Misplaced Pages

Übermensch: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editContent deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 17:34, 18 June 2006 edit84.68.57.146 (talk) →Misleading translation← Previous edit Latest revision as of 11:33, 23 December 2024 edit undo100.2.98.130 (talk)No edit summaryTags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit 
Line 1: Line 1:
{{Short description|Concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche}}
An {{Audio|De-uebermensch.ogg|'''''Übermensch'''''}}, (sometimes translated as "Overman", or "superman") is a concept exposited by ] ] in '']''. In that work, the eponymous protagonist contends that a man can become an ''Übermensch'' (''homo superior''; the common equivalent English translation would be ']'; ''see ]'') through the following steps:
{{Italic title}}
The '''{{lang|de|Übermensch}}''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|uː|b|ər|m|ɛ|n|ʃ}} {{respell|OO|bər|mensh}}, {{IPA|de|ˈʔyːbɐmɛnʃ|lang|audio=De-Übermensch.ogg}}; {{lit}} 'Overman' or 'Superman') is a ] in the ]. In his 1883 book, '']'' ({{langx|de|Also sprach Zarathustra}}), ] has his character Zarathustra posit the {{lang|de|Übermensch}} as a goal for humanity to set for itself. The {{lang|de|Übermensch}} represents a shift from otherworldly ] and manifests the grounded human ideal. The {{lang|de|Übermensch}} is someone who has "crossed over" the bridge, from the comfortable "house on the lake" (the comfortable, easy, mindless acceptance of what a person has been taught, and what everyone else believes) to the mountains of unrest and solitude.<ref name="Gutenberg-Nietsche">{{cite web | title= Gutenberg, THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA| website=Project Gutenberg | url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm |
quote = "When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. -- Liest thou not in a sky-blue lake of happiness? — Ye wags, answered Zarathustra, and smiled, how well did ye choose the simile! -- What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal. What is lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING. -"|access-date=2023-11-21}}</ref><ref name="Nietzsche 2024 c048">{{cite web | last=Nietzsche | first=Friedrich | title=Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None | website=Project Gutenberg | date=2024-03-01 | url=https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1998/pg1998-images.html | access-date=2024-03-05}}</ref>


== In English ==
# By his '']'', manifested ''creatively'' in overcoming ] and re-evaluating old ideals or creating new ones.
# By his ''will to power'', manifested ''destructively'' in the rejection of, and rebellion against, societal ideals and moral codes.
# By a continual process of '']''.


In 1896, ] made the first English translation of '']'', rendering {{lang|de|Übermensch}} as "Beyond-Man". In 1909, ] translated it as "Superman", following the terminology of ]'s 1903 stage play '']''. ] lambasted this translation in the 1950s for two reasons: first, the failure of the English prefix "super" to capture the nuance of the German {{lang|de|]}} (though in Latin, its meaning of "above" or "beyond" is closer to the German); and second, for promoting misidentification of Nietzsche's concept with the comic-book character ]. Kaufmann and others preferred to translate {{lang|de|Übermensch}} as "overman". A translation like "superior humans" might better fit the concept of Nietzsche as he unfolds his narrative. Scholars continue to employ both terms, some simply opting to reproduce the German word.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Lampert|first=Laurence|title=Nietzsche's Teaching|location=New Haven, CT|publisher=Yale University Press|year=1986}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Rosen|first=Stanley|title=The Mask of Enlightenment|location=Cambridge|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1995}}</ref>


