CONAN THE BARBARIAN: NIETSZCHE’S ÜNINTENTIONAL ÜBERMENSCH, Part 1

Hello all! How are you meandering today? I talked about James Bond last post, and in addition to talking about stories in general, the Bond work got me thinking of doing what are called ‘character studies’ on fictional characters. A character study is part biography, part metaphysics, part thematic, cause fictional characters at their best are almost as complicated as real people.

If, somehow, a fictional character is more complicated than you, please see a spiritual doctor, or at least partition to God to make you more interesting. Do note that complication and madness are easily mistaken for each other; if symptoms persist for more than four years, please seek charitable attention. Symptoms include being a monomaniac, being an inmate in a mental asylum that is also your brain, being full of high opinions of yourself, and demanding that other people call you interesting.

SO! To talk about Conan the Barbarian, we first have to talk about two other barbarian men, Friedrich Nietzsche (I call him Freddy or Freddy Nietzsche for short) and Conan’s author, Robert Ervin Howard (or just Howard). We also—well, I also have to give a good chunk of context for my contemporary audience of the 2020s. Note, too, that I’m a bit of a Conan nerd, and have read the annotated stories of Conan that were personally written by Howard (here, I’ll call the Howard Canon), except for two: ‘The Man-Eaters of Zamboula’ and ‘The Black Stranger’. AKA, “Conan fights cannibals in the desert”, and ‘Conan fights pirates, aristocrats, other barbarians, and a demon to steal lost treasure.’

How about a sketch of a timeline? Freddy N. lived from 1844 to 1900 (died insane, of pneumonia and strokes); Howard lived from 1906 to 1936 (suicide by gunshot to head); the first Superman comic was published in 1938 and the first Batman comic in 1939; H.P Lovecraft, the nerdy New England pen-pal of Howard, lived from 1890 to 1937 (died, in poverty, of intestinal cancer). …Not very happy men, I’ll tell you that. First, let’s start with Nietzsche!

We’ll have to breeze through Freddy here, so here’s a quick sketch of him: At age 5, he watched his father, a Lutheran pastor, die of an incurable fever. Freddy himself was very sickly—if you so much as sneezed in the same room as him, he’d be bedridden a day later. At age 24, he became the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. That is the same as a 24- year-old becoming a Chair at Harvard or Yale, he was that damn smart. What’s Philology? The study of ancient Greece and Rome. What’s a Chair? It’s where you sit down and teach something, and here it meant that Freddy was seen as ‘the supreme teaching authority of all things Greek and Roman’. At age 24.

In my estimation, the 1800s was the age that was the most hostile to Christianity. Secularism and rationalism were rapidly pushing Christianity to the fringe, or into house arrest. It didn’t help that the Christians, Catholic or Protestant, were acting like total boneheads, and making themselves look bad*. Now, Freddy here grew up in this timeframe, where Christianity was about as interesting, strong, and lukewarm as piss-water, which is why he held so dim a view of Christianity. He made his famous dichotomy, that of ‘master morality vs. slave morality’, the Greco-Roman pagans being the masters and the Christians being the slaves. And, of course, his infamous ‘Death of God’; blah blah blah.

[*This is according to Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age. The Catholics forgot the poor and retreated to a self-imposed ghetto, while the mainline Protestants emptied their doctrines to be ‘more up-to-date’ and ‘more inclusive’ with the times. Joke’s on Nietzsche, the Catholics came out of their ghetto and the Evangelical Protestants kicked the mainliners to the curb, but poor Freddy was too insane and dead to see it.]

Freddy's third famous idea, the Übermensch, is the topic. Like many things about Freddy, people mostly know the cartoonish caricature version of his ideas—they’re as bad a distortion as (film)James Bond vs. (book)James Bond. It does not help that the National Socialists took the Übermensch and bastardized it. Nor is it helped that every would-be Internet edgelord, fruitlessly m*******ting at his computer, rants on about the Übermensch, and makes the Übermensch look hideous by misrepresentation.

What is the Übermensch? In the German, the ‘over-man’, the ‘above-man’. That is, the man who is so above it all. The Übermensch is a response to nihilism—the devaluing of everything, the emptying of all meaning from life. For Freddy here, the Übermensch is a complete and total badass, powerful in every way. The Übermensch rejects the weak morals of the slavish Christians, yes, but the Übermensch never destroys for the sake of destroying. Rather, for Freddy, the Übermensch is a perpetual creator. The Übermensch makes new morals, and uses all his strength to enforce them. Once the Übermensch makes a moral, a rule, he cannot go against it! The Übermensch makes values, and does everything he can to keep them alive—precisely because he made them. In addition, the Übermensch is never cruel for the sake of cruelty. The Übermensch understands that, ultimately, evil and cruelty are pointless. Not only that, but evil actions are a waste of effort, which the Übermensch could be spending on making new stuff that he likes. Even crazier, the Übermensch is not inherently antithetical to other Übermensch’es being around. In fact, if he likes you, the Übermensch may even help you become another Übermensch! But, his help will only go so far—the Übermensch hates being dependent on others, and so the idea of others being in debt, in dependency on him, is abhorrent.

This is Freddy’s ideal—to be like a perpetual, creative demi-god, who helps others that want to be perpetual creators in their own way. An Übermensch is so powerful that he is above weakness; he’s so powerful that he’s above pettiness. He’s so powerful—what threat are you to him? It is not even a matter of arrogance; a strong man does not waste time on punks.

Nietzsche’s Übermensch is most beloved by weak men who worship power. In my estimation, Freddy here is also a weak man who worships power. It’s why people who don’t know Freddy well become obsessed with becoming, like the Übermensch, so powerful that they are ‘beyond good and evil’ (another phrase of Freddy’s)—they’re strong enough to make any rules they want, but don’t act in a way that makes them look like rules. The Übermensch is inherently anti-authority, but he can’t be an ‘official’ authority, because then normal people would make a (slavish) morality in opposition to the Übermensch. Because then the slaves would be tempted to worship the Übermensch, and the ideal Übermensch would hate that. (But this assumes that the Übermensch has his ego under control, and he should be so confident that he doesn’t need flattery or compliments.)

Most people don’t get the memo though! If you’re as powerful as a proper Übermensch, why do you then take petty revenge, when you should be so above it!? Most people want to be the Übermensch for pure power’s sake; they end up trapped in an ideal they can’t follow. It’s a little complication people don’t understand—to be an ideal Übermensch, you effectively have to be sinless. You may have even noticed, ‘wow! Nietzsche’s Übermensch seems to be invulnerable to everything, including character flaws!’ And you’d be right! I don’t recall Freddy ever saying as such. But I do know that the ideal Übermensch hates all weakness, especially in himself.

More to follow, in part 2!