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Hence, the psychoanalytic, psychotherapeutic sessions focus on and work away at the revelation, examination and analysis of these events and items that are, in turn, thought by the psychoanalyst to have induced and determined the distress, neurosis and psychosis in an attempt to scrape and withdraw all the defensives, protective layers, which the analysed individual creates and employs to protect him and prevent him from suffering, and find out as much as possible about them. These defensive, protective layers prevent and suppress the painful information, events and experiences from being aware of and felt. Experienced by the individual who has undergone and experienced them in the past. The non-subjectivity of psychoanalysis is to discuss and analyse the causes for the patient's condition in the releasing lineages as held accountable for the extractions in meriting inadequacies that come without restraint and confinement.
As part of the endeavour to find reasons, causes and determinants for everything and every human aspect, in general, and for the patient's condition, in particular, an important aspect and element in the Freudian psychoanalytic doctrine and in the Freudian technique of psychoanalysis is the search for symbolic meanings that are meant to have significant meaning as symbolic representations of other matters, moreover too essential imports that approve in acceptation that is perfectly unsaid by some sorted in an ordinance for the understanding of the patient's life and condition than the given, original, items. This technique is normally applied in Freudian dreams interpretation where the unconscious has to be revealed and analysed. Thus, a totally innocent, ordinary, everyday image and object can represent something far more significant, as far as the patient's condition is concerned. As an illustration, an image of a comb may represent a penis and combing one's hair can represent and mean some hidden, subconscious sexual urges directed toward a given person taken to be the source of the particular neurosis/psychosis. Likewise, in the famous case of little Hans' phobia of horses (1909), a big horse and Hans' fear of it have represented Hans' father and Hans fear of being castrated by him, the Oedipus complex.
The psychoanalyst, therefore, places meaning into every word and item that the analysed patient has uttered in her recalling of her dreams by using a series of already made and well-defined, preconceived theories and explanations (which are likely to involve sex, the Oedipus Complex, for instance) to find the reasons and explanations as for the patient's condition. To be fair, Freud has demanded that the interpretation of dreams would be carried out by a professional psychoanalyst who is well trained in this technique.
As a clinical, practical illustration as for the psychoanalytic doctrine and the technique and method of psychoanalysis, the psychoanalyst may conclude from the analysed neurotic patient's utterances during free association, her recounting of her dreams and fragments of memories of events in her life and by virtue of applying symbols and symbolic representations to her utterances and images in the patient's dreams that the patient's inability to have someone touching, grabbing or holding her head and her feeling of severe stress and terror while this action is being carried out is the result and direct consequence of a sexual abuse that occurred during early childhood, during which the abuser has forced the abused child to have oral sex with him by holding and grabbing the young child's head, and was regressing and suppressed by ill’s of Long-suffering from which her consciousness is to protect her from such are the aliments or the suffering comforted by its owing sector of defence mechanisms.
The psychoanalytic therapy is based on the presumption that once the adult neurotic patient overcomes and overpowers the defence mechanisms and becomes aware of the event and experience viewed as the reason as for her neurosis and the feelings, emotions and sensations that these experiences and events seduce the patient, and, least of mention, by means that are aforementioned as a consequent. The Great Theoretical Difference Between the Psychotherapeutic, Existential Application of the Nietzschean Doctrine and Freudian Psychoanalysis
In his writings (Essays on Aesthetics, Untimely Meditations, The Gay Science and others) Nietzsche wishes to be considered by his readers and viewed in and by history as a psychologist who practices’ psychology and has devised 'a new psychology'. There seems as many that are contiguously precarious of Nietzsche and the neurotic patient's feelings and emotions toward the abuser, toward her parents and other family members, any feelings of guilt, shame, humiliation etc., the psychoanalytic session, thus, endeavours to scrape and remove the protective layers that suppress those feelings and emotions and the traumatic event and experience, it, to be able to analyse them and discuss them freely.
Consequently, the sources, causes and determinants of the neurosis/psychosis are, therefore, suppressed, repressed and regressed and buried deep in the human psyche and are obscure and hidden from one's awareness, although active in his psyche. This given neurotic patient has retrogressed into the horrendous, traumatic experience from her consciousness as part of her defence mechanism to defend and protect her and was not conscious of it. Nevertheless, the traumatic experience was embedded and active in her psyche, unaware of by her. It influenced her conscious mental feelings, emotions, utterances, dreams and actions and came up in her neurosis and inability to have her head held, touched or grabbed. The objective of the psychoanalysis is, thus, to crush and overcome the defence mechanisms and have the sources of the neurosis/psychosis released and come up to the surface, where it is aware of by the patient and can be revealed, analysed, explained and observed freely.
The reason as for that doctrine, approach and technique lies in the fact that Freud, in his objection to the fact that some human mental aspects and human conduct would remain unexplained, obscure and incoherent to the psychoanalyst and his possession of the need to search for means of avoiding this situation and to both explain beyond doubt the reason as for the obscurity of the human conducts and utterances and turn them into explainable, lucid, comprehensive ones, maintain both that the essence of regression of information is of information being restrained and withheld from becoming conscious, by the defence mechanism where stress, grief and anguish are involved and by lack of interest and stimulation when no stress is involved, and, thus, forms a part of unconsciousness, a condition of latency that is not Perceived by the mind, and that unconscious information becomes known, while psychoanalysis, merely by being translated into consciousness (the objective of psychoanalysis), as merely conscious things are perceived and known? Thus, Freud defines the unconscious as whatever is not conscious and vice versa, whereas the preconscious is defined by him as a screen between the unconscious and consciousness and forms a part of consciousness for the sake of this specific definition. Accordingly, Freud regards all conscious information as unconscious information that became conscious.
Consequently, Freud maintains that since ‘the data of consciousness are exceedingly defective’ (Freud's, The Unconscious, 1915, found in Collective Papers IV) mental acts can often be explicated merely by assuming and referring to other processes that are outside consciousness. In other words, one is not aware of some of his mental experiences that, nevertheless, affect his actions, bodily, physical, performances (repulsive sensations, paralysis and the case illustrated above of the neurotic patient), dreams and utterances and, thus, these mental experiences are found outside his awareness/consciousness and influence those experiences of which he is aware. Therefore, the individual’s enactment to its belief and indirectly permeate the essential implements (as a process) that will carry through of a successful action and utter utterances that are obscure, unclear inexplicable and unexplainable on their own, by being observed directly by those given individuals, and need to look outside direct observation to explain them and make them utterly lucid.
The neurotic patient illustrated in the present paper has not been aware of the real reason (the sexual abuse) as for her inability to let her head be held and clenched for in spite of, has led to this mental obstacle, the neurosis. Once this awareness has been achieved by the method, described above, the patient has become cured. Hence, according to psychoanalysis, when the given patient becomes aware of her sexual abuse by her father or another adult that she had to regress as part of her defence mechanism to defend and protect her and can analyse it and discuss it freely then she is cured.
A thorough look into the procedure in which the unconscious mental information is being revealed and becomes a part of consciousness which permits the awareness of the given individual/patient is beyond the aim of the present paper and should be read in Freud's writings. Here, mentioning that the unconscious information undergoes a main is sufficient censorship, of which if it passes, it goes up to the level of the preconscious, where it is already in possession of consciousness and is being aware of by the agent, although not fully grasped and interrelated within terms of its context (if it does not pass this censorship, then to presupposing of regressions back to unconsciousness), then, some other censorship awaits to it, of which if it passes, it goes up to consciousness, where it is being directly and fully experienced, related to, sensed and comprehended by the individual. Freud provides clinical illustrations of the hysterics, neurotics’ theory.
To make sure that the reader who is a philosopher, rather than a psychologist, comprehends the relation between the unconscious and the conscious and consciousness, in The Unconscious (Freud, 1915), Freud asserts that psychoanalysis compares the perception of unconscious mental processes and experiences by consciousness with the perception of the outside, external, world through the sense-organs to obtain new knowledge from the comparison. Thus, Freud refers to Kant's work and viewed of the mind as an activity that manipulates experiences, borrows it for the sake of his argument, takes it out of context, distorts and changes it and comes up with the assertion that just as the external world is not viewed in the way it really is in nature but is subject to the viewer's subjective perception of it (Kant's account of the active mind), so are consciousness and the conscious affected by the unconscious and unconsciousness, manipulated and modified by them and are observed/treated by them.
In devising the Freudian psychoanalytic doctrine and the psychoanalytic technique of psychoanalysis, Freud has devised rigid theories (psychoanalytic theories) as for the nature and character of man and his existence that tailor and fit all individuals that constitute the basis as for the psychoanalytic treatment, i.e., psychoanalysis. He, therefore, devised his theory as for morality and personality development in both men and women which proceeds through five psychosexual stages in children and adolescents plus his theory as for the structure of personality and human interaction and moral or immoral conduct, the id, ego and superego. These theories serve as a model for the psychoanalytic treatment of all individuals who undergo psychoanalysis and are meant to be suitable for all individuals -human beings. Accordingly, the events that occurred in the life of the individual who undergoes psychoanalysis are tailored and fit into these Freudian theories. Thus, the very case of sexual abuse, which is illustrated in the present paper, is tailored and fit into the various aspects of the Electra Complex and the psychosexual stages of personality and moral development and the personality structure, any feelings of guilt and the like.
On the other hand, the existential movement has been formed and devised in the nineteenth century as a protest movement against the established spirit, mood and ambience of the mainstream of the intellectual world-notably of the philosophical domain, natural, moral and metaphysical philosophy, but also of deterministic, rigid theories and schools of thought and movements. The existential movement has protested against the destruction of both the authentic, independent, unreduced and free individual being and the personal, biased, subjective, authentic truth by the established mainstream of the intellectual world, in general, and doctrines such as the Hegelian and the Kantian doctrines, the empiricist doctrine, the positivist doctrine and the psychodynamic doctrine, in particular. Those doctrines have reduced the individual being into metaphysical theories, deterministic, innate, developmental theories, physiological and biological processes, innate releasing mechanisms, information processing devices etc., and made him fit into a single, unified and universal system of truth and reason.
Additionally, the existential movement in the nineteenth century has maintained that the concept of truth has become unreal, distant, universal, abstractive, and alienated from the individual being him. Accordingly, the concept of truth has become an idea of the manner in which the universe should be like. The individual being has had to make him fit within this kind of truth rather than lead his life following his own idea of truth and being fully committed to this idea of truth. Thus, the individual being has been swallowed by the idea of whom he should be, which has been dictated to him and forced and imposed upon him by society and deterministic elements, has lost his individuality and uniqueness and has become a part of theories as for whom he should be and why.
Hence, the existential movement objects to the endeavour to reduce the individual-human-being into sets and systems of reasons, explanations, metaphysical and scientific theories and causes and determining factors for his nature, his conduct, his mental/inner state (feelings, sensations, emotions and the like) and his mental state of being (neurosis, dementia praecox, psychosis and 'stability/sanity'). Instead, the existential movement endeavours to examine and study the individual-human-being's existence, Being-In-The-World, to comprehend it, to have the most agreeable, authentic existence, Being-In-The-World possible and to be able to actualise his personal existence in the world and, appropriately, him and his life.
As just noted, the existential movement also objects to the notion of universal, objective truth only to introduce truth as the subjective, personal entity of the individual who devises it, possesses it and lives his life and frames to specific designs and gives by some designation to his abiding accordance to it. Thus, according to the existential movement, man is an existing, -determining, issuing considerations of becoming beings who defines him by his own subjective view of truth and possesses a full responsibility as for his life and the capacity and powers to choose whatever and whomever he wishes to become and be, his values and ideologies with a view to actualise them and to lead an authentic life and existence.
In other words, man is an individual who determines, designs and realises him according to the choices, deeds and wishes that he makes, rather than a determined entity who is determined by social conformism, genetically hereditary and the environment, i.e., the past and present. Man, according to the existential movement, is, therefore, an emerging procedure toward the future and becoming being and is defined by his own past and present actions, decisions and choices and by the future outcome of these actions, decisions and choices. That is, man becomes what he is.
The forebears and the devisers of the existential movement, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, were loners who have excluded and isolated themselves from the establishment and from their fellow philosophers and savants and constantly occupied and devoted themselves by spending all their time analysing themselves and studying themselves. Kierkegaard has never had an academic, university post while Nietzsche has been forced, at the young age of thirty-five, to resign of a full professorship of philology in Basel, and, therefore, a truly brilliant academic career, due to ill health. The two brilliant savants have lived on their own financial means that freed them from the necessity of having a paid position and from being a part of the establishment and allowed their questioning and critic of the state, society and the establishment and their fellow philosophers and other savants.
Accordingly, the forebears and the devisers of the existential movement, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, devised their doctrines as personal, individualistic, -analytic accounts of their own state of being and as an attempt to solve their personal crisis and to ameliorate their feelings of severe anxiety, depression and desperation (numerous authors also claim that the two were psychotic due to syphilis) and to achieve responsibility as for their lives and realise authenticity and true and to become whoever and whatever they desired to be (authentic individuals, apart from the crowd and the establishment). Nietzsche's writings, unlike those of Kierkegaard who was a tremendous poet (Kierkegaard, in fact has regarded him as nothing other than a poet) and a writer of beautiful, well-structured, literary works, have been written in unorganised note forms, which, often, constitute beautiful, literary, verse, in small notebooks as part of spills of creativity and ingenuity and an urge to write down his personal thoughts, feelings and sensations to alleviate anxiety attacks and to feel better about him. Nonetheless, these two giant savants have written to an imaginary audience to which they wished to preach and inform their teachings as for the authentic manner in which individuals ought to live their lives. In fact, Nietzsche writes as if he were a desperate doctor who suffers the disease and carries out an analysis and diagnosis to propose his views as for a good mental health to his readers and followers with a view to ameliorate their state of being and attain authenticity and truth.
Nietzsche proclaims that ‘the levelling and diminution of European man are our greatest danger’. Nietzsche's ultimate objective is to create a powerful individual who can live a true, creative and authentic life and create, construct and reconstruct while in a nihilistic, meaningless world without dogmatic beliefs. Thus, despite an existential vacuum and the need of existential filling, he can endure a difficult, authentic, gloomy and tragic truth and actualise him, without succumbing and escaping to the more comfortable option of universal, detached and determined truth, illusive and metaphysical fantasies and consolations, which constitute constant temptations and appeals to him. By doing so he, therefore, avoided destroying him and turning him into a part of this gloomy world and nihilism and of the universal, determined truth and can realise of being that which for only of him can lead of a meaningful, authentic life.
