Nietzsche's critique of Metaphysics
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With Friedrich Nietzsche ended the entire Western philosophical/metaphysical tradition. Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death of God (and, of the human subject) symbolized the death of metaphysics. When reading Nietzsche, we are reading a poet as much as a philosopher. Through aphorisms, analogies, and a host of other literary devices, Nietzsche levels his critique of metaphysics. In The Gay Science, he uses the analogy of a madman in the marketplace to proclaim his sentiment that “God is dead” (Nietzsche 95). More significantly, he uses his madman to deliver another sentiment “At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke and went out. ‘I come too early,’ he said then; ‘my time has not come yet…deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard’” (Nietzsche 96). Through concepts such as Will to Power, the Uebermensch (Overman), and the Eternal Recurrence, Nietzsche tries to establish a joyful or gay science to replace his undermining of the whole foundation of philosophy – metaphysics. Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics calls into consideration the cultural authority of science, a revaluation of morals and ethics that demonstrates their inability to represent any universal truths. As Nietzsche notes in his acclaimed Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “When I came to men I found them sitting on an old conceit: the conceit that they have long known what is good and evil for ma
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selves because we are a special type of animal, one that questions why it exists. Because of this, we have constructed narratives or myths which are false. Nietzsche argues we must seek truth honestly. The only way this is achieved is explained in aphorism four, in which Nietzsche explains that creativity, newness, and regeneration lead to such honest truth seeking. However, this type of daring individuals is perceived by society as a threat because newness is associated with evil “The new is always the evil, as that which wants to conquer, to overthrow the old boundary stones and the old pieties; and only the old is the good…[However]; what is called good preserves the species, while what is called evil is harmful to the species. In truth, however, the evil urges are expedient and indispensable and preserve the species to as high a degree as the good ones-only their function is different” (Nietzsche 93-94).
Nietzsche felt only the strongest characters could overcome the in-built morality and ethics of societies which he viewed as favoring the weak at the expense of the truly strong. Concepts like virtue, which come along with man-made definitions based on faith, power, or control, only erode the noble selfishness and stren
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Approximate Word count = 2247
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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