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Nietzsche critique of religion and morality
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6. Quotes/passages: “ 'Purity . . . ' I said. 'The will of the Lord. Honour thy father . . .
If one’s traditions are evil, the odds are slim for one’s morals to be good. Some evil is planted within humans from the moment a person is born. The way a child is brought up determines their beliefs, motivations, and actions. Some people grow up with a skewed concept of good and evil, which can lead to confusion of what is truly good and evil.
Nietzsche talks about the problem of morality and how religious historians believe that their own morals and values relate to everyone around them. He gives an example of historians with morals of Christianity, which includes selflessness and self-sacrifice. These historians believe that everyone else relate to their morals of selflessness and self-sacrifice. And if these morals are different among the people around them, these historians believe that there is no connection between them and the people. However, Nietzsche disagrees with this generalization of religious historians because their way of thinking is closed-minded and do not seem to have any aspect of secularism.
The struggle of trying to live up to the expectations of the society justifies the development of guilt and condemnation of the christian
That Nietzsche is merely making observations on the different types of moralities. However, Nietzsche is a noble moral himself and he can very well relate to the noble morals. He actually praises the noble morals by explaining how successful they are, or in in his own words he says, “The noble human being lives with himself in confidence and openness”(Nietzsche 20). He also associated the word “good” with the noble because they are “inward” in a sense that they react to their surroundings and adapt themselves and move forward instead of trying to change the way things are.
Throughout Nietzsche’s “Morality as Anti-Nature,” he is constantly slandering organized religion, to make the point that it inhibits his idea of morality. He claims that “church is hostile to life,” because Christianity aims to turn one against passions, which is natural to humans, religion is forcing one to become anti-natural. An example he uses is ascetics, people who live without any traces of the passions in their life, due to their supposedly higher sense of religious morality. Furthermore, he goes on to speculate more about the nature of man, saying “how naïve it is altogether to say: “Man ought to be such and such!” Since organized religion is demanding for man to change, they are asking for everything to change; man is going against
No serious thinker has done more harm to the Jewish people than Friedrich Nietzsche. Following his death, Nietzsche’s writings served as an inspiration and philosophical justification for Adolf Hitler and Nazism. Quite paradoxically, Nietzsche was far from being an anti-Semite; in fact, he Nietzsche was considered to be one of the more pro-Jewish writers of his era. While in the second and third essay of On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche’s position against anti-Semitism seems to be clear, comments within the first essay can easily be misconstrued as anti-Semitic. In light of all he writes in his On the Genealogy of Morals, the Nazis were wrong to regard him as one of their
In the book “Beyond Good and Evil” Nietzsche mentions that true philosophers are the “bad conscience of their age”, by this he means that philosophers are called to a task to show their inequality of time. The task he tries to show what philosophers are, is the task of enhancing a society that deals with time. Nietzsche mentions in section 212 of the book “So far all these extraordinary patrons of humanity who are called philosophers have found their task, their harsh, unwanted, undeniable task lay in being the bad conscience of their age.” (Nietzsche,106). What Nietzsche is trying to say in this quote is that philosophers find their tasks by looking back at the morals they have used in their past to predict their future.
acknowledge the lack of Gods existence and with that as a result collapses the universal moral virtues(ten commandments, virtuous tendencies, etc). Yet, Nietzsche differs from Nihilist's by providing his own personalized account that the lack of universal ethics does not correlate to the lack of morality as a whole. By this he insinuates that just because Gods proscribed notions of virtues are no longer relevant, doesn’t mean morality is. His premise remains traditional conceptions of divine intervention have rested and passed, despite he wanted to help mould and craft new values that reflect humanity and our modern,revolutionized world. “Whatever has value in our world now does not have value in itself, according to its nature - nature is
A nontraditional idea in Nietzsche’s criticisms of morality is the thought that certain moral notions, such as pity, increase suffering. Nietzsche comes to this conclusion in a manner that is straight to the point. He argues that if one pities those beneath them, such as the slave in his example of slave and master morality, pity will become a moral “good” that one can only receive by suffering. In a modern-day analogy, someone might try to argue that donating to the homeless may harm them because, to obtain those same donations or charitable acts, one must suffer homelessness. Nietzsche writes, “On the other hand, those qualities which serve to make easier the existence of the suffering will be brought into prominence and flooded with
With the lack historical spirit, Nietzsche will open his essay by expressing his dissatisfaction with the English psychologists. They tried to explain where morality came from, but failed in Nietzsche’s eyes. The English psychologists proclaimed that “good” originated from “unegoistic actions were acclaimed and described as good by those towards whom they
As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Nietzsche’s sets out his project in On the Genealogy of Morals because of culture’s negligence in investigating its own values. In this respect, the application of genealogy to some moral is not moved by pure curiosity. In turn, just like irony genealogy is motivated by a critical interest toward morality. Accordingly, at the outset of GM we find Nietzsche framing its work’s Leitfragen as ‘[…] under what conditions did man devise these value judgements good and evil? And what value do they themselves possess?
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher who became one of the most influential modern thinkers of time. Nietzsche produced great literary works such as “The Birth of Tragedy”, “Beyond Good and Evil”, and “The Genealogy of Morality”. His ideals were focused on existentialism, which is a philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and freedom of the human person as an individual (Mitchell, 2008). Nietzsche believed that he was a prophet of a concept called self-overcoming, in which a person he called the superman rises above their circumstances to embrace whatever life flings at them. Nietzsche was trying to teach us how to become the person we really are.
Thesis Statement: Origin of Morality Outline A.Universal Ethics 1.Karl Barth, The Command of God 2.Thomas Aquinas, The Natural Law 3.Thomas Hobbes, Natural Law and Natural Right 4.Immanuel Kant, The Categorical Imperative B.Morality and Practical Reason 1.Practical Reason a.Practical Reason and Practical Reasons C.Evolution of Morality 1.What makes Moral Creatures Moral 2.Explaining the Nature of Moral Judgments F. Answering Questions 1. What is the origin of Morality: Religion or Philosophy? 2. What does religion say about morality?
It claims that this religion instills guilt for the feelings and aspirations that are inherent to humanity while promoting a moral system that consistently goes against the instincts and nature of mankind. In seeking moral excellence and “the ideals of humanity,” Nietzsche asserts that mankind loses its instinctive desire to grow and become powerful and, therefore, becomes corrupt (Nietzsche 6). To simplify, corruption can be defined as straying away from innate feelings that encourage growth and yearn for power. Nietzsche uses the concept of transvaluation of values to reiterate his argument that everything that Christianity suggested is good is actually evil and vice versa. Nietzsche sees Christianity as nihilistic, stressing that the values and traditions leave people yearning for redemption that they will never be able to achieve on their own.