Übermensch: Difference between revisions
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''[[The X-Files]]'' episode [[Arcadia]] features a creature called ''Übermenscher.'' |
''[[The X-Files]]'' episode [[Arcadia]] features a creature called ''Übermenscher.'' |
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The webcomic [[Dresden Codak]] also references the concept, curiously crosslinked with [[D&D]]. |
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== Notes == |
== Notes == |
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Revision as of 05:54, 5 December 2006
The concept of the — (homo superior; equivalent English: 'overman', 'super-human' or trans-human; see below) — was expounded by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in the 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, whose eponymous protagonist contends that "man is something which ought to be overcome". Zarathustra thus announces the coming of the Übermensch . Mankind could prepare this coming through the following steps:
- By using his will to power destructively, in the rejection of, and rebellion against, societal ideals and moral codes.
- By using his will to power creatively, in overcoming nihilism and re-evaluating old ideals or creating new ones.
- 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, via Zarathustra, he declared that there were many examples of Last Men. Zarathustra assigns to his contemporary civilisation the task of preparing the venue for the Übermensch. Nietzsche criticized the concepts of soul, personal consciousness, and the "ego". His criticisms of the metaphysics of substance and of the subject, whom he identified as a "grammatical fiction," opposed any individualist interpretation, which would render the Übermensch a heroic figure [1]. Therefore, the Übermensch also has been interpreted as a temporary state, or event, of the multiple wills to power composing this "individual fiction". Thus interpreted, the Übermensch is neither person nor substance, but the existential process of overcoming both oneself and nihilism. It should be stressed that if the coming of the Übermensch was a task for times to come, and thus engaged a responsibility of some kind, Nietzsche criticized any conception of freedom as "free will": it is not simply a matter of each one "choosing" to become a Übermensch — Nietzsche, who admired Spinoza, a philosopher who also criticized this conception of freedom, didn't believe in such a "free choice" — but rather of creating the conditions making the Übermensch's coming possible. Adding to the interpretative difficulty surrounding the Übermensch concept is the relationship between the views of Zarathustra, the book's protagonist, and the views of Nietzsche, himself.
Origins
Nietzsche was aware of Herbert Spencer's concept of "survival of the fittest." Spencer held that it was only adaptation, not morality or a divine hand, that enabled some species, institutions and people to triumph over others. Nietzsche's concept of the Übermensch is in part related to his understanding of the body and of humankind. Thus, he criticized Spencer's assertion according to which species adapted themselves to their environment, claiming this was only a reactive form of action [2]. This criticism of adaptation as a reactive force was enforced by Nietzsche's criticism of the "will to life" (and, for example, of Spinoza's conatus, or tendency to live of every being [3]) on behalf of his "hypothesis of the will to power". Nietzsche also criticized any teleological conception of history, which identified the end of each thing with its origins (hence, the eye would have been created to see, and animalkind to have the human being as its perfection) [4]. Thus, his conception of the Übermensch should also be thought as opposed to the conception of mankind as the ultimate word of evolution.
Aspects of the Übermensch
The will to destruction
Nietzsche's motivation for claiming that God is dead was the destruction of the Christian conscience: that is, destroying the 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 an Übermensch, literally someone who is "beyond human", he wrote. According to Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals, Christianity is based on a doctrine of remedy and punishment. Zarathustra was the man who announced the coming of the Übermensch to the world.
Further, as Nietzsche put it, asceticism — religions positing a "next life" more important than the earthly, and especially the teachings of Plato that point to a nihilistic "beyond" —oppose a belief in God against objective, material reality. Nietzsche opposes a "slave morality" and a "master morality"; both, he said, can coexist within a person.
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 by positing 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
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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 transcendent 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 :
- "It is here and nowhere else that one must make a start to comprehend what Zarathustra wants: this type of man that he conceives, conceives reality as it is: it is strong enough for it—, it is not estranged or removed from it, it is reality itself and exemplifies all that is terrible and questionable in it, only in that way can man attain greatness..."[5]
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 [his] own law." It is not a question of dominating others[6].
