[PHILOSOPHY] On Nietzsche & The Übermensch Concept

I wonder if there's a more misunderstood book than Friedrich Nietzsche's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None.) There are as many interpretations of the book as there are interpreters. Who hasn't heard about the German Nazis' attempt to adapt Nietzsche to the National Socialist ideology? Those who today study modern social science or philosophy, can hardly avoid to be confronted with Nietzsche's philosophy in one form or another. In the continental philosophy, Nietzsche has come to play a dominant role thanks to the efforts of philosophers like Foucault and Derrida.

Nietzsche wrote:

"I am not a human being, I am dynamite."

In a sense, Nietzsche was right. When his work detonated, European philosophy, for better or worse, was not recognizable anymore. But Nietzsche's philosophy was and is not only a strict academic affair. Nietzsche has always aroused strong feelings even among non-philosophers. The object of this article therefore is to explore what it is in Nietzsche's philosophy that has made so many non-academics to raise their eyebrows. The answer is Nietzsche's concept of the "Übermensch" (overman).

"I teach you the Übermensch. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?… All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood, and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is ape to man? A laughing stock or painful embarrassment. And man shall be that to overman: a laughingstock or painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape... Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the lightning, however, is the Übermensch."

It's not difficult to understand why a concept like "Übermensch" arouse bad blood in egalitarian-oriented cultures. Nor should there be any doubt that Nietzsche would be hostile to much of what today comes under the heading "gender policy".

The basis of Nietzsche's philosophical reflection consists of a realization of an impending crisis without precedent in human history: the death of God. For a culture that has built up his human; moral and natural perception around this axiom, this is an event of almost unimaginable dimensions. Suddenly man recognizes that no compensation will be paid to the victims of injustice and that no rewards will be awarded to those who renounced the good life for the sake of others. In a blow the basis of conventional morality are snatched away. Man is demoted to a simple animal in a morally neutral universe.

For Nietzsche, the death of God isn't the real problem. The religious crisis is problematic because of everything that it causes. Such an effect is nihilism. The nihilist can't see successful people as positive examples. In them, the nihilist only sees an intimidating confirmation of their own inadequacy. This explains, according to Nietzsche, the nihilists or herd human's hatred toward those who differ. Nietzsche was not a Darwinist. On the contrary, he argued that Darwin was wrong on several points. For Nietzsche, it was beyond doubt that the strong would perish and the weak survive for the simple reason that the latter were so many more.

Nietzsche never concealed his aversions for Christianity, and he hoped that the old, religiously influenced and universal morality would be replaced by more individualized sets of maxims.

"Are you a new strength and a new right? A first motion? A self-rolling wheel? Can you even compel the stars to revolve around you? ... Can you give yourself your own evil and good, and set up your own will as a law over you? Can you be judge for yourself, and avenger of your law?"

It's therefore in the light of this enormous destruction process that one should view the concept of "Übermensch". The Übermensch is an individual who's capable of giving himself an ethics and a purpose in a time when the morality systems are in resolution.

But Nietzsche was no dreamer. He was fully aware that man would never be able to bear the realization of the absences of cosmic justice without a certain degree of organized "mirror fencing". Art, therefore, plays a central role in Nietzsche's philosophy. The artwork aestheticize and dramatize the unbearable. The artist creates a the aesthetic of doom and destruction, which makes it possible for the individual to regard himself and his life as something, at the same time, futile and grand. Nietzsche's aim was to with the help of philosophy and poetry help beautify the intolerable and inevitable, and the result was one of the most beautiful books in the world.

"I will join the creators, the reapers, and the rejoicers: I will show them the rainbow, and all the steps to the Overman. I will sing my song to the lonesome and to the twosome; and to whoever who still has ears for the unheard, I will make his heart heavy with my happiness. I make for my goal, I follow my course; over the loitering and tardy I will leap. Thus let my on-going be their down-going!"

Image sources:
faculty.frostburg.edu
thinkingaboot.blogspot.com
izquotes.com