The German prefix {{lang|de|]}} can have connotations of superiority, transcendence, excessiveness, or intensity, depending on the words to which it is attached.<ref>''Duden Deutsches Universal Wörterbuch A–Z,'' s.v. über-.</ref> ''Mensch'' refers to a human being, not a male specifically as it is still sometimes erroneously believed. The adjective {{lang|de|übermenschlich}} means super-human: beyond human strength or out of proportion to humanity.<ref>Übermenschlich. PONS.eu Online Dictionary. Retrieved from http://en.pons.eu/german-english/%C3%BCbermenschlich.</ref>
The ''Übermensch'' was contrasted with the exemplar of the '']'', who is the ] of the Übermensch. Whereas Nietzsche considered there to be no examples of an ''Übermensch'' in his time, he (via the "mouthpiece" of Zarathustra) declared that there were many examples of ''Last Men''. Zarathustra assigns to today's civilization the task of preparing the venue of the ''Übermensch''. In the understanding of this concept, however, one has to recall Nietzsche's ] critique of the ] ] whom he claimed is a "grammatical fiction". Nietzsche thus criticized both the concepts of ], personal ] and the "]". <ref>
See '']'', §16 and 17 of the first section (. <blockquote> <small> "16. There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are "immediate certainties"; for instance, "I think," or as the superstition of ] puts it, "I will"; as though cognition here got hold of its object purely and simply as "the thing in itself," without any falsification taking place either on the part of the subject or the object. I would repeat it, however, a hundred times, that "immediate certainty," as well as "absolute knowledge" and the "thing in itself," involve a CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO; we really ought to free ourselves from the misleading significance of words! The people on their part may think that cognition is knowing all about things, but the philosopher must say to himself: "When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, 'I think,' I find a whole series of daring assertions, the argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible: for instance, that it is _I_ who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,' and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking--that I KNOW what thinking is. For if I had not already decided within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether that which is just happening is not perhaps 'willing' or 'feeling'? In short, the assertion 'I think,' assumes that I COMPARE my state at the present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order to determine what it is; on account of this retrospective connection with further 'knowledge,' it has, at any rate, no immediate certainty for me." (...)" (§16 of the first section of ''Beyond Good and Evil'') </small> </blockquote> and also: <blockquote> <small> 17. With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognized by these credulous minds--namely, that a thought comes when "it" wishes, and not when "I" wish; so that it is a PERVERSION of the facts of the case to say that the subject "I" is the condition of the predicate "think." ONE thinks; but that this "one" is precisely the famous old "ego," is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an "immediate certainty." After all, one has even gone too far with this "one thinks"--even the "one" contains an INTERPRETATION of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. One infers here according to the usual grammatical formula--"To think is an activity; every activity requires an agency that is active; consequently"... (§17 of the first section of ''Beyond Good and Evil'') </small> <blockquote/> </ref> Therefore, the ''Übermensch'' has also been interpretated as a temporary state of the multiple ] composing this individual "fiction". Following this interpretation, the ''Übermensch'' is not an individual nor a ], but something more like the process of overcoming oneself and nihilism. Adding to the interpretive difficulty surrounding the notion of the Übermensch is the matter of the relationship between the views of Zarathustra, the character in the work, and the views of Nietzsche himself.


==This-worldliness==
==''The will to destruction''==
{{Main|Faith in the Earth}}
Nietzsche introduces the concept of the {{lang|de|Übermensch}} in contrast to his understanding of the other-worldliness of ]: Zarathustra proclaims the will of the {{lang|de|Übermensch}} to give meaning to life on earth, and admonishes his audience to ignore those who promise other-worldly fulfillment to draw them away from the earth.<ref>Hollingdale, R. J. (1961), page 44 – English translation of Zarathustra's prologue; "I love those who do not first seek beyond the stars for reasons to go down and to be sacrifices: but who sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth may one day belong to the Superman"</ref><ref>Nietzsche, F. (1885) – p. 4, Original publication – "Ich liebe die, welche nicht erst hinter den Sternen einen Grund suchen, unterzugehen und Opfer zu sein: sondern die sich der Erde opfern, dass die Erde einst des Übermenschen werde."</ref>


Zarathustra declares that the Christian escape from this world also required the invention of an immortal soul separate from the earthly body. This led to the abnegation and mortification of the body, or ]. Zarathustra further links the {{lang|de|Übermensch}} to the body and to interpreting the soul as simply an aspect of the body.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Nietzsche|first=Friedrich|title=Thus Spoke Zarathustra|location=London|publisher=Penguin Books|year=2003|page=61|isbn=978-0-140-44118-5}}</ref>
Nietzsche's motivation for the claim ']' is the destruction of the ] ], i.e., a God-centered way of thinking, and the fateful will to break out. Only by breaking out of the ] ] and overcoming ] can one become ''Übermensch'', which literally means "]." Nihilism takes many forms, Christianism and the ] being one of the earliest of them. According to Nietzsche's '']'', Christianism is based on a remedy-punishment doctrine. ] was the figure who announced the ''Übermensch'' 's coming to the world.


