Nietzsche’s Philosophy: Death of God, Superman, Will to Power, Eternal Return
Nietzsche’s Philosophy: Key Concepts
The Death of God
This concept symbolizes the end of the sense of significance. With the death of God, humanity no longer seeks a reason behind the stars. This represents the liquidation of all idealism, any thought that superimposes itself on a unique world. The reality of God has caused the death of ideas. The emergence of a being, the last man alive without ideals, is negligible. He is only looking for comfort and creates a happy existence. The death, due to the disappearance of all values, has led to a situation where man no longer believes in anything, no longer finds meaning in anything. It is the era of nihilism, the lack of all sense and all finality. This nihilistic stage is only temporary since Nietzsche announces a new day where the values of life will once again dominate.
The Superman
Nietzsche introduced the Superman, the man who assumes the final consequences of the death of God. The new man is a god on earth, a creator of new values. The Superman does not limit himself to the old values but is a real creator of new values. Nietzsche presents the stages of the spirit up to the idea of the Superman from zoological symbolism. The camel carries the moral burden of “you must,” imposed from outside, millenary values. The camel becomes a lion and says “I want.” If the change to the camel symbolizes acceptance, the lion is the metaphor of the negation of established values and represents criticism of traditional morality. But he knows that the lion is not only incapable of creating new values to draw a path for the future, so it must transform itself into a child.
The Will to Power
The will to power is what encourages the Superman’s creative function in this difficult task, but it will not be able to reduce the political will to do with the survival instinct. Schopenhauer’s influence is present in the concept of will to power. For Nietzsche, Schopenhauer’s will is the true reality in all spheres of being, manifested by the same impulse to survive. But while for Schopenhauer, the cessation of pain in life only leads to death, for Nietzsche, life is a creative boost that continually looks for ways and is not satisfied with mere adaptation to the environmental conditions. For Nietzsche, the will to power is the desire for life, not the desire to join the stream of nothingness that is death.
The Eternal Return
The acceptance of the eternal return of all things, as everything goes back to an earlier state and has gone countless times, is a basic part of Nietzsche’s thought. Nietzsche opposes the concept of eternal return to the Greek collection in which every thing and every moment has an eternal value because they are unique. The new man rejects the idea of a one-time event. The eternal return is also a moral requirement. Nietzsche proposes a metaphysical doctrine, a kind of categorical imperative, a moral affirmation that prescribes acting in such a way that one wants the eternal return of each instant. Nietzsche summarizes his theory with the expression *amor fati* (love of fate).
Kant’s Categorical Imperative
Kant’s formal ethics, *a priori* and autonomous, is based on a duty dictated by reason, that is, in the imperative that is self-imposed unconditionally and quite rationally. The categorical imperative consists of acting in such a way that the act can be considered a universal law.
Heraclitus
The dynamic structure of reality is exemplified in four types of connection:
- The same things cause opposite responses in several different living beings.
- Aspects of the same thing can justify opposite descriptions.
- Things are only good and pleasant because they are recognized thanks to their opposites.
- There are opposites that are bound to form a whole.
Parmenides
The Way of Truth
The way of truth is the only one that can be practiced by reason. The motor of philosophy is that being cannot vary. These characteristics are demonstrable by the path of reason:
- Being is discontinuous if one admits that it exists.
- The void can be understood because being is not completely lacking.
- Immobility is justified by indicating the absence of void.
- Similarly, being is unique because if there were more, they would have to be differentiated.
- The eternity of being demonstrates the impossibility of finding an origin for it.
The Way of Opinion
The way of opinion is wrong because it accepts the apparent contradiction of the passage from non-being to being and vice-versa.