TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
1.1
THE PRINCIPAL PARTS OF
SELF-TRANSCENDENCE
1.1.1 THE
EGOCENTRIC INTERPRETATION OF
SELF-TRANSCENDENCE.
1.1.2 THE SOCIAL
INTERPRETATION OF
SELF- TRANSCENDENCE
1.1.3 THE
THEOCENTRIC INTERPRETATION OF
SELF TRANSCENDENCE.
1.2 ABSTRACT MANIFESTATION OF
SELF-TRANSCENDENCE.
1.2.1
SUBSTANCE AND ACCIDENT
1.2.2 BODY AND SOUL
1.2.3
MAN AND THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE
1.2.4
GOD AND THE UNIVERSE
1.3 MANIFESTATION OF SELF-TRANSCENDENCE
IN OUR DAILY PROGRAMMES AND THE WORLD
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW
OF RELATED LITERATURE
2.1 EPICUREANISM
2.2
HUMANISM
AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT PERIOD
2.3.
CAPITALISM
2.4.
MARXIS
2.5.
EXISTENTIALIST.
CHAPTER
THREE
EGOCENTRICISM
IN NIETZSCHE.
3.1. THE DEATH OF GOD
3.2 SLAVE AND MASTER MORALITY.
3.3 REVALUATION OF ALL VALUES.
3.4 THE WILL TO POWER.
3.5 THE SUPERMAN
CHAPTER FOUR
CRITICAL
EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION
4.1 CRITICAL EVALUATION
4.2 CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Man by nature it has been said is an
insatiable being. He is never satisfied and fulfilled within any particular
state. He wants always to move beyond his present condition and consequently
realize himself in the ultimate end. In other words, man seeks to transcend
himself in all his activities. Man is never a static and motionless being that
remains constant at any particular position. He is rather gifted with those
qualities that make him an active being full of potentialities and
capabilities. What then is self-transcendence? It is that characteristic
movement of man in which he continually surpasses himself, in all that he is,
all he wishes and all that he has. I mean it is that constant tendency
possessed by man to always go beyond the already acquired situation in search
of the supreme cause of his being, his primary origin and what should be the
final end.
With regard to this, some solutions
were given for the essence of self-transcendence and egocentricism is one of
them. This was however developed by modern and contemporary philosophy, above
all by the representative of the existentialist current, beginning with
Nietzsche. In this project therefore,
attempt is made to examine the egocentric interpretation of self-transcendence
in man in the light of its greatest exponent and defender by name Friedrich
Nietzsche.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Nietzsche has the belief that man, in
his present life, finds himself in a precarious, pitiable, devastating,
alienated, decadent, and inauthentic condition, full of deficiencies and
miseries. Consequently, something has to be done in order to free man from this
litany of problems. This is because there exists in every man that tension to
free himself from the slavery of ignorance, error, fear and passions.
Therefore, the crux of the problem lies in the recovering of the self through
the acquisition of a truer and more proper being by effectuating a fuller and
more complete actualization of his own possibilities. The message is that man
must as a matter of fact be surpassed and to fully realize himself, he must
shatter the fetters of metaphysics, morals and religion, and in particular, he
must eliminate the idea of God.
PURPOSE OF THE WORK
Nietzsche in a bid to free man from
his depressed state brought to the consciousness of all the fact that man must
abandon or eliminate the idea of God, religion and morality. An exhaustive
effort is therefore made towards analyzing, exposing and evaluating this
surpassing of oneself in a bid to realize oneself and we shall see also why it
is egocentric.
SCOPE OF THE STUDY
Going through many books especially
philosophical Anthropology by B. Mondin, one will see immediately that many
people made one contribution or the other on the issue of self-transcendence.
Many still said many things with regard to the egocentric interpretation of
self-transcendence in man. However, in this work much attention is paid to
Nietzsche who as it has been said earlier is the greatest exponent and defender
of this egocentric tendency in man. We equally considered the abstract and
spiritual manifestation of self-transcendence in other events outside man.
Besides, relevant materials could be sought from other philosophers and works
of Nietzsche and any other material we consider necessary no matter the source.
METHODOLOGY
It involves expository and critical
approach. Hence, the egocentric interpretation of self-transcendence in man
will be diagnosed, exposed, carefully and systematically examined in the light
of Nietzsche. This project also gives room for a well systematized and critical
evaluation of Nietzsche’s mind on egocentricism in man.
