Morality As Anti-Nature Essay

Friedrich Nietzsche, a prominent German philosopher in the 19th century is one of the most well-read philosophers of the past two-centuries. His ideas regarding morality and nature continue to be discussed and debated to this day among scholars of all beliefs. All living things are given desires by nature. These desires exist as part of who we are. They define us in a way; they can aid us and they can also do us great harm. The cardinal sin of Pride, for instance, can be a good thing, to have pride in yourself and your abilities, and be able to brag about them may be what stands between you and another person applying for the same job. But according to the Bible, it is a sin. So the other person might have the moral high ground, but you will end up with the job. Which is better? Only you can decide that for yourself. Another way to look at it is this. You have a great passion for reading, but morality says that reading is evil. So you deny yourself the pleasure of a good book, magazine article or even a street sign in order to follow what someone else has deemed to be a moral code. You are denying your true self, for no other purpose, but to be accepted in society. In your heart, and in your mind, you know that reading is no more evil that breathing, but because society has told you differently, you ignore reality. To Nietzsche, denying your own passions is like denying reality. If your passions were a tiger, a strong man would catch the tiger and tame it. A weak man would at least run away. But it is only a fool who pretends that the tiger doesn’t exist. The greatest of moralities are those that accomodate nature†¦ the weakest of moralities are those that deny it. Even though many people at the time truly believed that the church provided them a great direction in life, Nietzsche strongly disagreed. Nietzsche believed that following a religion is to ignore the very nature of humanity. He believed that man is born naturally good, proposing that the church  should not be followed in order for humans to allow their passions be presented in themselves as they desire. Throughout his writings, Nietzsche aims to inform his readers that we as humans can only reach our potential by following our passions and ignoring the flawed ideals of the church. Under the doctrine of the church’s morality, innate passions of its followers must be abolished in order to become proper Christians. By destroying the inner passions of its followers, the church is doing a great disfavor by using morality to rule out nature from their lives. When someone begins to follow the ideals of the church, they are introduced with the doctrine of the idea of free will. Basically, this concept claims that even if God is an all righteous and all powerful being, only â€Å"his† followers have the ultimate responsibility for their actions. As human beings, we have a certain weakness to make great mistakes. This is where Nietzsche claimed that there is a case of cause and effect. At the time of his writing, Friedrich Nietzsche saw that when events were not proven scientifically, followers of the church were very naà ¯ve to credit an act of God rather than searching for the answers differently. Christianity had become the enemy of life and nature and the church has stifled its followers by turning them into closed minded and weak humans. Nietzsche ultimately believed that religion creates a concept of anti-natural morality which damages our development as humans quite severely, eventually ending our status and rights as individuals once the church gets involved. Nietzsche believed that the church is at war with the passionate and the intelligent in favor of the poor and spirited. He believed that the ones who began the mental and spiritual decapitations of others are truly the ones who were unable to control their passions and were very ill willed. The people of the church who imposed morality as anti-nature were the ones who were unable to impose moderation in their lives. He believed that an immoralist is an ideal human being, because they are the ones who truly understand the rights and wrongs in life by applying passions and a chosen lifestyle that best coincides with their lives.