According to Nietzsche self-transcendence is the common essence of all moral codes: "Man is something that should be overcome."1 Self-transcendence is of the essence not only of morality, but of humans themselves; it is one’s authentic, civilized humanity. Nietzsche’s model of the self-perfected most authentically civilized man is the overman or the one who has overcome or transcended himself. Self-overcoming as the basis of self-transcendence and self-perfection is in brief what the Nietzschean conception of man is all about.

Confucius once said: "To overcome oneself and return to li is what is meant by jen."2 What Confucius means by li and jen may be put succinctly: li is what constitutes the civilized order by which our authentic humanity or jen is defined. To be more specific, li is the ritual propriety essential to civilized life; it is the civilizing factor or element -- the "civilized form", if you will -- that distinguishes human from non-human existence. The civilizing function of li lies precisely in its disciplinary power or the human power of self-command. Like the Nietzschean overman, the Confucian chun tzu or superior man is also an authentic, civilized human being: he, too, is one who has overcome or transcended himself.

There thus exists at least a notable formal similarity or parallelism between Nietzschean and Confucian philosophy in its conception of authentic humanity: namely, the recognition that the being of man is at heart moral in character.3 They agree that the process of being human, the civilizing process, is fundamentally a process of "moral creativity", namely, the creative transformation of human character by virtue of self-overcoming or self-command. But thus conceived, moral creativity is in truth human creativity: for Nietzsche, man is at once the "creator" and "creature" of his authentic existence. To put this in well-known existential phraseology, "Man is nothing but that which he makes of himself":4 the product of his own "self-making". What makes such creativity "moral" and defines the "moral" dimension of being human is none other than the power and reality of self-overcoming. There can be no question that in both Nietzschean and Confucian thought the human capacity of self-command is of the essence of one’s humanity: self-overcoming is the constitutive principle in the human.

That man is not a stone but, as Ortega observes, must fight for being what he is, and that he is quite capable of acting in opposition to himself or in spite of himself, is, of course, universally recognized. But the nature of the internal struggle or opposition so characteristic of the moral dimension of selfhood is by no means obvious. It is generally agreed that humans differ from the rest of nature, as in Ortega’s words, "Man’s being and nature’s being do not fully coincide."5 The distinction between a "natural" and an "extranatural" (Ortega’s terms) part of humans is undoubtedly one of the most widespread conceptions in civilized thinking. The natural or animal self is the not-yet-civilized part that we readily recognize as part of nature. That seems to be universally agreed. But what of the extranatural part wherein exactly lies the "human differential" between humans and beasts; what is the source of this extra-natural self or humanity?

That Nietzsche’s thought is at heart permeated by an aesthetic or artistic conception of life is almost unanimously recognized by his commentators, including the late Walter Kaufmann and the much discussed Alexander Nehamas. Nehamas’s brilliant commentary, subtitled "Life as Literature," is based entirely on this interpretation, as is in substance Kaufmann’s earlier well-known classic.6 Nehamas’s subtitle recalls a very Nietzschean statement by Ortega: "Whether he be original or a plagiarist, man is the novelist of himself."7 Nietzsche’s words are more emphatic: "One thing is needful -- `to give style’ to one’s character -- a great and rare art!"8 Thus, Nietzsche’s conception of human life and authentic selfhood is modeled fundamentally on the process of artistic creation. The human is at once the artist, the basic raw material, and the finished product of his own self-transcending creativity. Just as the creative artist must overcome the resistance of the raw material in transforming it into a beautiful work of art, so the creator in the human must overcome the resistance of his natural self in giving form and shape to his extranatural humanity (the self as creature). Moral creativity for Nietzsche is essentially aesthetic in character: it is a matter of imaginative ordering whereby the original chaos of raw material or data is organized in virtue of the artist’s creative appropriative power of projection and interpretation. In the context of human life this "chaos" refers to the natural self and is the chaos of unrestrained instincts, drives, desires and passions -- in short, the chaos of (what the Greeks called) Eros. For Nietzsche, at bottom the human is nothing more than a field of warring instincts. Each instinct seeks its own gratification and seeks to control every other instinct. Nietzsche termed this dynamic essence of Eros or the instinctual field the "will to power". This is not itself a particular instinctual drive, but the common feature of all instinctual drives. The life of Eros seeks power: in essence it is the will to power.

For Nietzsche the solution to the problems of civilized humankind and the enigmas of life is not to be found in the cessation of suffering or as the Buddhists would have it through extinguishing the fire and passions of grasping. Rather, and anticipating Freud, it is through the sublimation and creative transformation of the natural self, the chaotic complex of instinctual passions. Sublimation then is the mechanism of self-overcoming and thus the gist of human moral creativity. The overman is one who overcomes himself, that is, who succeeds in sublimating his gross or base instincts along the most fruitful or creative channels.9 There is no doubt in Nietzsche’s mind that the sublimational process of self-overcoming lies at the heart of civilized humanity. From the "civilizational" standpoint, the noble and the ignoble -- or the good and the bad -- are not mutually exclusive: the noble is in fact derived from the ignoble, the good from the bad. If every human society is at heart nothing more than a civilizational strategy of "drives management", then the "repressive" strategy of most traditional societies would be for Nietzsche, as for Freud, highly undesirable. Much of Nietzsche’s critique of Christian morality can be properly understood only from the standpoint of sublimational strategy. But the condition for the effectiveness of the sublimational strategy is the strength or power of self-command. Indeed, according to Nietzsche, the power of self-command -- which is the basis of all creative strength -- is the highest manifestation of the will to power. There is reason to believe that, although the power of self-overcoming is in principle only a special form of the will to power, in the order of discovery the latter concept was derivative of the former. It was Nietzsche’s own experience and insight into the nature of self-command and moral creativity that finally led to the formulation of his power doctrine -- which perhaps is the way it should be.

