Man is something to be overcome.

[PDF] So this is the great insight with which we are concerned; this is the great lightning flash that Zarathustra teaches 'the overman', teaches that man is something that shall be overcome, and asks 'What have you done to overcome him?' That means, of course, to overcome yourself. Other, lesser flashes follow, and the other flashes show us how Nietzsche arrived at the concept of the overman. Nietzsche quite clearly, quite explicitly, arrived at the concept of the overman by consideration of the general nature of the evolutionary process. Zarathustra, in this prologue - or rather Nietzsche - points out that so far in history all beings have created something beyond themselves. They never stopped. They never came to a halt. Every being, every kind of being, has created something beyond itself, has given birth as it were to something higher than itself in the evolutionary scale. And Nietzsche, through the mouth of Zarathustra, says that there is no reason to suppose that this process will stop with man. He says, clearly, explicitly: the ape created man. And in the same way, in an even higher way, an even better way, more glorious way, man himself must now create the overman by overcoming himself. And this means that he must learn to look down on himself, to despise himself, to be dissatisfied and discontented and disgruntled with himself; because it is only when he begins to look down on himself that he can begin to rise above himself and be something higher and greater and nobler than he was.

But it is very important to make clear, it is very important to point out that Nietzsche was not a Darwinian in the popular sense of the term. For Nietzsche, the overman is not simply, or will not be simply the latest, the last product of the evolutionary process. It's not that the evolutionary process just goes on and on and on and then up comes the overman. In other words, the overman will not be produced automatically, will not be produced as a result of the general blind function of the evolutionary process. In fact, we find in his writings, in his works, that Nietzsche distinguishes quite sharply between what he calls 'the last man' on the one hand, and the overman himself on the other. And the last man is simply the latest product of the general, the collective evolutionary process of humanity. The last man is not a higher 'type' but will be the product of the individual man's effort to overcome himself, to rise, to soar if you like, above himself. And it is on account of this distinction, this distinction which he makes between the last man on the one hand and the overman on the other, that Nietzsche is able to dissociate himself from superficial 19th century ideas of human progress; ideas to the effect that progress continues indefinitely and man becomes better and better, higher and higher. Nietzsche does not accept that. In other words, man is not becoming better automatically simply by virtue of the passage of time. We have to do something about it. Man isn't becoming better automatically by virtue of the passage of time but he can make himself better if he so chooses.

We must confess that Nietzsche isn't very clear at times on this point, or at least not always very explicit, but whereas the lower evolution is collective, the higher evolution is individual. Nietzsche in fact has a sort of vision of man, a sort of picture of man, in his mind. Nietzsche says that he sees man as a rope; a rope, he says, stretched out between the beast on one hand and the overman on the other. And Nietzsche, who is nothing if not graphic, nothing if not imaginative, says that this rope which is stretched between the beast and the overman is stretched over an abyss. It's dangerous to be a man, in other words, or at least it should be dangerous. Man, he points out, is something transitional. He is not only just a rope, he is also a bridge. He's a bridge and not an end; and being a rope as it were, being a bridge as it were, being not an end, he must live for something other than himself. And this something other, for the sake of which man, each and every individual man should and must live, is the overman. Nietzsche, in fact, does not only distinguish between beast and overman, he distinguishes too between man and overman. He distinguishes between man as animal and man as human being; and the distinction for Nietzsche is a very sharp one indeed. He says, in fact, that the majority of men are not men; the majority of men are animals. As we pointed out more than once in the course of these lectures, most people have not yet achieved humanity. According to Nietzsche, the turning point, the great watershed of evolution, of the evolutionary process, is not as between animal and man, it is between man who is still an animal and man who is no longer an animal, man who is truly human.

Kaufmann, expounding Nietzsche, says of him, he maintains, in effect, that the gulf which separates Plato from the average man is greater than the cleft between the average man and the chimpanzee. This is Nietzsche's thought. And it's not a view which is very flattering to the average man. The average man doesn't really like to hear that he is lifted very little, if at all, above the animal level, that he falls short of true humanity. This is not the sort of picture of himself that he cares to see, and it is not surprising that when Zarathustra, in the Prologue, spoke to the people in the market place about the overman they just laughed at him. They were much more interested in watching the tightrope-walker.

Nietzsche also speaks of what he calls 'prefatory men' and, though he is not very clear on the point, these seems to be intermediate between man on the one hand and 'the overman' on the other; and Nietzsche describes these prefatory men as bent on seeking in all things for that aspect which must be overcome. This is the characteristic of the prefatory men; and he exhorts these prefatory men to live dangerously; not safely, not cosily, not comfortably, not securely, but insecurely, even dangerously. And Nietzsche says, among other things, that the true men, those who are no longer animals, are simply the philosophers, the artists and the saints. And the overman, apparently, is something even higher, even superior to the philosophers, the artists and the saints. But at any rate it is also clear, in Nietzsche's thinking, that man becomes overman by the process of self-overcoming; and it is clear too that philosophers, artists, saints, are overcoming themselves, and to that extent are, in a sense, to some extent overmen.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Buddhism and the Superman:

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Buddhism and the Superman.
2. The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.
3. The Superman, the Overman or Übermench.
4. Thus spake Zarathustra.
5. Man is something to be overcome.
6. * Giving style to one’s character.
7. The will to power.
8. The Higher Evolution and the Overman.

By Urgyen Sangharakshita.

[in French] [Introduction] [Buddha] [Buddhism] [Meditation] [Sangharakshita] [FWBO] [the Centre].

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Dernière mise à jour:
21 juillet, 2008.