The superman is an image introduced into philosophy by the famous thinker Friedrich Nietzsche. It was first used in his work "So Said Zarathustra." With his help, the scientist designated a creature that is capable of surpassing modern man in power, as once man himself surpassed the monkey. If you adhere to the Nietzsche hypothesis, the superman is a natural stage in the evolutionary development of the human species. He personifies vital affects of life.
Definition of a concept
Nietzsche was convinced that the superman is a radical egocentric who lives in the most extreme conditions, being a creator. His powerful will has a significant impact on the vector of historical development.
Nietzsche believed that such people are already appearing on the planet. Consonant to his theory, the superman is Julius Caesar, Cesare Borgia, and Napoleon.
In modern philosophy, a superman is one who physically and spiritually stands immeasurably higher than other people. The idea of such people can first be found in myths about demigods and heroes. According to Nietzsche, man himself is a bridge or path to the superman. In his philosophy, the superman is the one who managed to suppress the animal principle within himself and from now on lives in an atmosphere of absolute freedom. In this sense, saints, philosophers and artists can be attributed to them throughout history.
Views on Nietzsche's Philosophy
If we consider how other philosophers related to Nietzsche’s idea of a superman, it is worth recognizing that opinions were contradictory. There were various views on this image.
From a Christian religious point of view, the precursor of the superman is Jesus Christ. This position, in particular, was held by Vyacheslav Ivanov. From culturological police, this idea was characterized as "aesthetizing a strong-willed impulse", as Blumenkrantz expressed it.
In the Third Reich, the superman was considered the ideal of the Nordic Aryan race, a supporter of a racial interpretation of Nietzsche’s ideas.
This image was widely used in science fiction, where it correlates with telepaths or super-soldiers. Sometimes a hero combines all these abilities. Many such stories can be found in Japanese comics and anime. In the 40, 000 Warhammer universe, there is a special subspecies of people with psychic abilities called psykers. They can change the orbit of the planets, take control of the consciousness of other people, are capable of telepathy.
It is worth noting that, to one degree or another, all these interpretations contradict the ideas of Nietzsche himself, the semantic concept that he put into the image of the superman. In particular, the philosopher strongly denied his democratic, idealistic, and even humanitarian interpretation.
Nietzsche's concept
The doctrine of the superman has always interested many philosophers. For example, Berdyaev, who saw in this image the spiritual crown of creation. Andrei Bely believed that Nietzsche was able to fully reveal the virtues of theological symbolism.
The concept of superman is considered the fundamental philosophical concept of Nietzsche. In it, he combines all his highly moral ideas. He himself admitted that he did not invent this image, but borrowed Goethe from Faust, having invested his own meaning in it.
Theory of Natural Selection
In Nietzsche, the theory of the superman is closely connected with the theory of natural selection by Charles Darwin. The philosopher expresses it in principle, "the will to power." He believes that people is only a transitional part of evolution, and its final point - this is the superman.
His main distinguishing feature is that he has the will to power. A kind of impulse with which it becomes possible to control the world. Nietzsche divides the very will into 4 types, demonstrating that it is she who constructs the world. No development and movement without this is impossible.
Will
According to Nietzsche, the first kind of will is the will to live. It lies in the fact that every person has an instinct for self-preservation, this is the basis of our physiology.
Secondly, purposeful people have an internal will, the so-called core. It is he who helps to understand what the individual really wants from life. It is impossible to convince a person with an inner will, he will never become influenced by the opinions of others, with which he initially disagrees. An example of internal will is the Soviet commander Konstantin Rokossovsky, who was repeatedly beaten, tortured, but remained faithful to the oath and soldier’s duty. He was arrested during the repression of 1937-1938. His inner will so impressed everyone that he was returned to the army, during the Great Patriotic War he rose to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union.
The third type is unconscious will. These are affects, unconscious drives, passions, instincts that guide human actions. Nietzsche emphasized that people do not always remain rational beings, often subjected to irrational influence.
Finally, the fourth type is the will to power. It is manifested to a greater or lesser extent in all people, this desire to subjugate another. The philosopher argued that the will to power is not what we have, but what we really are. It is this will that is the most important. It forms the basis of the concept of superman. This idea is associated with a fundamental change in the inner world.
