Essay about Dostoevsky and Nietzsches Overman - 2123 Words

Dostoevsky and Nietzsches Overman The definition of à ¼bermensch, or overman, in Barrons Concise Students Encyclopedia makes anyone who has read Nietzsches Zarathustra - even aphoristically, as I tried to do at first - cringe. Barrons Encyclopedia defines an overman as someone who has his act together and gets things done. Of course, considering that this is a summary of one part of Nietzsches ideas, and that the encyclopedia reduces his entire philosophy to one short paragraph, this is not a poor definition. But it eliminates parts of Nietzsches concept of the overman, or superman, which are essential to an understanding of this idea. Walter Kaufmann provides a detailed analysis of Nietzsches philosophy in†¦show more content†¦This process of overcoming the state of normal humanity is done in several ways, but perhaps the most important of these is the sublimation of normal human impulses. For Nietzsche, all human impulses - indeed, all human activity - is explainable in terms of his will to power. As he says in Beyond Good and Evil, Suppose, finally, we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of one basic for of the will -- namely, of the will to power, as my proposition has it; suppose all organic function could be traced back to this will to power and one could also find in it the solution of the problem of procreation and nourishment -- it is one problem -- then one would have gained the right to determine all efficient force univocally as -- will to power. (Beyond Good and Evil, 36) Nietzsche establishes a long line of degrees of the expression of the will to power. (Dawn 113) The overman is one who has attained the highest degrees expression in his will to power. Philosophy is one of these highest degrees. (Beyond Good and Evil 9) For Nietzsche, the more common expressions of the will to power (the sexual drive, for instance) are the lower ones, and must be sublimated, or redirected, so that the will to power expresses itself in higher, more creative ways. (Kaufmann 220) Art, for instance, is one of these ways, an idea whichShow MoreRelatedFyodor Dostoevsky Crime And Punishment Analysis1214 Words   |  5 Pages Dostoevsky’s disapproval on the Superman theory In the novel â€Å"Crime and Punishment†, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky expresses his disapproval of the Ubermensch theory by using his main character; Raskolnikov who tries to become an extraordinary person but fails to do so. Raskolnikov is put in a group where people maintain the idea that man is not actually equal but are divided into two separate groups which are; the ordinary people who are locked within the laws and tradition of society by onlyRead More Analysis of The Inquisitors Argument in Dostoevskys The Brothers Karamazov997 Words   |  4 PagesAnalysis of The Inquisitors Argument in The Brothers Karamazov      Ã‚   Dostoevsky makes a strong case against Jesus in The Grand Inquisitor: Jesus did not love humanity sufficiently to care for the greater good of the race.    The majority of people, according to the Grand Inquisitor, are weak and like sheep. Jesus prized freedom of faith above all else, and because he cared more for that freedom than for the happiness of people, the Grand Inquisitor and the Catholic Church, as ledRead Morewisdom,humor and faith19596 Words   |  79 PagesFools, no custom or convention was immune to ridicule and even the highest personages of the realm could expect to be lampooned.14 Following in the tradition of such celebrations and Erasmus’s The Praise of Folly, Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and others have praised a sort of wise folly in such characters as Triboulet (in Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel ), Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Shakespeare’s Falstaff, and Dostoevsky’s Prince Myshkin (the title character in The Idiot).15 Rabelais