1 day ago · Best essays by emerson what is a case brief essay. Titles for a drug essay, essay on personal hygiene and self grooming, example of essay about political dynasty sample of a good academic essay. My first day at college essay in english for 2nd year May 30, · TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION. Ecce Homo is the last prose work that Nietzsche wrote. It is true that the pamphlet Nietzsche contra Wagner was prepared a month later than the Autobiography; but we cannot consider this pamphlet as anything more than a compilation, seeing that it consists entirely of aphorisms drawn from such previous works as Jan 03, · Nietzsche read German translations of Emerson’s essays, copied passages from “History” and “Self-Reliance” in his journals, and wrote of the Essays: that he had never “felt so much at home in a book.” Emerson’s ideas about “strong, overflowing” heroes, friendship as a battle, education, and relinquishing control in order to
Friedrich Nietzsche - Wikipedia
The risk of nihilism is that it alienates us from anything good or true. Yet believing in nothing has positive potential. Nihilism is a constant threat. We might also begin to doubt whether those who accept the idea really know or care about whether or not the idea is true. This is one step away from thinking about why there is so little consensus about so many issues, and why everyone else seems to be so certain about what now appears to you so uncertain, nietzsche essays.
One of his many aphorisms on nihilism was that it is the result of the highest values devaluing themselves, nietzsche essays. Yet, rather than blame ourselves for putting too much faith in these nietzsche essays, we instead blame the values for not living up to our expectations. According to Nietzsche, nietzsche essays, we can then become active nihilists and reject the values given to us by others in order to erect values of our own.
Or we can become passive nihilists and continue to believe in traditional values, despite having doubts about the true value of those values. The active nihilist destroys in order to find or create something worth believing in. Only that which can survive destruction can make us stronger. Nietzsche and the group of 19th-century Russians who self-identified as nihilists shared this outlook, nietzsche essays. The passive nihilist however does not want to risk self-destruction, and so clings to the safety of traditional beliefs, nietzsche essays.
Nietzsche argues that such self-protection is in reality an even more dangerous form of self-destruction, nietzsche essays. Today, nihilism has become an increasingly popular way to describe a widespread attitude towards the current state of the world. Yet when the nietzsche essays is used in conversation, in newspaper editorials or in social media rants, it is rarely ever defined, as if everyone knows very well what nihilism means and shares the same definition of the concept.
But as we have seen, nietzsche essays, nihilism can be both active and passive. If we want a better understanding of contemporary nihilism, we should identify how it has nietzsche essays in epistemology, ethics and metaphysics, and how it has found expression in different ways of life, such as in self-denial, death-denial and world-denial.
I n epistemology the theory of knowledgenihilism nietzsche essays often seen as the denial that knowledge is possible, nietzsche essays, the stance that our nietzsche essays cherished beliefs have no bedrock. The argument for epistemological nihilism is based on the idea that knowledge requires something more than just a knower and a known.
But for epistemological nihilism, there is no standard, no foundation, nietzsche essays, no ground upon which one can make knowledge claims, nothing to justify our belief that any particular claim is true.
All appeals to objectivity seen from the perspective of epistemological nihilism are illusory. We create the impression of knowledge to hide the fact that nietzsche essays are no facts, nietzsche essays.
If something is claimed to be true based on past experience, then the problem of induction arises: just because something has happened does not entail that it must happen again. If something is claimed nietzsche essays be true based on scientific evidence, then there arises the problem of appealing to authority.
In logic, nietzsche essays, such appeals are seen as committing a fallacy, as the claims of others, even the claims of experts, are not seen as grounds for truth. In other words, even experts can be biased and can make mistakes. Furthermore, as scientists make claims based on the work of previous scientists, then they too can be seen as making appeals to authority, nietzsche essays.
This leads to another problem, the problem of infinite regress. Any claim to knowledge based on some foundation inevitably leads to questions about the foundation of that foundation, and then the foundation of that foundation, and so on, and so on, and so on. In trivialising doubts about knowledge, the passive nihilist trivialises the pursuit of knowledge.
For the skeptic likewise questions the foundations upon which knowledge claims are taken to rest, nietzsche essays, and doubts the possibility of knowledge ever finding any sure ground. Whereas the active nihilist would be similar nietzsche essays the radical skeptic, nietzsche essays, the passive nihilist would not be. The passive nihilist is aware that skeptical questions can be raised about knowledge. But rather than doubt knowledge, the passive nihilist continues to believe in knowledge.
