For William Connolly, Hegel’s method is present in his concept of Politics of Becoming (POB for short). This concept is tricky, because it’s equally saturated in neo-Nietzschian, Hegelian, & Schopenhauer’s philosophies. Therefore, hold onto the handlebars, we’re going on a rollercoaster ride through basic Nietzschian philosophy!
Nietzsche, in essay one of the Genealogy of Morals, explores the concept of ressentiment as it emerged in Jewish culture during the Roman occupation of Judea in the first century. Here he introduces his concepts Master & Slave Morality. Master Morality purports the notion of ‘might=right’ and is illustrated in the Roman’s suppression of the Jewish population by physical force. This understandably angered the Jewish people, which Nietzsche explains by identifying a cruelty drive within us. This cruelty drive must be satisfied. The Romans satisfy their drives by inflicting physical pain on the Jews, but the Jews can not do the same. Nietzsche concludes, the Jews must satisfy their cruelty drive by turning that suffering back on themselves. This breeds ressentiment in the Jews, so they create Slave Morality, which is comprised of the opposite of everything
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Starting with the latter, Schopenhauer in his book The World as Will and Representation vol. 1, described people as sufferers who strive to escape through satisfaction. This satisfaction, however, is fleeting and leaves us back at the default state of the human condition. Any satisfaction achieved by striving is only the beginning of the next wave of suffering from which we strive from. This striving appears as the motivating force behind Nietzsche’s Will to Power. In Nietzsche’s book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he describes the Will to Power as the casual element in our pursuit to achieve Übermensch status – or the fulfillment of our truest potential as
... slave morality that has choked the world ever since its inception. Nietzsche has been able to lift himself above the constraints of ressentiment in order to comprehend more fully what a truly great man is, and from what he has seen, he has been disgusted with the individual, wholly disappointed in human beings. He recognizes the nearly endless potential of the human mind, but must sadly turn away from the horror before his eyes that allows the poor, the meek, and the less able to command the respect of society. According to the general public, the birds of prey have become enemies to the world because of their perfect sight, their sharp claws, and their unequivocal ability. Nietzsche sees the lambs as the enemies to the world, the lambs who gaze up at the birds of prey with ressentiment and argue that it is better to be mediocre, it is far more just to be ordinary.
Nietzsche uses an elevated level of diction to help him achieve his purpose, he uses Latin in many passages to make the reader look to the bottom of the page and thus think about what he is proposing. His combination of elevated diction along with deductive reasoning can sometimes lose the reader, but just as fast as the reader is lost Nietzsche offers forth a formula which helps the reader follow his thinking. Nietzsche believes that a person’s "virtue is the consequence of happiness," or that a person’s emotions are the product of their beliefs. Nietzsche’s uses consequence to mean something more like cause than effect. He interchanges monosyllabic and polysyllabic - in the form of metaphors - words in connotation to sometimes differ the reader from the beaten track of thinking. He believes in a set course "that he became ill, that he failed to resist the illness," for humans and that they cannot deter from it (this is very far left in a time of conservative Europeans, late 19th century). Even in his "formulas" Nietzsche’s meaning is not as straight forward as it seems. It seems that he believes that individuals genetically are means to an end, but this is more of a metaphor for humanity, or that humanity is their own means to an end.
The origin of ambitions and desires tells us more about the reason behind the goal which would play a role in how the goal is achieved and how strong the desire is. Shakespeare’s Macbeth’s desire to be powerful is reignited by Lady Macbeth when he seems to be more or less uninterested upon hearing prophesies from the witches. Macbeth quotes in fear “Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings; My thought, whose [...
The first-rate admirable people follow a master morality emphasizing power, strength, egoism, and freedom. While slave morality focuses on weakness, submission, love, and sympathy. For Nietzsche, the Will to Power is the distinguished as the dominant principle of biological function, without the Will to Power abusing the weaknesses of everyone being equal, with that society cannot and will not develop. The Will to Power is also defined as the Will to Life.
...Hence he concluded that individuals of a society governed by capitalism risked falling into a state of nihilism bereft of meaning. Moreover, the solution he believed was that of a superhuman. A superhuman understands life’s lack of intransience and consequentially looks within for meaning. However, life’s transitory quality results in the superhuman having to constantly recreate in order to overcome the continuously new obstacles thrown at him. Correspondingly, Nietzsche ascertains the quest for satiation of one’s hedonistic insatiable desires, is the greatest strength for a superhuman. This is chiefly due to it being the underlying source for man’s insatiable desire to overcome. Coincidentally, the syntax, as noted by Ginsberg, is one of a pyramidal structure. The monotonic crescendo, symbolizes Solomon’s growing madness and its correlation with a heightened joy.
