Nietzsche Draft

Philosophers have had many perspectives on the meaning of life throughout the ages. Some have some up with reasons for existence; others have come up with reasons why there are no reasons for existence, even more have come up with reasons for why the reasons of why there are no reasons for existence are wrong, and so forth. Friedrich Nietzsche was a nineteenth century philosopher who developed many ideas on the meaning of life and who contracted even more. Nietzsche developed ideas on how animals and humans exist, and what they exist for; one of his major theories was that of Will to Power, which is that animals and humans live their lives to promote their power. “Nietzsche aims at freeing higher human beings from their false consciousness about morality (their false belief that this morality is good for them), not at a transformation of society at large.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Nietzsche also talked about the transvaluation of values, which is the acceptance of all instincts as organic and therefore valid, the will to power being one of these instincts. Nietzsche believed that one must accept organic human instincts and not attempt to oppress them, thus he was vastly anti-Christian because he viewed the religion as something that oppressed natural human instinct.
Nietzsche detested morality because he claimed that it made “untenable descriptive (metaphysical and empirical) claims about human agency” and that morality took away from the organic human instincts, which is how someone should live their life. Nietzsche believed that there were two types of morality, slave-morality and master-morality. Nietzsche looked down mainly upon slave-morality and claimed that master-morality was the creator of man as he is now. Master-morality, which Nietzsche claimed is the creator of values, is the morality of the strong and the noble. “The noble type of man experiences itself as determining values; it does not need approval; it judges, 'what is harmful to me is harmful in itself'; it knows itself to be that which first accords honor to things; it is value-creating." (On Genealogy of Morals) What Nietzsche is claiming here is that the noble man, the master-morality, is the one that creates values and does not follow others. From his views on master morality, we understand that Nietzsche had a very individualist perspective on the meaning of life, and viewed values as needing to be self created. Along with this master-morality is slave-morality, which Nietzsche looked down upon. The people of slave-morality are weak; they do not create their own values and follow the herd in a sort of herd mentality. Slave-morality uses good and evil as excuses for actions. Nietzsche distained slave-morality and viewed its followers as weak minded and oppressed. While Nietzsche didn’t distain master-morality as much as he did slave-morality, he believed that they both detracted from the way ones life should be lived, with purely organic values.