Nietzsche's Will To Truth

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.

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).

In regards to Socrates negative judgement of life Nietzsche believes the judgement of values concerning life can never be true or false within themselves because the value of life cannot be estimated. We cannot give an estimate as to what the value of life is since as living beings we are too close to life and thus subject to bias. What we value isn’t an accurate reflection of life’s worth; it is simply a reflection of our capacity.

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.

In this passage the central conclusion is that the value of life, whether that be humans or animals is contributed to the quality of life, the quality is related to its richness being related to the life’s capacity of enrichment. (LaFollette, Hugh. Ethics in Practice: An Anthology. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997. Print.) Frey gives support to this conclusion by recognizing that not all individuals from a moral group are individuals that have lives with equal value or significance within both humans and animals. (LaFollette, Hugh. Ethics in Practice: An Anthology. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997. Print.) In support this statement, Frey claims there are different moral standings of most human lives. Some examples were an infant with disadvantages, a disabled person and elderly person with a severe case of Alzheimer’s disease. Frey then supports these claims by saying that if we agree with these claims it is clear that we are not using species membership to determine the value and moral standing of an individual but instead as the quality of an individual’s life. An additional support of the central conclusion is that this view allows for animals to have more value than a human

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.”

Friedrich Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense represents a deconstruction of the modern epistemological project. Instead of seeking for truth, he suggests that the ultimate truth is that we have to live without such truth, and without a sense of longing for that truth. This revolutionary work of his is divided into two main sections. The first part deals with the question on what is truth? Here he discusses the implication of language to our acquisition of knowledge. The second part deals with the dual nature of man, i.e. the rational and the intuitive. He establishes that neither rational nor intuitive man is ever successful in their pursuit of knowledge due

Nietzsche starts this second essay by looking at and reviewing the importance of our ability to make and keep promises. To hold yourself and others to a promise means having the need of both a good memory, the ability to remember making said promise and a strong feeling of confidence what will happen next and a long term ability to know you will be able to fulfil said promise. In order for us to make the commitment and have the confidence to do so means that on some level, we must give a feeling and make ourselves into the ideal of becoming in a way predictable, to be able to achieve this we as humans need a set of guideline to follow, certain rules that make this predictability a possibility, the certainty that a set of actions will lead to a set of reactions both internally and externally.

In his second essay of the Geneaology of Morals, Nietzsche attempts to identify and explain the origin of the conscience. He does not adopt the view of the conscience that is accepted by the “English Psychologists”, such as Bentham, J. Mill, J.S. Mill and Hume, as the result of an innate moral feeling. Rather, it is his belief that the moral content of our conscience is formed during childhood under the influence of society. Nietzsche defines the conscience as an introspective phenomenon brought about by a feeling of responsibility, in which one analyzes their own morality due to the internalization of the values of society. This definition holds the position that the conscience is not something innate to

What is truth? What is the truth, of what truth is? There are many answers to this question. Each answer may lie different, inside of each person. Only you know what truth is to you. In this essay I will describe what truth is to me, how I verify truth, and whether I believe truth to be good or bad. I will then compare and contrast my idea of truth, to that of Plato’s truth, from his ideas in “Allegory Of The Cave.”

Humanity’s natural aggression means that civilization is “constantly threatened with disintegration” and it must make every effort to ensure these urges are curbed, in order for its continued existence. He continues in this vein, by stating that, in order for people to “forgo the satisfaction of their tendency to aggression” civilization encourages us to form into groups, however for this to work their must continue to be “outsiders,” that the aggression can be turned towards. This is in accordance with On the Genealogy of Morals, where it is the Slaves ascetic nature that forces them to also control their instincts. Likewise, both Freud and Nietzsche assert that these restrictions cause people to internalise their aggressions, turning inward.

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

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

Humans need the appearance of some sort of structure to live. They need rules to live by to tell them whether or not they are living “right”, in a good way or a bad way. We humans have come up with many different ways to tell whether we are living right “right” or not. We have come up with all of the different types of religions and the different sets of morals , all of which change throughout history and time depending on and reflecting it’s episteme. How can any religion or set of morals be considered the “right one” when there has been no consistency with either? Both Feuerbach and Nietzsche have the same belief, that religions and morals are only a crutch that humans grab on to in order to give some meaning to the random assortment of life on earth. Both think that religion was a crutch for humans because of our inability to be perfect. Religions especially Christianity (Jesus) have their own destruction built in to them because of the humanity aspect. Though Feuerbach and Nietzsche agreed upon this they had very different opinions on how it would come about.

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?