Accordingly, for this powerful, authentic individual, this gloomy, meaningless world does not provoke the collapse of the, however, the individual manages to resist it and free his creative sources, repressed until then by determined and compelled morality, social norms and psychological, mental, disabilities. Those creative forces lead the individual to destroy the ideologies determined for him and enforced upon him and create and adopt new beliefs and ideologies for him that are, themselves, abandoned and replaced by him once they lose their usefulness for him.
Hence, according to the Nietzschean doctrine, man is, by definition, a pure, blank slate, a child like consciousness who is empty from and free of ideologies, conventions and customs. He possesses the ability to control and determine his personal existence, his fate and his life. Nevertheless, he absorbs, covers and overlays him with external, deterministic, ideologies, norms, generalisations and subordination. To become a powerful, true and authentic being who can achieve responsibility for his life, existence and him and to create and realise him the individual has to scrape, suppress, overpower and overcome his external, deterministic layers of influences (ideologies, conventions and norms) which have been forced, imposed and superimposed upon him and determine his own ideologies and morality and, then, to recreate and render the state of a blank slate for him, where he can reorganise everything afresh.
Once achieving this state of emptiness and blank slate, the individual can adopt ideologies as he pleases, rebuild and determine him and renew and reconstruct afresh the temples (morals) which have been imposed upon him. Nevertheless, he always possesses the ability to succumb to the external, determined, imposed ideologies, absorb him in them and, consequently, lose and deny him. Thus, the process of The Great Theoretical Difference Between the Psychotherapeutic, Existential Application of the Nietzschean Doctrine and Freudian Psychoanalysis.
In his writings (Essays on Aesthetics, Untimely Meditations, The Gay Science and others) Nietzsche wishes to be considered by his readers and viewed in and by history as a psychologist who practices’ psychology and has devised 'a new psychology'. Seemingly, as there are many aspects of Nietzsche's work viewed by several authors (for instance, Kaufmann and Golomb) as psychological ones, a fact disregarded by numerous authors who regard Nietzsche as a mere anti philosopher and a writer of short, beautiful verse. Surely, while being a young, frustrated, physically and mentally ill, retired professors of Philology, who has viciously attacked his colleagues, the state, society and the establishment and wrote provocative verses and notes, Nietzsche has also sought to bring the nature of his own ideologies and his own perspectives and wishes to obtain power and authenticity. What is most important, the will to power involves what Nietzsche calls surpass? Surpasses, or transcendence, is the process in which the individual can achieve control, mastery and responsibility over his own life and to fight the urge to adopt and absorb him in the social, biological, hereditary, external, deterministic ideologies, norms, morals, conventions and generalisations. That is the urge to become a part of the crowd and give up the painful, tormenting process of being the sole responsible for him and his existence and determining, adopting and setting up his own ideologies and norms by him. surpasses, therefore, involves overcoming this urge and create and determine one.
Accordingly, the more will to power the individual possesses and substantiates more control that any or all qualitative powers that are of a higher degree of power, truth and authenticity that the individual attains and realises. Similarly, the less qualitative the will to power which is possessed by the given individual the more the individual wishes to be determined, loses him, absorb him in the crowd and deny him.
Nevertheless, in talking about power 'macht' and the will to power, Nietzsche talks about negative power and positive power. The negative power is really a psychological weakness and constitutes a wish to accomplish and acquire power by committing cruel acts and demonstrating muscles while The Great Theoretical Difference Between the Psychotherapeutic, Existential Application of the Nietzschean Doctrine and Freudian Psychoanalysis
In his writings (Essays on Aesthetics, Untimely Meditations, The Gay Science and others) Nietzsche wishes to be considered by his readers and viewed in and by history as a psychologist who practices’ psychology and has devised 'a new psychology'. Many aspects of Nietzsche's work are viewed by several authors (for instance, Kaufmann and Golomb) as psychological ones, a fact disregarded by numerous authors who regard Nietzsche failles a mere anti philosopher and a writer of short, beauti verse. Although being a young, frustrated, physically and mentally ill, and its retired professor of Philology, who has viciously attacked his colleagues, the state, society and the establishment and wrote provocative verses and notes, Nietzsche has also sought to bring the nature of no sensation of hood, a lack of confidence, a possession of bad conscious and feeling of guilt, an inclination to let one be dependent upon and determined by external factors and consequences and an inclination and a wish to escape from suffering, responsibility and pain to metaphysical consolations and security at all cost. The will to power is, therefore, really a will to positive power.
Consequently, the authentic individual is one who wills to (positive) power while the inauthentic individual is an individual who possesses negative power and does not will to power. The more positive power and will to power the individual possesses the higher level of authenticity he possesses and the more negative power and the less will to power the individual possesses the higher level of inauthenticity he possesses and vice versa.
In fact, Nietzsche's philosophy should be regarded as a means to entice its followers to overcome deterministic elements, to will to power, to determine themselves, to achieve responsibility for their lives, to form and actualise their authenticity, to obtain increasing positive power and true and to direct their efforts toward their own positive power, testing their ability to reach it and activate it in their lives. The Nietzschean doctrine should, therefore, be regarded as the granting of therapies, education and intellectual temptations to the individual with a view to prepare him for assuming responsibility and mastery over his life, leading and living an authentic, creative and well worthwhile life and to free his creative resources and realise and actualise him in a nihilistic, meaningless world without dogmatic convictions.
The individual is, thus, enticed to be directed and direct him toward his positive power and powerful spiritual creative resourcefulness, to examine whether or not he can achieve them and absorb them and to obtain as much positive power, will to power and creativeness can just be as likely. Nevertheless, it is merely the individual, him, who can actualise his power, facing bravely the numerous temptations to succumb to the easy, comfortable manner of living according to the external, deterministic norms and convictions that surround him, let him be determined by them and deny him and resisting these temptations in an attempt to actualise and fulfil his existence and him. Accordingly, the Nietzschean doctrine mainly intends to entice the individual to will to power.
Hence, enticing the individual's will to power, selves surpass and authenticity and truth are the real purposes of the Nietzschean doctrine. Nietzsche employs the method of writing short notes and verses and utilises a provocative, refined, poetic, arrogant language and a manner of writing, full of daring slogans, swaggers, paradoxes, myths and scepticism to raise consent and profound emotions and feelings in his readers with a view to obtain enticement and assist him in this process of enticing his readers. This reason joins the reasons mentioned above as for the unique type of writing which Nietzsche adopts and employs.
Furthermore, the more qualitative will to power which the individual possesses the more he possesses the enticement to will to power and the wish to obtain increasing power to become ever more authentic, true, perfect and powerful being. Thus, the individual who possesses a weak will to power is likely to deny the enticement to will to power and succumb to continue with the external and, deterministic, norms and convictions determined for him and are imposed upon him and, therefore, to possess a negative power and be a weak, unactualized individual. An individual with higher degree of qualitative will to power can and is likely to be enticed to will to power and, thus, to obtain positive power, authenticity and true and to overcome the negative power. Nonetheless, the individual can also be a superman whose level of qualitative will to power is so strongly that he does not need to be enticed to will to power. As a superman, he can, therefore, create him and his ideologies and perspectives on his own without this enticement and without the need to be enticed.
Nietzsche asserts that man is distinguished from an animal in his potentiality to cultivate his nature and image (i.e., who he is, his own ). His true nature and to create his ideologies, norms and conventions as he pleases, rather than have him and his ideologies and conventions are determined, designed and created for him. This ability raises man above the other animals and permits man to overcome the inclination to deny him and be absorbed and determined and, instead, to surpass him, to realise him and to assume full control and mastery over his existence and life. Nevertheless, the vast majority of men never realised themselves but succumb to a conformism and to society and its norms and ideologies and let themselves be absorbed in them and determined by them.
Thus, according to Nietzsche, man's task and role are to surpass, overcome and transcendent those impediments that suppresses, repress and prevent the mental powers from freeing, creating and realising the (those mental powers are rooted in man). Man has to activate those mental powers in the manner described above to obtain increasing power and mastery over his life, his existence and him and, by consequence, increasing authenticity, realisation and true. If man does not do so then he is degraded to the degree of beast (monkey, as influenced by Darwinism devised and was very popular and rigorous in that of the same period). Nonetheless, if man does so then he gains more power and mastery over his life, personal existence and him and, in a world where God is dead, man becomes closer and closer to God, the creator of man, truth, ideologies, norms and the, by virtue of adopting for him God's role of creating and determining him, man, (his image and nature), his own ideologies and his own truth and morality. In fact, man's greatest ambition and possibility is to assume increasing power and perfection and to become closer and closer to the power and perfection of God.
Man, according to the Nietzschean doctrine, is, therefore, responsible for his own existence and life and is free to design, determine and create him and his ideologies freely following his own ideologies and with whom and what he desires for him to become and be. The purpose of living is, therefore, to detach the living individual from biological, social and mechanical restraints (which determine his image and nature) and take on and follow the difficult, exhaustive and tormenting road and journey of analysis and learning and knowing and changing, with a view to grow constantly, construct and create him, realising him and becoming more independent, powerful and authentic being. Hence, man is an emerging and becoming being who emerges toward the future and becomes. Man is defined and determined by his emergence toward the future and by his becoming. He is, therefore, defined and determined by his choices and actions and their outcome. He, therefore, becomes what he is. In fact, the subtitle of Nietzsche's Ecce Homo is 'How One Becomes What One Is'.
From reading the two accounts, those of Freud and Nietzsche, it is very easy to conclude that the essence of the two doctrines, about the actual psychotherapeutic treatment, is virtually similar. In both doctrines, man has to suppress and overcome a psychological, mental, boundary that has to be scraped and shattered to obtain truth, allows the individual, the neurotic/psychotic patient, to function freely and establish a grasp of the given individual, the neurotic/psychotic patient. This fact has misled readers and researchers into maintaining that the Nietzschean doctrine constitutes the theoretical core of the psychoanalytic technique (psychoanalysis), methodology and approach.
Nevertheless, while according to Freudian psychoanalysis, man is a determined entity that follows universal, successive stages of morality and personality development, which are deterministic, common to all men and according to which all men behave, act, experience, feel and live their life, and have his neurosis/psychosis and crisis induced and determined by specific past events and experiences in his life, the Nietzschean doctrine views to man as an entity that is responsible for him and for his existence in the world. The 'Nietzschean man' possesses the power and ability to choose and determine his ideologies and actions, who and what he wishes to become and be and strives to overcome all boundaries, to surpass him, and realise of him and become a powerful, authentic individual.
Hence, according to the Nietzschean doctrine, man is neither good nor evil. 'Man is beyond good and evil' asserts Nietzsche and has named one of his important works 'Beyond Good and Evil'. The ability of man to assume control and responsibility for his life and existence, to determine him, to realise him and to achieve his truth and authenticity is suppressed and prevented from doing so by both an inner, psychological compulsion (such as fearfulness) and external deterministic elements, the state, the establishment, society and the like. Nonetheless, man possesses the power and capacity to overcome and free him from these puissant constraints, surpass, transcendent and overcome him and realise his will to power, his power and him while living in a nihilistic, meaningless, world. Alternatively, he also possesses the ability to succumb to those constraints, rather than to attempt to overcome them, to absorb him in them, not to will to power but, to adopt a negative type of power and be determined and weak and inauthentic. Accordingly, the psychological, mental, elements and aspects of the Nietzschean doctrine are both ones that prevent man from realising of him and ones which lead to his will to power, goes beyond and actualization.
Freudian psychoanalysis, on the other hand, views the defence mechanism as an element that the given individual has had to assemble the constructions that prevent and suppress painful and stressful information from entering the individual's memory and consciousness to protect him from stress and suffering. The patient, with the aid and guidance of the psychoanalyst, has to overcome it, insofar as, to find the sources and determinants of his neurosis/psychosis and the feelings and emotions induced by those sources of the illness and bring them to the patient's consciousness/awareness, where they can be revealed, analysed and examined freely. The psychoanalyst endeavours to explain the individual patient according to the achievement of comprehension of what determines him, his conduct, his malaise, his illness (neurosis/psychosis) and crisis, acceding to his ideologies and morals, in agreements of the rigid and predetermined theories, as for the elements that determine the nature of man and his conduct and morality, of the psychoanalytic approach.
Accordingly, even if both the Freudian, psychoanalytic doctrine (and Freudian psychoanalysis) and the Nietzschean doctrine endeavours to overcome suppressive boundaries to both obtain truth and cure, the two constitute two different approaches that vary completely one from the differentiated designations wherefore are the essences and through its definition. Their view as for their subject matters (Man and human existence) and the nature and image of man are contradictory. To demonstrate the difference between psychoanalysis further, and the psychoanalytic doctrine, and the Nietzschean doctrine in the domain of psychotherapy and display strong, additional evidence in favour of the thesis of the present paper, the existential school, technique and approach of and to psychotherapy in the field of psychiatry Logotherapy, which has been stemmed from the Nietzschean doctrine and devised by Viktor. E. Frankl, needs to be described, depicted and illustrated. This way, the reader would be shown the practical application of the Nietzschean ideas in psychotherapy and psychiatry and be efficiently comparable and correlate with some understanding measures within the psychoanalytic method and with Freudian psychoanalysis.
While crediting Freud with new insights into human nature, Frankl felt that Freud's ideas had hardened into rigid, predetermined ideas that determine the nature of man and the analysed individual and, consequently, dehumanise and reduce man. What was needed, according to Frankl, was the understanding of the human-individual-being in his totality as a whole, unreduced, independent, free and -determining to be who emerges toward the fulfilment of a given goal, objective and task in his life and personal existence. Who defines and determines him following those objective and goal and their realisation, rather than focussing on the specific event and experience that the psychoanalysts regard as the cause, reason and determinant of the given crisis and condition and analyse and examine them. Frankl, thus, set on a career in psychiatry in which he introduced the concepts of meanings and values and their realisation into psychiatry. The essence of his doctrine is that all reality has meant (logos) and that the individual never ceases to have lived for meaning.
Logotherapy is the search for the unique meaning and purpose in one's life in an attempt to design and reveal his particular journey in life and his functional role. An undertaking to do whatever it takes to actualise and realise his meanings, potentials, potentialities and him, determines them as given to him and his experiential actions, also the identity and existential meaning and becomes somebody, a true, actualised and authentic individual being. The Greek word 'logo', in fact, denotes meaning. Thus, Logotherapy regards the individual's striving to find meaning and purpose in his life (which logotherapists call the will to meaning), and a personal identity that would make his life meaningful, fully actualised and worthwhile, as the motivational force in man and as the element that defines and determines the individual, his life and his existence.
