Exploring Existentialism and the Character Leanord in the Film, Memento

Admittedly, the philosophy of the late nineteenth century German Friederich Nietzsche had a profound impact on my world view. I concur with his belief that humans should occupy themselves with living in the reality that is, and not to be preoccupied with fantastic illusions of working towards a great afterlife. Granted, I am still very young, but from what I can see, humans have no universal nature nor do any set of underlying human morals dictate what is right and wrong. And as much as people would like to believe, unfortunately, we do not have free will. Every action carries the weight of a punishment or reward, so in essence, people do things either in fear or in

While Nietzsche’s standpoint of the master morality can be viewed in the lifestyle of people today, it is not a morality that need be accepted or strived for as a sense of power or accomplishment in life. The Bible teaches that as we lose our live for Jesus we will find it (Matthew 10:39). Submitting to God is not an act of weakness, rather an honor and gain as we lose ourselves in Him and find our true selves. The Bible says that we were made in God’s image and likeness, and we were given dominion over the earth (Genesis 1:26). Nietzsche’s master morality appears to be just that, an attempt to gain dominion. Since Nietzsche did not believe in God, which is the way to salvation and eternal life (Romans 10:9), it is safe to assume that he was serving the god of this world and his ways, which have always been to try to copy or be like God (Isaiah 14:13-14). Nietzsche had knowledge about God but decided to turn away from him. Because of this, Romans 1:28 -29 shows that he, among other things would be arrogant, boastful heartless, and invent ways of doing evil, which to me is exactly what his whole master-slave morality portrays. Had Nietzsche just turned from his wicked ways and submitted to the One and only true God, he would have found the peace, love, and true authority with out death.

We were introduced to Friedrich Nietzsche who had written several essays titled “On the Genealogy of Morality”. The beautiful thing about philosophy is it allows us to constantly keep thinking and consider other people’s point of view. Prior to reading these essays, we had read about Plato, St. Augustine and later the Buddha. All of them believed in some type of after life, while Nietzsche did not. He was considered an atheist to some, but he believed in asceticism.

In Friedrich Nietzsche’s novel, The Gay Science, he discusses the death of God or more explicitly, “…the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable” (Nietzsche 199). What people believed was true years ago is now false. He questions whether our concept of God is our oldest lie. He pronounces that he and certain other people are free spirits, children of the future, and argonauts of the ideal. What Nietzsche means by this is that he and certain other people have the capability to be free from high moral standards produced by religion.

Fredrick Nietzsche would probably be worried about my morality. Growing up in an atheist household where Nietzsche’s assertion that “God is dead” was mostly true, the “sklavenmoral” of Christianity did not provide me with my set of morals, but neither did culture, as Nietzsche suggests, because neither of my parents were interested or educated in philosophy and art; I was only introduced to these subjects in school, after my morals had already been formed. Although Nietzsche may have been worried that someone in my situation would be helplessly immoral and lacking guidance, I know that I have a strong sense of right, wrong, and in between.

Nietzsche believed that once "God is dead", we must become like Gods and create our own meaning of life. We would be the creators of our own values, ethics, morals and truth. He believed that without God, there would be an emptiness between the difference of good and evil. For that reason, we would need to build our own definition of good and evil with no metaphysical belief in it. Furthermore, Nietzsche explained that God is not only a divine being for religious people but that he represents the foundation of our system of knowledge and the code of law of the modern civilization This idea is expressed in his book the gay science when he says: "Whiter are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backwards, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? [...] God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him." (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 181). What this quotation means is that God is the source of all meaning and since he is dead we are now left plunging through a valueless universe. We have lost our source of meaning, values, ethics, morals and truth. How can we know what is "up and down", "good and bad", or "right and wrong" anymore? This quotation proves us that once God is dead we will have no choice but to create new values for ourselves. Another interesting quotation that ties in both the

Nietzsche argues that from the modern death, it does not imply that experiences a physical death, but he theorizes that if Christians doubt the availability of the spiritual being, then the community’s morality will be separated. The argument reasons with me in that in the current studies conducted by different scholars I have observed that when most people in the fail to recognize the spiritual being, then their moral fabric will be separated since different people from this community will have a different contribution or take towards the existence of God.

