NIETZSCHE'S ÜBERMENSCH NOT A TITAN

Excerpted from N. F. Gier, Spiritual Titanism: Indian, Chinese, and Western Perspectives (SUNY Press, 2000), end of Introduction

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If one looks for Titanism in the West, one might be tempted to say that Nietzsche's Übermensch is the highest embodiment of extreme humanism.  I believe that this view is mistaken.  Nietzsche's Titan is symbolized as a lion, the second of the Three Metamorphoses of Thus Spake Zarathustra.  The lion, Titan-like, battles the dragon called "Thou Shalt," who rules over the cam­el, the first metamorphosis.  The lion takes every "It was" or "it happened to me" and transforms it into a "Thus I willed it and shall will it for eternity." Even tho­ugh necessary and liberating, the lion's work is ultimately negative and destruc­tive. (The lion is called "thief" as well as "predator" and this might provide a link to Prometheus stealing fire to create a new humanity.)  The lion opens up unlimited freedom and is thus effective in destroying old values; but because of his nihilism he is incapable of creating new values.  The Promethean "No" of the lion must be replaced by the sacred "Yes" of the child, the third metamorphosis, which I believe is Nietzsche's answer to Titanism.  "The child," as Nietzsche says, "is in­nocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game [of creation], a self-pro­pelled wheel, a first move­ment, a sacred Yes."⁴⁵ 

The Titan is a false Übermensch, the superman of popular, but distorted Nietz­schean interpretation.  The true Übermensch knows "the meaning of the earth . . . I beseech you, my broth­ers," says Zarathustra, "remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of other worldly hopes."  In former times the greatest sin was "against God," but "to sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing."⁴⁶  The Übergang of the Übermensch is also an Untergang; and she overcomes herself so that she is "over" herself, not the world or other people.  (Actually the play of Übergang and Untergang works out much better in a Daoist context, where the sage's overcoming always appears as underachieving and self-effacing.) Many of the metaphors of the Übermensch are horizontal and immanent, rather than vertical and transcendent--e.g., "Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman--a rope over an abyss."⁴⁷ Übermenschen never transcend their animal natures, because, as Graham Parkes observes: "It is impossible to go over unless the rope is held in tension; and if one casts off behind and loses the connection back to one's animal past there will be nothing to prevent a plunge into the abyss."⁴⁸ Übermenschen appear to be true ecological beings: in their Untergang humankind will "prepare earth, animal, and plant for [them]."⁴⁹  The Overman is a person of the elements: he is the Asense of the earth@ and also Aa sea@ so clean that he will redeem a polluted humanity.⁵⁰

Parkes proposes that we conceive of the Three Metamorphoses as a dialectical triad of "immersion, detachment, and reintegration."⁵¹A person of the first stage is immersed in society and nature without any clear delineation of self and other.  People at this stage typically take on the values that are given them, hence Nietzsche's image of a camel carrying the burdens of a herd morality.  Persons in the second stage develop fully self-conscious egos and separate themselves from society/nature either through active protest and rebellion or ascetic withdrawal.  This is the point at which spiritual Titanism is possible, and this book will analyze theoretical instances of its actualization in Indian thought, particularly Jainism and Sankya-Yoga.  A desert father known as Abba Joseph, who once exhorted a fellow monk Ato become entirely as fire,@⁵² offers a parallel to Indian yogis who claim to become one with the elements, not society, and appropriate the power of the universe. 

We shall, however, find just as many examples of the third stage of reintegration, which Parkes describes as a "return to participation, but now reflective and self-conscious.  The self reengages with the world without being totally taken in by it."⁵³ The third stage is symbolized in Zen Buddhism in the ninth and tenth Ox-Herding pictures and in Zhuangzi's sage whose "body and vitality are without flaw" and who returns "to become a Helper of Heaven."⁵⁴  Parkes' insight reminds us that we are obviously dealing with metaphors in the Three Metamorphoses and that the reinegrated person will be like a child in her spontaneity, her acceptance of things, and her love of body and the earth.  Unlike the literal child, the overperson will have refined raw instincts into a harmonized life of impulse and reflection.  This reintegration will not be limited to human beings, but will encompass all of nature: Awe [will] begin to naturalize humanity in terms of a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature.@⁵⁵  Nietzsche=s child is like the spiritual pilgrim of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, who returns to the Garden and truly knows it for the first time.  Reinterpreting Wordsworth somewhat, Nietzsche=s child will be AFather to the Man,@ a new humanity beyond the camel and the lion.

Bernd Magnus distinguishes between "lumpers" and "splitters" among Nietzsche scholars, and I side with the lumpers in most of my interpretations.  Magnus' distinction is not based on an analytic versus a continental approach or the philosophical versus the literary; rather, it is based on whether one gives any credence to Nietzsche's Nachlaß, specifically that material published as The Will to Power.  Following the lead of other scholars, my comparison between Daoism and Nietzsche draws on The Will to Power.  Most of my other points, however, come from Thus Spake Zarathustra, the book that Nietzsche thought was his best.   In the lumpers' defense one could say that historical philosophy would be a rather impoverished resource if we could not consult unpublished works.  There would be, for example, no Aristotle at all and a very minimal Wittgenstein, certainly not the Acontinental@ Wittgenstein, which Magnus appears to reject but which some of us have found in his Nachlaß.