==Death of God and the creation of new values==
Furthermore, according to Nietzsche, ], religions that hold a "next life" to be more important than this one, and especially the teachings of ] point towards a nihilistic beyond, which places the belief in God in opposition to reality.
{{Further|Transvaluation of all values}}
Zarathustra ties the {{lang|de|Übermensch}} to the ]. While the concept of God was the ultimate expression of other-worldly values and their underlying instincts, belief in God nevertheless did give meaning to life for a time. "God is dead" means that the idea of God can no longer provide values. Nietzsche refers to this crucial paradigm shift as a reevaluation of values.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Loeb|first=Paul|title=Finding the Übermensch in Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality|journal=Journal of Nietzsche Studies|volume=42-4|pages=77|via=EBSCO Host}}</ref>


In order to avoid a relapse into ] or asceticism, the creation of these new values cannot be motivated by the same instincts that gave birth to those tables of values. Instead, they must be motivated by a love of this world and of life. Whereas Nietzsche diagnosed the Christian value system as a reaction against life and hence destructive in a sense, the new values that the {{lang|de|Übermensch}} will be responsible for will be life-affirming and creative (see ]). Through realizing this new set of values, the {{lang|de|Übermensch}} is perfect because they have mastered all human obstacles.<ref name=":0" />
==Re-evaluating or destroying old ideals==


==As a goal ==
Once man has undergone the process of denying God ('Omnis determinatio est negatio'), he begins a journey towards becoming Übermensch. The humans are alone and, contrary to absolving themselves of responsibility through the postulation of a deity, they must create their own new moral ideals.
Zarathustra first announces the {{lang|de|Übermensch}} as a goal humanity can set for itself. All human life would be given meaning by how it advanced a new generation of human beings. The aspiration of a woman would be to give birth to an {{lang|de|Übermensch}}, for example; her relationships with men would be judged by this standard.<ref>''Thus Spoke Zarathustra'', I.18; Lampert, ''Nietzsche's; Rosen, ''Mask of Enlightenment'', 118.</ref>


Zarathustra contrasts the {{lang|de|Übermensch}} with the degenerate "]" of egalitarian modernity, an alternative goal which humanity might set for itself. "last man" appears only in ''Thus Spoke Zarathustra'', and is presented as a smothering of aspiration antithetical to the spirit of the {{lang|de|Übermensch}}.
In establishing new ideals, man now does not rank them according to ] aspects ("Where from" and "What for") because this would again aim towards beyond.


According to ], some commentators associate the {{lang|de|Übermensch}} with a program of ].<ref>Safranski, ''Nietzsche'', 262-64, 266–68.</ref>
Instead, there are no absolute ideals any more but only an interpretation of them in which moral ideals are the most important ones.


==Re-embodiment of amoral aristocratic values==
==Overcoming nihilism==
The most difficult step according to Nietzsche's ] is basing one's entire life in this world. Placing belief or faith in anything transcendental is nihilistic and would lead to the failure of man's attempt to become ''Übermensch''. The idea of God is a quiet temptation. In overcoming nihilism, man undergoes three phases:


For ], the {{lang|de|Übermensch}} represents a higher biological type reached through ] and at the same time is also an ideal for anyone who is creative and strong enough to master the whole spectrum of human potential, good and "evil", to become an "artist-tyrant". In ''Ecce Homo'', Nietzsche vehemently denied any ], ] or ] interpretation of the {{lang|de|Übermensch}}: "The word {{lang|de|Übermensch}} a type of supreme achievement, as opposed to 'modern' men, 'good' men, ], and other ] When I whispered into the ears of some people that they were better off looking for a ] than a ], they did not believe their ears."<ref>Nietzsche, ''Ecce Homo'', Why I Write Such Good Books, §1)</ref> Safranski argues that the combination of ruthless warrior pride and artistic brilliance that defined the ] embodied the sense of the {{lang|de|Übermensch}} for Nietzsche. According to Safranski, Nietzsche intended the ultra-aristocratic figure of the {{lang|de|Übermensch}} to serve as a Machiavellian bogeyman of the modern Western middle class and its pseudo-Christian egalitarian value system.<ref>Safranski, ''Nietzsche'', 365</ref>
*The immoralist phase: he dares the jump away from the Christian dogmas to a space without God but wonders how life without Him can be possible. He 'balances over an empty space'.
*The free thinker phase: man is already fully aware of his freedoms and knows how to use them. He knows 'I am free when I am with myself'.
*The ''Übermensch'': lives according to the principles of his ] which ends in complete independence.


==Relation to the eternal recurrence==
In short, Nietzsche stated that the goal of mankind is to produce a being who can take absolute responsibility for himself, and that this can only be achieved by transcending nihilism, represented most prominently by Christian and platonic ideals.
The {{lang|de|Übermensch}} shares a place of prominence in ''Thus Spoke Zarathustra'' with another of Nietzsche's key concepts: the ].