The most important thing a tourist does before they leave a new city is buying a trinket to immortalize their vacation. The streets of New York City are lined with memorabilia people use as mementos; street vendors, gift shops, and monuments all placed to get tourists to buy their items. People line up to buy these trinkets to freeze memories in time, to keep these moments in their head forever, to save as a memento. A memento is an object used for remembrance, usually used to remember a time, a place, or a person. In the movie Memento, the main character (Leonard) has short-term memory loss and he creates his own memento to remember important events. He uses tattoos on his body as a roadmap for significant events by inking details all over his skin.

Nietzsche: God is dead. The god that humans created to serve sociological or psychological purposes is no longer needed, mankind and society have evolved into a new, scientific era and so the god who ruled the past is no longer necessary, hence dead. Hates religion. Believes man created God.

Nietzsche describes in The Gay Science chapter that the madman figures out that God is dead and that humans are murderers of him. Nietzsche is trying to say that the madman comprehended God is not the reason there is good and bad anymore. There is no existence of the initial motive to have Christian morals. Individuals are now in control of their own judgement after they view God as dead, just like the madman. God is not the reason to be moral, people can now look to science and also find reasons of their own to be good or bad. People can define their own ideas of so they are not obligated to live guilty. Nietzsche reflects that God put a great deal of stress on people and made feeling guilty for their sins all the time. What was once a sin

Kierkegaard’s way of thinking transitioned right into the realm of mental aspects in which, he was a proponent of discovering what could be learned by the use and study of psychology. This included exploring the correlation between experiences, and the ability to be subjective in making decisions which, was demonstrated in his thought-provoking literary piece titled Repetition (1843) which, was viewed as being illustrative of experimental psychology. It was deemed that repeating the same situation over and over will not produce the same experience which, is the crux of Kierkegaard’s view point. He believed that the field of psychology dealt with distinctiveness and yearnings of humans thus, it was the antagonist of science (Klempe, 2013). It was evident that Kierkegaard explored the human consciousness and psychological concepts vicariously not only through his fictitious characters which, mirrored his personal life and struggles. It could be

Nietzsche claims that religion and morality is a set of strict rules that don’t only not benefit the follower but also causes them to become enslaved to the rules. On the one hand I agree with Nietzsche when he writes about the false ideology of causality and the belief that “God is dead”. Nietzsche describes causality as people misunderstanding that God is not the cause of events that happen to people and that people need to understand that they themselves are the causes in their lives. On the other hand, I believe that Nietzsche is wrong when he says that these religious guidelines creates slaves out its followers.

In Part I.A., Kierkegaard sets up the basic definition of the words he means to explain through his book. He regards the human self to “relate itself to itself” (9). The key concept to draw from this definition is that it is a distinct feature of being

Personally, I do not agree with Nietzsche that God is dead because as a religious person, I believed that God live in me, and in people that have a strong faith in him. On the other hand, even tough Nietzsche was an atheist, he did not believed that God was never existed. Instead, he thought because of the declining of Christianity, the image of God was debilitating and specially in the Western communities despairing . I agree with Nietzsche when he refers that because of atheism and absence of morality the work became a chaos. For example, teenagers that has been raised in the streets are most likely going to became criminals because of the absence of respect an strong values. This teenagers will be the future of our country, but the

June 15, 2001 was business as usual for the Hollywood. The usual string of expensive summer blockbusters were rolled out, with an array of commercial triumphs ("The Mummy Returns") and disappointments ("Pearl Harbor"). It was heartening to film fans that a classic sleeper could still find room in a marketplace filled with bloated extravaganzas nurtured by gray-suited Hollywood greedheads. Unbenost to the gray-suits, the per-screen average for writer/director Christopher Nolan's "Memento" -- a challenging art-house noir made for $5 million and released by a novice distributor -- was but $2 less than the per-screen average of "Pearl Harbor," a $200 million mediocrity, whose lavish, flag-wrapped premiere