Nietzsche: The Last Man vs. the Übermensch |
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche introduced the concepts of the Last Man and Übermensch (or Superman).
For Nietzsche, the meaning of the earth is the Übermensch—a higher, self-overcoming type of human.
The opposite of the Übermensch is the Last Man, a mediocre creature who choose security over greatness.
In 1882, Nietzsche entered into a love triangle with the beautiful Lou Salomé and their friend Paul Rée. On Nov. 5, in Leipzig, Salomé and Rée suddenly vanished from his life, without word or trace. He knew not where, or why. Some days later, when what had happened had sunk in, he confided to his friend Franz Overbeck, “So I really am going into utter solitude.” He never saw Salomé or Rée again.
Naturally, Nietzsche’s already fragile health suffered. He began taking heavy doses of chloral hydrate and opium. In mid-December, he sent out letters mentioning overdoses and suicide. On Christmas Day, he wrote to Overbeck: “This last morsel of life was the hardest I have yet had to chew… Unless I discover the alchemical trick of turning this much into gold, I am lost.”
Fortunately, Nietzsche did discover the alchemical trick, and the result was his masterpiece, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It’s his most famous work, and he insisted that everything he wrote afterward was mere commentary on its themes. In his autobiography, Ecce Homo, he goes so far as to call Thus Spoke Zarathustra the........