For the need of comparison with the rival approach of Freudian psychoanalysis and as an illustration of the motivational force, the primary motivational force in the Freudian doctrine and psychoanalysis is the urge and inclination to seek satisfaction and pleasure, normally in the most brutish and primitive, basic sources of pleasure (sexual pleasure and urge, satiating hunger and thirst and sleeping). This Freudian motivational force plays a crucial role in the Freudian deterministic theory of personality and morality development, which was depicted above, as constituting the motivational force for this development of human personality and morality. For its part, Logotherapy focus man, the unconscious, the conscious, conscious, analysis, relationships with other individuals, the inner state (emotions, sensations, feelings and the like), irrational sources of man's power and greatness as adequately formidable of his morbidity and -destructiveness into the scope of existence.
Successively succeeding by such are the numerous writings that Nietzsche also gives in expressions of the mind, the mental, instincts, reflexes, reflexive movements, the brain, symbolic representations, images, views, metaphors, language, experiences, in an instinct or in merely reconciling the conflicting claims of the id, ego and superego or in the mere adaptation and adjustment to society and environment and has him determined by them. Man is, thus, free and responsible for his life and personal existence and defines, creates and determines him by his willing to meanings, purposes and values and striving to surpass him and his existence and actualise those meanings and values and, a consequent of him, his life and personal existence in the world. Nevertheless, he can always succumb to the world of willing to mere pleasure and its satiation, determinism by others, conformism, genetics and hereditary, mass crowds, industry etc., absorb in it and give up the inclination to search for meanings and values in his own existence and life and actualise them. The destructive result of such a deed is described below Man's life, according to Logotherapy, ought to be a journey of surpassing his everyday existence, situations and existence and realising the meanings and objectives that he sought, searched, found and set to him to actualise.
The process of finding meanings is one of exploring all human values for those that fit best with the given treated individual's own, unique life experiences and that he can most profitably pursue as a surge for meaning. Frankl teaches that merely through the process of education and through the acceptance of full responsibility as for his personal, individualistic and unique choices of meaning by the treated individual, the treated individual can build an integrated personality with a special life task that will give direction and sense of purpose to his own existence.
Thus, to lead a meaningful life the treated individual has to explore all of the areas of traditional values and pick up those that can supply special meaning to him and, then, surpass his existence and realise his chosen meanings. The logotherapist's role is, therefore, to guide and help the treated individually. The Great Theoretical Difference Between the Psychotherapeutic, Existential Application of the Nietzschean Doctrine and Freudian Psychoanalysis
In his writings (Essays on Aesthetics, Untimely Meditations, The Gay Science and others) Nietzsche wishes to be considered by his readers and viewed in and by history as a psychologist whom practices’ psychology, who has devised 'a new psychology'. Many phraseological aspirations consistent of Nietzsche possession have a tendency to interactivity and silence, as these feature and absorbate themselves in mere immediate, superficial pleasure seeking, in conformism and the mechanical and let their lives be determined by other individuals, their environment, their daily routine, their genes and the like. Thus, they incline to cover themselves in those things, conform, despair and have themselves (their behaviour, ideologies, beliefs etc.) determined.
The results of such procedural actions are, however, likely to be a development and emergence of feelings grounded in an existential vacuum, a feeling of existential frustration and noogenic neurosis. Existential vacuums are the experiences lacking of meaning and purpose in one's personal existence that generates a feeling of emptiness and nihilism. So then, that is to say, that Logotherapy views nihilism as an evil, destructive force that destroys and consumes man and leads to severe crisis and despair in his life and to his dehumanisation. Existential frustration, for its part, is a reaction to the failure of fulfilling to achieve meaning. As for Noogenic neurosis, it is a neurosis generated by the neurotic patient's feeling of lack of meaning in life and human existence, as a whole, and in her personal life and personal existence, in particular.
Logotherapy endeavours to allure and challenge man with a potential meaning for him to fulfil and to urge him to struggle hard for some goals worthy of him to actualise and achieve and, thus, to evoke his will to meaning from its state of latency and actualise his will to meaning and actualising. Logotherapy, therefore, strives to guide and assist the individual patient in overcoming the inclination to be absorbed and determined. Logotherapy attempts to make the patient aware of the hidden 'logos' of her existence, actualising the potential meanings of her existence. Logotherapy aspires to assist the patient in filling the existential vacuum, searching for meanings, finding them, surpassing her existence and her, actualising those meanings and realising her and recreating her according to those meanings.
The result of Logotherapy is the scraping of the inclination to be determined and the filling of the existence with a cause, finding the reason as for one's personal existence in the world and recreating and realising the patient's existence. Hence, Logotherapy wishes to make the treated individual aware of what he actually aspires for the intensity of his endurable coercion for him fully to be aware of the task of his life and of his personal existence. In fact, cases treated using Logotherapy has demonstrated that enticing the treated individual and making him aware of his assignments and tasks in his life and personal existence, should assist in ameliorating his ability to overcome and alleviate his neurosis, crisis and malaise.
The symptoms are accepted, for the time being, as they are and are looked beyond them (transcendent them). The individual 'dereflects' (a term that Frankl has given to mention) attention from the immediate powerful situation to unimpaired assets and potentials that can be utilised in spite of the symptoms. Hence, Logotherapy endeavours to teach the individual to cope and deal with his malaise and painful situation, transcend and pass them and find meaning in his suffering by finding a potential for a good thing in all painful events and suffering (since nothing can be done to alleviate and alter them, in which case, where the painful events can be modified and improved, it is a mere sadistic act) and, thus, employ his suffering for the sake of a good element and for the sake of actualisation. In fact, Logotherapy, it, has been tested, devised and refined by Frankl as a method for treating individuals' suffering and for combatting dehumanisation and reductionism during the three years that he spent as an inmate in four different Nazi concentration camps and, thus, constitutes the meaning and the positive (good) element in Frankl's enormous suffering. Some clinical illustrations are called for to depict Logotherapy and its doctrine in practice and to display the great differences between psychoanalysis and Logotherapy.
Frankl tells of an American diplomat in Austria who has visited him in Vienna. The diplomat was discontented with his career and found it difficult to comply with American foreign diplomacy. Consequently, he experienced a sensation of void and emptiness and felt depressed and miserable. He has undergone psychoanalytic treatment for five years but his condition and state of being have merely gone worse. His psychoanalyst told him to reconcile with his father as it was obvious to the psychoanalyst that the powerful, authoritative American government has really symbolised and was nothing other than the father of the diplomat who tried to dominate his son and take charge over him and his life. Hence, the psychoanalytic approaches have asserted and concluded that the reason, cause and determinant of the diplomat's difficulties in complying with American foreign diplomacy and his depression and state of being ware, in effect, his relationship with his father, his fear of his father and his desire to rebel against his father. This stands on the same line as the Freudian rigid personality and moral development of the Oedipus complex.
Nevertheless, Frankl has taken the diplomat and his situation throughout and concludes by that the diplomat's lack of satisfaction and interest in his job and career and his inability to find meaning and purpose in them that have led to his state of being and depression. He, therefore, proposed to the diplomat to quit his career in foreign diplomacy and search for a career that would be more meaningful and purposeful to him and his personal existence and would enable him to actualise the (and his) meaning and purpose in his personal existence, his life and him. Of course, the diplomat has complied, changed his career to a more meaningful one to him that fulfilled his interests and intellectual objectives, actualised his personal existence and him and has been totally cured of his crisis and malaise.
As another illustration, Frankl recounts of a rabbi who came to see him, suffering from severe depression. His first wife and six sons have been murdered in concentration camps and his second wife has been barren. He was, therefore, extremely concerned of not having any sons to say 'Kadish' following his passing away. Frankl has guided him and assisted him to surpass and transcendent his situation and to try to search for meanings and purposes in his great suffering and in his personal existence and life to be able to actualise him and his life and existence and to cope with his great grief and malaise and to live and lead a decent, meaningful life. They concluded that the great suffering that the rabbi experienced would enable him to attain the highest place in heaven, which is normally reserved merely to martyrs and infants, and, thus, the sole manner to join his six young sons who perished as martyrs. The rabbi has found meaning in his suffering and his depression has been alleviated.
Once the rabbi has surpassed his existence and his situation, to find meanings in them and actualise them, he has actualised his life and existence, fills in his noogenic and empty feelings. His will to meaning and purpose, to actualise him, to cope with his malaise and with his life and existence and to feel much better A Freudian psychoanalyst would have worked away at exposing, examining and analysing the problem, the rabbi's relationship with his parents, his childhood, the sensations that the deaths of his dear ones have elicited in him, his feelings toward his second wife and their relationship etc., in an attempt to cure the depression and to be able to cope with his grief. This would take numerous years, would be extremely costly and, thus, make the psychoanalyst wealthier (and of interest to delay the psychotherapeutic treatment) and would lead to the worsening of the rabbi's depression.
This leads back to the neurotic patient who is unable to have her head be touched, rather than opening the patient's wounds and focussing on and working away at the revelation, examination and analysis of the traumatic event and the dreadful experience of sexual child abuse, with a view to work away at the examination carefully and the analysis freely of what the psychoanalyst considers as the reason, cause and determinant of the neurosis, as it is compatible with the psychoanalytic rigid and predetermined theories (but can very easily is induced by other factors, which are part of the individualistic life and existence of the treated, analysed patient), the logotherapist would have guided and advised the patient not to confine her in the past and constantly analyse her trauma but to go on living and Experiencing. In fact, the patient would be advised to try to surpass and transcendent both her traumatic experience of sexual abuse and her inability to have her head touched and seek for meanings and purposes and will to meanings and purposes in her life and her personal existence and in her trauma, suffering and crisis. Still, hardly, the trauma would be ignored or not treated seriously. The trauma, would slightly decrease and not enjoy the full attention of the logotherapeutic sessions, which would be devoted to the patient's ability to live a meaningful and rewarding life. The trauma would simply fit in this endeavour, to make the patient able to lead a meaningful life and existence.
The sexual abuse is, thus, viewed as an event that happened in the past. It must be accepted as an event that occurred already and cannot be erased, reversed and altered. It should be treated as if nothing could be done about changing it. There is no point in spending the entire psychotherapeutic sessions in discussing it, focussing on it and working away at analysing it as an event in the past, only the logotherapeutic sessions should intend to plan and devise the present and future of the patient's life and existence (the emergence and becoming of the patient), search for and find meanings and purposes in her life and personal existence and try to actualise them and, as a consequent, her commitment holds steadily from the debits owing her personal existence and life. The traumatic experience has to fit with (and in) this objective and with the patient's overall task in life and be employed to actualise her meaning and purpose in life and personal existence and be beneficial and have a meaning and construct of the same purposive unity as held within it, the traumatic sexual abuse and in the patient's life. Again, the overall objective and the reason for existing of logotherapy and the logotherapeutic sessions are to have the patient's living a meaningful, pleasant, actualised and authentic life.
A clinical illustration for the danger in searching for the correlation between a given past event and the given neurosis/psychosis and in asserting that it was this event that has induced the condition of the patient, Elisabeth Lukas reports of two sisters whom she has encountered in treating their mother of severe despair and depression. The mother has recounted that the older sister has been an unwanted child who has been severely sexually abused by her father throughout her childhood and has been ill-treated and mentally and physically abused by her entire family and has not been loved by her mother. The other, younger, child, on the other hand, has been a desired child and loved and well-taken care of and treated by her family. She has had an excellent, normal, warm, fatherly relationship with her father and was adored by her mother.
It was, nevertheless, the older, abused and an unwanted sister who has led a perfectly normal life. She has been perfectly healthy, both mentally and physically. She was kind, well mannered and easy to get along with, she also takes favour of her married, having children and has been a superb mother and wife. She has had a job and a rewarding career that she enjoyed and has lived a happy, meaningful and actualised life. Overall, she has been an active, valuable member of society and a happy individual being. Her younger sister, the desired and loved one, on the other hand, have developed severe psychotic/neurotic symptoms and have experienced severe numerous mental and physical problems. She has had sexual problems, has been lonely and could not develop and have relationships whatsoever with other individuals and with men. She has lied regularly, was rude and very hard to get along with. She broke the law countlessly and spent time in prison. Overall, she appeared to suffer from an existential vacuum, a feeling of existential frustration and noogenic neurosis.
The mother, who could not understand how this situation was feasible, has become severely depressed. The mother needed to be explained by the logotherapist (Dr. Lukas) that a person is determined by her search for meanings (will to meaning) in life, human existence and her life and personal existence and by the surpassing of her existence and the actualising of those meanings, rather than being automatically determined by given, specific events in her life.
Those clinical cases show that Logotherapy endeavours to overcome and suppress the inclination not to will to meaning, to surpass the patient's existence and to realise the patient's will to meanings and purposes in her life and her personal existence. Values that are to be actualised of finding them and set her to the fulfilment of the task of actualising them and, as a consequent, she of for whatever else she expends her life and existence, with the overall view to lead a happy, meaningful life. The supposition of Logotherapy is that in finding meanings and purposes in the neurosis, in terminologies extended by the meanings in the patient's personal existence and life would assist in alleviating it.
According to Logotherapy, the 'Freudian' defence mechanism that prevents the patient from having a direct access to his painful experience also prevents the exposure to an event that cannot be altered and reversed but, generate severe pain and suffering. Wherefore, ignoring the painful experience is a wrong thing to do, devoting the entire psychotherapeutic sessions to overcoming and suppressing the defence mechanism and exposing the trauma and, therefore, regressing to and remaining in the past, merely for the sake of revealing and analysing the trauma, is likely to lead to the opening of closed wounds and force them of an exaction in bleeding in and of additional spite. The Great Theoretical Difference Between the Psychotherapeutic, Existential Application of the Nietzschean Doctrine and Freudian Psychoanalysis
In his writings (Essays on Aesthetics, Untimely Meditations, The Gay Science and others) Nietzsche wishes to be considered by his readers and viewed in and by history as a psychologist who practices’ psychology and has devised 'a new psychology'. Again, there are many aspects of Nietzsche's work are viewed by several authors (for instance, Kaufmann and Golomb) as psychological ones, a fact disregarded by numerous authors who regard Nietzsche as a mere anti philosopher and a writer of short, beautiful verse. While being of my youth, frustrated, physically and mentally ill, and the retired professor of Philology, who has viciously attacked his colleagues, the state, society and the establishment and wrote provocative verses and notes, Nietzsche has also sought to bring the nature of man, the unconscious, the conscious, conscious, analysis, relationships with other individuals, the inner state (emotions, sensations, feelings and the like), irrational sources of man's power and greatness and his morbidity and -destructiveness into the scope of existence.
