The concepts of health and sickness in Nietzsche's philosophy

Download

index.pdf

Date

2009

Author

Akbalık, Bilge

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

238
views

168
downloads

The purpose of the present study is to assess the role of the concepts of health and sickness in Nietzsche’s philosophy. While doing this, our basic presupposition will be that these concepts owe their special place to their being the new criteria for Nietzsche’s project of revaluation of all existing values. Nietzsche was philosophizing in the face of the crisis of 19th century Europe, that is, nihilism. According to him, Western traditional thought is based on an otherworldly oriented conception of life the values of which are nothing but a negation of life. Although these values had served man’s justification of living for a long time, they reached their expiration by the ‘death of god’ resulting from the materialistic tendency of the flourishing natural sciences of the 19th century. The ‘death of god’ paved the way for a devaluation of once most valuable values, of which the most notable are ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Thus, Nietzsche’s project of revaluation needs new evaluative criteria as well, which is ‘health’ and ‘sickness’. In this study, I will argue that, Nietzsche situates a physiological understanding of these concepts at the very heart of his revaluation and their somehow metaphorical application to culture and modern society is based on a physiological conception of them as well.

Subject Keywords

Philosophy.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12611285/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/19199

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Dualities in bergson revisited: towards a reconciliation? Karahan, Gülizar; Çırakman, Elif; Department of Philosophy (2008) The aim of this study is to make an inquiry on the nature and the development of dualities in Bergson’s philosophy. Since the nature of each duality differs from the others and the dualistic pattern inherent in Bergsonian philosophy is subject to change, we base our study on a chronological structure in order to comprehend better how this pattern changes. We claim that such an inquiry will yield relevant outcomes with regard to ontological and epistemological evolution of Bergson’s thought. To state more pr...
A discussion on how to formulate the question of contingency in Leibniz's system: a logical approach Besler, Arman; Grünberg, David; Department of Philosophy (2008) The main objective of this study is to shed light on some difficulties involved in the formulation of the problem of contingency in Leibniz’s philosophical system. Leibniz’s mature philosophy is characterized by the solutions he proposes for this problem, and the ontological ideas underlying or assisting them. ‘The problem of contingency’ refers to the tension between his conceptual containment theory of truth and his claim that true existential propositions that is, propositions which concern actual indiv...
The relation of freedom and evil in Kant’s moral philosophy Aydın Bayram, Selma; Turan, Şeref Halil; Department of Philosophy (2006) The purpose of this study is to examine concepts of freedom and evil, and to clarify their relation in terms of Kant’s moral philosophy. In this study, I firstly examine Kant’s understanding of freedom and the problems that this understanding leads to. I also discuss how the concept of freedom can be reconciled with the concept of evil expressed in the form of “propensity to evil”. Additionally, I attempt to show the significance of the notion of evil for Kant’s moral theory. Evil is one of the most critici...
Nietzsche’s perspectivist epistemology : epistemological implications of will to power Soysal, Soner; Turan, Şeref Halil; Department of Philosophy (2007) The aim of this study is to examine the relation between Nietzsche’s perspectivism and his doctrine of the will to power and to show that perspectivism is almost a direct and natural consequence of the doctrine of the will to power. Without exploring the doctrine, it is not possible to understand what Nietzsche’s perspectivism is and what he trying to do by proposing it as an alternative to traditional epistemology. To this aim, firstly, Nietzsche’s doctrine of the will to power is explained in detail. Next...
An inquiry on Wittgenstein's conception of meaning Erşahin, Direnç; Turan, Şeref Halil; Department of Philosophy (2007) This study aims at investigating Wittgenstein’s conception of meaning. In this sense, philosopher’s early and later periods will be examined. Key notions of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, picture theory of meaning, language-game, rule following, Private Language Argument and his assertion that ‘meaning is use’ will be analyzed. Out of this analysis, Wittgenstein’s answer to the following basic question will be sought: How is meaning derived in a language? The outcome of this query will be comparativ...

Citation Formats

B. Akbalık, “The concepts of health and sickness in Nietzsche’s philosophy,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2009.