Was Nietzsche an Ubermensch?
In the course of reading my favorite author, Mr. Friedrich Nietzsche, I have come across a point that strikes me as paradoxical. Is Nietzsche an Übermensch? Is he this superman that he hopes to be, and encourages the intelligent of the masses to become. In reading his Twilight of the Idols: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer, there are points where Nietzsche stoops down to the level of the crazed religious fanatic, and points out the flaws in their way of life. It is as if he picks a fight with a child, over something the child has no control over. Nietzsche was, in some cases, just as fanatical as the religious fundamentalist! He can be described as a fundamentalist atheist, which is (probably) not any better than being a fundamentalist religious person.
The most telling argument is in Nietzsche’s mental breakdown. If he did indeed live by his own categorical imperative, and that lead him to spend over a decade of his life (and possibly more had he not passed away) unable to produce anything beneficial to society, does this negate his candidacy for being an Übermensch? How can he overcome the slave mentality when he was essentially functioning as an infant as a middle aged man? Would this lead one to believe that Nietzsche’s ethic is convoluted nonsense that leads one spiraling into a crippling depression? This is exceedingly troubling to me, and I see much of Nietzsche in myself and vice versa. I am BY NO MEANS the genius that Nietzsche was, but if we follow the same ethic are we doomed to the same fate as slaves to our own minds?
In ending, can Nietzsche be considered an Übermensch in his own sense of the word? I do not propose an answer to this, at this time, but I must say that I am shocked by the evidence that Nietzsche might not be the Übermensch, something he had spent his whole life trying to become, and may have not succeeded at it.
The most telling argument is in Nietzsche’s mental breakdown. If he did indeed live by his own categorical imperative, and that lead him to spend over a decade of his life (and possibly more had he not passed away) unable to produce anything beneficial to society, does this negate his candidacy for being an Übermensch? How can he overcome the slave mentality when he was essentially functioning as an infant as a middle aged man? Would this lead one to believe that Nietzsche’s ethic is convoluted nonsense that leads one spiraling into a crippling depression? This is exceedingly troubling to me, and I see much of Nietzsche in myself and vice versa. I am BY NO MEANS the genius that Nietzsche was, but if we follow the same ethic are we doomed to the same fate as slaves to our own minds?
In ending, can Nietzsche be considered an Übermensch in his own sense of the word? I do not propose an answer to this, at this time, but I must say that I am shocked by the evidence that Nietzsche might not be the Übermensch, something he had spent his whole life trying to become, and may have not succeeded at it.
posted by Brian Hillman at 8:42 PM
2 Comments:
Nietzsche is an arm-chair Uebermensch. You know, just as there are these arm-chair samurais who, with their war-mongering rhetorics, persuade the nation to go to war here, there, and everywhere, in order to revive ancient Sparta, but who dodged draft themselves, will never leave their air-conditioned office, or send their children to war, so there is arm-chair Uebermensch who tells others to get off their chair and overcome themselves but who never moves an inch himself, and who finally falls mad in his bed. This doesn't mean however that what they say is false (that would be... the straw man fallacy?...).
You are only 17? Wow, looking over your posts, I suddenly have some hope that some will survive the coming dark age.
Good job!
Sorry I was wrong, and I feel obligated to correct the wrong opinion. Another person has explained to me that Zarathustra has explicitly claimed that he is not the Uebermensch... What he is is the prophet of Uebermensch, proclaiming the coming of the Uebermensch. In this respect, Nietzsche is not the Uebermensch either, he is only a "prophet" in that sense.
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