A Paper on Nietzsche

By Angela Jensen
Intro to Philosophy
Monday and Wednesday class
formally Tuesday and Thursday
Section 31975
Alexander Izrailevsky
http://angieseportfolio.weebly.com/



A message to the reader: I tried desperately to choose another philosopher, any other
philosopher than this one. Where I love many of his ideals, I reject others. I originally tried to
start my paper on J.S. Mill but my brain kept creeping back to the fascinating theories of
Nietzsche, perhaps because I dont want to see my own ironic hypocrisy in his views. But one of
the things that I love to do is to challenge myself, to learn from others perspectives that may be
different from my own so that I might grow as a person as well as to play devils advocate. In
doing so I might also challenge some theories that I may disagree with. So I took on the
philosopher that I could not keep out of my thoughts and that is Frederick Nietzsche.
His work is open to interpretation for a reason. This is one of the great things about
Nietzsche, is that he wrote his work in such a way that one can get what they need out of it,
much like the Tao Te Chin. His work was controversial for the time and even today is still
controversial work meant to be confrontational for the reader to provoke instant passionate
reactions. He was from a religious background; his father was a Lutheran minister and died when
Frederick was a young boy. He was then raised by his mother, grandmother, aunts and sister. He
studied to become a minister to follow in his fathers footsteps, however, lost interest and
became an atheist. He challenged the ideology of Christianity. He experimented with Hedonism,
however he found it to have no depth and suffered from depression.
He later studied Arthur Schopenhauers pessimism and found the depth that he craved so
much. Schopenhauer wrote about life and that it is disappointing. He wrote that after you realize
one of your desires there will only be more desires to follow. This is absolutely true in the sense
that when one reaches a goal they then replace that goal with larger goals. This has been spoken
about in Eastern philosophy as well. For example, someone is content with their small apartment,
their thrift store clothes; all they really need is a blanket, food, water, etc. However, they make a
goal to get a better job. They get that new job, and suddenly the old life they had before is no
longer good enough. They have a taste of the sweet life and they want more and more. This is
why many celebrities are unhappy. They have nothing to strive for anymore, no goals, no more
hopes and dreams. They have realized all of their dreams and it is no longer shiny and new. They
give into the temptations of heroin and cocaine addiction just to get some kind of excitement.
Then they die or ruin their careers.
Will to Power
Nietzsche later connected an ideal to life that he called The Will to Power. He coined the
term for, a universal desire to control others and impose our values on them. This is a very real
threat to mankind and ironically his sister later revised his work to fit the Nazi regime. However,
the Nazis were the exact ideology that Nietzsche was warning humanity about. Hitler tried to
use the epistemology of Nietzsche for his propaganda, when in fact it was the Nazi regime that
was controlling the masses of Germany with propaganda, secretive unethical actions, and brain
washing. They lead their people to believe that the regimes interest was to create social change,
and political change in the interest of the average blue collar worker and the better good of the
larger group. Hitler instead created foot soldiers that had no thoughts of their own, people who
he controlled in every aspect of their lives. He imposed his values on the people of Germany, the
countries he invaded, and the Jewish people that he exterminated.
The Nazi regime decimated millions of people believing that it was for the greater good
of the whole of society but in fact it dehumanized the whole of the human race. Nietzsche
warned against this very thing, almost as if he could see the future of mankind. This same
problem seemed to happen in many regimes such as Communism especially in the time of
Joseph Stalin who would send people to the Gulags when they spoke against the regime. As well
as The Japanese Emperor Hirohito who brained washed the masses with his propaganda that the
Japanese soldiers in World War II were invading using ethical war tactics even though in
actuality they were using some of the most inhumane war fare mankind has ever seen. He wrote
about tragic optimism, The sense of Joy and vitality that accompanies the superior individuals
clear sighted imposition of his own freely chosen values on a meaningless world. Meaning a
person that holds themselves above other people and believes their values are superior to those of
others they believe to be inferior.
The moral here lies with all of mankind. I would be a hypocrite if I said that I, am even
above this moral. Every person who values their own opinion more than anothers is guilty. Even
Nietzsche is not innocent in this. It is human nature to do so. Of course we believe our opinions
are better than the opinion that is different than our own, that is why we chose it because we
believe it is better. However, we can stop ourselves from forcing our opinions onto others and
realize that they are just as entitled to their own opinions, as we are. As humans we can respect
those lives and thoughts of the person who is different than us. We must resist the urge to inflict
our values and opinions onto those who do not share ours, for they are also entitled to believe
their own interpretation of reality, and their own truth. It must be objective and if we are not
objective then we risk becoming the enemy of this epistemology and we may repeat the mistakes
that the Nazis have made.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he doesnt become a
monster. Frederick Nietzsche.


