How to Achieve Greatness — The Nietzschean Way

What Friedrich Nietzsche, Viktor Frankl, Howard Hughes, and 50 Cent have in common, and how you can learn from them.

One of the most enduring concepts proposed by the 19th Century German Philosopher, Friedrich Nietszche was that of the master and the slave morality. In perhaps his most famous work, On The Genealogy of Morals (1887)¹, he lays out how what historically has been considered good and bad were defined by the dominant members of societies. In classical Greece and Rome, Nietzsche argued that “good” referred to the beliefs and habits of aristocrats and conquerors, who valued vigor, wealth, and achievement, while “bad,” referred to the slaves and the poor, who were weak, sickly, and miserable. As time progressed however, the rise of Christianity, which he famously regarded as “platonism for the masses” elevated the morality of the poor and weak who hated and resented the strength and success of the aristocracy. While Nietzsche certainly preferred the master morality to the slave morality, he did not view this dichotomy as the basis for a universal form of ethics. Rather, he viewed it as a mental model for evaluating which traits were most likely to lead to success and self-actualization.

The concept of self-actualization was part of psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which posits that each individual in addition to basic physical and communal necessities, has an innate drive towards an accomplishment and self-mastery that must be achieved if one wants to live a truly fulfilling life.² Maslow’s concept of self-actualization does bear some similarities with Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power, which Nietzsche viewed as the underlying driving force of existence. Like Maslow, Nietzsche believed that human beings didn’t simply have an urge to survive, but an urge to thrive, stating “it can be shown most clearly that every living thing does everything it can not to preserve itself but to become more” in book three of The Will to Power,³ and “to have and to want to have more - growth, in one word - that is life itself.”

In order for growth to occur, Nietzsche believed that one must desire something, an ambitious goal that is desired above all else, or else one will remain stagnant. Unrelenting desire to achieve this goal is a necessity, because any endeavor worth pursuing inevitably encounters struggles and setbacks. Nietzsche didn’t believe struggle was to be feared, but to be embraced, and this is where his reverence of master morality becomes useful, as one must align themselves with ideals and traits that convey strength and determination. In The Will to Power, Nietzche further writes:

“Man does not seek pleasure and does not avoid displeasure: one will realize which famous prejudice I am contradicting. Pleasure and displeasure are mere consequences, mere epiphenomena-what man wants, what every smallest part of a living organism wants, is an increase of power. Pleasure or displeasure follow from the striving after that; driven by that will it seeks resistance, it needs something that opposes it- Displeasure, as an obstacle to its will to power, is therefore a normal fact, the normal ingredient of every organic event; man does not avoid it, he is rather in continual need of it.”

This is what Nietzsche meant when he said “what does not kill me makes me stronger,” in Twilight of the Idols (1888).⁴ A more modern encapsulation of this sentiment is the concept of antifragility, coined by essayist and mathematician Nassim Taleb. In his 2012 bestseller Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder, he differentiates between fragile, robust, and antifragile. What is fragile breaks easily when exposed to a stressor, what is robust or resilient stays the same, but what is antifragile gets stronger when exposed to adversity. Taleb argues that naive intervention in normally antifragile systems causes more harm than good, citing examples such as overprotective parents preventing children from healthy risks, the overuse of medication leading to weakened immune systems, and corporate bailouts by the government that artificially propped up the failing banks during the 2008 financial crisis.⁵

To endure struggle to achieve something great, to become antifragile, is also represented by Nietzsche’s emphasis on becoming, rather than being. Nietzsche believed that life was fundamentally chaotic and constantly changing, and that one must constantly be developing oneself in the process of that evolution. He disagreed with Plato and many of the presocratic philosophers who valued being, that the external world was timeless in nature, siding with Heraclitis, who he said “will remain eternally right with his assertion that being is an empty fiction” in Twilight of the Idols.

