a philosopher,
Iliana Ceruto
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, a philosopher, poet, cultural critic, composer, and philologist. Nietzsche brought with all of his talents cultural enlightenment to Western philosophy. Also exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history.
Nietzsche work touched a wide variety of concepts of art, philology, history, religion, tragedy, culture, and science. although all of his writings were of great impact in his time during the 19th century he still influences the modern day philosophical ideologies.
Cultural criticism is part of his biggest teaching in philosophy bringing in prominent elements including his radical critiques of truth favoring perspectivism. Nietzsche utilizes a historical technique used to question the commonly understood exposure of various philosophical concepts and social beliefs by attempting a complete philosophical analysis.
A geological critique of religion and Christian morality emphasized in Nietzsche’s brilliant work On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic (German: Zur Genealogie der Moral: Eine Streitschrift). Published in 1887, this writing consists of three correlated dissertations on the development of moral concepts and the contradiction in what we call “moral prejudice” focused more on Christianity and Judaism.
Paul Rée, one of Nietzsche’s colleagues wrote a book titled as The Origin of the Moral Sensations published in 1877. After reading Rée’s genealogical hypotheses Nietzsche concluded that it was unsatisfactory. Nietzsche’s perception attended that Paul’s writings needed “a critique of moral values” and “the value of these values themselves must be called into question”.Thus Nietzsche used his methods to create a “history of morality” rather than a theoretical method as Paul Ree style used.
Michel Foucault, in his essay “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” brings to notice that Nietzsche talks about origins in several different ways, one of them where he asses the idea of “origin” as a starting point. In Christianity, we find the “Origin” in the story of Adam and Eve and their exile from Eden. This is an Origin story that presents itself as humanity originating in a heavenly god-like state that is completely distant from us in space and time.
In the Adam and Eve scenario, we also find the Christian explanation for the human essence of disgrace. Christianity uses this concept as the foundation of “Sin”. As such utilizes morality as something created at a particular point in time, a decree or command created by a divine figure or a “perfect God”. This kind of morality has an origin but is not genealogy. This kind of morality concept Nietzsche used at the age of thirteen using God as guidance of morality driven by his parents believes.
After this observation Nietzsche soon after disregarded looking for the origin of morality “behind the world” he began to see the origin not as an occurrence but as a process. To find the origin with religion is to look for the answer “behind the world” meaning not using any historical of fact-based information much less using anthropological research. employing a Darwinian model we will find an approach which uses the process of evolution to explain origin by tracing back to primates. We can also use this concept to see morals as a gradual process, identified by trial and error.
When we look at morality using human evolution, morality loses sacredness. What we as a society see as “good” will not be an absolute rule of conduct. instead, it becomes a sequence of unplanned events followed by skills and knowledge that we approve of. when morality loses sacredness it becomes something we can question and critique. Questionning morality instead of blindly bealiving the moral values stated are good will bring enlightment and true morals.
Along with this Nietzche still, takes notice of the fact where losing any nature of morality can be dangerous, what Nietzsche identifies as “nihilism”. This philosophical viewpoint involves the lack of belief toward meaningful fetures of life.