Friedrich Nietzsche: Life, Influences, and Philosophy
Friedrich Nietzsche: A Life in Philosophy
Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 into a family where his father and maternal grandfather were Lutheran pastors. In 1869, he was appointed professor of Greek philology at Basel. He participated in the Franco-Prussian War, which extracted a profound rejection of nationalism that lasted all of his life.
He had health problems all his life, especially very strong headaches. This forced him to relinquish his chair in 1879 and begin a life of wandering: he spent
Understanding Moral Ethics and Human Action
Moral Ethics
Moral ethics and morality are terms related to customs that uphold human dignity. Morality refers to the characteristics and rules that should make a person better. Ethics should be studied as the actions of every human, actions that are socially and morally good. Humans interact with their environment and each other to improve their lives and increase their quality of life. All of this is accomplished through individual human action. Moral knowledge about human actions guides them towards
Read MoreHuman Rights: Individualism, Universalism, and the UDHR
Core Ideological Debates in Human Rights
Individualism versus collectivism is a central debate in human rights, concerning whether to prioritize individual liberty and independence or collective security and well-being. Different countries and cultures prioritize these values differently. Universalism versus relativism is another key debate, questioning whether human rights should be universally applied or relative to different cultures. Amartya Sen bridges these perspectives, advocating for cultural
Read MoreUnderstanding Alienation: Marx’s Perspective on Society
Understanding Alienation
Alienation. The word comes from alienus, which means something foreign or strange. It is the act by which property is transferred from one person to another. For Marx, alienation is when a man becomes a stranger to himself, becoming other. For Marx, man is a concrete being who feels alienated by being deprived of the fruits of their labor, becoming a commodity, as is the product he produces. The worker is considered as a mere labor force involved in the market, i.e., as a
Read MorePlato’s Ethics and Politics: A Comprehensive Analysis
Plato’s Ethics and Politics
Ethics: Overcoming Relativism
Plato addresses the Sophists’ relativism by proposing universal values. Knowing the good benefits all beings. The well-being is achieved through a combination of wisdom (intellectual insight) and pleasure, proportion (symmetry), truth (aletheia), and beauty (kalon). This is attained through contemplation and virtues like dialectic. Happiness is achieved through the acquisition of virtue.
Virtue and the Soul
Virtue (being just) is a balance of
Read MorePlato’s Similes: Sun, Line, and Allegory of the Cave
Simile of the Sun
Socrates discusses with his friends the meaning of justice and how to achieve a fair state with fair citizens. All design work leads to the Ideal State.
The simile of the sun explains the Idea of Good.
Socrates tells Glaucon that the Idea of Good is like the sun, referring to the sun as the “Stem Well.”
The sun causes knowledge because sunlight reveals things.
The sun causes existence; without sunlight, there is no life.
Conclusion: The Sun
The sun causes knowledge and the existence of
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