Nietzsche 2nd 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. While Nietzsche never directly speaks of the meaning of life he develops ideas on how life should be lived, which is simply another form of the question. 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 and also because the religion “warped” the teaching of Jesus, who Nietzsche believed might be the first Übermensch. According to Nietzsche the Übermensch is the final man so to speak, the “superman”, and humanities goal would be to reach the Übermensch.

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. Nietzsche’s ideas of mastery morality can be connected to the meaning of life through the Übermensch, which shares many characteristics of someone with master-morality, and also which Nietzsche believes is the final goal of a man. 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.

Nietzsche also detested other things which detracted from acceptance of all instincts as organic, which is why he hated what Christianity taught. He believed that Christianity disrupted the natural, organic instincts of mankind and that it disrupted the pure teaching of Jesus for its own benefit. Nietzsche believed that Jesus may have been the Übermensch, but then discredited the thought because Jesus embraced death, when the Übermensch would exalt in life. He despised that Christianity promoted life as a mere path towards the afterlife, glorifying death over life, which goes against Nietzsche’s “transvaluation of all values” that exalts life above suffering, unlike Christianity. Other primal instincts that Christianity shielded against was sex, which Nietzsche claimed was the creation of life, and because Catholics and Christianity promoted abstinent from sex they promote abstinent from a primal, organic instinct, which is how Nietzsche believed people should live their lives.

Nietzsche believed that people creating meaning in there life through the Will to Power, which he claimed is an organic instinct. The idea of Will to Power was supposedly born from the notion of Will to Live. But instead Nietzsche claimed that living was merely a subset of the Will to Power. He said that: “Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength — life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results” (Nietzsche). The will to power is a perfect example of Nietzsche’s view on the meaning of life. He believed the will to power was the massive combination of all the organic instincts of human behavior, and humans live for one thing: To promote their power thus we get “the will to power”. Nietzsche claimed that he was supported by many instances of this, including “people and animals are willing to risk their lives in order to promote their power (for example, ancient Greek heroes or "masters" often died young in battle, but achieved great power in the process).” (Wikipedia) He promotes his idea of the will to power in the Übermensch or in English: the overman or the superman.

The Übermensch is in a sense, the ultimate individualist who is created through the primal, organic instinct of the will to power. A man becomes Übermensch through a series of three steps. “By his will to power, manifested destructively in the rejection of, and rebellion against, societal ideals and moral codes. By his will to power, manifested creatively in overcoming nihilism and re-evaluating old ideals or creating new ones. By a continual process of self-overcoming.” (Wikipedia) The Übermensch breaks out of society standards and creates his own values and ideals to live by, all by the primal, organic instinct of the will to power. Nietzsche claimed that there was never a Übermensch during his life time, though he also claimed that to become Übermensch would be the final goal in life of all men, and the goal in life for all woman (according to Nietzsche) would be to give birth to the Übermensch.