Consequently, for the passive nihilist, knowledge exists, but it exists on the basis of faith. Nihilism is therefore not only to be found in the person who rejects knowledge claims for lacking an indubitable foundation. Scientific theories can be based on appeals to other theories, which are based on appeals to other theories, any one of which could be based on a mistake.
But so long as scientific theories continue to produce results — especially results in the form of technological advances — then doubts about the ultimate truth of those theories can be seen as trivial. And in trivialising doubts about knowledge, nietzsche essays, the passive nihilist trivialises nietzsche essays pursuit of knowledge. Or the phone might turn out to be wrong, in which case we are likely to blame not the phone but the train.
Since the phone has become our primary guarantor of knowledge, to admit that the phone could be wrong is to risk having to admit that not only could our phone-based knowledge claims be baseless, but that all of our knowledge claims could be.
After all, just like nietzsche essays the phone, we tend not to ask why we think we know what we think we know. I n moral philosophy, nihilism is seen as the denial that morality exists, nietzsche essays. As Donald A Crosby argues in The Specter of the Absurdnietzsche essays, moral nihilism can be seen as a consequence of epistemological nihilism.
If there exist no grounds for making objective claims about knowledge and truth, then there exist no grounds for making objective claims about right and wrong. In other words, what we take to be morality is a matter of what is believed to be right — whether that belief is relative to each historical period, to each culture or to each individual — rather than a matter of what is right.
To claim that something is right has been done historically by basing these claims on a foundation such as God, or happiness, or reason. Because these foundations are seen as applying universally — as applying to all nietzsche essays, in all places, in all nietzsche essays — they are seen as necessary to make morality apply universally.
The 18th-century moral philosopher Immanuel Kant recognised the danger of grounding morality nietzsche essays God or on happiness as leading to moral skepticism, nietzsche essays.
The belief in God can motivate people to act morally, nietzsche essays, but only as a means to the end of ending up in heaven rather nietzsche essays hell.
So, nietzsche essays, nietzsche essays response, Kant argued for a reason-based morality instead. According to him, if a universal foundation is what morality needs, then we should simply make decisions in accordance with the logic of universalisability. By determining what we are trying to achieve in any action, and by turning that intention into a nietzsche essays that all rational beings must obey, we can use reason to determine if it is logically possible for the intended action to be universalised.
Logic — nietzsche essays than God or desire — can therefore tell us if any intended action is right universalisable or wrong not universalisable.
There are, however, several problems with trying to base morality on nietzsche essays. Another problem, as pointed out by John Stuart Mill in Utilitarianismis that humans are rational, nietzsche essays, but rationality is not all that we have, and so following Kantian nietzsche essays forces us to live like uncaring robots rather than like people.
Yet another problem, as pointed out by Nietzsche, is that reason might not be what Kant claimed it to be, as it is quite possible that reason is no firmer a foundation than is God or happiness, nietzsche essays.
In On the Genealogy of MoralsNietzsche argued that reason is nietzsche essays something absolute and universal but rather something that has evolved over time into part of human life, nietzsche essays. Reason should not be seen therefore as a firm foundation for morality since its own foundations can be called into question.
The passive nihilist would rather navigate using a faulty compass than nietzsche essays feeling completely lost. Here again we can find an important distinction between how the active nihilist and the passive nihilist respond to such moral skepticism. The ability to doubt the legitimacy of any possible foundation for morality can lead the active nihilist to either redefine morality or to reject morality.
In the first instance, actions can be judged nietzsche essays moral principles, nietzsche essays, but the active nihilist is the one who nietzsche essays those principles. But what seems to be creative could in fact be derivative, nietzsche essays, as it is difficult to distinguish when we are thinking for ourselves as opposed to when we are thinking in accordance with how we were brought up. So rather than such moral egoism, it is more likely that the active nihilism will simply reject morality altogether.
Instead, actions are judged only in practical terms, nietzsche essays, nietzsche essays as what is more or less efficient towards achieving a desired end. Human actions are therefore seen as no different than the actions of an animal or a machine. If it seems like a mistake to say that an nietzsche essays is evil for eating another animal when it is hungry, nietzsche essays, then the active nihilist will say it is likewise a mistake to say that humans are evil for stealing from another human when nietzsche essays are hungry.
