Nietzsche

Nietzsche

Nietzsche's 'Beyond Good and Evil' has for many years been an enigma to all but the most dedicated readers and philosophers. It's small wonder, then, that the title is equally cryptic. The scope of the statement is extremely wide, and it is often taken out of context to imply nihilism. I believe that the title represents the meeting point of all Nietzsche's ideas. His ethics, epistemology, metaphysics and aesthetics share the one common ideal of stepping past traditional values and creating something altogether new and dangerous. The title clearly reflects this.

In the third chapter of "Beyond Good and Evil", Nietzsche discusses ideas of today's society being mainly atheistic, although still religious. God is no longer thought of as a father, a rewarder or a judge, and is no longer "listening". However there is still a religious spirit which has evolved beyond theism. Nietzsche also speaks of how the spirit of sacrifice for religion has been refined through time: at first we would sacrifice our loved ones for religion, and then we moved on to sacrifice ourselves to God instead, including our freedom and our strength. From this the only thing left to sacrifice was God himself and we now worship nothing. Nietzsche's declaration of the "death of God" in another of his books shows the abandonment of our culture to commitment to the Christian faith, which is also partly due to the fact that less leisure time makes it harder to be a true Christian.

Nietzsche strongly opposes dogmatism and thinks that instead of looking to reach an absolute position we should realise that we merely hold a certain perspective about something. Each different perspective sheds some light on a particular view. Because of this, Nietzsche sees the world as fluid rather than fixed, but the words that we use to describe it cannot be fluid. This gives the false impression that the world we are describing with these words is also fixed, and it is from this that we have gained our conception of absolutes such as truth, morality and God. However, Nietzsche sees these as false convictions since the world is constantly changing. Nietzsche speaks of the "will to power" which is always directing change within the universe and certain courses of action within people. He sees that each person possesses a desire to dominate over others, and the struggle for domination of the will or conflicting wills is the source of the change.

Nietzsche also puts the ideals of Christianity down to a "will to truth". He argues that this will is there to suppress life and to uphold an unhealthy will to power over life, and opposes things such as art. Christianity has been like "a weapon in the hands of the underprivileged, the envious and the resentful". He argues that Christianity is essentially life-denying, being a form of dominance which is going against the ultimate truth in life, which is the will to power.

Nietzsche does not believe in an absolute viewpoint, such as morality as derived from God, ...