WHAT IS NIETZSCHE BEST KNOWN FOR?

Friedrich Nietzsche was a famous German philosopher and philologist known forhis critical
texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science. He was widely known
for his ideas like death of God, perspectivism, the bermensch, the eternal recurrence, and the
will to power.

Nietzsche: Beyond Morality

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche shared Kierkegaard's conviction

that philosophy should deeply reflect the personal concerns of individual
human beings. But for Nietzsche, this entailed rejection of traditional values,
including the Christian religion. Nietzche's declaration of "the death of god"
draws attention to our culture's general abandonment of any genuine
commitment to the Christian faith.

According to Nietzsche's Die Gtzendmmerung (Twilight of the Idols)

(1889), Western philosophers since Socrates represent a degeneration of the
natural strengths of humanity. A noble taste for heroic styles of life can only
be corrupted and undermined by the interminable debates of dialectical
reason. Traditional Western morality philosophyand the Christian religion in
particulartherefore opposes a healthy life, trying vainly to escape
unfortunate circumstances by destroying native human desires.

Only perverse tenacity and cowardice, he believed, encourages us to cling

to this servile morality, It would be more brave, more honest, and much
more noble to cut ourselves loose and dare to live in a world without God. In
such a world, death is not to be feared, since it represents nothing more
significant than the fitting conclusion of a life devoted to personal gain.

All of this is, of course, a variety of nihilism. Nietzsche insists that there
are no rules for human life, no absolute values, no certainties on which to
rely. If truth can be achieved at all, it can come only from an individual who
purposefully disregards everything that is traditionally taken to be
"important." Such a super-human person {Ger. bermensch}, Nietzsche
supposed, can live an authentic and successful human life
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Beyond Good and Evil

Nietzsche offered a quasi-historical account of the harmful consequences

of traditional ethics in Zur Geneologie der Moral (On the Genealogy of
Morals) (1887). "Good" initially and properly designated only the right of
those individuals with social and political power to live their lives by sheer
force of will. But a "priestly" caste, motivated by their resentment of their
natural superiors, generated a corrupt alternative that would appeal to "the
herd" of less capable persons, turning values inside-out. In the "slave
morality" endorsed by religious establishments, Nietzsche argued, forceful
action which should be admired gets labelled as "evil," while the cowardly
tendency to think through everything in advance is transformed into the
supposed virtue of prudence.

Genuine autonomy, Nietzsche maintained, could only mean freedom from

all external constraints on one's behavior. In this (natural and admirable)
state of existence, each individual human being would live a life without the
artificial limits of moral obligation. No other sanction on conduct would be
necessary than the natural punishment involved in the victory of a superior
person over a vanquished enemy.

But the wish of lesser people to secure themselves against interference

from those who are better gives rise to a false sense of moral responsibility.
The natural fear of being overwhelmed by a superior foe becomes
internalized as the self-generated sense of guilt, and individual conscience
places severe limits on the normal exercize of human desire. Thus, on
Nietzsche's view, the fundamental self-betrayal of the human race is to
submit its freedom to the ficticious demands of an imaginary god. Afraid to
live by the strength of our own wills, we invent religion as a way of
generating and then explaining our perpetual sense of being downtrodden
and defeated in life.