Friedrich Nietzsche, (1844-1900)
"Through
life's
school of war: that which does not kill you only serves to make you
stronger."
central concern: How do you live a meaningful life when you
don't trust any of the foundations of morality/politics/knowledge?
Biography-
a.born in Liepzig, Germany
b.father was Lutheran minister, died when he was very
young
c. raised in all-female household
1. problematic relationship w/ women
2. proposed to 2 women, both turned him down
d. professor at University of Basel (24 years old)
1. injured during mandatory military service
2. poor health forced him to resign, 34
e. committed to sanitorium for insanity by 1889
1. wrote a great deal during periods of health
2. internationally recognized by time of death, but
often
distorted
Intellectual influences
a. Kant
b. German Romanticism
1. Wagner, musician
2. art allows to be in touch with true beauty
c. his work is basis for post-modernism, existentialism (20th
century)
Premises:
a. rationality is given too much weight by
theorists, ex. Kant
b. foundation of all creativity & reality is
non-rational
force
1. instinctual, life force, energy, always striving
to
become
2. resides in all humans, all living beings
c. morality is letting the creative force flow, stop repressing
it
with laws/morality/sobriety
d. laws are rationalization, the 'herd mentality' holding down
life
force of artist
"But to say it once more: there are
higher problems than all
problems
of pleasure, pain, and pity; and every philosophy that stops with them
is
a naïveté."
How do we know what is 'real'?
a. not through reason, only through emotions, senses, creativity
1. nothing exists outside of sensual world
2. notions of heaven/hell work to suppress the artist
seeking
true spirituality
3. christianity focuses too much on spirit,
repression
of body
b. ideal man is Zarathustra
1. solitary, reflective, healthy, striving 'ubermensch'
2 true love of life, enjoyment of psychological health-
striving
for ultimate
a. beyond notions of good and evil
b. natural for strong to dominate weak
3. "will to power" is natural, expansive, reinventing drive-
(central
force of universe)
a. powerful, healthy person is destined to
dominate,
others intended to be subordinate
b. depends on health/strength
"I love the magnificent exuberance of
a young beast of prey that
plays
gracefully and, as it plays, dismembers."
c. "God is dead"- means there is no single moral position
1. depends on perspective of person/society
2.ppl need to move beyond slave morality, stop feeling
guilt about
life-affirming
practices
3. artists should be role models
d. cynical view of human nature
1. most morality is hypocrisy, anyway
2. those who appear good, are getting something out of it
Few
people will not expose the
private
affairs of their friends when at a loss for a subject of conversation.
The
more
you
let yourself go, the less others let you go.
"
The thought of
suicide is a great
consolation:
by means of it
one gets
successfully through many a bad night".
Methodology:
a. Nietzsche uses paradox, puns, aphorisms to express
philosophy
There
are no
facts, only
interpretations.
"In
the end, one experiences only oneself."
Just
beyond experience!-- Even great spirits have only their five
fingers
breadth of experience - just beyond it their thinking ceases
and their
endless empty space and stupidity begins.
What?
Is
man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man's?
Whoever
fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become
a
monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks
into
you.
"The
perfect woman
is a
higher
type of human than the perfect man, and also something much more rare."
"Women's
intellect is manifested as perfect control, presence of mind,
and
utilization of all advantages."
"Thou
goest to
women? Do not forget thy whip!" - Thus Spake Zarathustra
Important
a. argues
that we can exist in society w/o foundations of certainty
1. morality can emerge from the situation
2. truth can be tentative and agreed on by those present, & revised
later
3. we can forget history and change meanings as we go along
4. to do this, is to be more creative & less worried about
sacredness of past
"Truths
are illusions about which one has forgotten that is what they are;
metaphors
which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost
their
pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins. We still
do
not
know
where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of
the
obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful
means
using the customary metaphors - in moral terms, the obligation to lie
according
to fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all...
b. example- using words and metaphors w/ no knowledge of their
original meaning or in different contexts.
1. "rule of thumb"
2. "putting your nose to the grindstone"
3. "letting the cat out of the bag'
4. holding your feet to the fire
5. going off the reservation
View of politics:
a.
anarchism
& individual resistance by the "uberman"
1. laws & rules needed by herd
2. uber-man can transcend the need, in search of a
higher morality
How
should a political innovation
suffice to turn men once and for all into contented inhabitants of the
earth? [That people think the answer to existential questions might
come from politics shows] that we are experiencing the consequences of
the doctrine…that the state is the highest goal of mankind and
that a man has no higher duty than to serve the state: in which
doctrine I recognize a relapse not into paganism but into stupidity. It
may be that a man who sees his highest duty in serving the state really
knows no higher duties; but there are men and duties existing beyond
this — and one of the duties that seems, at least to me, to be
higher than serving the state demands that one destroys stupidity in
every form, and therefore in this form too. That is why I am concerned
with a species of man whose teleology extends somewhat beyond the
welfare of a state…, and with [this kind of man] only in
relation to a world which is again fairly independent of the welfare of
a state, that of culture. (U III:4)
Distortions:
a. used to defend the third Reich
1. his sister, Elizabeth Neitzsche-Foerster, responsible
for this
2. she was anti-semitic, w/ husband founded
Germania
in Paraguay link
a. failed in late 19th century
b. base of nazi exodus to paraguay
after
WWII
b.
Nietzsche saw
'uberman'
as artist, not Nazi
1. also opposed collective movements
2. only theorized about individual activity,
artistic
3. opposed anti-semitism
c. focused more on the creativity possible w/ new ideas, less on the
destruction of the old
1. often viewed as totally negative force, his intent was
the opposite