Friday, April 21, 2017

Friedrich Nietzsche and concepts


Photo source: Wikimedia Commons, Friedrich Hartmann

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was an influential philosopher best known for his contributions to ethics and the theory of the ubermensch. Philosopher Paul Tilich said,
"Nietzsche is the most impressive and effective representative of what could be called a 'philosophy of life'. Life in this term is the process in which the power of being actualizes itself." (The Courage to Be, 1952)
The rest of this post is some quotes from Nietzsche's essay On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense.

Concepts and metaphors


"We have seen how it is originally language which works on the construction of concepts, a labor taken over in later ages by science." (On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense, 1873)

"The man of action binds his life to reason and its concepts so that he will not be swept away and lost; the scientific investigator builds his hut right next to the tower of science so that he will be able to work on it and to find shelter for himself beneath those bulwarks which presently exist." (On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense, 1873)

"We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things - metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities." (On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense, 1873)

"The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself." (On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense, 1873)