Nietzsche And The Superman Analysis

Nietzsche believed the ancient empires were developed from the master majority and the religious ideas and views grew out the slave majority. The idea of the "overman" or superman, which symbolized man at his most creative and Nietzsche, brought about highest intellectual capacity as well. Hegel believed people should sacrifice for the community. He thought war was also necessary to unify the state, with peace bring nothing but a weak society. Hegel also sustained that laws should be made by the corporate organization of the state.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a superhero as, “a fictional character who has amazing powers (such as the ability to fly)” or “a very heroic person”; yet, many of the characters in Watchmen have no supernatural power and are immoral by most precedent societal standards. Alan Moore, in the graphic novel Watchmen (1986-1987), asserts Rorschach as an example of deontology. Moore supports his thoughts through dialogue and illustration. The author’s purpose is to juxtapose philosophical beliefs by comparing their varied flaws through differing narrators’ points of view. The author takes a condescending tone in an effort to enrage his target audience of adult males. This paper seeks to illustrate, qualify, and challenge Moore’s claim that Rorschach is a deontologist.

“For what is freedom? That one has the will to assume responsibility for oneself.” (Nietzsche. Twilight of the Idols. Trans. Hollingdale. Sect. 38). Everyone desires freedom but everyone cannot handle the responsibilities of freedom. I will compare J.S. Mill’s views on the social function of freedom with that of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s characters from both, the novel Notes From Underground and the excerpt; The Grand Inquisitor, also drawing supplementary arguments from Friedrich Nietzsche, while expressing my views alongside.

Harlem Success Academy contains one of the most beneficial charter school programs in New York, where a majority of the public schools are failing. Over seven hundred applicants play the waiting game, trying to get in; however, more than six hundred and fifty students will be forced to return to the dreaded public school systems. Francisco, only in first grade, awaits one of the forty available spots for Harlem Success Academy. In Davis Guggenheim’s film, Waiting for “Superman”, five different families were documented in order to support his idea about the horrors of public education. Specifically, Anthony, Daisy, and Francisco’s families impacted the film the most. Guggenheim utilized emotional appeal throughout his film through these three families in hopes of triggering the audience’s feelings to match his own on public education.

The ideas of Nietzsche are explored throughout Sirens of Titan in order to express that the Ubermensch could never truly exist because humans are inherently selfish.

On the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche is typically listed as one of the most important philosophical works of the modern era. It is only modern, of course, to philosophical standards, being a mere 129 years old. It is also one of the most controversial works of its time, having the dubious distinction of being connected to Nazi ideology; it also has a not very subtle racist, sexist, and Darwinist bent that is a reflection of Nietzsche himself. That being said, I think that it is also serially misunderstood. Nietzsche directly mentions the role of interpretation in ethical discourse in the Genealogy, and the interpretive element factors heavily into one’s understanding of the polemic and by extension, ethics philosophy as a whole. Throughout the book, Nietzsche uses interpretation as a tool in itself to make a constructivist and existentialist argument about the history of ethics as whole. His idea that man has used interpretation throughout history, and the interpretive elements in Genealogy outside of the historical analysis, seem to say that almost all ethics are derived from interpretation and therefore constructivist in nature, which is a heavily existentialist argument. For example, the entirety of the first essay is based heavily upon the role of interpretation in the development of the early ethical systems that Nietzsche argues are built on the

Nietzsche’s publication, Untimely Meditations, contains four essays, one of which is Schopenhauer as Educator. Nietzsche is, to an extent, a disciple of Schopenhauer, though Nietzsche never met him. On the first page in the first paragraph of this text, Nietzsche writes that all men have a “prosperity for laziness” and “they are all fearful.” Though in some instances individuals can be lazy and fearful, that is not always accurate. Would Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have traveled 238,900 miles to the moon if they were lazy? Would human life have been able to perfect over hundreds of different languages if they were fearful of a malfunction? In my personal opinion, I feel that we as humans give our race a reputation of being indolent and

In both Friedrich Nietzsche’s resentment and Sigmund Freud’s repression, there is an underlying similarity; that both resentment and repression is feelings that are buried deep within us. The main difference in resentment and repression is while repression is feelings unconsciously buried within us; we won’t know it until someone else brings it out of us, usually in therapy. Resentment is a feeling of anger, fear that is expressed visually, and we consciously know that it’s there but typically not spoken out. These feelings of repression or resentment are what make us, human, but to Nietzsche and Freud, their views on repression or resentment have an alternative meaning.

