Nietzsche's critique of Plato and Christianity

Plato is remembered as one of the worlds best known philosophers who along with his writings are widely studied. Plato was a student of the great Greek philosopher Socrates and later went on to be the teacher of Aristotle. Plato’s writings such as “The Republic”, “Apology” and “Symposium” reveal a great amount of insight on what was central to his worldview. He was a true philosopher as he was constantly searching for wisdom and believed questioning every aspect of life would lead him to the knowledge he sought. He was disgusted with the common occurrence of Greeks not thinking for themselves but simply accepting the popular opinion also known as doxa. Plato believed that we ought to search for and meditate on the ideal versions of beauty, justice, wisdom, and other concepts which he referred to as the forms. His hostility towards doxa, theory of the forms, and perspective on reality were the central ideas that shaped Plato’s worldview and led him to be the great philosopher who is still revered today.

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.

He would disagree with what Socrates chose to do in accepting death and would look at the demanor of good and evil and raise the idea that this is all dogmatic, which then should be eradicated. If Socrates’s was to leave and struggle by failing to adhere to his principals he would suffer to a degree, but in his sufferage he would become a man of greatness. Nietzsche’s ideas of good and evil being formed through religion requires for it to be gone because God is “dead” therfore meaning is found at the end of ones

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

Nietzsche found Socrates and Plato to be anti-greek because they represented a movement towards the rational. Reason was essential to them, particularly pure reason which was purified from the irrational or instinct. Socrates believes that in order to

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 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.”

“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

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.

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

Even though they were separated by thousands of years, hundreds of miles, and different cultures, the philosophical views of Friedrich Nietzsche and Plato can be examined and weighed against each other in many different ways. Friedrich Nietzsche, born in 1844, was a German philosopher whose main goal was to erect a new image for the people and to create a free spirit in them. Plato, born in 427 B.C., was a Greek philosopher whose main goal was to create a new way of thinking about the world itself, knowledge itself, philosophy itself, and the individual. Both philosophers have obvious similarities; their literary style of writing is perhaps the most apparent, but also their desire

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

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.

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?

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” (Gay Science, 126) This harsh statement remains among Friedrich Nietzsche’s most powerful and disturbing quotes, spoken by a proclaimed Madman to a crowd of disbelievers. After making this claim, the Madman becomes horrified by his audience’s ignorance, noting that “This tremendous event is still on its way.” This has an effect of suspending the Madman’s message in time, expanding its audience infinitely, for the event of God’s death could still be on its way. Therefore, nearly 150 years after these words were written, we must ask ourselves, does God remain dead, and has our modern society killed him? This is a haunting and disturbing question, but in many ways our society does resemble Nietzsche’s masses. However, it also resembles the Madman himself, due to its inherent individualism.