Why did Nietzsche Create The Superman?

Introduction. The figure of the Übermensch - roughly translated as the Superman - is central to Nietzsche's thought. Why did Nietzsche create this swashbuckling Superman who invents new values, delights in danger, and openly mocks what is sacred to his time? An answer👇

Nietzsche: "Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman - a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal."

In the prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche's prophet Zarathustra is witness to a tight-rope walker's performance. As Zarathustra addresses the crowd, his message falls on deaf years, but the tight-ropewalker resonates with his words.

As the ropewalker reaches the middle of the rope, a small door opens at one end and "a brightly-dressed fellow like a buffoon" jumps on the rope. This joker runs the ropewalker, calling him names, and finally jumps over him. This disturbance made the ropewalker lose his balance.

The ropewalker falls down like "a vortex of legs and arms." People run away. Only Zarathustra stands next to the man who's now " badly injured and broken but not yet dead." The man says: "I’ve known for a long time that the Devil would trip me up. Now he’s dragging me to Hell."

The man continues: "I am not much more than an animal which has been taught to dance by blows and starvation." Zarathustra consoles him: "Not so. You have made danger your calling, there is nothing in that to despise." The man soon takes his last breath.

Zarathustra reflects as the evening grows darker: "Uncanny is human existence and still without meaning: a buffoon can be fatal to it." The buffoon stood for the random absurdity of life that can take give a noble risk-taker an ignoble death. How to live under such conditions?

Nietzsche's answer: by setting the ground for, or becoming, superman. By taking on difficult tasks such as creating one's own values, rejecting the siren call of equality, and daring to become a great person, we can successfully push back against the absurd randomness of life.

Nietzsche: "I teach you the Superman. Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?" Just as apes are a "laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment" to men, so shall be humans to the Superman.

The superman will be a descendant of those who are "bold adventurers" - people who are "intoxicated by riddles" and who "take pleasure in twilight." The spirit of people who "do not desire to feel for a rope with cowardly hand" will metamorph into the superman one day.