FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

            Existence is giving people the chance to live, see the reality and know the real idea of life. Nietzsche’s exceptional insights into religion, power and morality are hard to judge. He was an atheist that disbelieves in the existence of God. One of his concerns on his writing is existentialism which difficult to understand. 

       Influential German Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844, in Röcken bei Lützen, a small village in Prussia (Germany). His father, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, was a Lutheran preacher. He died when Friedrich was 4 years old. Friedrich and his younger sister, Elisabeth, were raised by their mother, Franziska.

           Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, philologist and Latin and Greek scholar. He applied himself to such topics as morality, religion, epistemology, psychology, ontology, and social criticism. He took a position as professor of classical philology (a study of language) at the University of Basel in Switzerland. He became the youngest ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869, at the age of 24. Before Nietzsche’s writing generation, he explained that the universe and everything on it is driven by a primordial (existing from the beginning of time) ‘will to live’ that result in a desire in all living creatures to avoid death and to reproduce.

            One of his most remarkable works is Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen also translated as “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. It was published in four volumes between 1883 and 1885. Most of the works deals with ‘eternal recurrence of the same’ and the parable on the ‘death of God’. He also wrote Beyond Good and Evil (published in 1886), The Genealogy of Morals (1887) and Twilight of the Idols (1889).

            Nietzsche’s prominent concept in philosophy is “will of power”. It is strongly connected to his concept of ‘life’. Matter is always moving and changing, as are ideas, knowledge, truth, and everything else. For Nietzsche, the universe is primarily made up not of facts or things but rather of wills. The idea of the human soul is just a grammatical fiction. The will to power is the engine of this change. Suppose nothing else were given as real except our world of desires and passions, and we could not get down to any other reality besides the reality of our drives for thinking is merely a relation of these drives to each other.

            Nietzsche writes criticism about Christianity. I choose this philosophy, as you all know I am a God believer, Nietzsche’s perspective is very opposite of mine when it comes to religious beliefs. He doesn’t believe in the existence of God. From his famous statement “God is dead” in his Zarathustra book of 1884, that statement is often misunderstood. It also caught the attention of the religious beliefs of the Christian faith, and as a Christian I’m not in favor of that statement. I believe in God. Yes, we may not see Him but that’s not an excused to disbelieve God. We can read His scriptures and we can feel His presence all the time. I know my reasons are lacking but we know that He sent His only son Jesus Christ who died for us to cleanse our sins to save us.

            “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

            This quote gives me headache but here where there is love but nothing deeper to hold a pair of people together. This quote of Nietzsche is a warning to all who would enter into a relationship to become friends first, and then see what develops. In my opinion friendship is really important in partners, especially to those people who’ll enter marriage because it is one of the best foundations of relationship that can help the both of them to grow. Those who marry without being friends can easily to break. Nietzsche also says that “When marrying you should ask yourself this question: do you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman into your old age? Everything else in a marriage is transitory, but most of the time that you're together will be devoted to conversation.” For me his point is marrying someone is not a joke. It's a commitment with someone to be willing to do whatever it takes to make the marriage work. He’s also pointing out that marriage is about willingness to be with them until the rest of their lives. But everything in marriage is temporary but most of the time that they’re together will be faithful.

            Nietzsche is critical of the idea of objective truth. At this point, Nietzsche believes there is such a thing as truth but that there is no single correct perspective on it. Even us, we don’t know what is real but it is not wrong to believe on things we believe right now.