] suggests that the eternal recurrence replaces the {{lang|de|Übermensch}} as the object of serious aspiration.<ref>Lampert, ''Nietzsche's Teaching''.</ref>
It should be emphasized that the obstacles in becoming ''Übermensch'' are essentially internal, a matter of overcoming oneself (a notion also appearing in Christianity, though there the goal is submission to God). In Nietszche's words, the ''Übermensch'' must be "judge and avenger of own law." It is not a question of dominating others; although the ''Übermensch'', having become master of himself, will become master of those who have not mastered themselves.


==Use by the Nazis==
==Common misconceptions==
The term {{lang|de|Übermensch}} was used frequently by ] and the ] regime to describe their idea of a biologically superior ] or Germanic master race;<ref name="Alexander 2011">{{cite book|last=Alexander|first=Jeffrey|title=A Contemporary Introduction to Sociology |edition=2nd |year=2011|publisher=Paradigm|isbn=978-1-61205-029-4}}</ref> a ] version of Nietzsche's {{lang|de|Übermensch}} became a philosophical foundation for Nazi ideas.<ref>, Court TV Crime Library</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://econ161.berkeley.edu/tceh/Nietzsche.html |title=Nietzsche and Hitler |access-date=2010-04-19 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120313191954/http://econ161.berkeley.edu/tceh/Nietzsche.html |archive-date=2012-03-13 |url-status=dead }}</ref> The Nazi notion of the ] also spawned the idea of "inferior humans" ('']en'') who should be dominated and enslaved; this term does not originate with Nietzsche, who ] of both ] and ].
===Misidentification with Nazis===


In his final years, Nietzsche began to believe that he was in fact ], not German, and was quoted as saying, "I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German blood".<ref>], "Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is" </ref> In defiance of nationalist doctrines, he claimed that he and Germany were great only because of "Polish blood in their veins",<ref>], "The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche", T. Fisher Unwin, 1908, reprinted by University of Michigan 2006, pg. 6, </ref> and that he would " all anti-semites shot." Nietzsche died long before Hitler's reign, and it was partly Nietzsche's sister ] who manipulated her brother's words to accommodate the worldview of herself and her husband, ], a prominent German nationalist and antisemite.<ref>
Many high-ranking ], among whom ], admired parts of Nietzsche's philosophy and sought to adapt it to fit their own visions of super-human beings and an ] "master race" (]). This biologization of the concept of ''Übermensch'' was criticized by ]'s ''Nietzsche'' (Heidegger's defense of Nietzsche against Alfred Baeumler's ] interpretation would later be used by Heidegger's partisans to discharge him of accusations concerning his ties to the Nazi regime and the ]). This biological interpretation significantly departed from Nietzsche's original ideas. Perhaps most importantly, Nietzsche believed that a human being of any ] could become an ''Übermensch''. Thus, while Nietzsche did believe in superior and inferior people, there is no evidence to suggest that he believed superiority and inferiority were determined by race. In '']'' and ''Nietzsche against ]'', he bitterly criticized the German artist. This rupture with Wagner was partly explained by Wagner's ] and ]. It is widely thought that Nietzsche's sister, ], who married an anti-Semite, and ] contributed greatly to this misconception by deliberately misrepresenting his work, and the Nazis themselves reinterpreted and incorporated elements of many philosophical and religious texts, including Nietzsche's. ] proved this in the 1960s when editing, for the first time ever, Nietzsche's complete posthumous fragments.
{{cite web |url=http://users.utu.fi/hansalmi/forster.html |author=Hannu Salmi |title=Die Sucht nach dem germanischen Ideal |year=1994|language=de}}{{dead link|date=April 2023}} Also published in ''Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft'' 6/1994, pp. 485–496</ref> Förster founded the ''Deutscher Volksverein'' (German People's League) in 1881 with ].<ref>], ''The German Dictatorship'', 1970, pp. 59–60</ref>


== Anarchism ==
===Misleading translation===
The thought of Nietzsche had an important ]. ] writes:


