Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher and cultural critic born on October 15, 1844, who profoundly influenced Western philosophy through his ideas on the 'will to power,' the concept of truth as perspective, and critiques of morality, particularly Christianity. He asserted that 'God is dead,' symbolizing the end of metaphysical ethics and prompting a reevaluation of human values, advocating for a shift from 'slave morality' to 'master morality.' Nietzsche's work reflects a struggle against nihilism, promoting the development of the 'Übermensch' as a new pinnacle of human evolution and existence.

1. FRIEDRICH
NIETZSCHE
By Sherina Noor
Amna Shahzad

2. BACKGROUND
Friedrich Nietzsche was born on 15th
October 1844 in a small village
of Germany
He was a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, philologist, Latin,
and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence
on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history
He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to
philosophy. He became the youngest ever to hold the Chair of
Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869, at the age of
24.
Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him
most of his life, and he completed much of his core writing in the
following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and a
complete loss of his mental faculties.
He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother (until her
death in 1897), and then with his sister Elisabeth Nietzsche, and
died in 1900.

3. IMPORTANT WORKS
OF NIETZCHE

4. The Birth of Tragedy:
He identified certain factors within
the human personality which make
it impossible for man to adequately
enjoy himself in modern society.
These energies are naturally self
destructive and usually
unconscious impulses the person
has little control over. These
spontaneous bursts of emotion is
termed as Dionysiac, after the

5. The Doctrine of the Will to Power
The will to power explains the fundamental,
changing aspect of reality. According to
Nietzsche, everything is in flux, and there is no
such thing as fixed being. Matter is always
moving and changing, as are ideas, knowledge,
truth, and everything else
The will to power describes
what Nietzsche may have believed to be the
main driving force in humans – achievement,
ambition, and the striving to reach the highest
possible position in life. These are all
manifestations of the will to power

6. The Perspectivist Conception of Truth
Truth, according to Nietzsche, is a matter
of perspective, not fundamental reality.
This understanding of truth and morality
has come to be known as perspectivism.

7. THE GAY SCIENCE
The Gay Scie nce is where
he introduces a lot of the
ideas that he lays out in
other books, like the death
of god, and even
Zarathustra himself.

8. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
In Be yo nd G o o d and Evil, Nietzsche
accuses past philosophers of lacking
critical sense and blindly accepting
dogmatic premises in their consideration
of morality. Specifically, he accuses them
of founding the faith that the good man is
the opposite of the evil man, rather than
just a different expression of the same
basic impulses that find more direct
expression in the evil man.

9. ‘GOD IS DEAD’
A world
without
moral
certainty

10. “God is dead. God remains dead. And we
have killed him. How shall we comfort
ourselves, the murderers of all
murderers? What was holiest and
mightiest of all that the world has yet
owned has bled to death underour
knives: who will wipe this blood off us?
What wateris there forus to clean
ourselves? What festivals of atonement,
what sacred games shall we have to
invent? Is not the greatness of this deed
too great forus? Must we ourselves not
become gods simply to appearworthy of
it?”

11. We abandoned God . This meant that
the co nce pt o f Go d was "dead", and
therefore, any ethics and indeed sense of
direction in general founded on this
metaphysical claim of the existence of God
and religion was "dead" as well.
God neverexisted. God is a concept that
human beings have made up.
‘Thus SpokeZarathustra’
‘GOD IS DEAD’

12. This is inevitable in the
timeline of civilization.
strengthening life-instinct
and growth toward
the o ve rm an
Everyone’s concept of right

13. METAPHYSICAL REALM
The metaphysical (meaning above/beyond the physical world) is a
concept that has survived in philosophy for centuries. It still
continues to this day
Any belief in a ‘God’ or the afterlife beyond our physical world is
dealing with metaphysics
• Any belief in the soul is dealing with metaphysics
• Any belief in ghosts or spirits is also dealing with metaphysics
• Any belief that suggests that morals are True in a
correspondence sense is dealing with metaphysics
Therefore, dismissing God as dead, for Nietzsche, was a
dismissal of the metaphysical and all that goes with it

14. NIETZSCHE AND NIHILISM
Nietzsche’s denial of
God and any
metaphysical realm
brings us to something
known as nihilism.

