Selbstüberwindung as expressed in Fight Club: A contemporary interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Many of Nietzsche’s philosophical antidotes concern the status and consequences of contemporary egalitarianism. The popular novel/film Fight Club parallels Nietzsche's prescriptions on the suffering induced by modernity, especially the “Death of God” and the notion of “Slave Morality”.
This statement is likely the most misinterpreted claim of all Nietzsche's philosophy. Many accept this as an atheistic celebration; God is dead because rational thought has triumphed in the modern age. This is not, however, Nietzsche simply signing the death certificate of the Christian God. Atheism was nothing new in his time; it may have been a controversial statement, but at face value it was far from cutting edge. It is in fact a much more profound (and much more horrifying) sentiment. This is not a Modernist delight, but a Postmodernist’s alarm.
Modernism: Modernism often embraces grand narratives and a belief in linear progress, rational thought, and the possibility of universal truths
Postmodernism: Postmodernism rejects grand narratives and the idea of a single, objective truth
Nietzsche argued that christianity gained popularity during the early middle ages in the minds of timid slaves who lacked the stomach or resolution to get what they really wanted, so they clung to a philosophy that made virtue of cowardice.
So, when Nietzsche says that God is dead he is not referring to any one god, rather to the broader idea of universal and transcendent truth. A more literal statement would be, “Truth is Dead”.
He claims that in killing God, we have exposed ourselves to a vacuum of nihilism, the result of which is in an overwhelming sense of “death anxiety”. The suffering experienced throughout life has no meaning as there is no heavenly salvation to look forward to in death.
Fight Club concentrates thematically on the state of western masculinity. Throughout the story, the unnamed main character tackles the Nietzschean odyssey of Selbstüberwindung (Self-overcoming). Selbstüberwindung is the process by which a great soul or “übermensch” rises above their difficulties to fully embrace who they are.
Nietzsche outlines four specific edicts in which one may overcome death anxiety and become the übermensch.
1. Own up to envy
Christianity says to feel shame, but Nietzche says there is nothing inherently wrong with envy, so long as we use it as a guide
Those who make us envious are simply examples of what we could one day become
Face up to our desires, fight to honor them, and embrace failure with dignity
2. Don’t be a Christian
In the entire new testament there is only one person worth respecting- Pilot
Claims that christianity emerges in the minds of timid slaves who lack the stomach or resolution to get what they really wanted, so they clung to a philosophy that made virtue of cowardice (Slave-morality)
They fashion a creed that denounces what they want but were too weak to fight for, praised what they didn’t want but happened to have
Sexlessness- Purity
Weakness- Goodness
Submission- Obedience
Not being able to take revenge- forgiveness
3. Never drink alcohol
“There have been two great narcotics in European civilization- Christianity and Alcohol”
Both numb pain
Fatal satisfaction
How little you
4. God is dead
Religious beliefs are false- he know, but he still observed they were beneficial in helping us cope
The gap left by religion should be filled with Culture
Critical of the way that is modern era did this
Education used as some boring set of academic exercise
Should be used as a guide to life
Cites the greeks using drama as a guide for moral education
Many of these prescriptions are mirrored in Fight Club, especially those claims relating to morality, religion, and desire.
In Fight Club, the main character is a contemporary interpretation of the übermensch. Before his transformation, his spirit is embodied wholy in the acquisition of material property and wealth. Nihilism has corrupted his soul to a state in which he cannot determine his reason for existence. His life consists of an endless loop of insignificant events, an allusion to the Nietzschean concept of eternal recurrence.
Slowly the main character’s descent into insomnia introduces him to his hallucinatory friend/savior Tyler Durden. Tyler represents his subconscious and innate desire to overcome emasculation and nihilism.
Tyler Durden takes on the role of Nietszche’s Zarathustra and preaches to his alternate self about the decline of civilization.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Thus-Spake-Zarathustra
The main character’s namelessness is reminiscent of Zarathustra’s calling to the “masses”, and Tyler is constantly preaching a contemporary interpretation of Zarathustra’s incitement. Tyler believes postmodern society acts as a mask for death anxiety, soaking the masses with indulgence and consumerism. It denies suffering as an inherent part of life, and demonizes violence at all costs.
The central plot of Fight Club is the return of violence, discomfort, inequality, and the will to power, as a means of reminding oneself of their own impermanence; Forcing one another to confront death anxiety head on.
“You have to know, not fear, know that someday you are gonna die”
Fight Club (3/5) Movie CLIP - Chemical Burn (1999) HD
“It is best understood as an irrational force, found in all individuals, that can be channeled toward different ends”
Neitszche believed that destruction was a requirement for creation. Tyler conveys this ideal in his decree that sacrifice is the ultimate trait of the higher man, “Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing”; “It’s only after we’ve lost everything, that we are free to do anything”
In Nietzsche’s scripture, the prophet Zarathustra ultimately realizes that the masses are unwilling to accept his antidote for civilizational survival, so he instead organizes a small group of “higher men” who are willing to transcend their status. Durden initiates a similar cult of fanatics who are “willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good”. He is not satisfied with fight club’s status as essentially a self-help group. He instead begins to conjure a plan to create a new civilizational order. He intends to collapse modern society as we know it, and reorganize it in his own image- with decentralized higher men serving as the aristocracy of this new order. Nietzcshe called this the “Reevaluation of all values”.
At the crescendo of the film, the main character and his alter ego quite literally fight one another over the implementation of Tyler’s societal deconstruction. His alter ego attempts to have him physically emasculated as a practical reminder of his metaphorical emasculation by society. Eventually, they have fought long enough for both personalities to realize the futility of they’re combat. The main character has endured excessive pain and suffering, and is even thrown down a set of concrete stairs (by himself) allegorically hitting rock bottom.
Finally, he shoots himself in the head (If I remember correctly this does not happen in the book, but we will go with the film adaptation). He confronts death in the most extreme sense imaginable. He somehow survives, as he openly accepts suffering and death, and in doing so kills his subconscious expression of Tyler Durden.
Do you mean "antidote"? To what malady does Nietzsche offer it?
ReplyDeleteIs the Fight Club/Nietzsche connection something you came to on your own?
"timid slaves who lacked the stomach or resolution to get what they really wanted"-- What of those who think it important to balance what they really want with what others want, in order to live amicably WITH others and not in opposition to them? They don't see it as a matter of "stomach or resolution," but of common civic decency.
“Truth is Dead”-- what would be the status of that statement, for Nietzsche? If purportedly true, isn't that a paradox? If not, why should we ponder it at all?
"The suffering experienced throughout life has no meaning as there is no heavenly salvation to look forward to in death." --But Nietzsche both rejects heavenly salvation AND thinks it possible to generate meaningful life through suffering. So his point is that the nihilists are only those who aren't also Nietzschean?
If Fight Club's message is that violence cures nihilism, some of us will consider the cure no better than the disease. But maybe the message, like Nietzsche's perspective on "will to power" etc., lends itself to a more subtle and less literal interpretation?
I most certainly do not agree with all of Nietzche's prescriptions. The antidote is his multi step process; the malady is death anxiety and stagnation. The Truth is dead, may seem paradoxical, but only if you take the statement itself as objective. I think the senselessness of that statement is what creates such anxiety and within the speaker (in the gay science); in other words, it's a continual loop of meaninglessness.
ReplyDeleteI believe he thought nihilism as a fallback option for those modernists who saw that religion no longer offered concrete truth, not that nihilists are everyone else. I also don't think violence cures nihilism, but is rather a modem for the modern man to find the path to enlightenment through suffering, in a world devoid of it. Violence in this case would be a means to end, not just for the sake of itself.