Shaw (Man & Superman, 3rd act):

4-act drama by Shaw (1903); his response to an appeal that he tackle the Don Juan theme; opened in London (1905) sans the 3rd act, first performed in its entirety in 1915; the long 3rd act is often dispensed with as the play performs well without it; sometimes performed separately as a play on its own; it consists of a philosophical debate between Don Juan (Jack Tanner) & the Devil, with Doña Ana (Ann) & Statue of Don Gonzalo, Ana's father (Roebuck Ramsden) looking on.  Shaw takes Nietzsche's theme, mankind evolving towards the "superman", suggesting the prime mover in natural selection ares women, not men.  Shaw noted: "Don Juan had changed his sex and become Dona Juana (breaking out of the Doll's House & asserting herself as an individual…Don Juan is the quarry instead of the huntsman".  It is an explicit reversal of Da Ponte's Don Giovanni; Ann, representing Doña Ana, is the predator.  Critics claimed that thematically, the fluid Don Juan myth becomes a favourable milieu for “Creative Evolution," the vehicle through which Shaw communicates his cosmic philosophy.

 

"master-moral":

central theme in Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) where he contrasts "master morality" and "slave morality"; morality is inseparable from its culture; ultimately there are no moral phenomena, only moral interpretations.  Master morality values pride & power, judges actions as good or bad: slave morality values kindness, empathy & sympathy & judges by a scale of good or evil intentions.  For strong-willed men, the "good" is the noble, strong & powerful, the "bad" is the weak, cowardly, timid, and petty.  The essence of master morality is nobility; other valued qualities are open-mindedness, courageousness, truthfulness, trustworthiness & an accurate sense of one's self-worth.  Noble types determine their own values, needing no approval; such individuals define “good” on whether it benefits them & their pursuit of self-defined personal excellence, aiding him in a life-long process of self-actualization through the will to power.

 

Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, uncompleted):

philosophical novel by Nietzsche, published between 1883 & 1885;  initially planned as 3 parts; Part 3 was intended to be the climactic end but Nietzsche subsequently decided to write an additional 3 parts; ultimately he composed only the 4th (seen as an intermezzo).  The first 3 published separately & then published in a single volume (1887); the 4th remained private until published with the first 3 in 1892.

 

“new values":

aka ”trans-valuation of all values", a concept Nietzsche elaborated in The Antichrist (1888), he asserts that Christianity, as the religion & moral system of the West, inverts nature, & is "hostile to life".  As "the religion of pity", it elevates the weak over the strong, exalting that which is "ill-constituted and weak" at the expense of that which is full of life and vitality.  The concept of God was the ultimate expression of other-worldly values & religions; such belief gave meaning to life for a time.  This (specifically Christianity) has now run its course; God based religions are exhausted ("God is dead") they can no longer provide values & the danger of nihilism looms.  The Übermensch will be the creator of new values to banish nihilism.

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“Superman" :

aka German Übermensch, concept Nietzsche introduces in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883);  the main character Zarathustra posits the Übermensch as a goal for humanity, a philosophical allegory, with similarity to the Gathas of Zarathustra.  Zarathustra proclaims the will of the Übermensch to give meaning to life on earth (as against the afterlife of Christianity); human life would be measured by how far it advanced a new generation; he is a type of supreme achievement, as opposed to 'modern' men, 'good' men, Christians & nihilists.

 

“Sinn der Erde,":

German, sense of the earth, from Nietzsche Thus Spoke Zarathustra (preface):

                                “The superman is the meaning of the earth. Your will say: the superman is the sense of the earth! I swear to you, my brothers,                                               remain true to earth and do not believe those who speak to you of supernatural hopes!”

Nietzsche is proclaiming the bankruptcy of religions promoting life after death, heaven or hell (i.e. Christianity).  Men must grasp their life on earth, not seek fulfilment after death in another world.

 

Nietzsche (Darwinian idea of the Superman evokes breeding): see EndNote<A>

While differing on points of detail Nietzsche seems to have grasped & accepted major aspects of Darwinism.  Some critics have associated the Übermensch with a program of eugenics.  This is most pronounced when Nietzsche's doctrine focuses on the future of humanity, the goal humanity sets for itself.  The reduction of psychology to physiology implies that men can be bred for cultural traits. 

 

”Dionysiac" idea:

In The Birth of Tragedy (1872) Nietzsche refers to the Dionysian and Apollonian artistic impulses in Greek tragedies.  Apollo represents harmony, progress, clarity, logic: Dionysus represents disorder, intoxication, emotion, ecstasy:; Apollonian & Dionysian juxtapositions appear in the interplay of tragedy: the tragic hero of the drama, the main protagonist, struggles to make (Apollonian) order of his unjust and chaotic (Dionysian) fate.  While the Apollonian exists in a dreaming state of illusions; the Dionysian lives in a state of intoxication, the liberations of instinct & dissolution of boundaries.  

 

Nietzsche (unconscious pupil of Darwin): 

Nietzsche only became interested in natural science late in life; his mastery of foreign languages was limited; it seems certain he did not read Darwin directly but was influenced by secondary sources published in Germany between 1860 and 1880, notably F.A. Lange’s History of Materialism (1866).  He discussed Darwinian ideas with professors at Basel where Darwin was a hotly debated topic.  In the Will to Power he explicitly addresses aspects of Darwinism he rejects, under the section headed “Anti-Darwin”.  His main contention was that Darwin ignored the “the will to power” in favour of adaptation.

