Nietzsche Research Summary

Nietzsche Research paper

Friedrich Nietzsche was a very prevalent 19th century philosopher. At age 24, Nietzsche was already a teacher of philosophy at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Shortly after that, he devoted himself to independent philosophy, where he began to write his book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In this book, a man named Zarathustra descends from his cave into a village, where he claims that the overman is the meaning of the earth. The people don’t seem to be moved by his speech, so he decides to meet with these people individually about how to reach the level of the overman, you must struggle. But only those that are strong can struggle. Those that aren’t strong enough resort to other things to control them, such as religion and politics. At the end of the book he collects all of the people he met with, which have gotten close to his aspirations, but not quite what he had hoped.

This book and Nietzsche both flat out mock Christianity, poking fun at gospel teachings all throughout the story. It also demeans the “rabble”, or the majority of the people. These ideas definitely reflect some of Nietzsche’s teachings. Nietzsche believes that you must be strong to obtain power, not simply put faith into something to give you that power. This is quite a controversial thought, but it certainly has some ground in its ideas. This idea comes up in several of his writings, including “The Antichrist”, which he also had written to mock Christian philosophy. Walter Kauffman, author of “Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist”, wrote on his response to the thought of the “will to power” philosophy. He says that overcoming anything requires the sublimation of a person’s basic instincts, guided by the will to power philosophy that Nietzsche talks about. This shows Kauffman’s faith in Nietzsche’s ideology, showing it has powerful basis in philosophy.

Nietzsche’s lack of faith in the “rabble” is also based in his will to power philosophy, but takes a slightly...