I have an interesting question regarding these two philosphers. Is Neitzche’s ideal of the Superman basically the same as Plato’s idea of the Guardian in Republic?
Not very likely, Nietzsche was referring to the superman as the next thing for us to become, what we should strive to be. Plato was referring to the soul, so to speak, and the guardian of the replublic was only part of a larger, encompassing idea.
I have a simple answer: no.
so simple and decisive.
wait how come that question was allowed up but IMP deleated a similar question i had regarding platos republic…
every one loves using the Armenians as scape-goats.
first the ottoman turks, than germany, now Impenitent
at the time I moved the question, the rules for the board were slightly different…
-Imp
What was your question yromemtnatsisrep?
Well, to make this more interesting, what do they have in similarity?
The superman is a man of the Will to Power, and the Guardians correspond to the Will of the soul. But the Guardians are under a rational principle, the Philosopher-King; whereas the Will to Power creates, i think, by intuition and not an explicit rational thought. The Nietzschean Guardian, it seems, would be in a Timocracy which creates great things for the state – maybe like France under Napoleon?
But someone might stop by and correct my interp on Nietzsche. But everyone seems to have their own interp of what the superman should be, or what people would be examples of it.
mrn
I have my own theory on the subject, but I’ll post it the paper I wrote in the essays section when I am down with rewriting it. However since I haven’t had the time to finish it I’ll write a little abstract.
[size=117]If one applies post-modern thought to Nietzsche’s philosophy by viewing his critical attack on the Cartesian unified self as an endorsement for modern anti-essentialist ideas on the self then one could imagining that the Overman has been with us for quite sometime– not as a biological human but Übermensch as the legal fiction of Corporate Personhood. [/size]
I’m sure everyone will rip my head off for even suggesting such a thing, which is good cause then I’ll be motivated to post my essay to back up my claim.
At first i don’t get it, then i do. I thought Cartesian thought was dualist, not essentialist. But thinking of the overman as Big Business, a beast with no satiety or morality, but highly creative, in intreguing. It even lives off the shallow “last man”. Don’t know how you get this idea from post-modernism (which I know little about), but an interesting idea to me. The businessmen will, of course eventually evolve into the Morelocks and the last men into Eloi.
mrn
Cartesian thought is dualist but it makes Well post-modern because I need to dislocate the self as individual and place emphasis on the plurality of consciousness. In my paper I felt it was necessary to explain how a corporation with all of its various individuals could compose a single entity like the Übermensch. On this subject I use a lot from a paper by Foucault and a Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author to explain how self affirming and world shaping creativity could legitimately come from such an entity.
The Cartesian self though dualistic remains indivisible- it is the continuity of a thinking self or I.
Nietzsche disagreed entirely. I don’t have my paper with me so I can’t footnote so I’ll paraphrase this, “most mankind should not count as a person and at best a few should be seen as multiple only the very best are whole.†Well I bet something like that. He then goes on to explain how this whole individual would require large numbers of people who shouldn’t count as people to toil for his existence.
So what I am getting at is that he can be seen to have been talking about something similar to a postmodern pluralist and fragmentized self.
*** I had to type this quick cause the cafe is closing ***
Okay, i guess you’re not going to answer this soon because the cafe is closing, but do you think the Cartesian self has unity with his experience of body? Now take Aristotle. There’s continuity of the thinking self, imo!
mrn
I adore this post. As though Imp were an ottoman Turk… I assure you, yrom, he’s an altogether different breed…
The most primary difference I see (going back to the initial question) is that the Ubermensch’s power derives from this world, on the physical realm, whereas the authority of the Guardians derives from (as per usual with Plato) the metaphysical soul…
Please do post your essay, then I can be pedantic about it and show you how I have a different reading of the same material. Nietzsche openly attacks Descartes’ self-as-unity in numerous places, showing how it relies on rash assertions and circular reasoning (a common complaint regarding Descartes - in places he both uses his conclusion as one of his premises, in others he contradicts his conclusion with one of his premises). But Foucault and Barthes (and Derrida, to a lesser extent) were dealing with the literary notion of selfhood, the author. There’s a big difference between the (Cartesian) self and the author, as such I think there’s a massive whole where your argument should be. Nonetheless you’ve spotted one of the more interesting threads that runs from Nietzsche through the postmodernists.
Nietzsche’s attacks on Descartes can easily be read as being epistemological and logical queries and refutations. Foucault and Barthes never really deal in logic and epistemology, their language game is taking place with different terms. Whether or not you account for this is in your essay is something that I’m keen to find out. I’ll willingly discuss this one in whatever amount of detail you like, it’s something I’ve been bouncing around for nearly 3 years.
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“Plato is a bore.”–Nietzsche.
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Paladin’s question is good, and thankfully has a simple answer that several have already pointed out. Plato’s guardians are not nietzschean supermen. The important question, of course, is why…
The most effective answer I could give in the space here would simply be the following:
Plato’s too fascist for Nietzsche.
Plato’s kingdom is a dystopian autocracy. The Overman is not about power, corporate or sexual or political, or otherwise. It is about style and a lack of guilt when exercising power. Nietzsche writes in The Will to Power:
In other words, life is more or less about confidence. We have to be sure despite the fact that there’s no certainty. When we create, affirm the impossible and the future in the same movement.
Now, a second and subtler question was raised about so-called ‘corporate’ individuals.
We’ve got to recognize this (legal!) designation of corporations as persons as artificial… but what is a ‘natural’ person? Also an artificial construction!
It is in this sense that we can answer the question regarding corporations. They not noble, though powerful and often without conscience. They are not supermen, but the ‘last men’: there is no essential difference in this case, as the corporations have completely bought into their own artificial version of reality.
They’ve sold everyone, even themselves, on a surreal and branded universe, embraced the spectacle so completely that it no longer gets questioned.
Even rebellion against the system is perverted and turned back into an image for sale. Images of bodies and images of thoughts: are we so convinced of our certainty, of our sense, of our ‘free will’?
Again, these issues are complex – kudos for asking a difficult question! This might even be an issue for a new thread.