To “Know yourself” and to “Become what you are” are two central elements of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. This was meant to be an antidote to the death of god and the resulting crisis in meaning that would inevitably follow. Nietzsche’s proposed way of overcoming this nihilism was for individuals to create their own values.
Throughout Nietzsche’s works he calls upon individuals to resist the values of the herd which breed conformity and instead to create our own individual values. What isn’t well known is what exactly Nietzsche means by “Know yourself” and “Become what you are” or how one creates their own values. In this video I will explain how you can start your own journey of self-cultivation and to create your own values in the way Nietzsche envisioned.
In the German language bildung refers to a tradition of self-cultivation, where education and philosophy are united for the process of individual and cultural transformation. The American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson and the German poet Goethe were important influences for Nietzsche’s concept of Bildung.
In both Goethe’s and Emerson’s philosophy, the notion of Bildung is absolutely central. Goethe describes the process of character formation as self cultivation. Emerson defines it as nature in its highest form, or nature perfected. In other words, character is the result of voluntary work done on one's own “nature” with the aim of perfecting and enhancing it.
“Although the seeds of our moral and spiritual dispositions are already present in us, and the fundamental character is, so to say, inborn in each of us, nonetheless the form, both moral and spiritual, that we acquire as adults is the effect of external circumstances that touch us in different ways, sometimes more deeply, sometimes more superficially.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
For both Nietzsche and Emerson knowing oneself and becoming who one is go hand in hand. The act of knowing yourself begins with the process of undoing the self-knowledge that you assume you already have. Becoming is the ongoing process of losing yourself and then finding yourself again.
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