Across his survey of human history, Nietzsche had obseived a miasma of
mediocrity. Through this spiritual smog, however, the towering figures of great men rose mountainous above the tumult, fomiing “a kind of bridge across the turbulent sti eam of becoming.”^^^ These giants transcended their forebears, participating in an “exalted spirit-dialogue” with their equals, “undisturbed by the excited chattering dwarfs who creep about beneath them”.^^^ This great “chain” of human exemplars served to unite the species and supply “the fundamental idea of faith in hunianity”.^^^ Despite the travesty of the domination of “the lower species,” who had all but eradicated the “higher species [...], i.e., those whose inexhaustible fertility and power keep up the faith in man”,^^"^ Nietzsche conceived of a being who w as- along Anselmian lines- simply too good not to be real:
Conversely, one could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self-
determination, such a freedom of the will that the spirit would take leave of all
faith and eveiy wish for certainty, being practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses. Such a spirit
would be the free spirit par excellence.^^^
A concept of ‘spiritual evolution’ provided a metaphorical means of linking the erratic yet spectacular specimens of the past— like Caesar and Napoleon- to a future which
individual (since ‘autonomous’ and ‘moral’ are mutually exclusive)- in short, the man with his own independent, enduring will, the man who is entitled to make promisesP [GM 41]
GM 105-106, 136; WP 9-10 [1886-1887].
UM 111. Nietzsche employed similar images of an archipelago of greatness in describing Wagner’s growing ‘chain’ of great operatic characters. [UM 202]
” ’ UM 111. UM 68. WP 19 [1887].
GS 289-290. Hollingdale argues that this is, in part, how Nietzsche personally resisted the will to nihilism. [Z 25] Nietzsche’s portrayal of the Übermensch was strongly infomied by his awe of the artistic supremacy of “Wagner’s overflowing nature”. [UM 223]
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overshadowed the present mediocrity which Nietzsche despised.^^^ Though it would be a
gross inaccuracy to accuse Nietzsche of seeking to return to a ‘Golden Age’, despite his constant urge to ‘press ahead’, there is no shortage of nostalgia and sentiment when he gazes at the past?^^ Hence, Houlgate writes: “Nietzsche does not wish to bring about the resurrection of the ‘blond beast’, but the sublimation of him”,^^* to which Strong adds, “[W]hat men have learned in slave morality must not be rejected, but rather
transfigured.”^^^ As Tanner rightly points out, Nietzsche attempts to combine the
‘incorrigible health’ of the rather ‘simplistic’ master \Herr\ with the cleverness and
complexity of the slave {Sklave\?^^ However, it would be an overstatement to reduce
Nietzsche’s vision of humanity to a message of interior self-overcoming for a general audience. Hence, the German philosopher delightfully embraced Brandes’ description: “The expression ‘aristocratic radicalism’, which you employ, is very good. It is, permit me
WP 471 [1887,1888]: “[I]t is perhaps part of the economy o f human evolution that man should evolve piece by piece.”
Tdimer Nietzsche 46. However, Ansell-Pearson states: “Nietzsche’s aristocratism seeks to revive an older conception of politics, one which he locates in the Greek agon [....]” [33-34] White contends that Nietzsche is attempting “to inspire us with an urgent longing for ‘the Master’s return’.” [685] He continues: “It follows that ‘the return of the Master’ coijesponds to tlie overcoming of nihilism, with the destraction of tlie Priest in histoiy, and the Slave within ourselves.” [Wliite 693] However, this would bring the conflict to an end, something untenable for Nietzsche. Rather, he would seek to instigate straggle with stronger and more challenging opponents, having no time for an ‘eschatological’ state of peipetual Sabbath peace.