15. NIHILISM
Nihilism (from the Latin nihil = nothing) is a
philosophical position that argues that existence is
without objective meaning, purpose, orintrinsic value.
Nihilists generally assert that objective morality does
not exist, and that no action is logically preferable to
any other.
Existence has no higher meaning
No proof or argument of existence of a higher ruler or
creator
humanity has no moral obligation to worship them.

16. NO WAY THROUGH
NIHILISM
Nihilismis wrong
– Keep belief in
metaphysics
(religious faith)
Nihilismis correct –
No metaphysical
reality
(Need to reassess the
way that we view the
world)
Christianity Nietzsche

17. NIETZSCHE
Nietzsche asks us to examine a world without God. He believes
that human beings are at the leading edge of evolution…
‘Man is a rope, fastened between animal and
übermensch (superman oroverman) – a rope overan
abyss.’
Nietzsche insists on two things from humanity:
1) The courage to face reality and
2) A desire to provide a new direction in our lives now that there
is no God to provide it.

19. NIETZSCHE’S ATTACK ON
CHRISTIANITY
Nietzsche despised Christianity. He believed that it symbolised
everything that was wrong with the world. He thought of it as a
vampire that sucked the life out of human beings. The Romans
had virtually ruled the known world for 1500 years until Christianity
was adopted as the state religion…
‘Christianitywas thevampireof theimperiumRomanum– ina
night it shatteredthetremendous achievement of theRomans’.
Nietzsche is suggesting that, through the adoption of Christianity
as the state religion, the values of Rome had changed from strong
masters of the known world to morality befitting slavish obedience
to a divine overlord (God).

20. NIETZSCHE’S ATTACK ON
CHRISTIANITY
Nietzsche considered that Christianity denied life,
making human beings sick from within.
Nietzsche saw that human desires and passions were
the most important thing for the evolution of the human
race. Christianity denies passion and desire, Nietzsche
suggests that the individual was as:
‘…acaricatureman, likeanabortion: hehadbecomea
‘sinner’, hewas cagedup, hehadbeenimprisonedbehind
ahost of appallingnotions…fullof hatefortheinstincts of
life, fullof suspicioninregardtoallthat is stillstrongand
happy. Inshort, a‘Christian’.

21. Nietzsche’s Alternative
In a sense what Nietzsche is saying is that ALL WESTERN
VALUES have arisen out of Christianity and that these values
undermine the very essence of what it is that makes us human.
For Nietzsche some humans are better than others and so should
behave as such, he is advocating that the ‘few’ become like the
übermensch or the masters - pursuing their desires and passions,
becoming the pinnacle of evolution, and the ‘many’ slaves serve
their worthy masters. This is known as master and slave morality.
Nietzsche believed that the values that Christianity and
democracy demand of us - passivity, selflessness, guilt, equality,
justice, humbleness, compassion, forgiveness and charity – must
be rejected and eliminated…
On the other hand he demands that lust, anger and revenge
should be regarded as virtues rather than vices – these mark out
the strong ‘masters’ while the Christian values were for the weak

22. • In a world without God, one needs the courage
to face one’s situation, set one’s own goals and
say ‘Yes’ to life.
• Humankind is to strive to go beyond itself – to
become ‘Supermen’ and to allow that quest to
give meaning to life.
• Christianity (and, through its values,
democracy) have promoted ‘slave morality’ to
defend the weak; Nietzsche wants a ‘master
morality’ to encourage the development of the
‘strong’.
Nietzsche’s Conclusions

23. NIETZSCHE'S INFLUENCE
The history of 20th-century philosophy,
theology, and psychology are unintelligible
without him.
The theologians Paul Tillich and Lev
Shestov acknowledged their debt as did the
“God is dead” theologian Thomas J.J. Altizer;
Martin Buber, Judaism's greatest 20th-
century thinker, counted Nietzsche among
the three most important influences in his life
and translated the first part of Zarathustra
into Polish.