Thus Spoke a Madman?

Now, approaching the end of my series of critical philosophers for this Semester's selection of highly influential and regarded figures, it's perhaps right that it ends on one of the most controversial and debated characters of Early Modernism. Many regard him in the West nowadays as a man who supported the extremes of nationalist Nazism and Anti-Semitism, whilst many were inspired by his beliefs of existentialism and the empowering nature which humans can posses...

Fredrich Nietzsche

(1844-1900)

"This world is the will to power—and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power—and nothing besides!"

Summary

1. Nietzsche, unlike Hegel and even Kant's Copernican Revolution, does not believe in a teleology of time itself and that events are constantly recurring, without beginning nor end. When something 'happens', it is impossible to predict when it starts or when its original causation derrived from. This drove his nihilism theory.
2. His relationship with Schopenhauer's ideas (especially the 'thing in itself') are very much divided. On the one hand, he quoted in his first text, The Birth of Tragedy, that "music is not, like all those others, the image of appearance, but an immediate portrayal of the will itself and also because it presents the metaphysical as compared to all physical things in the world." Nietzsche, as shown by his later writings about the 'Will to Power' would have had a great appreciation of the strength of human beings.
3. But, on the other hand, Nietzsche could not abide by pessimism. Schopenhauer's acceptance of defeat and resignation to die was counteracted by Nietzsche's own philosophy that we must overcome ourselves to become the master and to oppose virtues of the divide between good and evil. In terms of the Greek tragedy and arts, which represented by the God Dionysus, Schopenhauer's pessimism represented a backward step and a blunder "as he blundered in everything."
4. As a great misogynist, Nietzsche would have perhaps fitted well with beliefs in those such as Plato (who he detested), but against the liberal attitudes of Sparta (whom he admired). He once quoted as women being 'recreation' for the warriors who fought in battle and as soon given any freedom, they became intolerable to him. Unsurprisingly, he was not a philosopher loved by Russell, who believed in pacifism and compassion, and said "His followers have had their innings, but we may hope that it is coming rapidly to an end."
5. With any subject in relation to Christianity, Nietzsche was perhaps one of the most outspoken and first wave of professed atheism, building to the 20th Century. On the subject, he described "Christianity is the most fatal lie that ever existed." In addition, he believed that his famous 'death of God' was inspired by the fact humans would eventually see through God, as with many aspects of history, and build the foundations of a new knowledge. It must be remembered that later beliefs of the 'superhuman', who evolved after the human progression, and the extreme interpretations of Nietzsche's work are in large part due to his sister, Elizabeth's, own ill-informed translations that unfortunately attracted the Nazi party's attention...
   
   
   Nietzsche is a curious character. Although perhaps much of his philosophy has stood its ground with the existentialist philosophers of the 20th century (e.g. Sartre), he would have perhaps not have accepted entirely the human race lives for no particular purpose at all. Although he said the world may not exist besides a large fire of 'energy', humans were bound by fate and that they could be the masters of their own will, rather than merely a slave to perhaps Socratic punts such as "Virtue is knowledge." Perhaps this is the lone reason why Nietzsche had such a distaste for the logic of Socrates or Aristotelian ethics. It may be assumed that Nietzsche believed that we had created the morals we had constructed had now more importance than the people who created them and that our wills had become slaves to obedience.  On the subject of good and evil, it was not as simple that Nietzsche believed the evil force to be better because of its principles alone, but because all that is only bad is "all that proceeds from weakness." But if he were right, than this leaves the philosophies of Kant, Hume and Schopenhauer false. And that alone is too many philosophers.
   
   
   Much of the problem seems that Nietzsche had a love of hatred itself and in his semi-autobiographical text, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he referred to this as "The Great Contempt." Religion probably only bringing morals and laws which the human race was subject too. It's little wonder he went insane when this failed to realise, besides the physical agony of his crippled body. On this side of his philosophy, it has inflicted great damage and in the advent of dictators such as Hitler and Stalin, who rose to power through their Will, it has only brought results that even the man who created them wouldn't have desired. On the other hand, his love of music and Wagner and Dionysian tragedy appears to be more subtle and his belief of the illusion that humans don't wish to awake from, it is closer to what people can feels besides his morals, or lack of them. To sum up his text from The Birth of Tragedy "It is in this sense that the tragic myth has to convince us that even the ugly and dissonant are an artistic game, which the will, in the eternal abundance of its joy, plays with itself. But there is a direct way to make this primordial phenomenon of Dionysian art, which is so difficult to comprehend, completely understandable and to enable one to grasp it immediately, through the miraculous meaning of musical dissonance, the way the music in general, set next to the world, is the only thing that can give an idea of what it means to understand a justification of the world as an aesthetic phenomenon."