Recently purchased and reading Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra… any thoughts on:
(i) a) the overman and
b) who represents the overman in our life (by society, click, culture, individual, leaders)
(ii) explanation of Nietzsche’s purpose of the book
(iii) Thoughts on God is dead
“God is dead” means that the Christian God has become unbelievable.
“The Christian God is no longer tenable: hence “atheism” - as if there could be no other kinds of god.”
[The Will to Power, section 151.]
For Zarathustra, to be sure, all the gods are dead; the overman is simply the highest man beyond good and evil (not the best in the sense of “the least evil”, but “the most powerful”).
Now these “higher men” to whom Zarathustra speaks are not overmen in the sense of “the highest men”. “Highest” is a superlative (compare “superman”), whereas “higher” is a comparative; the “higher men” are high compared to the populace.
So the higher men are already relative overmen, but there is as of yet no overman, no species, no overmankind:
“Ye lonesome ones of today, ye seceding ones, ye shall one day be a people: out of you who have chosen yourselves, shall a chosen people arise: - and out of it the Superman.”
[ibid., Of the Bestowing Virtue, 2.]
As George Morgan says, the purpose of the Zarathustran lawgiver
“will be to direct thousand-year experiments at training a higher type - the superman - out of existing human material, and therefore he must grade that material into an enduring hierarchy of classes. This will be the work of justice, for justice is gradation, not equality.”
[What Nietzsche Means, page 369.]
As for Nietzsche’s purpose: was it not to restore the good conscience to the evil man, as he suggests somewhere?
Now this mention of “great sin” gives a clue as to how to grade the existing human material into an enduring hierarchy of classes:
“The idealization of the man of great sacrilege (a sense of his greatness) is Greek;* depreciation, slandering, contempt for the sinner is Judeo-Christian.”
[The Will to Power, section 845.]
At the point of the asterisk, the translator inserts a footnote, suggesting that the reader compare section 9 of The Birth of Tragedy, on Prometheus. There, we read the following:
“An austere notion, this, which by the dignity it confers on crime presents a strange contrast to the Semitic myth of the Fall - a myth that exhibits curiosity, deception, suggestibility, concupiscence, in short a whole series of principally feminine frailties, as the root of all evil. What distinguishes the Aryan conception is an exalted notion of active sin as the properly Promethean virtue [as opposed to the passive sin which is the vice proper to Adam and Eve: they are tempted (a passive construction)]”.
We see here that the masculine counts higher for Nietzsche then the feminine, the Aryan higher than the Semitic. And the Aryan, masculine, Promethean virtue is linked to the overcoming of man:
“This titanic urge to be the Atlas of all individuals, to bear them on broad shoulders ever farther and higher, is the common bond between the Promethean and the Dionysian forces.”
[ibid.]
Aryans, the evilest, great sin, human (genetic) material, and the Overman (Ãœbermensch) - these things are instructive enough. What does Zarathustra do with the material he cannot use?
“Crimes against humanity” - may these not be benefactions to Superhumanity?
I would go even a little bit further again all points of reference all constants, all abstract general systems, Plato’s forms, Descartes cogito, Kants catagorical imperitive
yada yada yada have all been lost.
“What if truth is a woman” in the traditional sexist sense of women supposedly shifting and inconstant - constantly up for redefinition.
The very ground is whipped out from under are feet.
The madman isn’t exactly singing “ding dong the witch is deadâ€-he’s no luck/luke warm atheist - in fact he is clearly devastated – we killed “God†– can we replace him?
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. “I have come too early,” he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves.
It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo.
Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: “What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?”
Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.]
I’m not really sure, but I do know that if you rearrange the letters, Zarathustra says “thrust a razar.”
I thought that was pretty kewl.
hehehe…[snort]…hehe
what do you think of the Superman of our class structure in the 21st century—what click, society, culture will develop the Superman, the Overman?
I can’t speak for all Western societies, but Australia simply doesn’t possess the soil to produce Overmen. We have envy, resentment, ‘tall poppy syndrome’, rampant consmuerism, petty superficial opinions, idiotic newspaper strories on celebrities and petty crime, copious ‘reality’ tv shows etc. This is the condition of the herd here, any change too far from this is scorned and ridiculed. To produce Overmen it has to be implanted in people’s minds at a young age that other people may be better than themselves in the game of life. This, then, instead of creating envy and resentment for the ‘tall poppy’, should create agon, a form of contest which forces people to better themselves by continually overcoming one’s own shortcomings and also by overcoming the next man. But in a democractic plebian age, this is impossible.
