Question

briedly dicuss and compare the existential philosophies of Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche.

briedly dicuss and compare the existential philosophies of Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche.

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Answer #1
  • Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard are often grouped together as some of the first thinkers in what would become existential philosophy. However, Nietzsche (who outlived Kierkegaard by decades) likely never encountered the other’s work directly. The differences between them are therefore stark.
  • Kierkegaard does not have a strident ontology of anything but the self. For him, the self is all-encompassing and the most pressing issue. Therefore, he is not concerned with the categorization of “being” in the tradition of Aristotelian thought. Rather, he turns his focus to subjective experience.
  • Kierkegaard viewed the categorization of the self as a perversion of subjectivity. Existence is not mirrored as a concept in the mind, it is self-created and self-categorized through the “Either/Or of choice” . No metaphysical abstractions will do the self justice – only the subjective choices truly represent it.
  • Similar to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche’s conception of “being” is difficult to pinpoint since he is mostly a political writer interested in polemics. Yet, his ontology is the cornerstone of his greater ideas and is therefore necessary to understanding his positions fully.
  • Therefore, Nietzsche mostly rejected metaphysics as institutionally illegitimate.
  • Both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche value the subject and largely reject metaphysics, which is where they intersect ontologically. Kierkegaard’s position against universals bears resemblance to Nietzsche’s position of perspectivism – that there are many different interpretations, and different perspectives, of a particular truth
  • When one person sees one thing and another sees something else in the same thing, then the one discovers what the other conceals. Therefore, it is through subjective perspectives and the commonality between them that we find truth and fulfillment as individuals, rather than through categorizations and abstractions.
  • Nietzsche and Kierkegaard both place emphasis on the individual, but apply these emphases differently. Nietzsche is concerned with the will of the individual in social relations and is thus concerned with questions of consciousness that Kierkegaard neglects to mention.
  • They also understand Christianity very differently not merely through the fact they believe or don't. For Kierkegaard, Christ is the absurd paradox, that God became man and was entirely both and gave his ministry before dying in a way very unbecoming of the King of Kings.
  • That the God-man could appear to us abased and crucified is beautiful and haunting in Kierkegaard and something that should inspire revulsion if one truly tries to make sense of it.
  • For Nietzsche it's certainly revolting but because of Christ valuing such horrible things as a belief in the meek and those who would fetishize helping in a way he sees as harmful.
  • The difficulty in our understanding the event for him is not that people can't understand God's death and abasement, though one could argue he agrees that we cannot, but that this so-called God, this Jewish carpenter and wannabe messiah, would value pitying those who are beneath him, would mock us by becoming man.
  • Neither philosophers think humanity typically understands the weight of this moment, or at least that it has been lost.
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