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This piece of work will try to find the answer to the question ‘In Nietzsche’s first essay in the Genealogy of Morals, does he give a clear idea of what good and bad truly are and what his opinion of those ideas is’. It will give a brief overview of his first essay, it will also go into greater detail of what he claims good and bad truly are, and finally look at what he is trying to prove with this argument. It will look at his background in order to see if and how that has influenced his work and opinions.
Nietzsche introduces the differences between what he names later in his first essay the "master morality" and "slave morality." The first master morality is the ideas of the nobles, including solders and other ruling classes. This he says is power deciding what good and bad is they see the qualities they possess such as physical strength, political power, over all better health and longer lives, monetary gains wealth and what they see as contentment, all these things are what they see as what is good, after all these are the things that set them apart. The nobles then see the di...
...no way implies that Nietzsche is presenting the ideas of the Genealogy in bad faith; he certainly believes that they have some truth to them-but perhaps not to the extent that they are definitive. Thus, it is possible that Nietzsche, in writing his polemic, has other goals than the mere straightforward elucidation of a philosophical system. If this view is adopted, many of Nietzsche’s radical notions and unsupported assertions become easier to stomach. Of course, such a softening of the impact of Nietzsche’s claims may destroy the fundamental mind-opening project that lies at the heart of the book, since the shock of encountering such views is clearly essential to that project.
According to Kain, he argued that Nietzsche was influenced by Hegelian history, even though many philosophers like Deleuze, Greene and Houlgate saying that Nietzsche is opposing Hegel master-slave dialectic (Kain, pg.123-124). Kain saying, that according to Nietzsche he was not trying to bring back master-slave dialectic, but Kain finds hard to believe, since there so much in common (Kain, pg 124). Kain is trying to investigate the relationship between Hegel’s master and slave and the clash between Nietzsche’s master and slave morality (Kain, pg. 123). Also Kain is trying to reject the view that “Übermensch “is created from the master rather than the slave ( Kain,pg 123).
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
... 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.
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.
September 10, 2009. Cambridge Critical Guide to Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality, Simon May, ed., 2010. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1473095>. Nietzsche, Friedrich.
The terms of Master and Slave Morality are easy to misunderstand. First of all, the assumption that there is master morality vs. slave morality already makes you believe master morality is the superior one, just by the words itself. Master morality is overall shaping slave morality. Following one another causes a misguided idea of the terms good and evil replacing the idea of “good” and “bad”. But, some would say few people disagreed with Nietzsche because no one really knew Nietzsche existed during his own time, his impact came later and his message became clear in fact
Friedrich Nietzsche is recognized for being one of the most influential German philosophers of the modern era. He is known for his works on genealogy of morality, which is a way to study values and concepts. In Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche mentions that values and concepts have a history because of the many different meanings that come with it. Nietzsche focused on traditional ethical theories, especially those rooted in religion. Not being a religious man, he believed that human life has no moral purpose except for the significance that human beings give it. People from different backgrounds and circumstances in history bend morality's meaning, making it cater to the norms of their society. For example, the concept of what is "good" in the ancient Greek culture meant aristocratic, noble, powerful, wealthy, pure, but not in modern era. Meaning, in the past the term “good” was not applied to a kind of act that someone did but rather applied to the kind of person and background they had. Nietzsche’s project was to help expand one’s understanding by re-examining morality through genealogy of morality; helping one to be more aware of a potential confusion in moral thinking. He feels that the current values and concepts that have been instilled into a society are a reversal of the truth, forcing him to believe that one’s moral systems had to have been created within society. In the works of genealogy of morality, Nietzsche traces out the origins of the concepts of guilt and bad conscience, which will be the main focal point, and explaining its role in Nietzsche’s project against morality. It will be argued that guilt and bad conscience goes against Nietzsche’s role against morality because it can conflict with the moral co...
The aim of this paper is to provide a detailed explanation on Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence, and then proceeds to determine whether such a concept results in the betterment of a free spirit’s life, or whether this is not the case. Before determining whether the concept has a positive outcome or not, it is important to provide a detailed...
By looking at one of Nietzsche’s specific postulations of perspectivism, we can get a better idea of precisely how this term applies to his philosophy and how it relates to the “tru...
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 to our illusion of truth. Therefore, Nietzsche concludes that all we can claim to know are interpretations of truth and not truth itself.
P. 38-39, Friedrich Nietzsche, “Beyond Good and Evil” Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, translated by Judith Norman, Cambridge University Press, 2002
Christianity is that slave revolt. The problem for Nietzsche is the New Testament - the introduction of Jesus. He thinks that linking the Old Testament with the New Testament is very cheeky. They are two different books with complete different ideas and so should not be linked together. The Old Testament is full of power - Nietzsche likes that.
In philosophy “Nihilism” is a position of radical skepticism. It is the belief that all values are baseless and nothing is known. The word “Nihilism” itself conveys a sense of abolishing or destroying (IEP). Nietzsche’s work and writings are mostly associated with nihilism in general, and moral nihilism especially. Moral nihilism questions the reality and the foundation of moral values. Nietzsche supported his view on morality by many arguments and discussions on the true nature of our inner self. Through my paper on Moral Nihilism, I will explain 5 major arguments and then try to construct a deductive argument for each, relying on Nietzsche’s book II “Daybreak”.
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...