Anna Karenina as a Nietszhean Superman

A detailed Summary of Anna Karenina as a Nietszhean Superman

Anna Karenina as a Nietzschean Superman

Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina almost fifty years before Nietzsche described his philosophy of the Superman. Readers, however, can easily apply the descriptive framework of Nietzsche's theory of the Superman to Anna in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Anna displays an overwhelming amount of characteristics that Nietzsche would have expected to see in his Superman. Nietzsche's theory must be applied retrospectively to Tolstoy, so it is certain that Tolstoy was not trying to create a character who fit the mold of a Nietzschean Superman, but it is certain that Nietzsche was no stranger to the writings of Tolstoy, and that unlike Tolstoy, Nietzsche would admire Anna. If one applies the attributes of a superman to Anna, then Tolstoy created a character that one could view as a sort of presuperman, but a Superman nonetheless. The argument of this paper is that, despite Tolstoy's intentions to condemn Anna for her selfishness, readers can find characteristics in Anna that appear as possibl!

e inspirations to Nietzsche in developing his Superman.

Nietzsche uses the character Zarathustra to reveal his definition of a Superman. At the end of his travels, Zarathustra reaches a state where he has renounce

y and lift Anna from her degraded position in society. Society's will is that Anna divorces; nevertheless, Anna acts according to her own morals and travels to Italy with Vronsky while still married to Karenin.

Thiele, Leslie Paul. Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul. Princeton

This paper will attempt to show that the character, Anna Karenina, exemplifies the ideals that Nietzsche seeks in a Superman. A problem immediately arises, however, since as a women it seems that Anna cannot become a Nietzschean Superman. Nietzsche never dealt with the issue of whether a women could become a Superman, but simply by calling a Superman, a Superman, it appears impossible. Anna often has masculine characteristics in the novel, but she must remain a feminine character so that her adultery carries the same force as a transgression of society. Anna takes on masculine characteristics by ignoring the instinct of motherly love when she abandons her first child and by treating her child with Vronsky as meaningless. Simply giving Anna masculine characteristics, however, does not reconcile the problem of asserting that a women could become a Nietzschean Superman. It seems highly unlikely that Nietzsche intended that a women as well as a man could become a Superman, a!

After traveling with Vronsky in Europe for three months, Anna feels "unpardonably happy and full of the joy of life," despite knowing that Vronsky and her husband are unhappy (Tolstoy, 432). Earlier in the paper it is mentioned that a superman must not feel pity if they are going to be true to their own will. Nietzsche asked, "Who will ever reach the height of greatness, if he does not feel within himself the power and the will to inflict great suffering" (Kennedy 181). Anna does not sympathize at all with Vronsky and his struggle to adapt to a new social milieu or his abandonment of a promising career, nor does Anna sympathize with her husband's miserable life. Tolstoy writes that Karenin's "unhappiness had given [Anna] too much happiness to be regretted" (Tolstoy, 392). Furthermore, Anna does not even think of her son, who yearns for his mother.

athustra who becomes a Superman when his pain and suffering peak, Anna begins living by a new moral code when her suffering becomes too intense. The morality that Anna is experimenting with one could describe as a way to find total satisfaction in love regardless of conventions.

Suffering is an important part of the development of the Superman. Nietzsche wrote that man must give birth to the Superman by self-evaluation, and that grief was the most powerful incentive that drove a man toward self-evaluation (Nietzsche, 42). Self-evaluation is necessary in the creation of the Superman because it helps the higher man pinpoint exactly what causes his suffering and what boundaries he must transgress to find happiness. The process of changing a higher man into a Superman has two distinct stages of suffering. In the first stage of suffering, higher man suffers from what he is as an individual, and is disgusted at himself for being so weak that he leads a life completely in accordance to that which is expected by society. This early stage of suffering is in conflict with the higher man's own individual desires and impels him to extreme somberness and pessimism. Nietzsche coins the second stage of suffering as "when man ceases to suffer as an individual a!

For a higher man to transform into a Superman, he must destroy some aspect of common morality. The emerging morality can become a supreme law that can set a tidal wave of generational change in motion, or if people do not accept the Superman's new morality, then Nietzsche writes that the Superman must defend his action at all costs. Nietzsche's Zarathustra tells a Superman, "You shall seek your enemies! You shall fight your fight! You shall do battle for your thought! And if your thought s

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Approximate Word count = 3571
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History