> Zarathustra first announces the Übermensch as a goal humanity can set for itself. All human life would be given meaning by how it advanced a new generation of human beings.
Quote from Wikipedia above
I had heard the term uber mensch before but I had presumed it referred to something else entirely.
In this context your question of whether the bigger thing needs to be "true" seems subjective. Is wanting human beings to work towards a better present and future for others a "truth"?
But in the sense that it is something true and not fictional like god, then yes to me true here means real and logical.
I don't understand what you mean by the "hold everyone" part though. If you mean that everyone on earth could adopt this philosophy or identify with part of it, obviously that would be great but quite impossible.
However you say "vulnerability" to the uberman, so having only given the Wikipedia article a quick once through, am I to understand that the idea presented is flawed or taps into a flawed part of humanity that wants to believe it to be possible?
I think your comment is probably the most curious I've been about getting an answer ever on HN.
Since "God is dead" the one who knows this is capable of taking control of the direction of humanity. Of taking control of the direction of morality and ethics and truth. If there is no real and logical proposition that is fit for all people and for all times then multiple such people can arise and strive for control, crushing all who oppose them, for none may judge the übermensch to come.
Think of this "unjudgability of the übermensch" like a fork in a cryptocurrency - when viewed from inside the system of the cryptocurrency there is no way to judge which fork is "correct". They cannot be reconciled without some external truth or even standard of truth - a lawgiver.
I say "vulnerable" because I don't believe that the Nazis were simply "a different fork" and that it could someday be "right" to massacre those who oppose the progress of history towards perfection - or even that it is possible to oppose that progress in the manner that the Hegelians (e. g. socialists, national and otherwise) mean.
I believe that there is an external reality to which all persons can give assent. I believe that we are flawed because we no longer want to give assent to that external reality (though we once did). I have hope because I believe that we have been given the chance to revive that desire, though the way is hard. That's why I say "vulnerable" - because the idea of the übermensch is a corruption of the truth.
Quote from Wikipedia above
I had heard the term uber mensch before but I had presumed it referred to something else entirely.
In this context your question of whether the bigger thing needs to be "true" seems subjective. Is wanting human beings to work towards a better present and future for others a "truth"?
But in the sense that it is something true and not fictional like god, then yes to me true here means real and logical.
I don't understand what you mean by the "hold everyone" part though. If you mean that everyone on earth could adopt this philosophy or identify with part of it, obviously that would be great but quite impossible.
However you say "vulnerability" to the uberman, so having only given the Wikipedia article a quick once through, am I to understand that the idea presented is flawed or taps into a flawed part of humanity that wants to believe it to be possible?
I think your comment is probably the most curious I've been about getting an answer ever on HN.