Further, in his numerous writings Nietzsche also talks of the mind, the mental, instincts, reflexes, reflexive movements, the brain, symbolic representations, images, views, metaphors, language, experiences, innate and hereditary psychological elements, defence, protective, mechanism, repression, suppression, overcoming, an overall battle, struggle and conflict between individuals etc. As an illustration, Nietzsche describes how blocked instinctual powers turn within the individual into resentment, -hatred, hostility and aggression. Moreover, Nietzsche strives to analyse human being, his crisis, his despair and his existence in the world and to find means to alleviate human crises and despair.
These aspects of Nietzsche's work elicit a tendency to compare Nietzsche's doctrine with that of Freud and psychoanalysis and to argue that the Freudian doctrine and school (the psychoanalytic theory of human personality on which the psychotherapeutic technique of psychoanalysis is based). Methods of treatment (psychoanalysis) have been influenced and affected by Nietzsche's philosophy and work and the Nietzschean doctrine. As a demonstration from the relevant literature, according to Golomb's (1987) thesis, the theoretical core of psychoanalysis is already part and parcel of Nietzsche's philosophy, insofar as it is based on concepts that are both displayed in it and developed by it-concepts such as the unconscious, repression, sublimation, the id, the superego, primary and secondary processes and interpretations of dreams.
Nevertheless, the actual situation in the domains of psychotherapy, psychiatry and clinical psychology is, not, strictly so. While the two savants (Nietzsche and Freud) endeavour to understand man, to develop the healthy power that is still present in the individual and the neurotic patient to overcome and suppress the psychological boundaries that repress his vitality and inhibit his ability to function freely and creatively and attain truth, the difference between the psychodynamic school, approach, movement and method of treatment, in general, and psychoanalysis, in particular, and the existential approach to psychotherapy, the existential movement and the existential, humanistic school of psychology and method of treatment stemmed from the doctrines and views of Freud and Nietzsche is profound and significant, for the actual psychotherapeutic treatment. The reason posited in this difference, lies in the variation in the two savants' view and definition of man and human existence, the nature and character of man and his relationship with the world and the environment, and in the variation in the intellectual soil, that the tasks, roles, endeavours, relationships and encounters and actualising set and determined (by the individual patient her) objectives and tasks make the old event a matter of the past and the life of the patient too full, excited and actualised to analyse and experience the problem and cause of the neurosis/psychosis and, therefore, influence and alleviate the psychosis/neurosis. Frankl and Lukas recount and provide numerous clinical illustrations to demonstrate this point.
The present paper has shown that the Nietzschean doctrine may be regarded as a personality theory and, as such, may be employed as the foundations for the devising of a psychotherapeutic approach. The Nietzschean doctrine defines man as a being who is fully responsible for his life and personal existence and possesses mastery over his fate, life and existence and his conduct, his nature, identity and image. As such, he possesses the power to determine, create and organise his ideologies, values and morals and, therefore, him, who and what he is. Nevertheless, the individual has to suppress and overcome the psychological inclination to have his ideologies and values be determined for him. Then, he has to realise the power to determine him to gain as much power as possible and become a powerful, individual being.
To demonstrate the applicability of the Nietzschean doctrine in psychiatry and psychotherapy, Frankl's existential approach of Logotherapy was displayed, briefly outlined, described and illustrated. Logotherapy guides the treated patient in overcoming the inclination to conform and be determined and help her seek and realise meanings and purposes throughout her life and personal existence with a view to create, actualise and determine her, to lead a meaningful life and existence and to become whoever and whatever she wishes to become and be.
Hence, in Logotherapy, the treated individual must assume power, responsibility and mastery over his own life and personal existence and create and design his life and existence and, because, him following his own set values and purposes. Once the individual has found the reasons, meanings and purposes to living and in all aspects of his life and personal existence (the painful ones and the happy ones) he can lead a more meaningful life and put up with almost any living conditions. In fact, Frankl put to use in Logotherapy two famous quotes from Nietzsche-‘whatever does not kill me makes me stronger’ and ‘Man can have the how if he has the why’. Thus, according to Logotherapy, the individual's entire state of being and mental and physical conditions are likely to be ameliorated, alleviated and sometimes even cured once he has established meanings and purposes into, to and in the human existence, as a whole, and his own life and personal existence, in particular, and can lead a meaningful, purposeful and actualised life.
Once establishing that the Nietzschean doctrine has many psychological aspects and elements in it and, therefore, possesses the ability and the potentiality to provide the core and essence of a psychotherapeutic approach in psychiatry and clinical psychology, psychoanalysis, which is the most popular and known psychotherapeutic approach (in as well as outside the relevant fields of psychiatry and psychology), immediately comes up to one's mind. In fact, the present paper was commenced by stating the similarity in terms of the terminology and the concepts that are employed in both the Nietzschean doctrine and the Freudian, psychoanalytic, doctrine and psychoanalysis. Moreover, the present paper has described the inclination to compare the Freudian doctrine with the Nietzschean doctrine and the Nietzschean doctrine to the psychoanalytic method and approach of psychotherapeutic treatment (i.e., psychoanalysis). The present paper has even gone as far as quoting Golomb's clear and bold assertion that the Nietzschean doctrine, in fact, constitutes not less than the theoretical core of Freudian psychoanalysis. In fact, the present paper has set it the task of examining this assertion by professor Jacob Golomb.
Nevertheless, it was the present paper's primary objective to refute this assertion and to show that the Nietzschean doctrine does not constitute the theoretical core of psychoanalysis. Both the theoretical, conceptual, and the practical, applied psychotherapeutic, differences between the Freudian doctrine and its method of psychotherapeutic treatment (Psychoanalysis) and the Nietzschean doctrine was displayed, outlined, illustrated and depicted in the present paper in some length. On the other hand, the present paper has demonstrated that the Nietzschean doctrine constitutes the theoretical core and essence of the existential approach to psychotherapy, which, in fact, constitutes the most vicious rival to psychoanalysis.
Throughout the existential approach of Logotherapy is depicted as a rival approach to psychoanalysis in the same field as psychoanalysis (that is psychiatry and clinical psychology) it is described as the one that really employs the Nietzschean doctrine as its true theoretical core and essence and as its foundation. Even, ignoring it is not feasible and skips on the similarities in and between the 'will to power' and its realisation and the 'will to meaning' and its actualisation, the ambition to surpass and overcome all that prevents and suppresses the will to power/meaning and the individual existence, the idea of free will, the notion of full responsibility for and mastery over one's life and the idea of the freedom to determine its creative. Those last three concepts constitute key concepts in the Nietzschean doctrine, the existential movement and Logotherapy. The existential movement was described in the present paper and Nietzsche was shown to have been the forebear and deviser of the existential movement, together with Soren, Aabye Kierkegaard.
The Freudian, psychoanalytic and psychodynamic doctrines, for their part, regard human personality, morality, ideologies, feelings, emotions and conduct as deterministic ones that are either innate or determined by events and other types of stimuli. The Freudian doctrine, therefore, maintains that the best manner to alleviate human crisis and despair (both neurosis and psychosis) is to search and find the reasons, causes and determinants for them. The psychoanalytic method of treatment is, therefore, really a technique of searching and finding and analysing and examining thoroughly and freely the events, experiences and stimuli that it assumes to be the causes and determinants of the neurosis/psychosis.
The process of searching and finding significant stimuli and events in the individual patient's life and of analysing the individual patient's life and existence freely applies the shuttering and overpowering of a defence mechanism that represses those events and stimuli from being revealed and aware of by the given analysed individual who has undergone them and regressed them to his subconscious. This process, therefore, strives to make the stimuli and events, which are assumed to be the cause, reason and determinant of the neurosis/psychosis, come up to the analysed neurotic/psychotic patient's consciousness and become fully aware of by the analysed neurotic/psychotic patient and, thus, revealed and analysed freely and thoroughly by both the patient and the psychoanalyst.
Overcoming the defence mechanisms and fully revealing the reasons and causes as for the neurosis/psychosis and exposing them to the patient's consciousness enable their analysing freely and without any restraint. Once the patient is fully aware of the event and stimulus that have generated his illness, crises and despair and those events and stimulus is analysed and examined thoroughly and freely the neurosis/psychosis is cured.
Hence, the tendency to assert that the Nietzschean doctrine influences the Freudian, psychoanalytic doctrine and approach and the Freudian method of psychoanalysis and that the Nietzschean doctrine constitutes the theoretical essence and core of Freudian psychoanalysis is erroneous and misleading. The Nietzschean doctrine, on the other hand, is the theoretical basis and core of the existential movement, existential, humanistic psychology and the existential approach to psychotherapy. Specifically, the Nietzschean doctrine constitutes the foundations of Logotherapy, also known as existential analysis.
The two movements, schools and approaches are rival ones and so are Logotherapy and Psychoanalysis. While there are some similarities in their shared ambition to alleviate man's crises and despair, in the terminology that they employ and in their shared endeavour to suppress and overpower the psychological boundaries that repress the individual patient from attaining truth and true and to free truth and the true, the notion of what is man, an individual being, the, the true, actualisation and the like, which constitute key issues in theories of personality and which define human personality, vary immensely and cannot differ more, in terms of their treatment and definition by the two movements and approaches.
In fact, other movements and schools such as Cognitive Psychology and Artificial Intelligence also employ concepts such as the, consciousness, unconsciousness, memory, recall, morality, revelation, human nature, personality and character. Nevertheless, attempting to compare them with psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic movement would be an absurd task. Their view and definition of those concepts vary immensely from the definition of those concepts by Psychoanalysis and their application and employment of those concepts differs greatly from the utilisation of those concepts by psychoanalysis, although Cognitive Psychology has created cognitive psychotherapy and talks about the recall and storage of information by and in the mind and the access and revelation of information-that is the representational model of Cognitive Psychology and the cognitive revolution and movement, which dominates cognitive psychology. A gathering frame of reference is vastly contained in Searle's book called ‘The Rediscovery of the Mind’ (1992) and, perhaps, to obtain as such would involve the furthering discussions of the conscious and consciousness, the unconscious and unconsciousness and preconsciousness and the preconscious in both Freudian psychoanalysis and cognitive psychology.
It is, thus, the overall designing, devising and depiction of the approach, doctrine and theory, and of what they endeavour to do and achieve-their definition of their main subject matter (Man and his existence in the world, his personality, nature, image and character) and of key concepts; By means of combining the key concepts by them; Their manner of applying those definitions in practice-which make up a given doctrine, approach and method of treatment and applicability and enable the comparison of the particular doctrine (approach) with other doctrines, approaches and methods of applicability and treatment of a similar type. Comparing selected aspects, components and elements of two or more doctrines and approaches may lead to the omission of important features and constituents that, in fact, vary and are contrasted significantly in the two doctrines and approaches and, therefore, to the adoption of the erroneous conclusion that the doctrines and approaches are similar and comparable when they are, in fact, totally different and contrasted. The Nietzschean/Freudian case to which the present paper was devoted and dedicated has, thus, shown how careful one should be so as not to be misled in comparing two doctrines, theories and approaches and claiming that one doctrine, theory and approach affect and influences another doctrine, theory and approach and constitutes its theoretical core.
Hence, having clearly shown that the Nietzschean doctrine does not constitute the theoretical core of psychoanalysis and, thus, fulfilling its main objective and defending its main thesis, the most important conclusion of the present paper is that it is a very easy task to search and find similarities between two doctrines and conclude that one doctrine influence and affects the other and constitutes its theoretical core. Searching for similarities would normally lead to their finding (after all terminology and language are limited and are bound to be the same in using similar domains and endeavours), or, when necessary, inventing, devising and manipulating them artificially, that is, scholastics. Studying it is, therefore, essential and examine the two doctrines, theories and approaches very thoroughly in their entirety-their ideas, aims, terminology, reason for existing, points de depart, historical and philosophical roots and the like-establish a full grasp of them and merely then to examine any possible relationships and theoretical similarities between them. If this is not carried out then inaccurate assertions, the thesis and conclusions are likely to occur.
Throughout history ‘humanism’ has been associated with ‘atheism’, since it arose as a reaction against certain forms of theism that were seen as anti-human. Yet some kinds of humanism do not concentrate on a struggle against deity and there are ‘religious humanists’, a great deal of modern religion claim to be humanistic. In order, however, we shall use the two terms ‘humanism’ and ‘atheism’, in close association, in order to bring out the differences between the humanisms, especially Marxist humanism, and the ethics of Christianity.
In the absence in the belief in Immortality, unending existence of the soul after physical death. The doctrine of immortality is common to many religions; in different cultures, however, it takes various forms, ranging from ultimate extinction of the soul to its final survival and the resurrection of the body. In Hinduism, the ultimate personal goal is considered absorption into the ‘universal spirit.’ Buddhist doctrine promises nirvana, the state of complete bliss achieved through total extinction of the personality. In the religion of ancient Egypt, entrance to immortal life was dependent on the results of divine examination of the merits of an individual's life. Early Greek religion promised a shadowy continuation of life on earth in an underground region known as Hades. In Christianity and Islam, as well as in Judaism, the immortality promised is primarily of the spirit. The former two religions both differ from Judaism in holding that after the resurrection of the body and a general judgment of the entire human race, the body is to be reunited with the spirit to experience either reward or punishment. In Jewish eschatology, the resurrection of the soul will take place at the advent of the Messiah, although the reunion of body and spirit will endure only for the messianic age, when the spirit will return to heaven.
Ethical goals must be determined by secular (nonreligious) aims and concerns, human beings must take full responsibility for their destiny, and death marks the end of a person’s existence. As of 1994 there were an estimated 240 million atheists around the world comprising slightly more than 4 percent of the world’s population, including those who profess atheism, skepticism, disbelief, or irreligion. The estimate of nonbelievers increases significantly, to about 21 percent of the world’s population, if negative atheists are included.
From ancient times, people have at times used atheism as a term of abuse for religious positions they opposed. The first Christians were called atheists because they denied the existence of the Roman deities. Over time, several misunderstandings of atheism have arisen: that atheists are immoral, that morality cannot be justified without belief in God, and that life has no purpose without belief in God. Yet there is no evidence that atheists are any less moral than believers. Many systems of morality have been developed that do not presuppose the existence of a supernatural being. Moreover, the purpose of human life may be based on secular goals, such as the betterment of humankind.
In Western society the term atheism has been used more narrowly to refer to the denial of theism, in particular Judeo-Christian theism, which asserts the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good personal being. This being created the universe, took an active interest in human concerns, and guides his creatures through divine disclosure known as revelation. Positive atheists reject this theistic God and the associated beliefs in an afterlife, a cosmic destiny, a supernatural origin of the universe, an immortal soul, the revealed nature of the Bible and the Qur'an (Koran), and a religious foundation for morality.
