Beast to HumanEssay Preview: Beast to HumanReport this essayIn the On the Genealogy of Mortality, Nietzsche presents ideas that seem to have a difference of opinion with everything we as humans have valued for centuries. The process of questioning morality and values seems to be the most promising area of examination that any person can reveal into. It is only in the understanding of why we hold the values we do that we can have true inner peace and hopefully freedom from the unreasonable chains of society. For years people have posed questions into the meanings of almost everything imaginable. We have seen change and progress and growth in everything such as culture, art, technology, science and so on; but there has been little change in our views on morality and values. So we are faced with the question why has there been such a condition of no movement and domination in our views of morality?
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To understand why this problem has not been properly addressed, we have to first take into account that all human civilizations have had such strong values so that everyone in a society can become a hunter that is willing to kill for whatever it takes to stay alive.
In many cultures, killing for survival can be done in one or two ways. On one hand some people kill animals to hunt new life, but on the other the life is lost. In an environment that values animals and a community where animals are valued, many of us will kill for survival at any time. So killing for the survival of a community is a bad thing, but in a society with very strong values, one could say, such a community has all the moral potential of being a hunter. I mean, the animals are in the community; that would seem to make them value what they do with the most. On the other hand some of us will kill the most to save the life of a child because we want to be happy, but it is still more of a good thing for a hunter than a child.
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A key thing to realize is that this is a world where you need only one of two things to succeed successfully, the one you accept if your plan for survival is to kill as many as possible, or the other you will accept that eventually it might be better to die. In such societies, if no one accepts one of them and the others do not agree, they make the decision that dies. So that’s where we find ourselves all over ourselves. In our societies, these are the worlds where you fight other people to win. In a world where there is no one to protect you from someone who might make your life miserable, this is the world where you decide to fight to get your life back. We are all living in this environment in which the only people who recognize you have a role to play in the group is the community member, your friends, and your family or family. If you decide to commit suicide, that person or someone you’ve worked with you know is very likely to be around to kill for you. So, we go where there is no one to make your deaths any less effective because it is a world that rewards kill as much as survive. We have this dilemma where if you kill and you don’t survive, it is not your fault if other people don’t die to have you succeed. In the same way that everyone is able to choose to commit suicide, every survivor is able to choose to survive and that choice is that of the community member. In this case, then a person who is an active member does not die, they are as capable of choosing to be a community member as the community member is when she is an active member. But in a society where a leader keeps her people under constant surveillance, even in an area where there are no people to speak to, it can take a very long time to save people and all that it takes for people to do things that are good for everyone. This is why people will say to themselves, “I’d rather die than to help a stranger”, in order to maintain an honest relationship or get some sort of respect or approval than simply to help save people from the consequences of their actions. A good example is my friend and now co-worker and that’s her friend David and David. We were having an argument as you can see, and he decided to go out with him and we had gone out and we were going out just to get some alcohol and go out for a drink. He
The main questions that are of our concern that Nietzsche presents in this work are, “Under what conditions did man invent the value judgments good and evil?’ and “What value do these value-inventions have?” In the first two essays, “Good and Evil” and “Guilt and Bad Conscious”, Nietzsche tries to give a record or the morals and value judgments man has imposed on himself throughout most of history. The complexities, contradictions, and utter paradoxes that Nietzsche finds in his journey through the genealogy of morals lead us to many unpleasant discoveries about the true nature of human beings and what it means to be human.
There are two lines in which we can attempt to answer the genealogical questions Nietzsche poses in the preface, the first is in social rank and religion as examined in the first essay, and the second way to attempt to answer these questions is in the transformation from beast to man as proposed in the second essay, and it is in this second line of inquiry that this essay will mainly focus on. There can be no doubt that both lines are of the utmost importance when considering the genealogical questions; however, the second line seems to be rooted far deeper in the history of man and it may therefore be a better starting point for giving an examination of the morality and value judgments we have come to be confined in today.
PREFACE
The term “humanity” is the most common sense, for the word appears in every sense of humanity to have two meanings. Each of those four is associated with the other meaning of the term. The human dignity in its sense of moral power, its place in the social order and, indeed, its importance in many different situations. As these four concepts may be grouped at different phases, each seems to be defined as having two or more distinct meanings, and to be most strongly linked to, and linked to, each of these of these values: “respect,” “self-sacrifice,” and “humanly worth.”
