Class Summary for 4/4

Last class we discussed Friedrick Nietzsche and his philosophy. Nietzsche believed there were three types of history which include monumental, critical, and antiquarian. All three forms of interpreting history can be used or misused. In a healthy society, a monumental historian studies history in order to find the greatness in the past. This historian, by studying the past and recognizing the greatness in it, applies greatness to his life. In an unhealthy or diseased society, a monumental historian sees greatness of the past to be something resented. The antiquarian, in a healthy society is one who sequesters the past, separates it from the present and studies objectively. The diseased antiquarian, also separates the ideals of this age from the past but does so because he believes the current ideals are meaningless. In the healthy society The critical historian, is one who studies history so the same mistakes are not repeated over and over again. The critical historian of the diseased society believes that the world is doomed to repeat itself again and again. History is studied to merely dissect. For Nietzsche, this diseased historian is the worst of all three because he is the one who destroys meaning for himself and man.
Through out history there has always been two wills. The will to power and the will to truth. The will to power, according to Nietzsche was man’s physiological need to create thereby affirming his meaning in a world of chaos. The will to truth, is man’s need to search for the ideal outside of the chaos. In Christianity, the ideal is God. In the age of Enlightenment, the ideal is reason. In Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, he contrasts the harmony of Tragic age of the Greeks with the unbalanced present age. In the tragic age, the two wills are balanced. The Dionysian, one who acknowledges chaos and flux being ever present while still having the will to power, and the Apollionian, the dreamer who searches for the ideal outside of reality thereby deferring meaning to the external world are both in accordance with one another. Overtime, the Apollonian will has taken over. Because the will to truth is ever present, flux is disregarded, the chaos of the here and now is denied overshadowing the value of the self, but the will to power can never be diminished completely.
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a “mad man” exclaims “god is dead. God is dead. And we have killed him.” Nietzsche through this character, laments the loss of meaning in an age where the will to power is almost forgotten. Although Nietzsche believes humanity is on a fast track to Nihilism a world where the cosmic order is denied and man believes in nothing, not even himself, he believes the Ubermench light lead the transition to a new will to power. The Ubermench is one who despite seeing the madness and flux can say yes to life. He is the artist, the creative affirmation who understands that all good comes from artistic creation.