I Bring you the Superman...or the Superwoman!

Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and wondered. Then he
spake thus:
Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman- a
rope over an abyss.
A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous
looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what
is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going.
I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for
they are the over-goers.
I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers,
and arrows of longing for the other shore.
I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for
going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the
earth, that the earth of the Superman may hereafter arrive.
I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order
that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own
down-going.
I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build the
house for the Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and
plant: for thus seeketh he his own down-going.
I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to
down-going, and an arrow of longing.
I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth
to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he as spirit
over the bridge.
I love him who maketh his virtue his inclination and destiny:
thus, for the sake of his virtue, he is willing to live on, or live no
more.
I love him who desireth not too many virtues. One virtue is more
of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one's destiny
to cling to.
I love him whose soul is lavish, who wanteth no thanks and doth
not give back: for he always bestoweth, and desireth not to keep for
himself.
I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour, and
who then asketh: "Am I a dishonest player?"- for he is willing to
succumb.
I love him who scattereth golden words in advance of his deeds,
and always doeth more than he promiseth: for he seeketh his own
down-going.
I love him who justifieth the future ones, and redeemeth the past
ones: for he is willing to succumb through the present ones.
I love him who chasteneth his God, because he loveth his God: for he
must succumb through the wrath of his God.
I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may
succumb through a small matter: thus goeth he willingly over the
bridge.
I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth himself, and
all things are in him: thus all things become his down-going.
I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his
head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his
down-going.
I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the
dark cloud that lowereth over man: they herald the coming of the
lightning, and succumb as heralds.
Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the
cloud: the lightning, however, is the Superman.

The Will to Power

I should like to make two things clear: first, that Nietzsche’s The Will to Power is essentially a series of notes, jottings and speculations, written between 1883 and 1888, subsequently collected and arranged in book form by his sister, Elizabeth; second, Elizabeth may eventually have given her support to the Nazi Party, but it is quite wrong to suggest that she 'twisted' her brother's works towards the Nazi cause. Her compilation-and it is her compilation-was, after all, first published in 1901, well before the advent of National Socialism.

Elizabeth's 'fault' was to blur the distinction between her brother's published works and his rough speculations; to present to the world the false impression that The Will to Power was the final and definitive statement of Nietzsche's thought. It was not. That lies in the work published while he was still intellectually active. Having said that, it is still a fascinating and worthwhile collection, an insight into the mind of the thinker in the raw. It would encourage me to think that it is read before judgement is passed

Der Fall Wagner

One can trace Nietzsche's disenchantment with the Wagner cult in his notebooks, where he discusses the master's addiction to luxury and glitter at his Bayreuth shrine; his misuse of the music medium; the false liberation his music brings; his desire to submit audiences to the power of his will; and above all his vanity, and yet again his vanity.

Nietzsche was maturing beyond the kind of abject devotion that Wagner, a monster of egoism, demanded. His task was "Neither to suffer so intensely from life, nor live in such a flat and emotionally deficient way, that Wagner's art would be needed as a medicine." Wagner was undermining Nietzsche's efforts to lay hold of life, so he removed himself physically from his orbit and intellectually from his cult, as he shows in Human, All Too Human and still later in The Wagner Case.

Beyond Good and Evil

Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil is a work of considerable analytical power, which penetrates right to the source of all moral concepts. Here are two of my favourite aphorisms-

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil

Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups.

The latter might best be illustrated by Arthur Miller's play The Crucible and Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. In Ibsen's play a doctor takes a principled stand against the collective 'good' of his local community, earning much hatred in the process, but he continues to defend the truth notwithstanding, because '...the strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone.'

God is Dead

I read again the story of the hermit in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. His life is based upon God's presence. Every action he performs is in praise of the deity. If God is dead then the hermit is dancing in a void, under the illusion that he has an audience. The saint, it might be said, has lost his witness, the only thing that hitherto gave life meaning. But it is far more significant than that; for when God died "...sinners died with him." They died as sinners because their acts no longer conferred any such identity.

Let me put this another way: with the death of God the world has lost its moral centre, the pole from which all meaning was derived. There are no more Saints just as there are no more Sinners. There are only questions, always questions. For Karl Jaspers, taking up Nietzsche's baton, the death of God is a historical situation through which humanity must pass on towards new forms of meaning. Nobody can escape the death of God, atheist or believer. And therein lies the most delicious of ironies!