Friedrich Nietzsche

Although Nietzsche is considered the father of Existentialism, which celebrates human freedom and moral responsibility, his aphoristic writing style produced polemics against the "celebrated concept of free will" as well as encomiums to chance.

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"Suppose someone were thus to see through the boorish simplicity of this celebrated concept of 'free will' and put it out of his head altogether, I beg of him to carry his 'enlightenment' a step further and also put out of his head the contrary of this monstrous conception of 'free will': I mean 'unfree will' which amounts to a misuse of cause and effect."

"Verily, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach: 'Over all things stand the heaven Accident, the heaven Innocence, the Heaven Chance, the heaven Prankishness.'

"'By chance' - that is the most ancinet nobility of the world...I taught them and through them no 'eternal will' wills."

"Oh heaven over me, pure and high! That is what your purity is to me now...that to me you are a dance floor for divine accidents, that you are to me a divine table for divine dice and dice players. But you blush? Did I speak the unspeakable?"


Chapter 6.6 - Language Chapter 6.8 - Progress
Part Five - Problems Part Seven - Afterword
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