Nietzsche: Transmutation of Values and the Rise of the Superman
Nihilism and the Transmutation of Values
Nietzsche considers that European culture has reached its decadence and nihilism. Nihilism is the decline of earlier values of life, a loss of the meaning of life. It is a way of knowledge, holding as true what is the result of a rationalization. There is a philosophical theory that is the result of the history of our Western culture, itself a consequence of the death of God, the absence of values, the lack of goals and interests. It is the collapse of the deity. It has lost the sense of guidance of our existence. It is the time of the last man, giving birth to a new being, to a new culture. Nihilism is an ambivalent and dialectical process.
- Ambivalent: It has two faces:
- Negative (passive nihilism, the essence of the Platonic-Christian tradition. Symbol of decay and disintegration of values)
- Positive (active nihilism, will to power as a characteristic peculiar to life, typical of those who managed to understand its meaning and rushed to destroy the ruins of old values and build new ones, transmuting existing ones).
- Dialectical: A movement or force that goes from negative to positive. Refusing to say, destroy to create.
Life and the Will to Power
Life is will to power, will to be more, live longer, overcome, to show an ever-increasing strength and the will to create. The will to power is not merely a power of conservation, but an expansion will, a power of development, strength, vital power that is present in all living things. The world, man, life is will to power. His interest in moral values makes the will to power largely a creative will of new values and destructive of the traditional ones. Knowledge also reveals the will to power, and that is known to dominate. All knowledge involves assessment and selection; it is interested in some ideas and leaves others, depending on the advantage or not.
Apollonian and Dionysian
It goes back to the Presocratics. The Greek work is the result not only of the Apollonian dimension, but also of the Dionysian. The forces originating Greek culture had been two aesthetic forces that fight each other, but cannot exist without the other. The classic Greek tragedy shows us these two forces that make up reality: Dionysian contains the values of life and Apollonian contains the values of reason. The Dionysian spirit derives from the god Dionysus, night and darkness, drunkenness, debauchery and music, the deep flow of life itself, the passionate, that breaks all barriers of concrete reality and ignores all limitations. Greece-Bacchus. The Apollonian spirit derives from the god Apollo, symbolizing light, sound harmony, perfection, serenity, so far, the limit, the principle of individualization of sensible realities, social order, of all identified and delimited.
Art is a brave and tragic acceptance of sublime life, a yes to life, despite the pain this entails. The basic and fundamental reality is the tragedy, life and death, the brightness of day and darkness of the night. Socrates is an anti-Greek and anti-tragic character, an opponent of Mr. Socrates is a triumph of reason over the tragic, the world upside down. The moral and intellectual elements are imposed. Socrates, great corrupter, imposes the optimism of science. He preferred death to life. It is necessary to recover the tragic vision of the world. Nietzsche is the great defender of the Dionysian attitude of acceptance of life as it is. In reality there is pain and destruction, but the upper path to confront this reality is not the renunciation or asceticism, but the art, an art that affirms life in its fullness.
Superman
To rise to nihilism, the death of God, the appearance of Superman, the will to power and the theory of eternal recurrence. A new era: no ideals, norms, principles or values above ourselves. The man of modern life only looks for everyday comfort and pleasure, not ideal goals. The new man, up to the opposite pole to the last man, is the new God, a God on earth who is going to create new values, values of life. Land has character, it clings to this land. The superman is the goal toward which history walks, been reaching humans when renounced and rejected the current value table. The Christian ideal – Jewish – democratic. A mixture of sensitivity and courage, intuition and power. What will the eternal recurrence. It is the result of successive transformations. Self-suppression, through the images of the camel, the lion and the child.
- The camel kneels to bear the weight that throws the great dragon.
- The lion is the power of humanity who rebels and is no longer willing to continue subject to the divine and human laws.
- The child represents innocence, looking at things without the prejudices of their elders.
With the advent of the superman emerges a new vision of morality, the world, man. Nihilism is overcome, a new human type relied on its strengths without more laws than themselves and who gives himself in order that you like.
Eternal Return
There is more to this world, denies any afterlife. Axiological sense, moral: it is the supreme value, loyalty to the land, yes to life and the world emerged from the will to power. It symbolizes that this is the only world, a world that turns on itself, but that does not advance. Hope that everything is eternal, the philosophy of Nietzsche becomes an affirmative philosophy.