Superman vs. Übermensch! Never coming to a theater near you!

how two cultures took one idea and ran with it in vastly different directions

Where did Superman come from? Krypton, you might say, assuming everyone knows that. Or if you want to stay down-to-earth you might say Kansas, since that’s where Smallville, his boyhood home, was located. But today let us consider the origin of not one but two supermen and remember one of the great ironies of history.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th century German philosopher who was one of the most profoundly influential thinkers in the history of philosophy. His ideas continue to resonate today in philosophical circles. Nietzsche wrote a book called Thus Spoke Zarathustra in which he promulgated the idea that God was dead as a source of values and meaning in human life.

After killing off God, Nietzsche felt the need to replace God and the value which God gave to life, so he came up with the idea of the Übermensch. The Übermensch was a physically and mentally superior human being striving for idealistic goals in this life rather than expecting a reward in the afterlife. In Nietzsche’s view, the Übermensch gave meaning to human life in a down-to-earth way that Christianity’s other-worldly idea of God did not.

The translation of the term Übermensch from German to English is rather problematic. Über can mean different things depending on context, but the term generally translates into the English words over or superior. And while mensch does not…