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Greeny World Domination 095
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T h e G R E E N Y w o r l d D o m i n a t i o n T a s k F o r c e ,
I n c o r p o r a t e d
Presents:
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"Ubermensch and Raskolnikov" by Bob the Master of the World
----- GwD: The American Dream with a Twist -- of Lime ***** Issue #95 -----
----- release date: 01-03-01 ***** ISSN 1523-1585 -----
(1) An immediate difficulty presents itself when attempting to glean the
actual philosophical sentiments of Nietzsche in _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_, a
problem common to this task when works of fiction are being investigated for the
voice of the author. What is Nietzsche's true position in this work? Is his
voice identical to the voice of Zarathustra or only at certain points in the
latter's sermons? This question is the same that must be posed in the cases of
both Plato and Soren Kierkegaard and is critical for discovering a greater
philosophical "system" in Nietzsche, though such a label would no doubt repulse
him. _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ contains the germs for several future
philosophical doctrines of Nietzsche and as such must be taken seriously, though
it diverges from mainstream philosophical writing in matters of style. One of
these ideas is that of the Ubermensch, variously translated as "overman" and
"superman," discussed in the third section of the first part of _Thus Spoke
Zarathustra_ (2). But how is one to approach an interpretation of what kind of
creature the overman really is, given the ambiguous language in which Nietzsche
describes him? As Nietzsche himself would remind us, a perspective must be
adopted and, despite the evidence in favor of it, a perspective it must remain.
I shall take an approach that emphasizes the words themselves that Nietzsche
utilizes for the description of the overman and proceeds on the assumption that
Nietzsche did not choose these specific words arbitrarily. Problems emerge,
however, when one considers that Nietzsche wrote in German; Walter Kaufmann's
translation of _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_, however, has generally been thought to
be fairly reliable (3). Though I may open myself to accusations of
interpretative naivety, I know of no better way to approach Zarathustra's
sermon on the overman than by assigning him the role as Nietzsche's mouthpiece;
for, after all, who can truly say whether or not Zarathustra represents the
voice of Nietzsche?
I undertake this task as a preliminary to another concern, namely to
ascertain the veracity of the frequent identification of Rodion Romanovitch
Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky's _Crime and Punishment_, with
Nietzsche's overman.
I. What is the overman?
It seems clear that a definition of "overman," as gleaned from _Thus Spoke
Zarathustra_, is required if an identification of Raskolnikov with the overman
is to be made, regardless of whether or not this identification is fully
realized, merely approximated, or absent entirely in _Crime and Punishment_. To
arrive at the essence of the overman, one must begin by clarifying the language
in which Nietzsche speaks of him, lest the ambiguity leads to a confused
exegetical account. I will attempt to construct an account of the overman based
on this clarification.
It is important first to notice that Zarathustra addresses the common
people. The overman can, and it appears must, be the willing creation of the
masses, one of their own, not some elite superhuman as some would have him. The
people, Zarathustra warns, must secure for themselves and by themselves the
return to humanity that the overman promises or suffer continuing devolution.
The "man" that needs to be overcome by the overman is the moral element of
humanity, emaciated by religion and fettered by traditional morality. Man has
become for Nietzsche "a smaller, almost ridiculous type, a herd animal,
something eager to please, sickly, and mediocre...the European of today" (4).
The overman comes to overthrow the "ape," Nietzsche's caricature of man when
retarded by traditional morality, not to slay the man. According to Nietzsche,
the European is not truly man, yet while the term "man" continues to be applied
to him, its meaning must necessarily change to reflect his degeneration.
Nietzsche does not want man to evolve into something higher than man, which for
all he knows may be impossible, but calls for the overman to return man to being
man, to cease the devolution of man, to divest humanity of its "ape-ness:"
"Scholarly oxen have suspected me of Darwinism on that account" (5). In this
passage, Nietzsche wants to distance the concept of the overman from the concept
of a creature that eclipses humanity in a strict biological sense; that is, he
wants to reserve the "man" in "overman." The way to achieve the restoration of
humanity is the way of the overman: "Verily, a polluted stream is man. One
must be a sea to be able to receive a polluted stream without becoming unclean.
Behold, I teach you the overman: he is this sea" (6).
The overman conquers man by returning him to his essential humanity, to that
purity of "humanness" possessed by all before the onset of morality, the man of
nature. Yet he does so in the context of a new religion, the way of the earth,
of nature, divested of all other-worldliness. This new religion is none other
than the way of science: Nietzsche wants us to reject the idea that the soul is
somehow superior to the body and that a noumenal world exists beyond our senses,
a fiction exploited by the religious sphere to control man. Nietzsche, like
both Confucius and the Buddha before him, wants to restore the attention of
humanity to what they can actually perceive and affect, the "earth" as discussed
in the overman section of _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_. Man, being the noblest
product of the earth in his untainted form, could be interpreted as the "earth"
to which man should "remain faithful," an idea that would naturally lead
Nietzsche to Protagoras' dictum that "man is the measure of all things." The
overman strives to focus man back on man, essentially promulgating a new
humanism.
