Last man


 * For the novel by Mary Shelley, see The Last Man.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) was the originator of the term "Ubermensch", his idea of the most evolved kind of human being. This type may be contrasted to a weak-willed individual, one who is tired of life, takes no risks, seeks only comfort and security. Nietzsche calls this passive being the Last Man.

For the Last Man, nothing great is possible. It is Nietzsche's contention that Western civilization (Europe) is moving in the direction of the last man, for whom nothing matters, who has no great passion or commitment, who is unable to dream, who merely earns his living and keeps warm, perhaps exemplified in the novel Babbitt. With the coming of the last man is the onset of "nihilism," the negation of all values.

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 -- the opposite of the Übermensch was the timid creature Nietzsche called "the last man."

The last man asks: "What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?"

The last man, Nietzsche predicted, would be one response to nihilism. But the full implications of the death of God had yet to unfold. "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."