I'll stick my hands up and say I'm not sure. I've never done much more than soak up odds and sods of philosophy.
As I understand it though, Neitzsche's Ubermensch can be translated as either ultimate or over-man. In which case Prof. X / Magneto are merely different sides of the same coin. This motif of antagonists merely making different moral choices that lead them to 'good' and 'evil' is something that recurs again and again in popular fiction. I suppose one could argue that this popular trend could have been deliberately utilised rather than being a cultural influence...
What about heroes from Greek, Celtic and other mythologies? It's fair to say that some of them are quite superpowered, and not all of them come from 'superior races' (or at least, not to the extent that that explains their powers)...
Not quite the same. The Greek gods represent not-human forces eg love, the sun, wine-drunkenness. They just happen to have man shapes (and nt always - Zeus v fond of being a swan, etc etc.)
The concept of the NIetzschian uber man is quite distinct - it is a human but a certain perfect quality of human, vamped up as it were... (=> Aryan super-man, etc etc)
That's why I referred to heroes, not gods. Hercules, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't represent any particular primal force, but it's probably fair to say he has super-strength; similarly Achilles' invulnerability everywhere but his heel; in Celtic myth, Cúchulainn's 'warp spasm' could certainly be considered a super-power, etc.
I'm not equating this with the Nietzschian Übermensch, but I would suggest that such heroes are for the most part more direct fore-runners of comic-book superheroes.
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andrewducker) wrote2007-07-06 07:20 pm
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My impression is that the idea of a single superhero (as distinct from a superior race) goes back to Wylie's Gladiator(1930).
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche
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As I understand it though, Neitzsche's Ubermensch can be translated as either ultimate or over-man. In which case Prof. X / Magneto are merely different sides of the same coin. This motif of antagonists merely making different moral choices that lead them to 'good' and 'evil' is something that recurs again and again in popular fiction. I suppose one could argue that this popular trend could have been deliberately utilised rather than being a cultural influence...
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The concept of the NIetzschian uber man is quite distinct - it is a human but a certain perfect quality of human, vamped up as it were... (=> Aryan super-man, etc etc)
no subject
I'm not equating this with the Nietzschian Übermensch, but I would suggest that such heroes are for the most part more direct fore-runners of comic-book superheroes.