{{blockquote|There were many things that drew anarchists to Nietzsche: his hatred of the state; his disgust for the mindless social behavior of 'herds'; his anti-Christianity; his distrust of the effect of both the market and the State on cultural production; his desire for an 'overman' – that is, for a new human who was to be neither master nor slave; his praise of the ecstatic and creative self, with the artist as his prototype, who could say, 'Yes' to the self-creation of a new world on the basis of nothing; and his forwarding of the 'transvaluation of values' as source of change, as opposed to a Marxist conception of class struggle and the dialectic of a linear history.<ref name="anarchonietzche">{{Cite web |url=https://radicalarchives.org/2010/05/18/nietzsche-and-the-anarchists/ |title=Spencer Sunshine: "Nietzsche and the Anarchists" (2005) |website=radicalarchives.org |date=18 May 2010}}</ref>}}
The translation of ''Übermensch'' as "Superman" may compound the misconception. '']'' is, among other things, the German equivalent of the prefix trans-. It has also gained a colloquial use in English with (sometimes spelt "ueber" or "uber"). Examples of prefixed words in German with the "trans-" meaning are: ''Überwindung'' ("overcoming"), ''überstehen''/''durchstehen'' ("come through"/"get over"), ''übersetzen'' ("translate"/"take across"). Some scholars therefore prefer the translation "overman", not simply because this best captures the other meaning of ''über'' ("transman" wouldn't be acceptable English) but because the point of the ''Übermensch'' is that man needs to ''overcome''.


The influential American anarchist ], in the preface of her famous collection '']'', defends both Nietzsche and ] from attacks within anarchism when she says
Furthermore, the German adverb ''übermenschlich'' is common and used in contexts such as "''mit übermenschlichen Kräften gelang es ihm…''" ("with a force no human being is capable of he managed to…" or "with superhuman force…"), the connotation is that of leaving the human sphere. Parallel constructions can be found in ''übernatürlich'' ("no longer natural", "transcendental"), ''überirdisch'' ("heavenly", literally "unearthly"). "Superman" lacks the German connotation of a sphere beyond human knowledge and power. In addition, ''Mensch'' is less specifically male than the English "man", closer at times to the English "human". ''Mensch'' is to be understood as a neuter form of a noun.


{{blockquote|The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer's ideas or personality. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, is decried as a hater of the weak because he believed in the {{lang|de|Übermensch}}. It does not occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind that this vision of the {{lang|de|Übermensch}} also called for a state of society which will not give birth to a race of ].<ref name="goldman">{{cite book |url=https://en.wikisource.org/Anarchism_and_Other_Essays |title=Anarchism and Other Essays |first=Emma |last=Goldman |author-link=Emma Goldman |date=1911 |publisher=Mother Earth Publishing Association |edition=Second Revised}}</ref>}}
One contemporary version of this ideal, although in no way explicitly based upon the ideals of Nietzsche but rather on the ideals of many people from the past and present, is to some extent ].


Sunshine says that the "Spanish anarchists also mixed their class politics with Nietzschean inspiration." ], in '']'', describes prominent Catalan CNT member ] as "an admirer of Nietzschean individualism, of the {{lang|ca|superhome}} to whom 'all is permitted{{'"}}. Bookchin, in his 1973 introduction to ]'s '']'', even describes the reconstruction of society by the workers as a Nietzschean project. Bookchin says that
===Popular elaboration of the concept===
The term has loosened its bounds and left the philosophic roundtable to go out into the general public. The inescapable reference is the American comic book character ]. Nazi references are also common. Care must be taken when one comes across the word in literary usage.


{{blockquote|workers must see themselves as human beings, not as class beings; as creative personalities, not as 'proletarians', as self-affirming individuals, not as 'masses'&nbsp;... economic component must be humanized precisely by bringing an 'affinity of friendship' to the work process, by diminishing the role of onerous work in the lives of producers, indeed by a total 'transvaluation of values' (to use Nietzsche's phrase) as it applies to production and consumption as well as social and personal life.<ref name="anarchonietzche"/>}}
===Confusion with biology-based views===


==See also==
Nietzsche's writings are spiritual and philosophical in character, and do not state that the central ideas are ], ], ], or ]. His ideas have no firm connection to the claim of superiority of any particular ] or ], and thus they are not ] in themselves. Furthermore, he criticized ]'s ] on various cases. However, as noted above, they have been used to justify or support ideologies that believe human beings can be divided into "superior" and "inferior" groups.
{{Columns-list|colwidth=22em|
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
*'']''
*'']''
*]
*]
*]
*'']''
*]
*]
*]
}}


== References ==
===The personification of the Übermensch.===
'''Notes'''
{{Reflist}}


