Nietzsche’s Philosophy: Romanticism, Positivism, and Beyond

Nietzsche’s Philosophical Periods

Nietzsche’s thought can be divided into four periods:

1. Romantic Period: Philosophy of the Night

Following Schopenhauer, Nietzsche believes that life is the will to power (desire to continue and exist). He exalts life to free it from the oppression of culture. Because life is unintelligible, he analyzes linguistic expressions as symbols after which he is unconscious, the non-communicable, vital reality. Language is the starting point of philosophical reflection, determining our way of thinking, feeling, and living, but can only express our relationship to things (not the things in-themselves). Art and poetry are means through which we grasp the essence of the world, original and profound. For example, Wagner, through the artistic (the opera), shows the nationalism and the Dionysian.

The symbolic expression of life evolved from two emerging aesthetic forces in Greek culture (in tragedy), although opposite and facing each other, are needed: the Apollonian (Apollo, reason, balance, and individuality) and Dionysian (from Dionysus, which represents the values of life, excess, the breakdown of boundaries and barriers, life overwhelmed).

Nietzsche criticized the Greek world since the tragedy represented the contrast between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, and Euripides will carry out a rationalization of it, it breaks the balance and Socrates and Plato used it to develop its metaphysics.

2. Positivist Enlightenment Period: Philosophy of Dawn

This period carries out a critique of culture. His attitude was illustrated, but he does not share the faith in progress. It’s the end of the metaphysics of the artist (breaks with Wagner), the resignation to the ideal of cultural renaissance, metaphysics, religion, and art are illusions to be destroyed. Education must be based on science (art is a thing of the past) that gives rise to a civilization more mature, less violent, and passionate. Science should not be a fan thought (objective): the model of free spirit (free thinker) and allows us to become aware of the mistakes of the intellect; the scientific man is the man’s artistic evolution.

Nietzsche also performs a critique of the moral world being based on the figure of the philosopher who works with a method and related to the scientific spirit, as it is the “deconstruction” of the world of morality (subjugation of life to transcendent values but have their root in life itself). Their method is based on the analysis and historical philosophy, and his anthropological thought is it all comes down to men and interpreted from it. For Nietzsche everything spiritual has to do with morality (reduction to the category of morality) and values are the product of factors “human, all too human.” The moral world is built on mistakes. Through genealogy, science tries to recreate the world of morality. The genesis of this is explained so by way aphorisms. With this criticism erodes the moral consciousness of “I” (rationalism, we do not decide our actions). The consciousness is “made”, not a last resort and this leads to the self-suppression of morality and the death of God (“the greatest of recent events.”) The external expression of self-suppression of morality is the end of the insecurity of existence in the social (knowledge of science). But after recognizing the errors it should be recognized as theirs has caused the progress of mankind (the “good temper”). The “free spirit” he reaches for the courage and uncertainty and uses science: get rid of the “ideal.” The criticism of the errors of metaphysics leads him to say that the free spirit living in proximity, on the surface.