Friedrich Nietzsche : Good And Evil

As we approach Nietzsche's philosophy within the text, we must first begin by adopting the principle of the will to power as the fundamental drive of all things. The principle of the will to power states that everything must obey something, and if one cannot obey oneself, one must obey someone else. Those who can transcend and command themselves then, according to Nietzsche, are the sole carriers of true freedom. The will to power for Nietzsche is not simply the desire for power or even something that one could choose to have or not, but is rather a characteristic of everything that lives. Such is observable through the human history of interaction but the will to power must not only be applied to human beings since ideas like religion, morality, and truth are also prevailing concepts that are all positioned in the alike struggle that dictates life.

“As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.” Nietzsche was one of the first modern philosophers to rebel against rationalism and when World War I came about, the revolution against religion truly became a legitimate statement. Friedrich Nietzsche strongly believed that many of those that practiced religion were led to the acceptance of slave morality. Religion had always played a fundamental role in society as it sets strict boundaries and standards of what is morally correct and incorrect. However, Nietzsche claims that, “Human nature is always driven by “ ‘the will to power’ ”, but religion will tell one otherwise, saying that one should forbid their bad desires. In Nietzsche’s

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.

Throughout his writings, Nietzsche aims to inform his readers that we as humans can only reach our potential by following our passions and ignoring the flawed ideals of the church. Under the doctrine of the church’s morality, innate passions of its followers must be abolished in order to become proper Christians. By destroying the inner passions of its followers, the church is doing a great disfavor by using morality to rule out nature from their lives.

Humanity, according to Nietzsche, is infected by an illness. It is the kind of illness that has infected every single man, religious or non-religious alike. It is his aim to release his readers from the illness. In much the same way as a doctor, he wishes to do so by primarily sourcing the cause of the illness, and secondly by diagnosing it. It is Nietzsche’s belief that this metaphoric illness is morality.

In Nietzsche’s aphorisms 90-95 and 146-162 he attacks what he believes to be the fundamental basis of the “slave” morality prevalent in the Judeo-Christian tradition as well as other religions and societies. From the beginning, he distinguishes the two different types of moralities he believes to exist: the “master morality”, created by rulers of societies, and the “slave” morality, created by the lowest people in societies. The former stresses virtues of the strong and noble while looking down upon the weak and cowardly. This type of morality, however, is not as widespread as the “slave morality” that has been adopted by so many religions. Nietzsche looks through the psychology and logic of

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.

Nietzsche saw truth as an individual discovery or belief that a person must find alone. This internal truth can only be found if one throws away all prior preconceived notions about morality. By realizing that man is of this world and a part of nature, a person can focus on this life. Since Christianity's teachings focus heavily on the

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 lived his life as a man critical of nearly everything in his life, provided that in influenced morality. Religion influenced people who, in his eyes, could do greater if their ideals weren’t held back by their preconceived ideas of morality. He frequently attacked philosophies that disagreed with him, claiming that they stood in the way of the benefit of mankind. His belief of abandoning preconceived notions of a code of morality is his own philosophy, Nihilism. Everything Nietzsche worked on became Nihilism. It is a shame that Nietzsche fell out of contemporary view because of the edits made by his sister that caused people to associate him with the hateful views of nazism and

Good Bad is that of Nietzsche. Good Evil is the verbiage of the plebian, the nihilists that perpetuate the fallacy of Christian morality. Nietzsche’s genealogy of morality is intriguing because of the ironic, and hypocritical origin story that he develops. By pinpointing moments of inaccuracy and hypocrisy, he demonstrates the inefficacy of Good-Evil morality. Christian morality is rooted in envy and inefficacy, in a wish to achieve the strength of the aristocracy. This is replicated through ascetic teachings using weaknesses to the Christian advantage. Termed ressentiment – meaning hatred, and hostility – the envy of the proletariat, of the weak is used as the key term. Nietzsche claims that ressentiment refers to an inability to change a situation – to guilt. By focusing narrowly on the origins of Christian values, Nietzsche builds a story of emotion, trying to stimulate anger and resentment against the church. For Nietzsche, Christian Values arose out of weakness and trickery. The premise of their core values – justice and patience are used to explain away an inability to fulfill the desires of the slaves or the weak. However, a significant problem originates in Nietzsche’s attempt to acknowledge that Christianity originated in a lie that neither the weak nor the strong believed. If both the strong and the weak have memory on which to develop a history and morals – how did the Christian morality gain

The world was changing and he knew this and you can see it in his writings the great thinker, was revolutionizing a new concept without having God deep in it. Nietzsche even though he is writing that God is dead he can’t believe his own writings this is why it sounds like the ramblings of a

Nietzsche introduces the initial concepts of what is good to be determined by those who have benefitted from unegoistical

5. Discuss Nietzsche’s theory of “will to power” and “the innocence of becoming”. Does the hypothesis of the will to power successfully “debunk” traditional religion, morality, and philosophical claims to provide the “disinterested” or “objective” truth?

Nietzsche is widely known as a critic of religion. In fact, he talks in depth about morality in regards to religion in his essays about the genealogy of morals. But the problem is not within religion itself or within morals. The problem is involved in the combination of the two to create society’s understanding of morality through a very religious lens. In fact, Nietzsche has criticism for almost any set of morals constructed by a group of individuals and meant to be applied to society as a whole. True morality, according to Nietzsche, requires a separation from these group dynamic views of morality- or at least a sincere look into where they originated and why they persist- and a movement towards a more introverted, and intrinsically personalized understanding of what morals mean in spite of the fact that “the normative force to which every member of society is exposed, in the form of obligations, codes of behavior, and other moral rules and guidelines, is disproportionally high” (Korfmacher 6).