Nietzsche’s Critique: Morality, Religion, and Science
Nietzsche (N.) aims to break with the Western philosophical tradition, seeking new ways of expressing feelings and thoughts. To emphasize this break, he adopts a critical tone. His philosophy is a genealogy, attempting to find the source of the initial error: metaphysics. He uncovers the past and hidden impulses that drive human action. Thus, N.’s philosophy can be understood as an unmasking. The ultimate goal of his thought is the critique of reason, understood as rational reasoning.
This rejection of reason, knowledge, and truth leads him to avoid argumentative discourse. His intuitive and explosive style makes it difficult to clearly establish his ideas. The two key figures N. criticizes are Plato and Kant, identifying a common mistake. Both distinguish between an apparent world and another real world, which, according to N., is meaningless. This concept goes back to Parmenides, who introduced the difference between being and appearance into the Greek world.
Criticisms of Traditional Morality
The deeper critique of Western culture is critical of moral values. Parmenides did not describe how the world *is*, but how it *should be*, which is the initial error. Philosophers have invented another “ideal” world. In traditional morality, decadent instincts prevail over the will to overcome. The “ideal” world is considered fixed and immutable. N. criticizes this moral life, asserting that life is the only reality. He rejects a particular morality: the Christian idealist one. He aims to establish another morality: the morality of life, where life is the will to power.
N. distinguishes between two types of morality:
- The morality of the lords: Those who love life and desire the death of God.
- The slave morality: Characterized by resignation and compassion, typical of Christianity.
The world proposed by metaphysical philosophers goes against life. Life is primary, the opposite of conceptual thought, and is constantly becoming. Everything changes. Life is creativity, understood as a creative force for new perspectives on reality. Life as will to power is the will to create. This will to power is the blind, multidirectional force that makes up the universe.
These forces can be ascending (active) or descending (reactive). The Western moral error is its “unnaturalness,” a sick and decadent morality. The moral ideal is the rule of virtue, which makes man a slave. Christian morality, as the supreme value, is governed by moral decadence. This represents a doubling of moral personality. No intelligible or spiritual world exists. There is only the world experienced by the senses, a unique, unreal, living movement whose principle is the will to power, knowing nothing stable.
Criticisms of the Christian Religion
All religion is born of fear, anguish, and needs, stemming from the importance felt by the individual. Therefore, no religion has ever contained any truth. Religion represents an inability to accept one’s own destiny. Christianity creates an ideal world in which values foster feelings of herd mentality. Religion involves the alignment of man. Nietzsche offers an unprecedented critique of the Enlightenment, interpreting Christianity as a vulgar morality originating from God. Nietzsche wants to reverse anti-Christian values through re-evaluations. He considers Christianity the mortal enemy of man’s higher potential, and anti-Christianity is the transmutation of all values that has lasted millennia. Thus, the transmutation of values is not merely anti-Christian but anti-Platonic.
Criticisms of Science
Science also follows guidelines set by the moral standard that aims to achieve absolute knowledge and total natural laws. It aspires to a knowledge of universal validity. The critical spirit is the ideal form of metaphysics, where one sees the need for universality against the tragic conception of the world. This is an anti-Dionysian will, believing in logic as the ultimate value. Science is characterized by understanding and domination. It is superficial, never achieving the great questions of life as these lie in its depths. However, Nietzsche proposes an authentic conception of science, which creates a society of free spirits.