Three ideas that Nietzsche formulated bear mention in this context: the will to power; the concept of the overman, or superman; and the contrast between what Nietzsche called a "slave morality" and a "master morality."
By will to power Nietzsche meant the urge to dominate or master. He saw this urge as being a primary force in all life, including in man. The will to power, according to Nietzsche, explains the human tendency to press forward--often in the face of great strain, tension, and pain, and even the prospect of death--to accomplish tasks that allow one to feel powerful, capable, and strong. Some have misinterpreted Nietzsche as equating the will to power with domination and mastery over other people. Much more, Nietzsche was talking about power over one's self. He wasn't really interested in political or economic power. What he most cared about was self-mastery and self-overcoming--becoming better than one is now.
Nietzsche saw the will to power as the force that gives a unique value to human life. He thought that mankind could use this force consciously to become the embodiment of the vision of a higher form of man that he articulated. He imagined human beings mastering their own energies and channeling them so as to serve the process of transforming themselves into beings of boundless passion, fierce joy, and creative might. These creatures would be the overmen, or supermen. They would embody our glorious destiny.
But there is one obstacle in the way of achieving the superman that Nietzsche perceived, and it takes the form of a set of moral values--that is to say, concepts of right and wrong. Nietzsche called that set of moral values that stood in the way of the development of the superman the "slave morality." He contended that the slave morality is the product of the fear and resentment of the strong and accomplished by the weak and less able. He accused the Christian church of articulating and legitimizing the resentment of the common people against the masterful people in order to gain power for itself. The church encourages lesser people to define their own weakness as good and the aggressive strength and mastery of their betters as bad, said Nietzsche. According to the slave morality, pride and ferocity are bad and meekness and humility are good; and tough-mindedness is bad and sentimentality is good. The slave morality condemns self-assertion as arrogance, perverts the body and sexuality with shame, and undercuts earthly life by extolling an illusionary afterlife. Nietzsche saw the slave morality as essentially a denial of life.
Nietzsche called for a new, master morality which will affirm life pursued with zeal, promote self-transcendence, and eliminate a preoccupation with guilt. Nietzsche implored man to remain faithful to this earth. Instead of constructing an ideal above the clouds that only underscores human inferiority, he wanted us to conceive of a higher type of humanity and exert ourselves to realize it. But in order to embark on that adventure, he contended, we have to expunge the morality that keeps us enslaved. The superman and the means of creating this being must become the standard of value, said Nietzsche.
"Behold, I teach you the Superman. The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman shall be the meaning of the earth!"
"Man is a rope, fastened between animal and Superman--a rope over an abyss. A dangerous going-across, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and staying-still. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; what can be loved in man is that he is a going-across."
"I love all those who are like heavy drops falling singly from the dark cloud that hangs over mankind: they prophesy the coming of the lightning and as prophets they perish. Behold, I am a prophet of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightning is called Superman."
Nietzsche spent a lot of time in his writings, and especially in Zarathustra, lamenting human frailties and foolishness and looking forward to the time when we will overcome these things. To Nietzsche, the Superman embodies the ideal outcome of this process of overcoming. The Superman represents what man can become at his best. The Superman does not exist as yet. He is not yet born. But he will be born out of mankind. He isn't some kind of separate or transcendent being. So it comes down to an evolutionary job, a breeding job, which is to be completed over, probably, a great period of time. The task of those alive now is to prepare the earth for the Superman, pave the way, serve this process.
I think we can get some hints or partial ideas of what the Superman is like by looking at the range of qualities we see in ourselves and other people today and in people in the past, and then putting those qualities on a scale of low to high based on Nietzschean values, and then extrapolating to the very highest ideal. I think that gets us heading in the right direction.
The qualities that are at the top of the scale: Wisdom is one--wisdom grounded in objectivity, the ability to see the world as it really is. And there's courage, not being fearful or cowardly. Self-mastery is one--in fact, this is probably the most valuable trait a person can have. And willpower, the ability to use fully all of the talents and strengths that you have and not succumbing to weaknesses, and being able to stick to a task once you've made the decision to do something, putting everything else aside and focusing your ability and energy on accomplishing that task. Those are some that I put at the top of the list.
Through intelligent child raising and educational approaches. We can greatly improve in this area over what ends up being the case with people today. That is why I think permissiveness is such a destructive way of raising kids. The only way a child learns self-control that he can exercise as an adult is if external discipline is applied to him when he is young. It is only when a child is given a task to do and he knows that he must do it or there will be hell to pay can he develop the strengths that will support him in overcoming hardship and adversity and getting really big jobs done in later life.
The philosophy today so often is that children shouldn't be pushed to do things they don't want to do, and that they should never have to experience failure or the consequences of failure, and that there should always be a way out. I think it is disastrous to teach kids that there are no real consequences, that nothing bad is really going to happen to you if you goof off when you have been told to do something. It just trains people to behave that way.
What I see in Nietzsche is a striving for a higher type of humanity. To me, that means a more beautiful, more noble human being and human existence. You see that throughout Nietzsche, and to me that is the core of his teaching.
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