Nietzsche’s Philosophy: A Critique of Traditional Thought
Nietzsche’s Critique of Traditional Philosophy
The Idiosyncrasies of Philosophers
Nietzsche criticizes the idiosyncrasies of philosophers, whose fundamental error, Egyptianism, rejects evolution, history, sense, and time. This rejection stems from opposing the notions of being and becoming, concluding that what is not, becomes, and what becomes, is not. Consequently, the senses are deemed misleading for showing change and are considered immoral. This leads to contempt for humanity, as people trust their senses, and a negation of the body.
The Confusion of First and Last Things
Nietzsche argues that the second fundamental error of traditional philosophy is the confusion of the latter with the former. This means affirming God as ens realissimum when the concept of God is the most abstract and far removed from reality. To arrive at this concept, philosophers have first taken concepts as existing gaps—the unconditioned, the good, the true, and the perfect—and established that none of these may have been generated and therefore are causa sui. Secondly, all these concepts have been identified with God.
Four Theses: An Inversion of Ontology
Nietzsche proposes four theses that invert traditional ontology and values. The first thesis states that what had been regarded as appearance is truly real. The second thesis asserts that what was believed to be the true self is really apparent. The third thesis posits that the invention of everything beyond this world is a negative attitude towards life. Finally, the fourth thesis suggests that the invention of afterworlds is a symptom of decline. In contrast, the attitude of valuing what is called appearance and reality is seen as saving, even as it is problematic and terrible. This is the artist’s own tragic, Dionysian attitude that has nothing to do with pessimism.
Key Notions in Nietzsche’s Philosophy
The Senses and the Body
Nietzsche argues that reflection cannot come from a supersensible world but must emerge from the earth, life, and its struggles, including contradiction itself. Life, as the will to power, is the source of actions, feelings, and thoughts. Morality, rationality, and cultural propriety are merely tools that serve the will to live rather than sustain it. These cultural aspects must be interpreted. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche identifies two principles containing the values of life: the Apollonian, which contains the values of reason, and the Dionysian. With the emergence of Socrates and Plato’s philosophy, a period of decline begins, lasting throughout the Western philosophical and theological tradition. This is due to the imposition of Apollonian values over Dionysian ones. Ontological value disclaims all matters relating to the sensible and corporeal, considering them fruitless and even dangerous paths to truth. For Nietzsche, this life-negating attitude is the cause of a sick and distorted tradition. The body, senses, and their appetites were reduced to normative, repressive concepts, revealing negative connotations of underestimation, such as irrationalism and sin. The theoretical option, as opposed to vital causes, leads to autistic, solipsistic thoughts and systems related to worldviews.
Concepts and the Concept of a Supreme God
Nietzsche uses the method of genealogy to uncover the hidden source of our ideas and beliefs, revealing what they represent in life. In Beyond Good and Evil, concepts are cultural creations, inventions that repress vitality, plunging the individual into a power structure whose effect is mortifying. The concepts with which knowledge is constructed are illusory metaphors converted into regulations for controlling the body and the individual through language. The supreme concepts of good, the perfect, and the supersensible (God) are illusory metaphors that have taken the place of life and even replaced it. Throughout the Judeo-Christian tradition and the cultural evolution of the West, these concepts have regulated and transformed the spheres of life. It is thought that life comes from concepts and ideas rather than assuming a vital position of reality. Nietzsche questions what lifestyle promotes these concepts, which catapulted life, guilt, and forgiveness. However, these values have no intrinsic value; it is human action that nourishes them. In The Gay Science, Nietzsche represents the death of God. This is the great metaphor expressing the death of absolute truths, immutable ideas, and the emergence of nihilism, advocating a new birth of life—one that serves life, not its executioner.
The Dionysian Tragic Art
Nietzsche offers a radical critique of the status and ultimate sense of Western culture. He demystifies the concept of primordial unity and, in return, presents the swing of meaningless multiplicity. Meaning is a story of dominant rationality. Life is the immediate time of desire and can only attend the event as an affirmation, as will to power. The tragic man adheres to the values of life, the Dionysian spirit that makes him a Superman, whose moral strength and honor lie in living independently. Tragic art saves the concept of lying, not hiding anything behind its forms, and possesses the will to power. Dionysus, embodied in art, serves to justify existence, but it is a balm. Herein lies its tragic content. It is not a world of beautiful appearance but welcomes the future and the avatar of the Dionysian spirit of life. Reason and discursive power are inadequate to capture reality. Therefore, Nietzsche’s philosophy defends irrationalism and the affirmation of life as the fundamental reality of human beings, as will to power and assertiveness. Greek tragedy shows the tension between the values of life and the values of reason. In reality, there is pain and destruction, and the road can only be overcome in art that accepts life as it is, with pain and death included. Socrates, the first to renounce life, preferring death to struggle, was the precursor to the decline of Western values. He imposed Apollonian values and destroyed Dionysian ones. The only cure is to reclaim life-affirming values and construct the Superman, with art as the vehicle of expression for a life in constant tension between opposites, whose character is tragic.
