Nietzsche accepted that Socrates did affect the history greatly, which is the characteristic that Nietzsche valued. However, he blamed Socrates for the western society and culture that emphasised the Apollonion principle too much.
Socrates was thought to have gone too far in defending rationality. It is then what the western dreams of and pursues up until now through science and technology. This is the view that does not accept human limitation, that men are powerless and have no control but always places men on the top of everything.
In contrast, Nietzsche views that an overman must be able to accept these limitations and can face it in the eternal recurrence. Nietzsche must have felt that the western culture had put less and less significance on artistic creativity and passion that mental and spiritual power which create beauty in life have fewer and fewer places in the modern society.
Emotion is one of the attributes of Dionysus and is also one of the entities which Nietzsche defended. He views that emotion is natural. Its repression or suppression is psychologically disastrous. This also includes sexuality. He attacked Christianity for its traditional value that places bars on emotion and impulse and this is viewed by Nietzsche as self-denying. He disagrees on inhibiting and thwarting human own nature. Rather, an overman must accept his own nature and divert the energy of primitive impulses into a culturally, higher or socially more acceptable, activity.
This is exactly what should happen to a good artist on creating his work of art. To him, the Dionysian is not completely dark and evil as opposite to the Apollonion which is associated with light and reason. The Dionysian is rather viewed as natural, both good and bad just like any ordinary human being. It is in every human nature.
With a right balance with the Apollonion and with the right use, a burst of creativity is the result. However, it is usually the case that when the Apollonion principle mixes the Dionysian, it tends to suppress the Dionysian.
As a result, the Dionysian principle is expressed in a destructive way. Basically, an overman must be able to control this and divert the Dionysian power into something creative. To Nietzsche, Dionysian is profoundly irrational rather than negatively or stubbornly irrational.
In the present age where science and rationality are highly valued, I realise that it is hard to accept the negative side of being rational since it seems to be the most reliable tool in treating others, living together and judging. Without it, society can be chaotic and too much disordered for no control is imposed on the irrational ones who do not use the Dionysian principle in a productive way.
However, I agree with Nietzsche in the beauty of the product created out of Dionysian principle and feel that the right mix of Apollonion and Dionysian will make the world much nobler, not in the luxurious sense but aesthetic one. The world with no passion and emotion will be an unnatural one and this special property, among others, of human that differs from other animals will be lost. Nietzsche might or might not consider himself an overman but he surely determined to be a means or bridge who brings closer to reality an emergence of an overman.
In his view, men are not born equal. He always stresses on the difference of men and hence in contrast to Marx who includes everyone into his ideal society. For Nietzsche, there are only some capable and talented who qualifies to be an overman from his point of view. Therefore, he is usually perceived superficially as an elitist which might have brought down the value of his thinking. Detwiller , in his book Nietzsche and the Politics of Aristocratic Radicalism, argues that the word 'superman' allows us to tie the translation to others words use 'super' like 'superhuman' or 'superhistorical'.
As Nietzsche notes in the first speech, the prophet Zarathustra made to the people began: 'I teach you the overman. Man is something that should be overcome Uberwunden. What have you done to overcome him' Thus Spoke Zarathustra, , 3. The superman is precisely the one who knows that God is dead and that religion no longer control us. He knows that his kind needs no God for meaning that one can comfortably live in a meaningless universe because one organizes a portion of it for oneself.
The Gay Science, , Against the Hebrew ideal of a 'normal man' he placed the Greek ideal of Freigeisterei und Vielgeisterei the free spirited and many spirited mentality. In his view, the Greeks had men, but they had in addition a delightful menagerie of Ubermenschen, Untermeschen and Nebenmenschen overmen, undermen, and paramen.
The Greeks rejected the idea of equality or conformity. Nietzsche longed for the return of such a culture where we could once again afford 'the luxury of individuals'. According to Nietzsche, by stifling this individualism, monotheism was 'perhaps the greatest danger that has yet confronted humanity' Hoover, , In his book The Antichrist, he argues that with the modern collapse of Christian monotheism the way has been opened up for a reconsideration of superior men.
He noted, 'without Christian theism as a buttress the modern doctrine of equality appears to be a great impertinence' In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 'we used to be equal before God, but his God has Died, since God has become unbelievable belief in equality has become equally impossible for a rational person.
It is the time for us to reaffirm the order of ranks to intensify the 'pathos of distance' that creates the psychology of the superior man.
Indeed the free spirits of modernity find themselves challenged by a momentous new task. He knows that the church ruined European man by standing all valuations on their head, by casting suspicion on joy in beauty, by breaking the strong, by bending everything mainly into agony of conscience, by inverting love of the earth into hatred of the earth.
The church botched the enhancement of man when it had the golden opportunity to hammer him into something beautiful. Nietzsche imagines an Epicurean God viewing this great failure and despairing Hoover, , Nietzsche's thought represents a response against the Christian world and its hierarchies.
For him, nihilism is a central trend in the modern age as a consequence of the devaluation of values by Christianity. What is great in man, Zarathustra declared, is that he is a bridge and not and end Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman-a rope over an abyss.
And man shall be just that for the overman; a laughing stock or a painful embarrassment. Therefore do not spend any time or energy on man! Mankind is not our goal but the superman.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, , 4. Nietzsche harboured the strong conviction that man had some developmental potential. Nietzsche stated in Thus Spoke Zarathustra that 'Man is his present state, weighed down by his bad conscience, is truly a sick animal, but perhaps this condition is like pregnancy, a sickness heavy with the future possibilities, Man is such incomplete, transitional creature that it almost seems as if nature had some future plans for him, as if man were not an end but only a way, an episode a bridge, a great promise'.
Nietzsche's Zarathustra said that man is something that nature intended to be overcome. Zarathustra asked to the audience: what have you done to overcome him? Most people who first heard Zarathustra's question lived in a culture that eulogized equality, democracy and socialism, anarchism, or feminism; yet Nietzsche says these will not produce the superman but 'the last man' man at the end of his developmental tether. Indeed, Nietzsche considers liberal democracy and revolutionary socialism as symptoms of a weak will that demands equality.
The central goal is not equality but to breed perfect beings, 'free spirits'. The highest man would have the greatest multiplicity of drives, in the relatively greatest strength that can be endured. He will obviously frighten religious people, because religion always seeks the extirpation of the drives. The Gay Science, Who is this superior man? According to Nietzsche, he is not a blond beast, an Aryan racist monster who murders at will andjustifies it by some romantic primitivism, although the superman has no obligation to show pity to his inferiors Hoover, The land now belongs to men.
So Zarathustra wants to end the old world, dualistic metaphysics and morality that results. This new morality is precisely the Will to Power. Nietzsche fights against immorality in the name of immorality.
Thus, hollow, Nietzsche tells us that the death of God is not enough to lead the world in a new corporation, without the will to power, if it is animated by a weak will, morality can become nihilism.
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