Ansell-Pearson identifies Nietzsche’s failure to provide legitimization for his political theoiy as a ‘fatal flaw’ which, thus, perpetuates class conflict between the aristocracy and the lower classes. [41] Habermas blames this on the logical fallacy of his dismissal of reason, without which he camiot “legitimate the criteria of aesthetic judgment that he holds on to” [96] In light of Nietzsche’s optimism in the constructive output of conflict. I’m not sure it constitutes, from Nietzsche’s view, either an oversight or a flaw. For Kaufmann’s existentialist yet enoneously egalitarian reading, see Nietzsche 297: “Nietzsche’s own ethic is beyond both master and slave morality. He would like us to conform to neither and become autonomousT -Nehamas rightly remarks that the choice of the title “Beyond Good and Evil” reflects Nietzsche’s aristocratic sympathies. [206]
” * Houlgate Hegel 13. Kain rejects tlie “obvious” conclusion that, “the Übermensch develops out of, or on the model of the master, not the slave.” [123] However, Kain downplays tlie invective which Nietzsche directed towards the slaves and their mediocre values. Furthermore, the priests who engineer the revolt are actually a splinter from the master class. [GM 17] Richardson is right to point out that an important distinguishing trait is that the masters form a coherent group or caste, while the Übermensch is a rare and solitary species. [54] I would disagree with the schematic tidiness- and overtly Hegelian nature— of Richardson’s formulation of “a sort of dialectical progression from master to slave to ovennan.” [68] The
Übermensch’s arrival seems far more random and accidental than Nietzsche would like. Strong 258.
Tamier Nietzsche 71. See also Richardson 68. Detwiler obsewes a marked absence of aristocratic politics and “more sympathetic” treatment of democracy during Nietzsche’s ‘middle period’ [16] Tanner argues that Nietzsche “gave up on the Übermensch, turning increasingly to Goethe as a model for the ‘higher man’.
[Nietzsche 79] I would suggest that Goethe’s influence on the Übermensch [e.g., as autonomous artist and self-creator, well-spring of joyous trust, etc.], has been evident from the very beginning and, thus, does not support an abandonment o f one for the other.
to say, the cleverest thing I have yet to read about myself.”^^^ As Detwiler insightfully observes,
His radicalism flows from his ability to embrace Romanticism’s aesthetic revolt against the optimism and the rationalism of the Enlightenment while
championing the uncompromising intellectual conscience that arose out of the Enlightenment but that in his view leads to the death of God and the advent of Western nihilism.^^^
To escape fr om this world of plebeian pettiness, Nietzsche strove to captivate the imagination with an artistic model for emulation,a new image of human destiny, “a higher type that arises and preserves itself under different conditions from those of the average man.”^^'* Although Zarathustra stated that such a being has yet to appear in human hi story,Nietzsche placed his hope in the utter unpredictability of the natural universe in producing ‘exceptions’:
One does not reckon with such beings, they arrive like fate, without motive, reason, consideration, pretext, they anive like lightning, too fearful, too sudden, too convincing, too ‘different’, even to be hated. Their work is an instinctive creation and impression of form, they are the most involuntary, most unconscious
artists there are— wherever they appear, something new quickly grows up, a living
structure of domination, in which parts and functions are demarcated and
articulated, where only that which has first been given a ‘meaning’ with respect to the whole finds a place.^^^
True to Machiavellian fonn, Nietzsche viewed entire civilizations, races, classes, and religions as useful means to this supreme end- the emergence of the superspecies. In a notebook entry, he once summarized his philosophical project as follows:
My ideas do not revolve around the degree of power that is gianted to the one or
to the other or to all, but around the degree ofpower that the one or the other
should exercise over others or over all, and to what extent a sacrifice of fr eedom. Brandes 3. This was written on December 2, 1887.
282Detwiler 190.
Golomb “Nietzsche” 255, See Ii-win’s rich suggestion that Nietzsche’s treatment o f human history parallels the Renaissance artists’ use of Hellenistic culture, “drawing inspiration from the Greeks, but also allowing themselves enough freedom and forgetting to produce traly great and original art.” [42-43] Nehamas portrays the Übermensch as an ideal literary character, “a framework within which many particular lives, each one o f which exhibits the unity and coherence he finds so important, can fit.” [167] Bufkitt’s notion o f the Übermensch as “violent fantasy” is a bit overstated. [62]
WP 463 [1887-1888].
Z 117. Hence, the nobility had to content themselves with their roles as ‘foreranners’: “But you could surely create the Supeiman. Perhaps not you yourselves, my brothers! But you could transform yourselves into forefathers and ancestors of the Superman: and let this be your finest creating!” [Z 110]
57 I
even enslavement, provides the basis for the emergence of a higher type. Put in ;
the crudest fonn: how could one sacrifice the development o f manldnd to help a ;
higher species than man to come into existence?^^^ j
!
