Nietzsche's Superman & Will to Power: Core Philosophy

Nietzsche's Superman: The Path to Self-Overcoming

"In another time, to act against God's delight was the highest delight. But God is dead, and with the dead are also those delinquents! Now, the most horrible crimes are against the land, and it entails the most inscrutable way." This challenging statement, echoing themes from the prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, introduces Nietzsche's profound idea that man is something that must be overcome. Nietzsche describes man as a mediocre herd being (the herd representing a moral concept), miserable, resentful, and unable to live fully. He is a weak and ill being who lacks the strength to confront traditional values. The Superman (Übermensch) stands in stark contrast. He is capable of creating new values, understanding that these are not absolute. He lives a life without detaching from the earth, without regard for an abstract and eternal world. Dionysus, for Nietzsche, is the embodiment of exuberant vitality. Zarathustra represents this new type of man, acting as the sun that illuminates the world after the death of God. The Superman will achieve the inversion of Platonic, Christian, and Jewish values. He lives beyond good and evil, guided by a radically autonomous morality that proposes a style of life rather than specific actions.

The Will to Power: Nietzsche's Core Concept

The concept of Will to Power is evident throughout Nietzsche's philosophy. Life itself is the will to power. Through it, every life form generates a higher life form. The survival instinct is a manifestation of the will to power. However, the will to power can also manifest negatively. Rather than asserting, it denies or reduces, as seen in the desire to simplify complex concepts into a reduced reality, often applied to science. The will to power is also at play in the work of philosophers and theologians who have invented a fictional world (also negative in nature, as it denies reality) to give meaning to existence and serve as a basis for anti-vital and unnatural values. This stems from a fear of life as it is, a desire to build a shelter full of meaning, away from reality. In the past, men also exhibited this will to power, manifested in their unwillingness to confront the reality of God's death and its consequences. Another manifestation is found in the preachers of equality—those whose lives went wrong and who seek revenge against all powerful life forms (the "tarantulas" discourse in Thus Spoke Zarathustra). These are individuals who cannot support any form of powerful life. Nietzsche polemicized not only against socialists and anarchists of his time but also against Christianity, which preaches the equality of all men before God. For the Superman, mastery means will, strength, vital impulse, excitement, passion, and striving. The Superman knows his finitude and uses his freedom to create temporary and finite goals. He does not overcome ascetically, denying time and finitude, or inventing an eternity in which to expect. Instead, he overcomes all steps within the finite will and projects himself beyond it.