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Saint Mary’s University

SCHOOL OF HEALTH AND NATURAL SCIENCES
Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
GROUP 8: Angel, Kristine Joy T., Balut, Chrystian Mae L., Banaag, Maica Janice M.

I. Brief History
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony,
Prussia, Germany. He was a German philosopher, cultural critic and philologist. By his
early 20s, Nietzsche was fluent in Greek and Latin and extremely well-read in the
Western canon. He became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology
at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24. In 1889, at age 45, he suffered a
collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and
vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death
in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900,
after many strokes and pneumonia.

II. Ethical Concepts

a. Who influenced Nietzsche’s idea?
Nietzsche was intellectually inspired by the idea of German philosopher, Arthur
Schopenhauer, from his book entitled “The World as Will and Idea”. Schopenhauer
was an atheist who believed that it was best not to be born at all. His argument states
that human beings were in a state of constant desire. Not achieving these desires
equates to discontentment, and even if the desires were actually achieved,
discontentment would set in anyway. Schopenhauer’s solution was to admit that
fulfillment is impossible. Hence, he encouraged us not to strive for happiness in order
to avoid anxiety and trouble in trying to achieve it. The happiest man, he said, is the
one who gets through life with the minimum of pain. With this idea, Nietzsche felt as
if he was looking into a mirror. In time, Nietzsche was able to write his first book, The
Birth of Tragedy (1872) wherein he started to grapple with the issue of how to deal
with suffering devoid of God.
b. Works of Nietzsche
• The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
• Human, All-Too-Human (1878-79)
• Dawn (1881)
• The Gay Science (1882)
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885)
• Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
• On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
• The Twilight of the Idols, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo (1888)
c. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885)
In order to deliver this message to his audience, Nietzsche used the concept of
Uber mensch (the super man) or someone who is no longer reliant on inauthentic
external goals society gives him or her - parents, religions. Rather, uber mensch is
someone who is able to commit to goals set by oneself and can shift and see that the
responsibility and the joy of creating life lies not with some transcendent God, but
lies within oneself.
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Saint Mary’s University
SCHOOL OF HEALTH AND NATURAL SCIENCES
Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya

d. Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

This book was written, expressing Nietzsche’s intense campaign against
Christianity, with utter dismay at the persistence of Christianity's moral values. In
his perspective, such values no longer represent divine authority, but were already a
threat to the future of humanity itself. According to Nietzsche, the real logic of
Christianity is a hatred of our own human, all too human nature. That is, the existence
of various drives such as sexual drives, aggressive drives, drives to dominate which
are recognized by Christianity as offenses against God and needs to be refrained or
driven down. Nietzsche believes that doing so will not bring humanity to superiority,
as Christians believe, but rather the opposite which is to bring humanity down. His
view of Christianity is something that teaches humans to deny their own nature and
bring about self-hatred. Nietzsche called this sklavenmoral or slave morality because
he thinks it's a morality that is focused on the worst off.
e. On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
In this composition, Nietzsche plotted the emergence of two distinct systems
of evaluation that investigates morality as it was originally defined by masters and
slaves. The first system is master morality which views the character of the master
as someone good, including their desires and approvals. This is characterized by
values such as courage, honor, nobility, and strength. Hence, “goodness” is not totally
good in itself but they are good because they are approved of or desired by the
master. So, master morality can be thought of as the morality of pride, strong-willed
people.
The second system is slave morality in which there is resentment for the
master because the master is dominant over the slave. This resentment then
transforms into a belief that the master and his desires are evil. Slave morality
believes that “goodness” is the opposite of evil. So, if the master is evil and slaves are
the opposite of masters, slaves are therefore good. From this idea, “good” is given the
meaning of being servile and meek. This is exemplified by Christianity which actually
disavows human nature because this religion blindly obeys God and does not allow
humans to think for themselves. Hence, it is for people who are weak and not as
important as the nobles. It values traits like empathy, sympathy, kindness,
generosity, patience, altruism, humility, etc.
Master morality thus grows out of goodness and freedom while slave morality
grows out of evil and slavery. With this explanation, Nietzsche feels that master
morality is the best type of morality because it allows us to embrace all that life has
to offer and is most likely to help humans attain the good life and fulfill the purpose
of ethics. On the other hand, the basis of slave morality (resentment) is not good for
attaining the good life. In fact, it drains the life out of a person and keeps them from
ever living a good life because the values of goodness are often used as a disguise for
weakness.
f. Happiness according to Nietzsche
Happiness is striving towards something and going through suffering in the
process of achieving a great task set by a person to himself. It is overcoming obstacles
that resist a person from achieving a goal that is part of the experience of happiness.
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Saint Mary’s University
SCHOOL OF HEALTH AND NATURAL SCIENCES
Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya

Hence, happiness is not just pleasure, but it is also pain that can be transformed into
happiness. Considering this idea, pain is almost an enabling condition for happiness.

III. Critiques against Nietzsche

➢ Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George
Santayana. Born on December 16, 1863, Was a Spanish and American philosopher,
essayist, poet, and novelist.
• Santayana thought Nietzsche was a "constitutional invalid," the belated prophet
of romanticism who preferred "the bracing atmosphere of falsehood, passion, and
subjective perspectives" to truth.
• The phrases in which Nietzsche condensed and felt his thought were brilliant, but
they were seldom just. We may perhaps see the principle of his ethics better if we
forget for a moment the will to be powerful and consider this: that he knew no
sort of good except the beautiful, and no sort of beauty except romantic stress. He
was a belated prophet of romanticism. He wrote its epitaph, in which he praised
it more extravagantly than anybody, when it was alive, had had the courage to do.
• According to Santayana, "The superman of Nietzsche is rendered the more
chimerical by the fact that he must contradict not only the common man of the
present but also the superior men, the half-superhuman men, of the past.

IV. Application of Nietzsche’s Ethical Principles in the Nursing Profession

➢ As novices in the nursing profession, we may apply the characteristics of Nietzsche’s
concept of master morality. This particularly refers courage, honor, strong-will, and
strength.
➢ In terms of Nietzsche’s concept of happiness, it can be related to the various
situations that nurses witness in the hospital. In this field, we encounter many
unfortunate cases which may tire us physically and mentally. Nonetheless, all of
these pain and obstacles serve as factors that mold us into better and reliable nurses.

V. Sources
British Broadcasting Corporation. (2019). Genius of the Modern World: Nietzsche.
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzcD-LCKuNs
Kirwin, C. (n.d.). Nietzsche’s Ethics. Internet encyclopedia of philosophy. Retrieved
from https://iep.utm.edu/nietzsches-ethics/#SH1a
Magnus, B. (2022, October 11). Friedrich Nietzsche. Encyclopedia Britannica.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Friedrich-Nietzsche
Nietzsche, Friedrich | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://iep.utm.edu/nietzsch/
Santayana's Criticism Of Nietzsche. (n.d.). Philosophical Society. Retrieved from
https://www.philosophicalsociety.com/archives/santayana%27s%20criticis
m%20of%20nietzsche.htm