That Nietzsche always depends on literary or artistic models for understanding life and world, as Nehamas observes,10 is not really surprising in light of his profound attachment to the Greek cultural tradition. For the artistic model of thinking is, among the civilized peoples in the ancient world, most prevalent with the Greeks. Plato’s application of it in the cosmogony and cosmology of the Timaeus is the most notable example. Like Plato’s Demiurge or supreme artisan, the creator in man in Nietzsche’s aesthetic conception of life and self-creativity is also responsible for the passage from chaos to cosmos -- from the lack of order to the acquisition of order. But what is the origin of order: is it immanent in chaos or does it come from a different source? When we apply these questions to Nietzsche’s philosophy, we are immediately reminded of his famous dichotomy in his early writings between the Dionysian and Apollonian principles, that is, between Impulse and Reason, Nature and Culture, betraying unmistakably a dualistic conception of life and reality. Yet in his later works the two symbols have, according to Kaufmann, become merged into one, with the Apollinian principle being absorbed into the all-encompassing symbolism of Dionysus.11 But Dionysus now stands for creativity itself and thus symbolizes at once both the ground of life and spirit, of impulse and reason, of nature and culture, in short, the will to power.

The distinction between life and spirit in Nietzsche corresponds to Ortega’s distinction between the natural and the extranatural parts of the human being. "The spirit (Geist)," says Nietzsche, "is the life that itself cuts into life."12 This implies clearly not only that the natural self constitutes the foundation for the extranatural self, but that the latter actually is derived from the former and is indeed an aspect thereof. Thus Nietzsche’s position is not only radically different from the traditional dualistic conception of man as typically exemplified by the famous "chariot" metaphor in Plato’s Phaedrus in which impulses (nature) and reason are essentially unrelated, but also quite removed from the indifference or even hostility towards the natural that has figured so prominently in contemporary existentialism. If the relation between reason and impulse be represented as between a tamer and his beast, then for Nietzsche the tamer is originally beastly in nature. To put it more emphatically, the tamer is in fact the beast itself, for the beast tames itself: it has evolved out of itself its own tamer.

Although Nietzsche’s philosophy of man ultimately is based on an organic conception of selfhood, the aesthetic model remains a decisive element in his thought, at least as a metaphoric guide. The importance of the aesthetic outlook in Nietzsche is attested by the strong role in his philosophy of the conscious ego with its capacity for imaginative ordering, which is the hallmark of the creative artist. On the other hand, Nietzsche seems to be just as strongly committed to the organic, field conception of order which inevitably deemphasizes the agency and efficacy of conscious ego. This ambiguity and tension between the aesthetic and the organic approach is never quite resolved in his thought. A similar tension and ambiguity is discernible also in the theory of the self in classical (pre-Chin) Confucian philosophy. The "idealistic" and the "realistic" wings of Confucianism are represented respectively by the positions of Mencius and Hsun-tzu, with the former clearly leaning towards the organismic outlook, whereas the latter shows an unmistakably aesthetic orientation. Hsun-tzu frequently employs artisanal metaphors in his writings; his theory of moral order both for the individual self and for society is attributed ultimately to the work of conscious intelligence and often is couched explicitly and implicitly in such metaphoric expressions.13 Like Nietzsche, Hsun-tzu also identifies the initial state of instinctual passions as a state of chaos and anarchy by saying that original human nature is evil. Hence, one must subject oneself to the restraints and disciplines of li in order to lead a civilized life. The fact that for Hsun-tzu human beings ultimately are perfectible, that every one can become a sage shows that for him instinctual desires are not in themselves evil. Under the proper guidance of the conscious intelligence and through the taming power of li the beast in man or his animal self can be harnessed and transformed into a perfected civilized being. A dimly conceived "sublimationalism", in the Nietzschean sense, is detectable in Hsun-tzu’s writings, for whom the good is derived from the bad, the noble from the ignoble. Evil as a matter of chaos, a function of excesses and unresolved conflicts; goodness lies in the achievement of the right proportion, in the restoration of order and harmony which is the hallmark of aestheticism.

Perhaps the purest expression of the way of care or the curatic outlook is to be found in the "idealistic" Confucianism of Mencius. Although artisan metaphors are not absent in Mencius, they are not pertinent to his conception of self and authentic humanity. Mencius certainly recognizes that man must somehow act in opposition to himself in order to achieve authentic selfhood. But the harsh reality or -- to borrow Nietzsche’s favorite term -- "cruelty" of self-overcoming,14 which both Nietzsche and Hsun-tzu would spare no effort to convey to their readers, is clearly not paramount in Mencius’s mind.

Mencius indeed likened the realization of humanity (jen) to the ripening of grains; and one is readily reminded of how in the story of the man of Sung he warns against the disastrous consequences of intervening too eagerly in the natural process of maturation.15 For Mencius the way to become authentically human is simply to recover the "lost mind" in which are contained the germs of the human’s original goodness. If Nietzsche sees in the will to power the unifying principle underlying the life of Eros, then for Mencius the beginnings or origins of humanity are to be found in what he termed the "unbearing mind", the principle of human integrity for the life of jen. This is one that cannot bear the suffering of others; its frustration is that of our primal feeling of care, our instinct for bonding and mutual belonging. This is diametrically opposed to the will to power which, as the primal instinct of grasping, is what underlies the experience of Wonder.