Nietzsche’s Critique of Western Culture, Metaphysics, and Morality
**Nietzsche’s Critique of Western Culture**
Nietzsche criticizes the totality of thought and culture in the West. Nihilism is the process by which the meaning of life is lost. The strength of the spirit of the West is exhausted by inadequate and fictitious values, based on the fear of life, and represented by Christianity. We can distinguish between:
- a) Passive: Loss of validity of the old values.
- b) Active: Capacity of destroying them and creating new ones.
Nietzsche’s thought is a hymn to life.
**Critique
Read MoreRousseau, Kant: Social Contract, Judgments, and Critique of Pure Reason
Rousseau: The Social Contract and the General Will
To improve society and ensure equality and freedom, Rousseau proposes the social contract: an agreement between citizens to obey the laws, giving rise to civil or political and moral freedom. This is achieved through the general will: a collective, permanent, and rational desire to act in the community’s best interest. The general will is the union of all individual wills in a society.
- Social Contract: An agreement where each person places themselves
Plato’s Theory of Ideas: Understanding Reality and Knowledge
Belief: “Knowledge” that rests on natural things and not copies thereof. So is the top level of the opinion. By relying on the senses, it cannot be authentically knowledge. It is the field of natural research.
Relegation Back to the Cave
He who has agreed to a higher life and knowledge feels sorry for the sad existence of his former colleagues. So I will come down to teach the truth to his former colleagues. It is the image of the philosopher who decides to govern instead of dwelling on the “island
Read MoreDescartes’ Philosophy: Existence of God and the Human Soul
Part 4 of the Discourse on Method: Reasons for the Existence of God and the Human Soul
Certainty and Cogito Ergo Sum
Analysis of the consequences of “Cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am):
- Thinking is the essence.
- The soul is distinct from the body (substantial anthropological dualism).
- Cartesian substance dualism.
- Knowledge of the soul is evident and raises the criterion of truth: the two notes of evidence are clarity and distinction.
- Immortality of the soul.
Substance
A substance is something that
Read MoreTheories of Mind, Body, and Human Nature
Body and Soul
The relationship between the soul and the body has been one of the most debated issues. “Brain” refers to the principal organ of the nervous system, so its ultimate reference is the body dimension. “Mind” refers to the intellectual, emotional, volitional, mental, and spiritual dimensions of humans. The question is: does the brain give rise to our minds, or is it just an instrument that serves a higher entity which we call “mind”? There are several positions:
Advances in artificial intelligence
Read MoreNietzsche’s Critique of Platonism and Judeo-Christian Tradition
Nietzsche’s Critique of Platonism
Criticizes Platonism: The tragedy in “The Birth of Tragedy” describes a new conception of reality. Life is like something torn by tragedy, the tragic phenomenon of what is the true nature of reality. Greek tragedy shows how the individualized self is born and dies (Eternal Return). In the construction, it expresses the tragedy of destruction, the perpetual becoming that is life. The tragic vision is a reality in which life and death, birth and decay of the finite
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