Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 17:37, 18 June 2006

An Übermensch, (sometimes translated as "Overman", or "superman") is a concept exposited by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In that work, the eponymous protagonist contends that a man can become an Übermensch (homo superior; the common equivalent English translation would be 'super-human'; see below) through the following steps:

1. By his will to power, manifested creatively in overcoming nihilism and re-evaluating old ideals or creating new ones.
2. By his will to power, manifested destructively in the rejection of, and rebellion against, societal ideals and moral codes.
3. By a continual process of self-overcoming.

The Übermensch was contrasted with the exemplar of the Last Man, who is the antithesis 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 ontological critique of the individual subject whom he claimed is a "grammatical fiction". Nietzsche thus criticized both the concepts of soul, personal consciousness and the "ego". Therefore, the Übermensch has also been interpretated as a temporary state of the multiple wills to power composing this individual "fiction". Following this interpretation, the Übermensch is not an individual nor a substance, 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.

The will to destruction

Nietzsche's motivation for the claim 'God is dead' is the destruction of the Christian conscience, i.e., a God-centered way of thinking, and the fateful will to break out. Only by breaking out of the idealistic norms and overcoming nihilism can one become Übermensch, which literally means "beyond human." Nihilism takes many forms, Christianism and the church being one of the earliest of them. According to Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals, Christianism is based on a remedy-punishment doctrine. Zarathustra was the figure who announced the Übermensch 's coming to the world.

Furthermore, according to Nietzsche, asceticism, religions that hold a "next life" to be more important than this one, and especially the teachings of Plato point towards a nihilistic beyond, which places the belief in God in opposition to reality.

Re-evaluating or destroying old ideals

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.

In establishing new ideals, man now does not rank them according to transcendental aspects ("Where from" and "What for") because this would again aim towards beyond.

Instead, there are no absolute ideals any more but only an interpretation of them in which moral ideals are the most important ones.

Overcoming nihilism

The most difficult step according to Nietzsche's immanent philosophy 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:

• 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 Will to Power which ends in complete independence.

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.

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.

Common misconceptions

Misidentification with Nazis

Many high-ranking Nazis, among whom Alfred Baeumler, admired parts of Nietzsche's philosophy and sought to adapt it to fit their own visions of super-human beings and an Aryan "master race" (Herrenvolk). This biologization of the concept of Übermensch was criticized by Heidegger's Nietzsche (Heidegger's defense of Nietzsche against Alfred Baeumler's ideological interpretation would later be used by Heidegger's partisans to discharge him of accusations concerning his ties to the Nazi regime and the NSDAP). This biological interpretation significantly departed from Nietzsche's original ideas. Perhaps most importantly, Nietzsche believed that a human being of any race 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 The Case of Wagner and Nietzsche against Wagner, he bitterly criticized the German artist. This rupture with Wagner was partly explained by Wagner's pan-Germanism and antisemitism. It is widely thought that Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who married an anti-Semite, and Peter Gast 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. Mazzino Montinari proved this in the 1960s when editing, for the first time ever, Nietzsche's complete posthumous fragments.

Misleading translation

The translation of Übermensch as "Superman" may compound the misconception. Über is, among other things, the German equivalent of the prefix trans-. It has also gained a colloquial use in English with (sometimes spelled "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.

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.

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 transhumanism.

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 Superman. Nazi references are also common. Care must be taken when one comes across the word in literary usage.

Confusion with biology-based views

Nietzsche's writings are spiritual and philosophical in character, and do not state that the central ideas are biological, psychological, sociological, or sociobiological. His ideas have no firm connection to the claim of superiority of any particular race or ethnicity, and thus they are not racist in themselves. Furthermore, he criticized Herbert Spencer's social darwinism 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.

The personification of the Übermensch.

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 Napoleon Bonaparte and Julius Caesar. However, he admired above all others Goethe, who himself was admired by Napoleon. And he also infamously preferred a Cesare Borgia to any of the Last men. Nietzsche praised Ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy, as cultures which produced more creative individuals than exist in present society, and where near-overmen were more common. He mentioned several individuals who came close: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Goethe, Jesus Christ, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon. But he was quick to point out no artist is without his flaws.

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. 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 Heraclitus). His concept of Übermensch is similar to a platonic ideal. Both Nietzsche and Plato believed that a human can never be ideal 100% of the time. Nietzsche criticized "Omni-satisfaction" (TSZIII 11;2) and considered man being a bridge with no end. (TSZ III, 12;3).

Notes

1. See Beyond Good and Evil, §16 and 17 of the first section (etext available here).

   "16. There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are "immediate certainties"; for instance, "I think," or as the superstition of Schopenhauer 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)

   and also:

   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)

2. Stanford Edu.
3. Connect.net

External links

• Dialogue on the concept of Übermensch in Nietzsche's works
• The 'Superman', the Overman or Übermensch
• Nietzsche’s idea of an overman and life from his point of view
• Martin Heidegger and Nietzsche’s Overman: Aphorisms on the Attack

• Ethics
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• German loanwords
• Philosophical concepts