How to Understand and Become Ubermensch?
The Übermensch’ is deemed one of the most fascinating ideas of the 19th century’s German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (also a cultural critic, prose poet, essayist, and composer whose writings are mostly about truth, morality, language, aesthetics, cultural theory, history, nihilism etc.). The Übermensch that is also a German word and has also been translated as “overman,” “super/superior man,” “superhuman,” in English, can be best understood as a higher state of existence seeking to surpass the feeble tendencies of the human (biological) condition. Although the idea is not as confusing and enigmatic, but still some scholars are of the view that there is no consensus regarding the exact nature of the figure of the übermensch in Nietzsche’s philosophy. According to them even Nietzsche himself never actually fully describes what the Übermensch — the Overman or the Superman — is like. Or we can say that it is also always impossible for the audience to fully comprehend any philosophical idea as every idea (great or not so great) can be interpreted, explained or understood in so many different ways and with so many angles that it is impossible to narrow it to fit in a single, simple, absolute or concrete definition. Moreover, as some critics argue, the complexity of Nietzsche’s perspective has inspired hundreds of texts and could not be covered adequately by any single project. He was even content to contradict himself in his writings and to hold multiple positions at once.
However, in spite of that scholars continue to make efforts to get a grip. Thus Ubermensch is also viewed and explained from different angles and some scholars who find Nietzsche’ complex views about the metaphysics of the self very similar to Buddhism, have proposed that the Ubermensch can be equated with Buddha. According to them, there may be similarities that can be seen when comparing the thoughts and teachings of Nietzsche with the philosophies of Buddhism.
But then some critics differ with this view of Ubermensch being like Buddha. In their view, although Ubermensch affirms all of her suffering and transforms it into Joy and Buddha also affirms all suffering, but there is a fundamental difference in both the concepts as Buddhist suffering means “Dukkha” that is not the same as English suffering, it is more akin to the Greek Pathos, and enduring might be a better translation than suffering. Thus according to Buddha, as suffering is universal we have to endure it. In other words when we accept it as an unavoidable character of existence, suffering becomes bearable. Moreover, it is also opined that “Nietzsche may have erroneous views on Buddhism, which could have been improved had Nietzsche been exposed to the level of scholarship on Buddhism as available today. And, surely had Nietzsche truly understood Buddhism , he wouldn’t have ended up in a mental asylum where he is believed to have spent the last 11 years of his life in total mental darkness, first in a Basel asylum, then in Naumburg under his mother’s care and, after her death in 1897, in Weimar in his sister’s care.
Thus Buddha chose a different path in the face of the apparent absurdity of world or meaninglessness by proposing that it is the desire that causes suffering and thus in order to lessen suffering, one must control desire. While Nietzsche believed in Dionysian ideal of joy and exuberance. For Nietzsche, the Dionysian was associated with music and dance, those forms of human expression beyond language or reason that possess the power to obliterate a person’s sense of self.
Another point is that Buddha was living in an ancient Indian society of 5th century BCE when the failure of orthodox Hinduism (with deep rooted and oppressive caste system) to address the needs of the people had paved the way for a significant religious and philosophical reforms. Thus rejecting the Hindu gods and giving people of lower classes more freedom by projecting the concept of individual salvation required a new concept of suffering. On the contrary, Nietzsche was the product of an age where science was emerging as a powerful ideology and scientific explanations had replaced religious ones — and with that faith in science growing stronger, faith in God started to decline (leading to the death of God because God was no longer needed as modern/Baconian Science seemed to solve all the problems of the outer world but without solving the questions of existence and meaning pertaining to the inner world). Nevertheless, as science too was not proving to be an ultimate truth, Nietzsche’s attitude toward science is also believed to be ambivalent: he remarks approvingly on its rigorous methodology and adventurous spirit, but also points out its limitations and rebukes scientists for encroaching onto philosophers’ territory. Thus there was a need for, as one dictionary definition tells us, ideal superior man of the future who could rise above conventional Christian morality to create and impose his own values, originally described by Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883–5).
In this context Napoleon Bonaparte too is considered the best example of Ubermensch by some experts on Nietzsche, as according to them, he had clearly rejected conventional or christian morality (that was causing the fear of suffering), lived according to his own rules, and whose actions continue to affect the fate of Europe even today. As the effect of the Übermensch on society should be felt for generations; in the mountain range of humanity, according to Nietzsche, such individuals stand out like mountain peaks.
Moreover, some scholars reveal that the term Übermensch (ironically) was also adopted by Hitler and the Nazi regime to describe their racist ideal of an Aryan master race. The Nazis also took it as justification for the domination, enslavement and extermination of “non-Aryans” (especially Jews) who were deemed to be members of an inferior race of subhumans (Untermenschen, or “under-men”).
Another point of view challenges the uniqueness of the the term Übermensch, often translated as Superman or Overman, by claiming that it was not just Nietzsche’s unique concept. According to a proponent of this claim “concept of hyperanthropos can also be found in the ancient writings of Lucian. In German, the word had already been used by Müller, Herder, Novalis, Heine, and most importantly by Goethe in relation to Faust (in Faust, Part I, line 490). In America Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of the Oversoul, and, perhaps with the exception of Goethe’s Faust, his aristocratic, self-reliant ‘Beyond-man’ was probably the greatest contributor to Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch. Nietzsche was, however, well familiar with all the above sources.”