Zarathustra creates a vision of the overman that appears rather similar to
that of a naturalistic Socrates. Socrates likened himself to a stinging gadfly,
awaking the horse (Athens) from his torpor. So too must the overman be, a thorn
in the side of man, to wake man from his slumber. He is the "inoculation" for
the disease of traditional morality: like an injection of a vaccination, the
overman's coming will initially bring pain but then a better life. Yet, unlike
Socrates with dialectical argumentation, the overman does not attempt to slowly
erode the life-denying beliefs of traditional morality, which might be
impossible; instead, he seeks to strike man as lightning would a tree in certain
circumstances, whereby the tree is not wholly destroyed. What remains after
this "frenzy" and "lightning" will be man as he should be according to
Nietzsche, unpolluted by the deceits of traditional morality.
So far all that has been demonstrated are various facets of the overman; a
requirement at this point to describe the overman as a whole is obvious. The
overman as described by Nietzsche is nothing other than a man who is determined
to free his fellow men from the oppression of traditional morality and does so
by first freeing himself and then violently attacking the beliefs of others, for
he cannot free them without their cooperation. In this sense, Nietzsche's
philosophical project, to arrive at a "creation of our own new tables of what is
good," (7) mirrors the overman's quest in the manner of its undertaking:
Nietzsche's virulent ad hominem attacks seek to cause pain in the reader in the
hope of causing greater awareness.
The overman's identity, expressed as a disjunction of the above
characteristics, is essentially linked to his relationship with the rest of
humanity; that is to say, one cannot be an overman without being the "sea" which
cleanses man. Thus, the cave dweller ceases to exist as a cave dweller when he
leaves the cave; the cave was essentially bound up with his being a cave
dweller. Furthermore, upon approaching a cave, a man cannot be said to be a
cave dweller, for he has yet to dwell in a cave. I propose that the overman
fits into this metaphor: his existence as an overman depends essentially on
doing what it is that an overman does. Well, what is the overman's occupation
that makes him an overman? To be an overman means to have cast aside
traditional morality, but this is only the first step, only the approach. He
must then help to liberate others, to restore their humanity, and potentially in
the process to create other overmen to assist him in this task. Just as the
cave dweller can be said to be a cave dweller only after living in but a single
cave, I think the overman can only be said to be an overman after having
"overcome" at least a single man.
II. Raskolnikov's Claim to Overmanship
Under the above definition, it seems clear that the character of Raskolnikov
in _Crime and Punishment_ is not an overman. Furthermore, given the ending of
the novel in which Raskolnikov puts himself back under the yoke of traditional
morality, he has not even successfully completed the first step, which, as
mentioned above, consists in detaching oneself from the fetters of traditional
morality. Raskolnikov attempts to justify his murder of Alyona Ivanova by
extrapolating from her death the good that would occur to those under her
oppression. Yet, in thinking in this fashion, Raskolnikov is still thinking of
"good" in terms of traditional morality, though he might be commended from a
utilitarian perspective. He strives to place his action above the law, but not
above morality. Thus, he heads in an entirely distinct direction from that of
the overman, seeking to become a paragon of traditional morality rather than its
conqueror. Raskolnikov desires to arrive at some point beyond good and evil,
yet it seems as if good and evil both remain and are accepted by the overman,
though reinterpreted in the light of Nietzsche's humanism. Nietzsche clearly
depicts the overman in a social context: lightning must necessarily strike
something, at least in nature, it does not exist in a vacuum; Raskolnikov's
isolationist character seems to preclude him from ever becoming an overman,
though he may have accomplished the first step.
It is to Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, to which we must turn if
a suitable parallel to the overman is to be found. The Buddha, upon reaching
enlightenment, could have left immediately for the bliss of Nirvana yet chose to
live on the earth for another fifty years to teach others how to obtain this
highest of mystical states. He strove to teach man to ignore metaphysical
speculation and concentrate on improving himself in the present; I think
Nietzsche would not object to these projects being identified with the tasks of
the overman.
-----
-=[Footnotes]=-
1. Uncited citations refer to the third section of the first part of _Thus
Spoke Zarathustra_, save for a commonly used quotation from Protagoras.
2. Nietzsche also discusses the overman in the section entitled "Why I Write
Such Good Books" in _Ecce Homo_. I focus on _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ not
only because its discussion of the overman precedes _Ecce Homo_ but also
because the former attempts to say what the overman is while the latter
wants to say what it is not.
3. I make this seemingly bold declaration in light of the fact that both _The
Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche_ and _Oaklander's Existentialist
Philosophy: An Introduction_ make citations from this particular
translation.
4. Nietzsche, Friedrich. _Beyond Good and Evil_. Translated by Walter
Kaufmann. Random House: 1966. 62.
5. Nietzsche, Friedrich. _Ecce Homo_. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. Random
House: 1967. From "Why I Write Such Good Books."
6. Nietzsche, Friedrich. _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_. Translated by Walter
Kaufmann. Random House: 1966. 125.
7. Nietzsche, Friedrich. _The Gay Science_. Translated by Walter Kaufmann.
Random House: 1974. 335.
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