Friedrich Nietzsche

FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE

A Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is a German philosopher, a influential one, who is known for his writings on good and evil (1844-1900), the end of religion in modern society and the concept of a “super-man.” Nietzsche is an “atheist” so it means he didn’t believe in God. It didn’t surprise me that much, because he is a philosopher, lover of wisdom means philosopher are seeking for more knowledge, construct so many questions in life, even though it’s not necessary to ask. I said those things because Nietzsche states that “God is Dead.” The moment I found his famous statement I already oppose it and I think we’re having the same reaction about this, right? But the question is what is the true meaning he said that? Did he mean that God is literary dead? What do you think guys? Well let’s find out, but before that let me  first tell you about his life.

On October 15, 1844, Nietzsche was born in Rocken bei Lutzen, a small village in Prussia. His father, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, was a Lutheran preacher; he died when Nietzsche was 4 years old. Well his father died so Nietzsche and his younger sister, Elizabeth, were raised by their mother. During his time in Leipzig, Nietzsche took a position as professor of classical philology at the University of Basel in Basel in Switzerland. During his professorship he published his first books, The Birth of Tragedy (1872) and Human,  All too Human (1878). Suffering from a nervous disorder, he resign from his post at Basel in 1879. For much of the following decade, Nietzsche lived in seclusion, moving from Switzerland to France to Italy when he was not staying at his mother’s house in Naumburg. However, this was also a highly productive period in him as a thinker and writer. One of his significant works, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, was published in four volumes between 1883 and 1885. He also wrote Beyond Good and Evil (published in 1886). In these works of the 1880s, Nietzsche developed the central point of his philosophy. One of this was his famous statement that “God is Dead,” a rejection of Christianity as a meaningful force in contemporary life. Others were his endorsement of self-perfection through creative drive and “will to power,” and his concept of a “super-man” or “over-man” (Ubermensch), an individual who strives to exist beyond conventional categories of good and evil, master and slave. Nietzsche suffered a collapsed in 1889 while living in Turin, Italy. The last decade of his life was spent in state of mental incapacitation. The reason for his insanity is still unknown, although historians have attributed it to causes as varied as syphilis, an inherited brain disease, a tumor and overuse of sedative drugs. After a stay in an asylum, Nietzsche was cared for by his mother in Naumburg and his sister in Weimar, Germany. He died in Weimar on August 25, 1900. And that is the end of his journey, but before he died Nietzsche left us his most remarkable statement that “God is Dead.”

I’ll start with this, I mentioned that earlier he states that “God is Dead” and finally here is the explanation for that. When he said that he doesn’t literally mean that God is dead, his point is that the death of God represents for existing moral assumption: “When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet. This morality is by no means self evident. By breaking one main concept out of Christianity, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one’s hands.” The death of God is a way of saying that humans, and Western Civilization as a whole, could no longer believe in any such order. The death of God will lead, Nietzsche says, not only to the rejection of a belief of cosmic or physical order, but also to a rejection of absolute value themselves to the rejection of belief in an objective and universal moral law, binding upon all individuals. In this manner, the loss of an absolute basis for morality leads to nihilism. This nihilism is that for which Nietzsche worked to find a solution by re-evaluating the foundations of human values. This meant to Nietzsche, looking for foundations that went deeper than Christian values. Nietzsche believed that the majority of the people did not recognize this death out of the deepest-seated fear and angst. Therefore, when the death did begin to come widely acknowledged, people would despair and nihilism would became rampant. This partly why Nietzsche saw Christianity as nihilistic.

            The will to power is a prominent concept in the this philosophy. The will to power describes what Nietzsche may have believe to be the main driving force in humans – achievement, ambition, and the striving to reach the highest possible position in life. These are all manifestation of the will to power; however, the concept was never systematically define in Nietzsche’s work, leaving its interpretation open to debate. This statement means we lost our faith in God, so there is no God at all.

            I conclude that his philosophy has a point, but I think it’s not right to construct that statement in that way. I know that there are some people that don’t follow or believe in God or on his teachings, but it’s not right to put that statement because these people had lost their path but it’s still can be corrected by the help of the others. There are a lot of people that obey and have their faith in God, meaning to say there is still hope in this world. He construct this statement because many people are hopeless and don’t believe in God and I think the reason why these people are hopeless is because they don’t believe in God. Nietzsche is right that it can lead to nihilism if we still continue living in this way. The also reason why Nietzsche state this it is because he don’t believe in God because he is an “atheist” and maybe that’s the reason why he said that. He rejects Christianity because it’s stopping him achieve his desire. We cannot see God, but it doesn’t mean his dead, and that’s why there are other people that believe in him. I think the main reason he reject Christianity is because he thinks that he’s not free, he wants to move like there’s no one stopping him even if it’s wrong. I think he state that to give us idea what is happening in us, people, but it doesn’t mean he believes in God, maybe he care for us but his belief is not the same like ours. I’m not agree in his statement but the explanation in this made me think about the beliefs of other people. This is the ending of my speech and I’m leaving you these words “ in order to change we need help, courage, and lastly we need God.”