Frantz Fanon and Friedrich Nietzsche on Humanity

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Having witnessed the racism and assimilation in the colonial Antilles, Frantz Fanon devotes himself to the battle for a human world--that is, a world of mutual recognition--where all races are equal. Applying the idea mutual recognition from Hegel to his situation, Fanon believes that mutual recognition is achieved when the White and the Black approve each other’s human reality, which is the capacity to have dreams and to turn them into reality. On the contrary, Friedrich Nietzsche believes the hope for humanity lies in the endless self-transcendence of becoming the overman, ignoring whether one receives acknowledgement from others or not. From his perspective, the overman is better achieved by solitude. Furthermore, Nietzsche bitterly criticizes the advocation of equality which is motivated by revenge against more powerful people. Nevertheless, he fails to realize that there are other situations where fight for equality is crucial to fully claim the humanity of the oppressed people. One of such situations is that for the Black in the colonial Antilles, which Fanon describes in Black Skin, White Masks, characterized by the lack of recognitions from the superior Europeans. As far as I am concerned, mutual recognition is important not only for solving the Black’s problem in the colonial situation, but also for empowering people of different groups nowadays to establish equal relationships, to maximize own potentials, to exceed to become the overman. To be specific, I will elaborate how the mutual recognition theory could be used to free women and men from deeply rooted inequality. First of all, Nietzsche emphasizes that human’s ultimate goal should be state of the overman, who is constantly overcoming himself and destroying old ... ... middle of paper ... ...uture, rather than Nietzsche’s idea of the overman. While Nietzsche focuses on individual excellence, Fanon explains the importance of mutual recognition between two parties with power disparities. You may argue that Nietzsche’s theory about the overman is more useful for everyone’s daily life, but Fanon’s idea which is specific about the colonial situation seems too far away. However, can you imagine a world with millions of overman who is isolated from the crowd, receiving no recognition from others, caring nothing about the discriminated ones? Rather than live in such a world, I would like to apply Fanon’s mutual recognition to daily life, to build equal and win-win relationship with people from other groups. From my opinion, one of such relationships with some sort of stereotype and inequality between the two sides is the relationship between women and men.

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