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SECTION III: How do I know?

Reading 7: from Nietzsche, The Gay Science

 

Like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche is an important father of existentialism. His focus is primarily on the human individual and the terms by which each lives his or her life. Unlike Kierkegaard, however, Nietzsche rejects traditional religion in all of its forms. He regards the concept of God as one that undermines and limits the fullest human development. His views on morality are as radical as they have been influential.

 

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"What is good?  Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself.
            What is bad?  Everything that is born of weakness.
            What is happiness?  The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.
            Not contentedness but more power; not peace but war; not virtue but fitness (Renaissance virtue, virtu, virtue that is moraline-free).
            The weak and the failures shall perish:  first principle of our love of man.  And they shall even be given every possible assistance."

 

Nietzsche portrait

Nietzsche, c. 1882

 

Music inspired by Nietzsche

Richard Strauss, Also Sprach Zarathustra

(you'll recognize this tune)

 

Nietzsche in 1890

Nietzsche's final years were lost to mental illness.

 

Go on to Value Theory.

Go back to Feuerbach.