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Nietzsche's Genealogy Of Morals

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During the late 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche examined the history of morals in his Genealogy of Morals. In his work, Nietzsche reveals the origin of morality, and he goes further to tear down the basis of Christianity and Kant’s Moral Law to show that there is a plurality of conflicting morals in society. Max Weber, who was a philosopher greatly influenced by Nietzsche, writes further on the plurality declaring that there is a polytheism that is the result of many conflicting values. Weber concludes that there is no science of ethics after Nietzsche, so there is no way to determine the “correct” value system. There is currently polytheism and a plurality of values that will not be resolved because all values are valid despite them conflicting …show more content…

People were moving away from the Christian church; however, the good/evil morality remained in society. Nietzsche refers to the lingering morality as the poison from Christianity. The secularized good/evil morality is the Moral Law which was written extensively on by Immanuel Kant. Even with the prominence of good/evil morality and the moral law, good/bad morality did not cease to exist. There were two major instances in history where attempts were made to reestablish good/bad morality. The Renaissance was an attempt to revive Greek and Roman culture and its associated system of values through art. This failed due to the Protestant reformation. Napoleon was also the embodiment of good/bad morality, but he was an anachronism and could not change the focus of morality. Both conflicting value systems were present simultaneously creating the plurality.
The conflicting value systems disproves the claims made by earlier philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Kant wrote extensively on the Moral Law which is the secularized version of good/evil morality since it involves the same values, but uses reason instead of God as a basis. Kant claimed in his work that the Moral Law is universal, meaning that it has always been around; however, since the moral law was created as a result of the good/bad morality, it is not universal. It was formed, which means it was not always and everywhere, so Nietzsche rendered the work of Kant …show more content…

In this new polytheism, “conflict rages between different gods, and it will go on for all time. It is as it was in antiquity before the world had been divested of the magic of its gods and demons, only in a different sense” (Science as a Vocation p. 23). The contemporary polytheism is similar to the ancient one in that it consists of conflict; however, in neo-polytheism, the gods are impersonal forces. There is no magic or personal gods in this new system. There is just conflicting value systems where each value system is equally valid. This is a difficult reality for people to digest due to the blinding strength the Christian church has on people. Christianity led people to believe that there was only one way to live. Any other value system was wrong in the eyes of Christians. People will become more aware that there is a plurality of value systems, and that each set of values can be considered just as valid as the next: “The destiny of our culture, however, is that we shall once again become more clearly conscious of this situation after a millennium in which our allegedly or supposedly exclusive reliance on the glorious pathos of the Christian ethic had blinded us to it” (Science as a Vocation p. 24). People will learn to move away from the ethics laid forth by Christianity and, in the face of polytheism, make their own

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