Throughout many centuries philosophers have tried to explain the nature of reality and the order that exists within the universe around us. The purpose of this paper is to first trace the developments that led up to modernity. Next I will react to the claim made by Fredrick Nietzsche that “God is dead” from a Biblical perspective.
Philosophers have attempted to answer that question of what reality is and how to answer the questions that everyone faced. The first philosopher Thales held that water was the source of life and death. This is how the earliest philosophers explained the cycle of life and death that they saw happening all around them. Heraclitus later thought that fire was the prime element, and
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Thomas Aquinas became the next great philosopher in Greek history, and he chose Aristotle’s philosophy as his model. Since reality functioned in the physical world, science was justified, unlike Plato and Augustine’s systems. While Aquinas did not deny the spiritual realm, he did recognize that there was a genuine reality that operated in the physical world, therefore the physical sciences had some value. According to Aquinas, God revealed Himself in physical reality; the supernatural invaded the natural. Aquinas did not create a closed system, but rather a reality that operated on a physical level according to laws, but did not except supernatural intervention.
Moving on we now reach the birth of modernity with the philosopher Francis Bacon. Bacon felt that he needed to totally disregard everything he had previously learned in order to arrive at the truth. He said that the only way to learn something was by experience. He also made an important transition in the way he formed logic. Philosophers in ancient times used inductive logic, and Bacon used deductive logic. Bacon was followed by Descartes who once ventured into a cave to find what truth really was on his own. He once said, “I think therefore, I am.” This statement sums up the entire theme of modernity. He doubted everything but the self, even the existence of God. After “discovering” the self, he concluded that since he could think
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.
During the seventeenth century, the scientific revolution in Europe was at its peak, changing people’s lives through the new techniques of the scientific method. Citizens of western civilizations had previously used religion as the lens through which they perceived their beliefs and customs in their communities. Before the scientific revolution, science and religion were intertwined, and people were taught to accept religious laws and doctrines without questioning; the Church was the ultimate authority on how the world worked. However, during this revolution, scientists were inspired to learn and understand the laws of the universe had created, a noble and controversial move toward truth seeking. The famous scientists of the time, such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton, were known to be natural philosophers, intending to reveal God’s mystery and understand (through proof) the majesty of God. Throughout previous centuries, people had hypothesized how the world and natural phenomenon may work, and new Protestant ideals demanded constant interrogation and examination. Nevertheless, some of these revelations went against the Church’s teachings and authority. If people believed the Church could be wrong, then they could question everything around them, as well. As a result, the introduction of the scientific method, a process by which scientists discovered and proved new theories, was revolutionary because it distinguished what could be proved as real from what was simply
Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche are two widely acclaimed philosophers due to the groundwork they made towards the philosophical principles of morality. However, even though they both have openly discussed their views, they have ended up contradicting each other. Kant implied that morality is not learned, but rather predestined, whereas Nietzsche alluded to a experience based morality, or one that is learned through actions and memories. Although these two men have accepted views of morality, the ideas of Nietzsche seem more applicable in relation to the present day; the world is constantly changing. There are two separate scenarios in which the issues of 'thou shalt not lie ' and 'thou shalt not steal, ' are morally assessed. The end results are supportive towards Nietzsche 's principles and detrimental towards Kant 's ideas. Overall, the moral concepts of Nietzsche will prevail as a result, illustrating the more probable use of his ideology.
Throughout many centuries philosophers have argued over the existence of God. In today’s society many people tend to hesitate in believing in a God because of the new scientific discoveries. For example, in the mid 1990s scientists built the Hubble telescope which revealed that there were billions of galaxies in our universe, this discovery led some people to question how can one divine being create so much and yet have a personal connection with everyone in the world. Which, in result, may take some scientific explanation to strengthen one’s belief in God, but for those who believe there is a benevolent God they do not need science to show proof that he exists because of their morals and beliefs they have been raised to follow. In this paper I will prove that God does exist by explaining the ontological, cosmological, and design argument.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s own skepticism symbolized the secular changes in contemporary Western civilization, in which he details mankind’s break away from faith into a new rule of chaos. In Book 5 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche establishes that “God is dead”, meaning that modern Europe has abandoned religion in favor of rationality and science (Nietzsche 279). From this death, the birth of a ‘new’ infinite blossoms in which the world is open to an unlimited amount of interpretations that do not rely on the solid foundations of faith in religion or science. However, in contrast to the other philosophers of his age such as Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Nietzsche deviates from the omniscient determinism of history towards a
One burning and enduring problem in philosophy to which we have given considerable examination is the question of the existence of God--the superlative being that philosophers have defined and dealt with for centuries. After reading the classic arguments of St. Anselm and St. Thomas Aquinas, the contentious assertions of Ernest Nagel, and the compelling eyewitness accounts of Julian of Norwich, I have been introduced to some of the most revered and referenced arguments for and against God's existence that have been put into text. All of them are well-thought and well-articulated arguments, but they have their holes. The question of God's true existence, therefore, is still not definitively answered and put to rest; the intensity of this
The traditional God in the Judeo-Christian tradition is known to be as an “Omni-God” possessing particular divine attributes such as omniscient, which means he knows everything he is also omnipotent, or all powerful. God has also been said to be also he is omnipresence which means he exists in all places and present everywhere, however there are many philosophical arguments on whether if any of that is actually true or if there is a God at all. This paper argues that it is not possible to know whether the traditional God exists or not. While there have been philosophers such as Aquinas, Anselm, Paley and Kierkegaard who are for god and present strong argument, likewise philosopher like Nietzsche and arguments like the problem of evil both make valid point on why God isn’t real.
