Nietzsche: Life, Work, and the Superman

Posted on Mar 8, 2025 in Philosophy and ethics

Nietzsche’s Life and Historical Context

Nietzsche (1844-1900), an author as influential in popularity as Heidegger and Deleuze, studied classical philology (he was a Professor of Greek) and had a close friendship with Richard Wagner, who influenced his aesthetics and conveyed to him non-Christian behavior, contrary to the tradition of their parents.

He lived in the second half of the nineteenth century, a period marked by many revolutions that enhanced ties between science and economy in Europe: the demographic revolution doubled the population, the revolution of steel and transport, and the industrialization drive in the communications field. Various social movements became important (such as liberalism, nationalism, socialism, and anarchism), the great empires (Britain, France, Germany, and the USA) expanded, science was highly developed (especially the humanities), and the economic and political power of the bourgeoisie increased significantly.

At the same time, there were two very important major cultural movements:

  • Romanticism: Opposed to the Enlightenment, it conceived of a living nature, dynamic, not mechanistic (Darwin set out his theory of evolution).
  • Positivism: Reduced all knowledge to science, ignoring what is not (notably Comte).

Nietzsche’s Work: Periods of Development

Nietzsche’s work can be divided into several periods:

  1. Romantic Period: Under the influence of Schopenhauer and Wagner, he wrote The Birth of Tragedy, a work in which Plato and Socrates were criticized for their refusal of life.
  2. Positivist Period: Criticism of religion, metaphysics, and art of his time. This stage includes Human, All Too Human, and The Gay Science, a work that appears for the first time the issue of the death of God.
  3. Critical Period: This is the fundamental period. His written works include Beyond Good and Evil (crucial work), The Genealogy of Morals, Ecce Homo, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and The Will to Power.

Nietzsche’s Thought: The Death of God

The Path to the Superman

Nietzsche examines the history of man and notes the following developments regarding the presence of God:

  1. Renaissance: With anthropocentrism, man begins to think for himself.
  2. Rationalism: Reason is the foundation of everything, although guaranteed by God.
  3. Enlightenment: Power is held by the people, not God.
  4. Positivism: Knowledge is in science; the Gods do not matter.

And hence it follows that among all, we have killed God of starvation (for lack of chores). As a result, man begins to live for the first time. He no longer has to bear the brunt of transcendence; the pillars that have sustained Western culture have collapsed. We have done it almost without realizing it, without a revolution that has marked a change. Now there are even those looking for a substitute in things like home, before which to sacrifice.

The Metaphor of the Three Transformations

Nietzsche represents this process in his metaphor of the three transformations: the man was a camel that endured burdens, but after becoming a lion, he broke with the established (killed God), and after that, he became a child, a creator and destroyer without consciousness of guilt, who can build his own values.

Nihilism and the Creation of New Morality

Once God is dead, we do not have something or someone for whom to do things. And this state of suspense, recent maturity of the supreme values, of momentary disorientation, the consequence of the absence of own values, is known as Nihilism. It is the state after the destruction and hopelessly before the creation.

Now we can create a new morality. Nietzsche proposes one based on the natural process of man: life. Reaching a compromise between the trends of Dionysus (life, excess, the body) and Apollo (reason, measure, the soul), he opts for the exaltation of life without seeking further explanation as to why. Master morality must prevail, following the instincts.

The Superman

Nietzsche, therefore, proposes to build a moral that leads us to stop being the man we have been until now, miserable and unfinished, and we get to be superman. This is the creative being (child) who follows his own moral, one must be strong at the height of this world, not be lowered, to fulfill its promises.

Seven Characteristics of the Superman

He defines the superman with seven characteristics:

  1. Desire to live: He cares about life, without any obstacle.
  2. Overcoming: He has exceeded traditional Christian morality.
  3. Superior: He says yes to the hierarchies among men.
  4. Values: He has broken the traditional hierarchy of values.
  5. Earth: He cares about what is earthly, no metaphysical transcendence.
  6. Power: He has the desire to dominate, to be master and slave.
  7. Return: He loves life and would accept re-living it countless times.