Nietzsche's Overman: Self-Overcoming and Ultimate Human Evolution

The overman, or superman, symbolizes self-overcoming, surpassing nihilism, and focusing on this life, as the pinnacle of human evolution.

### Nietzsche's Overman: The Superman of Self-Overcoming
* Nietzsche's Overman, also known as the Superman, represents the **supreme form of man** who overcomes nihilism by **creating their own values** and focusing on **this life, not the afterlife**.
* 🐪 The Overman is linked to the final metamorphosis of the child in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where one must first become a **free spirit**, then a **lion who rejects traditions**, and finally a **child who affirms life through play and creativity**.
* 🌍 Nietzsche emphasizes that the Superman shall be the "**meaning of the earth**," urging people to **remain faithful to this life** and **stop looking towards otherworldly hopes**.
* 🕊 The Overman is a bridge between the beast and the Superman, symbolizing a **dangerous crossing** and a **constant state of self-overcoming**.
* 💔 The Last Man, who represents **conformity, mediocrity, and the pursuit of comfort**, stands in opposition to the **Overman**.
* ⚡ The eternal return, the idea that one's life would infinitely repeat, serves as the **ultimate test of amor fati**, the love of fate, which Nietzsche sees as the **key to greatness**.
* 🧗 Self-overcoming, expressed through the **will to power**, is the process of becoming who you are by **encountering and overcoming obstacles**.
* 📜 Nietzsche's philosophy of the Overman, the eternal return, and the will to power aims to offer an **alternative to traditional values** and to address the **crisis of nihilism** in Western society.

In Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, there are three main teachings that the wise Zarathustra has to offer: the will to power, the eternal return, and the overman. We have explored the ideas of the will to power and the eternal return in depth in previous videos. Now, we will do the same here with the overman. Let's start with the word itself, overman. The first English translation rendered it as Beyond-Man, and later it was named Superman, however, this led to its mistaken identification with the comic book character Superman. It has also been called the superhuman and the over-man. Walter Kaufmann, one of the most important Nietzschean scholars, explains that the closest translation to the German term is superman. We will use this term, although it can also be used in its original German form. Nietzsche was a great admirer of Emerson. He wrote in his notes: Emerson. - I had never felt so comfortable in a book and in my home, as - I may not praise it, it is too close to me. Emerson had coined the term The Over-Soul (the title of one of his essays), which may have influenced Nietzsche's choice of the term overman, making the translation superman doubly appropriate. Nietzsche had translated the original English word over-soul as the over-soul, which may have also influenced his

However, he had spoken of free spirits, which will evolve in his later works to the wise Zarathustra, who paves the way for the overman. In one of his early books, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Nietzsche dedicates it to the free spirits that did not yet exist but he saw slowly coming. He spent time with these imagined free spirits to be in good spirits amidst illness, isolation, and inactivity, to chat and laugh. The free spirit challenges conventional ways of life and promotes society's growth. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the overman is linked to the final metamorphosis of the child. Nietzsche tells us that there are three metamorphoses for self-overcoming: the camel, the lion, and the child. However, not everyone can become a camel. First, one must become a free spirit and be willing to step out of their comfort zone to carry heavy burdens and sacrifice. Degrade oneself to wound pride, let madness shine to mock wisdom. In other words, Nietzsche suggests that when we feel proud of ourselves, we must take on even more weight to prove that we are not that great after all; we must be humble. The lion is the next transformation, the one who desires to assume freedom and must utter the Sacred No to all traditions and rules that previously kept him chained.

The final transformation, characterized by play and creativity, is the child. Having uttered the Sacred No to reject everything before, the child shouts the Sacred Yes that affirms life. It is a new beginning, without any burden or spirit of heaviness. After achieving the final metamorphosis, one can become who they are. The child's mind is one that is immersed in the moment, full of wonder and joy, giving way to pure creativity; one can create their own values and reality, one can now become a superman. The superman is the supreme form of man, someone who surpasses nihilism by creating their own values and focusing on this life, not on the afterlife. They put all their faith in themselves as autonomous creators and trust in nothing else. It is the pinnacle of self-overcoming, rising above human norms and all difficulties, embracing whatever life brings. It is someone who surpasses mediocrity and is not afraid to live dangerously. The superman will be the meaning of the earth. Owning oneself is the most difficult of all tasks and requires the greatest increase in power over oneself, not over others. This is related to their concept of the will to power, which symbolizes self-overcoming. Happiness is the feeling of increasing power, of overcoming resistance. The superman will thus be the happiest man and, as such, the meaning and the