Theism, however, is not a characteristic of all religions. Some religions reject theism but are not entirely atheistic. Although the theistic tradition is fully developed in the Bhagavad-Gita, the sacred text of Hinduism, earlier Hindu writings known as the Upanishads teach that Brahman (ultimate reality) is impersonal. Positive atheists reject even the pantheistic aspects of Hinduism that equate God with the universe. Several other Eastern religions, including Theravada Buddhism and Jainism, are commonly believed to be atheistic, but this interpretation is not strictly correct. These religions do reject a theistic God believed to have created the universe, but they accept numerous lesser gods. At most, such religions are atheistic in the narrow sense of rejecting theism.
One of the most controversial works of 19th-century philosophy, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-1885), Nietzsche’s theory of the Übermensch, a term translated as ‘Superman’ or ‘Overman.’ The Superman was an individual who overcame what Nietzsche termed the ‘slave morality’ of traditional values, and lived according to his own morality. Nietzsche also advanced his idea that ‘God is dead,’ or that traditional morality was no longer relevant in people’s lives. In this passage, the sage Zarathustra came down from the mountain where he had spent the last ten years alone to preach to the people.
In the Western intellectual world, nonbelief in the existence of God is a widespread phenomenon with a long and distinguished history. Philosophers of the ancient world such as Lucretius were nonbelievers. Even in the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century) there were currents of thought that questioned theist assumptions, including skepticism, the doctrine that true knowledge is impossible, and naturalism, the belief that only natural forces control the world. Several leading thinkers of the Enlightenment (1700-1789) were professed atheists, including Danish writer Baron Holbach and French encyclopedist Denis Diderot. Expressions of nonbelief also are found in classics of Western literature, including the writings of English poets Percy Shelley and Lord Byron; English novelist Thomas Hardy; French philosophers Voltaire and Jean-Paul Sartre; Russian author Ivan Turgenev; and American writers Mark Twain and Upton Sinclair. In the 19th century the most articulate and best-known atheists and critics of religion were German philosophers Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche. British philosopher Bertrand Russell, Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and Sartre are among the 20th century’s most influential atheists.
Nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was an influential critic of religious systems, especially Christianity, which he felt chained society to a herd morality. By declaring that ‘God is dead,’ Nietzsche signified that traditional religious belief in God no longer played a central role in human experience. Nietzsche believed we would have to find secular justifications for morality to avoid nihilism--the absence of all belief.
Atheists justify their philosophical position in several different ways. Negative atheists attempt to establish their position by refuting typical theist arguments for the existence of God, such as the argument from first cause, the argument from design, the ontological argument, and the argument from religious experience. Other negative atheists assert that any statement about God is meaningless, because attributes such as all-knowing and all-powerful cannot be comprehended by the human mind. Positive atheists, on the other hand, defend their position by arguing that the concept of God is inconsistent. They question, for example, whether a God who is all-knowing can also be all-good and how a God who lacks bodily existence can be all-knowing.
Some positive atheists have maintained that the existence of evil makes the existence of God improbable. In particular, atheists assert that theism does not provide an adequate explanation for the existence of seemingly gratuitous evil, such as the suffering of innocent children. Theists commonly defend the existence of evil by claiming that God desires that human beings have the freedom to choose between good and evil, or that the purpose of evil is to build human character, such as the ability to persevere. Positive atheists counter that justifications for evil in terms of human free will leave unexplained why, for example, children suffer because of genetic diseases or abuse from adults. Arguments that God allows pain and suffering to build human character fail, in turn, to explain why there was suffering among animals before human beings evolved and why human character could not be developed with less suffering than occurs in the world. For atheists, a better explanation for the presence of evil in the world is that God does not exist.
In Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (first published in 1748 under a different title), Scottish philosopher David Hume offers several criticisms of religious belief, including an argument against belief in miracles. According to Hume, testimony about the occurrence of miracles should be subjected to rational standards of evidence.
Atheists have also criticized historical evidence used to support belief in the major theistic religions. For example, atheists have argued that a lack of evidence casts doubt on important doctrines of Christianity, such as the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because such events are said to represent miracles, atheists assert that extremely strong evidence is necessary to support their occurrence. According to atheists, the available evidence to support these alleged miracles- from Biblical, pagan, and Jewish sources-is weak, and therefore such claims should be rejected.
Atheism is primarily a reaction to, or a rejection of, religious belief, and thus does not determine other philosophical beliefs. Atheism has sometimes been associated with the philosophical ideas of materialism, which holds that only matter exists; communism, which asserts that religion impedes human progress; and rationalism, which emphasizes analytic reasoning over other sources of knowledge. However, there is no necessary connection between atheism and these positions. Some atheists have opposed communism and some have rejected materialism. Although nearly all contemporary materialists are atheists, the ancient Greek materialist Epicurus believed the gods were made of matter in the form of atoms. Rationalists such as French philosopher René Descartes have believed in God, whereas atheists such as Sartre are not considered to be rationalists. Atheism has also been associated with systems of thought that reject authority, such as anarchism, a political theory opposed to all forms of government, and existentialism, a philosophic movement that emphasizes absolute human freedom of choice; there is however no necessary connection between atheism and these positions. British analytic philosopher A.J. Ayer was an atheist who opposed existentialism, while Danish philosopher S ren Kierkegaard was an existentialist who accepted God. Marx was an atheist who rejected anarchism while Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, a Christian, embraced anarchism. Because atheism in a strict sense is merely a negation, it does not provide a comprehensive world-view. It is therefore not possible to presume other philosophical positions to be outgrowths of atheism
Materialism, in philosophy, doctrine that all existence is resolvable into matter or into an attribute or effect of matter. According to this doctrine, matter is the ultimate reality, and the phenomenon of consciousness is explained by physicochemical changes in the nervous system. Materialism is thus the antithesis of idealism, in which the supremacy of mind is affirmed and matter is characterized as an aspect or objectification of mind. Extreme or absolute materialism is known as materialistic monism. According to the mind-stuff theory of monism, as expounded by the British metaphysician W. K. Clifford, in his Elements of Dynamic (1879-87), matter and mind are consubstantial, each being merely an aspect of the other. Philosophical materialism is ancient and has had numerous formulations. The early Greek philosophers subscribed to a variant of materialism known as hylozoism, according to which matter and life are identical. Related to hylozoism is the doctrine of hylotheism, in which matter is held to be divine, or the existence of God is disavowed apart from matter. Cosmological materialism is a term used to characterize a materialistic interpretation of the universe.
Antireligious materialism is motivated by a spirit of hostility toward the theological dogmas of organized religion, particularly those of Christianity. Notable among the exponents of antireligious materialism were the 18th-century French philosophers Denis Diderot, Paul Henri d'Holbach, and Julian Offroy de La Mettrie. According to historical materialism, as set forth in the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Ilich Lenin, in every historical epoch the prevailing economic system by which the necessities of life are produced determines the form of societal organization and the political, religious, ethical, intellectual, and artistic history of the epoch.
In modern times philosophical materialism has been largely influenced by the doctrine of evolution and may indeed be said to have been assimilated in the wider theory of evolution. Supporters of the theory of evolution go beyond the mere antithesis or atheism of materialism and seek positively to show how the diversities and differences in creation are the result of natural as opposed to supernatural processes.
Agnosticism, doctrine that the existence of God and other spiritual beings is neither certain nor impossible. The term, derived from agnostikos (Greek for ‘not knowing’), was introduced into English in the 19th century by the British biologist Thomas Henry Huxley. The agnostic position is distinct from both theism, which affirms the existence of such beings, and atheism, which denies their existence.
Although usually regarded as a form of skepticism, agnosticism is more limited in scope, for it denies the reliability only of metaphysical and theological beliefs rather than of all beliefs. The basis of modern agnosticism lies in the works of the British philosopher David Hume and the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, both of whom pointed out logical fallacies in the traditional arguments for the existence of God and of the soul.
Broadly speaking, theism is the belief in any god or gods. However in its typical philosophical and theological usage, theism is a form of monotheism, the belief in only one God. In contrast to theism, pantheism is the view that God is identical with the world or is completely immanent, pervading everything that exists in the world. Deism is the belief that God created the world but then had no further connection with it. Theism should also be contrasted with atheism and agnosticism, both of which have several variations. In the broadest sense, positive atheism is a disbelief in all gods including the theistic God, whereas negative atheism is simply the absence of belief in any god. Negative atheism is compatible with agnosticism, the denial that a person can know either that God exists or does not exist. Some agnostics draw the conclusion that one should suspend one’s belief, a view known as agnostic atheism. Other agnostics choose to believe in a theistic God on the basis of faith, a view known as agnostic theism.
From ancient times, people have at times used atheism as a term of abuse for religious positions they opposed. The first Christians were called atheists because they denied the existence of the Roman deities. Over time, several misunderstandings of atheism have arisen: that atheists are immoral, that morality cannot be justified without belief in God, and that life has no purpose without belief in God. Yet there is no evidence that atheists are any less moral than believers. Many systems of morality have been developed that do not presuppose the existence of a supernatural being. Moreover, the purpose of human life may be based on secular goals, such as the betterment of humankind.
In Western society the term atheism has been used more narrowly to refer to the denial of theism, in particular Judeo-Christian theism, which asserts the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good personal being. This being created the universe, took an active interest in human concerns, and guides his creatures through divine disclosure known as revelation. Positive atheists reject this theistic God and the associated beliefs in an afterlife, a cosmic destiny, a supernatural origin of the universe, an immortal soul, the revealed nature of the Bible and the Qur'an (Koran), and a religious foundation for morality.
Theism, however, is not a characteristic of all religions. Some religions reject theism but are not entirely atheistic. Although the theistic tradition is fully developed in the Bhagavad-Gita, the sacred text of Hinduism, earlier Hindu writings known as the Upanishads teach that Brahman (ultimate reality) is impersonal. Positive atheists reject even the pantheistic aspects of Hinduism that equate God with the universe. Several other Eastern religions, including Theravada Buddhism and Jainism, are commonly believed to be atheistic, but this interpretation is not strictly correct. These religions do reject a theistic God believed to have created the universe, but they accept numerous lesser gods. At most, such religions are atheistic in the narrow sense of rejecting theism.
In the Western intellectual world, nonbelief in the existence of God is a widespread phenomenon with a long and distinguished history. Philosophers of the ancient world such as Lucretius were nonbelievers. Even in the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century) there were currents of thought that questioned theist assumptions, including skepticism, the doctrine that true knowledge is impossible, and naturalism, the belief that only natural forces control the world. Several leading thinkers of the Enlightenment (1700-1789) were professed atheists, including Danish writer Baron Holbach and French encyclopedist Denis Diderot. Expressions of nonbelief also are found in classics of Western literature, including the writings of English poets Percy Shelley and Lord Byron; English novelist Thomas Hardy; French philosophers Voltaire and Jean-Paul Sartre; Russian author Ivan Turgenev; and American writers Mark Twain and Upton Sinclair. In the 19th century the most articulate and best-known atheists and critics of religion were German philosophers Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche. British philosopher Bertrand Russell, Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and Sartre are among the 20th century’s most influential atheists.
Nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was an influential critic of religious systems, especially Christianity, which he felt chained society to a herd morality. By declaring that ‘God is dead,’ Nietzsche signified that traditional religious belief in God no longer played a central role in human experience. Nietzsche believed we would have to find secular justifications for morality to avoid nihilism--the absence of all belief.
Atheists justify their philosophical position in several different ways. Negative atheists attempt to establish their position by refuting typical theist arguments for the existence of God, such as the argument from first cause, the argument from design, the ontological argument, and the argument from religious experience. Other negative atheists assert that any statement about God is meaningless, because attributes such as all-knowing and all-powerful cannot be comprehended by the human mind. Positive atheists, on the other hand, defend their position by arguing that the concept of God is inconsistent. They question, for example, whether a God who is all-knowing can also be all-good and how a God who lacks bodily existence can be all-knowing.
Some positive atheists have maintained that the existence of evil makes the existence of God improbable. In particular, atheists assert that theism does not provide an adequate explanation for the existence of seemingly gratuitous evil, such as the suffering of innocent children. Theists commonly defend the existence of evil by claiming that God desires that human beings have the freedom to choose between good and evil, or that the purpose of evil is to build human character, such as the ability to persevere. Positive atheists counter that justifications for evil in terms of human free will leave unexplained why, for example, children suffer because of genetic diseases or abuse from adults. Arguments that God allows pain and suffering to build human character fail, in turn, to explain why there was suffering among animals before human beings evolved and why human character could not be developed with less suffering than occurs in the world. For atheists, a better explanation for the presence of evil in the world is that God does not exist.
In Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (first published in 1748 under a different title), Scottish philosopher David Hume offers several criticisms of religious belief, including an argument against belief in miracles. According to Hume, testimony about the occurrence of miracles should be subjected to rational standards of evidence.
Atheists have also criticized historical evidence used to support belief in the major theistic religions. For example, atheists have argued that a lack of evidence casts doubt on important doctrines of Christianity, such as the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because such events are said to represent miracles, atheists assert that extremely strong evidence is necessary to support their occurrence. According to atheists, the available evidence to support these alleged miracles-from Biblical, pagan, and Jewish sources-is weak, and therefore such claims should be rejected.
Atheism is primarily a reaction to, or a rejection of, religious belief, and thus does not determine other philosophical beliefs. Atheism has sometimes been associated with the philosophical ideas of materialism, which holds that only matter exists; communism, which asserts that religion impedes human progress; and rationalism, which emphasizes analytic reasoning over other sources of knowledge. However, there is no necessary connection between atheism and these positions. Some atheists have opposed communism and some have rejected materialism. Although nearly all contemporary materialists are atheists, the ancient Greek materialist Epicurus believed the gods were made of matter in the form of atoms. Rationalists such as French philosopher René Descartes have believed in God, whereas atheists such as Sartre are not considered to be rationalists. Atheism has also been associated with systems of thought that reject authority, such as anarchism, a political theory opposed to all forms of government, and existentialism, a philosophic movement that emphasizes absolute human freedom of choice; there is however no necessary connection between atheism and these positions. British analytic philosopher A. J. Ayer was an atheist who opposed existentialism, while Danish philosopher S ren Kierkegaard was an existentialist who accepted God. Marx was an atheist who rejected anarchism while Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, a Christian, embraced anarchism. Because atheism in a strict sense is merely a negation, it does not provide a comprehensive worldview. It is therefore not possible to presume other philosophical positions to be outgrowths of atheism.