CHAPTER ONE
THE NOTION AND MEANING OF SELF-TRANSCENDENCE
IN MAN
Self-transcendence being a quality
outstanding in all human actions has its etymological meaning taken from the
Latin word “Transcendere” which means to ascend on, elevate oneself above,
cross, displace, scale, or simply going beyond. Going with this etymological
meaning, the concept transcendence is attained by experience and at this level
of experience, it denotes a spatial relation: the relation of surpassing,
unboundedness, passing beyond, displacement in the sense of being above, being
beyond, outside of etc. Consequently, we have such expressions like “to
transcend one’s own confines”, ambient or environment, “to transcend every limit”
to transcend the cloud and so on. Following this, the concept of
self-transcendence is transferred now from the realm of material or sensible to
that of the abstract and spiritual concept. From this angle, it therefore
becomes possible to say that the substance transcends the accidents,
intellective knowledge transcends sensitive knowledge. The soul transcends the
world of matter or body etc.
In our own time in philosophy, the
term has taken up a technical meaning. It indicates today the divine reality, namely,
it can refer to the Divine (the transcendence is God) As Mondin points out, we
use the term transcendence today even more often when speaking not only of God
but also of man. All along, we have been talking on the transcendence of
sensible objects. But we can apply the term to the subject. In this case
therefore, we can talk of auto- transcendence. The term therefore indicates the
property of man by which he constantly goes beyond himself in all that he
thinks, wills and all that he realizes or achieves. We can say therefore that
man transcend himself. He transcends himself in thought, in liberty, in
language, in association and in many other things. In fact “he is never
satisfied with his achievements”.
1.1 THE PRINCIPAL PARTS OF SELF-TRANSCENDENCE
The term transcendence is divided
into two principal parts namely horizontal or historical transcendence and
vertical or metaphysical auto-transcendence, While horizontal transcendence
consists of a simple going towards the future, but remaining within the horizon
of space and time and therefore of history. On the other hand “Vertical
transcendence refers to the one that pushes higher, and tends to exceed the
limits (bounds) of space and time, towards infinite”.
In the horizontal transcendence, man
tries to overcome his cosmic limitations, and project himself to a better
future like in the various technological products such as car, air-conditions,
houses, medicine, airplanes etc. The vertical auto-transcendence is seen as a
movement from the phenomenal to noumenal level. Here, man tries to discover
realities behind the spiritual world.
1.1.1 THE EGOCENTRIC
INTERPRETATION OF SELF- TRANSCENDENCE.
A careful and critical examination of
the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, Descartes, Feurerbach, Hegel and
Nietzsche reveals that man is always seen as trying to extricate himself from
life shackles, alienation, entanglement or the state of oppression. The purpose
of this liberation is to reinstate man back to his true nature and this of
course should be done through discovering human potentialities, which will
enable him to realize and actualize himself. This solution has the good of the
subject as its primary objective. According to the egocentric solution, “the
movement of self-transcendence has its one aim, the perfection, the
fulfillment, of man’s being in its individual person”.
This was retaken and developed by F. Nietzsche, as we shall see later.
1.1.2 THE SOCIAL INTERPRETATION OF
SELF- TRANSCENDENCE
Also called the philanthropic solution. It aims at giving
humanity better state of affairs. Its target is the elimination of
individualism and egoism, an attempt to create awareness in the people such
that they will emancipate from individualism miseries and social inequalities
and consequently arrive at perfect happiness. Many people supported this view
like Karl Max, Marcus, Bloch, Garaudy etc. Their target is the movement from
individual self to the entire community. They have no religious overtone. It is
given a social dimension. That is man as a social being is seen going beyond
himself.
1.1.3 THE THEOCENTRIC
INTERPRETATION OF SELF- TRANSCENDENCE.
The crippling and devastating
individualism of the egocentric position and the incompleteness of the social\
philanthropic interpretation of self-transcendence explains the need for man to
search for something more permanent and reliable. Therefore to cling on the
egocentric and social interpretation of self-transcendence will amount to
absolutizing the horizontal dimension of self-transcendence. When this total
dependence on the horizontal level takes place, it will be very difficult for
man to really surpass and assert himself. Therefore, the horizontal dimension
comprising egocentric and philanthropic interpretation of self-transcendence
does not provide a fertile ground for the realization of ones ultimate end.
