First section:

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) belongs among the most misunderstood or most enigmatic writers of philosophy. Nietzsche was educated in Leipzig where he was under influence of Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation. He was appointed professor of classical philology in Basel in 1869. He remained there until 1879 when he resigned from his post for health reasons. His philosophical production was not very abundant (e.g. Human, All Too Human, 1878) before his retirement. After his retirement he became more involved in philosophical studies and published several works: Daybreak (1881), The Gay Science (1882), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), Twilight of the Idols (1889), The Antichrist (1895), and Ecce Homo (published posthumously in 1908). His works represent trends and anxieties of his epoch which was rich in new approaches: development of new studies in science such as the discovery made by Darwin and the publication of his two most influential books, On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1872), a critical analysis of the evils of capitalism, new studies in comparative religions, and new studies in literary biblical criticism. Such intellectual enterprise gave rise to critical attitudes and abandonment of traditional ways of thinking and created a void which was succinctly formulated by Nietzsche in his famous expression, the “death of god.” Undoubtedly, Nietzsche, influenced by the pessimism of Schopenhauer, searched for new ways to overcome it, to fill the created void and find an affirmation of life. He was often characterized as a “nihilist” because he described the void produced by the collapse of the traditional system of values and worldview. But, on the contrary, by formulating the “death of god” which meant the abandonment of everything that related to the god-hypothesis, Nietzsche postulated a rethinking of the human existence, knowledge, morality, and elaborating a new account based on naturalistic analysis and affirmation of life. This program was the only tenable alternative to nihilism. His writing, however, is not organized in a form of systematic treatises, rather, it is a collection of observations, comments and loosely connected thoughts.

Among the major trends of Nietzsche’s philosophy we may list the following:

1. Nietzsche considered that human thought has basically an evaluative and interpretative character and called for a new assessment of all previous interpretations including a reevaluation of previous values and an analysis of their genealogy, hence the title of one of his works.

2. It seems that under the influence of developing science, he recognized the temporality of all human knowledge which offered nevertheless a certain perspective on the relationship between things and the ideas.

3. In his search for truth and knowledge Nietzsche postulated the use of naturalistic epistemology in place of the traditional religious and metaphysical. He advocated abandonment of the god-hypothesis as an “unworthy belief,” a product of “naïveté, error, all too-human need and ulterior motivation.” He rejected as well the notion of substantial soul and “self-contained things.” He considered such notions linguistic shorthand representing the natural processes.

4. Nietzsche certainly read the works of Charles Darwin and was impressed by them. He considered the world as undergoing constant organization and reorganization in an evolutionary process. He described this process as “will to power” which produces new relationships, perhaps, by analogy to the idea of Lamarck who postulated a certain “élan vital” as a driving motor for the evolutionary process. “This world is the will to power – and nothing besides, and you yourselves are also this will to power – and nothing besides.”

5. Nietzsche visualized the world as being without a beginning and end, and formulated this idea in an aphorism of an “eternal return” which meant that things happen repeatedly in a linear fashion.

6. He considered human nature and societies in naturalistic terms emphasizing the importance of social structures and interactions. The characteristic feature of his sociology was the possibility of development of humans with a special creativity whom he called “higher men,” or “supermen.” They would be responsible for the enrichment of humanity with cultural life. This attainment of life would be an expression at the highest level permitted by creativity and the transformation of human existence from nihilism to integrating the human condition with the world.

For the rest, see NietzschMorals2008.pdf