The Nietzschean concept of overman in its relation to the eternal return: an interpretative analysis of Thus Spake Zarathustra

• Grant number: 13/05130-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): May 01, 2013
• Effective date (End): August 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Oswaldo Giacoia Junior
• Grantee: Hugo José de Carvalho Vedovato
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 14/18078-9 - An analysis of the conceiving and evolution of the nietzschean concept of eternal recurrence of the same, BE.EP.IC

Abstract

In the project that follows, I propose an analysis and interpretation of the concept of Übermensch (Overman) in the work Thus Spake Zarathustra, by Friedrich W. Nietzsche, which shall consist of a starting point for ensuing researches. Such an enterprise comprises great challenges, given the theoretical complexity of the work, which is increased by the intermittent variation of wrinting stylistics, as well as by the opulent array of implicit reference. In Zaratustra, Nietzsche sinthetizes and establishes some of the most decisives ideas to his thought, such as the eternal return, the will to power and the overman; in his posterior works - for instance, Beyond Good and Evil and Genealogy of Moral - there is, most of all, an expansion of the questions elaborated in Thus Spake Zaratustra, which allows an hermeneutical analysis of this work to correspond decisively to an adequate comprehension of the mature Nietzsche, especially in his critique of metaphysics. If Zaratustra efficently sketches the range of nietzschean philosophy, it does so by being a culmination of the path that lies before and into its composition, since in it we see the unfolding of previous reflections. Such decisive ideas, presented in Zaratustra, have their embryos clearly identifiable in the works that preceeded it, from which it feeds off, rendering them fine treatment, and forging prototypes of their final forms. (AU)