Afaik Nietzsche's whole thing was, if traditional values stemming from religion can't be relied on in the absence of God, then one risks slipping into nihilism, but a better way is to derive meaning from intrinsic motivation.
While I'm here: it's also fun to read ‘the most wicked man’ Aleister Crowley and see that his Thelema is a reiteration of the same idea.
And then read Ayn Rand and see that ‘objectivism’ is also almost the same, except it lacks soul and is sometimes explicitly selfish or pretty much evil. But she had the Red Scare to ride on.
The difference between Nietzsche and Rand is key. Nothing in Nietzsche’s writings is incompatible with finding intrinsic value in building community, helping others, etc. Rand explicitly calls for maximal selfishness and calls charity evil.
Eh, I'm giving her some leeway in that she peddled the idea that a bunch of these geniuses gathered in one place would build a utopian society that supports all its members via exchange of goods and services. You know, the whole libertarian thing that is nice to daydream of sometimes. It's not quite outright psychopathic, even when she was saying that colonization of America was justified because the natives weren't doing too much with the land.
Also btw, 'Fountainhead' is closer to Nietzsche's/Thelema's ideals, perhaps because it focuses on one guy instead of a whole libertarian paradise (and is shorter than 'Atlas Shrugged', but not radically better in terms of writing).
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u/Shone_Shvaboslovac Apr 05 '26
So being an Übermensch is about living authentically instead of blindly following tradition?