Friedrich Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality - Report Example

Friedrich Nietzsche Morals Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), the nineteenth century German philosopher and ical philologist, has been recognized as a staunch critic of morality due to its obligation to unsustainable descriptive as well as its detrimental influence on the thriving of the highest types of human beings through its unique norms and values. His moral philosophy, therefore, has been critical in orientation. He has been a great philosopher who has left his mark in every kind of philosophy and his influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy in the modern period. The effect of his thinking can be found in existentialism as well as postmodernism and his fundamental questioning of the value and impartiality of truth has undergone crucial commentary and interpretation through the twentieth century. His radical moral philosophy has been a probing topic of analysis in philosophy and there have been several articles dealing with his moral philosophy. There have also been several significant attempts to associate his moral philosophy with other distinctive areas of knowledge including science, epistemology, ethics, and literature. One such critical approach has observed Nietzsche as a bridge between nineteenth-century atomistic science and process philosophy in twentieth-century physics, literature and ethics. Friedrich Ulfers and Mark Daniel Cohen, in their important article, 'Friedrich Nietzsche as Bridge from Nineteenth-Century Atomistic Science to Process Philosophy in Twentieth-Century Physics, Literature and Ethics,' attempt to establish that philosophy has its root in science and Nietzsche's moral philosophy illustrate this point. The major thesis of their article is that "the late nineteenth-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche established a philosophy rooted in science and succeeded in laying the foundation for a system of values capable of generating alternate forms of cultural expression--many of which have come to fruition in our own time, many of which have yet to be achieved. In particular, his philosophy, beginning in science, is capable of setting standards for and structuring radical formations in epistemology, ethics, and literature." (Ulfers and Cohen, 21) This paper undertakes an analysis of the article by Ulfers and Cohen in order to comprehend the major arguments of the authors and to respond to them with careful reasoning. Introducing their major arguments, Ulfers and Cohen mention that distinctive emergence of philosophy, art, literature, and science or 'the signal moments of culture' in our social life resulted in the systems of values and they bring about the connection between values and such essential areas of knowledge. The authors also make it explicit that there is essential relationship between science and moral values. "Even presumably objective scientific theories are barometric readings of our assumptions and implicit values. They are litmus tests of the cultural agar in which they grow--indicators of the fertility and of the active bases and acids of the ideological loam" (Ulfers and Cohen, 21) This is a major attempt by the authors to connect value system and scientific roots and they maintain that science has a distinctive connection with everything that mount from the soil. Even the natures of human beings are closely linked with sciences. It is in this background that the authors of the article present their chief proposition that Friedrich Nietzsche established a philosophy which was rooted in science and put down the groundwork for a system of values that could produce alternate forms of cultural expression. Ulfers and Cohen stipulate that Nietzsche's philosophy started in science and it can lay down standards for and structure fundamental formations in epistemology, ethics, and literature. Therefore, the central argument of the article attempts to illustrate the connection between science and moral value system with the example of Nietzsche's philosophy. "Nietzsche was primarily an ontologist -- a philosopher of the real, a delver and discloser of the hidden truth of the cosmos -- and that his ontology was rooted in and succeeded in achieving an intended advance upon the scientific principles of his time. His work constitutes a philosophical development by which he transformed the materialist and atomistic viewpoint of the physics of the late nineteenth century into what can be characterized as a process philosophy- a philosophy of the world as an energeticist system as what he called 'a monster of energy'" (Ulfers and Cohen, 21) The major arguments of the article is based on the central point that Nietzsche was chiefly an ontologist who could make the connection between science and his moral philosophy and it is based on this proposition that the authors justify and interpret the nature of Nietzsche's ethics. The largest part of the article 'Friedrich Nietzsche as Bridge from Nineteenth-Century Atomistic Science to Process