Compare And Contrast Nietzsche And William James

Shay Bridges
Professor David Smith
Philosophy101
27 November 2015
Free to Treat Others However We Wish? Would William James Agree? It is true that philosophers William James and Friedrich Nietzsche have had a widespread influence on the entire philosophy world. Though their theories on truth and morality are very different, there is some solid common ground. This essay plans to summarize the theories of both philosophers and show how they are similar. It will also explain if one has to agree with the views of the other based on their own personal theory and the similarities of both. William James, one of the most influential American philosophers of all time, was born in 1842. James also specialized in psychology and was the second of the
Nietzsche was a German philosopher that was born around the same time as James in 1844. In Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality, he introduces his theory on the origin of good and bad. Nietzsche explains how people’s perception of good and bad depends greatly on where they stand in society as well as how and why the general definition of good and bad has changed over time. Nietzsche also says that the root of good is related to the powerful and rich. This distinction led some to automatically associate having power and riches to being good in general. Nietzsche separates the entire population into two classes, higher and lower. The higher class are noble and powerful and the lower class are obedient, humble, and powerless. The higher class are also known to Nietzsche as the Aristocrats and they have what he calls master morality. People with master morality are genuinely happy because they take control and advantage of the power they have in life and do what they want. Nietzsche considers these people strong and also refers to them as ‘birds of prey”. The lower class have what Nietzsche calls slave morality and he considers them to be weak. The lower class resent the happiness of the higher class but are too weak to get their own power and happiness. Slave morality is a passive reaction to master morality where the lower class create a faux happiness to justify their
Both philosophers’ views are very different but similar in the way they describe how different people have different truths and how each person’s definition of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ differ from the next. Nietzsche explains how an individual’s definition of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depends specifically on where they stand in society. The definition of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ changes from person to person which means there is no solid definition of either term. A person with slave morality can believe that the Aristocrats are bad and they themselves are good. This is completely flipped when coming from the master morality’s perspective. Though these beliefs are opposite, there is nothing to prove either is false only evidence supporting the truths in both. Though Nietzsche does not fully side with either morality, he has a clear objection toward slave-morality. Nietzsche believes that the people that are powerless deserve it and the same for the powerful. This implies that people with either morality have what it takes to be the other if they want to. Nietzsche clearly objects to this when he says that the strong can be weak but not the other way around. One thing that is clear for sure is that a person can either be one or the other, not both. This is how it starts relating to James’ view on truth implying that nobody is the same. According to James, people have truths based on their