The 19th century was described by Nietzsche as a decadent century. However, it was also in this century that he saw the dawn of Western culture. Because something big happened at this time - God died. The death of God marked the beginning of the collapse of Western culture with Christianity as its spiritual pillar.
What is the Superman according to Nietzsche? After citing some of Nietzsche's words about Superman, someone said that in Nietzsche, the so-called Superman is a person who is both a genius artist and a world conqueror. He has five major characteristics: a genius, possessing supreme power, cruelty, cunning, and loneliness.
Nietzsche made many descriptions and metaphors of Superman. He said that Superman is the ideal type among higher humans, the meaning of existence, lightning in the clouds, etc. He said that Superman refers to a type of person whose appearance is a fragment of great luck, a person who is in direct opposition to modern people, good people, Christians and other nihilists. Based on Nietzsche's discussion, the Superman he said has the following characteristics:
First, Superman loves life and strength, but does not love zombies and cowardice, because he himself has a very strong life instinct and will to power. , is a very healthy person.
Second, Superman has a pair of nimble feet and regards life as a sacred dance. He always regards transcending traditional moral concepts and values ??and even all mankind as his goal, rather than himself as the goal. Because of this, in the eyes of Christians, he is always a destroyer of old morals, old values, and old laws, and a madman who cannot be tolerated.
Third, Superman has independent morality and unique personality. He is the creator of self-promulgated laws, self-evaluation, and self-established value standards.
Fourth, Superman is a great man, but not a complete man. In him, all the opposites and contradictions of human nature can be reflected, such as the highest and lowest, the happiest and most painful, the lightest and most terrible forces.
In short, in Nietzsche’s eyes, Superman is a new race that transcends humans. All the advantages, all excellent qualities, and brave spirit that humans do not possess are reflected in him. In fact, Superman is a dream that will never come true. The reason why Nietzsche wanted to conceive of such a superman who was like God.
First of all, human beings are a kind of existence that should be transcended. What is a human being? Man is the rope between the beast and the superman—a soft rope suspended over the chasm. In Nietzsche's view, the greatness of human beings lies in the fact that he is a bridge rather than a goal. That is, human beings are a process of constantly surpassing and sublimating themselves. The concept of Superman is the embodiment of this self-creation, self-transcendence. In this sense, Superman is not something other than human beings, but represents the transcendence and creativity of human beings themselves. "The hard struggle of self-transcendence is the realization of superhuman nature."
Secondly, superman is the goal of human life and the meaning of human existence. In the past, God was the goal of human life, and belief in God was the greatest meaning of life; now, it is up to Superman to fill this gap, "I want to teach people the meaning of existence, and this is Superman."
Finally, Superman is the overcoming of all kinds of laziness and decadence of the modern era, the conqueror of all kinds of harmful diseases. Nietzsche claimed that his life's work was to "improve mankind" and bring mankind a "peak of greatness." He felt painfully that modern people were degenerate and disabled. He looked forward to the arrival of a taller, stronger, happier and more physically and mentally sound man - Superman.
Nietzsche believes that because Superman or the pursuit of Superman requires people to have outstanding strong will, Superman is the destroyer and saver of the old world and old culture, and the creation of the new world and new culture. advocates and advocates. In his view, Superman is the sea, which will raise violent waves and swallow up the troubled world and all evil deeds; Superman is lightning, which strikes all the evils of the old world; Superman is the earth, which will create life on earth and life in this world. Superman is the constant renewer of new worlds.
In the society that led to the decadence of human nature in the past, human beings themselves were imperfect. Nietzsche provides people with the concept of the superman he expected as a lofty goal, which reflects Nietzsche's efforts to transform the ideal personality from God to human beings, and reflects a change in values. The nihility, degradation, and decadence of Christian culture were deeply rejected by Nietzsche. Nietzsche created God's spokesman, Superman, and armed him with a strong will to shoulder the heavy responsibility of revaluing everything. But Superman is not only the essence of Nietzsche's philosophical thoughts and attitude towards life, but also the principles of life and survival he established for people. The core new idea of ??Nietzsche's Superman philosophy is to ask people to "self-transcendence". He saw the uncertainty of life and asked people to establish lofty ideals and goals in life and constantly improve themselves to achieve the continuous transcendence of their life ideals. Nietzsche's Superman philosophy contains positive and reasonable thoughts. He not only had a profound influence on Western philosophy, but also had a profound impact on the creation and development of Chinese literati thought.
When Nietzsche was introduced to our country, as early as the era of Liang Qichao, Wang Guowei, Lu Xun, Chen Duxiu, etc. were all greatly affected. Nietzsche's attack on Christianity is similar to my country's May 4th New Culture Movement's anti-feudal ethics and advocacy of individual liberation.
