Finally back to somewhat familiar territory as we move from the Christian Kierkegaard to the atheist Nietzsche, who’s intelligence inevitably led to his insanity which scholars still debate. He is most famously known for his line “God is dead” and of course the “Ubermensch” (overman) which is mainly what we focused on this week. We read a bit from “The Gay Science” and “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” which introduced to us his philosophy on the death of God. As I understood it, Nietzsche is describing the death of the Christian god, which after time will christian morality from ruling our lives. In the future the belief in god will become less and less, allowing humanity to overcome the prison we have made for ourselves by clinging to Christian morals that are still engrained in our society. Although god is dead, Nietzsche believed that it would take a long time for god’s death to be accepted by people, for “This tremendous event is still on its way still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men.”
We also read about the Ubermensch. It is his concept which could replace the void of god. The Ubermensch is the next step in the evolution of man. As man was once ape, the ape is nothing but a primitive being and soon Man will be a primitive being to the Ubermensch. To me the Ubermensch is something to be strived for but can never be reached. He does not follow herd mentality, his mentality is individual and unique. When I consider this, it becomes unfathomable. How could a person possibly stray from the herd and act in a completely unique manner? I enjoyed how Nietzsche explained that we are like “No shepherd and one herd.”
There are so many people in the world that I believe individuality is nearly impossible. As soon as we communicate our thoughts, they no longer become individual and Nietzsche addresses this in his writings when he discusses consciousness. To Nietzsche, consciousness arose from the need to communicate. If a man were living in isolation in the woods, it would perhaps be possible for him to not have consciousness, for he could be a beast acting on his own animalistic passions and needs. Consciousness was something that came out of societal needs to communicate for survival. For Nietzsche, consciousness is a bad thing, a sort of curse that has fallen on man. The only form of consciousness, or rather self-consciousness to exist in the Ubermensch is that of the will to power. The will to power is merely the strive to become a better person, the best type of man that can be achieved, the ideal man. The Ubermensch would be above self-consciousness as he is above man.
Our final reading and class discussion was about Nietzsche’s view on “truth,” which was much more befuddling than I initially thought. In the Twilight of the Idols, he accuses Socrates and other wise thinkers as being unhappy. Is it truly worth it to analyze your life and the world around you if it just makes you “sick”? Nietzsche then argues that morality goes against the nature of man, and confines his passions. Should a man be able to tell you how you ought to be morally? In my interpretation, Nietzsche says no, that we should instead act on our own passions, which christian morals have imprisoned. Our passions are our nature, but morality has told us that we mustn’t do this or that. We mustn’t have sex with those we find attractive, we should find one person and remain faithful to him or her. Nietzsche insists that “there is only perspective knowing.” Therefore morality would be a perspective too, right? If so then we simply need to change our moral perspectives. Sex is a passion which exists beyond marriage, and I find that acceptable. Now can I act on this passion without feeling guilty?
You pose a great question when you ask “Is it truly worth it to analyze your life and the world around you if it just makes you ‘sick’?” In Nietzsche’s schema, this is just about the closest you can get to a moral question without self-contradicting.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, it challenges Nietzsche in ways you may not have considered when you first posted- if Nietzsche’s argument is that humans should become strong by looking at the world in a new way and this new way of looking at things makes people weaker (as it may have affected Nietzsche, culminating in his insanity), then isn’t it self-defeating?
But back to that moral claim issue- Nietzsche, in his enthusiasm, often seems to say assert his moral values as those that all people should objectively have, as if his conclusions logically followed from the rejection of the Christian god. I mean to say, his argument is something like “Because God is dead, you must fully embrace the will to power and strive to become the Overman.” The problem with that is that it forgets his very own belief in the subjectivity of morality. The best he could really say is “Because God is dead, you will best profit (e.g., be happiest, most powerful, etc.) by fully embracing the will to power…”
Even then, however, I see (what I deem to be) good reasons to not give up the moral value systems that Nietzsche disavows.
You describe the ubermensch very well in terms of what we as human beings are today. I don't ever think personally that we would develop into a ubermensch type people, but if people were better able to recognize a herd mentality and move away from that it might be possible. I do agree though however that as people become more and more engulfed in logic the need for faith or a belief in god in general would not be necessary since we can make our own decisions not believing that god is in the drivers seat controlling our lives. We are individuals and this entitles us the right to pursue our own passions whether people would believe that or not we can go out and do what we are passionate for. We should only feel guilty for what we have done if we have affected another person in a negative way other than that our passions are present for a reason for us to pursue them. Since religion is still a big part of humanity today I would not see everyone eventually getting rid of god, but it is progressing towards that since people start to not see the need for it anymore. Religion sprung out of a herd mentality to belong and when people start to think more for themselves then they find everyone blindly following along in some faith to be foolish. I'm not saying religion is a completely bad thing, but the morals people create from being in a religion can also be derived from just being a good person to others. Even though humanity probably should move away from the herd mentality I dont see it happening anytime soon because our methods of communication is what has brought us to this point today and if we couldnt communicate our ideas they would be more individualistic, but we wouldnt have ideas spreading around to benefit society as a whole.
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