This is because the question of self-transcendence goes beyond the horizon of
space and time and as such, recognizes the metaphysical dimension. This is the
solution that man’s self-transcendence can only be realized completely in God.
Hence, the theocentric interpretation of self-transcendence centers on God and
sees God as the end point of every human endeavour. God as it were, pulls all
creatures onto himself due to goodness and love. God being the unmoved mover,
draws every other being to himself. Some of the exponents of this view include:
Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Blondel, Lonergan etc. It is therefore only
in God that one can gain perfect fulfillment and consequently realize oneself.
This is the view of the theocentric interpretation of self-transcendence.
1.2 ABSTRACT MANIFESTATION OF SELF-TRANSCENDENCE.
The concept of self-transcendence
does not only exist in the concrete and experiential sense of human existence
but also extends to the metaphysical realm. It goes beyond the physical world
and extends itself to abstract things. That is “from material things, the
concept of self-transcendence was transferred into the realm of a spiritual and
abstract concept”. As a result of this
extension of the concept of self-transcendence to metaphysical things, we can
then say that substance transcends accidents, the world of spirit transcends
that of matter, God transcends the world, the soul transcends the body,
intellectual knowledge transcends sensory knowledge and things of this nature.
These things are really spiritual and abstract for we cannot touch them. We
shall therefore at this juncture examine critically one after the other this
spiritual and abstract manifestation of self-transcendence to see to what
extent they are true.
1.2.1 SUBSTANCE AND ACCIDENT
What can we say to be the meaning of
a substance? It can be defined as a being whose nature is to exist in itself.
For instance, we can see such things like racehorse, maple tree, robin, human
being etc whose centers of existence and activity remain independent. “Beings that go on being what they are behind
the restless face of everyday change”
On the other hand, accident “refers
to those beings that cannot exist on their own, any more than the grin on the
face of the cat can be found apart from the cat”.
The basic and outstanding fact about these ways of being (accident) is that
they cannot exist on their own and so depend on some prior being for their
existence. Hence “an accident can then be defined as a being whose nature is to
exist in another”.
The word substance is derived from
the Latin term sub (under) stans (standing) and it literally means “Standing
under” or that which stands under. Substance constitute the very nature or
essence of a thing and accident represents any of its qualities which is not
essential to its nature; for instance color, size, weight etc. Various
philosophers equally contributed on the superiority of substance over accident.
Therefore, one can courageously say that substance transcends accident. This
was so because the concept of transcendence not only dwells on material and
tangible things but also goes beyond. For Descartes “substance is an existent
which requires nothing but itself in order to exist”.
1.2.2 BODY AND SOUL
The concept of transcendence is seen
and experienced in the body and soul relationship. It was indeed an issue that
captured the minds and thoughts of many philosophers and theologians alike. The
human soul is the principle of intellectual activity and as such, it is
incorporeal and subsistent. That is to say that the human soul in its
relationship with the body can “exist and operate even when it is separated
from the body”.
Consequently, the soul being the
principle of intellectual life, takes the form of the human body. The
transcendence of the human soul over the body is equally seen in the
immortality of the soul, but the human soul is a spirit as well as soul; that
is, it has activities-understanding and willing – which being intrinsically
independent of the body for their exercise, indicate an act of existence
equally independent of the body. There is therefore no principle of death in
the soul, for neither can it be broken up into parts nor is it vitally
dependent upon some other being whose destruction it would share. This is
because the soul of man is spiritual as we noted earlier since it performs
operations that are independent of matter. Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas
would see the human soul as the substantial form of the body as against
philosophers like Plato and Descartes for whom the soul is a separate substance
independent of the body to which it is accidentally united or as against the
views of John B. Watson and David Hume who see the human soul as something that
is unknowable or does not exist at all. The point remains that the human soul
is superior to the body and many religions will support this view. This is why
at the point of death as some religions hold, the soul leaves the body and does
not decay and the body on the other hand decays. Therefore as spiritual, the
soul of man must be the “product of a direct creation; it must be immortal, for
there is no principle of dissolution
in a spiritual being”.
