Many people interpret Nietzsche’s death of God as a sort of “bad boy” metaphysics. That is, they see this as a critique of religion, Christian morality, etc. Yet this comes from a very strong misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s central character, Zarathustra. In this short essay, I would like to delineate two things: Nietzsche’s idea of the overman (some translate Uebermensch as “superman”) and how this idea is a reflexion of Christian thinking. To phrase this another way, Nietzsche relates himself to Jesus as Christ relates to the Church.
The Overman
From the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche shows how Zarathustra is constantly misunderstood and, in a related note, how Zarathustra misunderstands what the overman truly is. The overman is one who overcomes man; yet the best definition of the overman comes in the second book in the section titled “On Redemption.” In this section, Zarathustra defines redemption as “to redeem those who lived in the past and to recreate all ‘it was’ into a ‘thus I willed it.’” Not only that, but also to recreate it into a “thus I shall will it.” All the “good” and all the “bad.”
For Nietzsche, the mark of the overman is being able to look backwards into history (we’ll take a very extreme example, Auschwitz) and affirm it as good. We have examples of people who suffered through Auschwitz, such as Elie Wiesel. Throughout it, even as he says he saw God hanging in the gallows at the camp, he is still able to affirm life in the end. He is still able to esteem something. Can we affirm something so terribly horrible?
For Nietzsche, this derives from his view of mercy. In The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche defines mercy as the self-overcoming of justice, a definition directly related to the overman (the self-overcoming of man). The overman is able to show mercy to even the greatest wrongs against him because he has reached a place that is beyond the reactive nature of human morality.
Rethinking Christianity
Where do these ideas relate to Christianity? A prime example is the cross. Christians do not see the cross as an evil against Jesus, nor do they see the resurrection as revenge to correct the wrong. Instead, Christianity, in many ways, depicts the cross in terms of redemption. The cross is what redeems man and is not an action of vengeance. The redemption of the cross is one that redeems all past and all future. It affirms the Christian’s life as a “thus I will it.” Creation, for Nietzsche, involves both an annihilation of old laws and a creation of new values. These values are the innocence of childhood; that is the highest value in Nietzsche’s conception of the overman. It is the removal of guilt in one’s everyday living, but also an affirmation of all that has come to past. Can we affirm Auschwitz?
Christians do not see the cross as an evil against Jesus, nor do they see the resurrection as revenge to correct the wrong. Instead, Christianity, in many ways, depicts the cross in terms of redemption. The cross is what redeems man and is not an action of vengeance.
I think that because this is true, the Christian is able to become more like the overman, in that he resigns himself from vengeance. We realize that if anyone is to be vengeful, it is God - for he bore the physical and spiritual cross while none of us endured what Jesus did. In other words, we really have no right to seek vengeance on our own. Rather, it is wisdom to cede vengeance to God.
I confess to understanding little about Nietzsche so I read a bit (from the internet–where else?). What I read seemed to say that Nietzsche thought of man as a transitional being between apes and superman/overman. It sounds to me like he expects that when mankind eventually evolves to being supermen/overmen, then he will have no need for vengeance, guilt, or redemption.
This reminds me of conversations in high school (about 100 years ago) of “is man basically good?” and “are people getting better?”
I hate to sound so totally ignorant here, but my impression is that Nietzsche has nothing to do with classical Christianity–at least nothing positive. Yes, he was an influential philosopher, but in no way can be described as a believer. So we study him to know how other people think, but as believers, he doesn’t really offer us anything useful. Correct?
I am not up on my Nietzsche at the moment (Next term) but it seems even from what you wrote here that there are huge differences in what the uebermensch and Christian can do to the history of the cross. The uebermensch by power of his will changes his view of history into something that he wants it to be, while the Christian looks at the work of God in history to see what really occurred.
Also, it’s been a while since I read “The Use and Abuse of History” (so I may be wrong here) but doesn’t Nietzsche have a instrumental view of history? Wouldn’t such a view run into problems with Christianity since it cannot really take historical acts seriously, and therefore even if both can see god in a bad act the similarities would end there?
Sorry, god=good. My laptop likes to remove double letters on me.
Colin, what you are saying is also against Nietzsche’s conception of justice. Any kind of future “revenge” is bad because it is still stuck in the cycle of vengeance. Mercy means overcoming even that outlook.
Thainamu, the overman is not some kind of evolutionary step. W?hen we think of evolution, we think of the stronger living and the weak dying. Yet Nietzsche makes it clear that the strong (noble-minded) have to be protected against the weak (common-minded) because the weak’s usage of revenge in the form of ressentiment is so powerful. Nietzsche’s critique of morality isn’t that man is inherently good (quite the opposite!) but that man should strive to overcome his own shortcomings. In many ways, though, this lack-of-goodness comes from morality and resonates with Paul (”I was condemned under the Law”). Nietzsche’s answer, unlike Paul’s, is that we should abolish these arbitrary rules via the three transformations.
The transformations are that of the camel (the beast of burden enslaved to obedience), the lion (the master of his own desert who says No to the law), and the finally the child (the innocent one who says the sacred Yes and creates new values). Many people think of Nietzsche as promoting the lion of these three, but he’s really about the innocence which is only found in the child. Guilt, a term (in German) based on the economics of debt, is a complete missing the point in life.
Now, I do not know if we could consider Nietzsche a “believer” (PKs are always the worst), but his critiques of morality and humanity but him eerily close to the same things Jesus said/did.
Bryan, you are almost correct except that Nietzsche doesn’t think the overman rewrites history. The overman is able to not only accept it for what it is but also realize the “good” in it (and I hate to make him sound like the “Your best life now” preachers). From Twilight of the Idols: “The tragic artist is no pessimist: he is precisely the one who says Yes to everything questionable, even to the terrible–he is Dionysian” (I should not that his usage of Dionysian here is different from when he used it in Birth of Tragedy. Here, it is synonymous with the overman, while back in Birth of Tragedy it only correlated to one strand of the tragic artist).
I’m not sure about the instrumental view of history. I haven’t heard of that before. Care to elaborate further on it?
Colin, what you are saying is also against Nietzsche’s conception of justice. Any kind of future “revenge” is bad because it is still stuck in the cycle of vengeance. Mercy means overcoming even that outlook.
I see, so even the concept of revenge is eradicated. I’m curious then, for Nietzsche, does the idea of punishment in justice totally disappear is it merely a question of motive: vengeance vs. justice.
Even “justice” and “punishment” are viewed badly. In Zarathustra, Nietzsche writes that “‘punishment’ is what revenge calls itself” and “with a hypocritical lie it creates a good conscience for itself.”
Justice is only worth affirming if it declares that men are not equal (in contradistinction to the will to equality in the mob).