Philosophy
Martin Luther King and Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche was a philosopher who was born in 1844 in Roecken, Saxony. For all accounts, he is remembered as being a brilliant man. At the age of 24 years old, without obtaining a college degree, Nietzsche became a professor of Greek at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Nietzsche is the author of such works as Thus Spake Zarathustra, The Birth of Tragedy, The Dawn, The Gay Science, and Towards a Genealogy of Morals. He wrote Beyond Good and Evil ion 1886.
Friedrich Nietzsche spoke out against Christianity as depriving men of free thought in his Beyond Good and Evil. He believed the men needed to make their own determinations of what their values were instead of relying so heavily on the teachings of Christianity. Nietzsche believed that Christianity imposed the will of the weak in society over the strong. He felt that it was a foolish system of values that needed to be replaced by better ones. He did see a danger to society, however, in ignoring the existence of God all together. He believed that this may lead society to spiral into an abyss of meaninglessness if men did not determine some type of value system.
Martin Luther King Jr., was a prominent and integral leader in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. He was born in 1929. King was a pastor, an activist, a civil rights leader, a humanitarian, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. King is best known for his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington in 1963. He attended Morehouse College where he received his undergraduate degree. After graduating from Morehouse he attended the Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester Pennsylvania where he stood out among the other students, becoming president of his class that only contained six black students. Following his attendance at Crozer Theological Seminary, King received his Ph.D. from Boston University.
Martin Luther King Jr. was, for all accounts, a pacifist; King studied the teachings of Mahatma Ghandi that advocated the use of non-violent protests. Following these philosophical teachings, King organized and participated in such demonstrations as the March on Washington, the Selma Voting Rights Movement, and the Chicago Open Housing Movement. King used his philosophy of non-violent protests for more than just to promote equal rights for African Americans and other in the United States; he was also openly opposed to the Vietnam War as he felt that the war was an act of violence fought over money. Because of his position as one of the foremost civil rights leaders of his time, Martin Luther King Jr. catch the attention of many including the United States government. Martin Luther King Jr. was subjected to wiretaps and FBI surveillance. Additionally, allegations that he had ties to the Communist Party were levied against him.
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail while incarcerated in the Birmingham city jail for demonstrating against segregation. The letter was in response to public statements issued by eight white religious leaders in the South during the time of segregation. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail discusses his philosophy of nonviolence and the basis upon which his right to civil disobedience rested.
King and Nietzsche’s Ethical Systems
Nietzsche’s value system opposed the weak will that Christianity brought along with it. He believed that men should not blindly follow the teachings of Christianity, but instead they should pick their own value systems that displayed values of stronger men than what was promoted by Christianity. In fact, Nietzsche argued that God was dead and men should be thinkers. These thinkers should be free to choose their own values. He placed importance on such things as knowledge, truth, free will, and self-consciousness. In Beyond Good and Evil he discusses how religion is arrogant and egotistical in its value system. Nietzsche did believe, like King, that discrimination was not good for society. He criticized the Germans for their view of Jews and believed that there is no philosophical race.
Martin Luther King, Jr. believed in promoting societal change through non-violent demonstrations. Martin Luther King believed in using civil disobedience to promote change based on his Christian beliefs. Unlike Nietzsche, he believed that religion played an important role in his non-violence philosophy. In fact, it was the basis for his belief in the right to civil disobedience. King’s belief in non-violent protests would probably be opposed by Nietzsche as a demonstration of the will of the weak being imposed on the strong; the strong being the African American, such as Malcolm X, that believed that in the face of injustice, the use of violence is sometimes necessary. It seems as though some of the things that Martin Luther King Jr. stood for are the very things that Nietzsche was speaking out against in his Beyond Good and Evil. Martin Luther Kings Jr.’s belief in non-violence was based on Christian teachings. Nietzsche believed that men needed to choose their own values; Nietzsche would have probably felt men needed to choose for themselves whether they believe violence or injustice was the worst evil and act accordingly.
I, too, believe that the use of Christianity in the situation of the Civil Rights Movement called for the imposition of weaker will that what should have been used in the face of injustice. I, however, do not wholly endorse Nietzsche’s view that God is dead and the teachings Christian should be abandoned. I believe that a balance between the philosophy of King and Nietzsche is best for society.
