“I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?” — Zarathustra in the marketplace. The crowd laughs and asks instead for the Last Man, who has invented happiness, blinks, and wants only comfort.
The Übermensch is the answer to Nihilism: not a biological race, not a tyrant, but a goal — one who can bear the Eternal Recurrence and say yes to it.
Sententiae
phrases in the originalÜbermensch
Origin. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883). — Friedrich Nietzsche
⚠ Not a biological master race — a self-overcoming ideal. Shaw’s “Man and Superman” made “superman” the English word.
For self-overcoming and creating values.
Explore Next
related by shared connectionsBeyond Good and Evil
Nietzsche’s “prelude to a philosophy of the future” — an attack on the prejudices of philosophers, from Plato to Kant, and a sketch of the free spirit.
On the Genealogy of Morality
Nietzsche’s three essays tracing “good and evil”, guilt, and the ascetic ideal back to their hidden, all-too-human origins.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Nietzsche’s prophetic prose-poem — Zarathustra descends from his mountain to teach the Übermensch, the will to power and eternal recurrence.
Will to Power
Nietzsche’s idea that the basic drive of all life is not survival but growth, mastery, self-overcoming.
The Death of God
Nietzsche’s announcement that belief in God has become unbelievable — and that with Him the foundations of Western morality have gone.
Eternal Recurrence
Nietzsche’s thought-experiment — would you will to live your life again, every moment, infinitely? The supreme test of affirming life.