Philosophy

Philosophy Study Guide

level, and gender. The net effect of removing the unique and rich qualities from each individual is to place all people on the same abstract level which he called true alienation and described it in his writing entitled The Present Age and believed it was immortal. Per Kierkegaard, he believed to really exist is a lifelong challenge and evolutionary process. He identifies Three Stages of Life’s Way through which every person must pass to become an authentic individual and really exists: ● Aesthetic stage: This is the stage in life in which people are absorbed in pursuing the beautiful and pleasurable dimensions of life, living for the moment led by emotions and sensuous passions. Although powerfully seductive, a life devoted to simply pursuing pleasurable experience after pleasurable experience is ultimately dissatisfying and is ultimately filled with emptiness and dread. ● Ethical stage: Dissatisfaction with the excess of the aesthetic stage typically motivates people to seek a life guided by moral standards and ethical values. Moral codes provide people with a structure that was lacking in the aesthetic stage. Such codes provide with a clear listing of dos and don’ts of values to live by, of virtuous people to aspire to. Kierkegaard believes that too often people look outside themselves for moral guidance and define themselves in terms of the values of others the crowd. The ethical stage is a necessary but transitional stage in an individual’s quest for ultimate meaning an authentic existence that can only be realized by the religious stage. The important thing in this stage is not what you think may be right or wrong what matters is that you choose to have an opinion at all on what is right or wrong. ● 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. 9.9 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.

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