Genealogy Of Morality Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality explores human nature and its tendencies.

As a philologist, Nietzsche’s writes his novel in a complicated manner that requires attentive reading. By suspending past assumptions, and reflecting on the questions Nietzsche proposes, his arguments about human motivation can be interpreted in various approaches. His assessments are often polemical, and intend to inspire further argument and debate about human nature. Nietzsche’s three aphorisms present his chief argument that humans desire a purpose in life. By discussing the concept of the true lie, the desire to will, and priestly asceticism, Nietzsche explains how and why humans think and behave. After reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, it

While Conrad never explicitly mentions Nietzsche in his novella, Nietzsche’s ideas can be applied to Heart of Darkness in order to better explain how Marlow and Kurtz’s actions contribute to their ultimate fate. Nietzsche argues that humans have an innate desire to find a purpose in life. As mere descendants of animals, man strives to become something greater than his happy, but absentminded ancestors. As a result, humans are dis-eased with their lack of purpose in the world, and desire to break free from their animal past by finding a purpose. Thus emerges Nietzsche’s idea of the true lie. In order to gain some sense of purpose, humans create a vision for themselves, forging their own purpose in life. This fabricated purpose is essentially a lie because it is something man makes up in order to justify living; it is a true lie. Man is constantly changing and re-forging his purpose in life, creating new purposes to help him become more comfortable with his existence. Nietzsche develops this concept of the true lie in the preface by asking “how then should it happen that we find ourselves one day?” Nietzsche continues by explaining that humans are so concerned with “bringing home” something, that, after taking a step back, their sense of

Nietzsche argues that the priest teaches man to essentially internalize his conflicts in order to create struggle against ourselves instead of struggle against others. By turning inward, man will hopefully overcome this internal battle, and emerge with a greater sense of purpose, which is what all men search for. The man who struggles internally is described by Nietzsche as “the great experimenter with himself, the unsatisfied, unsatiated one who wrestles with animal, nature, and gods for final domination…the most deeply sick among all sick animals.” In Nietzsche’s words, men who struggle are the most dis-eased of all animals. Although they are trying to overcome their animal past, they are so uncomfortable with their existence because they know they have the potential to be greater than merely a ruminating animal. In Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Marlow and Kurtz both experience with this internal battle, and the concept of turning inward to overcome a struggle. However, Marlow exhibits control over his will when he masters his inward struggle. Marlow explains that he hates lies; that lies make him sick and unable to live with himself. However, he lies to the intended at the end of the novella by saying that Kurtz’s spoke her name before dying. Although Marlow did exactly as