Nietzsche’s most famous quote “God is dead, and we have killed him” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1882), was a proclamation that Christianity was no longer the guiding spiritual force in the western world, and Nietzsche worried that this would lead to a vacuum of nihilism.⁶ His solution was the ubermensch, or the overman, as a goal for humanity to set for itself. The overman was the most refined version of a human being that would be superior in his psychological traits. He would create his own values, rejecting the old Christian morality in favor of a new one that valued creativity and mastery of oneself. But to embark on such a tremendous task would require struggle and suffering that not everyone was capable of, and Nietzsche knew this. To master ourselves and achieve greatness, Nietzsche knew that it would require antifragility in the face of pain and suffering. In the following parts of this essay, we will explore the lives and work of three individuals who illustrate such antifragility, who attained greatness in the Nietzschean way. These individuals are the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, the industrialist Howard Hughes, and the hip hop artist Curtis Jackson, professionally known as 50 Cent.

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist and philosopher whose experiences in the holocaust compelled him to write Man’s Search for Meaning (1946), shortly after liberation. To say Frankl experienced hell would be an understatement, with constant hunger, hard labor, the death of his wife, brother, and parents, and the imminent threat of his own death that he faced on a daily basis. Throughout his three years in the Nazi concentration camps however, Frankl noticed prisoners died because they had lost hope and a sense of meaning, rather than because they lacked food or medicine. The prisoners who survived were often the ones who viewed their struggles as challenges to overcome, and who looked forward to the future, and this led Frankl to conclude that the way to overcome struggle and despair was to find meaning in one’s life, a process he called logotherapy.⁷ Frankl mentions Nietzsche throughout the book, even quoting his famous “he who has a why can bear almost any how” from Twilight of the Idols.

Frankl didn’t necessarily believe that one had to find ultimate meaning to survive, as in some grand and metaphysical truth that was universal, but proximate meaning, a sense of purpose that could vary from individual to individual, and from day to day. He believed that every person should find their life’s task, which for him was to survive the concentration camps and to one day profess his lessons to the world. He did this by vividly imagining himself in an academic lecture hall with an audience of hundreds of people, lecturing on the psychology of surviving the holocaust. This became his life’s task, and if he died, the wisdom he gained in the Nazi concentration camps would be lost forever.

Was Frankl a perfect example of Niezsche’s ubermensch? Probably not, as Frankl was religious, and Nietzsche wasn’t. That being said, logotherapy is directionally Nietzschean, as although it is not a textbook implementation of Nietzsche’s prescriptions, it nevertheless captures the essence of Nietzsche’s philosophy that we should create our own purpose, and that we should endure suffering in order to become stronger. Frankl’s logotherapy puts the task of building one’s happiness in the hands of individuals, affirming that we choose whether we let suffering break us. We find our own meaning that allows us to endure any hell imaginable, as opposed to surrendering our faith in a God and hoping things would turn out for the best. Logotherapy does not reject religion, but it is sufficiently independent from it.

Howard Hughes was born in Texas in 1905 to a wealthy family. As a child, Hughes was a shy and unmotivated student, with a fear of germs that would later develop into crippling obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Nevertheless, he had a burning passion for science and technology, building his first radio at age 11, and taking flying lessons when he was 14. Hughes was only 16 years old when his mother died, and 18 when his father died, which left Hughes to his own fate at a very young age. He used the money he inherited to launch his career as a filmmaker, coming to fame with his war epic film Hell’s Angels (1930), about aerial warfare during the First World War, which he wrote, directed, and produced.⁸

Hughes was a perfectionist, who devoted everything to his craft, assembling a massive airfleet and risking his life to produce the perfect aerial cinematography, in which he miraculously survived the first of many plane crashes. As audio in film became a major breakthrough for the art form, Hughes even reshot much of his film to incorporate sound into it, costing the production a fortune, but it paid off with Hell’s Angels being a box office hit. After several subsequent movie flops, Hughes directed the film Scarface (1932), about Al Capone, where he doggedly fought Hollywood censorship that thought his film was too violent. Howard Hughes was antifragile in the face of failure, and fought anyone who attempted to subdue his entropic creativity, something Nietzche would have clearly admired.

