Is Nietzsche’s overman a way for him to promote compassion by promoting its opposite, i.e to be selfish? This sounds like a exam question but it came about while talking with a friend. I have typed it in Google but found nothing. Any advice on decoding Nietzsche in general would be nice. Was he for example exteremly found of human beings and not the heartless madman people claim?
He was a heartless madman, and he wrote about what it is to overcome ones self, from the perspective of one who cannot.
I forget where but he says that his most important theme is the eternal reoccurance (not the will to power), which is to say that if your life was to occur infinitely, what would you have to be the result? It is this creative approach (that a certain person around here adopts) which is employed into every consideration for action. The overall force fueling this set-up is the will to power.
This is a basic rundown (there are others who can get into the specifics you may be after here) but essentially Nietzsche was a progressive thinker; he saw a certain stagnancy in the minds of his societal time period, and in this realization he wrote:
His idea of the overman is that of someone who wills the type of life like Napolean (who he applauds at some point). That is, someone who operates free from the confines of societal restrictions/imposed mental bias’. So in this way he admires Jesus but despises Christianity for the shackling lethargia it has placed over the masses.
However, was he a heartless madman? Mad maybe. He wanted people, if I am right to overcome the meaningless of life, make their own values and infulence others with those values.
He wanted people to have meaning in their life so when they re-lived it they would not feel cursed. This is a good thing right? They then feel happy.
Therefore he was not selfish, but wanted humans to better themselves and liked humanity.
“The modern state is marked by universal education, the diffusion of information through mass media, and the desire for acquisition, all of which lack, from Zarathustra’s perspective, any saving graces. He holds that the comforts, conveniences, and supposed advantages provided by the modern state represent contemptible forms of pleasure and sanction a false, poisonous freedom. Indeed, genuine freedom is undermined by the political or legal freedom that is the hallmark of modern liberal democracies. He announces that it would be preferable to allow the “all-too-many,” the “superfluous,” to waste away and die rather than to permit the satisfaction of their needs to hamper the development of the well-constituted men of “rich hearts” (see also WP 373). But he is not bereft of compassion: his heart goes out to the handful of rare and gifted souls oppressed and dehumanized by the modern state. The form of domination in the modern state oppressing Zarathustra is the subjugation of the needs of the few to the requirements of the many.”
[Peter Berkowitz, Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist, page 167-168.]
Nietzsche’s compassion is a form of selfishness: he does not advocate universal socialism, but national socialism, i.e., compassion with one’s peers. He was extremely fond of some human beings, higher human beings, of the overman. For an exegesis of what Nietzsche meant by “overman”, look here (third post, my first reply).
As for being heartless:
“They call you heartless: but your heart is true, and I love the bashfulness of your goodwill. Ye are ashamed of your flow, and others are ashamed of their ebb.”
[Thus Spake Zarathustra, Of War and Warriors.]
“Feel happy”, “better themselves”, “liked humanity” - this all sounds extremely un-Nietzschean, and raises a question mark against your right to discuss Nietzsche. Read him first! Then, if you are disturbed, you can always take recourse to the Dalai Lama!
I think I got to do the same. I always thought the over-man was humanity progressing naturally to their better self, as other animals do evolutionarily. I didn’t think it had anything to do with specific traits. He gave a glimpse of what this person would be like in Zarathustra and condemned one of the things he thought was holding back the overman. “Pity” encouragement to stay weak. The anti-survival of the fittest.
But then again, I don’t know much about Nietzsche’s philosophy. I foresee alot of reading of Nietzsche in my future.
You’ve got it much more right than free_thinker seems to have: you don’t see betterment as moral betterment, but as an increase in power, in flourishing.
You are right I don’t know much about Nietzsche’s philosophy, thats why I asked the question. However isn’t everyting open to interpretation? I plan to read Nietzsche next. So far I have read only some Plato, Mill, Marx and Rawls. No much at all I know, I will get there, I hope.
the overman has been overemphasized in “interpretations” of nietzsche’s philosophy. Zarathustra abandons the overman for eternal recourrance,
he even goes so far as to parody the overman in book four. You have to understand that Nietzsche was attempting to take on the entire history of western thought so familiarity with classical literature helps considerably.
there’s a reason why the overman doesn’t make much freaking sense whereas a cyclical view of time is enlightening. we’ll just have to agree to disagree.