Nietzsche and Freud

Nietzsche and Freud combined to create some of the most powerful philosophy in the history of the world, and both created theirs at a time period that was essentially a fertile growing ground for contextually bizarre thought. What I like most about Nietzsche, and I think has the most impact on how I approach life, is his idea that humans have to pursue their own course of creativity and throw tradition out of the window. I can’t really explain it, but this resonates with me strongly because I always get frustrated when people discredit things based simply off the fact that they’ve never happened before. I always tell myself that every single good idea that has ever been thought of was probably considered stupid by nine out of the ten people who first heard it. I agree with Cas, though, when he mentioned the fact that Nietzsche under estimates the power of community for an individual. Identity is something only present when other identities are involved, so it’s impossible for a person to truly create something unique by himself without automatically having it examined in the context of everything else, which is some sense ruins the individuality of the object. Humans are by nature social animals, and it’s hard to imagine a world where every person is pursuing something completely individual. My favorite aspect of Freud is his emphasis that we are driven by subconscious drives that we have no power over or knowledge of. It’s interesting to think about our bodies as ninety nine percent things we can’t control and one percent things we are able to understand and control. I think that the dream aspect of his philosophy is a little weird because I don’t understand how our subconscious would be so hard to understand when we’re awake, yet would present itself so clearly while we’re asleep. I think dreams are simply manifestations of our conscious mind distorting our current lives. When someone dreams about sex, I don’t think this is the subconscious sexual drive, but rather the brain, which probably thinks about sex when the person is conscious, distorting or exaggerating the conscious thoughts.