Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900)
Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the precursors of the existentialist movement in philosophy. While he did not consider himself an existentialist, Nietzsche's ideas about morality, meaning, and human freedom heavily influenced later existentialist thinkers.
A core theme in Nietzsche's work was the idea that God is dead – the notion that the enlightenment and rise of rationality had led to the loss of a universal moral order and teleological meaning in the world. Nietzsche saw this loss of stable foundations as requiring the individual to define their own subjective meaning and values. This aligns with the existentialist view of radical freedom and responsibility in creating one's own essence.
Nietzsche rejected traditional morality ("Beyond Good and Evil"), arguing that traditional values often turn life-affirming instincts into unhealthy guilt, resentment, and nihilism. Like existentialists, he called for individuals to develop their own values through conscious choice, living authentically rather than merely following external social roles and conventions.
Nietzsche's concepts of the Übermensch and will to power also influenced existentialism. The Übermensch is an individual who is able to overcome nihilism by creating their own values and meaning in life. This served as an inspiration for the existentialist imperative to exercise one's freedom authentically. His will to power described each individual’s drive to grow, dominate, and create, which connects to existential themes of self-definition and living passionately.
While Nietzsche differed from existentialists in his emphasis on aesthetics and vitality over rational understanding, he paved the way for their focus on individual values, responsibility, and meaning-making. His unflinching look at the death of God and lack of universal foundations clearly shaped the outlook of later existential philosophers like Sartre, Camus, and de Beauvoir. Nietzsche's insights made him one of the pioneering forerunners of the existentialist perspective on life in modern times.
Basic Ideas:
Death of God
Nietzsche claims that reason itself can be an escape from life
His thesis is rather that the values we hold are themselves nihilistic, self-undermining.
Perspectivism: See the Aphorism “The true World.” Against PLato.
Epistemic nihilism
Morality
Nietzsche did not attack morality as such. He attacks Judeo-Christian morality, which he considers nihilistic. He suggests that Judeo-Christian morality is actually a "slave morality," a morality of resentment. "Master" morality, by contrast, is aristocratic and independent, but today, it often appears as "bad conscience."
Universal principles, says Nietzsche, don't take into account the vast difference between individuals. Does love extended to everyone - per the New Testament - still deserve lo be called love?
Like Aristotle, virtue ethics.
Evolutionary possibility: Uber-Mensch?
Freedom, Fate, Responsibility
Nietzsche rejects pessimism and replaces it with amor fati - the love of fate, but insists that we can and should “give style to our character" to "become who we are."
For Nietzsche, consciousness is vastly overrated. We arc biological creatures, whose every action can (in principle) be explained naturalistically.
Nietzsche, unlike Kierkegaard and Sartre, has an ambivalent attitude toward the notion of responsibility.
Will to Power
Power is best conceived as self-mastery, inner strength.
For Nietzsche, the will to power provides a serious theory of motivation. Human behavior (animal behavior. too) is motivated by the desire for power.
The metaphor of energy pervades Nietzsche's works.
Nietzsche ultimately rejects the dichotomy between reason and passion.