I think you are right. The superman is not of this earth. It is a vision of the future, something that will be. What the passage indicates is that the future should be embraced, that we cannot go back and keep to the certainties of the past. Nietzsche lived in an astounding age, an age of progress and change, maybe only comparable to our own. Nietzsche fathomed that it would change what it is like to be human, but not how or what exactly, only that something new will come. He did caution against trying to keep the age old certainties. That is the noble way to do things, the autonomous way. At least, that is my take on it,

Now that we've seen a little further into the future, I think we can start making predictions about what the superman will be. It's unlikely to come from evolution, because we have ground human evolution to a standstill. We have become too apt at protecting the weak among us, and we are traveling through time too fast to wait around for the effects of evolution.

It's most likely that the superman will be a computer. Someday people will be transferring their conscious thought patterns into man-made devices. It allows us more room for more experiences and memories. It would allow us to tweak the threshold of happiness. For example, we could taste food without the limit of a stomach that fills up and makes us feel sick.

I don't envy the generation that finally "sets itself free" with technology. There will be endless intense debates about what a human should and shouldn't be. Things will spin out of control quickly as we dope ourselves up on the very best kinds of human experience. It will have the same eerie happiness as an opium den.

It's most likely that the superman will be a computer. — Bird-Up

Eventually AI will make human anatomy an evolutionary dead end.

It's most likely that the superman will be a computer. — Bird-Up

Then it wouldn't be a superman. It would be a supercomputer as opposed to just computers, which is what you are using right now.

Maybe superman would be more of a merging of biology and technology. In effect, cyborgs would be superhuman.

Then it wouldn't be a superman. — Harry Hindu

Yes, that is exactly the problem; and why so much debate will arise. Humans have always been defined as something that exists independently without the meddling from humans themselves. If we decide to give ourselves ten eyes instead of two, then can the result still be called a human? You could argue that humanity will intentionally design their own extinction. Because they thought of something that seems better. Something we want to replace ourselves with.

But that is also inside the bounds of human nature; to use tools and seek better solutions to our existence. So you could also argue that following the natural path of human nature will always eventually lead to abandoning the human body. Which one is more important? Human intention or the human body? Is survival of human-intent alone still human-enough to be called a person?

What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame. — Zarathustra

Richard Maurice Bucke said that the 'superman' was exemplified in those beings who had broken through into cosmic consciousness, 'as far above normal human consciousness as ours is above beasts.' Whereas Nietszche's Ubermensch was characterised wholly and solely by the will to power. It's hard to see how this wouldn't morph into fascism, although Nietszche's many defenders never seem willing to acknowledge that.

What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. — Zarathustra

Really? Do you think Jane Goodall would agree?

There remains something fundamentally egregious in Nietzsche.

There remains something fundamentally egregious in Nietzsche. — Banno

He's a monster. No question. But with moments of mad illumination. Like Isaiah; like any prophet: Utopian visions breed "the greatest thing ye can experience"..."the hour of great contempt."

"The hour of great contempt" - turned inward to self - opens vistas to a higher, less contemptible, self - for those humble and daring enough to risk the ascent.

His call to wage war against "self-complacency" is far from monstrous: This is his moment of mystical insight, his holy grail sorely won from the ghouls of the underworld:

What is the greatest thing ye can experience? It is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becometh loathsome unto you, and so also your reason and virtue.

The hour when ye say: “What good is my happiness! It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency. But my happiness should justify existence itself!”

The hour when ye say: “What good is my reason! Doth it long for knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!”

The hour when ye say: “What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made me passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!”

The hour when ye say: “What good is my justice! I do not see that I am fervour and fuel. The just, however, are fervour and fuel!”

The hour when ye say: “What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loveth man? But my pity is not a crucifixion.”

Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever cried thus? Ah! would that I had heard you crying thus!

It is not your sin—it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven!

Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which ye should be inoculated?

Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy!— — Zarathustra

His vision of transcended self-complacency, of feverish vitality (a life inoculated with lightning) is key to seeing beyond the monster. We have so much to learn from this monster.

Again, humility* is key: Those who have never found themselves contemptible can find no way into Nietzsche's invigorating pearls.

*Not to say Nietzsche was a humble man. But it's obvious he was versed in the Utopianist's self-contempt.

Do you think Jane Goodall would agree? — Banno

No, I don't.

