Born near Leipzig

1
Friedrich Nietzsche

• 1844-1900
• Born near Leipzig
• The son of a Lutheran priest
• Studied philology at Bonn and Leipzig
  Universities
• Influenced by Schopenhauer and Romanticism
• 1868 Appointed as the Chair of classical
  philology at Basle University.
• 1879 Retirement (for health problems)

2

• Major Works
• The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
• Untimely Meditations (1873-6)
• Human, All Too Human (1878-9)
• 1880-1889 With the exception of brief periods,
  Nietzsche abandons intellectual life and lives in
  France, Italy, and Switzerland (with his
  pension). In this period he writes
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra
• On the Genealogy of Morals (1887)
• 1889 Nietzsche becomes insane while watching a
  horse being flogged(EE 689) and will remain
  physically and mentally handicapped until his
  death in 1900.

3
E E

• Nietszches renunciation of the Western tradition
• Christianity a Jewish conspiracy

4
Main themes

• Radical critique of Western philosophy
  (reason/justice/love)
• Slave/Master mentality
• Jewish/Christian/Modern philosophy/the French
  revolution (decay)
• Death of God
• Eternal recurrence (life grows within this
  cosmic drama)
• Overman/Aristocratic values
• The will to power
• revaluation of values (life-affirming)

5
Problems

• Western civilization has degenerated and makes us
  sick (sickness of spirit)
• I understand corruption as you will guess, in
  the sense of decadence. () I call an animal, a
  species, or an individual corrupt when it loses
  its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers,
  what is disadvantageous. (700)
• Triumph of a slave morality through Socratic
  philosophy, Christianity, the Enlightment, the
  French Revolution, and Socialism.

6
Nietzsche

• Let me articulate this new demand we need a
  critique of moral values, the value of these
  values themselves must first be called in
  question and for that there is needed a
  knowledge on the conditions and circumstances in
  which they grew, under which they evolved and
  changed (morality as a consequence, as symptom,
  as mask, as tartufferie, as illness, as
  misunderstanding but also morality as cause, as
  remedy, as stimulant, as restraint, as poison)
  (20)

7
Neither Universals nor Progress

• Nietzsche rejects the possibility of Universal
  truths, and Christianity and the Enlightenment
  with it (Kant and Hegel overall)
• Truth consists only in the philosophers
  particular viewpoints they call truth
• Truth is an exercise of power Whatever a
  theologian feels to be true must be false This
  is almost a criterion of truth.(701).

8
Socrates the beginning of the End

• Aesthetic Socratism is the principle behind its
  death. we may call Socrates the opponent of
  Dionysus
• we need only see him as the prototype of a new
  and unimagined life-form, the prototype of
  theoretical man. (72)

9
The Birth of Tragedy

• Morality itself might morality not be a will
  to the denial of life, a secret instinct of
  annihilation, a principle of decay,
  trivialization, slander, the beginning of the
  end?(9)
• Jewish/Christian/Western/Modern Morality Denial
  of Life
• A Life Affirming position requires to be against
  morality (what in Western modernity means also
  being anti-Christian).

10
BT

• Let these serious people know that I am
  convinced that art is the supreme task and the
  truly metaphysical activity of this life in the
  sense of that man, my noble champion on that
  path, to whom I dedicate this book.
• Man is no longer an artist, he has become a work
  of art the artistic power of the whole of nature
  reveals itself to the supreme gratification of
  the primal Oneness amidst the paroxysms of
  intoxication. (18)

11
Zarathustra

• I teach you the Superman. Man is something that
  is to be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass
  man? All beings hitherto have created something
  beyond themselves and ye want to be the ebb of
  that great tide, and would rather go back to the
  beast than surpass man? (695)
• What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a
  thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to
  the Superman a laughing-stock, a thing of
  shame. (695)
• Man is a rope stretched between the animal and
  the Supermana rope over an abyss. A dangerous
  crossing, a dangerous way-faring, a dangerous
  looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting.
  (696)

12
Antichrist

• This book belongs to the very few.
• One must be honest in matters of the spirit to
  the point of hardness before one can even endure
  my seriousness and my passion. ()The
  predilection of strength for questions for which
  no one today has the courage the courage for the
  forbidden the predestination to the
  labyrinth.(699)

13
Modernity

• This modernity was our sickness lazy peace,
  cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous
  uncleanliness of the modern Yes and No.(699)
• Progress is merely a modern idea, that is, a
  false idea. The European of today is vastly
  inferior in value to the European of the
  Renaissance. (700)

