The Old Adam and the Last Man

Abstract

Friedrich Nietzsche described the Last Man in Thus Spake Zarathustra, as a creature of “desire and reason” as opposed to the First Man who was bestial and consumed by the desire for recognition alone. The Last Man (der letzte Mensch) the man of modern liberal democratic society was a “victorious slave” enacting the secular version of the Christian Kingdom of God on Earth. This was a society that put self-preservation first and cultivated physical security and material plenty. Nietzsche’s Superman (Ubermensch) would rise above this and would shed the shackles of conventional morality. But in the meantime we had a society where the weak could control the strong, but one that could become jaded by the experience of history; it could become bored with its own success.