Common misconceptions
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. Furthermore, his criticisms of consciousness and of the subject, tied to his criticisms of the traditional understanding of will as a "faculty", makes any individualist interpretation of Nietzsche extremely hazardous. It is doubtful to make of the Übermensch a "person", whether it be a person already dead or a person yet to live. This same criticisms of a conscious subject lead Martin Heidegger to his concept of the Dasein.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche did have an admiration for various figures, including writers such as William Shakespeare, artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, Jesus Christ and also political figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Julius Caesar; even Socrates or Plato have been admired by Nietzsche. However, he admired above all others Goethe. Nietzsche praised Ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy as cultures which produced more creative individuals than exist in present society. As had Tocqueville done before him, he criticized modernity, assimilated to democracy, claiming it was characterized by a tendency to equality which uniformized all beings and ultimately led to nihilism. [7]
Misidentification with Nazis and biological reductionism
The biologicalisation of the concept of Übermensch was criticized by Nietzsche in Ecce Homo, "Why I Write Such Good Books", § 1.
Many high-ranking Nazis, including 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). The biologicalisation of the concept of Übermensch was criticized by Martin Heidegger's Nietzsche,[8] because 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 Contra Wagner, he bitterly criticized the German artist, partly because of Wagner's pan-Germanism and antisemitism. It is widely thought that Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who was an avowed anti-semite, and Peter Gast contributed greatly to this misconception by deliberately misrepresenting his work. Philologists Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari proved this in the 1960s when editing, for the first time ever, Nietzsche's complete posthumous fragments. The Nazis themselves reinterpreted and appropriated elements of many philosophical and religious texts, including Nietzsche's.
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 ("literal:"over setting"/"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 adjective übermenschlich (above/beyond human) 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 neutral form of a noun.
In popular culture
The inescapable reference to the Übermensch is the American comic book character Superman; however, this comic book character (despite having tremendous physical and mental capabilities) is closer to a Last Man than an Übermensch, in that the character enforces and conforms strongly to pre-existing American cultural and especially moral norms.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, in his 1866 novel Crime and Punishment, anticipated the Übermensch concept: the book's main character, Raskolnikov, justifies an act of murder he commits by deciding that he, as a superior being, is not bound by the normal rules of morality. Raskolnikov identifies Napoleon as having been an Übermensch and seeks to emulate him, but his attempt fails - he is full of scruples and remorse, and in the end he finds solace in Christian morality.
George Bernard Shaw's 1903 play Man and Superman is a reference to the archetype; its main character considers himself an untameable revolutionary, above the normal concerns of humanity.
Jack London is considered to have intended to his character Wolf Larsen, the sea captain in his book The Sea Wolf as "an attack on Nietzsche's super-man philosophy."
In real life, Leopold and Loeb committed an act of murder in 1924 partly out of a similar Übermensch-like conception of themselves.[9] Their story has been fictionalized many times, including in the Alfred Hitchcock movie Rope and the 2002 movie Murder by Numbers. One should note that nowhere did Nietzsche claim that having a "superior intellect", or belonging to a superior social class (or, worse, "race") would entitle someone to free himself from morality's rules. Rather, he claims that it is a moralist view which believes that someone may be said "free" to "choose" this or this type of action, and the conception of "evil" was, according to him, enforced by "gregarious kind" (slaves) against "masters" in order to limit the "master's" sphere of action — by making them feel remorse for "bad" actions, which, in truth, they couldn't choose not to do. Beyond Good and Evil does not means beyond good and bad, and Nietzsche's criticism of social morality doesn't lead him, quite to the contrary, to refuse any kind of ethics.
The X-Files episode Arcadia features a creature called Übermenscher.
The webcomic Dresden Codak also references the concept, curiously crosslinked with D&D.
Notes
- ^ See Beyond Good and Evil, 16 and 17 of the first section (etext available here), where he criticized Descartes's cogito; this is the Helen Zimmern translation, as published in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, 1909-1913. See also On the Genealogy of Morals, I, §13.
"16. (...) 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)
- ^ See On the Genealogy of Morals, Part II, §13
- ^ It could be argued that this criticism of Spinoza — an author admired by Nietzsche — find its origins in a misunderstanding of Spinoza's conception of the conatus. Nietzsche's point is to underline that life is not the ultimate value of being.
- ^ On the Genealogy of Morals, II, 13
- ^ Ecce Homo, « Why I Am a Destiny, § 5. ».
- ^ FP, IX, 7 [21].
- ^ Pamornpol Jinatichra, Nietzsche’s idea of an overman and life from his point of view, personal page on Stanford.edu. Accessed 29 August 2006.
- ^ Heidegger's defense of Nietzsche against Alfred Baeumler's ideological interpretation would later be used by Heidegger's partisans (notably his ex-students the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre, who had participated in anti-Nazi resistance) to discharge him of accusations concerning his ties to the Nazi regime and the NSDAP
- ^ "Nietzsche inspired Hitler and other killers", Court TV Crime Library
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