many modern Westerners approach their lives. The love of struggle, the quest for autonomy and personal greatness, the clarion call of following your passion and making your life a work of art these are all cultural currents Nietzsche helped shape and set in motion. Thus to really understand modern life in all its wonder, and weirdness, one must understand Nietzsche.

Below I highlight just a few of Nietzsches biggest and most intriguing ideas; even if you decide you vehemently disagree with them, they are excellent fodder for examining how you live and exist in the world. Do you, as Nietzsche exhorts, say yes to life? Or do you deny its powers and possibilities and simply loaf through your existence?

Keep in mind that this article isnt an exhaustive look at Nietzsches work; its designed to be an accessible primer for those who wish to dip their toes into his philosophy. As such, I tried to simplify and condense the explanations as much as possible. For a more exhaustive and in-depth treatment, youll have to read the myriad books that have been written by Nietzsche and about his work; Ill suggest some of the best to check out at the end.

In Nietzsches first published work, The Birth of Tragedy, he describes two divergent outlooks embodied by the ancient Greeks: the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Together, Nietzsche argues, these two ethoses birthed one of the worlds most famous art forms the Athenian tragedy.

Apollo was the sun god who brought light and rational clarity to the world. For Nietzsche, those who view things through an Apollonian lens see the world as orderly, rational, and bounded by definite borders. The Apollonian views humanity not as an amorphous whole, but as discrete and separate individuals. Sculpture and poetry were the arts best represented by the Apollonian ethos because they have clear structuresand definedlines.

Dionysus was the god of wine, celebration, ritual madness, and festivity. Viewed through the Dionysian prism, the world is seen as chaotic, passionate, and free from boundaries. Instead of seeing humanity as being made up of atomized individuals, the Dionysian views humanity as a united, passionate, amorphous whole into which the self is absorbed. Music and dance, with their free-flowing forms, were the arts best represented by the Dionysian ethos.

For Nietzsche, the pre-Socratic Greek tragedies fused these two outlooks together perfectly. The works of Sophocles and Aeschylus forced the audience to answer one of lifes most burning questions: How can human life be meaningful if human beings are subject to undeserving suffering and death? The Apollonian answers this query by arguing that suffering brings forth a transformation chaos can be turned into beauty and order. The Dionysian, on the other hand, contends that dynamism and chaos are not necessarily bad things. Simply being part of the chaotic flow of life and joyfully riding its waves was a beautiful and worthy pursuit in and of itself; any suffering that came along with the ride was simply the price of admission.

Nietzsche argued that after Socrates, tragedies began to emphasize the Apollonian ethos at the expense of the Dionysian. Instead of seeing tragedy as the natural result of living in a world of chaos and passion, the post-Socratic dramatists saw it as the consequence of some tragic flaw in a persons character. Nietzsche believed this more rationalized view of tragedy extinguished some of lifes mystery and romanticism.

While this theory may seem very specific to a certain time, place, and art form, it has far wider implications. Its important to have a basic understanding of the two concepts because theyre woven throughout the rest of Nietzsches work. For Nietzsche, the Dionysian perspective was the more life-affirming and vitality-spurring approach to life; consequently, he emphasizes it over the Apollonian.

Besides the Dionysian and Apollonian archetypes, Nietzsche looked to other Ancient Greek ideas to inform his worldview. He was particularly fond of the pre-Socratic Greeks and their Homeric warrior ethics. Strength, courage, boldness, and pride were virtues that Nietzsche championed throughout his life.

There are no facts, only interpretations, Nietzsche famously wrote. From this, he is often accused of being a relativist, but a closer look at his work shows that this isnt quite the case. Nietzsche doesnt deny that there could be some big T Truth out there, but if there were, we would never be in a position to confirm its veracity because our observations are biased and conceived within a language, within a culture, within a perspective, within the constraints and expectations of a theory.

Instead of relativism, Nietzsche advocates for something that has been called perspectivism. Perspectivism in a nutshell means that every claim, belief, idea, or philosophy is tied to some perspective and that its impossible for humans to detach themselves from these lenses in order to suss out the objective Truth. Now, this may sound like relativism, but according to Nietzsche, its not the same thing. Unlike strict relativism, which says all views are equally valid because theyre relevant to each person, perspectivism doesnt claim that all perspectives have equal value some are in fact better than others. The job of the philosopher, according to Nietzsche, is to learn, adopt, and test as many different perspectives as possible to get a better picture of the Truth. This process may even require looking at the world with what appears to be opposing perspectives. While Nietzsche doesnt think taking on different viewpoints can ultimately reveal the big T Truth (remember, it can never fully be unveiled because of our biases), he does feel it can get you pretty close to it.

As I read about Nietzsches perspectivism, I was struck by how similar it was to John Boyds OODA Loop. If youll remember, the OODA Loop is a methodology for making strategic decisions in the face of opposition at least thats how its often viewed in todays business and military culture. For Boyd, though, the OODA Loop is more than just a decision cycle for military tacticians. It is a meta-paradigm for intellectual growth and evolution in an ever-shifting and uncertain landscape. The most important step in the OODA Loop is the Orient step, in which you constantly re-direct and re-frame your mind based on your observations of the world around you. Because our environment is always changing, we must always be orienting. A vital part of that is building a robust toolbox of mental models and testing out those mental models in the real world. According to Boyd, the more mental models one had at their disposal (even competing ones!), the more likely they were to understand the world and make good decisions. Sounds pretty much like Nietzsches perspectivism.

Nietzsche is perhaps most famous for his critiques and deconstruction of modern morality and religion. It is in Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals that Nietzsche fleshes out this critique. An important element in Nietzsches criticism is the concept of master morality and slave morality. While Nietzsche presents the development of master-slave morality as a historical and anthropological reality, its better viewed as Nietzsches big picture psychological explanation for why we (we, as in all of humanity) have the morality that we do.

According to Nietzsche, morality began as master morality. He sees the aristocratic warrior values of the Homeric Greeks and other pre-Judeo-Christian cultures as the origin of true virtue. For them, the world wasnt divided into good and evil, but rather noble and ignoble. To be noble meant successfully asserting your will on the world and getting what you wanted through your strength, courage, and excellence. Being noble meant being the best at whatever you did. This worldview required a hierarchical vision of humanity some people were more excellent and noble than others. Whats more, there was no room for humility in this conception of nobility. As Nietzsche put it, Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul. If you did great things, you took responsibility for them and basked in the glory you received from your peers. The noble, or masters, were the ones who determined what was moral.

The ignoble, or slaves as Nietzsche called them, were the complete opposite of the noble. They were weak, timid, and pathetic. The ignoble couldnt get what they wanted because they lacked the virtues of excellence and the ability to assert their will on the world. In fact, the ignoble avoided expressing their wants and desires because that could get them in trouble with the noble. They got along to get along. The noble did not esteem the slaves; they were at best pitied, at worst disdained.

