Comparing Nietzsche and Schopenhauer's Attitudes Towards Life

Nietzsche was a revolutionary author and philosopher who has had a tremendous impact on German culture up through the twentieth century and even today. Nietzsche's views were very unlike the popular and conventional beliefs and practices of his time and nearly all of his published works were, and still are, rather controversial, especially in On the Genealogy of Morals. His philosophies are more than just controversial and unconventional viewpoints, however; they are absolutely extreme and dangerous if taken out of context or misinterpreted. After Nietzsche's death it took very little for his sister to make some slight alterations to his works to go along with Nazi ideology.

On the contrary, Schopenhauer perceives that the absurdity of life is more limited than Camus because the absurdity of the human existence comes from intellect. Moreover, the more intellectual one is, the more capable they are of realizing the inherent absurdity of human existence (Guigon, 2001). Thus, according to Schopenhauer, the more intellectually-inclined person is the one who suffers the most from mere existence. Taking this one step further, it can be argued that those of higher intellectual abilities are more likely to commit suicide as they understand the philosophy behind the act (Schopenhauer, 1966). Furthermore, Schopenhauer claims that, “At best we might see our way through the absurdity, and achieve peace by denying the Will and the futile desires that are its most immediate manifestations.” (Solomon, 1988) Schopenhauer acknowledged that the Will is absurd and therefore it should be denied. Schopenhauer saw the human Will as a window to the world behind the representation, which he defined as thing-in-itself. According to Schopenhauer, the entire world is the representation of a single Will, of which the individual Wills are phenomena. Schopenhauer states: “The world as idea is a mirror which reflects the Will. In this mirror the will recognizes itself in ascending grades

Does hope really demolish one from achieving the best or is hope the fuel that ignites one’s ambitions? According to Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun, one can only be successful if they give up all hope of succeeding. In her article, “Start Where You Are”, Chodron shares her perspective on Buddhism and how giving up hope is the solution to all problems. On the other hand, Thomas Jefferson advocates hope by persuading his nephew in a letter to always strive to become better. These two authors provide readers with two very different views on how one could live an exceeding life.

In this essay I will try to prove that the philosophy of Nietzsche is clearly reflected in the works of Rainer Maria

"A man never is happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbor with mast and rigging gone" (returnofthekings.com). This quote by Arthur Schopenhauer means that a person cannot find happiness when they desire something they think will make them happy. Once they are able to achieve their goal, they are left in disappointment when their necessities vanish. This relates to Fahrenheit 451 and Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy about desire being a cause of unhappiness. Schopenhauer's philosophy relates to the desire for happiness in Ray Bradbury's novel, Fahrenheit 451. The characters in this novel are unhappy because they desire answers, books and desire to escape reality. Arthur believed that "desire never ends" (www.famouspeople.com). "[He] saw desire as the root of suffering and pain" (www.biography.com) the characters in the novel demonstrate just that.

Happiness comes in many forms. Depending on what type of happiness one is pursuing, they will either face endless obstacles or nothing at all; when facing hardship, one must learn to think optimistically in order to overcome the pain that has been induced. For instance, one can relieve their mind with the nature’s healing power as long as they have the ability to identify the beauty in even the simplest concepts. In addition, the pursuit of knowledge will also bring one’s happiness if it is executed carefully; if not, the individual shall fall for the other side of knowledge, since knowledge itself is a double-edged sword. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Frankenstein’s Creature demonstrates that an individual may pursue happiness through observing the beauty in life, which allow them to reflect their self-image. This could lead to the corruption of the individual, as they would realize that they are unfitting into the society; thus, resulting in a compromised happiness.

Because we are so keen on learning, we are disengaged from our experiences, and therefore are not in the right place to understand ourselves (3). The words that are used to define any given concept are not to be taken at face value since the judgment of our moral values depends on their respective time periods and cultural influences, which are subject to change as everything else does. In other words, they are products of the moral projections of people’s values, which often have a multitude of dimensions that surpass the shallow fields of initial interpretation. Consequently, we need to look beyond the surface interpretation of these words by re-interpreting their meanings many times to be able to judge what we believe. As we change with time, our interpretations are subject to change, and our value systems evolve, both preventing us from establishing absolute meaning regarding anything. As a result, we cannot truly understand concepts unless we remove several historical layers from them. Many times throughout his polemic, Nietzsche hints at the necessity of asking a question from “various perspectives” (41). “Understanding the demonstrated purpose or utility of a thing, its form, its organization” is not

