Sunday, 24 June 2012

Friedrich Nietzsche part 1


Friedrich Nietzsche philosophised that morality was a doctrine invented by the inferior to restrain the superior, this point can be broken into two sections, which must be individually dealt with. The first is that morality, is in fact a concept, which I believe it is, as everyone has a different interpretation of what I considered “moral”. I also find it difficult to believe that people would behave in an upstanding and ethical way if the thought to do so has not imposed on them by a higher power, through both positive and negative reinforcements, which could be anything from a parent putting a disobedient child on the naughty step, to an almighty entity promising eternity in paradise as a reward for following a set of guidelines. I believe that if we were still under the laws of natural selection many of us, if not all, would gladly murder a rival in order to survive, fortunately evolution has dictated that humans work better as a community, where it became necessity to ensure each others safety, even if it was for our own self-interest.

The second point of this we must consider is that there is, as Friedrich put it Übermensch” or Superhuman, many historians believe that this lead to Hitler's “Master race.” However Nietzsche himself was critical of both anti-Semitism and German nationalism. He stated that beyond humanity was ascertainable and should be the goal of every individual and collective. I agree that there are some who are superior to others, for example Carl Segan compared to the cast of Jersey Shore. However if it were to come to a point where everyone had the mental power of the great minds of our era, that would be considered normal or average, and if we continue along this path of intellectual evolution it would come to a point where we became creatures of pure consciousness at a sentient level and thus achieved a state of Übermensch.

If we put these ideas together we conclude that in order to achieve this god-like grandeur we must cast off the shackles of morality, to through away our concepts of good and evil, to do not what is right, but what is logical.

“Fear is the mother of morality.” - Friedrich Nietzsche  

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