To the contrary: exceptional men can develop themselves as never before. But, as I said, these are exceptions. There may - and will - be individual overmen (cf. The Antichristian, section 3-4), but not an overmankind. The latter, to answer Robertson’s new question, can only arise from conscious breeding (again, see AC 3-4).
The “overman” is simply someone who is willing to break laws, and the laws which he does not break…he does not break because there is no advantage to it, too much risk, what have you, raher than not breaking the law because it is “wrong”.
The overman is just an individual law maker who is willing to involve himself in conflict with authority.
There is no more romantic value to the overman. He is as dead as Zarathustra himself. You might find more satisfaction in James Dean as the extent of the rebellous dionysus, for the days of pure artisic expression are over (unless you play your D&D character out in real life…as I do, I carry my sword with to the grocery store, etc.) and anything even remotely attractive to the young Nietzschean’s today is a well produced rock and roll video with a few hot people, some leather clothes, and a band that wears a lotta black.
who represents the overman in our life (by society, click, culture, individual, leaders)
“Ye lonesome ones of to-day, ye seceding ones, ye shall one day be a people: out of you who have chosen yourselves, shall a chosen people arise:–and out of it the Superman.”
explanation of Nietzsche’s purpose of the book
“Verily, a place of healing shall the earth become! And already is a new odour diffused around it, a salvation-bringing odour–and a new hope!”
Perhaps the fault lies in that the idea of equality–as expressed in Paine, Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln, Marx, and others–should be omitted from our presence of thought and, through some revolutionary process, come to light against the darkness that, perhaps, just perhaps, people are not equal, but rather a conglomerate juxtaposition of values of good and evil; to be overcome by each individual in their will to power.
Neitzsche didn’t really even know (or rather, want to admit) what the overman truly was.
A hedonistic, blood sucking, muscle bound, intelligent…super-villian.
It’s not that she is willing to break laws, its that she is unconcerned with laws that are external to her own will. Her will is law in that it is unfettered by the resentment and self denial.
The quotes that show the role of ‘evil’ by the overman don’t paint the whole picture for two reasons:
Evil, as opposed to bad, is also a technical term. To say that someone ‘does evil’ means that they have the flexibility to do something that their culture radically rejects. Again, not because culture rejects it but because it is her will. This, of course, can be really horrible, but not always… Culture needs radicals to break it out of entrenched positions that have long since lost touch with the living realities of the present.
Today the term will has been dilluted to mean anything someone does. We all have this glorious illusion of freedom (especially evident through sarcasm) and the self driven will that we use to choose what we do etc… But this isn’t the case for Nietzsche. The Will as he used it is an striving force that can either affirm itself or deny itself. The affirmation of the will for Nietzsche doesn’t lead to a super friendly fellow, nor does it necessarily lead to hitler. It is non-perscriptive, meaning that it will find its own path. If it is cruelty that we’re wired for, it’s cruelty that we will instill. If it is love, than it is love.
Nietzsche is full of existential tests. If you see the superman as an evil person, a saint, a tyrant, a lover, a musican, a philosopher, etc…, I’d wager it is a reflection of some sort of idealized image of humanity that you hold, whether it be in reverence or contempt.
Dave
PS Most rock stars don’t have any resemblance to Nietzsche’s superman; they’re just winners of popularity contests.
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On (i)a): For me, the ubermensch is impossible in the absolute sense, as one should hope “he” would be. If the ubermensch were an absolute idea, it would represent a definite end and thus be limited by definition. Rather, the idea of the ubermesch is relative to the type of man present in his age. One might say that there have (almost) always been ubermensch among us.
An ubermensch is one who overcomes the limitations of his day and exceeds the expectations of his contemporaries.
In order to put some flesh on this idea, we might say that the ubermensch is a “man before his time”, as his time is never his own. If it were, he would cease to be ubermensch. Moreover, the ubermensch of today should be “greater” than the ubermensch of yesterday, just as the ubermensch of tomorrow ought to be “greater” than the ubermensch of today.
On (i)b): I must say that I have no idea, but it certainly is NOT any of the media stars that many might peg. I am more persuaded that this era is infested with what Nietzsche would have dubbed the “last man”.
There have often been overmen and he will always be possible (as long as there are people, of course); see The Antichristian, section 3-4.
The latter is certainly nonsense: where does Nietzsche say that? Moreover, the doctrine of the eternal recurrence tells us that the future is the past; so if the superman of tomorrow is superior to the one of today, the one of today is inferior to the one of “yesterday”.
Indeed.