From ancient times, people have at times used atheism as a term of abuse for religious positions they opposed. The first Christians were called atheists because they denied the existence of the Roman deities. Over time, several misunderstandings of atheism have arisen: that atheists are immoral, that morality cannot be justified without belief in God, and that life has no purpose without belief in God. Yet there is no evidence that atheists are any less moral than believers. Many systems of morality have been developed that do not presuppose the existence of a supernatural being. Moreover, the purpose of human life may be based on secular goals, such as the betterment of humankind.
In Western society the term atheism has been used more narrowly to refer to the denial of theism, in particular Judeo-Christian theism, which asserts the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good personal being. This being created the universe, took an active interest in human concerns, and guides his creatures through divine disclosure known as revelation. Positive atheists reject this theistic God and the associated beliefs in an afterlife, a cosmic destiny, a supernatural origin of the universe, an immortal soul, the revealed nature of the Bible and the Qur'an (Koran), and a religious foundation for morality.
Theism, however, is not a characteristic of all religions. Some religions reject theism but are not entirely atheistic. Although the theistic tradition is fully developed in the Bhagavad-Gita, the sacred text of Hinduism, earlier Hindu writings known as the Upanishads teach that Brahman (ultimate reality) is impersonal. Positive atheists reject even the pantheistic aspects of Hinduism that equate God with the universe. Several other Eastern religions, including Theravada Buddhism and Jainism, are commonly believed to be atheistic, but this interpretation is not strictly correct. These religions do reject a theistic God believed to have created the universe, but they accept numerous lesser gods. At most, such religions are atheistic in the narrow sense of rejecting theism. that sustains by itself the most controversial works of 19th-century philosophy, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-1885) articulated
In the Western intellectual world, nonbelief in the existence of God is a widespread phenomenon with a long and distinguished history. Philosophers of the ancient world such as Lucretius were nonbelievers. Even in the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century) there were currents of thought that questioned theist assumptions, including skepticism, the doctrine that true knowledge is impossible, and naturalism, the belief that only natural forces control the world. Several leading thinkers of the Enlightenment (1700-1789) were professed atheists, including Danish writer Baron Holbach and French encyclopedist Denis Diderot. Expressions of nonbelief also are found in classics of Western literature, including the writings of English poets Percy Shelley and Lord Byron; English novelist Thomas Hardy; French philosophers Voltaire and Jean-Paul Sartre; Russian author Ivan Turgenev; and American writers Mark Twain and Upton Sinclair. In the 19th century the most articulate and best-known atheists and critics of religion were German philosophers Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche. British philosopher Bertrand Russell, Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and Sartre are among the 20th century’s most influential atheists.
Atheists justify their philosophical position in several different ways. Negative atheists attempt to establish their position by refuting typical theist arguments for the existence of God, such as the argument from first cause, the argument from design, the ontological argument, and the argument from religious experience. Other negative atheists assert that any statement about God is meaningless, because attributes such as all-knowing and all-powerful cannot be comprehended by the human mind. Positive atheists, on the other hand, defend their position by arguing that the concept of God is inconsistent. They question, for example, whether a God who is all-knowing can also be all-good and how a God who lacks bodily existence can be all-knowing.
Arguments that God allows pain and suffering to build human character fail, in turn, to explain why there was suffering among animals before human beings evolved and why human character could not be developed with less suffering than occurs in the world. For atheists, a better explanation for the presence of evil in the world is that God does not exist. Published in 1748 under a different title, Scottish philosopher David Hume offers several criticisms of religious belief, including an argument against belief in miracles. According to Hume, testimony about the occurrence of miracles should be subjected to rational standards of evidence.
Atheists have also criticized historical evidence used to support belief in the major theistic religions. For example, atheists have argued that a lack of evidence casts doubt on important doctrines of Christianity, such as the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because such events are said to represent miracles, atheists assert that extremely strong evidence is necessary to support their occurrence. According to atheists, the available evidence to support these alleged miracles-from Biblical, pagan, and Jewish sources-is weak, and therefore such claims should be rejected.
Atheism is primarily a reaction to, or a rejection of, religious belief, and thus does not determine other philosophical beliefs. Atheism has sometimes been associated with the philosophical ideas of materialism, which holds that only matter exists; communism, which asserts that religion impedes human progress; and rationalism, which emphasizes analytic reasoning over other sources of knowledge. However, there is no necessary connection between atheism and these positions. Some atheists have opposed communism and some have rejected materialism. Although nearly all contemporary materialists are atheists, the ancient Greek materialist Epicurus believed the gods were made of matter in the form of atoms. Rationalists such as French philosopher René Descartes have believed in God, whereas atheists such as Sartre are not considered to be rationalists. Atheism has also been associated with systems of thought that reject authority, such as anarchism, a political theory opposed to all forms of government, and existentialism, a philosophic movement that emphasizes absolute human freedom of choice; there is however no necessary connection between atheism and these positions. British analytic philosopher A.J. Ayer was an atheist who opposed existentialism, while Danish philosopher S ren Kierkegaard was an existentialist who accepted God. Marx was an atheist who rejected anarchism while Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, a Christian, embraced anarchism. Because atheism in a strict sense is merely a negation, it does not provide a comprehensive worldview. It is therefore not possible to presume other philosophical positions to be outgrowths of atheism.
Faith is an attitude of the entire self, including both will and intellect, directed toward a person, an idea, or-as in the case of religious faith-a divine being. Modern theologians agree in emphasizing this total existential character of faith, thus distinguishing it from the popular conception of faith that identifies it with belief as opposed to knowledge. Faith indeed includes belief but goes far beyond it, and in the history of theology the distinction has more often been drawn between faith and works than between faith and knowledge. This distinction was powerfully expressed by the apostle Paul, who argued that the sinful human being cannot achieve salvation through good works, but only through faith in the free grace of God. In this view, forcefully revived by Martin Luther at the time of the Reformation, good works are consequences of faith. The faithful relation to God enables the believer to transcend limitations and bring forth good works.
The Book of Hebrews, which some scholars speculate was written for Jewish converts to Christianity in the 1st century, encouraged Christians to maintain their faith despite the possibility of persecution under Roman authorities. This excerpt, the eleventh chapter of the epistle, lists great heroes from the Old Testament, as well as Jesus himself, who because of their faith and devotion to God did not fear death. This passage is from the King James Version of the Bible.
The most evocative description of faith in the New Testament is found in Hebrews 11:1, where faith is heralded as ‘the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ Here, the word for faith is the Greek pistis, which denotes the act of giving one's trust. The New Testament conception of faith involves an amplification and an alteration of the older, Hebrew idea of faith as that quality of stability and trust that informs the living relationship between two beings. For the New Testament writers, faith has found its centre in the believer's relationship to Jesus Christ. But the New Testament idea of faith goes beyond that of the Hebrew scriptures in its addition of the concept of ‘belief in’ or ‘belief that.’ Hence, Christian theology has traditionally distinguished between the ‘subjective’ element in faith, which involves the supernatural action of God upon the human soul, and faith's ‘objective’ component, which is characterized as adherence to a body of truth found in creeds, in definitions of church councils, and especially in the Bible.
During the Middle Ages, Roman Catholic theologians distinguished two kinds of separate but ultimately compatible religious truths: those that are accessible to unaided human reason, such as belief in the existence of God; and those that require faith in order to be grasped, such as belief in the resurrection of the dead. Historically, the Roman Catholic church has defined faith as the complete acceptance of doctrine and of the absolute authority of God in what he reveals or promises to reveal.
Not all Christians have believed that the demands of faith are compatible with those of reason. Many early Christians, including St. Paul and the 2nd-century theologian Tertullian, insisted that faith resembles folly to the eye that has not been opened by the grace of God. In a similar vein, the 19th-century Danish thinker S ren Kierkegaard felt that a chasm separates human reason from faith, and that the would-be believer must make a ‘leap of faith’ across this abyss in order to find salvation. In general, modern Protestant theologians have emphasized, as Kierkegaard did, the subjective or individualistic aspect of faith and have concentrated on the risk and moral effort involved in attempting to lead the life of faith, rather than on the acceptance of creeds as an expression of faith
In polytheism, there are many holy beings, each manifesting some particular divine attribute or caring for some particular aspect of nature or of human affairs. Polytheism was the most common form of religion in the ancient world and was well developed in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, and elsewhere. It tends, however, to develop into a form of religion that has a unitary conception of the divine, either through philosophical criticism or through one of the deities in the polytheistic pantheon (assemblage of gods) acquiring an overwhelming superiority over the others. The gods of a pantheon were usually conceived in some family relationship, which ensured from the beginning a sense of their unity. Polytheism probably developed out of a more primitive form of religion (still practised in many parts of the world) called animism, the belief in a multitude of spiritual forces, localized and limited in their powers, some friendly and some hostile. In animism the sense of Holy Being is diffused throughout the environment.
Although conceptions of God have varied considerably by historical period, culture, and sect, a belief in Holy Being in some sense has been predominant in almost all societies throughout history. This belief has been challenged, however, since ancient times by the philosophical doctrines of skepticism, materialism, atheism, and other forms of disbelief. The proportion of unbelievers is higher in modern societies than in most societies of the past.
Arguments against belief in God are as numerous as arguments for it. Atheists absolutely deny the existence of God. Some, for instance, believe the material universe constitutes ultimate reality; others argue that the prevalence of suffering and evil in the world precludes the existence of a sacred being. Agnostics believe that the evidence for and against the existence of God is inconclusive; they therefore suspend judgment. Positivists believe that rational inquiry is restricted to questions of empirical fact, so that it is meaningless to either affirm or deny the existence of God. American psychologist and philosopher William James helped to popularize the philosophy of pragmatism with his book Pragmatism: A New Name for Old Ways of Thinking (1907). Influenced by a theory of meaning and verification developed for scientific hypotheses by American philosopher C. S. Peirce, James held that truth is what works, or has good experimental results. In a related theory, James argued the existence of God is partly verifiable because many people derive benefits from believing.
If, as Paul Tillich argues, God is the ground or source of being and not simply another being, even the highest or supreme being, then he does not exist in the sense in which things exist within the world. It may even be misleading to say, ‘God exists,’ although this is the traditional way of speaking. To believe in God is to have faith in the ultimate ground of being, or to trust in the ultimate rationality and righteousness of the whole scheme of things. This way of expressing the matter also leaves open the questions of transcendence and immanence, personal being and impersonal being, and so on. The primary basis for belief in God is to be found in experience, especially religious experience. There are many experiences in which people have become aware of Holy Being manifesting itself in their lives-mystical experiences, conversion, a sense of presence, sometimes visions and verbal communications-which may come with the force of a revelation. Besides specifically religious experiences, there are others in which people become aware of a depth or an ultimacy that they call God-moral experiences, interpersonal relations, the sense of beauty, the search for truth, the awareness of finitude, even confrontation with suffering and death. These are sometimes called limit situations (a term used by the 20th-century German philosopher Karl Jaspers), because those who undergo such experiences seem to strike against the limits of their own being. In so doing, however, they become aware of a being that transcends their own, yet with which they sense both difference and affinity. They become aware of what 20th-century German Protestant theologian Rudolf Otto, in a classic description, called Mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the mystery that at once produces both awe and fascination.
During the 13th century, Saint Thomas Aquinas sought to reconcile the empirical philosophy of Aristotle with the mystical theology of Saint Augustine. Aquinas wrote that reason and faith are fully compatible with one another and that furthermore, God can be known through both methods. While Aquinas himself accepted the existence of God on faith, he offered five rational arguments to support this belief.
To many people experiencing the Holy Being are self-authenticating, and they feel no need to inquire further. All human experience, however, is fallible. Mistakes of perception are everyday experiences, and false conceptions of the natural world, the earth, the heavenly bodies, and so forth have prevailed for thousands of years. It is therefore possible that the experience of Holy Being is illusory, and this possibility has led some believers to look for a rational basis for belief in God that will confirm the experiential basis. Numerous attempts have been made to prove the reality of God. Medieval Scholastic theologian Saint Anselm argued that the very idea of a being than which nothing greater or more perfect can be conceived entails his existence, for existence is itself an aspect of perfection. Many philosophers have denied the logical validity of such a transition from idea to factual existence, but this ontological argument is still discussed. Thirteenth-century theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas rejected the ontological argument but proposed five other proofs of God's existence that are still officially accepted by the Roman Catholic church: (1) The fact of change requires an agent of change; (2) the chain of causation needs to be grounded in a first cause that is itself uncaused; (3) the contingent facts of the world (facts that might not have been as they are) presuppose a necessary being; (4) one can observe a gradation of things as higher and lower, and this points to a perfect reality at the top of the hierarchy and (5) the order and design of nature demand as their source a being possessing the highest wisdom. Eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant rejected Aquinas's arguments but argued the necessity of God's existence as the support or guarantor of the moral life. These arguments for the reality of God have all been submitted to repeated and searching criticism, and they continue to be reformulated to meet the criticisms. It is now generally agreed that none of them constitutes a proof, but many believers would say that the arguments have a cumulative force, which, although still short of proof, amounts to a strong probability, especially in conjuction with the evidence of religious experience. Ultimately, however, belief in God is, like many other important beliefs, an act of faith-one that must be rooted in personal experience.
The self-communication of God; that is, God's disclosure of divine being or divine will to human beings. Most of the major world religions affirm revelation in some sense as a basis for their doctrines and practices. Revelation may be in the form of a vision, often accompanied by words, or may consist only of words. In the Old Testament, Moses saw a burning bush and heard God's voice proceeding from it. Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, heard a noise like a bell that resolved itself into words. As recounted in the Hindu epic the Bhagavad-Gita, Prince Arjuna saw his charioteer Krishna transformed into his true form as a divine being. Historical events may also be understood as revelation-for instance, the exodus of Israel from Egypt, or the life of Jesus Christ. General revelation refers to the knowledge of God communicated through the order of nature, a conception that is found in Eastern religion and in some romantic poetry, such as that of the English poet William Wordsworth. Special revelation refers to the knowledge of God that comes through specific experiences, such as visions, dreams, or events. The two kinds of revelation may be complementary. Christianity and Islam both teach that the natural order is revelatory of God, but their emphasis is on the special revelations communicated by their founders. In Judaism too the special revelations given to Moses and the prophets, which are described in the Bible, are fundamental to the faith. In all revelation, the primary element is the encounter with the divine, which it is the task of religious doctrine and of religious tradition to interpret and convey.
Heaven, in religion, place where God, gods, or other spiritual beings dwell, and the place or condition of perfect supernatural happiness for the redeemed in the afterlife.
