Man is something that should be overcome
Thus Spoke Zarathustra“Man is something that should be overcome” is Zarathustra’s central imperative: it rejects the idea that humanity, as it stands, is a finished end and directs human striving toward what lies beyond it. The Superman names that forward-looking purpose in earthly terms. Repeated across the book’s opening and later teachings, the expression becomes both a claim about human possibility and a demanding standard by which virtues, hopes, and ways of life are tested.
Formulation and Earthly Meaning
The expression appears in Zarathustra’s address to humanity: “I teach you the Superman. Man is something that should be overcome.” Its companion formulation makes the intended horizon explicit: “The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman shall be the meaning of the earth.” The pairing matters. Overcoming is not presented as retreat from earthly life; the Superman is named as the earth’s meaning, and the human task is to direct the will toward that possibility.
A closely related version uses “must” rather than “should”: “Man is something that must be overcome: and for that reason you must love your virtues – for you will perish by them.” The variation preserves the imperative while sharpening its force. Overcoming is not merely an optional improvement to a settled human condition; the saying presses its audience to treat that condition as something to surpass. At the same time, it turns the demand inward: even virtues are not exempt from change, and can become forces through which a person is undone.
Recurrence in Zarathustra’s Teaching
The maxim governs more than a single proclamation. In the book’s account of its discourses, it hovers over Zarathustra’s varied reflections, while the final chapter returns to the Prologue’s concerns: the death of God and the need for the Superman to give significance to the earth. There Zarathustra praises the magnanimous person, whose strength and well-being overflow in gifts to others, and urges his disciples toward independence before leaving them. The teaching thus moves from a public announcement of humanity’s task to a practical demand that those closest to Zarathustra cease depending on him.
The expression also shapes Zarathustra’s counsel to his “brothers in war.” He asks them to make love of life a love of their highest hope, then identifies that highest ideal with the overcoming of humanity. In this address, the imperative belongs to a language of obedience and struggle: what is dear must first be commanded, and a long life is not treated as an end in itself. The ideal therefore calls for disciplined commitment, not passive acceptance of the present or mere preservation of it.
Virtue, Struggle, and Departure
The image of virtue turning against its possessor gives the maxim a more unsettling edge. Zarathustra describes jealousy as a flame whose victim finally turns a poisoned sting against himself, like a scorpion, then asks whether a virtue has ever been seen to turn and stab itself. The claim that one may perish by one’s virtues makes the need for overcoming apply even to qualities ordinarily praised: what once served a person’s strength can become self-destructive if treated as final or unquestionable.
Zarathustra’s own course gives the teaching a dramatic frame. After emerging from ten years of solitude, he seeks to address humanity, but humanity rejects him and he turns away. He later leaves even the chosen few who have stayed with him and returns to solitude. The imperative is therefore not secured by a receptive audience or a permanent following. Its demand for independence culminates in separation: Zarathustra teaches the need to go beyond what is given, then refuses to make his disciples’ attachment to him the endpoint of their development.
