Genealogy In Nietzsche's Search For Meaning

“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

Masters and slaves are constantly discussed throughout Nietzsche’s work, but the connection between them is discussed best in his book On the Genealogy of Morality. The first of the three essays outlines two alternate structures for the creation of values, which is credited to masters and the other to slaves.

In his Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche examines the origins of the pervading moral system of his time to Christian values, which elevate restraint and self-denial. In his writings, Marx attributes societal ills to capitalism and the exploitation of the working class.

Nietzsche sets the scene for the current moral situation of society in the beginning of his allegory: the madman “in the bright morning lit a lantern and ran around the marketplace crying incessantly, “I’m looking for God!” (§125). The madman is distressed because many fundamental beliefs of Christianity--the belief in God and “sin, repentance,

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.

In Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche emphasizes that the Christian Church is a false idol. He dares to say, “..God to be an enemy of life..” and, “Life ends where the ‘kingdom of God’ begins..” because he believes that Christian morality is against life itself (Idols, 23). The reason for this is because Nietzsche believes that, “to have to fight against the instincts- this is the formula for decadence: so long as the life is ascendant, happiness equals instinct” which simply means that if one goes against instincts, or an intuitive way of carrying ones life, then as a consequence it will lead to the degeneration of society and intellect while if life is on the rise, happiness must be equivalent to following ones’ instinct (Idols, 15). Because of his belief it is understood that Nietzsche wants one to embrace their instincts. Nietzsche states that a life in which

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.

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

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.

He hypothesized that this gradual turning away from God would be such a gradual process that people would not realize that it was even happening until the idea had almost been exterminated (Frame 45). Nietzsche then proposed that there are no absolutes or standards for us to live by and therefore, God could not be real since he would have created those very standards into being (Lawhead 454).Because of this, Nietzsche said, people would never be able to take full responsibility for themselves and still leave room for God (Frame 49). Instead, he favored the idea that the true origin of morals could be found in the human flaw to desire a state of being viewed as powerful (Lawhead 456). Although he denied God’s existed and felt that morals came from a thirst for power, Nietzsche was quoted as saying that Jesus came “not to ‘redeem men’ but to show how one must live (Lawhead 455).”

They both see the values of society as being a result of and necessary for civilization, rather than natural phenomena. Both theorists see guilt as stemming from a restriction of humanity’s natural urges, Nietzsche believing that it was a tool used by the priests to control the masses. Freud on the other hand thought it developed from a repression of humanity’s aggression towards one another. Equally, Freud and Nietzsche show a similar disdain for religion, the former seeing it as a delusional, infantile way to limit the pain and suffering that existence brings with it and the latter, due to what he sees as the transvaluation of values that the Judeo-Christian religions have brought about and the perceived cultural inaction that stems from this. As well as this, Nietzsche disliked the apparent inherited debt that comes with Christianity and the obligated guilt from Christ’s

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

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

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).