'''Bibliography'''
According to Nietszche, he himself was not an ''Übermensch''; neither was the fictional character Zarathustra, who only announced the coming of the ''Übermensch''. He explicitly denied that any true overmen had yet existed. Nevertheless, he did have an admiration for ] and ]. However, he admired above all others ], who himself was admired by Napoleon. And he also infamously preferred a ] to any of the Last men. Nietzsche praised ] and ] Italy, as cultures which produced more creative individuals than exist in present society, and where near-overmen were more common. <ref> </ref>
* {{Cite book |last=Bentley |first=Eric |url=https://archive.org/details/centuryofherowor0000bent/mode/2up |title=A Century of Hero-Worship: A study of the idea of heroism in Carlyle and Nietzsche, with notes on Wagner, Spengler, Stefan George, and D. H. Lawrence |publisher=Beacon Press |year=1957 |edition=Second, revised and reset |location=Boston |url-access=registration}}
He mentioned several individuals who came close: ], ], ], ], ], ], and ].<ref> </ref> But he was quick to point out no artist is without his flaws.
* ] (2014) "The Übermensch as Social and Political Task: A Study in the Continuity of Nietzsche’s Political Thought", in: Knoll, Manual and Stocker, Barry (eds.) (2014) ''Nietzsche as Political Philosopher'', Berlin/Boston, pp.&nbsp;239–266.

* Lampert, Laurence (1986) ''Nietzsche's Teaching: An Interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra''. New Haven: Yale University Press.
In what intitially seems like a contradiction, Nietzsche declares in the novel ''Thus Spoke Zarathustra'' that there has never been a perfect human being. It would be consistent with Nietzsche's philosophy of change to think of ''Übermensch'' as an ideal or a state of being that someone can be in for perhaps most of their lives.
* ] (1885) '']''
Nietzsche never materializes the Ubermensch, just elucidates it as a goal. Nietzsche saw everything as being in a state of flux (which was adopted from ]). His concept of ''Übermensch'' is similar to a ]. Both Nietzsche and Plato believed that a human can never be ideal 100% of the time.
* ]; Hollingdale, R. J. and Rieu, E.V. (eds.) (1961_ ''Thus Spoke Zarathustra'' Penguin Classics: Penguin Publishing (Originally published 1885)
Nietzsche criticized "Omni-satisfaction" (TSZIII 11;2) and considered man being a bridge with no end. (TSZ III, 12;3).
* Rosen, Stanley (1995) '']''. New York: Cambridge University Press.

* ] (2002 '']''. Translated by ]. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
== Notes ==
* ] (1981) ''The Outsider''. Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher.
<references/>


==External links== ==External links==
{{Wikiquote}}
{{wiktionary}} {{wiktionary}}
*
*
*
*


{{Thus Spoke Zarathustra}}
]
] {{Nietzsche}}
{{Authority control}}
]
]


]
]
]
]
]
]
] ]
]
]
]
]
] ]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]

Latest revision as of 11:33, 23 December 2024

Concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

The Übermensch (/ˈuːbərmɛnʃ/ OO-bər-mensh, German: [ˈʔyːbɐmɛnʃ] ; lit. 'Overman' or 'Superman') is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. In his 1883 book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (German: Also sprach Zarathustra), Nietzsche has his character Zarathustra posit the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself. The Übermensch represents a shift from otherworldly Christian values and manifests the grounded human ideal. The Übermensch is someone who has "crossed over" the bridge, from the comfortable "house on the lake" (the comfortable, easy, mindless acceptance of what a person has been taught, and what everyone else believes) to the mountains of unrest and solitude.

In English

In 1896, Alexander Tille made the first English translation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, rendering Übermensch as "Beyond-Man". In 1909, Thomas Common translated it as "Superman", following the terminology of George Bernard Shaw's 1903 stage play Man and Superman. Walter Kaufmann lambasted this translation in the 1950s for two reasons: first, the failure of the English prefix "super" to capture the nuance of the German über (though in Latin, its meaning of "above" or "beyond" is closer to the German); and second, for promoting misidentification of Nietzsche's concept with the comic-book character Superman. Kaufmann and others preferred to translate Übermensch as "overman". A translation like "superior humans" might better fit the concept of Nietzsche as he unfolds his narrative. Scholars continue to employ both terms, some simply opting to reproduce the German word.

The German prefix über can have connotations of superiority, transcendence, excessiveness, or intensity, depending on the words to which it is attached. Mensch refers to a human being, not a male specifically as it is still sometimes erroneously believed. The adjective übermenschlich means super-human: beyond human strength or out of proportion to humanity.