In 1932, Hughes founded the Hughes Aircraft Company, setting the world record for the fastest airplane to date, the H1 racer in 1935. In 1938, Hughes completed the fastest flight around the world in less than four days. During the Second World War, Hughes was contracted by the United States government to build aircraft for the war effort, which included the Sikorsky S-43 and XF-11, both of which resulted in plane crashes that Hughes barely survived. While his traumatic brain injuries would lead to his declining mental health, Hughes’ bravery and willingness to take risks would have been applauded by Nietzsche. He was an innovator who led his team of engineers from the front, risking his own life by constantly putting his own skin in the game. In The Gay Science (1887), Nietzsche writes:

“For, believe me, the secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities under Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors, as long as you cannot be rulers and owners, you lovers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be satisfied to live like shy deer, hidden in the woods! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and own, and you with it!”

There is little doubt that this aphorism from Nietzsche perfectly encapsulates the peerless audacity of Howard Hughes, who was one of the most noble capitalists of his day. He took relentless risks to advance the frontiers of human innovation, in stark contrast to the capitalists of today who spend their time finding new ways to get people to click on advertisements

The final individual to achieve Nietzschean greatness that we will discuss is the hip hop artist Curtis Jackson, professionally known as 50 Cent. He was born in the South Side of Queens in 1975, with his father having died before he was born, and his mother being murdered while selling drugs when he was only eight years old. 50 was subsequently raised by his grandparents, which wasn’t easy for him considering they had sixteen other grandchildren. For 50, hustling during his teenage years was the only realistic chance he and others his age had for success in the South Side of Queens in the 1980s and 1990s, but it was very dangerous. Between the police and the competitors, one move could end it all.

50 took it upon himself to never wish for things to be any different, embracing Nietzsche’s concept of amor fati. 50 understood that the greatest danger was not the police, nor was it other gangs, but getting soft. Many older hustlers only lasted until their mid twenties, as they would become complacent after initial success, believing it would last forever. 50 Cent sought to align himself with the harshest of truths out there, remarking that “Reality is my drug. The more I have of it, the more power I get and the higher I feel.”

During the mid 1990s, recognizing that being a drug dealer would ultimately lead to destruction, he decided to embark on a music career, and became successful throughout the rest of the decade, even signing with famous rappers like Dr. Dre and Eminenm. However, in the year 2000, a crisis came to his doorstep. He was the target of an assassination attempt due to a feud from his old hustling days. Because there was too much violence associated with him, record producers dropped him, along with all the “friends” he had made in the music industry. Suddenly, he was out of luck. While in the hospital for recovery, he listened to rap music on the radio. By listening to the lyrics, he concluded that most of the rappers who claimed about being from the hood were charlatans with made up stories, which infuriated him.⁹

But instead of dwelling on that anger, 50 decided that what did not kill him needed to make him stronger. He would use this misfortune to his advantage, disappearing for a few months to plot his comeback, with no meddling music executives to push him around, allowing him to take his lyrics as far as he wanted. A bullet had gone through his jaw, which gave his voice a sinister hiss, as he had to move his mouth more slowly, which made him sound more menacing. Since he still had a bounty on his head, he refused to make any public appearances, which created an allure of mystery, a sort of 50 Cent mythology.

By 2003, 50 had returned to the mainstream rap scene, and released his new album Get Rich or Die Tryin.’ The album was a massive success, being hailed as one of the greatest and best selling albums of all time. 50 had finally made it, and he owed it to his indomitable Nietzschean willpower and his antifragility, creatively using the setbacks he encountered to his advantage. He turned water into wine, and cemented himself as one of the most successful hip hop artists of his generation.

1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Walter Kaufmann. On the Genealogy of Morals. Vintage Books, 1989.

2. Valiunas, Algis. “Abraham Maslow and the All-American Self.” The New Atlantis, The New Atlantis, 17 June 2021

3. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Walter Kaufmann. The Will to Power: A New Translation. Vintage Books, 1968.

4. Nietzsche, Friedrich, and R. J. Hollingdale. Twilight of the Idols. Penguin Books, 1990.

5. Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. Random House, 2016

6. Nietzsche, F., & Kaufmann, W. (1960). The portable nietzsche. Viking Press.

7. Frankl, V. E. (2021). Man's search for meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust. Rider.

8. Barlett, D. L., & Steele, J. B. (2003). Howard Hughes: His life and madness. Andre Deutsch.

9. Cent, 50, & Greene, R. (2013). The 50th law. Profile Books.