Comfort is the Enemy — Nietzsche's Last Man

The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly. ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra It is important in life that we have not just heroes but anti-heroes. We know who we are not just by what we are moving towards, but by what we are moving away from. In previous instalments we have talked a lot about Nietzsche's ideal; we've looked at his life-affirming Dionysian ideal in a couple of articles and we looked at the stages of the development of his Übermensch in the Three Metamorphoses article. But Nietzsche also has a counter-ideal and the name of this counter-ideal is "The Last Man". This counter-ideal is articulated most thoroughly in the same place as his ideal — in the book for all and for none — Thus Spoke Zarathustra. There we find the Last Man introduced in sharp and eternal contrast with Nietzsche's ideal — the Übermensch. These two poles — the Übermensch and the Last Man are two responses to the death of God. In the ruins of the transcendent values, Ni

The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly. ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra It is important in life that we have not just heroes but anti-heroes. We know who we are not just by what we are moving towards, but by what we are moving away from. In previous instalments we have talked a lot about Nietzsche's ideal; we've looked at his life-affirming Dionysian ideal in a couple of articles and we looked at the stages of the development of his Übermensch in the Three Metamorphoses article. But Nietzsche also has a counter-ideal and the name of this counter-ideal is