 

Nietzsche (from the time that he wrote aphorisms):

Nietzsche first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872) was written in conventional essay style.  Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, published in 1878 was his first use of the aphoristic style that would come to dominate his later writings.  He wrote a 2nd part, Assorted Opinions and Maxims in 1879, and a 3rd part, The Wanderer and his Shadow followed in 1880.  It is in the latter work (part 3) that he first refers to the "Desire for Power", the pleasure of the feeling of power and the hunger to overpower.  He would develop will to power further in his later works.  In this work he also criticized Darwin as naïve & claimed far from being original he was simply a derivative of Hobbes & early English economists (like Malthus).

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Darwin (remoulded 18th Century evolution-ideas):

Darwin did not invent evolution.  Nuances of the idea are found much earlier.  Kant uses evolution to describe the origins of the universe out of gaseous mists (General History of Nature, 1755); the planets are uncoiled from matter, according to natural laws, a mechanical but also divine, process.  The idea assumes preformation, the existence of a mixture perfectly formed germ, an idea Goethe picked up & added clarity to with his Ur-phenomena.  The German Idealists also handle evolution, Herder (in Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity, 1774) writes of becoming throughout history.  Hegel introduces the Geist (sprit) evolving to fuller consciousness of itself over history.  Natural (as opposed to metaphysical) evolution was also on the move in the 18th century.  Linnaeus recognised the hierarchical nature of species which he viewed as fixed by divine plan (1735).  In 1751, Maupertuis wrote of natural modifications in reproduction which could accumulate over generations producing new species; Comte de Buffon suggested species could degenerate into different organisms.  Erasmus Darwin speculated all mammals could have descended from a single microorganism.  The first systematic evolution was Lamarck's "transmutation" theory (1809).  None of these were based on empirical evidence, all were condemned as speculation.  The legacy system, divine benevolent design, continued to dominate.

 

political economy (Malthus):

a term which until the early 20th century simply referred to economy; Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill & Jean-Jacques Rousseau all used this to describe their theories; it is the study of production & trade and their relations with law, custom and government; and with the distribution of national income and wealth; the term originated in 18th century moral philosophy, to explore the administration of a states' wealth; the earliest works are attributed to the British scholars Adam Smith, David Ricardo & Thomas Malthus.  Malthus was a demographer before he was an economist & first came to prominence with his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) where he observed an increase nation's food production improved the well-being of the populace, but only temporarily as it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level.  In 1827 he published Definitions in Political Economy, a glossary of terms and definitions, explicitly organized & defined; he was the first economist to do this.

 

Malthus (and the Lancashire cotton industry): * see EndNote<B>

Spengler appears to be in error here- Malthus did not study the Lancashire cotton industry; none of his writings consider this topic, his most famous work Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), is a study on demography.  It appears he never spent time in the north, home to the cotton mills of Lancashire; he was born & lived in southern England; he did briefly attended school, Warrington Academy, in Lancashire but spent most of his life in Hertfordshire (near London); furthermore, Manchester had no cotton mills until 1783 and was still in the early stages of the textile revolution when he published his Essay on Population.

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Buckle (his History of English Civilization):

(1821-1862), English historian, a self-educated scholar who neither studied nor taught at a university, often called "the Father of Scientific History"; most 19th century historians saw history as a science, those under the sway of Positivist philosophy thought history could unlock the general rules of human development; he was most famous for his History of Civilization in England (1857), in which he treated history as an exact science, his work tried to lay down the laws governing human progress; the work was to provide examples of these principles (via the histories of Spain, Scotland, USA & Germany); Buckle wrote only 3 of the projected 14 volumes

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Machiavellism:

Nietzsche makes direct reference to Machiavelli in his works, in particular The Will to Power; in all he portrays Machiavelli as among his most important influences.

                           “Machiavellianism pure, unadulterated, raw, green, in all its strength, in all its harshness is superhuman, divine, transcendental, it will                                   never be achieved by man, at most approximated.”

                                                                                                                 The Will to Power

He follows Machiavelli in condemning Christianity as a religion of weakness, while also approving of Machiavelli concept of power, his use of force and fraud.  

 

Darwin ("mimicry"):

an evolved resemblance between an organism & another object, often an organism of another species; may evolve between different species, or between individuals of the same species functions to protect a species from predators, making it an anti-predator adaptation. Mimicry evolves if a receiver (such as a predator) perceives the similarity between a mimic (the organism that has a resemblance) and a model (the organism it resembles) and as a result changes its behaviour in a way that provides a selective advantage to the mimic.  HW Bates (1825-1861), an English naturalist and explorer, developed the first scientific account of mimicry in 1861.  His work was based on Amazonian butterflies he studied during his expedition to the Amazon with Wallace, starting in 1848.

 

Marx (disciple of Malthus):

Marx was not a Classical political economist but he did participate in the debates which characterized political economy in the 19th century; he used many ideas developed by earlier political economists. He followed Adam Smith in claiming the most important beneficial economic consequence of capitalism was a rapid growth in productivity abilities.  He praised Smith in advancing the analysis of surplus-value and capital.  Marx followed the ahistorical theory of pulation growth Malthus presented, to which he then added a theory explaining how the surplus population tended to push wages to subsistence levels.  He saw surplus population stemming from economic and not biologic roots.  Finally much of Marx’s formal economic analysis found in Capital (1867) is based on Ricardo's economic theory.  It is a critical analysis of political economy to reveal the contradictions of capitalism & how it is the precursor to socialism; It is an explanation of the "laws of motion" of the capitalism from its origins to its future by describing the dynamics of the accumulation of capital, the growth of wage labour, the transformation of the workplace, the concentration of capital, commercial competition, the banking system, the decline of the profit rate, land-rents; it describes the class struggle rooted in the capitalist social relations of production.