Posted by Casper S Damsgaard on April 10, 19103 at 04:28:46:
In Reply to: Nietzsche Vs Descartes posted by Cie on February 14, 19102 at 08:03:35:
: can anyone help me in my coursework of comparing and contrasting the views of descartes and nietzsche on the possibility of religious faith. thanks
Well, Descartes tries to prove the existence of God, which is the condition of establishing/ensuring an external world, including intersubjectivity, in his view. God is a precondition of the innate ideas and coonnection with the surrounding world. There's no doubt in the mind of Descartes, that God exist. Hence, he is claiming that faith/religion is a pre-condition of any understanding.
Nz is trying to reduce religious phenomena to psychological. The believe in God and christianity is an attempt to escape the contingency of life by adopting the norms of a larger group. It's an expression of a sheep or slave mentality, which Nz opposes. He believes in the will of one man, a strong willed man who doesn't have to live by the dogma of his civilization (he critisise also democracy and socialism - and I'm sure that he would be equally concerned with the consumarism of today).
In Nzs oppinion the idea of God has been refuted by history as a psychological illusion of the human mind - that's what he means when he states, that God is dead. Earlier, (for instance in ancient Greece) the mind of man weren't evolved to recognize the true nature of the phenomenom of God - and such a belief is natural and understandable. But the phenomenom of God has proven in time to be a still more empty concept - as man finds science able to provide answers, God is expendable. We have the laws, but we have killed the legislator.
Hope this is of some use;-)