All of the dejection, human stupidity, and suffering in existence can be endured, even !
justified, if they are swept under a higher cause. Hence, when speaking of the ‘man of j
science’, Nietzsche stated: i
The objective man is an instrument, a precious, easily damaged and tarnished j
measuring instrument and reflecting apparatus which ought to be respected and Î
taken good care of; but he is not an end, a termination and ascent, a I
complementary man in whom the rest of existence is justified, a conclusion— and |
even less a beginning, a begetting and first cause, something solid, powerful and 1
based firmly on itself that wants to be master: but rather only a delicate, empty, \
elegant, flexible mould which has first to wait for some content so as ‘to fonn’ :
itself by it i
This ‘termination and ascent’ was the Übermensch: the ‘supeiman’ or ‘ovennan’ ;
which, Kaufinann contends, was inspired by the concept of the ‘over-soul’ from an essay J
by Ralph Waldo Emerson.^^^ Safi*anski identifies Nietzsche’s first usage of the term when *
he was a teenager, describing Byron’s “Manfied” as an "^Übermensch who commands the i
spirits”.^^*^ “/ teach you the Superman f a post-transfigurational Zarathustra announced:
“Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?”^^*
At the same time, however, Nietzsche specified that the Übermensch is dependent upon the
human herd, who comprise the very ‘power generators’ fi'om which the super-indiyiduals !
‘spike’, as long as society is not inhibited by metaphysical ‘surge protectors’: i
Great men, like great epochs are explosive materials in whom tremendous energy
has been accumulated; their prerequisite has always been, historically and j
physiologically, that a protracted assembling, accumulating, economizing and !
preserving has preceded them— that there has been no explosion for a long time. ;
282 [1883-1888]. See also WP 464 [1887-1888]. Salome argues that, in Nietzsche’s understanding, “‘victory’ equals self-destruction of mankind to make possible the creation of a superior mankind”. [19] ” * BG 135. See also Z 44: “What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; what can be loved in man is that he is a going-across and not a going-down.
GS 11. Brandes contends that Nietzsche’s vision was stiongly influenced by Renan’s Dialogues Philosophiques, [36] while Kaufinami highlights parallels with Aristotelian “greatness o f soul”. [Nietzsche
382-384] Kaufinann dates the word back to second century C.E. usage by Lucian, and lists occunences in Heimich Müller, J. G. Herder, Jean Paul, and Goethe. [Nietzsche 307-308] Another influential usage comes from Goethe’s Mephistopheles: “You prayed with might, with depth that has controlled me,/ And here I am!— What horror now can chase/ The colour from your lips, my supennan?” [Goethe 147]
Safianski 35. 29]Z41.
If the tension in the mass has grown too gieat the merest accidental stimulus suffices to call the ‘genius’, the ‘deed’, the great destiny, into the world?^^
Like the idealized nobleman, the Übermensch radiates cool indifference from a
glacial core of invulnerable superabundance after having defeated his strongest foes: “What is best about a great victory is that it liberates the victor fiom the fear of defeat. ‘Why not be defeated some time, too?’ he says to himself; ‘Now I am rich enough for
that.’”^^^ The Übermensch will remain impervious to opposing forces, whether external or
internal, and will thereby epitomize true fieedom.^^"^ Unlike the self-negation of
Christianity, the Übermensch's self-conquering will be merely a means to higher feats of
m a s t e r y . H e will implement new values and revaluations while simultaneously
292 rpj iQg The mechanics of Nietzsche’s master-slave dialectic appear far more insidious than that of Hegel, since proponents of Hegel— unlike Nietzsche— may argue that his dialectic is descriptive, not prescriptive. See Norman 50, Rice 367, Lynch 43, Nietzsche’s necessitation of slaveiy is fairly unequivocal, given his response to contemporary labour issues— “[I]f one needs slaves, one is a fool if one educates them to be masters.” [Tl 106]— and the treatment of women— “as if slavery were a counter-argument and hot rather a condition o f every higher culture, of eveiy enliancement of culture”. [BG 168] However, the eschatological actualization of Hegel’s thought- the extinction o f all particularity— may be far more deleterious in tlie long ran. As Houlgate notes, the Nietzschean slave at least preseives his particularity by never abandoning the desire to reassert power over the master, whether by value inversions or by other means. [Hegel 130-131]
GS 199. For the endorsement o f ‘stoic’ heroics, see also WP 490 [1887-1888].
