Nietzsche: Death of God and Übermensch

Nietzsche's Core Ideas

The Death of God

The "death of God" thesis states that belief in God, and by extension, belief in any absolute entities, is dead. Belief in God served as a comfort against the misery and suffering in this world. When Nietzsche declared that "God is dead," he meant to indicate that humanity lives disoriented, no longer guided by the ultimate horizon in which it has always lived. With this "death," humanity cannot live without the Absolute in the "innocence of becoming." It is the condition for the appearance of the Übermensch (superman).

Culture that believes in an absolute reality with objective values like Truth and Good is, for Nietzsche, nihilistic. He saw the entire Christian and Western culture as nihilistic, directing all passion and hope towards something nonexistent, disregarding the only existing reality: the world offered to the senses, the reality of life.

Nietzsche's perspectivism means any representation of the world is a representation for a subject. Nietzsche considered it impossible to know reality in itself, because every belief, every theory of the world, depends on the point of view of the person who created it. There is no data or experience untainted by a point of view, an interpretation. A "criterion of truth" free of subjective elements is not possible; there are no hard data from which we can build objective knowledge.

The Concept of the Übermensch

The man who must be overcome is one who submits to traditional values, a morality based on belief in a transcendent reality that creates contempt for life, the body, and the differences between people. The Übermensch is only possible after the "death of God." The Übermensch cannot be identified with a privileged social class inherited by tradition or resting on social power, nor with a race.

Some features of the Übermensch's moral behavior:

• Rejects the morality of slaves (caution that hides cowardice, obedience to a foreign rule).
• Rejects herd behavior (the morality of those who follow the majority).
• Creates values; the Übermensch invents the moral norms to which he is subjected. The values he creates are faithful to the world of life.

Living in finitude, the Übermensch does not believe in any transcendent reality, neither in God nor in a privileged destiny. He accepts life in its finitude, likes risk, new and challenging experiences, and is contrary to egalitarianism. He loves the exuberance and intensity of life: happiness, excitement, health, sexual love, beauty, body, and spirit.

The Übermensch is the strongest affirmation of life, the creator and master of himself and his life – a free spirit.