Nietzsche’s Critique of Traditional Metaphysics
Traditional metaphysics has introduced an ontological dualism by distinguishing between the real world of the permanent, grasped by reason, and the apparent world of change, perceived by the senses. As a result:
- Ontology is considered static because the Self is seen as something fixed and immutable.
- True reality, the Self, cannot be perceived as it truly is in this world, where everything is appearance and falsehood according to the senses.
- The Self has a world of its own. Since what we know in this
Nietzsche’s Critique of Metaphysics and the Will to Power
Nietzsche’s Critique of Metaphysics
Critique of Ontological Metaphysics
Metaphysics is based on a traditional error: the belief in the antithesis of values. Dogmatic philosophers have believed that things of supreme value have an origin in themselves, that they come directly from God, from another world. For Nietzsche, Western philosophical thought succumbed to the temptation to negatively assess the sensible world, contrasting it with an eternal, true, and good world. The wise man looks at the ideal,
Read MoreDescartes’ Proofs of God’s Existence: Innate Ideas & Causality
Item 2: Demonstration of the Existence of God
In philosophy before Descartes, the existence of God could be demonstrated based on certain “facts of the world.” For Descartes, it must come from your consciousness. Images are for Descartes, whose way of thinking is through immediate perception, becoming conscious of that thought. They are characterized by forms of thought; ideas determine thought to become thought of this and nothing else, to be automatically picked up, and by having a representative
Read MoreKant and Aristotle: Key Philosophical Concepts
Kant’s Philosophy
Social Contract
The origin of political power and the state is the social contract, which explains how men left the state of nature and came to live in a political community. According to Kant, the state of nature is wild; the driving force of individuals in nature is to meet their goals and desires without any hindrance. In nature, there is no morality; no beings are moral by nature. We have by nature a hostile sociability that Kant called “unsocial sociability.” Motivated by reason
Read MoreRené Descartes: Life, Philosophy, and Historical Context
René Descartes: Life and Times
René Descartes is considered the first philosopher of the modern age and the initiator of one of the fundamental currents that would come to characterize it: rationalism. Born in France in 1596, he graduated in law. After a period spent in the army and then traveling continuously, he established his residence in Paris in 1625. However, in 1629, he moved to Holland, where he settled permanently. In 1649, at the invitation of Queen Christina of Sweden, he moved to Stockholm,
Read MoreSaint Thomas Aquinas: Philosophy, Theology, and Existence
Work of Saint Thomas Aquinas
The Summa Theologica reflects the problems of his time and maintains a balance between a philosophy that does not contradict the faith from Aristotelian categories and includes medieval Augustinian ideas.
The Structure of Being
Aquinas accepts the Aristotelian structure and causes stress upon two things: a widely used measure, the composition of power. He adds an original way, the distinction between essence and existence.
The composition of essence and existence: The real
Read More