Nietzsche on Reason and Morality

Paper Summary:

This paper takes a look at Friedrich Nietzsche's attempts to show the empty interior of the "idols", that is, the "truths" man has taken to heart so blindly. The paper focuses on Nietzsche's views regarding two such 'truths', reason and morality, and points out that it is not so much the falsity of these idols that Nietzsche wants brought to light but their life-denying qualities that have had such a tight grasp on our lives. The paper then asserts that Nietzsche's message for future generations was to not let reason and morality reign over mankind. The paper concludes that Nietzsche advocated that we question the 'truths' we hold so dear, those that seem to him to do little more than prevent us from living.

From the Paper:

"Reason is the first enemy in Nietzsche's battle against the denial of life. At first he sets out to show how reason has progressed (starting with Plato) into a current form that is such denial of life that it caused nihilism to spread across Europe. When Plato first began investigating the world he came to the conclusion that what we experience here on earth could not be the reality or nature of world as it really was in itself. The importance Plato placed upon such earthly objects and occurrences (instead of a sort of self existence) was a representative quality, in which they were mere glimpses, place-holders for reality, the 'forms' of such a world that existed beyond the heavens. Thus the world became homage to truth rather than truth itself; this event, for Nietzsche, was the 'sun beginning to set'."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Hackett Publishing Company, 1996.
• Nietzsche , Friedrich. The Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer. Penguin Classics, 1990.
• Plato, Phaedrus. Hackett Publishing Company, 1995.

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• Analytical Essay # 147573 : "Ideas of Human Nature: Marx, Nietzsche and Freud"

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