Living a code based on the noble/ignoble dichotomy is what Nietzsche calls master morality. But, the philosopher argues, master morality only bred resentment in the slaves or lower classes. And it is this resentment that gave birth to slave morality. Slave morality, according to Nietzsche, was a spiritual revenge against the ruling class which sought to turn master morality on its head. Beginning with the Ancient Hebrews and continuing with Christianity, the ignoble or lower classes began to declare that the values of the master class were not only offensive to God, but that it was actually more righteous and excellent to be weak, humble, and submissive. Instead of splitting the world between the noble or ignoble, slave morality divided the world into good and evil. Under the rubric of slave morality, the noble man was seen as the evil man, and the ignoble man was seen as the good man. For Nietzsche, slave morality was a way to not just protect the weak, but to also exalt them.

Whats more, unlike master morality, which was created by the self-assertion of the noble individual himself and thus unique to him, slave morality was external and applied to everyone. Think the Ten Commandments.

While Nietzsche certainly praises master morality and casts slave morality in a bad light, he does see slave morality as serving an important psychological purpose in that it gave those without power a sense of self-esteem. The problem for Nietzsche is that, its dignity-bestowing properties aside, slave morality always puts its adherents in a secondary, dependent position. The slave can never have a sense of self-worth without thinking of someone else as evil; its reactive instead of proactive.

Nietzsche notes that its possible for an individual to be guided by both master and slave morality. Take the Pope for example. At one time in history, the Pope had actual political and military power. He governed nations and directed armies. He could, in a sense, be guided by master morality. But as a Christian, he followed a morality that emphasized humility and restraint. So there was a struggle between the two types of morality within a single man.

Its not just popes who have to deal with this internal struggle; according to Nietzsche, we all do. What we call a bad or a guilty conscience is the result of our desire to live by a code of master morality butting against the pull of slave morality. We want to be rich and powerful, but we feel guilty for wanting those things because weve been told that the desire for wealth and power is evil. The battle between master and slave morality within ourselves also manifests itself when we feel bad about our successes or when we downplay them by providing self-deprecating excuses like, Oh, it was just luck. Slave morality for Nietzsche then becomes a sort of self-hatred.

Nietzsche argues that with the passage of time, slave morality overtook master morality and what we call morality today is almost entirely composed of the formers values. Instead of seeking personal excellence, slave morality encourages us to judge and find fault in others so that we can say, Well, at least Im not as bad/evil/sinful as that guy. It encourages us to paint our enemies in the worst possible light in order to feel justified in going after them; in the world of slave morality, theres no room for the idea of the noble adversary. Slave morality also manifests itself in societys overweening emphasis on humility; to even mention ones accomplishments is seen as bragging. We balk at anyone who claims to be better than us. All in all, Nietzsche thought that living by the code of slave morality was a weak and pathetic way to go about life.

So if slave morality is so bad, whats Nietzsches alternative? Interestingly, he doesnt encourage us to go back to master morality because he feels were past the point of no return and it would be psychologically impossible to do so. Instead, Nietzsche argues that we must move beyond good and evil, and towards a morality that doesnt depend on calling certain things bad in order for goodness to exist a morality thats proactive and not reactive, and focused on attaining personal excellence. According to Nietzsche scholar Robert Solomon, a type of Aristotelian virtue ethics would be a good candidate for this new (old) morality.

Of all the bold claims Nietzsche put forth in his life, none is more (in)famous than the idea that God is dead. Some have mistakenly interpreted this statement as Nietzsche celebrating the death of Deity. But a closer reading reveals a different story. Nietzsche was simply making explicit what had silently been happening in the West since the beginning of modernity. He was describing, not exulting. Instead of placing their faith in God and basing their worldview on a divine, universal law, most modern Westerners even those who claimed to be devoted to their faith conducted their lives and viewed the world through the Enlightenment-born prism of scientific materialism.

Rather than feeling that this evolution was something to celebrate, Nietzsche saw the death of God as tragic and traumatic. To get a sense of the travesty Nietzsche believed had happened in replacing God with science, read the following passage from The Gay Science in which Nietzsche has a madman announce that God is dead:

Whither is God? he cried; I will tell you. We have killed him you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all sun? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?

Nietzsche predicts that the death of God will bring with it the rejection of the belief in a universal moral law, which in turn will cause existential nihilism a philosophy hedetested. While Nietzsche didnt think highly of slave morality, as we just discussed, he did think it was good for the psyche, and that religion played an important role in creating meaning a center of gravity in the world. Nietzsche predicted that once a universal basis of morality eroded away, there will be wars the like of which have never been seen on earth before a prediction which came true not long after he died in 1900.

What often gets overlooked about Nietzsches pronouncement of Gods death is that he also points out that no one really noticed the Almightys passing. And why is that? First, even while Westerners put more and more of their faith in science and reason, they continued to profess a belief in God and kept up their religious practices. Its not that people actively sought to prove the non-existence of God at the time, like todays New Atheists. They simply started to ignore Him, even if they didnt realize they were.

Second, Nietzsche argues that modern Westerners failed to notice the death of God because they continued to practice faith just that now it was one centered on science and reason rather than the divine; if people were honest with themselves, Nietzsche would say, they would admit that they planned their days, made decisions, and picked careers based not on scripture and prayer, but on economic, sociological, and technological factors. While Nietzsche was an atheist and a fan of the scientific process, he believed this new faith in science wasnt any better than the old faith in God. In fact, it was worse, for it made no room for a passionate, Dionysian spirituality that lent life vitality and meaning. Whats more, the reductivist explanations of scientific materialism promoted an empty, nihilistic outlook on the world.

Nietzsche believed that joy required a man to love this mortal life right at this moment with all of its ups and downs. My formula for greatness in a human being, Nietzsche argued, is amor fati [literally, love of fate, the embracing of ones fate]: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it but love it.

For Nietzsche, life itself, with all of its pleasures and pains, is what gives human existence meaning. Because struggles provide us a chance to test ourselves, we should not just welcome them, but love them, and love them dearly. The same goes for our enemies. We should respect and love our enemies, not out of piety, but because they challenge and push us. Nietzsche wants us to say yes to life. Rather than hide from it embrace it head on. His idea of eternal recurrence (see below) really drives home this idea.

Life-denying philosophies are philosophies that attempt to downplay or even eliminate both the pains and pleasures of this life. For Nietzsche, the most pernicious type of life-denying philosophies are those that cause an individual to hold out for some pie in the sky future that will free them from all pain and sorrow. Instead of seeing mortalitys trials as something to struggle with and overcome, and in the process become stronger, life-denying philosophies encourage individuals to hate this life and look forward to another.

According to Nietzsche, Christianity and even scientific materialism promoted this sort of life-denying thinking. Christianity, Nietzsche argued, was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, lifes nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in another or better life. Hatred of the world, condemnations of the passions, fear of beauty and sensuality, a beyond invented the better to slander this life.

