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Strengths of self reflection
Strengths of self reflection
Strengths of self reflection
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In his second essay in the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche makes several points about the origins of bad conscience and guilt. One of the points put forth by Nietzsche right at the beginning of the essay is that of a promise. He says of promise that one must have powerful memory and strong confidence in the future to keep the promises he/she makes. He further explains that a man makes promises out of his own free will, and the responsibility that comes with this free will is called conscience. Of guilt, he says it origins from debt due to the similarity in German etymology. He expands on this by writing about debtors and creditors; that when a debtor was unable to repay his loan to the creditor, the creditor would punish the debtor as another way of At first, the concept was a little difficult to understand, however, after further research and finding that will to power means different people finding power in different wills (ex. I think myself powerful if I know more about taxes than my friend does; her power is that she can dance better than me). That is what I understood. Because of this understanding, his idea that the action remains the same but the meaning differs based on the will behind the action also really made sense to me. His idea of struggle with oneself due to repressed animal instincts in one, made me think about whether the internal struggle would cease if the society deemed it alright to be violent towards others. Could it be possible that human evolution into a being who is able to understand the other on a emotional level is the cause of guilt and not being forced into society? Unless, being forced into a society meant forcefully developing these emotions and understanding for the other. If so, then even if the society collectively makes it a norm to be violent against one another, these pre-developed emotions will hinder the success of such movement. That is, some people will choose not to participate in violence because
ultimately defends the wild in all of its forms. He opens the novel with a narrative story about a
Furthermore, free will has been closely connected to the moral responsibility, in that one acts knowing they will be res for their own actions. There should be philosophical conditions regarding responsibility such like the alternatives that one has for action and moral significance of those alternatives. Nevertheless, moral responsibility does not exhaust the implication of free will.
In respect to the arguments of Ayer and Holbach, the dilemma of determinism and its compatibility with that of free will are found to be in question. Holbach makes a strong case for hard determinism in his System of Nature, in which he defines determinism to be a doctrine that everything and most importantly human actions are caused, and it follows that we are not free and therefore haven’t any moral responsibility in regard to our actions. For Ayer, a compatibilist believing that free will is compatible with determinism, it is the reconciliation and dissolution of the problem of determinism and moral responsibility with free willing that is argued. Ayer believes that this problem can be dissolved by the clarification of language usage and the clarification of what freedom is in relationship to those things that oppose freedom or restrain it. In either case, what is at stake is the free will of an agent, and whether or not that agent is morally responsible. What is to be seen from a discussion of these arguments is the applicability and validity of these two philosophies to situations where one must make a choice, and whether or not that person is acting freely and is thus responsible given his current situation. In this vein, the case of Socrates’ imprisonment and whether or not he acted freely in respect to his decision to leave or stay in prison can be evaluated by the discussion of the arguments presented in respect to the nature of free will in its reconciliation with determinism in the compatibilist vein and its absence in the causality of hard determinism.
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...
The three essays that make up On The Genealogy of Morals each deal with a certain stage of cultural development of morality. In order to establish chronology, the second section should precede the first, as noted by Dennett (Darwin's Dangerous Idea, 1995) . Essay I deals with the origins of "good" and "bad" as pertaining to the master and slave moralities. Essay II delves into the origin of guilt and bad conscience, while Essay III offers a discussion of the "ascetic ideal." I will concern myself only with the second phase of morality (Essay I), as it encompasses important aspects of the other two, but I will later give a brief discussion of Essays II and III in light of the explanation of the very origin of morality that Nietzsche is out to disprove.
...ghout the novella is that even though we are humans and not animals, if we continue to repress each and every aspect of our own primitive needs and instincts, we will completely lose them. We will not be able to function in any world except the one we live in, making us extremely and very dangerously vulnerable. We need to, instead, embrace these instincts as our ancestors did to help them survive in their own unique, yet brutal environments. We can never revert fully back to Primitivity as Buck did, that would cause absolute chaos. We do however, need to utilize certain aspects of these natures, the ones that can help us survive, give us special intuition, and allow us to come closer to ourselves and understand what it means to be a truly free and independent human being in a world that is entirely too dependent on altering everything that humans need to embrace.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On the Genealogy of Morality” includes his theory on man’s development of “bad conscience.” Nietzsche believes that when transitioning from a free-roaming individual to a member of a community, man had to suppress his “will to power,” his natural “instinct of freedom”(59). The governing community threatened its members with punishment for violation of its laws, its “morality of customs,” thereby creating a uniform and predictable man (36). With fear of punishment curtailing his behavior, man was no longer allowed the freedom to indulge his every instinct. He turned his aggressive focus inward, became ashamed of his natural animal instincts, judged himself as inherently evil, and developed a bad conscience (46). Throughout the work, Nietzsche uses decidedly negative terms to describe “bad conscience,” calling it ugly (59), a sickness (60), or an illness (56); leading some to assume that he views “bad conscience” as a bad thing. However, Nietzsche hints at a different view when calling bad conscience a “sickness rather like pregnancy” (60). This analogy equates the pain and suffering of a pregnant woman to the suffering of man when his instincts are repressed. Therefore, just as the pain of pregnancy gives birth to something joyful, Nietzsche’s analogy implies that the negative state of bad conscience may also “give birth” to something positive. Nietzsche hopes for the birth of the “sovereign individual” – a man who is autonomous, not indebted to the morality of custom, and who has regained his free will. An examination of Nietzsche’s theory on the evolution of man’s bad conscience will reveal: even though bad conscience has caused man to turn against himself and has resulted in the stagnation of his will, Ni...
Human nature is a conglomerate perception which is the dominant liable expressed in the short story of “A Tell-Tale Heart”. Directly related, Edgar Allan Poe displays the ramifications of guilt and how it can consume oneself, as well as disclosing the nature of human defense mechanisms, all the while continuing on with displaying the labyrinth of passion and fears of humans which make a blind appearance throughout the story. A guilty conscience of one’s self is a pertinent facet of human nature that Edgar Allan Poe continually stresses throughout the story. The emotion that causes a person to choose right from wrong, good over bad is guilt, which consequently is one of the most ethically moral and methodically powerful emotion known to human nature. Throughout the story, Edgar Allan Poe displays the narrator to be rather complacent and pompous, however, the narrator establishes what one could define as apprehension and remorse after committing murder of an innocent man. It is to believe that the narrator will never confess but as his heightened senses blur the lines between real and ...
When one considers the extensive degree to which modern philosophy has invested in scrutinizing the subject of morality, the default reaction would perhaps be one of amenable acceptance. After all, the significance of morality is obvious, and questions such as what constitutes as moral and how exactly does one become moral have been matters of contention for maybe longer than philosophy has even existed. It can be said therefore, that philosophy is steadfast in its fascination with everything morality. It is also precisely this almost fanatic obsession with morality that Nietzsche is so critical of. This is not to say the he would reject the importance or even the necessity of morality altogether. He is concerned however, that
In conclusion, there is no absolute truth or meaning behind the concepts and values of guilt and bad conscience except for the meanings that human beings give it. Because of the meanings that human beings give values and concepts, Nietzsche is free to argue that in his opinion, guilt and bad conscience goes in opposition to his role against morality because it can conflict with the moral codes in society. Depending on what society considers morally right determines if a certain concept or value will go against it. As Nietzsche might have mentioned before, the history and meanings behind a concept or value are not created by the world but is created by different groups with different cultural heritages and beliefs.
Kane, Robert. "Free Will: Ancient Dispute, New Themes." Feinberg, Joel and Russ Safer-Landau. Reason and Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2013. 425-437. Print.
He says that a man's supposed ability to make choices freely is just an illusion. He believes that all our will and decisions are the result of our brain activity and its interaction with the environment.
Nietzsche attacks religion for its stance against of healthy instinctive values and the intolerance and complacency that religion breeds.(Nietzsche 52) Nietzsche believed that the Christen morality prevented us from reaching our full potential as human beings(Janaway). Nietzsche most classical explanation for how this repressing of healthy values, such as passion and ambition occurred is the slave revolt. In this theory he states that the priestly classes of the ancient world invented an evaluative system for the downtrodden, according to which what their masters considered virtues, such as pride and strength are evil(Milgram 93). A result of this is this pervasive feeling of self guilt when our natural instincts provoke such feelings from within us, which has a negative impact on our mental health (Janaway).
`Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil...'Gaudium et Spes (64). This opening quote from the Second Vatican Council is a good place to start in attempting to explore the complex subject of conscience. It indicates that conscience is something that can be known, based on love and is not just an individual personal thing. Conscience and having a soul are two of the distinguishing features of our humanity that set us apart from other species. Every religious code believes in a higher power and a morality that can be known or deduced by human reason. We are free rational agents capable of making decisions. How we act has consequences. In this essay, I will attempt to define what conscience is. I will then show how it evolves in a human, taking into account some psychological observations. The role of God in conscience is the most important one for Christians. How do we form our conscience in the light of God's teaching though his Son Jesus Christ? Finally, I will examine the Catholic Church's teaching on conscience.
...ll have a choice on our hands. Think of yourself to be a firework and imagine that the world is full of matches that are ready and waiting to light you on fire and watch you explode. All you have to do is make sure you avoid flames and you will be okay. At each and every single moment, you’re always in control of yourself, you always have a choice and you can dictate your present with your judgements, actions and reactions. You cannot simply state that every human being is naturally violent because our upbringing and personalities/ideas vary from one another. We are all born unique from each other and our experiences and up brining change our characteristics. To say that violent nature is encoded in our genes would in essence pre determine our actions in the future. We alone can shape our present and future to create an institution where violence ceases to exist.