Although Nietzsche responded to the rise of science (that paved way for the rise of new atheism) by famously writing that God is Dead, not a celebratory but a tragic statement. However, he believed that men could do without religion and create new values, rising up to the figure of the Übermensch. Thus, man becomes God. However, Dostoevsky paints a negative picture of this idea of Ubermensch. In his novels “Crime and Punishment” and “Brother Karamazov”, he condemns the two characters who are the epitome of the idea of “superman.” Svidrigalov in Crime and Punishment and Fyodor Kramazov in Brother Karamazove were proponents of the “superman” idea. Sridrigalov’s sole objective was to satisfy his sensual desires by hook or by crook. Fyodor Karamazov also indulged in many immoral activities like Sridrigalov.His life consisted of drinking, debauchery, and mistreatment of his wives. Dostoevsky uses these characters to display the destruction that results from a single man (like Harry S. Truman who decided to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki justifying that weapons are being used with the goal to end the war), believing that he is higher than another morally free to do anything even if it results in the death of an innocent person(s).
Moreover, Dostoevsky saw the new atheist movement as incredibly dangerous; it laid the seeds for the character of Raskolnikov, with his own superman beliefs presented in his wonderful, thrilling and enthralling book: Crime and Punishment, which remains the single most widely known Russian novel as well as one of the greatest works in world literature.
For Dostoevsky, ultimately god is above man, and man can never be god. For “if there is no God, everything is permitted.” And to live without hope is to cease to live.
Regardless, there are also those who try to explain the idea of Ubermensch from Nietzsche’s own point of view. They propose that Ubermensch is like Dionysus. Nietzsche is believed to have showed Dionysus to be an uplifting alternative to the salvation offered by Christianity, which demands that man renounce life on earth altogether and focus only on heaven. Thus in order to achieve salvation through Dionysus, one must immerse oneself in life now to escape suffering. In other words the highest state attainable by a man can be achieved when life is conceived in terms of the realization of the Dionysian ideal of the overman. Dionysus, according to some exponents, is an eastern deity whose cult spread from the East, and his cult was firmly connected with these eastern origins. Nietzsche’s philosophy presents Dionysus as a god who brings divine madness and ecstatic unity. Dionysus is a god of revelry, ecstasy, joie de vivre, inspiration and instinct. Yet, the Dionysus that Euripide’s Bacchae (an ancient Greek tragedy, written by the Athenian playwright Euripides) poignantly depicts, also represents cruelty, savageness, violence,madness and suffering. It is experienced as a direct and powerful influx of energy without the benefit of any filtering mechanism to separate the blissful and restrain the brutal. Thus as Dionysus is deeply emotional as well as irrational, he needs a balancing force and here enters the Apollo the symbol of calm and reason. The Apollonian and the Dionysian represent two fundamental but opposing perceptions of the world, which we will call art-worlds or we may also call it the art of life. According to Peter Sloterdijk, the Dionysian and the Apollonian form a dialectic; they are contrasting. In his first book The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche examines art, particularly ancient Greek plays. While he didn’t write the last word on the subject, he did use the book to introduce a concept that continued to appear in his writings long after he dismissed his early work as “badly written, ponderous, embarrassing, image-mad and image-confused.”
Thus Artistic creation depends on a tension between two opposing forces, which Nietzsche terms the “Apollonian” and the “Dionysian.” Apollo is the Greek god of light and reason, and Nietzsche identifies the Apollonian as a life- and form-giving force, characterized by measured restraint and detachment, which reinforces a strong sense of self. Dionysus is the Greek god of wine and music, and Nietzsche identifies the Dionysian as a frenzy of self-forgetting in which the self gives way to a primal unity where individuals are at one with others and with nature. Both the Apollonian and the Dionysian are necessary in the creation of art.
Thus man/mankind is a tight rope and the person walking the tight rope is also mankind. More precisely he is of the view that “Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman — a rope over an abyss.
A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING.”
Thus Übermensch is a result of man surpassing himself. And Nietzsche’s ideas about Power and Life, among six values that play indisputably important roles in Nietzsche’s sense of what matters, also support this view. According to literary sources, after the Second World War, Walter Kaufmann ([1950] 1974: 178–333) engaged in a long-term campaign to recuperate Nietzsche’s thought from some unsavory lines of interpretations, largely by insisting on how often the forms of power emphasized by Nietzsche involve internally directed self-control and the development of cultural excellence, and not the domination of others like Napoleon or Harry S. Truman.
In view of the above, most would agree that Umbermensch is in a sense “overman” who strives for self-overcoming. Thus the whole idea of the Ubermensch, IMHO, can be explained in the context of a parable about two wolves fighting inside a man:
“A grandfather is talking with his grandson.
The grandfather says, “In life, there are two wolves inside of us which are always at battle.
One is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery, and love, and contentment etc.
The other is a bad wolf which represents things like greed, hatred, fear, jealousy, and anger etc”.
The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?”
The grandfather replies, “The one you feed.”
So we can say that Ubermensch is a man who feeds the wolf representing positive values like, love, bravery, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, kindness etc.
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References:
i) https://philosophybreak.com/articles/ubermensch-explained-the-meaning-of-nietzsches-superman/
ii) https://philosophynow.org/issues/93/Nietzsches_Ubermensch_A_Hero_of_Our_Time
iv) https://artemalexandra.com/2021/06/21/nietzsche-with-buddha/
v) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Friedrich-Nietzsche/Decade-of-isolation-and-creativity-1879-89
vi) https://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu:169205/datastream/PDF/view
vii) https://www.fau.edu/athenenoctua/pdfs/Lori%20Dilican.pdf
vii) https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/384722-man-is-a-rope-stretched-between-the-animal-and-the
