Ubermensch or Last Men?
- Vallabhi Agrawal
- Aug 12, 2020
- 2 min read
' God is dead' were groundbreaking words written by Nietzsche some hundred years back. Nietzsche, despite being a lifelong Atheist mourned this Death of god, or rather man's idea of the supreme being. With the enlightenment came the realisation that man was in charge of his own destiny and thus his own morals. Nietzsche predicted nihilism for mankind stating that we would not be able live ours lives without the aid of god guiding us i.e.that we would sink down to meaninglessness and despair.
Nietzsche described the Ubermensch and the last men as the kind of individuals that would rise out of this enlightenment. The Ubermensch would form their own value system and would were something man should try to achieve whereas the last men were beings nearer to what he thought most men would become, that is a creature of comfort, without any thought to growth.
Today, a century later, Aethism is widespread. People everywhere have stopped referring to the divine as a mentor of conduct. So then, the question that arises is that with the change of cultural atmosphere all over, is our society at the point of nihilism? Are we without morals?
While at some instances I am inclined to agree that man has indeed lost all morality, most of us have coped well without the hand of god guiding us. We have definitely not descended into complete unmorality and meaningless existence. We have not become the last men. Instead we as individuals create our own set of morals that we strive to live by. The enlightenment brought about the death of god but it also gave a new way of life, one that is self governed and upholds our own values.
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