Abstract

The starting point of this study is the feeling of reluctance that Nietzsche's ideal of a superman can provoke in us, and the question why such a sentiment did not bother Nietzsche at all. The feeling of reluctance originates in the inner man. The superman, however, is for Nietzsche an organic system of a higher level, which means that for him there is already no unique quality — like rationality or morality — that serves as the measure of man, but only the level and quality of the organic. Should not this give rise to the supposition that Nietzsche only has been capable of staying on the track of the mysterious essence of man by giving up man ? According to The Gay Science nr. 113, To the Doctrine of Poisons, Nietzsche's concept of the superman contains the dream of a being that has incorporated the three fundamental powers that are spread (with man) over, respectively, the scholar (will to truth), the artist (will to beauty) and the legislator (willto justice). The crucial point is that these instincts transform each other on the basisof the incorporation and transformation ofa fourth power, that of the doctor (will to healthiness). The event of the death of God and the certain coming of an economic total control of the earth meant for Nietzsche that man will either fall back to an animal-like existence or be raised to superman. Between animal and superman, man falls away. In the period 1881-1884, we find this theory frequently pronounced, but later Nietzsche has reservations. The guide for the second half of the study is the conjecture that perhaps the uniqueness of man primarily hides in the question that man forms in itself. In Nietzsche's Human, All too Human the question of man's destiny is still a declared curiosity. Later, however, this question becomes central. But is it possible for him to admit it into the heart of his thinking ? Is not this centre already occupied ? Man for Nietzsche is not primarily a questioning, but an organic judging being. Hence the destiny of man can only liein a higher organic system. But can man ever completely be limited to an organ ? Is not he essentially more than this as long as he can be gripped by the question ' Who am I ?'. In relation to this question, an old fragment of Alcmaeon is interpreted : that men must die because they are not capable of relating the beginning to the end. The ultimate condition for Nietzsche's superman, however, is this capacity — in the affirmation of theeternal recurrence — to connect end and beginning. But is not this simply the denial of man — as mortal being ? Nietzsche could not take up the who in the midst of his thinking, because of the presence already of another question and the presumably final answer toit, the question what man is. The end of the study explains how, in fact, Nietzsche has only been able to pursue closely the mystery of mortality by abandoning death