Comparing John Stewart Mill and Nietzsche
The Discourse of Mill and Nietzsche, Can Mill Overcome While it appears, on the outside, that John Stewart Mill contradicts Nietzsche’s idea that the mind serves deeper than our inner human drive, however, the story of Mills life seems to actually confirm itself. You see, Nietzsche believes that your instincts define who you are and if you go through life using your brain making all your decisions for you, you aren’t being true to who you really are. Nietzsche talked about how Socrates uses reason to influence his instincts and make decisions that way; he thought this was the one downside to Socrates. It's almost as though Socrates was tricking himself so that his instincts were overshadowed by his reason. John Stewart Mill used his reason to examine every little thing in his life. If you look at the development of the man from the outside you only get to see that reason plays a huge part into what he believed. However, if you actually get to know the person and look at him from his point of view it is clear that he actually was the opposite of Nietzsche’s theory. It becomes easier to see that everything Mill worked toward through his whole life was to affirm his life by trying to overcome his need for everything to be reasonable. Instincts for Nietzsche are one of the most important things that one should possess in order to stay true to who we are as humans. If we are to use reason every day in order to get things done than we are not being ourselves, we are fake. He states that the brain is the latest and shallowest development in our evolutionary time period that we humans have tracked through. If we go deeper into where we used to be before our brain, before our reason was established, all we have are our instincts. That’s how we got to where we are today. Every animal has their own set of instincts. Instincts are not taught to you, they are known from the time you are born. If you follow them then you will live. Instincts are basic survival knowhow’s of