Nietzsche Good And Evil Essay

According to Nietzsche, the right and wrong (good and bad, good and EVIL) are just a type of the concept. Nietzsche explains that from the beginning in his first argument that the “good” did not originate among those to whom goodness was shown. It explains that the trait of “good” was really a trait as we know it today, it was actually people who were good themselves, which is Aristocratic who are powerful, high minded and high class people who controls the class below them and also politics in some cases. This was the concept that defined what right and wrongs were because it cleared things out that good was really a trait but the people who were powerful and high class in society, unlike bad which was completely opposite. But over the time

Good v. Evil, it’s way more than just a concept, it’s more of a lifelong struggle inside of you. What more could you do when evil is shown all around you? Many of us may see the struggle between good and evil in the people we come across everyday. Flawed individuals may be perceived as good but are bad in the eyes of someone else; it all comes down to how you see it. The exposure to things and memories you make help impact the good in you. In order to further evaluate the argument of how good can come out of evil and good can show up even when it’s not right in front of you, can be shown in both William Golding’s novel Lord of the flies and the Anonymous Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf. This essay asserts that,

In his book, Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche examines the origins of Good and Evil. He postures that these two concepts are derived from language, rather than essential morality. He argues that people label things as good or evil based upon their personal feelings and position of privilege. Douglas Smith translated this edition of Genealogy of Morals into English, but he also included explanations of some of Nietzsche’s key concepts. According to Smith, “A central concept in Nietzsche’s argument, ressentiment is the essence of slave morality, a purely reactive mode of feeling which simply negates the active and spontaneous affirmation of values on the part of the nobility” (142). Ressentiment stems from the oppressed party’s jealousy. The oppressed do not accept that it is bad that they do not have the luxuries and rights that the nobility posses. Instead, the oppressed use ressentiment, flip the moral spectrum, and declare that those luxuries are evil.

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.

It does not find its root and origin in objective circumstances; it originates from a place of suppression, of seeking freedom, and most significantly, of ressentiment. Herein the idea Nietzsche proposes is that the slaves are responsive against their noble masters because they are weak and impotent, leading to the festering of hatred and resentment. This means that values culminating from the revolt would be inaccurate in representing the true meaning of “good” or “evil”, because they were formed through the tainted lens of the slaves of ressentiment. They would portray the slaves, the weak, and the powerless as “good” and favourable, while casting the nobles, the masters, and the upperclassmen in an “evil” and malicious light. This inverts the original notion that the nobles are the definition of “good”. Nietzsche expounds this situation by clarifying that the nobles become “blond beast[s]” (Nietzsche, page 128) when out of their familiar circumstances, insinuating that they turn into a barbaric state where they seek victory over those who are inferior to them. In turn, displays of brutality will be expressed, as a by-product of this barbarism and therefore, fulfilling the morality of the nobles as “evil”. Nietzsche also expresses that this form of morality may not always be beneficial; it cages the

These two structures are controlled by different intangible themes. The first is ‘good/bad’ in terms of master morality and the second is ‘evil/good’ in terms of the slave morality. Noble classes and races, according to Nietzsche, started by defining their actions, themselves and their way of life as ‘good’, while ‘bad’ simply referred to anything that was not noble – “everything lowly, low-minded, common and plebeian” (OGM, Sec. I.2). In contrast, the morality of slaves discusses a position of weakness rather than strength. It starts by redefining the masters’ values as ‘evil’, while ‘good’ refers to anything opposed to that of ‘evil’. Unable to create their own original values, the slaves instead invert the values of their masters. This makes the master morality affirmative and favorable, while the slave morality is reactant and adverse. Deleuze, in an interpretation of Nietzsche, summarizes these two positions as a constrasting formula: where the master’s saying is “I am good, so that means you are bad”, while the slave’s logic is that of ‘ressentiment’: “You are evil, so that means I am good.”