Sigmund Freud took a different approach to the question of human happiness. In an excerpt from his book, which is titled Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud identified what he felt were the three

Friedrich Nietzsche and Aristotle were great philosophers of their respective times, but their ideas and beliefs were completely different from each other. The focus of this paper will be on Nietzsche’s critique of Nicomachean Ethics by using On the Genealogy of Morals. Nietzsche had a different outlook on philosophy, especially in historical and goal oriented terms. According to Nietzsche, everything, including virtues, needed to be understood through change and historical development. Aristotle believed that human nature was static while Nietzsche believed that human nature changed over time. Another difference between the philosophers was Aristotle’s teleological understanding of the world. Aristotle was under the impression that a goal-oriented description was needed to understand the world. Nietzsche believed that humanity’s will was always in a state of willing but not towards any specific goal. Aristotle believed that humanity was always trying to achieve happiness. Nietzsche, on the other hand, believed that the human will was never directed towards one universal goal, like happiness, because goals of any kind ignore evolutionary fact and the possibility of change.

In “On The Sufferings of the World,” Arthur Schopenhauer has a pessimistic outlook on life. He believes that suffering is a part of life and that without suffering, the world would be an even more miserable place. As many people may assume, life gets better as you grow older. Schopenhauer however disagrees with this statement and claims that life continually deteriorates. Before reading this piece I strongly believed that I was an optimist. I always like to see the bright side of situations but, Schopenhauer really gave me a different outlook on life, a pessimistic view, and I surprisingly agreed with many of his ideas. Although this is true, at the end of the reading, I disagreed with more ideas than not. Therefore, I do not think that Schopenhauer’s account on life is a good proposal to live by because not everyone is continuously miserable in their life and it is perfectly reasonable to have a positive outlook on life.

We have grown weary of man. Nietzsche wants something better, to believe in human ability once again. Nietzsche’s weariness is based almost entirely in the culmination of ressentiment, the dissolution of Nietzsche’s concept of morality and the prevailing priestly morality. Nietzsche wants to move beyond simple concepts of good and evil, abandon the assessment of individuals through ressentiment, and restore men to their former wonderful ability.

Nietzsche fight to the idols is based on his age and according to him, they need to be fought and to be approached with violence because they are very strong and they rule with the power of obviousness. Therefore, Nietzsche has a belief in mind that those who begin to read his polemical philosophy will engage in a fight implying that the readers of his work will be the subject of his violent attacks. His claims are a preeminent way to be the type philosopher he gives in his description in beyond “Good and Evil” “a man tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, who has always found himself, and had to find himself, in a contradiction to his today: whose enemy was ever the ideal of today”. According to Nietzsche, the great wisdom of all spirits who have become too inward is war (Hollingdale,

The will leaves no entity outside of its governing periphery. It directs and governs all transient beings including human individuals. Moreover, human beings are, without a doubt, sensible beings. Having that in mind, humans cannot negate the fact that it is intrinsically imbedded in their nature to satisfy their bodily urgencies. More than that, human beings must likewise respond to their personal desires. Schopenhauer claims that one cause of suffering is the conflicting desires of the individual person. Diverging desires produces more human suffering for the reason that individual’s desires is in collision and contradiction with the others’. Hence, unity, peace, and understanding is

Friedrich Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher and held in regard amongst the greatest philosophers of the early part century. He sharpened his philosophical skills through reading the works of the earlier philosophers of the 18th century such as Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Arthur Schopenhauer and African Spir; however, their works and beliefs were opposite to his own. His primary mentor was Author Schopenhauer, whose belief was that reality was built on the foundation of experience. Such as it is, one of his essays, Schopenhauer als Erzieher, published in 1874, was dedicated to Schopenhauer (Mencken, 2008). In the past two centuries, his work has had authority and influence in both

Nietzsche introduced an idea of philosophy that was more than simply a rational groundwork of existence or as the pursuit of an absolute truth. Instead, he suggested that philosophy is something to be respected as a personal interpretation of life and all its faculties (morality, existentialism etc.) and that was – for him - focused on life affirmation. Furthermore, this thinking implies that philosophy is not a be all and end all answer to life’s questions; rather, it is merely a