Essay Example on Friedrich Nietzsche: Radical Aristocrat, Poet & Prophet

Friedrich Nietzsche was a radical aristocrat, an overzealous enemy of the religious doctrine, poet, and prophet. He was born on Oct. 15, 1844, at Röcken, a German town near the battlefield of Lützen (Warbeke, 1909). He was considered to have shared the fate of a radical man and a prophet during his lifetime. Nietzsche was a son to minister; his mother, too, was a daughter of a minister. He was a controversial man. While acting as a professor at Basel, his students initially adored him before abandoning him to lecture empty seats, all because of his revolutionary ideologies. His central concept was about moral uprightness, intellectual enhancement, and physical advancement.

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Nietzsche's concept was well described by the watchword superman or overman, which implies a man higher than what the so-called ordinary man had not and probably would never achieve, concerning intellectual, physical, and moral uprightness. He argued that all humankind should strive to attain this level as the retreating bound of human development. According to Nietzsche, the superman was the total aristocrat and possessed extraordinary power and unmatched abilities; he was responsible for making the destinies of men. Additionally, he regarded this superman as the giver of dignity, tone, path, and termination to society. He also claimed that the human race only existed to advance the superman's position, which he termed to be the head (Bell, 2003). The superman was supposed to act as the shepherd of the people, who he compared with sheep without a shepherd. Nietzsche disagreed with the democratic ideal, which he claimed was aimed to make every man equal. Thus, limiting other more influential persons to predominate through an expression of their geniuses. He added that democracy created a commonplace of vulgarity and belittled the dignity accorded, naturally. Nietzsche's stance was that existential mediocrity would be overcome, were people willing to emulate the superman ideology. He opined that those who could rise above the rest of the population should be afforded the space to do so, survival for the fittest; only then could people eliminate weakness. As it were, he argued, life was meaningless as people were only left to look forward to another entity other than finding the meaning of their existence here on earth.

How one was to become a superman was well answered by Nietzsche when he claimed that men were supposed to struggle for existence. "Every man his neighbor," he opined (Warbeke, 1909). According to the superman ideology, every man was to fight their own battles. Those who are weak and those who envision another life would then be eliminated, leaving only the enthusiastic. In essence, one would become a superman through outshining the rest of the people in the battle of moral uprightness, intellectual capacity, and physical dominance. To excel in the ethical aspect, they need to have self-control rather than rely on external sanctions. To make the transition to superman, one also needs to look at ethical issues in another new perspective (Bell, 2003). One would be required to rethink existential societal confines such as those presented by religion and democracy. The superman would also be obligated not to practice empathy "… charity, and weakens those who give and those who take." The superman should also endeavor to unlearn the concept of sacrifice, which he argued demeans both the giver and the taker. In essence, becoming the superman entails not caring about the weak, including blind persons, the impoverished, and the aimless. He claimed that a superman should not delve in aiding such persons because it would be tantamount to dragging them through aimless existence. Above all, a superman is meant to use his power to invite people to elevate themselves out of laziness and moral beggary. Such a person is also obliged to resist evil by all means. Thus, an overman was envisioned to be the lone arbiter, stemming from his nature and personality.

Is it possible to have a person equivalent to a superman? The vagueness with which Nietzsche answered that question speaks for itself. There is no such person. When asked about the same issue, the German philosopher claimed that people at the time did not have sufficient data to make a judgment. He claimed that the required data would come from physiological, medicine, sociology, and psychological subjects, all of which were not adequately developed at the time (Warbeke, 1909). Based on his argument, it is impossible to have such a person until the professionals mentioned above provided the appropriate data. Again, I think Nietzsche was arguing without due diligence of his assumptions. If he highly regarded moral uprightness, how would acting with shear disdain against the physically challenged be any tenant of morality?

Conclusion

Additionally, he was potentially biased by purporting that the physically challenged would not fit in the pedigree of leaders. Notwithstanding, there are physically challenged persons who are better than some physically fit persons in terms of intellectual capabilities and morals uprightness. Yes, indeed, some religious and democratic ideologies could be misplaced, but dividing people according to predicaments they did not bring to themselves, in my opinion, was an egocentric opinion. One would the question, what if he was not physically fit, maybe he would have argued otherwise.

References

Bell, M. (2003). Nietzscheanism: "The Superman and the all-too-human." A Concise Companion to Modernism, 56-74.

Warbeke, J. M. (1909). Friedrich Nietzsche, Antichrist, Superman, and Pragmatist. The Harvard Theological Review, 2(3), 366-385.