Quite possibly the most poignant and eye-opening relationship of the entire play of Hamlet and his mother, becomes sabotaged by Hamlet internalizing Catholic driven dogma. People often resort to using religion as a moral compass to give their lives structure and personal guidance. Friedrich Nietzsche, a prominent figure associated with the existential movement states in his book, Beyond Good and Evil, that “Perhaps one the most solemn concepts which have occasioned the most strife and suffering, the concepts ‘God’ and ‘sin’, will one day seem to us of no more importance than a child’s toy and a child’s troubles” (82). Clearly, Nietzsche actively rejects the concept of committing sins, which is the binding force in most religions. To begin,

This paper is a comparative study between Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. Detailing their views regarding ethical and unethical law.

Friedrich Nietzsche was a philosopher in the 1800’s. His work has since influenced, impacted, and brought forth new questions for many philosophers to follow. One of Nietzsche’s famous writings Beyond Good and Evil expresses his views on society and the two different classes it holds, slave and master. He expresses his belief that the two are in warfare with one another, the strong (master) fighting for the will to power, while the weak (slave) tries to pull the master down to their level using clandestine forms of revenge. Nietzsche believed the slave morality was one that included humility, obedience, and submission, and was the destructive choice and attribute of Christianity, while the master morality was full of arrogance and pride

Man’s development of “bad conscience” is a complicated process that sees its beginnings in slave morality’s doubling of the doer and the deed. According to Nietzsche, the slave (the weaker man) had developed ressentiment towards the noble (the stronger man), labeling the noble as evil and blaming him for slave’s suffering (20-22). The slave separated the noble (the doer) from his instinctive actions (the deeds) and claimed the noble possessed “free will;” the slave believed “the strong are free to be weak” (26). The slave set up the ideal of his own weak and passive instincts being “good” and the strong and active instincts of the nobles being “evil” (26-27). As stated by JHarden, when defining his weakness as good, “the slave turned [his] natural condition of suffering at the hands of others into a condition which should be desired” (JHarden). As religions developed, and the slave morality became dominant, this ideal of good and evil prevailed and forced man to become conscious of his instincts as separate from himself, something he could control.

The concept of morality plays an important role in human society. Through the discovery of what, exactly, determines that which is “good” and that which is “bad”, humans develop mechanisms that determine how they respond to or judge any given situation. What remains a mystery, however, is what, exactly, is the basis of morals. It is commonly believed that morals are learned through lived experiences, as well as, from those who act as each person’s individual caretaker(s). Even though these factors do play a significant role in determining morality, these factors alone neither create nor determine a person’s moral compass. In Paul Bloom’s work, Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, we are introduced to the idea that morality, while partly learned, is something that is ingrained in humans from birth. Through multiple studies, performed both by Bloom as well as other psychologists, it is revealed that not only are babies able to perceive what is right and what is wrong, but also, from birth, babies are instilled with the innate knowledge of empathizing, valuing fairness and status, and valuing those who look similar versus those who look different. In spite of previous ideas, Bloom proves that babies are smarter than previously thought, while simultaneously recognizing the shortcomings of this “elementary” form of morality. Bloom’s finding prove to be revolutionary, in that they allow for the examination of different social structures, their shortcomings, and what

For Nietzsche, “the slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge.” (Nietzsche 913). This imaginary revenge causes the complete reversal in defining words of class. The resentful slaves and priests looked up at the nobility with anger, characterizing them as selfish, corrupted, abusive and tyrannical, among other things. Ultimately, they came to the conclusion that the nobility were the pinnacle of evil. In doing so, “he has conceived ‘the evil enemy,’ ‘the Evil One,’ and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a ‘good one’—himself!” (Nietzsche 915). Through the venomous eye of ressentiment, the slave class has characterized the good men, those with strong moral character as evil, and in doing so, has

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,

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche discusses how he is not a believer in democracy. The principles of democracy were put together by levelers, or people that believe in democracy. These principles lead to equality that restrains life to one universal truth and Nietzsche did not agree with this idea at all. He believed that these principles caused people to form into one large herd. In this herd, people follow one another with no will to power, which results in the downfall of individual rights and instincts. This makes the herd the definition of morality in society, which Nietzsche disagrees with. But he brings up the idea of neighbor love. Neighbor love is the idea that we are all in one herd so we are all equal which creates us to all