Nietzsche and Life

Nietzsche and Life

Introduction

    Sophie’s World is definitely an excellent novel that is flagged as an introduction to the history of philosophy, quite a good front site to step into a more yet-to-be-explored battlefield of mind and idea. Exciting when I saw so many great intellectuals, who construct their own system of philosophy, I felt quite eager to re-think my life and reconstruct my way of thinking that ties my life, with the reference of the philosophers’ major work.

    Obviously, Jostein Gaarder does his best to capture all major philosophers in human history as many as possible. However, I am quite disappointed that major philosophers he mentions in the 20th century lie only in the stream of existentialism, such as Satre and Heidegger. I dare say, Nietzsche, the most influential philosopher in the 20th century, whom should be selected as a main issue, is underestimated by Jostein Gaarder, who just takes about him in a hurry way within several paragraphs.

  In fact, inspired by Nietzsche’s philosophy, I believe my life, at least my way of thinking has changes while applying his ideas to the real life. In this essay, I would take about several ways that Nietzsche’s philosophy motivates me to see deeply and profoundly while encountering some specific problems, such as truth and morality.

    In this essay, I would like to begin with an account of Nietzsche’s perspectivism regarding ‘perspectives’ and ‘interpretations’. Then I would specifically pinpoint the notion of ‘truth’ and ‘morality’ to illustrate how they relate to perspectivism in the later part. I hope to give people a fresh and critical view to rethink about our life in modern society.

Perspectivism
Three types of Perspectives
    Nietzsche’s notion of truth is based on what he called ‘perspectivism’ rather than positivism:
      Against positivism, which halts at phenomena – ‘there are only facts’ – I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only... [continues]

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