... noble morality (16). Furthermore, in contrast to the self-contentment of the noble morality, the slave’s lack of outward power led him to direct his power inwards, resulting in man’s first exploration of his inner life.
The theory behind The Will to Power is incredibly well supported despite the fact that it is simply a collection of notes from Nietzsche's later years. It is a wonderful compilation of the premise behind all of his other works and the summary of their individual points. The most amazing aspect of the book and the philosophy is the incredible validity of it even now, over a hundred years after it was written. The social order of his new world needed to be addressed more, but the principles proposed stand sturdily on their own two feet confident in their own will to power.
Friedrich Nietzsche was a critic and a German Philosopher from the 18th century. Nietzsche was the father of psychoanalysis and he formulated several philosophical concepts that have greatly contributed to the understanding of human nature. Nietzsche ideas had been misinterpreted by many people over time specifically, due to his style of writing. Nietzsche style of writing was adopted to strengthen his arguments on various controversial topics. In this paper, I will discuss Nietzsche’s idea of naturalistic morality, master morality, self-mastery morality, and how they connect with the affirmation of nature and strength.
Primeval man acquired the faculty of memory, according to Nietzsche, in response to his sudden enslavement at the hands of a master race (2.17). These masters set as their task the imposition of a few general rules of civilized existence (otherwise known as the morality of mores) upon their subjects, who had been “slaves of momentary affect and desire” (2.3) before their enslavement. This project, according to Nietzsche, necessitated the searing of these basic rules into the minds of the populace by means of immensely cruel acts and resulted in t...
As presented in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the aim of Life is to free itself from confinement "in-itself" and to become "for-itself." Not only does Hegel place this unfolding of Life at the very beginning of the dialectical development of self-consciousness, but he characterizes self-consciousness itself as a form of Life and points to the advancement of self-consciousness in the Master/Slave dialectic as the development of Life becoming "for-itself." This paper seeks to delineate this often overlooked thread of dialectical insight as it unfolds in the Master/Slave dialectic. Hegel articulates a vision of the place of human self-consciousness in the process of Life as a whole and throws light on the role of death as an essential ingredient in the epic drama of life's struggle and Spirit's birth.
Wyatt, C. (2010). Friedrich Nietzsche. In Tameri Guide for Writers. Retrieved December 6, 2010, from http://www.tameri.com/csw/exist/nietzsche.shtml
Friedrich Nietzsche was on the cutting edge of sociological and philosophical theory when he lived in the latter part of the Nineteenth century. His ideas and theories about the world around him inspired some of the most recognized schools of thought in the modern world(or post-modern as it is seen). His post-humous work The Will to Power is the culmination of his life's work and allows for all who read it to understand the genius behind one of the greatest thinkers of all time. In The Will to Power, Nietzsche explains how the will is the controlling device each of us, and that the true will should only be used on oneself and not to take advantage of or injure another. Nietzsche seeks all who read it to understand how this is the true exercise of will and how the world has been run down by people using their will in the wrong way.
What is morality? There are many different views on what morality really is, but the one I find to be closest to the truth is Nietzsche’s view. Nietzsche completely reevaluated all of the values tied to morality and concluded that there is little true value in this world. Morality has always seemed to be complex and always been kept in a very limited “box”. Nietzsche goes beyond the normal limits and out of the “box” morality has been kept in. Nietzsche believed that there is no truth, just beliefs. Morality is just another belief. All beliefs are just interpretations or ways of looking at the world. Everything is a perspective. How I might view morality or what I might consider to be moral may be and probably will be very different from how someone else’s views. Nietzsche does not think we truly understand morality or the history of it. This is primarily where he believes other philosophers have gone wrong when trying to understand and describe what morality is. Nietzsche says, “As is the hallowed custom with philosophers, the thinking of all them is by nature unhistorical…” (Nietzsche, 25). Nietzsche believed that historically there were two types of morality: slave morality and master morality. Nietzsche says that, “It was out of this pathos of distance that they first seized the right to create values and to coin names for values…” (Nietzsche, 26). How we view morality now along with many other things has changed over the course of time. Nietzsche calls this conceptual transformation. Nietzsche says, “Thus one also imagined that punishment was devised for punishment. But purposes and utilities are only signs that a will to power has become master of something less powerful and imposed upon it the character of a function…” (Nie...
Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals can be assessed in regards to the three essays that it is broken up into. Each essay derives the significance of our moral concepts by observing
Nietzsche believed this to be a form of nihilism because mankind valued precisely what was halting his advancement. With this in mind, Nietzsche began his bold movement towards the revaluation of all values.