Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (German: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, October 15, 1844 - August 25, 1900), German philosopher, Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844 Born in a rural priest family in the village of Loken near the town of Loken in Saxony, Prussia. His works provide extensive criticism and discussion in the fields of religion, morality, modern culture, philosophy, and science. His writing style is unique, often using aphorisms and paradoxes. Nietzsche had a great influence on the development of subsequent generations of philosophy, especially existentialism and postmodernism. He resigned in 1879 due to health problems and suffered from mental illness ever since.

Nietzsche

Nietzsche's philosophy was once regarded as an "action philosophy" at the time, a philosophy that claimed to maximize personal requirements and desires. His philosophy is disdainful and critical of everything. This is an important reason why his philosophy is appreciated by postmodernists.

Postmodernism either rejects or eliminates traditional philosophy and modern philosophy. Yet there was a soft spot for Nietzsche's philosophy, from which postmodernists absorbed everything they needed. Including the basic ideological viewpoints of Nietzsche's philosophy, and even Nietzsche's philosophical style. The dissolution tendency in Nietzsche's philosophy became the spiritual pillar of postmodernism. Nietzsche never imagined that he would become the theoretical pioneer of postmodernism.

For him, philosophical thinking is life, and life is philosophical thinking. He created a unique philosophy with different forms from the past to demonstrate his philosophical thoughts. His philosophy requires no reasoning and argument, no systematic framework, and is not a theoretical system at all. It is his direct perception of the pain and joy of life. Nietzsche, in his first academic work - "The Birth of Tragedy", had already begun his criticism of modern civilization. He pointed out that in capitalist society, despite increasing material wealth, people have not achieved true freedom and happiness. The rigid mechanical model suppresses human personality and causes people to lose the passion for free thought and the impulse to create culture. Modern culture appears so decadent. This is a disease of modern civilization, and its root cause is the atrophy of life instinct. Nietzsche pointed out that in order to cure modern diseases, we must restore human life instinct and give it a new soul to provide a new interpretation of the meaning of life. He received inspiration from Schopenhauer and believed that the essence of the world is the will of life.

Nietzsche violently exposed and criticized traditional Christian morality and modern rationality. In epistemology, Nietzsche was an extreme anti-rationalist, and he made the most thorough criticism of any rational philosophy. He believes that the spiritual life of Europeans for two thousand years is centered on belief in God, and humans are God’s creations and appendages. The value of life and everything in human beings rest on God. Although the basis for God's existence has begun to disintegrate since the Enlightenment, in the absence of new beliefs, people still believe in God and worship God. Nietzsche's famous saying, "One shout - God is dead" - is a ruthless and fearless criticism of God. He said through the mouth of a madman that he was the murderer of God, pointing out that God deserved to be killed. Christian ethics constrains the human mind and suppresses human instinct. To gain freedom, God must be killed. Nietzsche believes that the decline of Christianity has its historical necessity. It transformed from the religion of the oppressed into the religion of the rulers and oppressors. Its decline is a historical necessity.

After killing God as God, we ushered in the God of capital, God incarnated by capital. Nietzsche ignored a basic fact: being enslaved by capital is not much freer than being enslaved by God. But the enlightening value of his cry "God is dead" cannot be underestimated.

Nietzsche also held a critical attitude towards modern rationality. He first attacked the rational philosophers. He pointed out that the first characteristic of philosophers is their lack of sense of history. For thousands of years, everything that philosophers have dealt with has become a conceptual mummy. The role of reason is nothing more than to freeze the flowing history and use some eternal concepts to frame living reality. The result is to stifle the process of birth and death of things and stifle life. He believes that this world is a world full of contingency, turmoil, and thus unpredictable. He said that there is no reality, everything is fluid, ungraspable, and evasive. The second characteristic of philosophers is to "reject the evidence of the senses" and reverse the real world and the imaginary world. Perceptual evidence is real and believable, it's just that lies are stuffed into it when it's processed. The third characteristic of philosophers is to confuse the beginning and the end. They deny the process of growth and evolution. The fourth characteristic of philosophers is to use the "reason" in language to force people to make mistakes. "Is" is confused with "existence", making falsehoods appear true and truths seeming false, deceiving ignorant people. He believes that it is absurd for people from Socrates to modern people to fanatically appeal to reason. The reason why human beings advocate reason is that they expect it to bring freedom and happiness to people; however, the result is exactly the opposite. Reason is always the enemy of human instinct, causing greater suffering to people.

Nietzsche

If we look at it from a secular perspective, Nietzsche's life was unfortunate and his ending was tragic.

He is a typical loser: the development of his thoughts failed to achieve the expected goals; there were very few people who could understand him in the era in which he lived, and he was always surrounded by terrible loneliness; finally, the disease came slowly and quietly , even became a part of his life. Conversely, one could also say that his life and writings would be unimaginable without his illness and suffering.

However, any unprejudiced person who picks up Nietzsche's works will find them to be brilliant, dazzling and heroic. Of course, there is also a mixture of exaggeration and neurotic narcissism. In these works, Nietzsche used extraordinary courage and astonishing insight to easily overturn various accepted concepts, ridiculed all virtues, and praised all evils. Nietzsche did not establish a closed and huge philosophical system. He only wrote prose, aphorisms and aphorisms; he did not prove anything between the lines of his words, but only predicted and inspired him; but it was not with logical reasoning but with magical imagination that he Conquered the whole world.