Nietzsche’s Superman: Metamorphosis, Will to Power, and the Übermensch
Nietzsche’s Path to the Superman
Transit from Passive Nihilism to Superman. Nietzsche explains the transition from passive nihilism to the superman through the triple metamorphosis:
- The camel (cannot say no) represents the Christian, the humble sheep who sacrifices his life by repressing instincts and embodies passive nihilism. This must be overcome.
- The lion (only knows how to say no), kills God, critiques, and destroys the foundations of the West. It announces the death of God and symbolizes active nihilism. The lion, formerly the camel, seeks freedom but cannot create new values. It knows it wants to be free but doesn’t know what it wants to be free for. It hates and wants to devour the camel.
- The child, who is the Superman, emerges when the lion laughs, becomes an artist, or the superman. Once God is dead, we become gods and create worlds in our image. The child is free, not fighting anything, but enjoying existence. It creates with innocence, takes life as a game, and is delivered to chance and fate. It has no guilt, expects nothing from the future, lives to play, and is free because it only wants to play.
Life and Vitality
4. Life and vitality. Life as will to power: up = strong = health = pleasure = victory. Down = weak = disease = displeasure and repose, yawn. To distinguish between a strong and weak will, we focus on the spirit of achievement: life that acts reactively (defensively) is exhausted, wants peace, rest, denies itself, and degenerates. A stronger will says yes and bases life on passion. Relationship with pain: life in decline relieves pain by denying life, avoiding suffering at the cost of no benefit. In dealing with instincts: instincts can destroy or strengthen a human being. Life assumes risk to assert itself through instinct. For Nietzsche, life becomes the criterion for evaluating human actions. The meaning of life is not transcendent, but in life itself, in the here and now, and recreated at every moment.
Update on Contradiction
UPDATE. After studying Nietzsche, I believe the most meaningful concept in his philosophy is contradiction. Life itself, and each person’s perspective, is based on contradictions. According to SAR, contradiction is defined as “affirmation and denial that oppose and destroy each other.” Nietzsche knows they are not destroyed and that life is pure contradiction. This is important because humans with a strong will to power should be guided by instinct, unconsciously contradicting reason. This is due to evolution; when an action is repeated, we don’t feel the same because parameters are always changing.
The Will to Power
5. Will to Power The will to power is the vital energy (mysterious inner strength) or passion that drives us to assert ourselves. It is power, spirit, momentum. Not wanting to acquire power, but power over oneself. The Will to Power seeks to affirm life, elevate, enhance passion, and seek risk to increase self-confidence. Characteristics of the will to power:
- Unconscious. Momentum is linked to the body that impels us to act assertively.
- Pre-reason. Reason and thought are symptoms of the will to power; our body is our will to power.
- Peculiar. The will to power is always changing (idiosyncratic) and shifts with age, diet, climate, etc.
- Requires resistance. It is always unsatisfied. Its passion for self-affirmation forces it to overcome opposition, to be stronger, because it seeks not balance or peace, but to increase its power.
- Needs pain. Pain is the best teacher and motivator. His vision of man is tragic. The Will to Power does not seek spiritual peace, calm, but conflicts and change. Thus, Nietzsche moves away from stoicism (ataraxia, indifference) and Schopenhauer.
- Lacking external purpose. It is for itself, seeking neither happiness nor pleasure.
- Creative. Imposing our vision of the world is a gift to life, recreating instincts, not fearing life, and accepting it.
- Free. Doing what the body asks. My freedom ends where my will to power ends. Active love for ourselves.
- Diverse. The will to power is variable in every individual and every moment.
The Übermensch
6. The Übermensch (Superman) is synonymous with the child, an artist who appears at the end of the triple metamorphosis. It is also seen as superhuman, going beyond what Westerners call human. Nietzsche sees it as a project, the creator of values, with common characteristics. The Superman is powerful because it is self-created, a perspectival artist of life. It walks without a destination, without a goal, without respite, without demands, without fear of the random, and organizes the chaos within and without. Proud, fickle, cold to suffering, it is not good but hard (cruel) to live every moment of its will to power with all its contradictions. It can be a beast that kills or bestows virtue. This individual seeks personal liberation, the recovery of a sense of power, free from Western values of reason and conscience, guided by the body’s desire.