1.2.3 MAN AND THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE
The creation account shows that human
beings are creatures of God, made in his image and likeness (Gen 1:27) and as
such “they are the words of visible creation under God”. The scripture made us understand that
no other thing was created in the image and likeness of God except man. Hence,
the only animal that resembles God is man. This resemblance is seen in our
soul. This therefore bears an eloquent testimony of the superiority and
importance of man over all the created things. Besides, an image is a copy of
something else, resembling it in some specific way.
“Men and women are important images
of God, who infinitely transcends them, because they have a specific likeness
to God in virtue of their spiritual operations of understanding and willing”. The transcendence of man over the
world is also felt in the immortality of man’s soul as against other creatures of
God. Whereas other things will one day perish and go out of existence, the
human soul does not perish. Besides all these, man is the only animal given the
power to walk upright (Homo erectus). He is the only animal that is endowed and
gifted with the faculty of reasoning. (homo sapiens) and many other factors
that make man unique among the creatures of God. Other creatures like plants
and other lower animals cannot boast of these things. Considering the above
enumerated talents and gifts to man, we see that he is really a unique being.
This uniqueness therefore distinguishes him from all other creatures. For
instance, man can engage himself in the production of many things in the field
of science and technology. Thanks to his intellect and rationality. Besides,
man is a creature that thinks and deliberates over an action before executing
it and he is quite conscious of himself. That is why he can be held responsible
for his daily actions. These things cannot be found among the lower animals.
For instance, one cannot hold a goat responsible for eaten up ones yam in ones
farm or barn because a goat does not posses the above outstanding qualities
which man possesses. It is not in the nature of a goat to possess these things.
On the other hand, man possesses all these qualities and this makes man a
unique animal or being. It is because of these facts and many other ones that
we say that man transcend his environment and the creatures in it.
1.2.4 GOD AND THE UNIVERSE
To talk about the transcendence of
God over the universe is already a clear fact to the human knowledge. Our
emergence into this world and the entire universe itself is the handwork of
God. This is because created things cannot be greater than its creator and as a
matter of fact should remain under its direction and sustainance.
In short there is nothing which is not subject to the
government of God, for it is God who maintains all creatures in existence and
moves all things including subordinate causes, in accordance with his will
This implies therefore that there is
no cause which can impede his action, because no cause can happen independent
of him. God shows his transcendence over all creatures by preserving them in
existence. “Just as the song is continually dependent upon the singer if it is
to be heard, so the creature is continually dependent upon God if it is to
exist”. God moves and sees to the movement of
all the creatures and through this movement which they receive from God, they
are able to act since they cannot act outside God. Therefore, we can say that
God “rouses creatures from inactivity to activity” We can also deduce here that this
movement of the universe presupposes a mover who is not moved himself by any
other thing since he transcends both the creatures and movement. God is indeed
the “prime mover, the unmoved mover and the source of the motion of the
universe”. The creature “remains
a contingent being deriving its existence from God and so the creature exists
only as long as God sustains it”.
Stretching the transcendence of God
over the creatures, we come to see his immutability. What does this means? It
means that “God is in no way subject to change”.
All other creatures can change from one state to another. For instance; man
changing from the state of poverty to richness etc. God is eternal because he
continues to exist of himself without having beginning and without the
possibility of ceasing neither acquiring anything nor suffering the loss of
anything. Simply put, God transcends the universe.
1.3 MANIFESTATION OF SELF-TRANSCENDENCE IN OUR DAILY
PROGRAMMES AND THE WORLD
The limitedness of man which springs
up as a result of man’s boundedness within space and time does not make him
wait on nature in providing for his well-being. For instance, he throws himself
into creating and inventing many things. Today, man has many achievements like
the construction of modern houses, reduction in infant mortality, and complete
eradication of some diseases through medicines, processed food items, easy
means of transportation in the air, sea
and land and all these are possible due to the break through in science and
technology; that is the outcome of human ingenuity. In politics, man also
propounds laws and the rule of life for a better conduct and happy future.
Ethics also contributes its own quota. It helps to create the awareness on what
to do and what to guard against for the overall welfare of all. These guiding
principles make man to live in peace and harmony with others. Economically, man
is also making sincere efforts to ameliorate his ugly and devastating situation
in the world.
Man also brings in sophiscated
implement like tractors instead of relying on local implement in his farm work.
But one thing remains clear and that is that man is simply seeking to transcend
himself in all these actions and consequently arrive at a better condition and
fulfilled life.
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