Nietzsche saw scientific materialism as fomenting a similar dissatisfaction with life, by holding out hope not for heaven, but for a better future just over the horizon. Those who put their faith in science believe that through reason and innovation well be able to overcome our physical limitations and become free from all suffering.

Nietzsche detested both of these views because both take a persons focus off the vital present and direct it towards a distant future. Life, Nietzsche argued, had to be lived now.

The other type of life-denying philosophy Nietzsche criticized was asceticism. As a lover of the passionate Dionysus, Nietzsche believed that asceticism devalued the human passions by encouraging individuals to mortify and deny lifes vital energies. He felt that asceticism prevented people from enjoying all that mortality had to offer. Nietzsches critique of this philosophy as life-denying isnt just directed towards religious practices like fasting, celibacy, or intense meditation. He also argued that the dogged pursuit of scientific knowledge was a form of asceticism as well, in that it caused a person to evade life its hard to experience the fullness of mortality when youre holed up in a laboratory or have your nose in a book all the time. Nietzsche also saw type-A workaholics who never have the time to enjoy the fruits of their labor as yet another category of life-denying ascetics.

An important doctrine (if you can call it that) buttressing Nietzsches life-affirming philosophy is that of eternal recurrence or eternal return. The idea is that time repeats itself over and over again with the same events. Its not a new idea. Several ancient cultures had some conception of eternal recurrence, including the Persians, the Vedics of India, and the Ancient Greeks. Nietzsche simply expanded on the idea and used it as an existential test for modern man.

Nietzsche best captures his idea of eternal recurrence near the end of The Gay Science:

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust! Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine?

If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and everything, Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more? would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate confirmation and seal?

Eternal recurrence is a thought experiment that serves as an existential gut check: Do you really love life?

People say they love their life all the time, but when they say that, they usually mean they love all the good things in life that happen to them. For Nietzsche, love of life requires loving all of life, even its pains and sorrows. For many, thats a tough pill to swallow. If the thought of living your life over and over again fills you with dread, well, then according to Nietzsche, you dont really love life.

So how does one come to love life? Nietzsche prescribes his philosophy of amor fati the love of fate. Love and embrace all that life throws at you both the good and the bad. Instead of resenting lifes trials, see them as opportunities to test yourself and grow.

Nietzsche had doubts about the human capacity for personal improvement (he was somewhat of a determinist; you were born the way you were, and pretty much stayed that way), but he does suggest that we can take action to create the kind of life we would gladly put on an infinite loop.

Does contemplating replaying your life fill you with feelings of anxiety and regret? Nietzsche would advise you to change course: Ask that girl out; write that novel; learn that new skill youve always wanted to learn; make amends with your estranged friend; head out on a long-dreamed of adventure. And at the same time, dont despair over lifes hardships and uncertainties; ride them like a wave that takes you to a different, and even higher place.

Eternal recurrence would have a tremendous influence on the Existential philosophers of the 20th century. You can see it especially in Albert Camus essay The Myth of Sisyphus. The Existential psychologist Viktor Frankl echoed the idea of eternal recurrence in his book Mans Search for Meaning when he writes: So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now! In other words, live with no regrets!

To be clear, Nietzsche likely didnt believe that wed actually repeat our life over and over again. He did have some notes in which he tried to create a scientific proof of eternal recurrence, but it was deeply flawed, and he never published it. Nevertheless, for Nietzsche it doesnt matter if eternal recurrence is an actual phenomenon what matters is the motivating effect which comes from meditating on the idea.

Nietzsche first coined the phrase the will to power in his early aphoristic works as a response to Schopenhauers will to life philosophy. For Schopenhauer, all living creatures had a motivation for self-preservation and would do anything just to survive. Nietzsche thought this outlook was overly pessimistic and reactive. He felt there was more to life than merely avoiding death, and believed that living beings are motivated by the drive for power.

But what does Nietzsche mean by power? Its hard to say. While Nietzsche used the phrase will to power throughout his published works, he never systematically explained what he meant by it. He just gives hints here and there. Many have interpreted it as the drive for control over others. While it could mean that, if we look at the original German phrase (Der Wille zur Macht), we discover that Nietzsche likely had something bigger and more spiritual in mind.

Macht means power, but its a power thats more akin to personal strength, discipline, and assertiveness. With this in mind, many scholars believe that Nietzsches conception of the will to power is that of a psychological drive to assert oneself in the world to be effective, leave a mark, become something better than you are right now, and express yourself. Exercising ones will to power requires self-mastery and the development of personal strength by embracing struggle and challenge.

According to Nietzsche, this notion of will to power is much more proactive and even noble than Schopenhauers will to live. Humans are driven not just to survive, Nietzsche proclaims, but to dare mighty deeds.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche introduced two archetypes of humanity: the bermensch and the Last Man.

The bermensch or Overman is an oft-misunderstood Nietzschean concept. Some have interpreted it as a biological, evolutionary goal that through our mastery of technology and nature, humanity will be able to become a race of Supermen.

But thats not what Nietzsche had in mind. He doesnt think a person can actually become an bermensch. Rather, the bermensch is more of a spiritual goal or way of approaching life. The way of the bermensch is filled with vitality, energy, risk-taking, and struggle. The bermensch represents the drive to strive and live for something beyond oneself while simultaneously remaining true and grounded in earthly life (no other-worldly longings in Nietzsches world). Its a challenge to be creators and not mere consumers. In short, the bermensch is the full manifestation of the will to power.

Nietzsche never states what exactly we should be striving for thats beyond ourselves or what we should be creating. Thats for each man to figure out for themselves. It could be a work of art, a book, a business, a piece of legislation, or a strong family culture. Through the act of creation, we can forge a legacy that lives beyond our mortal life. By seeking to live as the bermensch, we can attain immortality in a this-worldly sense.

Contrast the bermensch with the Last Man. The Last Man is the very antithesis of a Superman:

Lo! I show you THE LAST MAN.

What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star? so asketh the last man and blinketh. The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man who maketh everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of the ground-flea; the last man liveth longest. We have discovered happiness say the last men, and blink thereby. They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loveth ones neighbor and rubbeth against him; for one needeth warmth.

Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbleth over stones or men! A little poison now and then: that maketh pleasant dreams. And much poison at last for a pleasant death. One still worketh, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one. One no longer becometh poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wanteth to rule? Who still wanteth to obey? Both are too burdensome. No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wanteth the same; every one is equal: he who hath other sentiments goeth voluntarily into the madhouse.

They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health. We have discovered happiness, say the last men, and blink thereby.