14
Good Evil

• What is good? Everything that heightens the
  feeling of power in man, the will to power, power
  itself.
• What is bad? Everything that is born of
  weakness. (699)
• The weak and the failures shall perish first
  principle of our love of man. And they shall even
  be given every possible assistance. What is more
  harmful than any vice? Active pity for all the
  failures and all the weak Christianity. (700)

15
God/s

• a proud people needs a god it wants to
  sacrifice. Under such conditions, religion is a
  form of thankfulness. Being thankful for himself,
  man needs a god. Such a god must be able to help
  and to harm, to be friend and enemyhe is admired
  whether good or destructive.() What would be the
  point of a god who knew nothing of wrath,
  revenge, envy, scorn, cunning, and violence?()
  No one would understand such a god Why have him
  then? (701)
• The Christian conception of GodGod as god of
  the sick, God as a spider, God as spiritis one
  of the most corrupt conceptions of the divine
  ever attained on earth. (702)

16
The Genealogy

• The Genealogy intends to serve as a clarification
  to Beyond Good and Evil
• It is an attempt to rise above the slave
  morality, but it is also an attempt to rise above
  the faith in opposite values.
• He invites us to go beyond established parameters
  of morality which cannot be done without passing
  through them before.

17
GM. Problem the origin of moral values.

• Where our good and evil really originated. (16)
• Why is the unegoistic (pity, self-abnegation,
  self-sacrifice) considered good ?
• What is the value of morality? (17)

18
Genealogy

• The project is to traverse with quite novel
  questions, and as though with new eyes, the
  enormous, distant, and so well hidden land of
  morality...
• As a genealogist of morals (21) (deciphering
  hieroglyphic records of the moral past of
  mankind)
• A Genealogy of Morals cannot be serious (as it is
  science), but cheerful...

19
Basic Principles

• Life Affirming
• Life Denying
• Ideas and practices

20
Problem

• Western civilization has degenerated and makes us
  sick (sickness of spirit)
• Triumph of a slave morality through Socratic
  philosophy, Christianity, the Enlightment, the
  French Revolution, and Socialism.

21
Master Slave Moralities

• Aristocratic ideal of morality embodied by the
  noble type of man -a free spirit solitary,
  courageous, honorable- who creates his own
  values, according to what is pleasant or harmful
  for him (life affirming principle).
• Slave morality oppressed individuals gather
  together and create a morality of resentment.
  Universal Values that seek to end suffering (and
  seek social change without suffering, so
  suffering is denied)
• ? Herd morality (yet, the herd morality is
  conservative.

22
Nietzsche

• We never doubt the good man is of greater value
  than the evil man...
• But what if the reverse were true? (20)

23
(The Noble) Man

• ...is an animal with the right to make promises
  and the capacity to forget, that is to digest
  memories...
• Memories Forgetfulness
• Promises make a future for us (58)

24
The free man... Also possesses his measure of
value (60)- the strong and reliable (those
with the right to make promises) that is, all
those who promise like sovereigns, reluctantly,
rarely, slowly... Whose trust is a mark of
distinction these men also show -responsibility
-power over overselves and over fate
25
Only what never ceases to hurt stays in the
memory
The human species created a mnemonics through a
system of cruelty (and religion is but a
sophisticated such a system) ASCETICISM Memory
is needed for us to live in society (promises)
26
To see others suffer does one good, to make
others suffer even more...Without cruelty there
is no festival... (67)(ancient Gods, the
friends of cruel spectacles)
Besides,
27
So, how did the bad conscience come into the
world?

• Unavoidability and senselessness of Suffering...
• Leads suffering to be made into an argument
  against existence (67)

28
Legal Developments...
Contracts Debts Guilt Compensation
Punishment (duty appears in the sphere of
legal obligations structuring all social
relationships and morality) the feeling of
guilt... Is the oldest and most primitive
personal relationship (70)
29
All instincts that do not discharge themselves
outwardly turn inward this is what I call the
internalization of man thus it was that man
first developed what was later called his
soul. (84)
30
Hostility, cruelty, joy in persecuting, in
attacking, in change, in destruction all this
turned against thepossessors of such instincts
that is the origin of the bad conscience. (85)
31
The bad conscience is an illness
(86)(developed out of guilt fear of ancestors
turned into Gods...Fear is turned into
LoveThe Christian God expresses the maximun
guilt ever developed)
32
Nietzsche shows us that each one is not only an
alienated being, but that inside each individual
there is a whole universe of power, made of
power, in struggle with power. In sum, he reveals
before us an entire new dimension of power our
subjectivity, our soul.
33
Human subjectivity is a product of power. The
challenge of gaining our will for ourselves to
become sovereign of ourselves is still and will
be open.
34
Thus,

• Atheism and a kind of second innocence belong
  together. (87)
•