Nietzsche’s Vitalism
Life as Will to Power
Vitalism is a group of philosophies revolving around the theme of life. It emerged in the 19th century, with thinkers like Dilthey, Bergson, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, as a reaction against the positivism of Comte and Marx. In the 20th century, vitalism continued with Ortega y Gasset, Sartre, and Heidegger, who enhanced the vital and effective compared to an excess of rationalism. Vitalism refers to life in both the biological and biographical sense. For Nietzsche, the concept of life is biological and cultural, encompassing momentum and experience. Nietzsche had a positivist period influenced by Voltaire and the French Enlightenment. He accepted that religion and metaphysics were being replaced by science as forms of explaining reality. During this stage, he also used the historical method to criticize metaphysical assumptions in the development of knowledge. Nietzsche’s philosophy calls for living in light of what the human being truly feels, leaving the security of a transcendent world of values and taking life as a tragic experience, a match where the only source emanates value. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche sees life as the ultimate nature of all reality. Life is what we love most deeply and is presented as a spontaneous impulse, constant struggle, and constant change. Life is a will to power, a direction, a pulse in all living things to overcome. These ideas follow Schopenhauer, but Nietzsche exalts life free from the oppression of culture to achieve an eternal return of the admirable. The man who demands the scope of higher vitality will be called Superman, who becomes a law unto himself and lives fully and freely. Life must be understood as an upward force causing higher life forms, demanding the sacrifice of lower forms. Life is an inseparable unity with suffering and death, which Nietzsche compares to a parturient’s pain—pain and creation go together. To affirm life is to say yes to the pain it brings. The pursuit of happiness is a vital sign of decadence. Affirming life with all that is terrible should not be confused with pessimism, which is a sign of resignation and lamentation. Nietzsche defines his conception of life as a tragic philosophy, seeking to go beyond the dualism of optimism and pessimism. The real antithesis is between those who affirm life and those who deny it, which would be nihilism. Life is the criterion for judging any cultural event, as culture is a symptom of a certain vitality, ascending or descending.
The Last Man and the Superman
The first type of decadent modern man is the “last man,” who only wants to avoid harm, conform to the world, and identify virtue with modesty and meekness—what Nietzsche calls mediocrity. Two types of decadent men are great scholars and Christians, who agree in their contempt for the instinctual and their inhibition of passions. Characteristic of the sages is Socrates, whom Nietzsche considers the prototype of Greek decadence. For Nietzsche, reason and conscience have not always belonged to men; they are late appearances in human evolutionary history, making a living due to instincts. He advocates for “instinctive wisdom” over rational knowledge, preferring symbols and metaphors in his philosophy. Christians consider the evils of the world a punishment for their sins or an ascetic way to a happy, blessed life—the antithesis of life. Nietzsche juxtaposes Dionysus against the crucified as symbols of opposing attitudes to life. The Christian God represents the negation of this world, the contradiction of life. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche declares, “God is dead.” By God, he means the underlying moral ideal of Western culture. God’s death signifies the collapse of morality. Nihilism weighs on the “pleasant man,” produced by the situation of orphans when man has not yet found values and goals to replace the old ones and does not believe in anything. Nietzsche argues that active nihilism is the demolition of old, expiring ideals, while passive nihilism is immersion in a lack of respect, without any energy heralding the passing of the state. The death of God must be a sunrise, meaning that the Superman is faithful to the meaning of the earth and different from the last man, who is mediocre. The Superman is defined by vitality and the creation of new values. Finally, Nietzsche describes the transformation of the spirit through the camel, which obeys orders; the lion, which is critical and master of itself; and the child, who is creative and seeks self-affirmation.
Nietzsche’s Critique of Philosophers
Nietzsche’s critique of traditional philosophers centers on their rejection of change, their confusion of ultimate concepts with reality, and their life-denying values. He advocates for a reevaluation of these values through the lens of life affirmation, embodied in the Dionysian spirit and the concept of the Superman.