Who Is Nietzsche's Skepticism?

This will to power is the animalistic hunger for attaining more power. But it is explained by him that there are those who cannot simply achieve that goal through force. So this will to power is eventually turned inwards, where the deprivation and repression of the basic instincts is seen as having power over them. This lifestyle is what Nietzsche describes as asceticism. A lifestyle of monks, priests and nuns, he describes it as having an aura of seriousness. This process of forgetting common sense, distrusting the instinct and withdrawing from the world is the same part of the same slaves revolt in morality that he explains in his earlier essay. This ascetic ideal is further embodied in the then flourishing world of science. He describes science as the "most recent and noblest form" of the ascetic ideal”(Nietzsche 3.25), adding that science is not opposed to religion or morality, it is aiming for truth. His optimism about civilization's advancement towards the truth is a sharp contrast to the bound discontent of Freud. Yet Nietzsche does have his own doubts about the faith in science. Similarly to the scientist questions the priest's faith in God, Nietzsche recommends the conscience to doubt even faith in truth. He is in no form a relativist, but he states emphasizes that knowing as many different perspectives as possible

Throughout his writings, Nietzsche aims to inform his readers that we as humans can only reach our potential by following our passions and ignoring the flawed ideals of the church. Under the doctrine of the church’s morality, innate passions of its followers must be abolished in order to become proper Christians. By destroying the inner passions of its followers, the church is doing a great disfavor by using morality to rule out nature from their lives.

In his book, Twilight of the Idols, Friedrich Nietzsche aggressively challenges conventional schools of thought dating back to the ancients. Philosophy, as we know it, began over two-thousand years ago in Athens with the birth of Socrates. Socrates introduced the practice of reasoning and dialectics—the art of discourse hoping to bring individuals closer to some universal truth—to an Athenian society that previously held aesthetics, not logic, as indicative of goodness. Socrates revolutionized life in Athens, and by extension, the Western tradition. His beliefs are found in works written centuries after his death. He is heralded as the “father of philosophy.”

Within this article, Lee analyzes the state of mind of Billy in the terms of his execution due to Billy’s calmness as well as the way that his death relates to a Nietzschean understanding. The arguments made are relatively sound though nothing is perfect. Lee, in the second paragraph, makes the assertion that “All these critics”(61) have concluded to one situation and he is the only one to see the higher way. By saying “all”, Lee has weakened his argument due to the illogical factor of Lee being able to account for every individual. He then proceeds to base his argument on this one way of thinking, that no one else has ever thought of before. On top of this, Lee has included the use of personal pronouns such as “I” and “my” in order to conclude

Nietzsche starts this second essay by looking at and reviewing the importance of our ability to make and keep promises. To hold yourself and others to a promise means having the need of both a good memory, the ability to remember making said promise and a strong feeling of confidence what will happen next and a long term ability to know you will be able to fulfil said promise. In order for us to make the commitment and have the confidence to do so means that on some level, we must give a feeling and make ourselves into the ideal of becoming in a way predictable, to be able to achieve this we as humans need a set of guideline to follow, certain rules that make this predictability a possibility, the certainty that a set of actions will lead to a set of reactions both internally and externally.

In Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche emphasizes that the Christian Church is a false idol. He dares to say, “..God to be an enemy of life..” and, “Life ends where the ‘kingdom of God’ begins..” because he believes that Christian morality is against life itself (Idols, 23). The reason for this is because Nietzsche believes that, “to have to fight against the instincts- this is the formula for decadence: so long as the life is ascendant, happiness equals instinct” which simply means that if one goes against instincts, or an intuitive way of carrying ones life, then as a consequence it will lead to the degeneration of society and intellect while if life is on the rise, happiness must be equivalent to following ones’ instinct (Idols, 15). Because of his belief it is understood that Nietzsche wants one to embrace their instincts. Nietzsche states that a life in which

That being said, I argue that we should understand Nietzsche’s partial rebuttal of The Birth of Tragedy as a development of his former positions about Metaphysics. For sure his idiosyncracies with the term have grown over the years: at this stage, metaphysics simply tends to be employed just in a negative way, often describing what falls into the cauldron of Platonic-Christian Ressentiment. Nonetheless, we should not let a shift in terms of vocabulary mislead us. Once more, the problem for Nietzsche is not metaphysics as such, but 'just' the values embodied by a particular metaphysics . This finds evidence in that, while he rejects the metaphysics of the duality of Apollo and Dionysus, in the late Nietzsche art still enjoys a crucial role.

So overall the quote to me means that every man has the power and the strength in them to overcome the suffering that is necessary to become great, self-commanding men. However, Nietzsche also feels like mankind is doomed to fall into a type of slavery where they will never be able to truly free and self-commanding.

We have grown weary of man. Nietzsche wants something better, to believe in human ability once again. Nietzsche’s weariness is based almost entirely in the culmination of ressentiment, the dissolution of Nietzsche’s concept of morality and the prevailing priestly morality. Nietzsche wants to move beyond simple concepts of good and evil, abandon the assessment of individuals through ressentiment, and restore men to their former wonderful ability.

In Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche’s appeal to

Although the problem of the relationship between Nietzsche and metaphysics might seem to be a settled issue, this is in fact a quite complicated and fascinating problematic. The difficulty with this subject lies in the often unacknowledged ambiguity that the term ‘metaphysics’ exhibits in Nietzsche's writing, as this word assumes different nuances and connotations in different contexts. Therefore, if we can get past the usual rhetoric on the topic, we come to realize that Nietzsche addresses the topic of metaphysics in at least two distinct ways.

Nietzsche’s theory foregrounds the concept of a cycle (Williams and Palencik 395). In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra teaches the concept of the eternal return to a dwarf. Both characters arrive at a gate with two paths marked “‘Moment,’” and each of whom insist that they last an eternity. Zarathustra then states, “Must not whatever can already have passed this way before? Must not whatever can happen, already have happened, been done, passed by before?...And return and run in that other lane, outward, before us, in this long, eerie lane – must not we return eternally?” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra). This illustrates a cycle of moments generated by occurrence and reoccurrence. The cycle of moment or moments traps a person within, forcing them

I chose to conduct my research on Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher. One of the main reasons I decided on him, is because of my personal beliefs. I am agnostic and Nietzsche’s philosophy has an atheistic view on religion, which I resonate with.

Nietzsche´s eternal return is similar to the 1993 film Groundhog Day where a news reporter got stuck into a time loop reliving the same day over and over until breaking the loop. The contrast here, however, is the film focusing on the reporter´s unhappiness of reliving the same day everyday, whereas Nietzsche philosophized that every decision and action made would be the setup to be relived from the changing point when it all began; the cycle would be repeated when the person dies and then is immediately reborn into the point of change. In terms of the film Groundhog Day, the main character “died” at the end of each day to be reborn at the point his alarm clock went off in the morning. (Faust, 2012)

5. Discuss Nietzsche’s theory of “will to power” and “the innocence of becoming”. Does the hypothesis of the will to power successfully “debunk” traditional religion, morality, and philosophical claims to provide the “disinterested” or “objective” truth?