Nietzsche had an interesting view of history; he saw it as a necessity for men but that we also need to forget it. He saw history as a service to life and that the necessity of history is for man to be a historical being. However, Nietzsche also saw too much history as being detrimental and creates a generation of cynical people. He used the term “inwardness” defined as man’s “chaotic inner world” filled with “knowledge, taken in excess without hunger, even contrary to need” that “no longer acts as a transforming motive impelling to action and remains hidden” (Nietzsche 24). Nietzsche believed that history should be a balanced contemplation between historical and unhistorical to preserve life. He writes in his scholarship On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life that “the unhistorical and historical are equally necessary for the health of an individual, a people and a culture” (10). Within the historical, Nietzsche named the three types the monumental, antiquarian and the critical.
Nietzsche approaches history as monumental, which is examining the past to inspire greatness for present and future actions. Monumental history examines the past to use it as a teacher or model for future greatness. The monumental history is concerned with the greatest moments in history of humanity and uses it as leverage to emulate or surpass those historical moments. This kind of history attempts to emulate the greatness of the past but Nietzsche is skeptical of this idea by
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.
This will to power is the animalistic hunger for attaining more power. But it is explained by him that there are those who cannot simply achieve that goal through force. So this will to power is eventually turned inwards, where the deprivation and repression of the basic instincts is seen as having power over them. This lifestyle is what Nietzsche describes as asceticism. A lifestyle of monks, priests and nuns, he describes it as having an aura of seriousness. This process of forgetting common sense, distrusting the instinct and withdrawing from the world is the same part of the same slaves revolt in morality that he explains in his earlier essay. This ascetic ideal is further embodied in the then flourishing world of science. He describes science as the "most recent and noblest form" of the ascetic ideal”(Nietzsche 3.25), adding that science is not opposed to religion or morality, it is aiming for truth. His optimism about civilization's advancement towards the truth is a sharp contrast to the bound discontent of Freud. Yet Nietzsche does have his own doubts about the faith in science. Similarly to the scientist questions the priest's faith in God, Nietzsche recommends the conscience to doubt even faith in truth. He is in no form a relativist, but he states emphasizes that knowing as many different perspectives as possible
In reading a Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich you realize that history seems so much less complicated when you are the one standing back and reflecting on the past. You realize how easy it is to often forget that every single new idea, religion and war was a struggle that lasted generations upon generations. History is more than just a page or a story, its our account of the world. That goes to show how short life and history is, you realize that history is always repeating, war after war, peace then war. There are good and bad periods in history and its up to us to learn from them. In a way history is much like a human being it goes through stages, learns about life, and has inner struggles or wars about their ideas and their beliefs.
A person who views history as the actions of individuals is what brought about history believes in personality views, whereas a person how believes the culture and intellectual environment of a particular history era believes in the naturalistic history (Goodwin p. 10)
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
In his book, Twilight of the Idols, Friedrich Nietzsche aggressively challenges conventional schools of thought dating back to the ancients. Philosophy, as we know it, began over two-thousand years ago in Athens with the birth of Socrates. Socrates introduced the practice of reasoning and dialectics—the art of discourse hoping to bring individuals closer to some universal truth—to an Athenian society that previously held aesthetics, not logic, as indicative of goodness. Socrates revolutionized life in Athens, and by extension, the Western tradition. His beliefs are found in works written centuries after his death. He is heralded as the “father of philosophy.”
The past, For Nietzsche, has to be forgotten because it upsets the peace of a future moment.
A historical example that I believe applies to Nietzsche’s quotes is the Civil Rights Movement, particularly Rosa Parks. Parks was an African-American women, who, at the time, did not have the same rights as white people due to the color of her skin. In 1955, due to the whites-only section being filled on a bus, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the colored section to a white person. Parks was arrested for these actions, as were a few others who took the same actions. Due to this historical event, Parks was motivated to bring change to people of color and she eventually joined forces with Martin Luther King Jr. in
“One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.”
According to Nietzsche’s assertions in the first two essays of On the Genealogy of Morals, human beings suffer because they have lost the ability to enjoy life to its fullest extent. A significant shift in morals occurred from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans, who carried out good deeds with a surplus of energy simply because they could afford to do so, to the predominantly Judeo-Christian era of self-repression. This transition demonstrates a decline in our ability to make sense of our lives and understand our true human purpose. Nietzsche suggests that we have become out of touch with the truth – we are no longer present in our lives. He urges us to recognize the social constraints to which we sometimes unknowingly submit
During the latter parts of the Nineteenth Century, the German existentialist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote a great deal on his ideas of morality, values, and life. His writings were controversial, but they greatly affected European thought. It can be argued that Nietzschean philosophy was a contributing factor in the rise of what is considered our world's most awful empire, the Third Reich.
Because we are so keen on learning, we are disengaged from our experiences, and therefore are not in the right place to understand ourselves (3). The words that are used to define any given concept are not to be taken at face value since the judgment of our moral values depends on their respective time periods and cultural influences, which are subject to change as everything else does. In other words, they are products of the moral projections of people’s values, which often have a multitude of dimensions that surpass the shallow fields of initial interpretation. Consequently, we need to look beyond the surface interpretation of these words by re-interpreting their meanings many times to be able to judge what we believe. As we change with time, our interpretations are subject to change, and our value systems evolve, both preventing us from establishing absolute meaning regarding anything. As a result, we cannot truly understand concepts unless we remove several historical layers from them. Many times throughout his polemic, Nietzsche hints at the necessity of asking a question from “various perspectives” (41). “Understanding the demonstrated purpose or utility of a thing, its form, its organization” is not
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.
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
As mentioned earlier, Nietzsche doesn’t recognize a high power, which is odd because he grew up among Lutheran pastors. Philosophy of the future influenced Nietzsche’s philosophy. He believed in the after of certain periods. For example, he was post moral, post religious, post metaphysical etc. He also was the type of existentialism philosopher that was about reevaluating values, basically giving a new sense of good and bad and to be multi-perspectival. However, in Nietzsche’s eyes decision making wouldn’t be a burden like it would be seen in Kierkegaard’s eyes. Nietzsche would see as a great process for people to have control over their own lives. Because he believed in that you should enhance the quality of life and become a work of art would support that having that free will, will let humanity become, enhance, and create the life they want for themselves. Nietzsche’s outlook about shows that the central idea to his philosophy is the idea of “life-affirmation,” which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life’s expansive energies, however socially prevalent those views might be. (Wicks 1). With Nietzsche’s outlook, would intrigue modern people today, to proclaim their own lives and make their own decisions. Also, being constructive, being creative, and reinterpreting everything was a part of the Nietzsche’s philosophy and those three