Humans need the appearance of some sort of structure to live. They need rules to live by to tell them whether or not they are living “right”, in a good way or a bad way. We humans have come up with many different ways to tell whether we are living right “right” or not. We have come up with all of the different types of religions and the different sets of morals , all of which change throughout history and time depending on and reflecting it’s episteme. How can any religion or set of morals be considered the “right one” when there has been no consistency with either? Both Feuerbach and Nietzsche have the same belief, that religions and morals are only a crutch that humans grab on to in order to give some meaning to the random assortment of life on earth. Both think that religion was a crutch for humans because of our inability to be perfect. Religions especially Christianity (Jesus) have their own destruction built in to them because of the humanity aspect. Though Feuerbach and Nietzsche agreed upon this they had very different opinions on how it would come about.

In Sherman Alexie’s, Superman and Me, Alexie uses multiple literary devices such as conflict and metaphor to help encompass the idea that education/society changes over time and opens doors of opportunities for people.

Nietzsche shares a similar view of man. The important thing in man is his potential; man is striving but for something different, Ubermensch or superman. It represents man constantly striving to overcome himself and become a man whose values are independent from societal conceptions of good and evil. Ubermensch must be willing and able to reject what he is now to become something different and never become content with present values. Similar to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche sees life as a series of stages that take man from the herd to Ubermensch. The first step for man to achieve Ubermensch is to overcome a collective herd view of values because they are not bridges to Ubermensch. Once this herd is overcome, man can begin to concentrate on overcoming himself.

In his essay, “The Joy of Reading: Superman and Me,” Sherman Alexie analyzes how notions such as creative writing and reading high-level texts were considered “beyond Indians.” To combat such unwarranted profiling, he reminds young Native Americans of the importance of resisting negative stereotypes. Alexie claims that no matter into which situations they were born, they can still accomplish their aspirations. He supports this contention through his own experiences, reflecting upon how empowerment from reading, particularly that from the comic Superman, “saved” him from the failure expected from his race. In his essay, Spokane Indian-American writer Sherman Alexie employs relatable and uplifting personal narrative to motivate Native American youth to view others’ success, real or fictional, as validation of their own potential.

Whether you call him Kal-El, Clark Joseph Kent or the Man of Steel, fans and non-alike know him the world over as Superman. Recently, this iconoclastic character was reintroduced to a new generation with the film Man of Steel and so began for some a look back to another era where a bold new dawn of superhero action movies was born with Superman The Movie. An inevitable debate ensued about whether a modern, technologically advanced and possibly more faithful adaptation could outshine the original, with all its nostalgia, including an inimitable portrayal of Superman given by the late Christopher Reeve. My aim is to find out whether I still believe a man can truly fly or if he is just simply wearing a costume.

Nietzsche is widely known as a critic of religion. In fact, he talks in depth about morality in regards to religion in his essays about the genealogy of morals. But the problem is not within religion itself or within morals. The problem is involved in the combination of the two to create society’s understanding of morality through a very religious lens. In fact, Nietzsche has criticism for almost any set of morals constructed by a group of individuals and meant to be applied to society as a whole. True morality, according to Nietzsche, requires a separation from these group dynamic views of morality- or at least a sincere look into where they originated and why they persist- and a movement towards a more introverted, and intrinsically personalized understanding of what morals mean in spite of the fact that “the normative force to which every member of society is exposed, in the form of obligations, codes of behavior, and other moral rules and guidelines, is disproportionally high” (Korfmacher 6).

Back towards the beginning of American history we see superheroes arising for the first time in our culture. They were not necessarily able to fly or see through walls. However, they were still extraordinary people. Their stories were passed from father to son and the story grew with every telling. People like Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill were just two of the many tales of the time which spoke of men doing extraordinary things. These tales wouldn’t excite forever, though. As years go by our country and its people become less and less naïve and craved more. A giant man with a blue ox and an axe just could not suffice. People become more and more numb to pain and murder, and needed more than these tall tales.