This-worldliness

Main article: Faith in the Earth

Nietzsche introduces the concept of the Übermensch in contrast to his understanding of the other-worldliness of Christianity: Zarathustra proclaims the will of the Übermensch to give meaning to life on earth, and admonishes his audience to ignore those who promise other-worldly fulfillment to draw them away from the earth.

Zarathustra declares that the Christian escape from this world also required the invention of an immortal soul separate from the earthly body. This led to the abnegation and mortification of the body, or asceticism. Zarathustra further links the Übermensch to the body and to interpreting the soul as simply an aspect of the body.

Death of God and the creation of new values

Further information: Transvaluation of all values

Zarathustra ties the Übermensch to the death of God. While the concept of God was the ultimate expression of other-worldly values and their underlying instincts, belief in God nevertheless did give meaning to life for a time. "God is dead" means that the idea of God can no longer provide values. Nietzsche refers to this crucial paradigm shift as a reevaluation of values.

In order to avoid a relapse into Platonic idealism or asceticism, the creation of these new values cannot be motivated by the same instincts that gave birth to those tables of values. Instead, they must be motivated by a love of this world and of life. Whereas Nietzsche diagnosed the Christian value system as a reaction against life and hence destructive in a sense, the new values that the Übermensch will be responsible for will be life-affirming and creative (see Nietzschean affirmation). Through realizing this new set of values, the Übermensch is perfect because they have mastered all human obstacles.

As a goal

Zarathustra first announces the Übermensch as a goal humanity can set for itself. All human life would be given meaning by how it advanced a new generation of human beings. The aspiration of a woman would be to give birth to an Übermensch, for example; her relationships with men would be judged by this standard.

Zarathustra contrasts the Übermensch with the degenerate "last man" of egalitarian modernity, an alternative goal which humanity might set for itself. "last man" appears only in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and is presented as a smothering of aspiration antithetical to the spirit of the Übermensch.

According to Rüdiger Safranski, some commentators associate the Übermensch with a program of eugenics.

Re-embodiment of amoral aristocratic values

For Rüdiger Safranski, the Übermensch represents a higher biological type reached through artificial selection and at the same time is also an ideal for anyone who is creative and strong enough to master the whole spectrum of human potential, good and "evil", to become an "artist-tyrant". In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche vehemently denied any idealistic, democratic or humanitarian interpretation of the Übermensch: "The word Übermensch a type of supreme achievement, as opposed to 'modern' men, 'good' men, Christians, and other nihilists When I whispered into the ears of some people that they were better off looking for a Cesare Borgia than a Parsifal, they did not believe their ears." Safranski argues that the combination of ruthless warrior pride and artistic brilliance that defined the Italian Renaissance embodied the sense of the Übermensch for Nietzsche. According to Safranski, Nietzsche intended the ultra-aristocratic figure of the Übermensch to serve as a Machiavellian bogeyman of the modern Western middle class and its pseudo-Christian egalitarian value system.

Relation to the eternal recurrence

The Übermensch shares a place of prominence in Thus Spoke Zarathustra with another of Nietzsche's key concepts: the eternal recurrence of the same.

Laurence Lampert suggests that the eternal recurrence replaces the Übermensch as the object of serious aspiration.

Use by the Nazis

The term Übermensch was used frequently by Hitler and the Nazi regime to describe their idea of a biologically superior Aryan or Germanic master race; a racial version of Nietzsche's Übermensch became a philosophical foundation for Nazi ideas. The Nazi notion of the master race also spawned the idea of "inferior humans" (Untermenschen) who should be dominated and enslaved; this term does not originate with Nietzsche, who was critical of both antisemitism and German nationalism.

In his final years, Nietzsche began to believe that he was in fact Polish, not German, and was quoted as saying, "I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German blood". In defiance of nationalist doctrines, he claimed that he and Germany were great only because of "Polish blood in their veins", and that he would " all anti-semites shot." Nietzsche died long before Hitler's reign, and it was partly Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche who manipulated her brother's words to accommodate the worldview of herself and her husband, Bernhard Förster, a prominent German nationalist and antisemite. Förster founded the Deutscher Volksverein (German People's League) in 1881 with Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg.

Anarchism

The thought of Nietzsche had an important influence on anarchist authors. Spencer Sunshine writes:

There were many things that drew anarchists to Nietzsche: his hatred of the state; his disgust for the mindless social behavior of 'herds'; his anti-Christianity; his distrust of the effect of both the market and the State on cultural production; his desire for an 'overman' – that is, for a new human who was to be neither master nor slave; his praise of the ecstatic and creative self, with the artist as his prototype, who could say, 'Yes' to the self-creation of a new world on the basis of nothing; and his forwarding of the 'transvaluation of values' as source of change, as opposed to a Marxist conception of class struggle and the dialectic of a linear history.

