Friedrich W Nietzsche.
... hand destroying effects of The WW1. Nitzsche’s health kept deteriorating over the years, and though he stayed mentally very active and quality and quantity of his writings is a proof of that, he suffered mental breakdown, which rendered him, invalid for the rest of his life. He died on Aug. 25, 1900 at age of 56. Early Period. At this time he studied Greek philosophers and German romanticists, which expressed alternative understanding of Greek culture, and by surveying the history of Western culture since times of Greeks, he lamented over how this “Dionesian”, creative energy had been weekend and became overshadowed by the “Apollonian” ways of logical order and stiff sobriety. I t is in this period that Nitzsche starts to examine issues of ethical sort. He rejected the idea of universal constants, and claims that we call “truth” is only “a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms and anthropomorphisms”. His view is that arbitrariness completely prevails within human experience: “truth is nothing more than the invention of fixed conventions for merely practical purposes especially for those of security and consistency. Middle Period. At this time of his career, Nitzsche starts to exhibit his ideas on power, for which he became known later, and it appears at an explanatory principle, but he really tends at this time to consider hedonistic views of pleasure and pain in his explanations of cultural and psychological phenomena. Also he considered importance of the “feeling of power”, as opposed to pleasure, in his understanding of moral behavior. Later Period. This is the period of the greatest importance to us. At this time Nitzsche published his greatest writings: “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, “Beyond the Good and Evil”. It is now when he identified imagination, self-assertion, danger and “creation of values” as qualities of genuine philosophers as opposed to accidental characters. He disagreed with concepts such as “self-consciousness”, “free will” and he goen on record stating that: “perspective of life, which is “beyond good and evil”, and challenges the deeply-entranced moral idea that exploitation, domination, injury to the weak, destruction and appropriation are universally objectionable behaviors. Above all he believes that living things aim to discharge their strength and express their “will to power” which naturally can entail danger, pain, lies, deception and masks. He also further denies that there is a universal morality applicable indiscriminately to all human beings, and instead designates a series of moralities in an order of rank ranging from noble to plebeian. Essentially, Nitzsche proposes that some behaviors can be considered moral and others not depending on the position and what kind of person one is. Deciding factor would be whether one is strong, healthy, powerful, or whether one is weak, sick, and on the decline. The previous sentence one could consider “an essence of Nitzsche”, everything is revolves around position of power. His position on ethics is closely related to his position on human existence and he believes that “deeds committed by people in power can always be justified, simply because of their understanding of greater things”. Nitzsche’s idea on Christian morality, the traditional ideals of it, for example, is a product of self-deception since they were created in the bad air of revenge, resentment, hatred, impotence and cowardice. Ethics to Nitzsche is virtually an...