Up@dawn 2.0

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Kylan Stribling Report


The Philosophy book I am writing about is the book Beyond Good and Evil.  The book is written  by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and It was published in 1886. In the book Nietzsche blames older philosophers of not being critical and blindly accepting arrogant arguments when theorizing the debate of morality. He accuses them of believing that a good man is the opposite of a bad man. Instead of looking at the bad man as a different expression of the same basic impulses of a good man. What Nietzsche is trying to say is that evil men are not that much different than good men. The book circulates around the concept of good and evil. Not the traditional concept of good and evil, but how it relates to the perceptual nature of knowledge. In the book Nietzsche explains the problems with old philosophers and describes the qualities of new philosophers. The qualities of new philosophers according to Nietzsche are imagination, self-assertion, danger, originality, and creation of values. He spells out to us the old philosophic traditions like self-consciousness, knowledge, truth, and free will. He says these philosophic traditions are inventions of moral consciousness, and Nietzsche replaces these traditions with the “will to power” as an explanation to all power. In the book Nietzsche illustrates that there is no universal morality for all human beings. The book is divided into nine parts: Part One: On the Prejudices of Philosophers, Part Two: The Free Spirit, Part Three: The Religious Essence, Part Four: Maxims and Interludes, Part Five: On the Natural History of Morals, Part Six: We Scholars, Part Seven: Our Virtues, Part Eight: Peoples and Fatherlands, Part Nine: What is Noble? 
In the first two opening parts in the book Nietzsche describes how the philosophers in the past had moral prejudice and how they were always looking for the objective truth, and he called new philosophers, like himself, “free spirits,” would replace them. He has doubt in the old philosophers because he asks himself why would we want the truth rather than the recognized untruth as a condition of life. He is referring to how all old philosophers at the time was always trying to find the truth about life, but they never tried to find what was not true about life. Old philosophers taking this one angle to find the truth about life made them ignorant in Nietzsche’s eyes. Nietzsche explains every single past philosophy and gives a psychological background on each philosophy. He says life is nothing without appearances and the destruction of appearances would mean the destruction of truth. He also says that it is no more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance. He trying to allude that appearance and truth are equally important and anybody that does not believe that are morally wrong. Nietzsche sheds light on the stoic philosophers and their concept of all people should live according to nature. He uses this concept to show how philosophy creates the world in its own image. He also says that nature is something uncontrollable and beyond measure. The whole point Nietzsche is trying to make in the book beyond good and evil is that life is not so black and white when it comes to good and evil, but has many grey areas and he says that philosophers in the past have not paid attention to those grey areas.



1 comment:

  1. "What Nietzsche is trying to say is that evil men are not that much different than good men." - Not quite. He's saying the judgment of good or evil reflects a history and serves the interests of the weak and resentful, while constraining the creative freedom of "free spirits". There is obviously a stark difference between good and bad people, but it's not settled by conventional opinions and rules.

    "life is not so black and white when it comes to good and evil, but has many grey areas" - right. Why don't you link to some specific passages in BGE, in your next installment, and discuss how he proposes that "free spirits" of the future should be unleashed to explore the grey areas. Then comment on what implications that would have for democracy and the rights of ALL individuals. Can society tolerate a Nietzschean approach to ethics?

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