section_path: Philosophy/Übermensch
section_name: Übermensch
paragraph_text: Übermensch
  
  Another concept important to understanding Nietzsche is the Übermensch (Superman). Writing about nihilism in Also Sprach Zarathustra, Nietzsche introduced an Übermensch. According to Laurence Lampert, "the death of God must be followed by a long twilight of piety and nihilism (II. 19; III. 8). Zarathustra's gift of the overman is given to mankind not aware of the problem to which the overman is the solution." Zarathustra presents the Übermensch as the creator of new values, and he appears as a solution to the problem of the death of God and nihilism. The Übermensch does not follow the morality of common people since that favours mediocrity but rises above the notion of good and evil and above the " herd ". In this way Zarathustra proclaims his ultimate goal as the journey towards the state of the Übermensch. He wants a kind of spiritual evolution of self-awareness and overcoming of traditional views on morality and justice that stem from the superstitious beliefs still deeply rooted or related to the notion of God and Christianity.
  
  From Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Zarathustra's Prologue; pp. 9–11):
  
  I teach you the Übermensch. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves: and you want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just the same shall man be to the Übermensch: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any ape. Even the wisest among you is only a conflict and hybrid of plant and ghost. But do I bid you become ghosts or plants? Behold, I teach you the Übermensch! The Übermensch is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Übermensch shall be the meaning of the earth... Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Übermensch—a rope over an abyss... What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a going under.
  
  Zarathustra contrasts the Übermensch with the last man of egalitarian modernity (the most obvious example being democracy), an alternative goal humanity might set for itself. The last man is possible only by mankind's having bred an apathetic creature who has no great passion or commitment, who is unable to dream, who merely earns his living and keeps warm. This concept appears only in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and is presented as a condition that would render the creation of the Übermensch impossible.
  
  Some have suggested that the eternal return is related to the Übermensch, since willing the eternal return of the same is a necessary step if the Übermensch is to create new values untainted by the spirit of gravity or asceticism. Values involve a rank-ordering of things, and so are inseparable from approval and disapproval, yet it was dissatisfaction that prompted men to seek refuge in other-worldliness and embrace other-worldly values. It could seem that the Übermensch, in being devoted to any values at all, would necessarily fail to create values that did not share some bit of asceticism. Willing the eternal recurrence is presented as accepting the existence of the low while still recognising it as the low, and thus as overcoming the spirit of gravity or asceticism. One must have the strength of the Übermensch to will the eternal recurrence. Only the Übermensch will have the strength to fully accept all of his past life, including his failures and misdeeds, and to truly will their eternal return. This action nearly kills Zarathustra, for example, and most human beings cannot avoid other-worldliness because they really are sick, not because of any choice they made.
  
  The Nazis attempted to incorporate the concept into their ideology by means of taking Nietzsche's figurative form of speech and creating a literal superiority over other ethnicities. After his death, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche became the curator and editor of her brother's manuscripts. She reworked Nietzsche's unpublished writings to fit her own German nationalist ideology while often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche's work became associated with fascism and Nazism; 20th-century scholars contested this interpretation of his work and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available.
  
  Although Nietzsche has been misrepresented as a predecessor to Nazism, he criticised antisemitism, pan-Germanism and, to a lesser extent, nationalism. Thus, he broke with his editor in 1886 because of his opposition to his editor's antisemitic stances, and his rupture with Richard Wagner, expressed in The Case of Wagner and Nietzsche contra Wagner, both of which he wrote in 1888, had much to do with Wagner's endorsement of pan-Germanism and antisemitism—and also of his rallying to Christianity. In a 29 March 1887 letter to Theodor Fritsch, Nietzsche mocked antisemites, Fritsch, Eugen Dühring, Wagner, Ebrard, Wahrmund, and the leading advocate of pan-Germanism, Paul de Lagarde, who would become, along with Wagner and Houston Chamberlain, the main official influences of Nazism. This 1887 letter to Fritsch ended by: "And finally, how do you think I feel when the name Zarathustra is mouthed by anti-Semites?" In contrast to these examples, Nietzsche's close friend Franz Overbeck recalled in his memoirs, "When he speaks frankly, the opinions he expresses about Jews go, in their severity, beyond any anti-Semitism. The foundation of his anti-Christianity is essentially anti-Semitic."