Nietzsche’s Philosophy: Overcoming Nihilism and the Will to Power
Overcoming Nihilism in Nietzsche’s Thought
The Tragedy as a Representation of Life
The opposition of the will to power represents the Apollo-Dionysus opposition. With two art deities, Apollo and Dionysus, our knowledge of the Greek world binds a monstrous antithesis, source, and goals. Both drives are so different in companionship that they perpetuate the struggle of that antithesis, finally generating the matching artwork of Attic tragedy, which is Dionysian in the same way as Apollonian.
Tragedy is not pessimism but a manifestation of vitality. In tragedy, Dionysus speaks the language of Apollo to Apollo; Dionysus speaks the language. There is a change from the first work to the last, from a thought closer to Schopenhauer linked to the development of your own.
The Genealogical Method of Critical Values from Life
Nietzsche tries to debunk the Apollo-on-Dionysus domain that has dominated Western culture to free individuals who create their own freedom. Since this method seeks the source of value in assessing the origin: Procedure “historical-philological” and “psychological.”
At the root of a value is a will to power at play. The “historical-philological” procedure reconstructs the historical evolution of the linguistic manifestations of a value, identifying its source. Psychological procedure: the value of the source depends on the vitality of the will that creates and enforces securities. Behind every value, there is a will that plays in between. The procedure aims to find out what life will occur in the values.
The moral value is an interpretation, a way of interpreting. The interpretation itself is a symptom of certain physiological states, and a certain spiritual level prevails in judgments.
The Genealogical Method is a Hermeneutics of Suspicion
- Thought and culture are under suspicion as a product of ill will to power and decadent.
- Thought and culture are under suspicion as a product of a desire for power, reactive and resentful.
History of an Error: The Domain of Apollo on Dionysus
- The real world is accessible to the sage, the pious, the virtuous, he lives in this world, that world. (Oldest form of the Idea. “Plato, I am the truth”).
- The real world, unattainable for now, but promised to the sage, the pious, the virtuous (the sinner who repents.) Progress of the Idea becomes a woman becomes a Christian.
- The true world is unattainable, unprovable, unpromiseable, but in thought, a consolation, an obligation, an imperative (The Idea in disbelief).
- The world’s true, is unavailable? At any rate, unattained, also unknown. Therefore no consoling, redemptive, compelling. Positivism: scientific knowledge is the data of the senses.
- The “real world”, an idea that it serves no purpose, no longer even requires, an idea that has become useless, superfluous, consequently a refuted idea.
- We removed the real world: what world is left? Does the apparent? No, by eliminating the real world, we have also eliminated the apparent.
The crossroads of Western culture: not to draw conclusions from the “death of God” and live with the false consciousness of the implicit nihilism, traditional or everyday. Western thought is nihilistic because they leave behind passive nihilism, we can say that is the state following the collapse of all values that had sustained traditional morality and classical philosophy. Nietzsche summarized in the famous cry of Zarathustra: “God is dead.” It symbolizes the disappearance of all inherited from Socrates and Plato, as inherited by all Greek metaphysics and Christian. Everything is gone to the impulse of life, and the collapse is lost meaning of existence, the understanding of systems, the assertion of any goal.
There is a need for an active nihilism or anti-nihilism, i.e., denial of the idealistic visions, religious or romantic nihilism that is implicit and passive nihilism produced by falling. We need a vitalism Transvalores: Imperative vitality. Creation of new values from a Dionysian sensibility.
Highlights of Nietzsche’s Thought
Innocence of becoming: the “death of God” should be followed by a revaluation of values. Nietzsche is consistent with the advancement mechanism and denied that the dynamism of matter and the evolution of life have any meaning.
The “child” as a metaphor for life that creates its own meaning. Everyone has to make sense of his life.
The will to power is an aesthetic intuition projected as a general interpretation of reality and individual life. We could say that is the trend that governs the inexhaustible dynamism of reality and also governs individual life. Authentic individual life is growth and improvement.
The eternal return and amor fati: It is a moral metaphor which proposes a cultural-historical conception of human time. There is a circular view that seems to lead to an affirmation of life eternal. How can the finite be repeated infinitely? My life is infinitely repeated, and so there will be an acceptance of one’s life. The cost is to accept that after death, there is nothing.
Superman: take the word of Helvetius (“Homme Supérieur”) and developed in “Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Human all too human.” It has the will to power. Man himself is continually inventing his life. Superman is not: a superior race or class but the metaphor expressing the proposition closing Nietzschean anthropology:
- Man is a transit and a sunset, something that must be overcome and transcended.
- Overcoming nihilism or active nihilism.
Revaluation of values: life, understood as self-care-> imperative of vitality and creative self-awareness, thought, culture alive and vital. For an education in the service of the fullness of life of individuals:
- Release of sensitivity and thought.
- Creativity.