In simple societies the concept of life after death was substantially that of a shadowy continuation of life on earth. Even in that concept, however, the principle of the necessity for vindication of divine justice was manifested. This principle is illustrated in the distinction between Elysium (a place of reward for the virtuous dead) and Tartarus (a place of damnation where the wicked were punished) in the Greek and Roman religions and in the various depths of Sheol (abode of the dead) of the Jewish Scriptures. Later Jewish mystics regarded the heavens as contained in the seven spheres of the firmament, and they found in the Persian doctrine of resurrection a hope of release from Sheol to a new life on earth or in the heavens.
Aristotle declared that all (polytheistic) religions united in placing the abode of the gods in the most elevated place in the universe. Such regions were, in classical times, considered as closed to ordinary mortals. The Islands of the Blessed, sometimes identified with Elysium, were reached only by heroes, demigods, and favourites of the gods. The heaven of later polytheistic religions was conceived of as a place where mortals might continue the pleasures of earthly life, as in the Valhalla of the Germans and Scandinavians and the happy hunting ground of the Native North Americans.
The general belief of Christians is that, since the resurrection of Christ, the souls of the just who are free from sin are admitted immediately after death into heaven, where their chief joy consists in an unclouded vision of God known as the beatific vision. Their bliss is eternal, but at the general resurrection their souls are to be reunited to their perfected, or glorified, bodies. Some Christians believe that, before entering heaven, souls first pass through a state of purification called purgatory.
Islam, in the Qur'an (Koran), adopts the concept of the seven heavens of the firmament, differing in degrees of glory from the seventh, the abode of the Most High, downward to the first, or most earthly, paradise. Although the Qur'an portrays the happiness of heaven as the unrestricted and inexhaustible partaking of the joys of physical sense, many writers consider this portrayal to be purely allegorical.
Nirvana, the heaven of Buddhism, is a state of extinction of all desire and of union with Brahma, the creator god, achieved by perfecting the soul in the course of its successive transmigrations. Literally, ‘discourse about the last things,’ is the doctrine concerning life after death and the final stage of the world. The origin of this doctrine is almost as old as humanity; archaeological evidence of customs in the Old Stone Age indicates a rudimentary concept of immortality. Even in early stages of religious development, speculation about things to come is not wholly limited to the fate of the individual. Such devastating natural phenomena as floods, conflagrations, cyclones, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions have always suggested the possibility of the end of the world. Higher forms of eschatological thought are the product of a complex social organism and an increased knowledge of natural science. Often myths of astrological origin, the concept of retribution, or the hope of deliverance from present oppressions provided the material or motive for highly-developed eschatologies. Prolonged observation of planetary and solar movement made possible the conception of a recurrence, at the end of the present cycle, of the events connected with the origin of the world and a renovation of the world after its destruction.
The development of eschatological speculation, therefore, generally reflects the growth of human intellectual and moral perceptions, the larger social experience of men and women, and their expanding knowledge of nature. The outward forms of the doctrine of eschatology vary, however, according to the characteristics of the environment and of the peoples.
Belief in a life of the spirit, a substance inhabiting the dead body as long as food and drink are furnished, is typical of primitive eschatology. The concept of the future life grew richer as civilization advanced and cosmic forces became objects of worship associated with departed spirits. The belief in judgment after death was introduced when standards of right and wrong were established according to particular tribal customs; the spirits themselves were made subject to the laws of retribution. Through this twofold development the future life was thus made spiritual and assumed a moral character, as in the eschatology of ancient Egypt. In Persia and Israel, the old conception of a shadowy existence in the grave, or in some subterranean realm, in general retained its hold. Escape from such an existence, however, into larger life, with the possibility of moral distinctions among individuals, was provided by the conception of a restoration and reanimation of the old body, thus ensuring personal identity. In other cultures, as in India, the spirit was conceived as entering immediately upon death into another body, to live again and die and become reincarnated in new forms. This concept of transmigration, or metempsychosis, made possible the introduction into the future life of subtle moral distinctions, involving not only punishments and rewards for conduct in a previous stage of existence but also the possibility of rising or falling in the scale of being according to present conduct. In spite of the seemingly perfect justice thus administered on every level of being, the never-ending series of births and deaths of the individual may come to appear as an evil; in which case deliverance may be sought from the infinite wheel of existence in Nirvana. The ancient Greeks arrived at their eschatology by considering the functions of the mind as a purely spiritual essence, independent of the body, and having no beginning or end; this abstract concept of immortality led to the anticipation of a more concrete personal life after death.
The ideas held throughout history concerning the future of the world and of humanity are only imperfectly known today. The belief in a coming destruction of the world by fire or flood is found among groups in the Pacific islands as well as among American aborigines; this belief probably did not originate in astronomical speculation, but was rather engendered by some terrifying earthly experience of the past. The ancient Persians, who adopted the doctrines of their religious teacher Zoroaster, developed the basic idea of the coming destruction of the world by fire into the concept of a great moral ordeal. According to this belief, at the end of the world the worshippers of the lord Mazda will be distinguished from all other people by successfully enduring the ordeal of molten metal, and the good will then be rewarded. This concept is found in the Gathas, the earliest part of the Avesta, the bible of Zoroastrianism. It is not certain that the idea of a resurrection from death goes back to the period represented by the Gathas. But the Greek historian Herodotus seems to have heard of such a Persian belief in the 5th century Bc, and Theopompus of Chios, the historian of Philip II, king of Macedon, described it as a Mazdayasnian doctrine.
Similarities can be seen between the ancient Greek concepts of heaven and hell and those of Christian doctrine. The Homeric poems and those of Hesiod show how the Greek mind conceived of the future of the soul in Elysium or in Hades. Through the Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries this thought was deepened. That the future of nations and the world also played an important role in Greek and Roman thought is evident from the prophecies of the Sibyls. An eschatological philosophy dominated the epoch ushered in by the conquests of Alexander the Great, and Greco-Roman thought became suffused with Oriental ideas in its speculation upon the future of the world. In a similar manner the Scandinavian idea of the destruction of the earth by fire and its subsequent renovation under higher heavens-to be peopled by the descendants of the surviving pair, Life and Life’s thrustor (as set forth in the Elder Edda)-reflects an early Nordic interpretation of the idea of hell and heaven.
In early Israel the ‘Day of Yahweh’ was a coming day of battle that would decide the fate of the people. Although the people looked forward to it as a day of victory, prophets such as Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Zephaniah, and Jeremiah feared that it would bring near or complete destruction, associating it with the growing military threat from Assyria. To Jeremiah, this forecast of judgment was the criterion of true prophethood. Later, the books containing their pronouncements were interpolated with prophecies of prosperity, which themselves constituted significant signs of the expansion of eschatological hopes. The Book of Daniel voices the hope that the kingdom of the world will be given to the saints of the Most High, the Jewish people. A celestial representative, probably the archangel Michael, is promised, who, after the destruction of the beast representing the Hellenistic kingdoms of the Middle East, will come with the clouds and receive the empire of the world. No messiah appears in this apocalypse. The first distinct appearance of this deliverer and king is in the Song of Solomon.
After the conquest of Palestine by the Roman general Pompey the Great in 63 Bc, the Jews longed for a descendant of the line of David, king of Israel and Judah, who would break the Roman yoke, establish the empire of the Jews, and rule as a righteous king over the subject nations. This desire ultimately led to the rebellion in Ad 66-70, which brought about the destruction of Jerusalem. When Jesus Christ proclaimed the coming of the kingdom of heaven, it was natural, therefore, that despite his Immortality, unending existence of the soul after physical death. The doctrine of immortality is common to many religions; in different cultures, however, it takes various forms, ranging from ultimate extinction of the soul to its final survival and the resurrection of the body. In Hinduism, the ultimate personal goal is considered absorption into the ‘universal spirit.’ Buddhist doctrine promises nirvana, the state of complete bliss achieved through total extinction of the personality. In the religion of ancient Egypt, entrance to immortal life was dependent on the results of divine examination of the merits of an individual's life. Early Greek religion promised a shadowy continuation of life on earth in an underground region known as Hades. In Christianity and Islam, as well as in Judaism, the immortality promised is primarily of the spirit. The former two religions both differ from Judaism in holding that after the resurrection of the body and a general judgment of the entire human race, the body is to be reunited with the spirit to experience either reward or punishment. In Jewish eschatology, the resurrection of the soul will take place at the advent of the Messiah, although the reunion of body and spirit will endure only for the messianic age, when the spirit will return to heaven.
Jews. His disciples were convinced that he would return as the Messiah upon the clouds of heaven. It is unlikely, however, that the final judgment and the raising of the dead were ever conceived by an adherent of the Jewish faith as functions of the Messiah.
In Christian doctrine, eschatology has traditionally included the second advent of Christ, or Parousia, the resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, the immortality of the soul, concepts of heaven and hell, and the consummation of the kingdom of God. In the Roman Catholic church, eschatology includes, additionally, the beatific vision, purgatory, and limbo.
Although the great creeds of Christendom affirm the belief in a return to the son of God to judge the living and the dead, and in a resurrection of the just and the unjust, Christianity through the centuries has shown wide variation in its interpretation of eschatology. Conservative belief has usually emphasized a person's destiny after death and the way in which belief in the future life affects one's attitude toward life on earth. Occasionally certain sects have predicted the imminent end of the world.
Islam adopted from Judaism and Christianity the doctrine of a coming judgment, a resurrection of the dead, and everlasting punishments and rewards. Later, contact with Persian thought greatly enriched Islamic eschatology. Especially important was the belief in the reincarnation of some great prophet from the past. Time and again the world of Islam has been stirred by the expectation of Mahdi, the Muslim messiah, to reveal more fully the truth, or to lead the faithful into better social conditions on earth. Iran and Africa have had many such movements.
Liberal Christian thought has emphasized the soul and the kingdom of God, more often seeing it as coming on earth in each individual (evidenced by what was believed to be the steady upward progress of humankind) than as an apocalyptic event at the end of time. Twentieth-century theological thought has tended to repudiate what many scholars have felt to be an identification of Christian eschatology with the values of Western civilization. In the second half of the 20th century, eschatology was equated by some theologians with the doctrine of Christian hope, including not only the events of the end of time but also the hope itself and its revolutionizing influence on life in the world. The most eloquent exponent of this eschatology is the German theologian Jürgen Moltmann.
In modern Judaism the return of Israel to its land, the coming of the Messiah, the resurrection of the dead, and everlasting retribution are still expected by the Orthodox, but the more liberal base the religious mission of Israel upon the regeneration of the human race and upon hope for immortal life independent of the resurrection of the body.
As. too, the doctrine that the existence of God and other spiritual beings is neither certain nor impossible. The term, derived from agnostikos (Greek for ‘not knowing’), was introduced into English in the 19th century by the British biologist Thomas Henry Huxley. The agnostic position is distinct from both theism, which affirms the existence of such beings, and atheism, which denies their existence.
Although usually regarded as a form of skepticism, agnosticism is more limited in scope, for it denies the reliability only of metaphysical and theological beliefs than of all beliefs. The basis of modern agnosticism lies in the works of the British philosopher David Hume and the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, both of whom pointed out logical fallacies in the traditional arguments for the existence of God
Finally, immortality, deems of an unending existence of the soul after physical death. The doctrine of immortality is common to many religions; in different cultures, however, it takes various forms, ranging from ultimate extinction of the soul to its final survival and the resurrection of the body. In Hinduism, the ultimate personal goal is considered absorption into the ‘universal spirit.’ Buddhist doctrine promises nirvana, the state of complete bliss achieved through total extinction of the personality. In the religion of ancient Egypt, entrance to immortal life was dependent on the results of divine examination of the merits of an individual's life. Early Greek religion promised a shadowy continuation of life on earth in an underground region known as Hades. Judaism in holding that after the resurrection of the body and a general judgment of the entire human race, the body is to be reunited with the spirit to experience either reward or punishment. In Jewish eschatology, the resurrection of the soul will take place at the advent of the Messiah, although the reunion of body and spirit will endure only for the messianic age, when the spirit will return to heaven.
Humanism, in philosophy, lends itself of the attitude that emphasizes the dignity and worth of the individual. A basic premise of humanism is that people are rational beings who possess within themselves the capacity for truth and goodness. The term humanism is most often used to describe a literary and cultural movement that spread through western Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. This Renaissance revival of Greek and Roman studies emphasized the value of the classics for their own sake, rather than for their relevance to Christianity.
The humanist movement started in Italy, where the late medieval Italian writers Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Francesco Petrarch contributed greatly to the discovery and preservation of classical works. Humanist ideals were forcefully expressed by another Italian scholar, Pico della Mirandola, in his Oration on the dignity of man. The movement was further stimulated by the influx of Byzantine scholars who came to Italy after the fall of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) to the Ottomans in 1453 and also by the establishment of the Platonic Academy in Florence. The academy, whose leading thinker was Marsilio Ficino, was founded by the 15th-century Florentine statesman and patron of the arts Cosimo de' Medici. The institution sought to revive Platonism and had particular influence on the literature, painting, and architecture of the times.
The collection and translation of classical manuscripts became widespread, especially among the higher clergy and nobility. The invention of printing with movable type, around the mid-15th century, gave a further impetus to humanism through the dissemination of editions of the classics. Although in Italy humanism developed principally in the fields of literature and art, in central Europe, where it was introduced chiefly by the German scholars Johann Reuchlin and Melanchthon, the movement extended into the fields of theology and education, and was a major underlying cause of the Reformation.
One of the most influential scholars in the development of humanism in France was the Dutch cleric Desiderius Erasmus, who also played an important part in introducing the movement into England. There humanism was definitely established at the University of Oxford by the English classical scholars William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre, and at the University of Cambridge by Erasmus and the English prelate John Fisher. From the universities it spread throughout English society and paved the way for the great flourishing of Elizabethan literature. However, this humanism is directed against all claims for objective universals, both political and religious. As a method of radical empiricism and a doctrine of radical individualism, it denies all gods as ruling principles and all authorities as principal rulers. It replaces patriarchy by fellowship, kinship by merit, theoretical premises and deduction by sense data, experiment, and induction, faith by critical reason, and duty by individual happiness. This sprightliness of the ‘modern’ mind of the past four-hundred years bears sufficiently the affiliations in reserve for science’s ‘passionate interest in the detailed facts and by the rise of naturalism in art in the late middle ages. This particularist and empirical spirit have frequently been combined in various ways with a conviction in the ultimate Order or Creator of Nature, as in the early scientists Kepler and Newton, the philosophers St. Thomas and Occam, and especially the Protestant religious thinkers ranging from Luther to Anabaptists and Deists like Jefferson. However, the general drift of modern thought in the West has been anti-supernaturalistic, empirical, individualistic, and humanistic. In accumulating of these that we are in finding the illustrations for which the dominant schools of contemporary secular philosophy in the West: Realism, positivism, analysis, phenomenology, and existentialism.