Moral issue
Nietzsche was convinced that morality was not inherent in the superman. In his opinion, this is a weakness that drags anyone only down. If you help everyone in need, then the individual spends himself, forgetting about the need to move forward himself. And the only truth in life is natural selection. Only by this principle should a superman live. Without the will to power, he will lose his power, power, strength, those qualities that distinguish him from an ordinary person.
The superman Nietzsche was endowed with his most beloved qualities. This is an absolute concentration of will, super-individualism, spiritual creativity. Without him, the philosopher did not see the development of society itself.
Examples of superhumans in the literature
In the literature, including domestic, you can find examples of how the superman manifests himself. In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, Rodion Raskolnikov shows himself as the bearer of just such an idea. His theory is to divide the world into "creatures trembling" and "right having." He decides to kill in many respects because he wants to prove to himself that he belongs to the second category. But, having killed, he cannot bear the moral suffering that has piled on him, he is forced to admit that he is not suitable for the role of Napoleon.
In another Dostoevsky’s novel, Demons, almost every hero considers himself a superhuman, trying to prove his right to kill.
A striking example of creating a superman in popular culture is Superman. This is a superhero whose image was inspired by the works of Nietzsche. In 1938, it was invented by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Schuster. Over time, he became an icon of American culture, is a hero of comics and films.
"So said Zarathustra"
The idea of the existence of a man and a superman was presented by Nietzsche in the book "As Zarathustra said." It tells about the fate and ideas of a wandering philosopher who decided to take the name of Zarathustra, having named himself after the ancient Persian prophet. It is through his actions and actions that Nietzsche expresses his thoughts.
The central idea of the novel is the conclusion that man is just a step on the path of turning a monkey into a superman. Moreover, the philosopher himself repeatedly emphasizes that humanity itself is to blame for the fact that it fell into decay, having actually exhausted itself. Only development and self-improvement can bring everyone closer to the realization of this idea. If people continue to succumb to momentary aspirations and desires, then with each generation they will slide more and more towards an ordinary animal.
Problem of choice
There is also the problem of the superman, connected with the necessity of choice, when it is necessary to solve the question of the superiority of one individual over another. Speaking of this, Nietzsche singles out a unique classification of spirituality, which includes a camel, a lion and a child.
If you follow this theory, then the super-superman must free himself from the shackles of the world that surrounds him. To do this, he needs to become clean, as a child happens at the very beginning of the journey. After this, a non-trivial concept of death is presented. She, according to the author, must obey the desires of man. He must own a monopoly on life, become immortal, comparable to God. Death must be subordinate to the goals of man, so that everyone has time to do everything that he planned in this life, so a person must learn to manage this process himself.
Death, according to Nietzsche, should turn into a special form of reward, which a person can receive only when he has lived with dignity his whole life, having completed everything that was destined for him. Therefore, in the future, a person must learn to die. Many researchers have noted that these ideas are similar to codes and concepts that Japanese samurai followed. They also believed that death must be earned, it is available only to those who fulfilled their destiny in life.
Nietzsche despised the modern man who surrounded him. He did not like that no one was ashamed to acknowledge himself a Christian. He interpreted the phrase about the need to love his neighbor in his own way. Noting that she means leaving her neighbor alone.
Another Nietzsche’s idea was related to the impossibility of establishing equality between people. The philosopher argued that initially one of us knows and knows more, while someone is less able and unable to perform even basic tasks. Therefore, the idea of absolute equality seemed absurd to him, namely, it was propagated by the Christian religion. This was one of the reasons why the philosopher so vehemently opposed Christianity.
The German thinker argued that it is necessary to distinguish two classes of people. The first - people with a strong will to power, the second - with a weak will to power, they are just an absolute majority. Christianity glorifies and erects on a pedestal the values inherent in the weak-willed, that is, those who by their very nature cannot become an ideologist of progress, a creator, and, therefore, fail to promote development, the process of evolution.
The superman must be completely freed not only from religion and morality, but also from any authority. Instead, each person must find and accept himself. In life, he gives a large number of examples when people were freed from moral shackles in order to search for themselves.