The Last Man plays it small and safe. He blinks and misses lifes energies. There is no ambition, no risk-taking, and no vitality in the Last Man. He avoids challenges because challenges result in discomfort. The Last Man doesnt want to create or be a leader because creation and leadership are burdensome. There is no desire to live for something beyond himself. The Last Man has discovered happiness in his little pleasures and just wants to be left alone so that he can live a long, unremarkable life. The Last Man is simply surviving, and not truly living. In the words of Robert Solomon, the Last Man is the ultimate couch potato.

While Nietzsche didnt think it possible to transform oneself into a full-on bermensch, the Last Man represented a decidedly attainable state. Look around you and even at yourself. Youve likely seen glimpses of the Last Man within yourself; he serves as a warning of what youll become if you cease striving for things beyond yourself if you dont nurture the flashes you sometimes also get of your superhuman potential.

A favorite directive of Nietzsches to his readers is one he borrowed from the ancient Greek poet Pindar: Become who you are. But what exactly does this exhortation mean?

For Nietzsche, becoming who you are doesnt mean becoming who you want to be. That can only lead to frustration.

For example, I would love to be an NFL player, but Im 32 years old, havent played football in 17 years, and wasnt blessed with natural athleticism. Professional football isnt and never was in the picture for me.

Rather, the mandate to become who you are requires us to acknowledge the limitations that biology, culture, and even blind luck have placed on us. Within these limitations, we must strive to live our natural talents and abilities to the fullest extent possible. In fact, we should embrace our limitations because they provide us the opportunity to exercise more creative power than if we had complete freedom. In a way, Nietzsches notion of becoming who you are is akin to a haiku. The constraints of haiku poetry force the poet to think deeply about which words to use and how to structure his prose. The constraints counterintuitively encourage creativity.

Thus, become who you are requires you to love fate, to relish the cards life has dealt you even if its a terrible hand and do the best you can with them. Become who you are is a mandate to exercise creative power and become the author your life. This notion of self-realization helps you avoid the feelings of resentment and angst that come when you wish for a life that simply doesnt and cant exist. Instead, Nietzsche argues, we should channel our energies into focusing on the here and now and find joy in the journey.

I hope this two-part series has given you a clearer understanding of the basics of Nietzsches famous philosophy. Regardless of your beliefs and background, grappling with Nietzsches ideas can give you insight about how you want to live your life, as well as the why behind how many others live in the modern West.

If youre a theist, Nietzsches diagnosis of the death of God serves as a spiritual gut check, forcing you to ask yourself, Do I really live my life as if there is a God? If I really believed without a doubt that the claims of my faith are true, how would my daily behavior, how I spend my time, and my life goals change? He also causes you to reflect on whether youre enjoying this earthly existence, in all its wonder, or simply pining for the next world; do you see life as something to be enjoyed, or simply endured?

If youre an atheist, Nietzsche challenges you to not simply replace your faith with science, which can ultimately lead to nihilism, but to actively seek a vital spiritual life filled with meaning.

For Nietzsche, the challenge for all modern men is to create and live by their own life-affirming values to become autonomous and to find meaning in a world that has become void of any such thing. In the present age we often feel like we are straying as through an infinite nothing; Nietzsches exhortation to all is to fight against this empty drift, to become who you are, to love suffering and challenge as much as ease and comfort, and to always, always say yes to life.

Did you enjoy this series and would like to see other philosophers given the same treatment? Let us know in the comments, as well as who youd like us to hit next!

Sources and Further Reading

What Nietzsche Really Said by Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins. The best Intro to Nietzsche book that I came across. They do a great job explaining Nietzsches big ideas as well as dispelling many of the myths that exist about Nietzsche.

The Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Audio lectures by Solomon and Higgins. Very accessible. The lectures follow their book, What Nietzsche Really Said, so Id recommend going with their book or their audio lectures.

Nietzsches Noble Aims: Affirming Life, Contesting Modernity by Paul Kirkland. This book is dense and academic, but if you can will yourself through it, youll discover all sorts of great insights about Nietzsches love of contest and his idealization of the noble adversary.

Introducing Nietzsche: A Graphic Guide by Laurence Gane. A graphic novel introduction to Nietzsche and his philosophy. Its a bit disjointed, so if you dont have any knowledge about Nietzsches philosophy, youll likely be lost while reading it.

Life Lessons From Nietzsche by John Armstrong. A really short book that highlights a few of Nietzsches ideas. At the end of each chapter, the author includes actionable steps on how you can apply that principle in your own life.

Where to Start Reading Nietzsche?

A few readers asked what order they should read Nietzsches works in if they were to do their own personal course.

Heres myrecommendation based on my own self-study experience:

Read an Intro to Nietzsche-type book first. I tried reading Nietzsches works first without any background information, and it was rough going. I had a hard time following him. After I read a few of the above books, things started to click once I went back to the direct sources. So, my recommendation would be start off with reading something like What Nietzsche Really Said.

Read The Birth of Tragedy. After youve read an intro book, read Nietzsches first work, The Birth of Tragedy. While its not as exciting as his later works, youll get a good understanding of Nietzsches concept of the Apollonian and Dionysian that is woven throughout all of his work.

Read in chronological order or just read what interests you. Reading in chronological order will allow you to see how Nietzsches ideas develop, but it can be a slog when you get to works that dont really interest you for whatever reason. If you think youll get bored trying to barrel through Nietzsche, a better approach would be to read what interests you. If the idea of the Ubermensch and The Last Man intrigues you, read Thus Spoke Zarathustra; if you want to tackle Nietzsches critique against modern morality, read On the Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil. Eternal recurrence? The Gay Science.

Read anthologies. Another approach is to simply read the curated anthologies of Nietzsches work produced by scholars. You wont find all of Nietzsches works in these anthologies, just the ones the authors thought were important for a reader to be exposed to. The Portable Nietzsche by Walter Kaufman is a classic. Basic Writings of Nietzsche is a great one as well.

Last updated: November 30, 2017

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A Primer of the Philosophy of Nietzsche | The Art of Manliness

Written by grays

April 10th, 2018 at 12:42 pm

Posted in Nietzsche

"God Is Dead": What Nietzsche Really Meant | Big Think

Posted: March 26, 2018 at 4:41 am


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Its been 134 years since FriedrichNietzsche declared: God is Dead (or Gott ist tot, in German), giving philosophy students a collective headache thats lasted from the 19th century until today. It is, perhaps, one of the best known statements in all of philosophy, well known even to those who have never picked up a copy of The Gay Science, the book from which it originates. But do we know exactly what he meant? Or perhaps more importantly, what it means for us?

Nietzsche was an atheist for his adult life and didnt mean that there was a God who had actually died, rather that our idea of one had. Afterthe Enlightenment,the idea of a universe that was governed by physical laws and not by divine providence was now reality. Philosophy had shown that governments no longer needed to be organized around the idea of divine right to be legitimate, but rather by the consent or rationality of the governed that large and consistent moral theories could exist without reference to God. This was a tremendous event.Europe no longer needed God as the source for all morality, value, or order in the universe; philosophy and science were capable of doing that for us.This increasing secularization of thought in the West led the philosopher to realize that not only was God dead but that human beings had killed him with their scientific revolution, their desire to better understand the world.

