Introduction to Philosophy

Achieve Test Prep: Philosophy

• Religious stage: Characterized by a highly personal, subjective, and non-rational leap of faith and because it is beyond reason and objective analysis it is impossible by its nature to communicate it in any precise fashion. This is the realm of subjective truth, an existence in which people become profoundly aware of their individuality and relationship to the divine. For Kierkegaard the individual’s recognition of choice and responsibility is paramount. Rather than succumbing to the values of the crowd, we must create ourselves as unique individuals and develop a personal relationship with the Divine through a leap of faith. Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche was a German philosopher who challenged the ideals of Western philosophy, including science, morality, and the notion of God. His writings were passionate, poetic, inspiring, and open to varied interpretation. He believed that all of life is governed by a primal force, the will to power-the will to grow, spread, seize, become predominate-that is manifested in all living things. The will to power finds its highest expression in humankind in our universal desire to control others and impose our values on them, thus the ultimate moral good is an individual’s striving to exert his or her will to power to the fullest possible extent. Nietzsche found the qualities of Christian and Judeo-Christian morality such as compassion, self-sacrifice, meekness, humility, pity, and dependency to be a gross violation and preservation of the natural life principle of will to power. These traditionally good values were in fact destructive and socially toxic because these so called virtues were in fact the product of the conspiracy of the weak and powerless designed to constrain the strong and powerful individuals in a web of moral restrictions. Instead of encouraging individuals to fulfill their glorious potential the unrestrained expression of their will to power, this perverted moral code of the weak and powerless exhorted people to serve and devote themselves to others particularly the weak and incompetent. Nietzsche believed that this Christian slave morality vision was threatening to the human spirit and prevented the best and strongest individuals from becoming strong and dominant. He was convinced that humans were destined to evolve to higher forms of being (the overman). The role of the overman is to create values, not to conform to the life-denying values of Christian slave morality. He believed that Jesus was a supreme example of the overman, an individual of great power, influence, and originality. He considered the moral system and religion that was based on Jesus’s life and teaching to be a distorted version of his true message, it is a religion that warns against the sins of ambition, pride, and denomination, precisely those qualities that Nietzsche found to be the purest expression of the will of power. Nietzsche believed that devoting ourselves to God was a wasted effort because God was dead. What he meant by this was the concept of God as an all-powerful dominant entity was being eroded by modern consciousness, the evolving influence of scientific progress, and the increasing faith in humankind’s abilities to solve humankind’s problems without divine intervention. Nietzsche articulates his prophecy about the death of God in his writings entitled The Gay Science , he shows his belief in how it is now up

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