The Conflict Between Existentialism and Super-charged Intellectual Development

Jack McDonald
3 min readSep 26, 2020

Who was Nietzsche?

Frederick Nietzsche was a german philosopher who, as an esoteric moralist, aimed, through writings and teachings, to free human beings from their false consciousness about morality, not at a transformation of society at large. You can read loads more articles on his teachings, publications, and life, but the basic understanding you must have to obtain the proper contextual backing to continue this article is two-fold: that Nietzsche stressed the importance to individuality(freeing oneself from metaphysics), and the belief that beings can become intellectually and contextually super-powered (using the accomplishments and lives of those that came before us as the means by which we grow).

The mixing of existentialism and the influence of others.

The goal of this article is to briefly provide my arguments against the validity of mixing both existentialism and individuality, with the influence of others to push the lives and accomplishments of their successors forward. Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge that I am arguing against the validity of this mix, not as independent ideas.

Existentialism

Let’s imagine that we lived in a society that had no metaphysical connection and folds of magnitude greater emphasis on individualism. What would the lives of one of these citizens look like? Well, from the view of Frederick Nietzsche, the lives of these individuals would be, on average, more productive and possibly more enjoyable, being that those living would not be of the belief that they would be judged in any context other than the physical. Although I can argue my own beliefs on this idea, I will resist for the purpose of reducing bias. In this world, Nietzsche argues that the lives of those experiencing it would be governed partially by the ideas and lives of those in the past, but mostly by their own intuition. In this claim, I find dramatic misalignment with my own beliefs.

I find it almost silly to think that a world in which citizens rely on their own intuition can have a higher degree of productive functionality than one that includes groups and organizations that foster similar ideas and values. While one can argue on and on about the benefits of autonomy, this world of philosophical idealization would inevitably result in dramatic and large scale conflict because of the disagreements of individuals being seen as more severe. This, in my opinion, is the benefit of organizations and groups, generalizing beliefs takes away the naturally occurring human disagreements and results in a more diplomatic world.

Existentialism intermixing with intellectual realizations

As I described above, a core belief Nietzsche had was the ability of humans to progress in development to the point where they became intellectually super-powered. While I believe that there is some sense of truth in this, I also believe that a few weak points of argument must be brought up. First and foremost, I feel compelled to describe my confusion in the idea that the means of attaining this type of intellectual prowess can truly even exist in a society attached so strongly to individuality. How can the intellectual development of an individual be so strong that that person becomes intellectually super-powered because of the accomplishments and insights of others, while also maintaining any individuality what so ever?

In my opinion, a world completely embracing individuality while pushing the application of other’s learnings onto one’s self creates not a freeing society, but a limiting one.

Contact

Hey, I’m Jack. I’m a 16-year-old Innovator at The Knowledge Society. Over the past few months, I’ve been diving deep into machine learning and AI. Recently, I have been diving specifically into computer vision. Navigate to the links below to connect!

Email: mmcd.jack@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-mcdonald-a960ab194/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmmcd123

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Jack McDonald

Builder exploring the impact of digital identity and credentials in the next age of the internet.