FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE || PHILOSOPHICAL BREAKDOWN

 Writing about Nietzsche is a difficult task itself as decoding the philosophy of someone who is already misunderstood by thousands and misinterpreted by most of the people of his century is quite challenging. Apart from this Nietzsche is someone, I am fond of reading. Coming to the writings, Nietzsche's aphorisms and morbidly perplexing instances themselves served as the source of misinterpretation and misunderstanding. People believe Nietzsche was far ahead of his time and hence his ideologies and beliefs never satisfied the people of his century.

His writings owning the use of quite strong and aggressive words made it difficult for people to understand the same with ease. It's quite often people miss a number of vital points of his writings and hence misinterpret the whole stuff. One of the most famous examples includes, ''GOD IS DEAD''. In simple words, the whole philosophy of Nietzsche is the assessment of humanity as it stands and the prediction of where it's actually going.

GOD IS DEAD

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?

Now, this few word statement holds a deep and meaningful philosophy behind it. In short, Nietzsche is challenging people to rise over their theistic imaginations. He simply meant God can no longer provide values. By this statement, Nietzsche directly highlighted the replacement of religion by western civilisation in terms of ethics and morality. He simply analogues God with morality and hence meant that mankind's beliefs came to an end with respect to God because of new ideologies of Atheism, Nihilism, Marxism, etc and hence there's a need to establish a new system of beliefs and morality. 

Nietzsche both predicted as well as feared that without effective replacement, humanity would be left to struggle as well as suffer without any clear system and meaning and devolve into despair or say Nihilism.

UBERMENSCH 

Nietzsche challenged the whole concept of thinking by the introduction of the idea of ''THE OVERMAN'' or ''UBERMENSCH''. Enhancement of humanity and mankind forms the laying stone of the whole concept of Ubermensch. According to Nietzsche, humans hold the power of making their own decisions. We need not bear the burden of social constructs and seek and consume the truth without external influences affecting the same. The Ubermensch or the Overman is strong enough to reevaluate all values, overcome pity and sufferings, provide meaning to the meaningless life, express his will to power(The Will to Power) in higher forms and hence when a man is able to do this, he surpasses the level of being a man and become an Overman or Ubermensch.

SELF OVERCOMING AND SUFFERING IN LIFE

Self-overcoming forms the central theme of ''THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA''. Life is a struggle and full of suffering. Sufferings of life can't be eliminated, instead, can be overcome. There's no point in running from pain. The only way to grow is to take a direct dig at it i.e by facing the pain, growth can be experienced. In the words of Nietzsche, “What does not kill me, makes me stronger.”. 

Nietzsche believed suffering is a good thing to be leaned into. Suffering acts as fuel towards the amassing of strength and psychological power. In short, suffering paves the way towards progress and growth.

“Man, the bravest of animals, and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far.”

EXISTENTIALISM AND NIHILISM 

Well, Nietzsche neither considered himself a Nihilist nor an Existentialist. But his philosophy, by different terms, supports the ideas of both Nihilism and Existentialism. According to my own views, Nietzsche was leaner towards existentialism.

Favouring Existentialism, he believed that men must accept that they are part of a material world, regardless of what else might exist. As part of this world, men must live as if there is nothing else beyond life. A failure to live, to take risks, is a failure to realize human potential.

In a nutshell, Nietzsche wants us to find meaning and purpose in a meaningless life. He wants to make us realise our self-worth and according to him, no price is high for the privilege of owning oneself. He strongly condemns the systems that already prevails. According to him, we destroy our integrity and free will just to get adjusted in the preformed systems and hence we need to withstand the herd mentality and find the true nature of life ourselves.

THANK YOU!!