philsophy buffs please help?

Question

I am trying to answer review questions for my final exam in philosophy. I am terrible at this subject but its a core class I have to have.. Our exam is over nietzsche beyond good and evil. our test is monday and we have about 50 questions to answer and I can't even comprehend this book. I don't think I have ever read anything quite confusing before. I hate to inconvience anyone but is there someone who would not mind helping me?? i have looked on the internet for resources for each section but I can't find any. I got the cliff notes but they aren't helping because they only do a summary over each chapter and there are questions that the summary doesn't cover. Gosh I am freaking out. This is so difficult for me. Please someone help me in any way. I suck at this subject

Answer 1

Your teacher can be a bit sadistic, nietzsche is not easy to read i have read that book too and wasn't sure if i understood it. Anyways here are some links to help you study

http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/introser/nietzs.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Good_and_Evil

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/beyondgood/

Answer 2

He would not could placed on something, except he has little ones that are available interior the direction of the nighttime soliciting for daddy to scare away the undesirable desires, then he could a minimum of placed on unders, boxers are terrific, or pajama bottoms.

Answer 3

It was in BGE that he began to formulate his theories on the ethics of good/bad/evil that would be given it's full display in 'on the genealogy of morals.

Answer 4

*An obvious stooge question by and for "j153e".

...in the light of the noonday sun.

Answer 5

Fred was a philosophic basket case (due to a tragic passing of his Pastor father, the "little Pastor" (his fellow grammar students' nickname for him, for he was always preaching to them out of the Bible) couldn't handle the trauma, and turned against God ("God is dead" = "my father passed away while I was still in need of his ministration, care, and role-modeling, so I freaked and began hating the absence of father, thus to get over it I decided God was dead, and I had to be the moral superman if I were to keep my identity as 'little pastor' intact")).

If your core exam is on "Beyond Good and Evil," well, that's a professorial choice, however, it is not representative of many philosophies.

So, assuming you care about gpa, passing, etc., will note that you should reflect on what you believe to be the teacher's grading preferences. E.g., if the teacher is an atheist/dogmatic materialist, give him/her back the same cr-p offered you as "education" and "knowledge."

BG&E was probably his "best work." It was written in his "mature phase" (before he started crying about overworked horses and ended up meekly following his mother about in her house).

Nietzsche was "profoundly" (i.e., psychologistically) concerned about the nihilism which he believed would beset European civilization during the slow decline of Christian culture.

Schopenhauer's "World as Will and Representation" influenced him greatly during his undergraduate years. Basically, his philosophic worldline was a personal/universal drama search to overcome the two-fold perceived conditions of no God and vapid/nihilistic personal existence/civilization.

"Thus Spoke Zarathustra" is Nietzsche's hand-puppet version of "We shall overcome." This is Wittgenstein's basic position, for example: the incorporation of perception by a thinking human--a philosopher--which brings insight and meaning to one's current surround.

What is, if God is not connected with/re-cognized, and many are in "herd mentation"? FN's answer is as Wittgenstein's, in method: check out what's happening, in as profound and insightful a way as you are able, and claim and defend your opinion as a good alpha philosopher.

For N, the "de-deification" of Nature (no more Natural Law, no more any perception of God's majesty written in the heavens a la Saint Paul) left one "logical" choice: man as natural animal. So, without Daddy, Freddy became a one-man gang: king of the hill, the self-described "Antichrist," brave new thinker going where no herd had gone before, etc.

During his time, such positions were shocking, radical, highly controversial/disturbing, etc., kind of like punk rock in the 1980s.

Our modern, post-Christian "well, it's true for you" is a descendent of his "perspectival" notion--all is perspective (even the great Nietzsche's). There is no "Truth," no "Reality" (how would he know?), etc. FN denied "soul"...hence, man was a grown-up germ.

Summarized in his own bravado: "This world is the will to power [Schopenhauer's theme, btw], and you yourselves are also this will to power ["not my will, but Thine" being the anti-nietzche]--and nothing besides!"