294 is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome: five steps from tyramiy, near the tlireshold of the danger of servitude. This is trae psychologically when one understands by ‘tyrants’ pitiless and dreadful instincts, to combat which demands the maximum of authority and discipline towards oneself- finest type Julius Caesar [....]” Nietzsche’s vision of autonomy bears a strong resemblance to Hegel’s description of the ‘two modes of consciousness’: “The one is independent whose essential nature is to be for itself, the other is dependent whose essence is life or existence for another. The fomier is the Master, or Lord, the latter the Bondsman.” [Hegel I 182]
NR 233. I disagree with commentators like Kain who attempt to argue for a ‘kinder, gentler
Übermensch', who thereby becomes a paragon o f ‘self-repression, sublimation and self-overcoming’. [134] See also Kaufinann Nietzsche 309-310, Hollingdale Nietzsche 97-99, Golomb and Wistrich 8. Such theorizing hinges, in part, upon a false dichotomy between ‘private’ and ‘political’; hence, Hollingdale insists; “[T]he consequences following from the theoiy of will to power are, in fact, not social at all, [...] they are concerned with what takes place within a single ‘soul’.” [Nietzsche 95] It is evident even fiom the example Kain cites as “the best example of the Übennensch", King Vishvamitra, that such ‘internalized power’ is not confined to a mythical ‘private realm’ but achieves external expression in building “a new heaven, that is, a new religion, a new religion, new meaning and values.” [135] Nietzsche himself was aware of the subtle elision between public and private, as reflected in an 1876 statement: “Craelty is often a sign of troubled inner disposition that yearns for repose, as well as a certain crael relentlessness of thought [....]” [Safianski 157] He also recognized this in his genealogical analysis of how the self-imposed cruelty of the priests manifested itself in an overtly external ethical onslaught against master morality. Furthennore, Nietzsche may be accused of many things, but political quietism isn’t one of them- hence, his rhetorical attacks on Bismarck’s ‘grand politics’ and the rights of women. The Übermensch, like Zarathustra, is not destined to stay in his ‘cave’. Kain goes on to acknowledge that the carte blanche ‘poetic license’ which the
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inspiring them. Contrary to fascist appropriations of Nietzsche’s writings, one scholar
rightly emphasizes: “The epitome of Nietzschean strength and self-expression is thus not to be conceived as the crude, material manifestation of physical or political power, but
rather as an internalized, spiritualised (vergeistigt) fonn of aesthetic wholeness and
creativity.Moreover, this ultra-human could soar over the darkest abysses like a bird, tear through human values faster than a speeding bullet, boldly go into the vast realms of undiscovered human experience, resisting the black holes of nihilism, probing the nebulae of ‘evil’, and emerging victorious, cold and distant as a god, tom and bloodied as only a foreboding. [135] He writes, “The only kind of power Nietzsche is after, the sort of power the Übermensch
must have, is the power to create meaning— a new heaven, a new vision, new cultural values.” [Kain 143] It is one thing to extol the ‘creation of new values’, but whose meaning and for whom do they apply? Though Schacht argues that Nietzsche envisioned “an ordering transformation, which under different circumstances takes such different forms as subjugation, regulation, stiuctural articulation and fixation, and the functional integration and harmonization of constellations o f forces”, [228] this would be little consolation for those who were powerless to resist their ‘harmonization’. For a longer rebuttal of attempts to minimize the ‘domination o f others’ theme in Nietzsche, see Detwiler 157-162.
Houlgate Hegel 74. Houlgate later states: “Nietzsche’s celebration of heroic, cavalier, creative self-affiraiation is not mindless or bratish, but [,..] includes—and is deepened by— his appreciation of the value of more mild, other-regarding virtues such as gentleness, responsiveness, and magnanimity.” [ “Power” 132] I concur with Ansell-Pearson in dismissing J. P. Stem’s assertion that Hitler was the closest embodiment of Nietzsche’s anthropological ideal. [Ansell-Pearson 33] This does not, however, distance Nietzsche entirely fi'om the fascist politics which commandeered his thoughts. As Detwiler observes, “Nietzsche’s artistic vision carries with it a willingness to aestheticize politics in ways that suggest distinct affinities with fascism,” [113] See also Gemes 356: “While Nietzsche scholars may believe that his many positive accounts of mixtures, his continual disparagement o f German nationalism, and his many positive comments about Jews exonerate him fiom responsibility [...] I think those who take seriously Nietzsche’s dictum that a thing is the sum of its effects and understand how destructive the biologistic rhetoric of degeneration has been for Europe will find little solace here.” Though Nietzsche opposed a tyrannical nation-state, bmte force, and military coercion, his derision of Christian mediocrity, cultural lassitude, liberal