Justification of existence. The first appearance of the overman does not occur for the first time in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as many believe. Nietzsche actually mentions it once in an aphorism from The Gay Science: The invention of gods, heroes, and overmen of all kinds, as well as of near and sub-men, dwarfs, fairies, centaurs, satyrs, demons, and devils was the invaluable preliminary exercise for the justification of selfishness and the sovereignty of the individual: the freedom granted to a god in his relation to other gods, which ultimately is also granted to oneself in relation to laws, customs, and neighbors. The survivors of this aphorism seem to be the gods, demigods, and heroes of the ancient Greeks. For Nietzsche, these overmen appear as symbols of the rejection of any conformity to a single norm: antithesis of mediocrity and stagnation. Realizing one's true self means not imagining the self that is deeply hidden within you, but rather the self that is immeasurably above you. This aphorism is significant because it contains one of the few references to the overman before Thus Spoke Zarathustra and was written just before that work. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the overman makes his most important public appearance, along with the eternal return and the will to power, which had not been fully developed before Zarath

He arrives in a village, where he meets a crowd gathered in the market square, as it had been announced that a tightrope walker would appear. And Zarathustra spoke to the people: I teach you the Superman. Man is something that must be surpassed. What have you done to overcome him? All beings up to now have created something beyond themselves: and do you want to be the ebb of this great tide and return to the beasts instead of overcoming man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man will be precisely that for the Superman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, man is more ape than any ape. Look, I teach you the Superman. The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman shall be the meaning of the earth! ... Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the madness with which you should cleanse yourself? Look, I teach you the Superman: it is this lightning, it is this madness.

However, the people do not understand him and burst into laughter. They mistakenly assume that he is the tightrope walker everyone has gathered to see and tell him that he must get to work. But the tightrope walker, who thought the words applied to him, got down to work.

Zarathustra looked at the people and marveled. Then he spoke thus: Man is a rope stretched between the beast and the superman, a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous path, a dangerous looking back, a dangerous trembling, and a stillness. The great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what is charming in man is that he is one who goes beyond and a descent.

The original text in German of Thus Spoke Zarathustra contains a large number of wordplays that are lost in translation. Zarathustra's descent from the mountains as the solitary wanderer symbolizes his descent or Untergang, as he desires to share his wisdom with humanity after staying in solitude for 10 years. However, this descent is also contrasted with one who goes beyond or Übergang, and the overcoming or Überwindung, which evoke the superman or Übermensch. In other words, self-overcoming (Selbstüberwindung) necessarily implies a descent. The superman cannot be dissociated from the concept of overcoming. It is repeated throughout the book that man is something to be overcome, and the man who has overcome himself has become the superman. The crowd still does not understand him; they only laugh at him. They symbolize the opposite of the superman: the Last Man. Those

Those who fight for conformity, those who are all the same and enjoy mediocrity, afraid of doing something too dangerous. They are perfectly happy to be practically the same as everyone else. They believe they have discovered happiness and blink. Zarathustra begins to speak of this Last Man and when he finishes, they shout: Give us this Last Man, Oh Zarathustra - that's how they shouted - turn us into this Last Man! You can keep the Superman! And all the people laughed and shouted. But Zarathustra became sad and said to his heart: They do not understand me: I am not the mouth for these ears. Meanwhile, the crowd is fixed on the tightrope walker who has just reached the middle of his dangerous crossing, symbolizing the progress of humanity between the beast and the superman. Suddenly, a jester emerges behind him and mocks him, finally lets out a scream like a devil and jumps onto the tightrope walker who stands in his way. The latter, seeing his rival triumph in this way, lost his balance, dropped the pole, and fell. Zarathustra hurries to the severely wounded but still alive man: I knew long ago that the devil would make me stumble. Now he is dragging me to hell: are you trying to prevent it? - 'By my honor, friend,' Zarathustra replied,