The death of God didnt strike Nietzsche as an entirely good thing. Without a God, the basic belief system of Western Europe was in jeopardy, as he put it inTwilight of the Idols: When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole.

simon-critchley-examines-friedrich-nietzsche

Nietzsche thought this could be a good thing for some people, saying:... at hearing the news that 'the old god is dead', we philosophers and 'free spirits' feel illuminated by a new dawn.A bright morning had arrived. With the old system of meaning gone a new one could be created, but it came with risksones that could bring out the worst in human nature.Nietzsche believed that the removal of this system put most people at the risk of despair or meaninglessness. What could the point of life be without a God? Even if there was one, the Western world now knew that he hadnt placed us at the centre of the universe, and it was learning of the lowly origin from which man had evolved. We finally saw the true world. The universe wasnt made solely for human existence anymore. Nietzsche feared that this understanding of the world would lead to pessimism,a will to nothingnessthat was antithetical to the life-affirming philosophy Nietzsche prompted.

His fear of nihilism and our reaction to it was shown inThe Will to Power,when he wrote that:"What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism... For some time now our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe."He would not have been surprised by the events that plagued Europe in the 20th century. Communism, Nazism, Nationalism, and the other ideologies that made their way across the continent in the wake of World War I sought to provide man with meaning and value, as a worker, as an Aryan, or some other greater deed;in a similar way as to how Christianity could provide meaning as a child of God, and give life on Earth value by relation to heaven. While he may have rejected those ideologies, he no doubt would have acknowledged the need for the meaning they provided.

Of course,asNietzsche saw this coming,heoffered us a way out. The creation of our own values as individuals. The creation of a meaning of life by those who live it. The archetype of the individual who can do this has a name that has also reached our popular consciousness:thebermensch. Nietzsche however, saw this as a distant goal for man and one that most would not be able to reach.Thebermensch,which he felt had yet to exist on Earth, would create meaning in life by their will alone, and understand that they are, in the end, responsible for their selection. As he put it in Thus Spoke Zarathustra:"For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred yes is needed: the spirit now wills his own will."Such a bold individual will not be able to point to dogma or popular opinion as to why they value what they do.

Having suggested the rarity and difficulty in creating the bermensch, Nietzsche suggested an alternative response to Nihilism, and one that he saw as the more likely to be selected; The Last Man. Amost contemptible thingwho lives a quiet life of comfort, without thought for individuality or personal growth as:"'We have discovered happiness,'-- say the Last Men, and they blink."Much to the disappointment of Zarathustra, Nietzsches mouthpiece, the people whom he preaches to beg him for the lifestyle of The Last Man, suggesting his pessimism on our ability to handle Gods death.

But you might ask, if God has been dead for so long and we are supposed to be suffering for knowing it, where are all the atheists? Nietzsche himself provided an answer:God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. Perhaps we are only now seeing the effects of Nietzsches declaration.

Indeed, atheism is on the march, with near majorities in many European countries and newfound growth across the United States heralding a cultural shift. But, unlike when atheism was enforced by the communist nations, there isnt necessarily a worldview backing this new lack of God, it is only the lack. Indeed, British philosopher Bertrand Russell saw Bolshevism as nearly a religion unto itself; it was fully capable and willing to provide meaning and value to a population by itself. That source of meaning without belief is gone.

As many atheists know, to not have a god without an additional philosophical structure providing meaning can be a cause of existential dread. Are we at risk of becoming a society struggling with our own meaninglessness? Are we as a society at risk for nihilism? Are we more vulnerable now to ideologies and conmen who promise to do what God used to do for us and society? While Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the future, the non-religious are less so than the religious. It seems Nietzsche may have been wrong in the long run about our ability to deal with the idea that God is dead.

values-without-religion

As Alain de Botton suggestsabout our values, it seems that we have managed to deal with the death of God better than Nietzschehad thought we would; we are not all the Last Men, nor have we descended into a situation where all morality is seen as utterly relative and meaningless. It seems that we have managed to create a world where the need for God is reduced for some people without falling into collective despair or chaos.

Are we as individuals up to the task of creating our own values? Creating meaning in life by ourselves without aid from God, dogma, or popular choice? Perhaps some of us are, and if we understand the implications of the death of God we stand a better chance of doing so. The despair of the death of God may give way to new meaning in our lives; for as Jean-Paul Sartre suggested"life begins on the other side of despair."

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Sources:

Abrams, Daniel, Haley Yaple, and Richard Wiener. "ArXiv.org Physics ArXiv:1012.1375v2." [1012.1375v2] A Mathematical Model of Social Group Competition with Application to the Growth of Religious Non-affiliation. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Aug. 2016.

"Americans Overwhelmingly Pessimistic about Country's Path, Poll Finds." Mcclatchydc. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Aug. 2016.

"America's Growing Pessimism." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 10 Oct. 2015. Web. 04 Aug. 2016.

"CNN/ORC Poll: 57% Pessimistic about U.S. Future, Highest in 2 Years." CNN. Cable News Network, n.d. Web. 04 Aug. 2016.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Walter Arnold Kaufmann. "The Meaning of Our Cheerfulness." The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. New York: Vintage, 1974. N. pag. Print.

Press, Connie Cass Associated. "Gloom and Doom? Americans More Pessimistic about Future." Las Vegas Review-Journal. N.p., 03 Jan. 2014. Web. 04 Aug. 2016.

Russell, Bertrand. Bolshevism: Practice and Theory. New York: Arno, 1972. Print.

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March 26th, 2018 at 4:41 am

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Nietzsche Quotes: Philosophy

Posted: March 2, 2018 at 12:43 am


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How I understand the philosopher -- as a terribleexplosive, endangering everthing... my concept of the philosopheris worlds removed from any concept that would include even a Kant,not to speak of academic "ruminants" and other professors ofphilosophy...

from Nietzsche's Ecce Homo, s 3.2.3, WalterKaufmann transl.

Knapsack of the Metaphysicians.-- Those whoboast so mightily of the scientificality of their metaphysicsshould receive no answer; it is enough to pluck at the bundlewhich, with a certain degree of embarrassment, they keep concealedbehind their back; if one succeeds in opening it, the products ofthat scientificality come to light, attended by their blushes: adear little Lord God, a nice little immortality, perhaps a certainquantity of spiritualism, and in any event a whole tangled heap of'wretched poor sinner' and Pharisee arrogance.

from Nietzsche's Assorted Opinions andMaxims,s. 12, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

Even today many educated people think that thevictory of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of thesuperior truth of the former - although in this case it was onlythe coarser and more violent that conquered the more spiritual anddelicate. So far as superior truth is concerned, it is enough toobserve that the awakening sciences have allied themselves point bypoint with the philosophy of Epicurus, but point by point rejectedChristianity.

from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.68,R.J. Hollingdale transl.

