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It is interesting in the context of what transpired in Europe in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries to examine some of Nietzsche’s warnings for us that resulted in his promotion of the Superman. Hehad warned against the state that takes the place of God as it will enslave us. It was “the coldest of cold monsters.” Remarkably he predicted the rise of the socialist centralized states and the violence that they would create. Nietzsche sawBismarck’s vulgar “blood and soil” politics as a harbinger of things to come. He condemned the Prussian statesman who unified Germany in 1871 for cementing his power by stoking nationalist resentments and appealing to racial purity.

It was the beginning of a period of great transformation in Europe. There was a debate about the future of the continent, and Nietzsche perceived a shift into a form of “petty politics” of the sort pioneered by Bismarck.Nietzsche hoped for a grand unification of Europe, a trans-national politics in which high culture and art could thrive. What he witnessed instead was more fragmentation, more nationalism, more tribalism. Nietzsche developed frameworks to analyze these transformations that could help us think differently about the unraveling we are seeing todayin Europe and North America.

Nietzsche’s influence has been, and remains, far and wide. Intellectuals have written about the Superman, for example George Bernard Shaw in his 1903 play Man and Superman. In the 1930stwo young American Jewish men with an East European background created the comic book character Superman who went on to become one of the most successful comic book characters of all time. This Superman wore the colors of the United States, red and blue, and like the nation was the champion of justice and fair play. He was described as, “Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound.” Two other young American men, Leopold and Loeb, who in the 1920s planned the “perfect crime” by murdering a younger weaker boy in Chicago to establish their superiority, Jack Kerouac, who mentionsNietzsche in the first paragraph of On the Road, and Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, the American professor who in 2012produced an academic book,American Nietzsche, which dramatically recasts our understanding of American intellectual life and puts Nietzsche squarely at its heart, were all in one way or another influenced byNietzsche.Mom,the American TV series, had an episode called “Nietzsche and a Beer Run” featuring a romance with a muscular fireman who has a Ph.D in philosophy and the heroine. I was struck by Nietzsche’s entry into American pop culture even though there was the underlying running joke of the improbability of a philosopher as a hot fireman. Luc Ferry has been in the forefront of French scholars in engaging with Nietzsche and attempting to contain his influence on French philosophers. Their efforts are framed in philosophic terms: “To think with Nietzsche against Nietzsche.”

Perhaps the best methodological approach to the discussion of the Superman is not to be distracted either by abstruse philosophic debates or to see him in relation to the DC Comics hero but instead to return to Nietzsche. His aim was to urge mankind to become the best that we as human beings can aspire to, the finest, ultimate version of ourselves. The Superman is something that is within us and something that we in the future can become.

The Superman in the Age of the Pandemic

We are now confronted with a serious crisis in the coronavirus pandemic which has attacked humanity. I believe that in this environment we need to remind ourselves of the concept of the Superman which gives us an important perspective and tools we may use to rise to meet the current challenge. It also provides us with a kind of model of leadership we need.

Having rejected the tyrants of the twentieth century, the Hitlers and Stalins, why should mankind turn to the Superman now?Let us look at the United States, the most powerful and economically prosperous nation in the world when the pandemic hit early in 2020.It is well to keep in mind thatone American is dying every minute of the virus, around a thousand Americans are dying daily, and as of writing this piece in mid-August there are about five million cases and over 160,000 have lost their lives. So far, no vaccine has been discovered.

But we do not need Superman to work in the laboratory as a medical researcher. We need Supermen because we wish the wise and the compassionate to guide us in these terrible times, to give us hope as we know they transcend ordinary politics. They are especially needed as symbols because the traditional leadership has proven a dangerous failure. People are disillusioned by their leaders who they see as out of touch, corrupt and incompetent. We need them as studies show the majority of people, in America, for example, are suffering from mental health problems such as depression and thoughts of suicide. The pandemic has made people short-tempered and easily angry; it has promoted violence. Societies desperately need figures that are unimpeachable and can unite and inspire. People seek compassion and wisdom.

Discarding ideas of thestereotypicalSuperman as a muscular bodybuilder, we have some remarkable candidates in our own age. These would approximate to the classic definition of the Superman as laid out by Nietzsche. We havePresident Jimmy Carter, the late John Lewis, and the current chief medical advisor to the US government, Dr. Anthony Fauci to name three. Each one of them in their own way has contributed to society and helped make it better, aspiring towards something beyond itself. Each one of them faced challenges and resistance. But in spite of the hurdles they faced they provided a moral clarity, a moral leadership, and an example that brings out the better angels in us. In that sense they are aspirational figures. There are also public intellectuals whose reach extends beyond the borders of their countries-Professors Rajmohan Gandhi in India, Noam Chomsky in the United States, and DrHarisSilajdzic in Bosnia-Herzegovina, for examples. There are outstanding religious figures: in the United Kingdom, we have figures like Dr. Rowan Williams and Lord George Carey, both former Archbishops of Canterbury, and Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the UK, and in Eastern Europe there is the former Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dr. Mustafa Ceric.

During the pandemic we have seen a tendency for large sections of society to fall back to traditional faith. It gives them a sense of belonging, a feeling of being part of a bigger family and a community and it also provides certainty in an uncertain time. It provides this even when miracles do not happen and those who fall ill and even die cannot avert the disaster by prayer alone. In spite of the limitations of religion to perform miracles, people still cling to what is familiar and it gives them comfort. In the same way the Superman idea allows communities to look up to its leaders and be inspired by them. The problem is that we live in an age where nothing is hidden or kept secret for long so that no leader, however retiring or modest, can escape the destructive attention of the media. Sooner or later the searing cynicism of the media and its iconoclastic eye will spot the weaknesses in individuals and then proceed to tear down those it may have built up only recently. That is why a Superman today would find it very difficult to remain a Superman and our own choices indicate how difficult it is for Supermen to survive.

While the fact that Brad Pitt,one of Hollywood’s most glamorous stars, played Dr. Fauci confirms the good doctor’s popularity in American contemporary mythology, Fauciis also not only attacked by those on the right but by Donald Trump, the president of the US himself.This has generated an avalanche of hatred against Fauci and he has had to hire security to protect himself and his family. That hostility is the fate of Nietzsche’s Superman. It is also a fact that when this ugly Covid-19 virus finally lifts,and with it the current crop of so-called leaders who stand exposed as hollow and corrupt, societies will desperately need to turn to those they can trust for guidance and wisdom. Perhaps then it maybe the time of the Superman.

The writer is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC, and author of Journey into Europe: Islam, Immigration, and Identity