The influential American anarchist Emma Goldman, in the preface of her famous collection Anarchism and Other Essays, defends both Nietzsche and Max Stirner from attacks within anarchism when she says

The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer's ideas or personality. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, is decried as a hater of the weak because he believed in the Übermensch. It does not occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind that this vision of the Übermensch also called for a state of society which will not give birth to a race of weaklings and slaves.

Sunshine says that the "Spanish anarchists also mixed their class politics with Nietzschean inspiration." Murray Bookchin, in The Spanish Anarchists, describes prominent Catalan CNT member Salvador Seguí as "an admirer of Nietzschean individualism, of the superhome to whom 'all is permitted'". Bookchin, in his 1973 introduction to Sam Dolgoff's The Anarchist Collectives, even describes the reconstruction of society by the workers as a Nietzschean project. Bookchin says that

workers must see themselves as human beings, not as class beings; as creative personalities, not as 'proletarians', as self-affirming individuals, not as 'masses' ... economic component must be humanized precisely by bringing an 'affinity of friendship' to the work process, by diminishing the role of onerous work in the lives of producers, indeed by a total 'transvaluation of values' (to use Nietzsche's phrase) as it applies to production and consumption as well as social and personal life.

See also

References

Notes

  1. "Gutenberg, THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA". Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 2023-11-21. When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. -- Liest thou not in a sky-blue lake of happiness? — Ye wags, answered Zarathustra, and smiled, how well did ye choose the simile! -- What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal. What is lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING. -
  2. Nietzsche, Friedrich (2024-03-01). "Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None". Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 2024-03-05.
  3. Lampert, Laurence (1986). Nietzsche's Teaching. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
  4. Rosen, Stanley (1995). The Mask of Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  5. Duden Deutsches Universal Wörterbuch A–Z, s.v. über-.
  6. Übermenschlich. PONS.eu Online Dictionary. Retrieved from http://en.pons.eu/german-english/%C3%BCbermenschlich.
  7. Hollingdale, R. J. (1961), page 44 – English translation of Zarathustra's prologue; "I love those who do not first seek beyond the stars for reasons to go down and to be sacrifices: but who sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth may one day belong to the Superman"
  8. Nietzsche, F. (1885) – p. 4, Original publication – "Ich liebe die, welche nicht erst hinter den Sternen einen Grund suchen, unterzugehen und Opfer zu sein: sondern die sich der Erde opfern, dass die Erde einst des Übermenschen werde."
  9. Nietzsche, Friedrich (2003). Thus Spoke Zarathustra. London: Penguin Books. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-140-44118-5.
  10. ^ Loeb, Paul. "Finding the Übermensch in Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality". Journal of Nietzsche Studies. 42–4: 77 – via EBSCO Host.
  11. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I.18; Lampert, Nietzsche's; Rosen, Mask of Enlightenment, 118.
  12. Safranski, Nietzsche, 262-64, 266–68.
  13. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, Why I Write Such Good Books, §1)
  14. Safranski, Nietzsche, 365
  15. Lampert, Nietzsche's Teaching.
  16. Alexander, Jeffrey (2011). A Contemporary Introduction to Sociology (2nd ed.). Paradigm. ISBN 978-1-61205-029-4.
  17. "Nietzsche inspired Hitler and other killers – Page 7", Court TV Crime Library
  18. "Nietzsche and Hitler". Archived from the original on 2012-03-13. Retrieved 2010-04-19.
  19. Friedrich Nietzsche, "Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is"
  20. Henry Louis Mencken, "The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche", T. Fisher Unwin, 1908, reprinted by University of Michigan 2006, pg. 6,
  21. Hannu Salmi (1994). "Die Sucht nach dem germanischen Ideal" (in German). Also published in Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 6/1994, pp. 485–496
  22. Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship, 1970, pp. 59–60
  23. ^ "Spencer Sunshine: "Nietzsche and the Anarchists" (2005)". radicalarchives.org. 18 May 2010.
  24. Goldman, Emma (1911). Anarchism and Other Essays (Second Revised ed.). Mother Earth Publishing Association.

Bibliography

External links

Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Concepts
Poetry
Analysis
Music
Paintings
Friedrich Nietzsche
Works
Concepts and
philosophy
Influence and
reception
Related
Categories: