NIETZSCHE THE EXISTENTIALIST REPORT PPT.

Friedrich
Nietzsche
Philosophy

• Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born October
15, 1844, the son of Karl Ludwig and Franziska
Nietzsche. Karl Ludwig Nietzsche was a Lutheran
Minister in the small Prussian town of Röcken,
near Leipzig.
• His father died of a brain hemorrhage, leaving
Franziska, Friedrich, a three-year-old daughter,
Elisabeth, and an infant son.
1. Biography:

• These events left young Friedrich the only male in
a household that included his mother, sister,
paternal grandmother, and an aunt, although
Friedrich drew upon the paternal guidance of
Franziska’s father. Young Friedrich also enjoyed
the camaraderie of a few male playmates.
• Nietzsche was a German philosopher, essayist,
and cultural critic.
• His writings commonly address truth, morality,
language, aesthetics, cultural theory, history,
nihilism, power, philosophy, and intellectual
history.

• One of his famous works it is where he spoke of
“the death of God”
• Nietzsche suggested a plan for “becoming what
one is” or has to do with the creation of the self.
• Through cultivation of instincts and various
cognitive faculties a plan that requires constant
struggle with one’s psychological and intellectual
inheritances.

•Nietzsche claimed the exemplary human being
must craft his/her own identity through self-
realization and do so without relying on anything
transcending that life such as God or a soul. This
way of living should be affirmed even were one to
adopt, most problematically, a radical vision of
eternity, one suggesting the “eternal recurrence”
of all events.
Nietzsche’s college life in the year 1866 at the
University of Bonn
• He chooses the more humanistic study of
classical languages and a career in Philology.

• Nietzsche’s relationship with his major professor
Friedrich Ritschl year 1869 and Friedrich
Nietzsche was 24 years old.
• From Bonn to the University of Leipzig and
dedicated himself to the studious life, establishing
an extracurricular society there devoted to the
study of ancient texts. Nietzsche’s first
contribution to this group was an essay on the
Greek poet, Theognis, and it drew the attention of
Professor Ritschl, who was so impressed that he
published the essay in his academic journal,
Rheinisches Museum.

• Nietzsche had a position as Professor of Greek
Language and Literature at the University of Basel
in Switzerland, even though the candidate had not
yet begun writing his doctoral dissertation
• At Leipzig they become friends with Richard
Wagner.
• Wagner is a famous poet and a musician whom
Nietzsche idolized. Their friendship lasted into the
mid-1870s. However, their friendship broke, and
this broke-up became the touchstone of his
personal and professional life.

• Friedrich Nietzsche Died on 1990.
• It is being discussed that Friedrich suffered
from illness. That illness of him took his life.
However, his influence was not fully felt until the
present century.

2.Published Works:
• First published works: While working as a
professor in Basel, Nietzsche began writing. His
first book,
• The Birth of Tragedy (1872),
• explored the origins of the Greek tragedy, the
philosophy of Socrates, and the duality between
Apollonian and Dionysian worldviews.
• Untimely Meditations (1873) and a book of
aphorisms Human, All Too Human (1878).

• These works marked the first time that Nietzsche
began questioning the nature of morality in his
society.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883),
• A prose poem featuring a memorable line about
man being the cruelest animal
Beyond Good and Evil (1886),
• Nietzsche’s critique of Immanuel Kant and Plato.

Nietzsche also wrote several polemics against
Christianity
• On the Genealogy of Morals (1887),
• Ecce Homo (1888),
• The Antichrist (1888),
• Twilight of the Idols (1888).
One of his final published works was Nietzsche
• Contra Wagner (1889),
A whole book dedicated to Nietzsche’s thoughts
on his old friend Richard Wagner’s life and work.

3. Ethics and Morality:
Slave revolt in Morals based on the published
work of Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil and On
the Genealogy of Morality
• The development of moral systems: A
fundamental shift took place during human
history from thinking in terms of "good and bad"
toward "good and evil".
 A contrast between good and evil
• Good being associated with other-worldliness,
charity, piety, restraint, meekness, and submission
• Evil is worldly, cruel, selfish, wealthy, and

 Nietzsche saw slave morality as a source of the
nihilism that has overtaken Europe.
• Modern Europe and Christianity exist in a
hypocritical state due to a tension between master
and slave morality, both contradictory values
determining, to varying degrees, the values of
most Europeans (who are "motley").

• Nietzsche called for exceptional people not to be
ashamed in the face of a supposed morality-for-
all, which he deems to be harmful to the
flourishing of exceptional people. He cautioned,
however, that morality, per se, is not bad; it is
good for the masses and should be left to them.
Exceptional people, in contrast, should follow their
own "inner law".A favorite motto of Nietzsche,
taken from Pindar, reads: "Become what you are”

 "A higher order of values, the noble ones, those
that say Yes to life, those that guarantee the
future". What Nietzsche called a master morality.
• Just as "there is an order of rank between man
and man", there is also an order of rank "between
morality and morality”. Nietzsche waged a
philosophic war against the slave morality of
Christianity in his "revaluation of all values" to
bring about the victory of a new master morality
that he called the "philosophy of the future"
(Beyond Good and Evil is subtitled Prelude to a
Philosophy of the Future).

 A critique of the current ethical mindset entails
the proclamation of unchanging moral principles
and universal moral law.
• Nietzsche’s early writings evolves with the
universal law and the moral law. This is recognized
on his book The Birth of Tragedy.
 Nietzsche’s essay addressing to David Strauss
about the sum and substance of morality
• It consists in looking at all other human beings
as having the same needs, claims, and rights as
oneself and then asking where this imperative
(vital) comes from.

Recognizing the usefulness for the existence,
survival, and welfare of the community is
understood as a morality
• Morality is primarily a means of preserving the
community in general and warding off destruction
from it.
Compulsion has first to be employed to make the
individual conform his conduct to the interest of
society. ( compulsion is succeeded by the force of
custom, and in time the authoritative voice of the
community takes the form of what we call
conscience)

 Obedience can become second nature as it
where and be associated with pleasure
 Thus, morality is interiorized through a process
of progressive refinement.
 The historical development of Morality has a
twofold early history of good and evil is the
characteristic of Nietzsche.
 There are two primary types of morality based
on his book entitled: In Beyond Good and Evil

• Master morality and slave morality- in the form
of higher civilizations they are mixed and can be
found in the same man.
• Master morality also known as aristocratic
morality good and bad are equivalent to noble and
despicable and the epithets(an adjective or
descriptive phrase expressing a quality) are
applied to men rather than to actions.

• Slave morality the standard is that which is useful
or beneficial to the society of the weak and the
powerless. Qualities such as sympathy, kindness,
and humility, as extolled (praise or commend
something highly) as virtues, and strong
independent individuals are regarded as
dangerous and therefore evil.
 Based on the standard of slave morality, the
good man of the master morality tends to be
accounted as evil-slave morality is thus herd
morality. Its morals and valuations are
expressions of the needs of a herd. (with
reference to a group of people) (go back to its

 The genealogy of Morals expounded more about
morality- the concept of resentment.
• It means that the higher type of man creates his
own values out of the abundance of his strength
and life.
• The meek and powerless, fear the strong and
powerful.
 Therefore, we can conclude that the history of
morals is the conflict of the two moral attitudes
or outlooks.
• For Higher man there can be a sense of
coexistence.
• There could also be coexistence if the

4. God
The greatest event of recent times in the boom
Joyful Wisdom that “God is Dead”
• That belief of Christian God has become
unworthy of belief- already begins to cast its first
shadows over Europe.
• Decay of belief in God opens the way for man’s
creative energies to develop fully.
• The Christian God with his commands and
prohibitions no longer stands in the path and
man’s eyes are no longer turned towards an unreal
supernatural realm, towards the other world
rather than towards this world.

 This view obviously implies that the concept of
God is hostile in life. and this is precisely
Nietzsche's contention
 The concept of God according to Nietzsche in
the book The Twilight of the Idols
• God is the greatest objection against existence
 The concept of God according to Nietzsche in
the book The Antichrist
• With God, war is declared on life, Nature, and the
Will to live. God is the formula for every calumny
against this world and for every lie concerning the
beyond.

 Nietzsche is willing to admit that religion in
some of its phases has expressed the will to life,
rather to power; but his general attitude is that
belief in God, especially in the God of Christianity,
is hostile(an enemy) to life, and when it expresses
the will to power, the will in question is that of
the lower types of man.

5.
Epistemology
 Knowledge
• He insists that works as an instrument of power,
therefore it is obvious that is grows with every
increase of power.
 The desire to knowledge, the will to know,
depends on the will to power.
• The aim of knowledge is not to know, in the
sense of grasping absolute truth for its own sake,
but to master.
• As we desire to schematize, to impose order and
form on the multiplicity of impressions and
sensations to the extent required by our practical

• Reality is Becoming: it is we who turn it into
Being.
 Knowledge is a process of interpretation
• It should be grounded on the vital needs and
express the will to master the otherwise
unintelligible flux of becoming.
• A question of reading an interpretation into
reality rather than reading it so to speak, off or in
reality.
 According to Nietzsche there is no absolute
truth.
• The concept of absolute truth is an invention of

• Truth is that sort of error.
• Without a particular type of living being could not
live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.
• All truths are fiction, all fictions are
interpretations, and all interpretation are
perspectives.
• Categories of reason are also logical fictions and
perspectives, not necessary truths, nor priori
forms.

 Nietzsche’s general view of truth
• It presupposes the possibility of occupying an
absolute standpoint from which the relativity of all
truth or its fictional character can be asserted and
this presupposition is at variance with the relativist
interpretation of truth.
• For Nietzsche, even the fundamental principles of
logic are simply expressions of the Will to Power,
instruments to enable man to dominate the flux of
Becoming.

6.
Metaphysics
 Superman is the goal for Nietzsche
• Man is nothing that must be surpassed; man is a
bridge and not a goal. But this must not be a
process. Superman is a myth and the goal of Will.
• Superman is the meaning of the earth
 Nietzsche does indeed assert that man is a rope
stretched between animal and superman-a rope
over an abyss.
• Superman cannot come unless superior individuals
have the courage to transvalue all values, to break
the old tables of values, especially the Christian
values, and create new values out of their

7. Social Philosophy
 In the field of human psychology Nietzsche finds
ample opportunity for diagnosing the manifestations
of the Will to Power.
• For example, he dismisses as quite unfounded the
psycho-logical theory presupposed by hedonism,
namely the theory that pursuit of pleasure and
avoidance of pain are the fundamental motives of
human conduct.
Nietzsche's view pleasure and pain are concomitant
phenomena in the striving after an increase of power.
• Pleasure can be described as the feeling of increased
power, while pain results from a felt hindrance to the

 It is absurd therefore to look pain as unmixed
evil.
• Man is constantly in need of it as stimulus to
fresh efforts and, for the matter of that, as a
stimulus to obtaining new forms of pleasure as
accompanying results of the triumphs to which
pain urges him.
 According to Nietzsche, rank is determined by
power.
• It is quanta of power, and nothing else, which
determines and distinguishes rank.
• If the mediocre majority possesses greater
power than individuals who are not mediocre, it

 Power is an intrinsic quality of individuals
• I distinguished between a type that
represents ascending life and a type that
represents decadence, decomposition, and
weakness.
• If the mediocre majority, united together,
happens to be powerful, it does not
represent ascending life.
• Yet the mediocre are necessary.
• For a high culture can exist only on a broad
basis and soundly consolidated mediocrity.

 Nietzsche welcomes the spread of democracy
and socialism.
• They create the requisite basis of mediocrity.
• He insists that the mediocre masses are the
necessary means to an end, the emergence of a
higher type of man.

8. A simple question: does Friederich Nietzsche
have a political Philosophy?
 Little work has been done in another area of
Nietzsche’s thought; that is, whether a political
philosophy can be drawn out of his work. While
Nietzsche cannot be seen as explicitly
propounding a political philosophy, one may still
be able to implicitly draw one out from his
writings.

 Nietzsche is simply not concerned with the
legitimacy, or formation, of the state in the face
of what Nietzsche sees as the death of religion;
that is, Nietzsche sees a close connection
between the state and religion, and when we
take this connection along with Nietzsche’s belief
that we are in an age of the death of religion,
political questions become trivial.
 To start, we will look at the strong interpretation
of the question; specifically, the strong
interpretation provided by Nussbaum.

• Martha Nussbaum provides seven criteria that are
addressed by “serious” political thinkers. According
to Nussbaum, the seven criteria are as follows:
1. Material need. He must show an understanding
of the needs human beings have for food, drink,
shelter, and other resources, including the role of
these resources in supporting the development of
higher human capacities, intellectual and moral.
He must make some proposals for the distribution
or redistribution of resources in the light of these
needs. Usually this will involve an account of
distributive justice, including an account of the
institutional structures required by justice.

2. Procedural justification. Closely connected
with this, he must give an account of the
procedures through which a political structure is
determined, procedures that legitimate and/or
justify the resulting proposals. (I am thinking, for
example, of the role played by the Original
Position in Rawls's theory of justice.)

3. Liberty and its worth. He must give an account
of the various types of human liberty that are
relevant to political planning, assess their worth,
and give an account of the relationship between
the political sphere and the most important types
of liberty. Usually this will include an account of
the limits of state intervention with personal
choice, and preferably also an account of the role
of the political in creating the capacity for choice.
More broadly, it will usually be connected to an
account of the worth of the human being, and of
the attitudes of respect and concern we owe to
human beings as such.

4. Racial, ethnic, and religious difference. He
must show an understanding of the role played in
political life by differences of race, ethnicity, and
religion, and make some proposal for dealing
politically with these differences.
5. Gender and the family. He must show an
understanding of the different ways in which
society has structured the family, and of the ways
in which differences of gender have been and can
be regarded by political institutions. He must
make some proposal for the appropriate
structuring of these relations.

6. Justice between nations. He must show
awareness of the fact that nations share a world of
resources with other nations, and make some
proposal concerning the obligations nations owe to
one another, both with respect to the morality of
international relations and with respect to
economic obligation.
7. Moral psychology. He must have an account of
human psychology motivation, emotion, reaction
as this pertains to our interactions in the political
sphere, either fostering or impeding them.

 The purpose of using Nussbaum’s seven criteria
for “serious” political thought has been to
illustrate the strong interpretation of the
question that is under scrutiny in this section.
While this has been a crude representation of the
strong interpretation,
 Conclusion: Nietzsche does not endorse a
particular form of government.

9. Issues refuting philosophers'
claim
 Nietzsche’s influence has taken the form of
stimulating thought in this or that direction. And
this stimulative influence has been widespread.
But it certainly has not been uniform. Nietzsche
has meant different things to different people.
 In the Field of Morals and Values
• His importance for some people has lain
primarily in his development of a naturalistic
criticism of morality.
• While for others would emphasize his works in
the phenomenology of values.

 In the fields of social and cultural philosophy
• Some have portrayed him as attacking
democracy and democratic socialism in favor of
something like Nazism
• While others have represented him as a great
European, a man who was above any nationalistic
outlook.
 In the field of religion
• He appeared to some as a radical atheist, intent
on exposing the baneful influence of religious
belief.
• While others have seen in the very vehemence of
his attack on Christianity evidence of his

 Attacking democracy democratic socialism in
favor of something like Nazism
 His philosophy was seen as very nihilism for
which he professed to supply a remedy.
 Are we to say that the interpretation of the
world without a given meaning or goal and as a
series of endless cycles is a fiction that expresses
man’s Will to Power? If so, the question of
whether the world has or h a s not a given
meaning or goal remains open

NIETZSCHE THE EXISTENTIALIST REPORT PPT.

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NIETZSCHE THE EXISTENTIALIST REPORT PPT.