CRITICISM of NIETZSCHE's WESTERN culture

In this lesson from a TEACHER you will learn what the Critique of Nietzsche's Western Culture, a fundamental philosopher who marks a before and after, not only in culture, but in the history of humanity. In his work, he addresses various topics, philology, music, religion, tragedy... and sets the course for later philosophy, psychology and philology.

It is worth highlighting in his work, the influence of Arthur Schopenhauer and Wagner, who although at first he admired them, later he is critical of both. His criticism is mainly directed at the moral, metaphysics and religion. If you want to know more about Nietzsche's critique of Western culture, keep reading this article by a PROFESSOR.

Index

1. Nietzsche's Critique of Western Morals
2. Criticism of metaphysics
3. Nietzsche's Critique of Religion
4. An affirming philosophy of life

In order to Nietzsche, The most important is the individual and life on earth.

Nietzsche starts from two concepts for his critique of Western culture: the Apollonian and the Dionysian, terms related to two important figures in Greek mythology, Apollo and Dionysus. The first symbolizes balance, the rational, sobriety, while chaos, the irrational and drunkenness. And in this contradiction all classical culture rests. They appear for the first time in his work The Birth of Tragedy in the Spirit of Music.

Nietzsche's superman is the one who has changed the morale of servants for the moral of gentlemen, that is, the values ​​of a decadent morality, for values ​​that take into account the human being as what it is, a person with a body, which has needs and who lives on earth, in the world sensitive. This is the only world there is, putting hope in something that does not exist means wasting life and time. What is fundamental is the individual, the self, and his own morality.

Nietzsche says in Beyond Good and Evil:

"The Jews - a people" born into slavery, "as Tacitus and the entire ancient world say," the people chosen from among the peoples, "as they say and believe - the Jews have carried out that prodigy of investment of values ​​thanks to which life on earth has acquired, for a few millennia, a new and dangerous attraction: - its Prophets have merged, reducing them to one, the words "rich," "atheist," "wicked," "violent," "sensual," and have transformed the word "world" into a single word for the first time. shameful. In this inversion of values ​​(of which the use of the word "poor" as a synonym for "Saint" and "friend") resides the importance of the Jewish people: with him begins the rebellion of the slaves in the moral".

With Platonism and Christianity, Nietzsche asserts, philosophy becomes a denier of the life, despising the earthly world and the body and defending the purity of the spiritual world and the soul. Dualism has led to speak of good and bad in an absolute sense and based on values ​​that do not have take into account this life, the passions of the human being, the irrational part of him, which is precisely what is essential in every being human.

By denying life, the individual finds that his life is meaningless, he becomes aware of the emptiness of existence and falls into nihilism. On the other hand, Nietzsche defend that nihilismof the one who has killed God and does not need it as a moral norm, the one who sets himself his own values, that of the superman, the one who will succeed the last man, who is the one who, while accepting the death of God, finds himself lost without him, falling into pessimistic nihilism.

Christians defend the existence of heaven, just as Plato defends the existence of the intelligible world. But Nietzsche assures that after the Earth, only the Earth remains, There is nothing else. The eternal return is more than a total affirmation of life on Earth, if not in addition, it fulfills an ethical function. Accept the eternal return of the same it supposes an assumption of one's own actions, a responsibility, and therefore, it serves as a warning. Regret does not make any sense, regardless of the consequences or feelings triggered by individual actions.

In the Gaya Science he writes the following:

Have you not heard of that madman who in broad daylight ran through the public square with a lit lantern, shouting incessantly: «I am looking for God! I am looking for God! ». As many who did not believe in God were present, his screams caused laughter. [...] The madman faced them, and staring at them, he exclaimed: Where is God? I am going to tell you. We have killed him; you and me, all of us are his murderers. But how have we been able to do it? How could we empty the sea? Who gave us the sponge to erase the horizon? What have we done after detaching the Earth from the orbit of the sun? [...]

Don't we fall incessantly? Don't we fall forward, backward, in all directions? Is there still an up and a down? ¿We float in an infinite nothing? Is the void chasing us [...]? Isn't it colder? Do you not see the night approaching continually, more and more closed? [...] God is dead! [...] And we killed him! How we murderers among murderers console each other! The most sacred, the most powerful thing in the world so far has stained our knife with its blood. Who will erase that bloodstain? What water will serve to purify us? [...] The enormity of this act, is it not too great for us?

Nietzsche states that the origin of christianity and of all other religions, it is fear and anguish. Furthermore, religions do not try to search for the truth, but rather assume that the only truth that exists is God and the afterlife. That is, like metaphysics, they make transcendence their own.

The German philosopher attacks in his criticism, especially in The Antichrist, the Judeo-Christian-medieval-modern tradition, which goes against the Dionysian of the classical world and invents an unreal world, in which all hope must be placed.

Christianity, assures Nietzsche, is nothing more than a Platonism of the people, vulgar and aimed at weak people, those who have a slave morality. The values ​​that this religion promotes are those of the herd, such as sacrifice, mercy, resignation, humility, benevolence, that is, those of the slaves. In addition, a world is invented in the afterlife, completely separate from this one. Immortality implies that this life is nothing more than a transition path to eternal life in the afterlife, in the ideal world.

It is therefore, fundamental for this philosopher, an inversion of values, ending the herd's own values and start building your own. This is what it means the death of God, reversing conventional values. The last man is the one who has accepted the death of God, but has not yet freed himself. Once God dies, the human being is lost, with nothing to cling to and therefore can fall into the anguish of nihilism.

On Gay science Y Thus spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche develops the idea of eternal return that symbolizes the affirmation of life to the point of wanting everything that has happened to repeat itself.

For this, it is necessary Fati love, Or what is the same, love of destiny, in such a way that the human being not only accepts, but wishes, the eternal return of the same. That everything that has happened, all the sorrows, the joys, the humiliation and the victory in becoming the creator and destroyer of the world. The human being is an unfinished being, the eternal return allows to overcome all thoughts and actions, to go beyond knowledge.

Nietzsche's thought has greatly influenced 20th century authors like Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Georges Bataille, Gianni Vattimo, Michel Onfray, Max Weber. Paul Ricoeur, proposes the name of “masters of suspicion”, The group formed by Nietzsche, Marx and Freud.

If you want to read more articles similar to Nietzsche's Critique of Western Culture, we recommend that you enter our category of Philosophy.