The Superman as salamander: symbols of transformation or transformational symbols?

Abstract

Taking its cue from David Holt's discussion of Jung and Marx in relation to alchemy, Christianity, and the work against Nature, this paper discusses Goethe, Nietzsche, and Jung in relation to alchemy and the work on the self. It focuses on the idea of transformation as central to Jung's understanding of both Goethe's Faust and Nietzsche's Thus spoke Zarathustra. And it argues that, in alchemical terms, the Superman becomes the salamander – while suggesting, in the hidden and unspoken part of its title, that the Superman does not just become a salamander, he becomes the philosophers’ stone.