On the Return to Nature and Society in Decline
Initially the class discussion about Nietzsche’s rejection of morality had reassured me that believing in morality through reason was something necessary to human existence. However, in reading about his “return to nature” I realized that morality, at least as it’s known to us now, rejects emotional depth in favor of reason - something with which I can’t really agree. When reading the phrase “return to nature,” it’s difficult not think of images of barbarism and violence and struggle; but for Nietzsche a return to nature is “not a going back but a going up” (Twilight of the Idols, p. 89). I feel as though part of the original aversion I had to the concept of a return to nature was that it had little …show more content…
Feelings and emotions are more complex and dynamic than the thoughts with which we try to understand them; there’s a rawness in emotions that doesn’t exist in carefully calculated thoughts and reason. Using reason as a means to conduct one’s life and moral compass is part of the response to one’s inability to fully realize their own emotions and use them as a guide to live their lives. Reason is giving up on the most essentially “human” thing we possess – emotions. A return to nature, then, should require a surrender of reason to emotions as the supreme way to conduct one’s behavior, morals, and overall life. In a return to nature, there is very little need for reason – which terrifies the people of …show more content…
It’s much more comforting to be able to give something an arguably arbitrary reason, than to grapple with the confusion and angst that comes with the unknown. Emotions, and the general thought of anything unknown, is too terrifying to the species that believes it is their supreme duty to know and give reason to everything. There’s a sense of primitivism in using emotions as the default method of understanding rather than reason, because emotions don’t conquer or explain anything – the ultimate desires of humankind. The ability to reason made mankind more powerful than any species on the planet, yet with ability to reason came the inability to truly under our emotions and our desires, constantly attempting to reason with those as well. However, an overabundance of reason takes away from what makes us truly human - and subordinates our desires, and our actual being – and makes these things as simple as extraneous reasoned concepts that are to be understood, rather than personal affects that exist outside of the field of reason. Nietzsche states later in Twilight of the Idols “Human beings are not the effect of some special purpose, or will, or end… It is absurd to wish to devolve one’s essence on some end or other.” (p. 35) While he was not directly talking about reason and emotion, the quote still offers value to the point that trying to define and
Initially the class discussion about Nietzsche’s rejection of morality had reassured me that believing in morality through reason was something necessary to human existence. However, in reading about his “return to nature” I realized that morality, at least as it’s known to us now, rejects emotional depth in favor of reason - something with which I can’t really agree. When reading the phrase “return to nature,” it’s difficult not think of images of barbarism and violence and struggle; but for Nietzsche a return to nature is “not a going back but a going up” (Twilight of the Idols, p. 89). I feel as though part of the original aversion I had to the concept of a return to nature was that it had little …show more content…
Feelings and emotions are more complex and dynamic than the thoughts with which we try to understand them; there’s a rawness in emotions that doesn’t exist in carefully calculated thoughts and reason. Using reason as a means to conduct one’s life and moral compass is part of the response to one’s inability to fully realize their own emotions and use them as a guide to live their lives. Reason is giving up on the most essentially “human” thing we possess – emotions. A return to nature, then, should require a surrender of reason to emotions as the supreme way to conduct one’s behavior, morals, and overall life. In a return to nature, there is very little need for reason – which terrifies the people of …show more content…
It’s much more comforting to be able to give something an arguably arbitrary reason, than to grapple with the confusion and angst that comes with the unknown. Emotions, and the general thought of anything unknown, is too terrifying to the species that believes it is their supreme duty to know and give reason to everything. There’s a sense of primitivism in using emotions as the default method of understanding rather than reason, because emotions don’t conquer or explain anything – the ultimate desires of humankind. The ability to reason made mankind more powerful than any species on the planet, yet with ability to reason came the inability to truly under our emotions and our desires, constantly attempting to reason with those as well. However, an overabundance of reason takes away from what makes us truly human - and subordinates our desires, and our actual being – and makes these things as simple as extraneous reasoned concepts that are to be understood, rather than personal affects that exist outside of the field of reason. Nietzsche states later in Twilight of the Idols “Human beings are not the effect of some special purpose, or will, or end… It is absurd to wish to devolve one’s essence on some end or other.” (p. 35) While he was not directly talking about reason and emotion, the quote still offers value to the point that trying to define and