Religion has always played a fundamental role in society. Indeed, up to the sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church benefitted of its temporal power. This temporal power allowed the Popes to have sovereign authority over the papal State, thus they did not exercise their authority only in the religious sphere but also in the public one. Therefore, the situations created were contradictory. The Popes could, indeed, start a war against other States, mainly for territorial and political aims, using their religious authority, such as excommunication or interdiction to achieve certain purposes of political and “earthly” nature. The Church’s temporal power, therefore, was used to preserve its unity and independence. However, the end of the Roman Catholic Church’s temporal power can be traced back as far as the sixteenth century, more precisely 1517 with the start of the Protestant Reformation started by Martin Luther and John Calvin:
The beginning of the modern period can be traced to the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, with its supposed affirmation of the individual as standing directly in relation to God, a God sanctioning prosperity in this life and all its worldliness. But it can equally well be traced to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment with its virulent anticlericalism and its attack on all kind of religious myth. (Franke 220)
It can thus be said that the Church, at that time, was a despotic and fundamentalist body that professed certain values that the very same Church did not follow or respect. All moral and traditional principles lost their significance before the deep and well established materialist interest of the Church, which used the above-mentioned power of excommunication, interdiction, and eternal ...
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Howe, J. Thomas. “Affirmations after God: Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Dawkins on Atheism.” Journal of Religion & Science 47.1 (2012): 140-155. Web. 18 Apr. 2014.
Ingraffia, Brian D. Postmodern theory and biblical theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Print.
Moore, Gregory. “Nietzsche, Degeneration, and the Critique of Christianity.” Nietzsche and Religion. Spec. issue of Journal of Nietzsche Studies 19 (2000): 1-18. Web 18 Apr. 2014.
Nicola, Ubaldo. Filosofia e Scuola. Atlante di Filosofia. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
< http://www.swif.uniba.it/lei/scuola/atlante/ubal15.htm.>
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Walter Arnold Kauffman, and R. J. Hollingdale. The Will to Power. New York: Random House, 1967. Print.
Winks, Robin W., and Joan Neuberger. Europe and the Making of Modernity: 1815-1914. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.
Peterson, Michael - Hasker, Reichenbach and Basinger. Philosophy of Religion - Selected Readings, Fourth Edition. 2010. Oxford University Press, NY.
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”.
Friedrich Nietzsche certainly serves as a model for the single best critic of religion. At the other end of this spectrum, Jonathan Edwards emerges as his archrival in terms of religious discourse. Nietzsche argues that Christianity’s stance toward all that is sensual is that grounded in hostility, out to tame all that rests on nature, or is natural, akin to Nietzsche’s position in the world and his views. Taking this into account, Edwards’s views on Christianity should be observed in context targeted at those who agree with his idea, that G-d is great and beyond the capacity of human reason.
New York: Vintage Books, 1966. Nietzsche, Friederich. A. & Co. Beyond Good and Evil? Trans. Walter Kaufmann.
Thesis Statement: These key events reforming religion are what shaped the world for good and for bad in the 14th to the 19th century.
Through the years from the medieval ages up until now, the Roman Catholic Church has always had a major influential presence in all walks of life for European people, whether it was for taxation, the establishing of laws, the rise and fall of monarchs, and even daily social life. Furthermore, the Catholic Church held such power that they could even appoint and dispose of great kings with just the writing of the pen. However, their power started to wane once human curiosity overcome ignorance and blind obedience. For example, the Enlightenment Age brought a series of shocking blows to the Church’s power such as disproving the Church’s theory of geocentricism and presented an age of questioning and secularism. In essence, by looking at the Church’s
Leiter, Brian. “Nietzsche’s Moral and Political Philosophy.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, CSLI, Stanford University, 26 August 2004.
Roles of the Catholic Church in Western civilization has been scrambled with the times past and development of Western society. Regardless of the fact that the West is no longer entirely Catholic, the Catholic tradition is still strong in Western countries. The church has been a very important foundation of public facilities like schooling, Western art, culture and philosophy; and influential player in religion. In many ways it has wanted to have an impact on Western approaches to pros and cons in numerous areas. It has over many periods of time, spread the teachings of Jesus within the Western World and remains a foundation of continuousness connecting recent Western culture to old Western culture.-
Religious reformation in Germany, France, and England transformed religious liberty at the cost of Western Christian unity. Leading up to this point, there is a build up of resentment against Catholic taxation and obedience to officials of the foreign papacy in other countries of Europe. As a result of this religious strife, an increasing amount of European political warfare occurs for over 100 years. Furthermore, as faith is being questioned against the ruling monarchs, no longer is politics the only party involved in war. Subsequently, a sense of humanistic revival is found in the 15th century, laying down the path for reform among religious authority in Germany, France, and England in the 16th century.
In conclusion, the Reformation brought about a wave of political devolution counteracting the surge of political centralization sweeping through post-Medieval Europe. The new religious sects which formed in the first half of the sixteenth century continued to separate themselves from the doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church, effecting not only the spiritual lives of the laity, but the social institutions of Europe for years to come. The war these religions will create will be a major part of European history in the years to come, with the conflict between Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinist, and other protestants defining the political landscape of Western Europe well into the 17th and 18th centuries.
Smith, Andrew. "Chapter Nine: Life After Death." 2014. A Secular View of God. 12 May 2014 .
The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century is one of the most complex movements in European history since the fall of the Roman Empire. The Reformation truly ends the Middle Ages and begins a new era in the history of Western Civilization. The Reformation ended the religious unity of Europe and ushered in 150 years of religious warfare. By the time the conflicts had ended, the political and social geography in the west had fundamentally changed. The Reformation would have been revolutionary enough of itself, but it coincided in time with the opening of the Western Hemisphere to the Europeans and the development of firearms as effective field weapons. It coincided, too, with the spread of Renaissance ideals from Italy and the first stirrings of the Scientific Revolution. Taken together, these developments transformed Europe.
On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, Nietzsche. United States of America: Bedford/St.Martin's, 2001. 1171-1179. Print
Nietzsche was a man who questioned the morality of his time. He dug deep in to what good really meant, and if there was a difference between bad and evil. He sought to look at the world by stepping back and looking at it with out the predisposition of what morality was/is. He looked at what he called slave and noble morality. He looked passed what was on the surface, and gave us many things to digest and discuss. In this paper I will discuss how Nietzsche’s writing can be seen as favoritism towards the noble morality by touching on how he believes the noble morality and slave morality came about, then I will talk about his “birds of prey and lambs” example which shows his fondness of the bird of prey, and I will end with my interpretation
Paxton, Robert O. Europe in the Twentieth Century. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975. Print.