According to Magnus, the lumpers generally conclude that Nietzsche held specific philosophical positions: viz., a perspectivist epistemology, a will-to-power ontology, an eternal recurrence cosmology (here is where I "split" with the lumpers), and the Übermensch as a human ideal.  On the other hand, the splitters see Nietzsche as the most brilliant forerunner of deconstructive postmodernism, demonstrating that no philosophical positions are possible.  (If Parkes is correct that the child metamorphosis goes beyond nihilism to reintegration, the lumpers' Nietzsche might be construed as a constructive postmodernist.) In defense of the splitters, Magnus argues that

no published aphorism treats eternal recurrence as a cosmology, . . . and that only two published aphorisms arguably assert will to power as a cosmology or an ontology of sorts.  Equally interesting, in my opinion, is that the notion of Übermensch virtually disappears from Nietzsche's published and unpublished writings after Zarathustra.⁵⁶

For our purposes, let us focus on the difference between the two schools with regard to the Übermensch.  As we have just seen, the lumpers take Zarathustra at his word that common humanity will be overcome and that this transition will lead to a new race of value creators.  Magnus summarizes the view of three lumpers on the Übermensch:

Lumpers tend to construe the Übermensch as the essence of Nietzsche's notion of a higher humanity: an ideal of perfectibility (Schacht).  The  Übermensch has overcome his animal nature, sublimated his impulses, organized the chaos of his passions, and has given style to his character (Kaufmann).  He is a free human being, joyous, without guilt, the master of instinctual drives which do not overpower him (Danto).  The Übermensch overflows with vitality and health, spirituality, refinement, manners, independence of mind and action, intellectual honesty and astuteness (Schacht).⁵⁷

As opposed to the view that the Übermensch is a "goal for human striving or as a recipe for achieving greatness," Magnus believes that the consistent splitter (he admits that some splitters are lumpers on the Übermensch) must stress the point that all ideal human types are culturally conditioned.  One only needs to be reminded of two examples: Aristotle's "great souled" man, a propertied male beaming with pride, and the Nazi interpretation of the Übermensch.  This means that the lumpers would be hard pressed, considering the great variety of historical preferences, to agree on a single set of virtues for the Übermensch.  Indeed, Nietzsche's choice of ancient warrior virtues is a source of constant irritation for even his most enthusiastic readers.

Magnus proposes that instead of seeing the Übermensch as a normative ideal, we should see it as a particular attitude toward life, in which a person

would crave nothing more fervently than the eternal recurrence of each and every one of life's moments. . . an Übermensch cannot lie or imagine his life under erasure, edited, emended in this way or that.  Rather an Übermensch must love each and every moment of life unconditionally.⁵⁸

Magnus' view of the Overman fits very nicely with a noncosmological interpretation of eternal recurrence, one that I have always supported.  Nietzsche did not want us to subscribe literally to a cosmology of eternal return; he only wanted us to live as if every moment of our lives would come back again.  His pseudoscientific speculations notwithstanding, Nietzsche is using scare tactics; the terror of eternal recurrence (Zarathustra's most dreadful thought) is a psychological ploy to eliminate self deception, to force us to love our lives, and to get us to take full responsibility for ourselves. The most that eternal return can mean psychologically is that we can expect to be faced with many similar events in our lives and the sooner we remove the shackles of bad faith the better off we shall be.  The most that eternal return can mean cosmologically is that the universe has no ultimate meaning--in part or as a whole.

Whether we are lumpers or splitters we should all agree that the Übermensch is no Titan.  (Even Magnus' suggestion that the Übermensch is an "inverted secular god equivalent" does not mean that the Overperson takes on divine attributes.) This is not only clear in the strong implication that the Overperson is the child, but also in the more indirect indication that all people, regardless of mental or physical powers/appearances, can overcome themselves.  Both the Zhuangzi and Zarathustra play host to large numbers of strange characters, many of them crippled and deformed.  For Zhuangzi the real deformity--being crippled by Confucian virtue--is far worse than any physical deformity.  Indeed, Zhuangzi's monsters express unconditional self-acceptance and self-love in the Nietzschean sense.  While Zhuangzi's characters are generally self-affirming, Nietzsche's motley crew of "higher men" is in constant need of preaching and prodding. Zarathustra's advice to a group of cripples who besiege him is that they should not beg for miracle cures, but they should perform the greatest "miracle" themselves, viz., to use their own wills to overcome their handicaps.⁵⁹  Being an Übermensch is a matter of accepting things as they are, the greatest of all challenges in the nonteleological universe of Nietzsche and Zhuangzi.  Zarathustra's rough treatment of the cripples is only a way of forcing them to stop their self‑pitying and to start them on the road to self-love. In the daily news we are continually reminded of handicapped persons who have overcome incredible odds to lead exemplary human lives. No one can "reach the ultimate in a single leap"⁶⁰--this is the illusion of Titanism--but all human beings can overcome themselves and flow with the Dao of Heaven.