Illness and the Ubermensch

This week in class we talked about the ubermensch or the ‘overman’ or ‘superman’ and how he is the future of mankind (gendered language here and in the rest of the post is Nietzsche’s not mine). While this ubermensch will go beyond man as he is thought of today, he will also come from man in an almost dialectical manner. If we see our current (slave morality) views of human beings as the thesis, then Nietzsche is arguing that we need an antithesis. This can be seen in the way Nietzsche characterizes exactly what the sickness of bad conscience is. “The bad conscience is an illness, there is no doubt about that, but an illness as pregnancy is an illness” (88). Pregnancy is first of all an illness that can only last for a certain length of time. After nine months, either the illness kills you, or you are then able to return to being healthy. Also, pregnancy is a kind of illness for the mother, but is not for the baby. In fact, it is only because of the illness that the baby can be. It is also only because the mother endures the illness and does not seek treatment for it that the baby is allowed to be born. This ‘illness’ is both a positive and negative symptom of modern society and slave morality. It is positive because it leads to the ubermensch, but it is also negative because it is a kind of nihilism that is life-denying.

Nietzsche describes this illness in reference to Europe. “Here precisely is what has become a fatality for Europe – together with the fear of man we have also lost our love of him, our reverence for him, our hopes for him, even the will to him. The sight of man now makes us weary-what is nihilism today if it is not that? – We are weary of man” (44). Here Nietzsche is recognizing the illness as nihilism, but rather than remove the problem, he is in fact advocating that we must embrace man. This does not mean that we look past his faults, but rather that we recognize the illness for what it is, and move beyond our current, nihilistic conception of ourselves. At the end of the second essay, Nietzsche argues that the “man of the future” will “redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also from that which was bound to grow out of it, the great nausea, the will to nothingness, nihilism” (96). This man of the future is not just wishful thinking, but “he must come one day” (ibid).

Given Nietzsche’s insistence on necessity, it makes sense that this man of the future must come. But what will this look like exactly? Is it Hegelian/Marxian insofar as it is a dialectical process?