Nietzsche and The Future of Man

In Zarathustra’s Prologue, Nietzsche claimed that “Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman.” Man is, according to Nietzsche, a bridge that encompasses the transitory phase from animal to Superman, and he intermingles their qualities into one. In the end, Nietzsche declared, Man would create his own values, and that would be the solution to the death of God. Yet how is this done? Let us first analyse what the constitution of the Superman is, and how it distinguishes itself from its starting point of the animal.

An animal is irrational. It looks not within but without, entirely absorbed in a race toward survival in the external realm of nature. If that is one pole, and the Superman is the other pole – with Man being the rope – then the Superman will be the contrast to the animal. The relationship is binary, and Man is transitory. So then what constitutes the Superman? The animal man will, like sheep, follow the herd often without question. The Superman looks within, and from here he defines his own values. He is the new God, an enlightened race that makes his own meaning away from worship. So Man is the evolving entity of transformation, for he embodies a mixed bag of characteristics. He combines the spiritual and the materialistic, the logos and the pathos. As Plotinus said, his soul consists of both the inner, that is aligned with the spirit, and the outer, that looks without toward nature. He is social, naturally tribal, but he has refined this into a civilisation that allows and involves individual parts to pursue their own endeavours. He is intelligent, but not enlightened. Yet the conclusion that we must become enlightened, so much so as to make our own values, must be met with scepticism.

Nietzsche was born into a post-enlightenment era where reason and scientific rationality had, at least in the intellectual world, replaced the moral and existential truths of religion. His proclamation that “God is dead” was a reflection upon this. And even a fairly shallow observation of the past couple centuries will indicate that this progression of scientific rationality has clearly taken hold of our minds. It makes sense that the concept of the Superman arose from this time period, but one cannot presume this concept to be true. Man is an animal. Yet he is gifted with the spirit of consciousness. He does bring together the nature of pure animal with the nature of pure reason (or spirit or God or whatever one may call it). Yet never will he become a creature of pure reason. It is Men that builds walls, and it is Men that inspires progress. It is from here that values arise, whether organised or not, with the aim of keeping society within the narrow path that carefully balances order and chaos. It seems not that Man will replace God, but rather that he will revive him, and in a new form.