In this Commentary of sections 1-7 of essay two in Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals, I will give a brief overview of the text, to help with showing the content that the comment covers, the go deeper into the individual sections and relate them to Nietzsche’s way of thinking and also look into any problems or solutions offered by those arguments.
For thousands of years man has pondered a question. A question that is very important as the answer affects everything that mankind knows about morality, the universe, and the meaning of life itself. This question has been asked by men and women from all walks of life and it would seem that for every question answered concerning this topic a dozen more arise. Philosophers to Scientists to Kings have all pondered this question and this question is whether or not God exists. Now there are various conceptions of God within philosophy, but the most simple and widely accepted definition would likely be a “metaphysically necessary being.” That will be the definition of God for this paper. Numerous arguments have been put forth for and against the existence of a God, and some can be grouped together according to their type. Examples of these arguments range from teleological arguments to axiological arguments to cosmological arguments (to name a few). The following paper will focus on cosmological arguments, in particular the Argument from Contingency.
We continue our study of the history of God by looking at His attributes from a number of different viewpoints. We will first examine the view of Classical Theism, then the view of Freewill Theism, and finally that of Open Theism. We begin by defining Classical Theism, also called traditional theism or Augustinian theism.
On the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche is typically listed as one of the most important philosophical works of the modern era. It is only modern, of course, to philosophical standards, being a mere 129 years old. It is also one of the most controversial works of its time, having the dubious distinction of being connected to Nazi ideology; it also has a not very subtle racist, sexist, and Darwinist bent that is a reflection of Nietzsche himself. That being said, I think that it is also serially misunderstood. Nietzsche directly mentions the role of interpretation in ethical discourse in the Genealogy, and the interpretive element factors heavily into one’s understanding of the polemic and by extension, ethics philosophy as a whole. Throughout the book, Nietzsche uses interpretation as a tool in itself to make a constructivist and existentialist argument about the history of ethics as whole. His idea that man has used interpretation throughout history, and the interpretive elements in Genealogy outside of the historical analysis, seem to say that almost all ethics are derived from interpretation and therefore constructivist in nature, which is a heavily existentialist argument. For example, the entirety of the first essay is based heavily upon the role of interpretation in the development of the early ethical systems that Nietzsche argues are built on the
Although the problem of the relationship between Nietzsche and metaphysics might seem to be a settled issue, this is in fact a quite complicated and fascinating problematic. The difficulty with this subject lies in the often unacknowledged ambiguity that the term ‘metaphysics’ exhibits in Nietzsche's writing, as this word assumes different nuances and connotations in different contexts. Therefore, if we can get past the usual rhetoric on the topic, we come to realize that Nietzsche addresses the topic of metaphysics in at least two distinct ways.
In his work Meditations on First Philosophy, published in 1641, René Descartes sets out to establish a set of indubitable truths for the sciences. He begins by discarding all of his beliefs, then works to rebuild his beliefs based on careful thought. Descartes clearly states this goal, saying in the First Meditation, “I will work my way up… I will accomplish this by putting aside everything that admits of the least doubt” (I, 17). He is able to establish his own existence, but struggles to move beyond his internal thoughts to discuss external objects. Descartes decides that the Christian God is the bridge he needs to escape the confines of his own mind, and argues for the existence of God in the Third Meditation in order to move on to discussing the physical world. In this paper I will argue that Descartes’ rationalistic project would have been improved without an appeal to the Christian God, although I will also argue that Descartes thinks this appeal is necessary.
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
Have you ever asked yourself where your conscience comes from? The feeling that takes a hold of you when you do what you feel is wrong. This feeling is almost like a consequence when you tell a lie or commit a crime. Your conscience helps you sort out the good and bad and feels your mind with sorrow when you see a sad story on the news or gives you the initiative to donate money to a contribution. But where does it come from. Is it something you are naturally born with, taught over time or given to you by a higher power? This argument leads to the existence of moral values by many philosophers including William Lane Craig. One of his excerpts argues that if there is an existence of moral values, which some people agree,