Last man

The Last Man (German: der letzte Mensch) was a term used by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, to describe the antithesis of the imagined superior being, the "Übermensch", whose imminent appearance is heralded by Zarathustra. This 'Over Man' may be contrasted to a weak-willed individual, one who is tired of life, takes no risks, seeks only comfort and security: the Last Man. The last man would be the product of socialism, democracy and other egalitarian belief systems.

Nietzsche saw that nothing great is possible for the Last Man, and it is Nietzsche's contention that Western civilization (Europe) is moving in the direction of the last man, an apathetic creature, who has no great passion or commitment, who is unable to dream, who merely earns his living and keeps warm.

One of Nietzsche's greatest fears was creeping mediocrity. If the "Übermensch" represented his ideal – the ideal of a being strong enough to create his own values, strong enough to live without the consolation of traditional morality, and strong enough to recognize and embrace the notion of change as the ultimate reality – then Nietzsche’s so called "last man" is the exact opposite.

The last man, Nietzsche predicted, would be one response to nihilism. But the full implications of the death of God had yet to unfold. As he said, "the event itself is far too great, too distant, too remote from the multitude's capacity for comprehension even for the tidings of it to be thought of having arrived as yet."

Perhaps the best literary example of this would be the "underground man" in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground. Dostoevsky's novel is written from the point of view of a pathetic nameless "underground man," a cowardly, self-loathing civil servant who does not believe in God or original sin, and believes consciousness itself is a disease, because too much consciousness of one’s self and of the human condition makes one feel as though he has reached the final barrier (a wall) and that there is no way to become anything else. The underground man believes he is not capable of becoming anything, "neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect.” Although Nietzsche wrote about the "last man" before he discovered Dostoevsky, after reading a french translation of Notes From Underground in 1887 Nietzsche wrote "I did not even know the name of Dostoevsky just a few weeks ago… an accidental reach of the arm in a bookstore brought to my attention L’esprit souterrain, a work just translated into French. . . The instinct of kinship (or how should I name it?) spoke up immediately; my joy was extraordinary.”