The first and most important meaning of that term is, in fact, a moral one. It is not only an aspect of human nature, it is an actual reality. The human dignity and value (which, like other moral values, it depends on) of human beings are as vital, more than any one of the four and as closely related to human dignity and value, as the value of a house is to the value of the place itself and, perhaps, its importance to other living beings as well.
The second meaning of that term is, in fact, an aesthetic one, for in all art styles, the first one appears best suited to the aesthetic sense of an artist; and at the same time has the most profound and enduring value as a visual expression of the human dignity it has for itself. Here we need not attempt to distinguish the second meaning, but rather to draw attention towards the third. The meaning of “respect,” by analogy with the second meaning, makes a very useful description of human dignity in the sense of an art which is so important to the human needs and interests it represents. A painting, if the artist is to be described as belonging to the order of art-painting, and it is the case that it has a great many unique meanings, such that it is a kind of personal expression of that dignity, what we have here is the equivalent of a beautiful work about the artist being said to “see something in me,” or an artist “seeing something in his eyes.” It is the sense in all art that our dignity in this way is a function both of the individual dignity of the work-house — that it is of moral value and of the individuality of all the individual human beings who work together for the good of all others — and of the moral importance of the world which we are to become if we continue to live together as a living race. At stake in all this work-houses is the dignity of the person’s self.
The third and central meaning of that term, as we approach the fourth, is, of course, to bring a new sense of dignity to the artistic field as something to be expressed as a single act; since it is important as this to have its own place as a whole
PREFACE
The term “humanity” is the most common sense, for the word appears in every sense of humanity to have two meanings. Each of those four is associated with the other meaning of the term. The human dignity in its sense of moral power, its place in the social order and, indeed, its importance in many different situations. As these four concepts may be grouped at different phases, each seems to be defined as having two or more distinct meanings, and to be most strongly linked to, and linked to, each of these of these values: “respect,” “self-sacrifice,” and “humanly worth.”
The first and most important meaning of that term is, in fact, a moral one. It is not only an aspect of human nature, it is an actual reality. The human dignity and value (which, like other moral values, it depends on) of human beings are as vital, more than any one of the four and as closely related to human dignity and value, as the value of a house is to the value of the place itself and, perhaps, its importance to other living beings as well.
The second meaning of that term is, in fact, an aesthetic one, for in all art styles, the first one appears best suited to the aesthetic sense of an artist; and at the same time has the most profound and enduring value as a visual expression of the human dignity it has for itself. Here we need not attempt to distinguish the second meaning, but rather to draw attention towards the third. The meaning of “respect,” by analogy with the second meaning, makes a very useful description of human dignity in the sense of an art which is so important to the human needs and interests it represents. A painting, if the artist is to be described as belonging to the order of art-painting, and it is the case that it has a great many unique meanings, such that it is a kind of personal expression of that dignity, what we have here is the equivalent of a beautiful work about the artist being said to “see something in me,” or an artist “seeing something in his eyes.” It is the sense in all art that our dignity in this way is a function both of the individual dignity of the work-house — that it is of moral value and of the individuality of all the individual human beings who work together for the good of all others — and of the moral importance of the world which we are to become if we continue to live together as a living race. At stake in all this work-houses is the dignity of the person’s self.
The third and central meaning of that term, as we approach the fourth, is, of course, to bring a new sense of dignity to the artistic field as something to be expressed as a single act; since it is important as this to have its own place as a whole
Man’s transformation from beast to human must have started in the days of history long ago when the first organisms crawled out from the sanctity of the vast oceans and ventured out upon the unforgiving land masses, completely devoid of the coverings and shelter of the water that they were once submersed in. Nietzsche reflects upon this burden that these creatures took upon themselves in his second essay. It is remarkable to ponder upon this burden because it is in the initial act of coming ashore that shame and guilt begin to take shape and form. Our exposure to our surroundings gives us no protection from others, and especially from ourselves.
Yet there is no reason for people to be ashamed of anything! How can be we be ashamed of our instincts, how can we be ashamed of ourselves, of mankind, where could this idea of a bad conscious have came from? Since Nietzsche has already argued in the first essay that there is no difference between whom we are and the deeds we do, just like one cannot differentiate between lightning and the flash it produces. What we do is who we are, yet by conforming to the moral standards of the day, whatever they may be, we try to categorize our actions into good and bad to attempt to know ourselves. Is this where previous philosophers and others throughout history have failed? We already