Without morality, concepts such as theft, property or rights are seen as having only legal standing. Actions can nietzsche essays seen as criminal but not as immoral. An example of such active nihilism can be seen in the Ancient Greek sophist Thrasymachus. Instead, the passive nihilist rejects the idea that the legitimacy of morality really matters. The passive nihilist obeys morality, not for the sake of morality, but for the nietzsche essays of obedience.
To live in accordance with what is believed by others to be right and wrong, nietzsche essays, to be good and evil, is seen by the passive nihilist as preferable to having to live without any such moral standards to guide decision-making.
Moral standards provide a compass, and the passive nihilist would rather navigate life using a faulty compass than risk going through life feeling completely nietzsche essays. Moral standards also provide the feeling of belonging to a community.
Sharing norms and values is as important for sharing a way of nietzsche essays as is sharing a language. In rejecting morality, the active nihilist is therefore also rejecting community. But the passive nihilist is unwilling to risk feeling completely alone in the world, nietzsche essays.
So, by rejecting moral legitimacy, nietzsche essays, the passive nihilist is embracing community. What matters to the passive nihilist then is not whether a moral claim is true, but whether a moral claim is popular.
The passive nihilist values morality as a means to an end, not as an end in itself, nietzsche essays. Because the desire to belong and to be led outweighs the desire to have moral certainty, the passive nihilist cares only about the sense of direction and the sense of community that can come from accepting a moral system.
The passive nihilist supports moral standards just because they are accepted by the community to which the passive nihilist wants to belong. J ust as epistemological nihilism can lead to moral nihilism, so moral nihilism can lead to political nihilism. Political nihilism is typically understood as the rejection of authority. This was the case with the aforementioned self-identified nihilists of 19th-century Russia, who ultimately succeeded in assassinating the tsar.
However, this revolutionary form of political nihilism, which we can identify with active nihilism, does not capture the passive form of political nihilism, nietzsche essays. The danger of active nihilism comes from its anarchic willingness to destroy society for the sake of freedom. The danger of passive nihilism comes from its conformist willingness to destroy freedom for the sake of society. As we have already seen, the passive nihilist instrumentalises knowledge and morality by treating both as important only insofar as they serve as means to the ends of comfort and security.
The need to feel protected from the discomfort of doubt and from the insecurity of instability is what leads the passive nihilist to become ultimately more destructive than the active nihilist, nietzsche essays. The danger here is that the moral and political systems that promote freedom and independence will be seen as less desirable to the passive nihilist than the moral and political systems that promote dogmatic acceptance of tradition and blind obedience to authority.
Though we might say we want to be free and independent, such liberation can feel like a terrible burden. Just think of how often being presented with a menu full of options leads restaurant-goers to ask the server for a recommendation. Nietzsche was worried by what he saw as the growing acceptance of nietzsche essays, self-sacrifice and nietzsche essays as moral ideals.
He saw the acceptance of such self-negating ideals as evidence that passive nihilism was spreading like a disease through 19th-century Europe.
It was this worry that motivated the work of both critical theorists in Germany and of existentialists in France.
Nietzsche EXPLAINED: The Genealogy of Morals - Ascetic Ideals, Suffering, Will to Nothingness
, time: 28:05Ralph Waldo Emerson (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Jan 03, · Nietzsche read German translations of Emerson’s essays, copied passages from “History” and “Self-Reliance” in his journals, and wrote of the Essays: that he had never “felt so much at home in a book.” Emerson’s ideas about “strong, overflowing” heroes, friendship as a battle, education, and relinquishing control in order to Friedrich Nietzsche (—) Nietzsche was a German philosopher, essayist, and cultural critic. His writings on truth, morality, language, aesthetics, cultural theory, history, nihilism, power, consciousness, and the meaning of existence have exerted an enormous influence on Western philosophy and intellectual history. Nietzsche spoke of “the death of God,” and foresaw the May 30, · TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION. Ecce Homo is the last prose work that Nietzsche wrote. It is true that the pamphlet Nietzsche contra Wagner was prepared a month later than the Autobiography; but we cannot consider this pamphlet as anything more than a compilation, seeing that it consists entirely of aphorisms drawn from such previous works as
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