Nietzsche’s Philosophy: Language, Superman, and Life Periods
The Genealogy of Language
Genealogy and the objective idea of language: immutable ideas. Language is not born out of man’s need to know, but out of the need to express one’s own life experience. The training process is the concept of sensation. The feeling passes through image metaphors. Then comes the word, through which a human being is the source of becoming. This process is called the agrarian pact. Language is not merely pragmatic; it is an agreement between a group of people manifesting their will to power and their values of life. The pact is the result of an immediate reaction, which, through reason and grammar, becomes calmer. The signatories of the pact intend to forget the original meaning of the anaphora, a poor conscience in defending truth and value. Truth is the use of certain terms in certain situations and contexts. The concept of truth agreed upon by the weak is related to the concept of lying to punish those who break agreements. The genealogy of language leads us to a perspectivism of truth. Truth is constituted by a multitude of perspectives where language, without rules of grammar, is very poetic, artistic, and metaphorical. Perspective and the plurality of interpretation allow for the shaping of different life experiences that life is designed to encompass. It is not truth that determines moral good, but the other way around.
The Superman
The Superman: The Superman now goes beyond what Westerners have called human. The Superman knows how to live with chaos and diversity. He engenders meanings without being, without transvaluing values. He is his own self so that God creates with total freedom without imposing any metaphysical kind. First, we find the camel, an example of sacrifice and humiliation. Then, the camel becomes a lion, and all his thought is directed to devour it. Finally, the lion transforms into the baby, the creator of innocence, lacking prejudice. His life is a playful mode of existence, given to chance and fate. The game can never be a duty; someone who just wants to play makes any other purpose intermediary to his action. Nietzsche symbolizes the absence of meaning with the death of God. With this death, the last man is born, a being who does not believe in anything substantial and lives a miserably gray existence. The meaning of life may lie in moral values such as love, fraternity, and happiness. Otherwise, there is the idea of process that gives meaning to existence. The eternal world is a new version of Platonism. Consequently, there is the meaning of deception in the belief of nothing. The concept of metaphysics is the new life. For Nietzsche, life is the will to power; the Superman creates new values, vital instincts that migrate directly and generate new values rooted in the earth.
Periods in Nietzsche’s Life and Work
Periods in Nietzsche’s life and work:
- The Birth of Tragedy (1872), which criticized aspects of the culture of the era, including truth and lies.
- Human, All Too Human (1878), which connects the traveler, his work, and diverse opinions and sentences.
- Aurora (1881)
- The Gay Science (1882)
- Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
- The Antichrist (1888)
- The Will to Power (1901), edited by his sister.
Nietzsche’s Three Philosophical Periods
His thought is divided into three periods:
- First Period (1869-1879): The stage of tragedy that presents the dichotomy between the Dionysian and the Apollonian.
- Second Period (1876-1882): Nietzsche becomes negative, critical, and skeptical of the creations of Western culture. The Gay Science openly announces the death of God, the essential issue of the third period, where the literary style is aphoristic.
- Third Period (1882-1888): A positive philosophy and consecutive creativity. The fundamental concepts were nihilism, the last man, the Superman, the transvaluation of values, the will to power, and the eternal return of all things.