5. Macbeth
by William Shakespeare
Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the
stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
7. Nihilism
• Arose as a reaction to the
despair and isolation produced
by a growing atheism and
reliance on science and human
rationality
(naturalistic and materialistic
worldview)
13. Impact of WWI– despair over man’s
inhumanity and brutality
14.
15.
16.
17.
18. People found themselves
feeling alone and adrift in a
seemingly absurd, cruel, and
uncaring world
19. What is nihilism?
Not a true philosophy
Denial of everything
truth
knowledge
morality
beauty
meaning
purpose
20. Nihilism rejected
• The complete confidence in
Enlightenment rationality
• Confidence in science and
empiricism
• Traditional philosophy and
philosophical assumptions
• Religion
• The notion of a universal truth
27. Knowledge
• There is no knowledge
• The human intellect and rationality
cannot be trusted.
• If the human mind is just physical
matter, why should we trust it?
28. Moral ethics
• There are no universal moral
standards
• Man must live according to his
passions and instincts
• The primary focus is on power
• “Reason cannot establish values”
Nietzsche
32. Nietzsche’s major ideas
• Believed that Christianity produced
a “weak, slave” mentality
• Believed that a race of “supermen”
would ultimately rule over the weak
and inferior
• Believed that the ideal human being
was beyond the concept of good and
evil
33. • Proposed that man must embrace
his essential nature
• Live according to his instincts and
passions
• Power and force
• For Neitzsche,women were seen as
weak and too emotional to ever act
in authentic ways.
34. “In our whole unhealthy modernity
there is nothing more unhealthy
than Christian piety. To be
physicians here, to be inexorable
here, to wield the scalpel here-
that is our part, that is our love of
man….”
35. “God is dead. We have killed him.”
Nietzsche believed that humanity had “killed”
the idea and importance of God by ceasing to
believe. Religion and the notion of God had
become irrelevant.
37. According to nihilism,
humans would have to face
the void of a world without
God, truth, purpose or
meaning.
“The abyss”
38. Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
“But his soul was mad. Being
alone in the wilderness, it had
looked within itself and, by
heavens I tell you, it had gone
mad."
“The horror…the horror”
Kurtz’s last words