From Encyclopedia Britannica:
This superior man would not be a product of long evolution; rather, he would emerge when any man with superior potential completely masters himself and strikes off conventional Christian “herd morality” to create his own values, which are completely rooted in life on this earth.Bingo. More on Das Übermensch from the age-of-the-sage blog (which is of unknown quality, but I like this quote and Google led me there):
The context in which the Overman or Superman is to be judged to be such is implied by Neitzsche's previous works. He maintained that all human behavior is motivated by the will to power. In its positive sense, the will to power is not simply power over others, but the power over oneself that is necessary for creativity. Supermen are those who have overcome man - i.e. the individual self - and subliminated the will to power into a momentous creativity.It's not a perfect fit, but I feel like it's close enough.
Supermen are creators of a "master morality" that reflects the strength and independence of one who is liberated from all values, except those that he deems valid. Such power is manifested in independence, creativity, and originality.
For those who want Trump to be presidential, ha! He has created his own morality because he wills it. Your puny conventional values cannot restrain him. And woe to those who killed God and thought they could determine the form of future morality. Trump picks up where you left off with your avant-garde performance art, spattering menstrual blood on your audiences and dunking crucifixes in urine. He takes your postmodern rejection of objective morality to a whole new level.
Trump has gone beyond good and evil and has created his own cultural norms. Of course, those involve ridiculous gifs of him body-slamming CNN logos and tweets about plastic surgeries gone wrong, but what made you think that Das Übermensch was going to be something admirable or even serious?
Therein lies the fundamental flaw in Nietzsche. His superman was to be a glorious leap forward for Mankind, ruling with an iron will bent to dramatic improvements in the world. Instead, his superman is a nincompoop.
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| Way to go, genius. |
Update: And then he goes and makes a speech like he did in Poland today. Sigh. What to make of this guy?
Until your update I was in rare disagreement with you, about Trump, not Nietzsche. At its briefest, he is the antidote to eight years of obama and Hillary. Plus of course sixty years of cultural Marxism and even longer of the 'Progressives'. [Another perfectly good word ruined by the Orwellian left.] I don't think there is anyone else could do the job that Trump is doing. As some say, just being not Hillary is sufficient to thank the good Lord for bringing him along. One hopes that he is in the line of needed leaders in bad times like Churchill, Reagan, Thatcher, Pope John Paul, [three at once, a miracle!] Lec Walenza played a big part as well.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to the update, well, he is human, after all. Nobody is consistently wrong about absolutely everything, just as nobody is 100% correct about everything. Even Nietzsche has some good bits blended in with the bad.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is currently playing to Trump's advantage. He's managed to get expectations set so low that when he occasionally does something right, he gets way more credit for it than he probably deserves. At the moment, I honestly think that the combined Trump/media circus has gotten us to the point where, as long as he avoids getting us obliterated in a nuclear war or turning the government into an explicitly totalitarian dictatorship, the overall response to his presidency will be "Well, that wasn't as bad as expected, anyway."
I always get the impression that his sane and well-considered speeches are the work of his team while those childish tweets are the real Trump.
ReplyDeleteProbably right but he picked the team!
ReplyDeleteTrue enough, ligneus!
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