Zarathustra
Nietzsche believed that he was the prophet of higher ethics and morals. He referred to
himself as an Immoralist, and iconoclast proverbially smashing the false idols of philosophies
past. He wrote an Epistemology in which he called Zarathustra in which was a call to rise above
decadence and mediocrity. He believed that its purpose was to overcome the oppressive fallacies
of values that were not of higher thinking. It was his intent to tear down the old and false values
of yesterday. He wrote about this character in his book The Gay science, and he prophesized the
rise of the Ubermensch or the Over Man who he believed to be the next step in evolution and a
kind of super man who is of a higher morality than that of his time. This ideal was bastardized by
the Nazi regime they believed that they were the Ubermensch. They believed they were the Over
Man or Supermen that Nietzsche had prophesized. They used his ideals as propaganda to fit into
their belief that they were the next step in evolution and a superior race of people. When in fact
they actually twisted his teaching to impose their beliefs on the German people as well as the
other countries they occupied.
It was quite the contrary of what he was trying to convey. He believed the Over Man was
a morally higher being. That it is the Under Man who would be the morally inadequate lesser
person who imposes their views on others. One could argue that in fact the Nazi regime is the
epitome of The Under Man or Undermensch. Though they believed the Jews were the latter.
Gods, too, decompose. God is Dead, God remains dead. And we have killed him.
Nietzsche may have meant two different things when he wrote The Parable of the
Madman. For one he was an Atheist who was quite critical of Christianity because he believed
when any regime of any ideology becomes the main religion of the masses and becomes an
oppressive regime that forces its values onto those that have differing views. That is not to say
that Christianity is actually bad in theory. However history has shown us that even the best of
ideas can lead to oppressive governments. They become oppressive because the people who
started the fight for these values are no longer around and have often been forgotten. People start
to follow these regimes blindly and stop questioning these regimes of their ethics. Many times
such regimes sacrifice the very ideology that it started from.
For example The Spanish Inquisition and The Salem Witch trials were the exact opposite
of the original ideals of the early Christians who believed in peace, compassion and kindness to
all people regardless of beliefs. Especially since those early Christians were persecuted and
burned at the stake as they later inflicted upon others. Karl Marx certainly did not have in mind
the kind of hypocrisy that Joseph Stalin forced on the people of Russia. Marx called for social
change and Revolution whereas Stalin called for his people to submit to his iron fist and his
alone. Yes Marx believed that a dictatorship was the only way to get there, however, not in the
way that it happened. Even the original Nazis believed that they were creating a government for
the greater good that quickly became the very thing Nietzsche was warning against. That is not
to say that Christianity dont have some very good core values or that all Christians are
hypocritical or follow blindly. In fact many of the Christians left in Germany during WWII hid
the Jews from the Gestapo. These people stood up against the hypocrisy of the masses and risked
their own lives for their integrity and ethics. These are the true Ubermensch. It is the hipocracy,
and uncompassionate values seen today where no one questions the ethics of people who hold
positions of power over others. Instead they sacrifice the weak and powerless for the greater
good.
One of his other theories of why God is dead is that feminism killed him. His theory is
that there must continue to be men who will fight for their ideals with passion. And that it is
those men who are to lead rebellions. He believed that because of women who nurtured and
changed the world with compassion and the Christian Church, we now have beat rebellious men
into submission and those men no longer fight for their principles because they are now family
men, that they prefer to stay home with their wives. He believed that women dominated the
family and their husbands. This I agree and I disagree with. If you are speaking about feminism
in the sense that he may have been thinking of then yes I agree, such as womens ability to be
compassionate, soft, and nurturing. Who wouldnt want to stay home with their families and stay
alive another day to protect those that that they love? Rebellion is a young mans game. I even
agree that women dominate their husbands and the family home. It has become politically
correct to do so and it is a double standard that we as women are guilty of this. It depletes us of
respect from men and actually denies ourselves of equality, because you can not be equal if you
are imposing your views on another person regardless of sex. He believed that Christianity must
be rejected and he may have believed that if you have to have a religion to be a good person then
you are not a good person. I say that if it helps you to find happiness, love, compassion, and
serenity then there is no harm in following such a code of ethics.
However, while I agree on this theory in that sense, I disagree with the idea that
Feminism of any kind is a Christian ideal. Though Christ may have had compassion like women
do, his followers are far from feminists. The Christian ideologies are patriarchal and have been
since its early days. The Druids and the Pagans were more feminist than any religions since.
There were respected Goddesses, and respected priestesss. There were medicine women and
midwives who held great power in their time. In fact it was the Christian Churches who drove
out the Pagan and Celtic tribes who still believed in the old religions. They created a religion that
believed that Eve was the root of original sin. It used the apple and the snake to represent evil.
These symbols were originally symbols of the goddess based religion of the Celts. The early
bishops even designed their Devil after the horned god Pan. They burned their female clergy as
witches and when the people would not leave the old gods and goddesses they made them patron
saints. It was in the past a religion that was so intimidated by a womans power that they
demonized them. Of course it is mainly the Catholic Church that committed these offenses. So
one cannot generalize nor condemn all Christians. This is the kind of hypocrisy that Nietzsche
was warning his readers about.
Now to say that women do not want there men to rebel is a fallacy. Nietzsche obviously
did not know of Ayn Rand who spoke against the Communist regime, Alice Paul who spoke and
protested for the right to vote, Virginia Wolfe who wrote on womens equality, the countless
women who spoke out against the Vietnam War. Women are revolutionary and they speak out
against fascist regimes. In this sense there are flaws in Nietzsches logic. Perhaps it was his
upbringing that formed this opinion, or possibly a product of being smothered by all the women
in his life, or the crippling depression and rejection of unrequited love.
It is not that the core values of Christianity are bad in fact he also warned against
nihilism which is the absence of religion. He in fact did not believe the answer is to abolish
religion because the consequences would be dire and he was right. The Communists and the
Nazis both denied religion and their moral compass became desolate in a desert dried up of
religious values.
Sources
Soccio, Douglas J. Archetypes of Wisdom.2010.Belmont,CA:Wadsworth Cengage
Learning.Print.
Kaufman, Walter.ed.(New York:Vintage,1974),pp181-82.)thehistoryguide.com