Friedrich Nietzsche

"Nietzscheans don't believe in optimism. It inhibits survival."

- Gaheris Rhade

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher and classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and aphorism. Nietzsche's influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy, notably in existentialism and postmodernism. His style and radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth have resulted in much commentary and interpretation, mostly in the continental tradition. His key ideas include the death of God, perspectivism, the Übermensch, the eternal recurrence, and the will to power. Central to his philosophy is the idea of "life-affirmation," which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life's expansive energies, however socially prevalent those views might be.

Nietzsche's philosophy played heavily into the back story of several characters featured in the 2000-2005 television series Andromeda. An alien race known as the Nietzscheans took their name from the philosopher and patterned their culture after his teachings.

In the pilot episode of the series, "Under the Night", Nietzschean High Guard commander Gaheris Rhade quotes Nietzsche, "Man is for woman a means. The end is always a child." The context of the quote is in relation to Captain Dylan Hunt's pending nuptials to Sara Riley.

Like the Nietzscheans in Andromeda, the genetically enhanced humans from the Star Trek mythos known as Augments likewise adopted Nietzche's principals into their own code of ethics. When comparing their genetic superiority over humans, the Augment known as Malik quoted Nietzsche by saying "Mankind is something to be surpassed".