Socrates.-- If all goes well, the time willcome when one will take up the memorabilia of Socrates rather thanthe Bible as a guide to morals and reason... The pathways of themost various philosophical modes of life lead back to him...Socrates excels the founder of Christianity in being able to beserious cheerfully and in possessing that wisdom full ofroguishness that constitutes the finest state of the humansoul. And he also possessed the finer intellect.

from Nietzsche's The Wanderer and hisShadow,s. 86, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

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Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor // Reviews // Notre Dame …

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Moores intention in this deeply historical book is to situate Nietzsches thoughts in the context of two dominant trends in late-nineteenth century European intellectual life evolutionary biology and fin-de-sicle theories of degeneration. According to Moore, Nietzsche was well read in the literature of both areas, and consequently, his philosophy is heavily influenced by the emerging debates about the evolution and/or degeneration of man. In this respect and this is one of Moores key claims Nietzsche did not transcend his time to the extent that he repeatedly claims. For Moore, a measure of the contemporary influence on Nietzsche is found in his use of biological/medical language, and a central objective of this book is to decipher this language to discriminate Nietzsches literal from his metaphorical uses. Moore promises to analyze Nietzsches use of concepts such as evolution, degeneration, health, sickness, etc., and to tell us how much Nietzsche borrowed from the dominant paradigm of his time and how much, through metaphor and ironic distance, he transcended the contemporary discussion.

Broadly speaking, Moore presents two central arguments: first, he contends that Nietzsche developed his own theory of evolution which was, like so many other nineteenth-century evolutionary theories, anti-Darwinian. Moore studies the impact of Nietzsches evolutionary theory on his accounts of morality and art and in doing so sets up a distinction between his own interpretation and a long tradition of Nietzsche scholarship which has viewed his characteristic appeal to the language and concepts of biology as mere rhetorical posturing, as an ironic counterweight to the otherworldliness of traditional views (p. 85). Second, Moore concludes that Nietzsche goes beyond his age primarily by turning Christian concerns with degeneracy, decadence and mental illness back upon Christianity itself. For Moore, this ironic move is Nietzsches most distinguishing philosophical trait. Moore also traces Nietzsches medical talk of decadence through his analyses of art and morality. (These two lines of thought correspond to the two parts of the book.)

Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor is a fascinating reconstruction of pockets of nineteenth century intellectual history and contains some intriguing accounts of the influence on Nietzsches thinking of biologists such as Wilhelm Roux and William Rolph. Moore traces Nietzsches view of agency as a war between conflicting internal forces to the work of Roux who argued that organs, tissues, cells and even molecules of organic matter are found in an unceasing struggle for existence with one another for food, space and the utilization of external stimulation (p. 37). Roux was aware that this account of the internal workings of an organism begged the question as to why such an organism did not simply fall apart under the stress of this ongoing competition. He accounted for prolonged existence in terms of the notion of self-regulation which essentially means that the organism temporarily stabilizes when its most adapted components prevail. According to Moore, Nietzsche borrowed Rouxs theory in developing his notion of agency as a conflict of multiple internal forces periodically resolving itself through the establishment of a regulative hierarchy.

Another major influence on Nietzsche was William Rolph who argued against what he perceived as Darwins insistence on the primacy of a survival instinct. For Rolph, the primary biological urge was for expansion and not preservation. In commenting on Rolph, Moore writes:

Much of Moores book contains similarly detailed accounts of obscure, but as far as Nietzsche is concerned extremely relevant, biological theories. Thus, some of Nietzsches central notions for example, the fractured agent and the will to power are cast against a backdrop of contemporary biology, filled as it was with a proliferation of misreadings and misguided criticisms of Darwin. Moores treatment of the effects of these biologists on Nietzsches thinking is thoroughly convincing and gives real content to the widely accepted, though vague, idea that Nietzsche was influenced by contemporary science.

My high regard for Moores study is, however, tempered by two serious concerns. The first is Moores almost exclusive reliance on Nietzsches unpublished notes. At this stage in Nietzsche scholarship, the debate over the use of his notes is all too familiar, and I will not rehearse it here. In recreating Nietzsches reading and understanding of contemporary biologists Moore relies on the notes to such an extent that the reader begins to get the impression that he is unearthing a hidden Nietzsche. Unfortunately, he never brings this underground Nietzsche to the surface. Nietzsches published works are not just influenced by contemporary biology but also by Greek philosophy, by Kant and Schopenhauer, by Christian writers, etc. Moore never fully acknowledges this, and for the most part, treats the biological Nietzsche as the only Nietzsche. Thus, certain problems arise with Moores interpretation of Nietzsche on morality and art because he does not juxtapose the theories that he culls from the notes and the published views. I will mention three such problems.

In tracing the impact of Nietzsches biologism through his critique of morality Moore says: It is against this historical backdrop, I believe, that we must reconsider Nietzsches naturalistic critique of traditional morality (p. 58). This backdrop is, in part, made up of Nietzsches theory of evolution, according to which the driving force in evolution is not natural selection or the struggle for existence, but the will to power. Moore tells us that Nietzsche differentiates the evolution of the strong and the weak. The evolution of the strong is a matter of the springing forth of isolated cases of intense complexity and individuality. Evolution then is the sudden eruption of lifes creative energies (p. 54). The weak evolve by gathering in increasingly large groups and reaching higher and higher levels of adaptation. One of their adaptive strategies is morality. Thus, the morality of the majority is herd morality, which is a pattern of habitual and heritable behavior promoting the continued survival of the social organism. According to Moore, Nietzsches self-governing individual emerges from the social organism when with the natural cycle of growth and decay, the social organism begins gradually to disintegrate (p. 82). Moore writes:

This social collapse leaves the herd members without internal regulation and in the ensuing conditions only those strong individuals capable of self-regulation will flourish.

According to Moore, this account is supposed to clearly anticipate Nietzsches more famous differentiation of master and slave moralities in Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality (p. 62). But does it? Moore writes that for Nietzsche the higher individualistic morality emerges from the lower herd morality. Mans original state is one of a herd-like mentality from which a higher individuality emerges. But Nietzsche is adamant in the Genealogy that the higher (master) morality comes first and that lower (slave) morality is a reaction. If anything, what Moore has pointed to may form the basis for Nietzsches understanding of the morality of mores. Nietzsche explicitly links herd instinct and morality of mores in The Gay Science 149 and 296. But Moore never introduces Nietzsches published discussion of master morality, slave morality or the morality of mores in order to even point to differences or gaps between the published and unpublished accounts, or to explain how exactly the unpublished theory that he outlines is supposed to anticipate Nietzsches better-known account.

