(1844-1900) German philosopher; atheist; early existentialist; Hitler used his view of "superman." Wrote 1. The Birth of Tragedy , 2. Beyond
Good and Evil , 3. The Genealogy of Morals , 4. Thus Spake Zarathustra , and 5. The Will to Power . Western man has been corrupted by two major evils:
intellectualistic philosophy and the idealization of weakness by Christianity. Both deny the natural human spirit. A transvaluation or reversal of values is needed: instead of sympathy and pity -- contempt and aloofness; instead of neighbor love --
egoism and ruthlessness. Why? "Life is precisely Will to Power the fundamental fact of all history." But the transvaluation is for "free spirits" only, for the
Superman. The everyday man is a "bridge," a something to be "surpassed." The new morality is "beyond good and evil," beyond the values of the "common herd," who sublimate their resentment of the naturally superior in the form of a conventional morality that makes the virtue of superiority "evil" and their own weakness "good." Altruism is a typical "slave" ideal. The new morality embodies the realization of the natural virtues of strength and power. "The noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values."