Grounded of strict empiricism, this kind of humanism appears to arise in those periods when the old centres of social power are shifting and the corresponding ruling ideologies are called into question. Not disposed to return to orthodoxy and not yet prepared to create a new ideology for a social order still to be born, intelligent and educated men are thrown back upon the immediate evidence of their senses and upon the impulses of their own bodies. Reality, value, and knowledge are to be found in or by the individual human being considered in contrast to the authoritative God of the past; the rebellion of the Titans against their rulers is repeated. The life of value and divine aspiration and fulfilment is attributed to the individual man who alone is God. Thus, the Greek atomists, in a way similar to the Charvakas in India, pictured a cosmos composed of an infinite number of individual atoms moving unhindered through empty space. In this view, the order of society and of the universe can only be a function of their individual inherent properties. The reasonable person becomes correspondingly as similar of a god once he or she understands this order. Modern empirical humanism does not always affirm the order, as it does affirm the actual or potential divinity of the individual man.
Western humanistic criticism, however, has been associated with another tradition of thought, namely, that which has stressed descriptive generalization, integrative reason, first principles, universals, ideals, communal and organic forces and values, and duty rather than individual happiness. This tradition, too, has associated with some principle of reason its acknowledgement of the existence and importance of the divine. From a traditional religious, that is, strictly supernaturalistic, point of view, it has been antireligious and humanistic, for it leaves no place for faith and identifies the divine with the transcendent principle of reason to which man has access. Some Greek speculative philosophers such as Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, and the Stoics, and some Renaissance and Enlightenment rationalists such as Bruno and Hegel fall into this group. The rich development of natural law philosophy is to be found here, branching out successively in Catholic theology through St. Thomas, in democratic theory through Jefferson, who combined it with Lockean libertarianism, and in Marxism where it was fused with materialism and dialectics. Pope John XXII's Pacem in Terris beautifully illustrates how natural law thought provides a matrix for the meeting, communing, and mutual ordering of diverse viewpoints and systems.
Stress is an unpleasant state of emotional and physiological arousal that people experience in situations that they perceive as dangerous or threatening to their well-being. The word stress means different things to different people. Some people define stress as events or situations that cause them to feel tension, pressure, or negative emotions such as and anger. Others view stress as the response to these situations. This response includes physiological changes-such as increased heart rate and muscle tension-as well as emotional and behavioural changes. However, most psychologists regard stress as a process involving a person’s interpretation and response to a threatening event.
Stress is a common experience. We may feel stress when we are very busy, have important deadlines to meet, or have too little time to finish all of our tasks. Often people experience stress because of problems at work or in social relationships, such as a poor evaluation by a supervisor or an argument with a friend. Some people may be particularly vulnerable to stress in situations involving the threat of failure or personal humiliation. Others have extreme fears of objects or things associated with physical threats-such as snakes, illness, storms, or flying in an aeroplane-and become stressed when they encounter or think about these perceived threats. Major life events, such as the death of a loved one, can cause severe stress.
Stress can have both positive and negative effects. Stress is a normal, adaptive reaction to threat. It signals danger and prepares us to take defensive action. Fear of things that pose realistic threats motivates us to deal with them or avoid them. Stress also motivates us to achieve and fuels creativity. Although stress may hinder performance on difficult tasks, moderate stress seems to improve motivation and performance on less complex tasks. In personal relationships, stress often leads to less cooperation and more aggression.
If not managed appropriately, stress can lead to serious problems. Exposure to chronic stress can contribute to both physical illnesses, such as heart disease, and mental illnesses, such as disorders. The field of health psychology focuses in part on how stress affects bodily functioning and on how people can use stress management techniques to prevent or minimize disease.
The circumstances that cause stress are called stressors. Stressors vary in severity and duration. For example, the responsibility of caring for a sick parent may be an ongoing source of major stress, whereas getting stuck in a traffic jam may cause mild, short-term stress. Some events, such as the death of a loved one, are stressful for everyone. But in other situations, individuals may respond differently to the same event-what is a stressor for one person may not be stressful for another. For example, a student who is unprepared for a chemistry test and anticipates a bad grade may feel stress, whereas a classmate who studies in advance may feel confident of a good grade. For an event or situation to be a stressor for a particular individual, the person must appraise the situation as threatening and lack the coping resources to deal with it effectively.
Stressors can be classified into three general categories: catastrophic events, major life changes, and daily hassles. In addition, simply thinking about unpleasant past events or anticipating unpleasant future events can cause stress for many people.
A veteran of the Vietnam War (1959-1975) mourns the death of friends killed in the war during a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Many Vietnam veterans, particularly those involved in combat, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Symptoms of this disorder may include extreme, disturbing flashbacks and nightmares, emotional numbness, and irritability.
Life-threatening disasters, such as earthquakes, cause severe stress and can take a heavy psychological toll on their victims. Buildings in Mexico City destroyed by a September 1985 earthquake. The quake left almost 30,000 people homeless and 7000 dead.
A catastrophe is a sudden, often life-threatening calamity or disaster that pushes people to the outer limits of their coping capability. Catastrophes include natural disasters-such as earthquakes, tornadoes, fires, floods, and hurricanes-as well as wars, torture, automobile accidents, violent physical attacks, and sexual assaults. Catastrophes often continue to affect their victims’ mental health long after the event has ended. For example, in 1972 a dam burst and flooded the West Virginia mining town of Buffalo Creek, destroying the town. Two years after the disaster, most of the adult survivors continued to show emotional disturbances. Similarly, most of the survivors of concentration camps in World War II (1939-1945) continued to experience nightmares and other symptoms of severe emotional problems long after their release from the camps.
The most stressful events for adults involve major life changes, such as death of a spouse or family member, divorce, imprisonment, losing one’s job, and major personal disability or illness. For adolescents, the most stressful events are the death of a parent or a close family member, divorce of their parents, imprisonment of their mother or father, and major personal disability or illness. Sometimes, apparently positive events can have stressful components. For example, a woman who gets a job promotion may receive a higher salary and greater prestige, but she may also feel stress from supervising coworkers who were once peers. Getting married is usually considered a positive experience, but planning the wedding, deciding whom to invite, and dealing with family members may cause couples to feel stressed.
Much of the stress in our lives results from having to deal with daily hassles pertaining to our jobs, personal relationships, and everyday living circumstances. Many people’s experience the same hassles every day. Examples of daily hassles include living in a noisy neighbourhood, commuting to work in heavy traffic, disliking one’s fellow workers, worrying about owing money, waiting in a long line, and misplacing or losing things. When taken individually, these hassles may feel like only minor irritants, but cumulatively, over time, they can cause significant stress. The amount of exposure people have to daily hassles is strongly related to their daily mood. Generally, the greater their exposure is to hassles, the worse is their mood. Studies have found that one’s exposure to daily hassles is actually more predictive of illness than is exposure to major life events.
Studies conducted in countries around the world demonstrate that people can actually work themselves to death. Factors such as workplace stress and long hours contribute to the risk of death from overwork. In this article from Scientific American Presents, Harvey B. Simon, a professor at Harvard Medical School, explores recent findings about the dangers of working too hard and suggests ways of developing healthier work habits.
A person who is stressed typically has anxious thoughts and difficulty concentrating or remembering. Stress can also change outward behaviours. Teeth clenching, hand wringing, pacing, nail biting, and heavy breathing are common signs of stress. People also feel physically different when they are stressed. Butterflies in the stomach, cold hands and feet, dry mouth, and increased heart rate are all physiological effects of stress that we associate with the emotion of anxiety.
When a person appraises an event as stressful, the body undergoes a number of changes that heighten physiological and emotional arousal. First, the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system is activated. The sympathetic division prepares the body for action by directing the adrenal glands to secrete the hormone’s epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine (noradrenaline). In response, the heart begins to beat more rapidly, muscle tension increases, blood pressure rises, and blood flow is diverted from the internal organs and skin to the brain and muscles. Breathing speeds up, the pupils dilate, and perspiration increases. This reaction is sometimes called the fight-or-flight response because it energizes the body to confront either or flee from a threat.
Another part of the stress response involves the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland, parts of the brain that are important in regulating hormones and many other bodily functions. In times of stress, the hypothalamus directs the pituitary gland to secrete adrenocorticotropic hormone. This hormone, in turn, stimulates the outer layer, or cortex, of the adrenal glands to release glucocorticoids, primarily the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol helps the body access fats and carbohydrates to fuel the fight-or-flight response.
Canadian scientist Hans Selye was one of the first people to study the stress response. As a medical student, Selye noticed that patients with quite different illnesses shared many of the same symptoms, such as muscle weakness, weight loss, and apathy. Selye believed these symptoms might be part of a general response by the body to stress. In the 1930s Selye studied the reactions of laboratory rats to a variety of physical stressors, such as heat, cold, poisons, strenuous exercise, and electric shock. He found that the different stressors all produced a similar response: enlargement of the adrenal glands, shrinkage of the thymus gland (a gland involved in the immune response), and bleeding stomach ulcers.
Selye proposed a three-stage model of the stress response, which he termed the general adaptation syndrome. The three stages in Selye’s model are alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. The alarm stage is a generalized state of arousal during the body’s initial response to the stressor. In the resistance stage, the body adapts to the stressor and continues to resist it with a high level of physiological arousal. When the stress persists for a long time, and the body is chronically overactive, resistance fails and the body moves to the exhaustion stage. In this stage, the body is vulnerable to disease and even death.
The stress test, also called an exercise electrocardiogram, measures the heart rate of a person during exercise and identifies any abnormal changes in heart function. Such changes may indicate the presence of coronary or arterial disease.
Physicians increasingly acknowledge that stress is a factor in a wide variety of health problems. These problems include cardiovascular disorders such as hypertension (high blood pressure); coronary heart disease (coronary atherosclerosis, or narrowing of the heart’s arteries); and gastrointestinal disorders, such as ulcers. Stress also appears to be a risk factor in cancer, chronic pain problems, and many other health disorders. Stress-Related Disorders.
Researchers have clearly identified stress, and specifically a person's characteristic way of responding to stress, as a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. The release of stress hormones has a cumulative negative effect on the heart and blood vessels. Cortisol, for example, increases blood pressure, which can damage the inside walls of blood vessels. It also increases the free fatty acids in the bloodstream, which in turn leads to plaque buildup on the lining of the blood vessels. As the blood vessels narrow over time, it becomes increasingly difficult for the heart to pump sufficient blood through them.
People with certain personality types seem to be physiologically over responsive to stress and therefore more vulnerable to heart disease. For example, the so-called Type A personality is characterized by competitiveness, impatience, and hostility. When Type A people experience stress, their heart rate and blood pressure climb higher and recovery takes longer than with more easygoing people. The most ‘toxic’ personality traits of Type A people are frequent reactions of hostility and anger. These traits are correlated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease.
Stress also appears to influence the development of cancer, but the relationship is not as well established as it is for cardiovascular diseases. There is a moderate positive correlation between extent of exposure and life stressors and cancer-the more stressors, the greater the likelihood of cancer. In addition, a tendency to cope with unpleasant events in a rigid, unemotional manner is associated with the development and progression of cancer.
Ordinarily the immune system is a marvel of precision. It protects the body from disease by seeking out and destroying foreign invaders, such as viruses and bacteria. But there is substantial evidence that stress suppresses the activity of the immune system, leaving an organism more susceptible to infectious diseases. An organism with a weakened immune system is also less able to control naturally occurring mutant cells that overproduce and lead to cancer.
Numerous studies have linked stress with decreased immune response. For example, when laboratory animals are physically restrained, exposed to inescapable electric shocks, or subjected to overcrowding, loud noises, or maternal separation, they show decreased immune system activity. Researchers have reported similar findings for humans. One study, for example, found weakened immune response in people whose spouses had just died. Other studies have documented weakened immune responses among students taking final examinations; people who are severely deprived of sleep; recently divorced or separated men and women; people caring for a family member with Alzheimer’s disease; and people who have recently lost their jobs.
Stress appears to depress immune function in two main ways. First, when people experience stress, they more often engage in behaviours that have adverse effects on their health: cigarette smoking, using more alcohol or drugs, sleeping less, exercising less, and eating poorly. In addition, stress may alter the immune system directly through hormonal changes. Research indicates that glucocorticoids-hormones that are secreted by the adrenal glands during the stress response-actively suppress the body’s immune system.
At one time scientists believed the immune system functioned more or less as an independent system of the body. They now know that the immune system does not operate by it, but interacts closely with other bodily systems. The field of psychoneuroimmunology focuses on the relationship between psychological influences (such as stress), the nervous system, and the immune system.
Stress influences mental health as well as physical health. People who experience a high level of stress for a long time-and who cope poorly with this stress-may become irritable, socially withdrawn, and emotionally unstable. They may also have difficulty concentrating and solving problems. Some people under intense and prolonged stress may start to suffer from extreme anxiety, depression, or other severe emotional problems. Anxiety disorders caused by stress may include generalized anxiety disorder, phobias, panic disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. People who survive catastrophes sometimes develop an anxiety disorder called post-traumatic stress disorder. They re-experience the traumatic event again and again in dreams and in disturbing memories or flashbacks during the day. They often seem emotionally numb and may be easily startled or angered.
Coping with stress means using thoughts and actions to deal with stressful situations and lower our stress levels. Many people have a characteristic way of coping with stress based on their personality. People who cope well with stress tend to believe they can personally influence what happens to them. They usually make more positive statements about themselves, resist frustration, remain optimistic, and persevere even under extremely adverse circumstances. What is most important, they choose the appropriate strategies to cope with the stressors they confront? Conversely, people who cope poorly with stress tend to have somewhat opposite personality characteristics, such as lower -esteem and a pessimistic outlook on life.
Psychologists distinguish two broad types of coping strategies: problem-focussed coping and emotion-focussed coping. The goal of both strategies is to control one’s stress level. In problem-focussed coping, people try to short-circuit negative emotions by taking some action to modify, avoid, or minimize the threatening situation. They change their behaviour to deal with the stressful situation. In emotion-focussed coping, people try directly to moderate or eliminate unpleasant emotions. Examples of emotion-focussed coping include rethinking the situation in a positive way, relaxation, denial, and wishful thinking.