Saturday, 20 February 2010

Friedrich Nietzsche

A wise man once said, "After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands."

That man was Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th century German philosopher. Nietzsche had many idea's floating around in his oversized moustache head but unfortunately his work was widely unread until his death from mental health issues in 1900. It's thought that after his death his written word suffered some distortion by his sister and literary estate, Elisabeth and became a set of ideas which supported Hitler and Nazism... whether this is derived from his obvious hate of religion I don't know. There was always an argument surrounding whether he was a Nazi or not. Nietzsche was NOT a nazi, the nazi movement happened after he died but he was into anti-semitism but he didn't hate Jews in particular. He hated all religions equally. "God is dead." was a famous quote of his

Through out his 1885 philisophical novel, 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra', Nietzsche talks about the overman which is essentially the superman theory. He believed that humanity was something that must be overcome and that the world consisted of Übermensch people such as Leonardo Davinci, Beethoven and Shakespeare. He said that 'normal' people could become superpeople by breaking away from conventions. It could be argued that Nietzsche was a role model for gay rights as he believed you don't need to worry that being gay is wrong because that is a collectivist idea, just as all religions are too.

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