Moores account of the development of Nietzsches critique of morality also suffers from his almost exclusive focus on the notes. In assessing Human, All Too Human Moore claims that unlike Nietzsches later thinking there is no attempt to view moral imperatives as merely the rationalization of feelings accompanying certain physiological states (p. 59). If this is to suggest a shift in Nietzsches published works toward a different kind of analysis after Human, All Too Human, then it is straightforwardly inaccurate. In Human, All Too Human 44 Nietzsche analyzes the moral weight of gratitude as a rationalization of a desire for revenge. In Human, All Too Human 45, Nietzsche tells us that good and bad have a dual history and that whoever has the power to repay good with good, evil with evil is called good. Feelings of power and strength are associated with being a member of a tightly knit caste. Though powerlessness is not first and foremost a physiological state, these sections demonstrate that Moore is trying to point to a development that does not exist in the published works. Quite simply, Nietzsche retains the same kind of analysis from Human, All Too Human to the Genealogy grounding morality in a combination of social structures and individual psychology.

Finally, Moore characterizes Nietzsches early criticisms of morality as a critique of the teleological assumptions in contemporary moral theories. Thus, Nietzsche criticizes Spencers view that morality serves both self-preservation and preservation of the community. Moore adds that this analysis takes place before Nietzsche develops the theory of will to power and bemoans the development of this later theory claiming that it opens Nietzsche himself up to a critique of teleological explanations. He writes: his early evolutionism is far more Darwinian and certainly less teleological than his later theory of the will to power (p. 66). But how can this interpretation be reconciled with Beyond Good and Evil 13 where Nietzsche writes:

Clearly, Nietzsches own understanding of will to power as non-teleological is at odds with the account that Moore compiles from the notes.

In the end what Moore establishes is that Nietzsches thinking in his notes does not transcend his time. Given that these are unpublished notes often compiled during the reading of other works it is perhaps unsurprising that they contain many virtual paraphrases of things read. Nietzsches published works, on the other hand, typically reflect all the various influences and interests that affected him in his writing, and Moores focus on the notes simply disqualifies him from being able to make a judgment on the extent to which these published works do or do not take Nietzsche beyond the contemporary scene.

My second main criticism of the book is that it lacks a certain interpretive rigor. To take just one example: in Chapter 4 Moore initially argues that Nietzsche, perhaps influenced by Comte Arthur de Gobineau, traces contemporary decadence to the racial intermingling of the nineteenth century (p. 123). But, later in the same section, Moore argues that Nietzsche, under the influence of Charles Fr, equates degeneracy and weakness of the will. We might expect that Moore would then go on to give a causal account of weakness of will in terms of racial intermingling, but in actual fact he argues that Nietzsche, following Fr, posits a number of other factors leading to weakness of will including overwork, malnutrition, rapid industrialization (p. 127). Racial intermingling simply drops out of the account. This is not an insurmountable problem, or even an unusual occurrence in reading Nietzsche, since he often gives many accounts of the same phenomenon. But the Nietzsche commentator must take on the challenge of reconciling the various accounts or at least placing them in a time-line. In general, Moore does not engage in this kind of analysis to a sufficient degree.

Having made these criticisms I must, at the same time, say that the primary virtue of this book is that it shows us a different Nietzsche: it enriches our understanding of Nietzsche as a nineteenth century figure. Most readers of Nietzsche could say one or two things about the influence of contemporary science but this book introduces many of the specifics in a very scholarly way. (For example, Moore is excellent in detailing Nietzsches disgust at the extent to which contemporary science was co-opted by Christian values and turned to traditional ends.) What remains to be done is to bring Moores interpretation of Nietzsche together with the best current readings of Nietzsches published work. I am confident that such an exercise would throw light on many interpretive disputes in Nietzsche scholarship such as the disagreement over the status of the will to power doctrine and thereby enrich our understanding of one of Europes greatest thinkers.

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The bermensch (German for "Beyond-Man", "Superman", "Overman", "Superhuman", "Hyperman", "Hyperhuman"; German pronunciation: [ybmn]) is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. In his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra (German: Also sprach Zarathustra), Nietzsche has his character Zarathustra posit the bermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself. It is a work of philosophical allegory, with a structural similarity to the Gathas of Zoroaster/Zarathustra.

The first translation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra into English was published in 1896. In that translation, by Alexander Tille, bermensch was translated as "Beyond-Man". In the Thomas Common translation, published in 1909, however, bermensch was rendered as "Superman". Common was anticipated in this by George Bernard Shaw, who had done the same in his 1903 stage play Man and Superman. Walter Kaufmann lambasted this translation in the 1950s for two reasons: first, its near or total failure to capture the nuance of the German word ber (while the Latin prefix super- means above or beyond, the English use of the prefix or its use as an adjective has altered the meaning); and second, a rationale which Fredric Wertham railed against even more vehemently in Seduction of the Innocent, for promoting identification by children with the comic-book character Superman (whom Wertham described as "un-American and fascist"). The preference of Kaufmann and others is to translate bermensch as "overman". Scholars continue to employ both terms, some simply opting to reproduce the German word.[1][2]

The German prefix ber can have connotations of superiority, transcendence, excessiveness, or intensity, depending on the words to which it is attached.[3]Mensch refers to a member of the human species, rather than to a male specifically. The adjective bermenschlich means super-human, in the sense of beyond human strength or out of proportion to humanity.[4]

Nietzsche introduces the concept of the bermensch in contrast to his understanding of the other-worldliness of Christianity: Zarathustra proclaims the bermensch to be the meaning of the earth and admonishes his audience to ignore those who promise other-worldly hopes in order to draw them away from the earth.[5][6] The turn away from the earth is prompted, he says, by a dissatisfaction with lifea dissatisfaction that causes one to create another world in which those who made one unhappy in this life are tormented. The bermensch is not driven into other worlds away from this one.

Zarathustra declares that the Christian escape from this world also required the invention of an eternal soul which would be separate from the body and survive the body's death. Part of other-worldliness, then, was the abnegation and mortification of the body, or asceticism. Zarathustra further links the bermensch to the body and to interpreting the soul as simply an aspect of the body.

Zarathustra ties the bermensch to the death of God. While this God was the ultimate expression of other-worldly values and the instincts that gave birth to those values, belief in that God nevertheless did give meaning to life for a time. 'God is dead' means that the idea of God can no longer provide values. With the sole source of values no longer capable of providing those values, there is a real chance of nihilism prevailing.

Zarathustra presents the bermensch as the creator of new values. In this way, it appears as a solution to the problem of the death of God and nihilism. If the bermensch acts to create new values within the moral vacuum of nihilism, there is nothing that this creative act would not justify. Alternatively, in the absence of this creation, there are no grounds upon which to criticize or justify any action, including the particular values created and the means by which they are promulgated.

