Friedrich Nietzsche’s Philosophy: A Critical Analysis
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Nietzsche’s Critique of Western Culture
Nietzsche’s philosophy is a critique of Western culture in many different fields: morality, science, art, and more. His philosophy reacted against the prevailing conventions and mediocrity in a decadent society dominated by bourgeois-Christian morality and puritanical prejudices.
Critique of the Platonic-Christian Tradition
His philosophy centers on a critique of the Platonic-Christian tradition that leads to decadence and nihilism. Nietzsche proposes a new interpretation of reality, truth, and the human being, created in the revaluation of values.
Critique of Morality and Philosophy
Morality is unnatural because it goes against life, and its roots are in the Judeo-Christian religion that lays down rules opposed to vital functions. On the basis of this unnatural morality, we find Platonism: the world of ideas became the center of gravity of the human being.
Western society was corrupted from Socrates and Plato onward. Socrates won the right to life, and Plato created the illusion of a real world and invented “the pure spirit and good in itself.”
The biggest mistake of metaphysics is the adoption of two worlds: the *apparent* world and the *real* world. This error is due to the underestimation of the values of the senses and the overvaluation of reason.
Nietzsche’s perspectivism is based on the idea that things are not in themselves, but rather are perspectives.
The Genealogy of Morals
In his book, *The Genealogy of Morals*, he criticizes moral force from the study of the origin of moral concepts, and he follows a genealogical method based on the etymological and historical investigation of these concepts.
For Nietzsche, in all languages, the concept “good” meant “noble, aristocratic” as opposed to “evil” referring to “plebeian, vulgar.” The so-called “bad” rebelled and became known as “good,” calling the noble “evil.” Thus arises morality from the rebellion of the poor, which is the product of resentment (guilty of the existence of a hostile culture of the vine and the average man).
Nihilism
All Western values, Nietzsche considers them as false. The collapse of these values will lead to nihilism, that is, the absence of any goal in life. Nietzsche also proposes a passive nihilism, in which the nihilist destroys all traditional values and allows new conditions to arise.
Nietzsche’s Proposal: The Will to Power
Life is the will to power, the desire for change, renewed hope, to be overcome; it will create. It is any set of forces and impulses that go to power and achievement, that is, the creative will of values.
Until now, mankind has valued all that was against the prevailing moral life, and spirit comes from a decadent and sick society. We have to value and affirm life again. “Revaluation of values, this is my formula.” Nietzsche was considered “immoral” because his morality is a glorification of life and inverts values.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the Superman
In his book *Thus Spoke Zarathustra*, Nietzsche presents a new morality, where the three metamorphoses of the spirit are described: the camel, which is the one who kneels to carry the weight, becomes a lion, which destroys the old values and wishes for more freedom, and that becomes the child who is capable of creating new values. This Superman now has the innocence of the child. But for the Superman to be believed, it is necessary that “God is dead.”