All that you have spoken of does not exist: there is no Devil or Hell. Your soul will be dead even before your body: therefore, fear nothing anymore! The man looked with distrust. If you are telling the truth, he then said, I leave nothing behind when I leave life. I am not much more than an animal... That's not true, said Zarathustra. You have made danger your vocation, there is nothing to despise in that. Now you perish for your calling: so I will bury you with my own hands. When Zarathustra had said this, the dying man did not respond anymore; but he made a gesture with his hand, as if seeking Zarathustra's hand to thank him. Nietzsche indicates that the tightrope walker who risked his life, contrary to the mediocrity of the last man, had lived an admirable life. In fact, one of the characteristics of the overman is the ability to face danger. I love those who do not know how to live unless their lives are a descent, because they are the ones who are overcoming themselves.
This danger is the bridge to the overman. In one of Nietzsche's most popular phrases, he says: Believe me! - the secret to reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from existence is: to live dangerously!
Nietzsche evokes the figure of man as that of a tightrope walker. In

Human, All Too Human, in which Nietzsche had intended to highlight our animal nature. Human, All Too Human then refers to our true self, and the Overman is the one who has gained self-mastery. When Nietzsche says, The Overman is the meaning of the earth. The Overman shall be the meaning of the earth, he aims to focus attention on this life, instead of devaluing it in favor of an afterlife. I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! They are poison-mixers, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned, of whom the earth is weary: Let them go. Once sin against God was the greatest sin, but God has died, and these sinners died with him. Sinning against the earth is now the most terrible thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable above the meaning of the earth. Nietzsche believed that focusing on an afterlife is a symptom of dissatisfaction with life that leads the individual to imagine another world where their vengeance will be fulfilled. This necessitated the invention of an immortal soul separate from the earthly body, leading to the renunciation of the body or asceticism. For Nietzsche, the soul and the body cannot be separated. Nietzsche saw the decline of Christianity in society as devastatingly dangerous, as it

The Parable of the Madman proclaims the death of God. Its proclamation has tragic connotations. Christianity had focused mainly on the afterlife, devaluing this life, as well as on an excessive appreciation of truth and the impossibility of criticizing it. Nietzsche considered that Christianity developed a self-destructive tool that ended up destroying itself, calling it the will of nothing, a will opposed to life, but it is still a will. In other words, man will desire nothingness instead of not desiring anything, yet brought into life a new and more poisonous poison that devalues this life. The death of God symbolizes the opening of the gap of nihilism. He saw humanity facing an unprecedented crisis that would require a transformation or evolution of humanity. The evolution Nietzsche has in mind is more philosophical than physical. It will require a questioning of the entire Western philosophical tradition and a completely different attitude towards life. The origin of the crisis for Nietzsche lies in the longing for the beyond, the desire that has shaped Western tradition since Socrates to be freed from the prison of the body and earthly existence. In contrast to this longing, Zarathustra emphasizes that one must remain faithful to the earth. Therefore, the greatest evolution of humanity requires overcoming the dualism of mind/body, spirit/nature that has shaped much of Western thought. Nietzsche intended the monumental task of

A Revaluation of All Values, through the Superman, the eternal return, and the will to power. Seeks to offer an alternative to traditional values in the absence of a divine order so that human beings stop looking towards a supernatural realm and focus on this world. The Superman is destined to be the solution to nihilism, by conquering it; it is the meaning we must give to our lives. The Superman overflows with strength and well-being, so much so that he has to give gifts to others. Nietzsche not only refers to the death of Christianity but states at the end of the prologue of Zarathustra that: All gods are dead, now we want the Superman to live - let this be our last will someday at high noon! Nietzsche also speaks of higher men, great human beings who serve as examples of people who would follow his philosophical ideas. Those who use their own legs to rise high and not let themselves be carried by others. Because man must grow to the height where the lightning can strike and shatter him: high enough for the lightning. Nietzsche also calls them free spirits, philosophers of the future, and creative geniuses, those with intellectual consciousness and a sense for art. Nietzsche recommends the artistic lifestyle of which he considers his own life to be an example. Besides being a philosopher, he considers himself among poets and artists. In Part IV of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the wise Zarathustra

Hermits that he committed when he went to men for the first time: he had gone to the market. And when he spoke with everyone, he spoke with no one. Nietzsche does not write for everyone. In fact, the subtitle of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is A Book For Everyone and For No One. He writes for that small percentage of people who are willing to take risks to achieve true satisfaction and happiness in life. You, Superior Men, learn this from me: in the market, no one believes in Superior Men... the crowd blinks and says... there are no Superior Men, we are all equal, man is just man, before God - We are all equal! Before God! But now this God is dead. However, superior men are not supermen; as a result of Zarathustra's instruction, they become aware of their shortcomings. Zarathustra says: They may all be Superior Men... but to me, they are not tall and strong enough. Zarathustra previously stated that: There has never been a superman. Naked, I saw the greatest and the smallest man. They are still too similar to each other. Indeed, even the greatest I found too human. 
The question is simply whether a superior man became truly perfect, or if even he was, in some aspects, too human. This consideration, however, does not affect the interpretation of the overman as the man who has to overcome

