Friedrich Wilhelm

Nietzsche
 Sound Familiar?
 “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

 “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

 “When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into
you.”
 Who is Friedrich Nietzsche?
 Born: October 15, 1844, Rocken, Germany.
 Died: 25 August 1900, Weimar, Germany.
 German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and Latin and Greek scholar.
 Became the lead professor for Classical Philology at the University of Bazel in Switzerland at
the early age of 24, during which he published his first books “The Birth of Tragedy” (1872)
and “Human, All Too Human” (1878).
 Is most known for his writings on good and evil, the end of religion in modern society, and the
concept of a “Super-man.”
 Became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers due to his unique set of beliefs.
 “God Is Dead”
 “God is Dead” (or “Gott ist tot” in German) is perhaps Nietzsche’s most
remembered and controversial statement. Until today it is known by most
philosophy students, even those who haven’t read the book (The Gay Science)
from which the line originated from.
 Nietzsche thought that this could be a good thing for some people, saying: …”at
hearing the news that ‘the old god is dead’, we philosophers and ‘free spirits’
feel illuminated by a new dawn.”
 He didn’t mean that there was a God who had actually died (Nietzsche was an
atheist), rather it was our idea of one that did. After the Enlightenment, the
idea of a universe that was governed by physical laws and not divine providence
was now reality.
 Nietzsche on Christianity
 Nietzsche resented Christianity for protecting people from their envy.
 He believes that Christianity emerged in the late Roman Empire, in the minds of
slaves who had “lacked the stomach to get a hold of what they really wanted,
and so had clung to a philosophy that made a virtue of their cowardice. He
called this “Sklavenmoral” which means “slave morality.”
 He states that even Christians wish to enjoy the taste of real fulfillment, such as
a high ranking position, intellectual mastery, sex, talents, etc. but they’d been
too inept to get them. Because of this, he claims that they instead fashioned a
hypocritical creed (Christianity) which denounces what they wanted, but were
too weak to fight for, while praising what they didn’t want, but happened to
already have.
 Nietzsche is a prophet of what he calls

“SELBSTUBERWINDUNG”
(self-overcoming)

…the process by which a great sole person would be called an

“UBERMENSCH”
(super-man)
 The “Ubermensch”
 The “Ubermensch”, or the “Superman”, is described as one who
rises above their circumstances and difficulties, to “embrace
whatever life throws at them”.
 Nietzsche wanted his life’s work to teach us, as he put it, “how to
become who we really are.”
 The “Superman”
 There are five characteristics that Nietzsche identifies as distinctive of “higher
men.”
 He claims that these five are the following:
1.) Solitary
2.) Pursues a “unifying project”
3.) Healthy
4.) Life-affirming
5.) Practices self-reverence
 The higher type is solitary.
 Nietzsche claims that “every choice human being strives instinctively for a
citadel and a secrecy where he is saved from the crowd, the many, the great
majority…”
 “A human being who strives for something great considers everyone he meets
on his way either as a means or as a delay obstacle – or as a temporary resting
place.”
 The great man approaches others instrumentally not only because of his
fundamental proclivity for solitude, but because of another distinguishing
characteristic: he is consumed by his work, his responsibilities, his projects.
 The higher type pursues a “unifying project.”
 Nietzsche says that “a great man displays a long logic in all of his activity…
he has the ability to extend his will across great stretches of his life and to
despise, and reject, everything petty about him.” This is also the trait that
Nietzsche sometimes refers to as having “style” in “character.”
 “My life is simply wonderful. For the task of a revaluation of all values
more capacities may have ever been needed than have ever dwelt together in
a single individual….I never even suspected what was growing in me – and
one day all my capacities, suddenly, ripe, leaped forth in their ultimate
perfection.
 The higher type is healthy.
 Nietzsche says that one essential attribute for the “well-turned-out”
person is that he “has a taste only for what is good for him ; his
pleasure, his delight cease where the measure of what is good for
him is transgressed.
 “Health” although for Nietzsche, is a term of art, meaning not the
absence of sickness, but something closer to resilience.
 The higher type affirms life.
 Nietzsche claims that the higher type embraces the doctrine of the
eternal recurrence and this evinces what he often calls a “Dionysian”
or “life-affirming” attitude. A person, for Nietzsche, has a Dionysian
attitude toward life insofar as he affirms his life unconditionally; in
particular, insofar as he affirms it including the “suffering” or other
hardships it has involved.”
 The higher type has self-reverence.
 Nietzsche states that “the higher nature of the great man, lies in
being different, in incommunicability, in distance of rank, not in any
effect of any kind – even if he made the whole globe tremble.”
 “The higher type, honors himself as one who is powerful, also as
one who has power over himself, who knows how to speak and be
silent, who delights in being severe and hard with himself and
respects all severity and hardness.”