Nietzsche – the Overman and the Three Metamorphoses

“I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome” – Zarathustra’s Prologue.

The overman for Nietzsche is the truest, most pure form of humankind. This form can be achieved by humans only when and if they liberate themselves from 1) their internal thresholds and 2) the external thresholds. Deep down inside of every human is hidden the overman. The thresholds contain the restrictions made of ‘fixed patterns’ and I find there to be interdependence between the restrictions that both thresholds contain. To put it simply, an internal (self) restriction may have to be imposed because of an external (society’s) restriction in that regard.

A human’s internal thresholds are the confinements of religion which are usually reinforced by teachings of morals and ethics. Belief in God, virtue and a fixed pattern of what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in the eyes of the Supreme Power limits a human because of the fear of punishment. A human’s ‘true, actual’ self is repressed by fear. If some part of an overman emerges in a human in this regard, it is considered immoral. In ‘Letter to Overbeck’ Nietzsche writes of a girl who has premarital sex and how she’s considered to be contemptible:

“A feeling (of sexual desire) is supposed to be subdued by a thought – more precisely, by the thought of fear…In itself, it is not at all shameful, but natural and fair, that a desire be satisfied immediately. Therefore what is really contemptible in this girl is the weakness of her fear”.

The ‘true’ human possesses the Apollonian forces that create desire , a feeling. There’s no force that creates fear as a feeling for the ‘true’ human is fearless. Fear is therefore only a thought, in this case, a thought invoked by the society to the girl.

The external or society’s thresholds are where the society deems them to be socially acceptable. This may be religiously and academically. The State, according to Nietzsche, used Christianity to “provide an excuse to people to accept suffering, poverty and being downtrodden” since Christian proverbs dictate that the rich will never enter heaven and the meek shall inherit the earth. Regarding education Nietzsche wrote that the ‘education’ being provided to the masses was merely to convert them into ‘slaves’ to work for the State and Businesspeople. These masses of ‘factory slaves’ work the same work day-in and day-out for other people instead of ‘working’ towards their ‘self-discovery’. With time they become “sick of themselves” and “degenerate into dangerous discontent and criminal tendencies” Nietzsche describes them in ‘The impossible class’:

“…when you listen to the newspapers and leer at your rich neighbor, made lustful by the rapid rise and fall of power, money, and opinions? When you no longer have any faith in philosophy, which wears rags, and in the candor of those who have no wants?”

Education, in its true sense, to Nietzsche starts when a human fights against internal and external thresholds and questions “Why?” It begins when humans behaving like entranced mice stop following the Pied Piper, and choose to go down different paths. The overman can only prevail when God (and the likes of him) is dead and when that age comes “which is to carry heroism into the pursuit of knowledge and wage wars for the sake of thoughts and their consequence” .

The piece of writing which perhaps best describes the need and the inevitability of the prevalence of an overman is in ‘Letter to His Sister’. Nietzsche ends it by saying, “Here are the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for the peace of soul and pleasure, then believe (all that is taught to you); if you wish to be a devotee of the truth, then inquire…”

In Zarathustra’s Speeches Nietzsche writes on the three metamorphoses of one’s spirit: from the camel to the lion and finally the child. I found this metamorphosis to be a fable of a human turning into an overman.

The camel portrays the normal man, the spirit who learns all that is taught to him about God and societal norms. He carries this burden of imparted education leaving him no room to inquire and learn about the ‘truths’ he may want to question. It is interesting to note that a camel’s stride is slow and appears to require much effort. This is the life, the stride of a spirit, a ‘factory slave’, when internally and externally restricted.

When it runs though, a camel is very fast and this burdened camel while running starts questioning “Why?” and transforms into a lion. The lion has been a symbol of bravery and a spirit as a lion will stand up to the lord/god who is depicted as a dragon in comparison which had burdened the lion in the first place. That dragon has the name of “Thou shalt” and thou shalt is the beginning of all and any restrictions, internal and external, which are imposed on humans. This is the becoming of the overman.

Prevalence is achieved when the lion becomes a child. The struggle of becoming a lion from a camel is very difficult and the lion may become an outcast in the society, thus feeling lost in this world. When the child emerges though he comes with the liberty to question and believe whatever he wishes without any struggle. Thus the overman will prevail, the ‘true inquirer’.

“The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement…the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world” .