Essay On Nietzsche And Religion

Late in his life, Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown, and was transferred to the care of his sister, Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, despite Nietzsche's many falling outs with her.Elizabeth, along with her husband Bernhard Förster, were virulently anti-Semitic.

Quite the opposite - they arise largely of this context.

The ideas of the Enlightenment - self-determination and individual freedom, emphasis on science over faith, democracy over absolutism, etc - evolved as a result of the Age of Exploration, the invention of the printing press, and the growth of capitalism.

Elizabeth even falsified letters he wrote later in life.

Of the collection of 505 of her brother's letters that Förster-Nietzsche published in 1909, just 60 were the original versions and 32 of them were entirely made up (source).

And also like Socrates, he gives lots of criticisms but few clear answers!

Essay On Nietzsche And Religion

This is partially because both philosophers start from a humble standpoint: Socrates admits that "All he knows is that he knows nothing," and Nietzsche reminds us that we are all animals approaching any problem from a certain biased perspective.So what exactly does a "genealogy" of a concept such as morality look like?Conventional histories and philosophical texts often trace many disparate facets of modern life back to one single event or fundamental principle or trace the linear evolution of a concept over time.For example, a historian might look at the crucifixion of Jesus, and trace its many impacts on political, social, and economic life throughout history.Or a linguist might look at when the word "good" first became used and trace the meaning of this single word in isolation up to the modern use of the word "good".So read his works carefully, and be weary of media portrayals of Nietzsche."It must be taken into the bargain, if various clouds and disturbances - in short, slight attacks of stupidity - pass over the spirit of a people that suffers and WANTS to suffer from national nervous fever and political ambition: for instance, among present-day Germans there is alternately the anti-French folly, the anti-Semitic folly, the anti-Polish folly..." ( “This most anti-cultural sickness and unreason there is, nationalism, this nervose nationale with which Europe is sick, this perpetuation of European particularism, of petty politics…is a dead-end street.” "Since then I’ve had difficulty coming up with any of the tenderness and protectiveness I’ve so long felt toward you.So much so, in fact, that they even eventually founded a Utopian "Aryan" colony in the Paraguayan jungle called Nueva Germania in 1887 (needless to say, it did not last long.Bernhard committed suicide in 2 years and Elizabeth returned to Germany in 6).The separation between us is thereby decided in really the most absurd way.Have you grasped nothing of the reason why I am in the world?