5th
School work sucks.
(Just something I am working on for school)
By: Nathan Morris
Usurping the Universal: A look at the use of Ethics in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and Nietzsche’s The Anti-Christ
As Friedrich Nietzsche states, “the noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values,” he does not blindly submit to the morals imposed by his surroundings (Reath 267). Here, much like Soren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling — and its decree to move past the limits of the ethical, or universal — Nietzsche’s work, The Anti-Christ, encourages its readership to rise above the decadent and egalitarian values of morality, and in turn, embraces the maxim that “the single individual is higher than the universal” (Kierkegaard 63). In short, both texts promote a “teleological suspension of the ethical,” or a renunciation of ethics, in order to comment on the absurd and paradoxical doctrines of Judeo-Christianity. To accomplish this, each work presents a Biblical character, removed from strict moral conventions. Thus, for Kierkegaard, Abraham’s choice to suspend ethical norms, and sacrifice his son, is seen as a method of attaining both enlightenment and a true conception of faith. Whereas for Nietzsche’s work, Jesus’s opposition to the “ressentiment” of Christian ethics, serves as a means to depict the importance of man’s will to power: simply, man’s nature as a “creator of values,” one who is able to use his will to promote a self-glorifying morality.
