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Posted by Steven Gendel
on 5/10/2008, 3:08 am, in reply to "Re: Zarathustra Prologue 3"
24.255.39.X
Hi Nicole,
I don't know the The Naked and the Dead too well, and the Nietzsche quote is a mini-slice of a very "juicy" mixed metaphor. Typical Nietzsche, it points in five directions at the same time without much guidance. Here is the full context of the quote:
“I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
“All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beast rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that to the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made yourself from worm to man, yet much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape.”
“Whoever is the wisest among you is also a mere conflict and cross between plant and ghost. Bit do I bid you to become ghosts or plants?
“Behold, I teach you the overman . . .”
The most straightforward interpretation of the sentence Mailer quotes is: 1) Man is specifically NOT an "end", a perfect being, or created by God, etc; 2) Looking inside and looking around, Man is a mere shadow of what he might be, or will become; 3) Looked at from a larger perspective, what we hail as wisdom appears as rationalization of the plight of a piece of evolution that is experiencing major flux, at best.
Maybe this will help you, maybe not... If you want to discuss it further e-mail me at sgendel1@cox.net .
Take care,
~ Steven
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: the Dead by Norman Mailer, who begins one
: of the parts of his book with this quote
: "'Even the wisest among you is only a
: disharmony and hybird of plant and phantom.
: But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?'
: ~ Nietzsche," (431). However, I cannot
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