Philosophy in Twentieth-Century Physics, Literature and Ethics' is an attempt to interpret Nietzsche's moral philosophy, epistemology, and postmodernist elements in his philosophy on the basis of science and ontology. Thus, the authors establish that the moral philosophy of Nietzsche foreshadows the world view of twentieth-century physics and it is a world view which reaches much beyond the limits of science. Nietzsche's philosophy has its origin from the scientific debates of his time, especially the progress of heat theory and this philosophical view focused on 'Becoming over Being'. The principles of the heat theory, the conservation of energy, Heracitus's conception of the phenomenal world as Becoming, and the Heraclitean 'strife of opposites' etc combined with Nietzsche's process ontology produced his central ideas of his moral philosophy. It is also essential to realize that Nietzsche considered 'will to power' as his core ontological principle and he interprets this concept as existing beyond all perceptions anterior to all understandings of permanence and impermanence. Human beings envisage the world as a constant and fundamentally static truth and everything in the world has an appearance of stability and permanence to them. "In Nietzsche's view, the need of an illusion of permanence is a biological imperative... For Nietzsche, the human vision of the world is a result of the same processes that produced the apparent physical nature of the human animal: evolution and natural selection... In short, the character and the structure of all human perception and knowledge, the very language and grammar by which we think, are the products of evolution - they are as they are because of their value as adaptations, because of their capability to help us live, and not because of their literal accuracy, which for Nietzsche is not even suggested." (Ulfers and Cohen, 21) According to the authors of the article, an understanding of the essential relationship between science and moral value, a relationship which is illustrated through the evolvement of Nietzsche's moral philosophy, reveals the basic principles and characteristics of his moral philosophy. In Nietzsche's moral philosophy, one finds an urge to reach beyond what is comprehensible to human perception and understand realities in broader spectrum. Significantly, "to devise a philosophy that suggests the nature of what we do not perceive and cannot directly and clearly conceive is to begin to step out of the cage of our delusions, for such a philosophy hints at what has been elided in our utilitarian perceptions of the world. It is an attempt at a revelation on the part of the philosopher, an effort to part the curtains, and as such, what is inferentially made evident may serve as the foundation for a radicalized version of all that knowledge creates and guides. In Nietzsche's case, his process ontology extends throughout his thinking." (Ulfers and Cohen, 21) Therefore, the article establishes that Nietzsche's moral philosophy is the result of his process ontology in realizing the truths of the world in its entirety. Through their article, Ulfers and Cohen attempt to interpret the origin of Nietzsche's moral philosophy on the basis of the principles of modern science and to justify the specific nature of his moral philosophy by reason of his process ontology. "Nietzsche's address for a new, renewed ethics is made as directly as his heralding of a new knowledge. There is, in Nietzsche's process ontology and in his critique of the generation of moral systems... a call for an ethics not built upon the un-changeability of dominant moral strictures. And it certainly follows that, if the conception of the nature of beings is altered, there is reason to seek an alteration in the conception of the relations between beings." (Ulfers and Cohen, 21) In conclusion, Ulfers and Cohen, through their article "Friedrich Nietzsche as Bridge from Nineteenth-Century Atomistic Science to Process Philosophy in Twentieth-Century Physics, Literature and Ethics,' attempt to make the connection between atomistic science of nineteenth century and the process philosophy of twentieth century and Nietzsche's moral philosophy is used as the essential link between the two. They not only interpret the origin of Nietzsche's moral philosophy on the basis of the principles of modern science but, more significantly, justify the specific nature of his moral philosophy by reason of his process ontology. Essentially, the article establishes that Nietzsche's heralding of a new knowledge solidly corresponds to his new and renewed ethics. Similarly, one may locate Nietzsche's interest for an ethics which is not built upon the constancy of dominant moral strictures in his process ontology and the critique of the generation of moral systems. Works Cited Ulfers, Friedrich and Mark Daniel Cohen. "Friedrich Nietzsche as Bridge from Nineteenth-Century Atomistic Science to Process Philosophy in Twentieth-Century Physics, Literature and Ethics." West Virginia University Philological Papers. 2002. P 21. Read More