So, while it is a bit of a stretch, N also had a concept of "the good:" if you could do it again with gusto, it's good (a dog's philosophy of life: if one enjoys eating, etc. it, it's good). N dignified this notion of the good by "the Eternal Return" ("we'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when"). (I.e., some billions of universes later, another "FN" will be going through his caterwauling and kvetching, "again," and "loving it.")

At least, this is likely, if universes arise in cycles. However, proton decay etc. tend to vitiate this 19th century recycling notion, and the only alternative to eternally-organizing Matter is a Creator Mind which brings Energy into Material configuration (the only two options, as "nothing can come of nothing").

Like Schopenhauer, N gave import to art, man's creative spirit, as able to raise some above the herd.

This has a more positive presentation in Abraham Maslow's "Theory Z," in which he deduced that a) humans have basic physical needs (water, shelter, etc.), then, while keeping those in-coming, b) the human spirit moves beyond this "herd" to self-actualization, artistic creativity; what Maslow found, in his final years, reviewing his data on people who'd followed his teaching and system, is that even being an Uebermensch was insufficient--like Nietzsche, a "burned out case" meekly dressed in a white robe and following his mother around, about 95-98% of all "maslowian self-actualizers" came a'cropper. What is needed, Maslow found, is what Plato cited: a "myth" of a "higher Power," a "divine Being," which helps, guides, and inspires. This enables self-actualization to become Self-realization, transcendence of earthly existence to a presumed immortal being, hence, Meaning. (E.g., http://www.yogananda-srf.org http://www.easwaran.org )

Nietzche bravely shrugged this Platonic wisdom off, but even for him, God became once again a living Reality, Presence, in his final years of seclusion or "quiet madness."

It is not only coincidental, but also telling, that his first major work, "The Birth of Tragedy," prefigures and ironically tragically foreshadows the condition of his final daze--inasmuch as in the BoT N claims art will be sufficient for the justification of the "superman's" life (and profound consciousness)--whereas N's acute sensitivities could not obfuscate the existential and Presence Truth of his being by pretending art was sufficient to answer his profound questioning of being.

BG&E has a "if I choose it, I am right/justified" theme (similar to BoT, but totalitarianly expanded from dictator of the canvas to dictator of the societal canvas). If people are not grossly insensitive/functionally sociopathic, such imperiousness elicits pain-awareness of the suffering one's own "superman" or "superwoman" "I'm right" behavior inflicts upon others. (E.g., "Abort that preborn human?--no problem--I'm inconvenienced;" "Find Jews to be obnoxious?--no problem--declare them inhuman and incinerate them," etc.)

So, in essence, to pass the faux test, give faux information by understanding faux Nietzsche (before he went white-robed and Mother's childlike). It's like living a lie, but, that's what the course structure requires, no? So, put on your N "thinking" cap, thus illogically know there's no God (impossible to prove a universal negative, but don't let that stop your super behavior), believe that your sister (or, in your case, "your brother" molested you, believe that there's no law but your own, because you're tough (Humphrey Bogart might be a good model for "FN-thinking")...and try to brainwash yourself into reading BG&E key factoids and views in that way. Then, unless you like being an illogical, sociopathic idiot, after the exam, return to your herdy or Christian/Jewish/faith-based common sense.

cordially, and good fortune,

j.

p.s. You might enjoy, as theraputic recreational reading, Martha Beck's "Expecting Adam" and Dr. Elizabeth Mayer's "Extraordinary Knowing." Beck's book is warm, autobiographical, witty, and profound in ways that philosophizing FN doesn't even begin to grasp; she wrote notes for it while carrying her child to term and earning her Ph.D. at Harvard.

Father Seraphim Rose's "Nihilism" is a brief (100 pages) treatment of nihilism, which is excellent, in that it includes Nietzsche's "anti-nihilism" for what it is--a little child's disdain for life without father, and a strongly stubborn effort to find meaning in a nonetheless nihilistic way.

"Watch Your Dreams" and "Men in White Apparel," Ann Ree Colton, "Climb the Highest Mountain," Mark Prophet, and "A Philosophy of Universality," O. M. Aivanhov, might challenge your awareness, but many have benefitted by them.