Nietzsche’s Critique of Western Philosophy and the Will to Power
Nietzsche’s Critique of Western Philosophy
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche must be framed within the crisis of human reason in the nineteenth century. Western culture, born in Greece, transitioned from myth to logos, entrusting since its beginning in the potential of reason to achieve its intended goals. Reason seemed to give a single meaning to human life. But it was in the nineteenth century when confidence in reason was broken and replaced by pessimism and distrust. Thus, some authors, called the “philosophers of suspicion,” agreed on a common attitude of pessimism and distrust in human reason, offering different visions and solutions. Among these are the philosopher Karl Marx, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, but especially Nietzsche, in whom distrust of reason would be absolute. We should point to the pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer’s life (one of the authors that would influence him), to which Nietzsche will flip and vindicate the will to live and practical conduct. For this reason, the German philosopher will focus on removing the intellectual structure that has supported Western culture to survive.
To make this critique, Nietzsche used the genealogical method, which aims to show the fraud, the origin of the West. This will expose the deception of a culture that offers the world as a guarantee of progress, truth, and justice, and is not a gregarious culture. A culture that defended the interests of men who failed to live up to the reality gap that formed through an alternative world of reason (the “real world”), a fictional underworld to live safely and comfortably. And it is the fear of losing this safer world that caused the philosophical and moral interest to justify and substantiate, that is, to hide, the beginning of civilization. And so, as reason is the cause of the disease in the West, it aims to override impulse and create the underworld. Along with “Twilight of the Idols,” Nietzsche qualifies Western philosophers as patients who are in decline. To this disease, Nietzsche proposes the alternative that is based on the interrelationship between the crucial notions of will to power and life. This will to power is vital energy that drives us to act to assert ourselves; it is the enthusiasm or passion that drives us to perform certain actions. It is not power but wanting to gain power over oneself. On the other hand, intertwined with the will to power is life, which will become the criterion to evaluate human actions. And this statement to life, we can describe his theory as vitalist.
Critique of Western Philosophy
But focusing on the critique of Western philosophy, for most philosophers from Socrates onward, reality is inaccessible to human knowledge. We experience it, but do not know it because in it there are only happenings, events we experience. They also claim that the senses deceive us and lead us into error. Therefore, the reality shown, that of becoming (the one for Nietzsche), is pure appearance; after her is the true reality, the real, that we reach through reason. In this way, we have created two worlds: on one hand, the world of becoming, and secondly, the world of being, of authenticity (ontological dualism defended by Plato and remaining throughout the history of philosophy). Nietzsche rates all these philosophers as philosophers-mummy, by analogy to what the Egyptians did with their dead. Some philosophers who relied on abstract concepts as well as distrust of the senses. This term is widely used by our philosopher in “Twilight of the Idols,” especially in “‘Reason’ in Philosophy.”
The Illusion of the “Real World”
Fill in the chapter contents: So, at the insistence of philosophers to defend the two asymmetric realities and priority against the apparent real world, Nietzsche responds that there is only becoming, change. The apparent is what you can experience, but the “real” is nothing but a construct of reason, and is no more than a child that cannot be established as the supreme value of life. Therefore, the real is the multiplicity and change. And so the philosopher ends with ontological dualism, concluding that the only fact that remains is the “apparent world.” But the “real world” state that is a symptom of a life down (of a sick man) that man has invented his image and needs to survive; it is, therefore, anthropomorphic.
Language and the Metaphysical World
Complete with “How the ‘real world’ ended up becoming a fable.” To create that world, dogmatic philosophers have used language as the main tool. And the result of the use of this instrument has been the difficulty of perceiving change, becoming. With what Nietzsche says that faith in grammar has created this metaphysical world. A world that does not exist, since there is no truth, only different interpretations, a multitude of perspectives all equally valid because none respond to the truth, but to the experience of each. The metaphysical world is only the interpretation of the sick, where lies the error of wanting to impose their interpretation as universal truth, the only validity for all. It is for this reason that Nietzsche advocates for perspectivism: no facts, only interpretations, and all equally valid.