who, by trusting his own sense of what is good and evil succeeds better than any other. It is argued that only by following his example can we hope to improve ourselves and our society. Is the necessity of overthrowing the existing established values justified in Nietzsche's principle, and does he in fact prove that his alternatives are any better.
Mankind, in order to justify its existence, has always required some belief in a higher purpose in life. People are never satisfied with the idea that there is no meaning in anything they do or accomplish. Without such a belief, life becomes impossible to accept as the question asked by nihilism is continually before one, "why live at all?"
Nietzsche dismisses this answer to nihilism.
As effective as it is he finds fault with it in that it serves to make one feel ashamed of himself and the world. In so doing this belief extinguishes an individual's hope of fully realizing his own powers and strengths as such things are viewed in a negative light as being worldly thus evil. Nietzsche holds that such restraint tends to weaken an individual making him sickly and weak physically and psychologically; such a thing imposed upon society would naturally lead to a sick and weak population. Not seeing any overall gain in a system of beliefs which teaches suppression, he purposes to give us a new one which is not only said to be as effective but also frees them of Christianity's binds. With his principle of the superman Nietzsche seeks to give us values that at the same time, create a medium where power is realized and strength flourishes, and define a purpose for …show more content…
life.
The superman is someone who in discovering himself he discovers that it is in his best interests to reject any outside philosophy about values, trusting rather what he finds within himself. He creates his own good and evil, based on that which helps him to succeed or fail. In this way good is something which helps one to realize his potential and evil is whatever hampers or stands in the way of this effort. Since to Nietzsche everything in the world, including good and evil is temporary. everything is being continually reinvented. The superman embraces this idea of change which to him appears evident , he understands the fact that since there is nothing in the world which is permanent whatever exists must eventually be overcome by something else which comes along. Seeing himself and his values in the same light he knows that these aspects must also be overcome by something stronger if not by him than by someone or something else. So in order to keep up with the times he continuously reinvents himself over and over always building something stronger, more powerful, on top of what went before. The superman therefore is the ideal of someone who has mastered the practice of overcoming himself
It is from the example of the superman that we are intended to see how much is actually realistic in the world.
The values he creates he continually tests himself always refining them to be better and better still. In this way they rise above the values of the masses (the weaker, the unwise) until they arrive at the top and being superior to any other they serve as the guidelines for the rest of society. They remain on top until another superior system of values comes along and usurps it. In this way a society is created which, by allowing the stronger to succeed, promotes strength. Nietzsche deems this a healthy society as it always strives to heighten its potential and is founded upon the attributes of the healthiest individual who exists. It is a macroscopic version of the same sort of overcoming which occurs in the superman and is labeled healthy because weakness is discouraged in support of a medium in which strength and superiority are pushed to the level of maximum importance.
In this system the question "why live?" asked by nihilists is answered in man's striving to overcome himself. The superman sees mankind as a bridge which has no end which always stretches still further and further. Thus mankind is aware of no ultimate limits. Each life is valuable as it can serve mankind by helping to push its potential ever higher, making it that much stronger, elevating it another step out of the comparative misery which existed before this process was
begun.
Suffering is also addressed here. We are told that not only can suffering be suppressed but the improvement of it is also possible. Though suffering is at times necessary the superman redeems himself from it in his regular creating. This creating which allows him to overcome himself, and through trial thus leads to improvement he calls his "will's joy". So if in order to overcome himself, he must create and in creating he feels joy if he is constantly overcoming then with all the resulting joy he experiences, naturally, very little area is left for suffering.
We see that an understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy would not be complete without an understanding of the idea of the superman, the central and most crucial aspect about it. In eliminating the idea of God and the values attached to it in his system he is forced to give us a parallel substitute, that is, another god like figure from whom we may receive our new values in order to fill the void which is created. We get an individual who derives his strength from that which is touchable (namely, his own self) and dismisses that which cannot be plainly observed in the everyday world. Christianity in placing such a level of importance on the conjectures of the unseen and dismissing that which is tangible becomes directly opposed to the former. The two doctrines, therefore, are each other's exact opposites and can never be resigned as the one's good is the other's evil and vice versa. With the western society having been so long in the habit of conforming to Christian values when a new and unfamiliar set of values is proposed one naturally cannot expect a complete acceptance of them to occur overnight. Nietzsche himself admits that though he believes that to many his ideas will make perfect sense the full realization, for most, of the severe changes which they imply will not occur for quite some time to come .So though we are here given two