But I agree: set beside humankind - "How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! ...in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!" - the ape is a laughingstock and a thing of shame.

Key to note that Nietzsche immediately clarifies this point by saying:

Once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes. — Zarathustra

So Nietzsche doesn't precisely mean Goodall's apes. There's some abstractifying going on. He's pointing to something like our degressive tendency to self-complacency: an anti-evolutionary languor.

As with Wittgenstein, it's important not to take in Nietzsche via aphorisms.

wholly and solely by the will to power. — Wayfarer

A bit of an exaggeration. In the opening pages of Zarathustra - to my view, Nietzsche's purest moment of visionary insight - the Superman is set out as evolution's aim: from worm to ape to man to Superman.

Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes.

Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?

Lo, 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!

I conjure you, my brethren, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH... — Zarathustra

The will to evolutionary ascent.

He's a monster. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Come on. You can’t be serious.

Dead serious. A monster:

The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.

What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak— — Nietzsche - The Antichrist

Wanting to be übermenschen is a natural instinct - we all desire it and spend a whole lot of energy and time trying to be supermen. In other words there's nothing really laudable or praiseworthy about übermenschen. What would be more impressive, a dog being a dog or a dog trying to transcend, resist, its doggyness?

What would be more impressive, a dog being a dog or a dog trying to transcend, resist, its doggyness? — Agent Smith

Well, certainly there's nothing impressive about a dog being a dog.

I see you snuck in the word "resist" alongside "transcend." A self-resistant (if you like) or self-transcendent dog - say, a dog who, instead of chewing a bone, attempted an exegesis of Hegel - would be impressive indeed. A Disney or Grimm dog here on Earth.

That aside: Nietzsche seems to have in mind a kind of vital orthogenesis along the lines of Bergson and possibly Lamarck. A bit out of my depth here.

"The book proposed a version of orthogenesis in place of Darwin's mechanism of natural selection, suggesting that evolution is motivated by the élan vital, a "vital impetus" that can also be understood as humanity's natural creative impulse." — Wiki on Bergson's Creative Evolution

He saw evolution as comprising four laws:[12][13]

"Life by its own force, tends to increase the volume of all organs which possess the force of life, and the force of life extends the dimensions of those parts up to an extent that those parts bring to themselves;"

"The production of a new organ in an animal body, results from a new requirement arising. and which continues to make itself felt, and a new movement which that requirement gives birth to, and its upkeep/maintenance;"

"The development of the organs, and their ability, are constantly a result of the use of those organs."

"All that has been acquired, traced, or changed, in the physiology of individuals, during their life, is conserved through the genesis, reproduction, and transmitted to new individuals who are related to those who have undergone those changes." — Wiki on Lamarck

As misguided as Nietzsche-qua-Zarathustra's vision of evolution may have been, his soapbox war on self-complacency - his invocation to Earth-devotion and self-overcoming* - is useful as a source of inspiration for any worm, ape or human envisioning, and assaying to be, more.


Even monsters get a day in the sun.


*His call to self-overcoming always linked him, in my mind, to John the Revelator. A parallel to make the man emete:

To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. — John the Revelator

The fruit of the tree of life is a bit like an inoculation of lightning.

Self-Overcoming — ZzzoneiroCosm

That's what I'm talking about!

Everyone wants to be an übermensch! It is, truth be told, an irresistable impulse! To deny/reject is a bigger deal than to indulge in it.

To deny/reject is a bigger deal than to indulge in it. — Agent Smith

But that, it could be argued, is just another form of self-overcoming. What do you think?

....

But that, it could be argued, is just another form of self-overcoming. What do you think? — Merkwurdichliebe

Indeed, but I wouldn't consider following the herd an übermenschen quality (we're all wannabe supermen). Transcendence! We must leave our humanness behind and what is more that than desiring for transcendence! It's quite a puzzle this (reminds me of dialectical materialism - the negation of the negation).

The will to evolutionary ascent. — ZzzoneiroCosm

was it you I was talking to about Afrikan Spir's book?

He’s often deliberately provocative. Plenty of interesting things to say about pity.

Also, I agree with him. If you read this as “kill off all the Jews” or something to that affect, that’s your preference. That’s not how I read it.

was it you I was talking to about Afrikan Spir's book? — Wayfarer

Nope, never heard of it. Is it a good one?

I miss the Na'vi - did you design your new avatar? Pretty sweet.

