“There are more idols than realities in the world. […] This time it is not contemporary idols but eternal idols that are being touched here with the hammer as if with a turning fork”. This “revaluation of all values”, an expression that Nietzsche would use numerous times in his oeuvre, enables him to present his personal conception of what “true” morality could be. Doing so, he also gives an insight into his perception of what could be a superior life, a life in which man would not be bound to any moral, but in which he could express himself freely and then realize his potential. But this superior way of living can only be achieved by the overman that Nietzsche characterizes in Ecce Homo as: “A type that has turned out supremely well, in antithesis to “modern” men, to “good men”, to Christians and other nihilist.” Thus, Nietzsche defines the overman regarding to the ones who represent the “wrong” morality he loathes (i.e. any morals that tend to enslave men or at least weaken them).
[...] The genius his works, in his deeds- is necessarily z squanderer: his greatness lies in his expenditure [ ] People call this ‘self-sacrifice'; they praise his ‘heroism', his indifference towards his own well-being, his devotion to an idea, a great cause, a fatherland: all of these are misunderstandings [ ] But because we owe a great deal to such explosives, we have given them a great deal in return, too, for example a kind of higher morality For that is how humanity expresses its gratitude: it misunderstands its benefactors.-”[31] “Throughout the ages the wisest of men have passed the same judgment on life: it is no good From this statement with which Nietzsche starts Twilight of the Idols (it comes just after the “Maxims and and the critic which follows and introduces the notion of décadence and of declining types, we can already guess that the idea of life that the philosopher will present us is probably not a happy one. [...]
[...] - This excerpt proves that Nietzsche was not a antichristian who hated Church just because of its existence, but someone whose core values were despised, said as being evil principles by this Church and whom for these reasons criticized it, as he criticized error which lays in [Socrates'] belief in ‘rationality at all costs”.[17] What Nietzsche values so much is the fact to live its life to the fullest, without regards to what you are supposed to do. The world is how it is, a world of contingencies on which you can not have any control and actually, to speak about the value of such and such things in the world does not really make sense. [...]
[...] Indeed his personal conviction is that: moderns with our anxious self-welfare and brotherly love, with our virtues of work, unpretentiousness, abiding by the law, scientificity –accumulative, economical, machine-like - emerge as a weak period A few lines later is exposed the concept blamed for being the main reason for the decline of man and then what is considered to be its antithesis: “'Equality', a certain actual assimilation, which the theory of ‘equal right' merely expresses, is the essence of decline: the gulf between man and man, rank and rank; the multiplicity of types; the will to be oneself, to stand out- everything I call pathos of distance- is proper to every strong period.”[4] Nietzsche's rejection of democracy comes from this core idea of equality as identified with decline, as he supposes that the type of government created from this can only bring mediocrity. [...]
[...] at making it dependent on them ] People were thought of as ‘free' so that they could be judged and punished that they could become guilty: consequently every action had to be thought of as willed, the origin of every action as located in consciousness.”[24] To this the philosopher objects his own doctrine: immoralists especially are seeking with all our strength to eliminate the concepts of guilt and punishment again and to cleanse psychology, history, nature, social institutions and sanctions of them.”[ ] [Our doctrine can be] that no one gives man his qualities, neither God, nor society, nor his parents and ancestors, nor man himself [ ] That no one is made responsible any more, that a kind of Being cannot be traced back to a causa prima, that the world is no unity, either a sensorium or as a ‘mind', this alone is the great liberation –this alone reestablishes the innocence of becoming . [...]
[...] This is the case for the “Natural Value of Egoism”, this being allowed by the principle that “What justifies man is his reality will justify him eternally.”[26] From there, if what is accomplished has value, the way or the reason to act matters much less that the fact of acting, and thus egoism can be praised. For Nietzsche: “Every single person can be considered from the point of view of whether he represents the ascendant or descendant line of life. [...]
APA Style reference
For your bibliographyOnline reading
with our online readerContent validated
by our reading committee
