I Didn't Know How to Spell Nietzsche

I’m honestly a little shocked to be reading Nietzsche at this point. Although I knew that Nietzsche was going to be covered in this class, I always felt like I would have a stronger, more concrete grasp of the existentialist prose. Yet here I am, just as lost and mystified in the complex logical reasoning and unconventional thinking as I was almost three months ago (although, in a way that might be the purpose of existentialist philosophy). While I know that a portion of this lack of progression is due to my focus being placed elsewhere and due to the fact that as a physics major, my thoughts processes are more mathematical than philosophical, I can’t help but feel unprepared for Nietzsche. I have always heard reference to Nietzsche in most any semi-serious conversation that involves philosophy, but his works were always used and cited in such a way that they appeared too advanced for the amateur philosopher. After my first reading of Nietzsche, I find that I can see why he was often portrayed as being a much more advanced philosopher than those who are often used to introduce beginners such as I was, or possibly continue to be. Nietzsche, although I will admit that my reading of him to this point has been little, seems almost uninterested in the seemingly mundane existentialist questions and instead goes straight for the ones that seem to epitomize existentialist thought. The death of God, the source of morality, and the cause of consciousness are all questions that Nietzsche has begun to tackle in my limited readings. The death of God concept was especially interesting to me, particularly how Nietzsche describes how the death of God affects philosophers,

“we philosophers and “free spirits” feel, when we hear the news that “the old God is dead,” as if a new dawn shone on us” (Solomon, 68).

This lead me to ask, does the death of the old God lead to expanded avenues of philosophical thought in the same way it leads to expanded thoughts of scientific thought? I feel the death of the old God, Nietzsche seems to highlight the Christian God, may have had the same effect on philosophical thought that it had on scientific inquiry. The effect that, by removing the restrictions placed on questioning based on the religious tradition, scientists in the last two hundred years have made incredible advancement in the amount of knowledge available to humanity. While I am not familiar enough with the development of philosophy in the last two hundred years to say for certain, I feel that Nietzsche described an actual pattern in philosophy analogous to that which took place physical sciences.

Solomon, Robert C. Existentialism. New York: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.