It says help the botched and weak to perish.

I suppose an (over-) charitable interpretation could downplay that - but to my view, there's no reason not to take him literally here. Do you see a reason not to?

Neitzsche's mistake was failing to appreciate that the tribal life of proto humans would naturally promote a moral sense; a sensitivity to moral implication ingrained into the psyche, akin to humour or the aesthetic sense — karl stone

I see him as passionately reactionary. I don't think he had the old tribes in mind. More what he saw as an animalesque devolution or slothful self-satisfaction in the ape-men (as he saw it) that were his compatriots. One of the burdens of genius, to be profoundly disappointed with humankind.

... even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes. — Zarathustra

I think he felt like the botched and the weak stood in the way of humankind's evolution. And literally felt it would benefit humankind to do them in.

Monstrous.

If that wasn't what he felt he should have been more careful with his rhetoric - it can definitely be read that way and it lines up with his views in general.

we all desire it — Agent Smith

Possibly everyone on this forum wants it. We all seem to want to improve our minds.

But it's a leap of false charity to say everyone wants it. I've been in close proximity to the uneducated, uninterested, uninspired a good part of my life. The Superman is the furthest thing from their minds.

That’s not how I read it. — Xtrix

How do you read it and what is your justification for a non-literal reading?

It's a question of evolution: from ape to man to Superman. — ZzzoneiroCosm

In ‘Who is Zarathustra’s Ape?’, Peter Groff argues that
Nietzsche’s model of nature was not a Darwinian evolutionary position, and that he used the word ‘ape’ to refer not to a primate but to an approach to
thinking, the mimicking or ‘ apeing’ of ideas.

“Nietzsche writes: “No animal is as much ape as the human being.” The human being is more ape than any ape because so much of what it is and does is rooted in superficial imitation.”

Concerning your quote , he says:

First let us note an obvious fact that misled many of Zarathustra’s earliest readers: Nietzsche is in this passage exploiting Darwin’s popularly caricatured, but still scandalous, insight into the human being’s evolutionary descent from primates. Partly as a result of this, Nietzsche has been often been cast as a Darwinian thinker, a misunderstanding that has since for the most part been dispelled.

If anything, contemporary readers emphasize his opposition to Darwinian conceptions of life. But although Nietzsche attempted to distance himself from the famed English naturalist on a number of philosophical points—and indeed, could not countenance Darwinian interpretations of the Übermensch (EH “Books” 1)—he nonetheless gladly appropriated Darwin’s overall evolutionary model, along with its more radical implications. These are: (1) that biological nature has a history; (2) that the human being can no longer be understood as essentially other than nature (but rather as a product of chance and necessity, like any other natural organism); and (3) that the deeply entrenched prejudice of human superiority with regard to other species no longer has any legitimate purchase, at least as traditionally conceived.”

“The following passage from the Antichrist(ian)
summarizes this aspect of his naturalism most economically:

We have learned differently. We have become more modest in every way. We no longer derive the human being from “the spirit” or “the deity”; we have placed
him back among the animals. We consider him the strongest animal because he is the most cunning: his spirituality is a consequence of this. On the other hand, we oppose the vanity that would raise its head again here too—as if the human being had been the great hidden purpose of the evolution of animals. The human being is by no means the crown of creation: every living being stands beside him on the same level of perfection. And even this is saying too much: relatively speaking, the human being is the most bungled of all the animals, the sickliest, and not one has strayed more dangerously from its instincts. But for all that, he is of course the most interesting. (A 14; cf. GM 111:25)

“The human being as a species does not represent any progress compared with any other animal. The whole animal and vegetable kingdom does not evolve from the lower to the higher—but all at the same time, in utter disorder, over and against each other.”

https://philarchive.org/archive/GROWIZ

Thanks for the interesting and fact-based post.

Nope, never heard of it. Is it a good one?

I miss the Na'vi - did you design your new avatar? Pretty sweet. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Found it googling 'wayfarer'.

The human being as a species does not represent any progress compared with any other animal. The whole animal and vegetable kingdom does not evolve from the lower to the higher—but all at the same time, in utter disorder, over and against each other.

Never understand the pull of Nietszche. My view is that if mankind is unable to acknowledge their difference from and separation from nature, they are unable to take responsibility for their situation and condition.

Never understand the pull of Nietszche — Wayfarer

I don't care much for him either - I admire a few passages from Zarathustra.