Reason and Will

Finally!!! A class where I felt that I learned something. Sometimes I feel like as if I just go into class and just listen to people debate how they interpreted the stories and the material but rarely do I ever get the “that’s exactly what the author was going for” sort of thing. I really didn't learn anything from the first group, but the second group! Wow! Great job guys! I honestly found Nietzsche’s works to be rather confusing to me and I am glad I was given the information I needed to clarify the way I interpreted it.

From the discussion of how Nietzsche and Socrates differed I think it had to do with Socrates believed in reason and rationality completely whereas Nietzsche believed that will to power was the essence of life itself.  You need will to survive in Nietzsche’s eyes, but you need reason to survive in the eyes of Socrates. I also think that that is a reason on its own that Nietzsche did not completely agree with Socrates because when Socrates died he surrendered his will for the sake of reason. He choose to not escape from his death or plea for forgiveness all so he did not look like he was going back on everything he ever said. He felt as if everything he said was completely true and he gave his will up to prove a point to the people. And for Nietzsche a person who gives up their will is practically dead anyways.

I believe this also goes against Nietzsche’s views on truth because he philosophizes that there is a realm of truth and being but reason is excluded from it.

“Let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as “pure reason,” “absolute spirituality,” “knowledge in itself”: these always demand that we should think in an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye absurdity and a nonsense. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective “knowing”; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our “concept” of this thing, our “objectivity,” be.”

This is yet another thing that I could see the two philosophers viewing differently on. Nietzsche is proposing that truth comes with only the perspective eye. The more view and perspectives we have about a certain thing then the more truth that we will gain about the thing. But reason would argue that there is only one way of seeing something. It either is or it isn’t. There is no other way of looking at the objective truths. But for Nietzsche the more you know about it the more true it can become (in my opinion).

In conclusion I would like to share what I felt about the quote that group two brought up at the very end of class and asked us to reflect on.

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”

Other than it meaning clearly what it says, that everyone has a different way of doing things and there is no right way to do something, I believe that this has something to do with the whole finding truth through different perspectives. In a sense I think it is telling the readers who are reading about Nietzsche’s philosophy that what he is saying is merely only a perspective in our quests to find our inner truth. That his way is only one way. We can either take what he says to heart or believe it to be true or merely use it for our overall knowledge. There is no right way to viewing, interpreting, and carrying on about our lives. As one day we will find our own truth through our own will perspectives and with our own will to lead us the way.