Is it a virtue to be driven? At times, it seems our greatest admiration is reserved for those whose past is a staggering list of accomplishments, who keep up a life so filled with activities that it seems impossible that one person could maintain them all, yet who make it look easy. Where does this ideal of super-achievement come from? For Nietzsche, the greatest virtue was self-overcoming, embodied in his figure of the Overman or Superman, the one who surpasses himself. Nietzsche despised Christianity, and his Overman is an aristocratic elitist, but it was Christianity who gave us the Protestant work ethic, in which endless work and accomplishment became a religious virtue. Eventually, the ideal disconnected from its religious origins and simply became the work ethic.
March 15, 2024
March 15, 2024
March 15, 2024
Is it a virtue to be driven? At times, it seems our greatest admiration is reserved for those whose past is a staggering list of accomplishments, who keep up a life so filled with activities that it seems impossible that one person could maintain them all, yet who make it look easy. Where does this ideal of super-achievement come from? For Nietzsche, the greatest virtue was self-overcoming, embodied in his figure of the Overman or Superman, the one who surpasses himself. Nietzsche despised Christianity, and his Overman is an aristocratic elitist, but it was Christianity who gave us the Protestant work ethic, in which endless work and accomplishment became a religious virtue. Eventually, the ideal disconnected from its religious origins and simply became the work ethic.