SOURCE: Solomonson, Michael. “Man and Superman: The Shavianizing of Friedrich Nietzsche.” Independent Shavian 34, no. 3 (1996): 54-59.

In the following essay, Solomonson investigates the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy on Man and Superman.

Scholars often suggest a link between the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and that of Bernard Shaw. In particular, Shaw's Man and Superman is cited as an example of Nietzsche's influence upon the playwright. In his preface to the play, Shaw identified Nietzsche as being “among the writers whose peculiar sense of the world I recognize as more or less akin to my own” (Prefaces 162). Shaw further admitted in the preface to Major Barbara that the term “Superman” (“Übermensch”) was “borrowed by me from Nietzsche (Prefaces 117). Perhaps because of these admissions, critics and scholars examining Shaw's career have often focused on the perceived intellectual and philosophical ties binding the men. While Shaw's awareness of Nietzsche is indisputable, the...