Nietzsche Essay, Research Paper

Nietzsche

Nietzsche believes that people in his era are hypocritical. That is why he criticizes people. Nietzsche believes that he is the voice of all oppressed people. He believes there is a new age coming and it is called the twilight of the idols. He thinks that this new ear will subvert Christian authority, which has dominated the people s way of life up to this point. The twilight indicates that the sun is finally setting. The Christian idols will descend and new sets of values are being created. Through genealogy, which is the family tree of humanity, Nietzsche will give a historical account to explain how we got to this era. Nietzsche feels that genealogy must be gray, not blue. It cannot be blue, because blue symbolizes the sky. Genealogy cannot be concerned with loftiness or height; instead genealogy must be concerned with low or base origins. The purpose of the critique shows that our traditional values derive from lowly origins. Also, values of pity and selflessness make us want to destroy ourselves. Humans have never sought to know themselves; thus this is the first investigation of the self. In this essay I will hopefully be able to examine Nietzsche s genealogy, reconstruct the genealogical stage, and finally analyze the characteristic of the overman.

There are three questions concerned with genealogy. No one has ever questioned the word value before. So Neitzsche asks, What is the term value? Until this point selflessness was considered the highest value. He will justify his moral philosophy on The meek shall Inherit the earth, then all the meanings must be reversed. Whatever common sense tells us is good is now bad, because common sense tells us the true value of selflessness. The second question deals with the true false reversal, if it is the case that the truth was reversed, which reversed it, then why did the reversal falsify the value? He uses the priest to answer this question. The third question is: Why are these values reversed or falsified? The priest reversed it so he could gain power. Power is the feeling of autonomy.

The original even called the imprisonment, is the most important in Nietzsche s genealogy. This is where major transformations happen and values are created. There are two participants: The active and the reactive. The active feel an impulse on the inside and act on it. They are called city dwellers and think they are good, powerful, and strong. Neitzsche says they are not human because they lack humanity. The reactive people are considered nomadic. They react to nature and their environment. They do not act first on to situations, they react. He says they appear to be weak and inactive. This is an important moment because humanity is produced. According to Nietzsche, these two groups meet by chance. The example used is when the Romans conquered the Jews. The Romans imprisoned them in three forms. They forced them to live in the city, whenever they felt pain they could not leave. Next they were forced to abide by Roman customs. For example, they were forced to act, eat, and live like Romans, but they would never have the equal standing of the Romans. Finally, they were literally imprisoned. Nietzsche said nomads feel pain at all times, a change must come about, so there will be a slave revolt of the mind. He said due to the resentment the slaves have towards the Romans, they want revenge, but they fear the powerful Romans. The slaves turn hatred toward themselves and internalize the pain. This is a great event because it is the first time people develop a true inside and become human. Nietzsche says that the slaves become self – conscious and that this is when the revolt comes about. It is the priest who begins the revolt. There are three characteristics that make the priest different from other slaves. First of all, the priest is physically weaker than the rest of the slaves. This makes him pure and different so he distances himself from the other slaves. Next, he has extraordinary powers of imagination than any other slave or master. He takes self hatred and uses it to reverse the system that determines the way things are done. There are two roles of the priest. The first one is that he reverses the old values. He changes the values and says that the active will be bad. He changes the values through power of the imagination by the form of stories and falsification. Secondly he reverses the role of resentment by multiplying sensations and feelings by turning the resentment inside. The Ascetic ideal happens when things are returning to the dark ages. Christianity is at its peak point. Many people want to lead a monastic life and the monasteries are full. The ascetic ideal is the exercises against the body and the actual self. We restrain from sexual pleasures and remove the body from all impurities. Fasting is done to slow the body down so we don t feel the pain. The reason this is done is to get rid of the guilt by self-punishment. If we deny the body we will not feel pain. The idea of Christianity is to get rid of pain by getting rid of the body. Another Christian ideal is to reject the body by becoming spiritual.

Even through the development of modern science our thoughts become skeptical and falsify the priest s beliefs. We are treated by medicine and modern science makes us doubt. God is dead is an exhibition of relentless pursuit of knowledge and modern science denies what we have previously seen. Modern science survives in the new drug through feelings of pity, sympathy, and performing charitable acts. Being charitable is evil because it results in self denial.

The will to power is the most basic thing in the universe. All humans are heteronymous having no freedom. We know this because modern science leads this conclusion. The self amounts to different kinds of forces and sensations. Forces are sensations imposed from the outside. Inside forces form things, slaves bend force to use it. All sensations differ from one another in intensity. Power is the relation between the unformed force and the forming force the Will to Power is taking the unformed force and making use of them. We can take forces from the outside and impose our will on it. The Eternal return test produces two types of individuals. The question is, if you could feel all the all the sensations over again from a previous life, would you take? If the answer to this question were yes, one would be considered a strong person who pursues every sensation and become an Overman . If the answer to the question is no, one would be considered a weak person who pursues the Ascetic ideal and is self destructive. There are five characteristics of the Overman and four models that are examples of the Overman. The Overman senses things differently from a regular man. The Overman experiences pain as joy. He believes in self-affirmation and does not try to drug pain, he always says yes to it. He creates values differently. He believes that which is good comes from the outside. He will always say yes to pain eternally. Finally, he is a polytheist, constantly reuses things that have occurred in our history, including religion. There are four examples of the Overman. When the body feels like it is filled with energy, it allows the athlete to perform well. The body is filled with so much energy that one does not know what to do with it. The overman says yes to all forces that come from the inside. The model is a pregnant lady. This is an invasion of the outside to the inside. The woman goes through a very painful pain but she wants the child. The energy is literally bent outside and the fullness force is there, because through pain she forms a product. The artist undergoes lots of sensations he takes unformed sensation and puts from into it. An artist suffers a lot from his or her work because a lot of forces inside hated are hated by work outside. According to Nietzsche, the Philosopher is the greatest model. Philosophers are still descendents of slaves and the slave is the one who has developed the most force on the inside. The concepts of the philosopher bring us to a greater view in life and he/she does this in a life affirming way.