Nietzsche’s achievements are often seen as a precursor to Freudian thought. While many of Freud’s ideas are similar to Nietzsche’s in their atheism, they take it to entirely different places. Both thinkers emphasize the importance of evaluating one’s own beliefs and their origins. They differ on points concerning what one is to do with the information gathered. This has an effect onthe way that both thinkers go about evaluating morals. Where Freud endlessly attempted to identify the experiential root of people’s convictions, Nietzsche promoted self-realization as a method to adjust one’s actions. Freud founded psychoanalysis, the process of determining what environmental factors cause pathologies and such. Nietzsche’s work is more readily connected with contemporary scientific approaches to consciousness and cognition, which consider predisposition and environmental influence in tandem.

Freud saw rationality and “the id” to be at odds where Nietzsche’s philosophy calls for them to be co-dependant in what he calls the relationship between “Dionysian and Apollonian tendencies”. Freud patterned his philosophy around instincts existing in contradiction to the structure of society where Nietzsche viewed society as a consequence of those drives. Freud’s view of human behavior addresses the personal where Nietzsche’s is geared around the societal. Freud accepted determinism where Nietzsche did not. Freud looked at the human situation as impossible and tragic. Nietzsche’s propositions are more optimistic in that they allow for empowerment. Zarathrustra, from her position as liberated from expectation, illustrates Nietzsche’s sense of the free will. It is evident that Nietzsche used this character to demonstrate moral relativism and the place of volition in the realm of managing culture.