In order to avoid a relapse into Platonic idealism or asceticism, the creation of these new values cannot be motivated by the same instincts that gave birth to those tables of values. Instead, they must be motivated by a love of this world and of life. Whereas Nietzsche diagnosed the Christian value system as a reaction against life and hence destructive in a sense, the new values which the bermensch will be responsible for will be life-affirming and creative (see Nietzschean affirmation).

Zarathustra first announces the bermensch as a goal humanity can set for itself. All human life would be given meaning by how it advanced a new generation of human beings. The aspiration of a woman would be to give birth to an bermensch, for example; her relationships with men would be judged by this standard.[7]

Zarathustra contrasts the bermensch with the last man of egalitarian modernity, an alternative goal which humanity might set for itself. The last man appears only in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and is presented as a condition that would render the creation of the bermensch impossible.

According to Rdiger Safranski, some commentators associate the bermensch with a program of eugenics.[8] This is most pronounced when considered in the aspect of a goal that humanity sets for itself. The reduction of all psychology to physiology implies, to some, that human beings can be bred for cultural traits. This interpretation of Nietzsche's doctrine focuses more on the future of humanity than on a single cataclysmic individual. There is no consensus regarding how this aspect of the bermensch relates to the creation of new values.

For Rdiger Safranski, the bermensch represents a higher biological type reached through artificial selection and at the same time is also an ideal for anyone who is creative and strong enough to master the whole spectrum of human potential, good and "evil", to become an "artist-tyrant". In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche vehemently denied any idealistic, democratic or humanitarian interpretation of the bermensch: "The word bermensch [designates] a type of supreme achievement, as opposed to 'modern' men, 'good' men, Christians, and other nihilists ... When I whispered into the ears of some people that they were better off looking for a Cesare Borgia than a Parsifal, they did not believe their ears."[9] Safranski argues that the combination of ruthless warrior pride and artistic brilliance that defined the Italian Renaissance embodied the sense of the bermensch for Nietzsche. According to Safranski, Nietzsche intended the ultra-aristocratic figure of the bermensch to serve as a Machiavellian bogeyman of the modern Western middle class and its pseudo-Christian egalitarian value system.[10]

The bermensch shares a place of prominence in Thus Spoke Zarathustra with another of Nietzsche's key concepts: the eternal recurrence of the same. Several interpretations for this fact have been offered.

Laurence Lampert suggests that the eternal recurrence replaces the bermensch as the object of serious aspiration.[11] This is in part due to the fact that even the bermensch can appear like an other-worldly hope. The bermensch lies in the future no historical figures have ever been bermenschen and so still represents a sort of eschatological redemption in some future time.

Stanley Rosen, on the other hand, suggests that the doctrine of eternal return is an esoteric ruse meant to save the concept of the bermensch from the charge of Idealism.[12] Rather than positing an as-yet unexperienced perfection, Nietzsche would be the prophet of something that has occurred a countless number of times in the past.

Others maintain that willing the eternal recurrence of the same is a necessary step if the bermensch is to create new values, untainted by the spirit of gravity or asceticism. Values involve a rank-ordering of things, and so are inseparable from approval and disapproval; yet it was dissatisfaction that prompted men to seek refuge in other-worldliness and embrace other-worldly values. Therefore, it could seem that the bermensch, in being devoted to any values at all, would necessarily fail to create values that did not share some bit of asceticism. Willing the eternal recurrence is presented as accepting the existence of the low while still recognizing it as the low, and thus as overcoming the spirit of gravity or asceticism.

Still others suggest that one must have the strength of the bermensch in order to will the eternal recurrence of the same; that is, only the bermensch will have the strength to fully accept all of his past life, including his failures and misdeeds, and to truly will their eternal return. This action nearly kills Zarathustra, for example, and most human beings cannot avoid other-worldliness because they really are sick, not because of any choice they made.

The term bermensch was utilized frequently by Hitler and the Nazi regime to describe their idea of a biologically superior Aryan or Germanic master race;[13] a form of Nietzsche's bermensch became a philosophical foundation for the National Socialist ideas. Their conception of the bermensch, however, was racial in nature.[14][15] The Nazi notion of the master race also spawned the idea of "inferior humans" (Untermenschen) which could be dominated and enslaved; this term does not originate with Nietzsche. Nietzsche himself was critical of both antisemitism and German nationalism. In his final years, Nietzsche began to believe that he was in fact Polish, not German, and was quoted as saying, "I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German blood".[16] In defiance of these doctrines, he claimed that he and Germany were great only because of "Polish blood in their veins",[17] and that he would be "having all anti-semites shot" as an answer to his stance on anti-semitism. Although the term has been associated with the Nazis, Nietzsche was dead long before Hitler's reign. It was Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth Frster-Nietzsche who actually first played a part in manipulating her brother's words to accommodate the worldview of herself and her husband, Bernhard Frster, a prominent German nationalist and antisemite.[18] In order to support his beliefs he set up the Deutscher Volksverein (German People's League) in 1881 with Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg.[19]

The thought of Nietzsche had an important influence in anarchist authors (see Anarchism and Friedrich Nietzsche). Spencer Sunshine writes that "There were many things that drew anarchists to Nietzsche: his hatred of the state; his disgust for the mindless social behavior of 'herds'; his anti-Christianity; his distrust of the effect of both the market and the State on cultural production; his desire for an 'overman' that is, for a new human who was to be neither master nor slave; his praise of the ecstatic and creative self, with the artist as his prototype, who could say, 'Yes' to the self-creation of a new world on the basis of nothing; and his forwarding of the 'transvaluation of values' as source of change, as opposed to a Marxist conception of class struggle and the dialectic of a linear history."[20] The influential American anarchist Emma Goldman in her famous collection of essays Anarchism and Other Essays in the preface passionately defends both Nietzsche and Max Stirner from attacks within anarchism when she says "The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer's ideas or personality. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, is decried as a hater of the weak because he believed in the bermensch. It does not occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind that this vision of the bermensch also called for a state of society which will not give birth to a race of weaklings and slaves."[21]

Sunshine says that the "Spanish anarchists also mixed their class politics with Nietzschean inspiration." Murray Bookchin, in The Spanish Anarchists, describes prominent CNTFAI member Salvador Segu as "an admirer of Nietzschean individualism, of the superhombre to whom 'all is permitted'." Bookchin, in his 1973 introduction to Sam Dolgoff's The Anarchist Collectives, even describes the reconstruction of society by the workers as a Nietzschean project. Bookchin says that "workers must see themselves as human beings, not as class beings; as creative personalities, not as 'proletarians,' as self-affirming individuals, not as 'masses'. . .(the) economic component must be humanized precisely by bringing an 'affinity of friendship' to the work process, by diminishing the role of onerous work in the lives of producers, indeed by a total 'transvaluation of values' (to use Nietzsche's phrase) as it applies to production and consumption as well as social and personal life."[20]

Notes

Bibliography

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bermensch - Wikipedia

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