In Lu Xun's mind, Nietzsche was an ideological warrior who denied the old tradition. He called Nietzsche a "big iconoclast" and hoped that reformers would carry forward Nietzsche's rebellious spirit of "knocking down idols" and "revaluing all values" and break through the constraints of traditional thought. , criticizing Chinese society and old civilization without scruples. Nietzsche's Superman philosophy is not dedicated to building a perfect ideological system, but rather a process of self-transcendence of life. Nietzsche's philosophy breaks away from the worship of past traditions and authority, and undoubtedly has a profound reflective effect on today's new reforms.
Today, in the process of modernization in our country, the alienation, spiritual poverty, and moral decay that the West has experienced have begun to emerge. The establishment of the market economic system has enabled my country's economy to develop by leaps and bounds, but it has also been accompanied by ideological trends such as money worship and hedonism. Excessive worship of money has led to people's moral decay, and one-sided pursuit of material interests has caused spiritual emptiness. People have experienced ruptures in their beliefs, traditional values ??no longer fully adapt to the current situation, and people are spiritually confused and at a loss. Faced with this spiritual crisis, the construction of spiritual civilization has become the mainstream of China's current socialist construction, and how to carry out the construction of spiritual civilization has become a hot issue of concern. The modernization process in the West provides us with a good lesson. Although Nietzsche's philosophy of life is too extreme in many aspects, the positive and enterprising spirit that runs through his philosophy of life is worth learning from. This is reflected in: it gives positive meaning to life and affirms the value of life; it promotes human subjectivity, improves human status in nature, and praises human creative spirit; it embodies human self-transcendence and self-esteem. Perfection; his sharp criticism of Christian ethics, traditional morality, and rationalism is a great attempt to revalue values. All of these are of reference for the construction of spiritual civilization in our country. Today, in the construction of spiritual civilization, on the premise of adhering to Marxist philosophy as theoretical guidance and adhering to the four basic principles, we can learn from the reasonable elements of Nietzsche's philosophy, which will be beneficial to solving the landslide crisis in people's beliefs.
However, Nietzsche's "Superman Philosophy" strives to promote people to break through traditional ways of thinking and moral constraints, but it does not clearly point out the value direction of Superman, which leads to the one-sided development of Superman philosophy. While we can affirm that Nietzsche's "Superman" theory has a positive influence on absorbing the essence of his thoughts, we should also see the shortcomings of his theory. Nietzsche failed to analyze people's multi-faceted desires and value orientations, and his formulations are general and easy to be exploited. , its limitations are specifically reflected in the following aspects: First, Nietzsche over-expanded the role of the strong in human progress when emphasizing it, advocating that the strong should dominate the foolish and even eliminate the weak and foolish. This view did not exist in the first world During the war, it was used by Hitler and other fascists to cause Hitler's inhumane massacre of the Jews. It made Hitler not only want to conquer Europe but also want to embrace the earth. This not only failed to promote the progress of mankind but caused huge disasters to mankind. Second, Nietzsche overemphasized the development of individual subjective initiative and ignored the common foundation of society and the side of collective decision-making. He emphasized people’s self-creation and self-transcendence without realizing that people cannot struggle in isolation without society. and creation. Nietzsche was obviously deficient in his perceptual life. The will to power was only compressed into his metaphysical pursuit, which inevitably caused the suppression of his metaphysical impulses. This is evidenced by his loneliness and helplessness in his later years that led to schizophrenia. Third, the "transcendental philosophy" proposed by Nietzsche is a one-sided transcendence of the human system, which will ultimately only bring about serious divisions and abnormal development of human beings themselves. Therefore, Nietzsche's "transcendental philosophy" should be the transcendence of the complete realization of the human system for us. Only in this way can we transcend perceptual existence and general culture, reach a free spiritual realm, and care about the world as a relatively complete person, thereby further creating Better things, and strive to shape themselves into cultural giants of the times. To sum up, we should look at Nietzsche's philosophical thoughts dialectically, take the essence and discard the dross, so that we can use it scientifically.
Many examples in the real world have shown us that "supermen" do exist, but they do not only exist among "noble" people. A superman in the real world is a person who transcends and continuously improves himself. This kind of transcendence shows people's exploration of their own potential, which is exactly in line with what Nietzsche said about "being yourself" and "transcending yourself". According to the newspaper, in Japan in the 1970s, an old lady who was visiting her son was waiting to board the train at the station. She was carrying a 60-pound rice bag in each left hand and a 100-pound bag on her back. , and her own weight is less than 50 kilograms. Just imagine, why does she have such powerful power? Because the desire to see her son inspired her potential, making her a "superhuman". This may be what Freud called the subconscious mind, which is like an iceberg. The tip of the iceberg that we can see above the water is just our surface consciousness, but people actually have greater potential abilities, but we have not found them. Incentives to discover potential abilities. Therefore, no matter who you are, as long as there is an inducement and a stimulus, you can become a superman.