of eternal return and will to power. The eternal return implies that you would have to live the same life, with every struggle and every victory, every event and every experience, repeated for eternity. The eternal return was for Nietzsche less an idea than an experience: the supreme experience of a life unusually rich in suffering, pain, and agony. In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche proclaims that he is the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus and the master of the eternal return. Superior men, learn this, joy wants eternity. Joy wants the eternity of all things, it wants the profound, it wants deep eternity!

The weak, who can only endure life hoping for a kingdom, power, and glory in another life, would be crushed by this terrifying doctrine of the eternal return, which he considered as the heaviest weight, while the strong would find in it the ultimate incentive to achieve perfection. The eternal return is the ultimate affirmation of life, an eternal repetition of what constitutes existence in the present world. Nietzsche says that one would need the most passionate love of life: ...to desire nothing more fervently than this final confirmation and eternal seal. Self-overcoming is expressed in terms of the will to power. That is, power over oneself, becoming who you are, is manifested in the encounter with obstacles. Both pain and pleasure are inextricably connected, with intense pain comes a feeling of joy worthy

of the gods. This constitutes progress towards the overman, who will ultimately accept the eternal return with great joy, as he is the highest affirmer of life. My formula for the greatness of a human being is amor fati: that one does not want anything to be different, neither forward, nor backward, nor for all eternity. One's character is in constant becoming, while one attempts the seemingly impossible task of reaching for the stars, one aspires to the highest possible goal. This self-overcoming is the concept that unites the will to power, the overman, and the eternal return. It is indeed one of the most important aspects of all of Nietzsche's philosophy.

NIETZSCHE: The Übermensch (Overman)

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Nietzsche's concept of the overman is translated as the superman and is influenced by Emerson's idea of the Over-Soul.

The overman is the final stage of self-overcoming, progressing through the metamorphoses of the camel, the lion, and the child, ultimately becoming a supreme form of man.

This concept emphasizes creating one's own values, focusing on this life, surpassing mediocrity, and embracing the difficulties of life.

The Precedence of the Overman Before Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Nietzsche first mentions the overman in The Gay Science, using gods and heroes as a prelude to the justification of selfishness and individual sovereignty.

The overman is portrayed as a symbol of surpassing conformity and mediocrity, representing the ultimate self-realization.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the overman is introduced to the public but faces misunderstanding, highlighting the contrast between the overman and the Last Man.

Nietzsche's View on Conformity and the Overman

Nietzsche criticizes those who seek conformity and mediocrity, longing to be like everyone else, while he idealizes the concept of the "overman" who embraces danger and the unknown.

The tightrope walker in his narrative symbolizes the transition from the average "last man" to the exceptional "overman," emphasizing the importance of facing challenges and living dangerously.

Nietzsche's philosophy revolves around the idea that true fulfillment and enjoyment come from embracing and overcoming the dangers of existence.

Nietzsche's Ideas in "Human, All Too Human"

Nietzsche's "Human, All Too Human" focuses on the Overman as a symbol of self-mastery and the meaning of earth.

He criticizes the focus on the afterlife, seeing it as a way to escape dissatisfaction with this life and leading to the decline of Christianity.

Nietzsche believes that humanity is facing a crisis that requires a philosophical evolution, overcoming the dualism of mind and body that has shaped Western thought.

Nietzsche proposes the Superman as the solution to nihilism, representing the meaning of life and the rejection of traditional values.

He also refers to higher men as examples of those who embody his philosophical ideas.

Zarathustra's teachings differentiate between Superior Men and the concept of the Superman, emphasizing the need to overcome human shortcomings.

Nietzsche's Philosophy of Eternal Return and Will to Power

Nietzsche's concept of the eternal return involves living the same life repeatedly for eternity, seen as the ultimate affirmation of life and a challenge to achieve perfection.

The idea is terrifying for the weak but serves as an incentive for the strong to overcome obstacles and embrace life with passion.

The eternal return is closely linked to the will to power, which emphasizes power over oneself, the unity of pain and pleasure, and the progress towards the overman, who joyfully accepts this concept as the highest affirmer of life.