Nietzsche’s Philosophy: Art, Morality, and the Will to Power
Nietzsche’s Philosophy: Art, Reality, and Values
Nietzsche’s thought encompasses art and reality, the criticism of the values of European culture, the death of God, nihilism, and the new hierarchy of values. In relation to art and reality, life, as conceived by Nietzsche, the ultimate nature of all reality, cannot be defined. It is a natural instinct, a constant struggle, a continuous change, and the will to power, in life and facing life, death, elation, and pain. Life is intelligible in itself: language determines how we think and helps us to express our thoughts and our relationship with things.
Between the world of the subject and the object world, only ephemeral aesthetic behavior is possible. There is an active struggle of power between Apollo (light, reason, harmony, measure, sanity, and methodical) and Dionysus (darkness, instinct, passion, music, and dance). Apollo cannot live without Dionysus. Life is the fundamental reality. Man gets life for free, and once you own it, life itself is meaningless, and we should not find another way out of it.
Art accepts what is problematic in life; art transforms things, weakness to strength, impotence to power. As for the criticism of the values of European culture, it is flawed from the outset, determined to establish periodicity and unmotivated, exposed to life. Nietzsche’s critique of Western moral is in “Beyond Good and Evil” and “Genealogy of Morals.” Originally, he distinguished between dominant and dominated peoples.
Critique of Morality and Religion
Virtue is equal to force; the good man was the powerful, and the evil man was weak. The values of the slaves on the values of lords have imposed their criteria, weak to strong; this leads to degradation of human life. Nietzsche criticizes religion as any religion born of weariness and needs. He understands religion (Christianity) as a vulgar morality which refers to the specific values of true virtue (nobility, command, power). This vulgarity is not coming from man but of God that has been the major obstacle in life.
Critique of Traditional Philosophy and Science
Nietzsche criticizes the traditional philosophy that claims that this world is a copy of a world where everything is perfect. He argues that the classics are afraid of life and thus calls for future philosophers who lurk with classical metaphysics, critical to metaphysical concepts and the concept of truth. The concept of metaphysics relies on the language; words are metaphors that we have of the intuitions of things. The concept is a waste of metaphors. We tend to seek the truth; the failure of philosophy is to have forgotten the intuitions as the origin of concepts. There is no truth in the concept; all knowledge is relative.
He is critical of the positive sciences and criticizes its mechanism as embodied reality and reduces dynamic qualitative or quantitative laws. The knowledge of things as a phenomenon is only possible. The laws of science will not say anything about the essential reality of things.
The Death of God
The German philosopher talked about the death of God in “The Gay Science,” arguing that with the death of God has dogmatism, the supernatural conception of reality, and the division between good and evil.