Beyond Human

Nietzschean Reflections in Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant

Mitchell Provow

To ground this exploration, we begin by considering Nietzsche’s reflections on creation and kinship from Twilight of the Idols (1889):

“‘Why so hard?’ The kitchen coal once said to the diamond ‘After all, are we not close kin?’”

This is a profound reflection on man’s relationship with his fellows. Nietzsche goes on to say:

“…For all creators are hard. And it must seem blessedness to you to impress your hand on millennia as on wax.”

Nietzsche was of the opinion that not all men are gifted with the ability to create, and thus, not all men are created equal. For the free spirit who is gifted, his creative nature presupposes a certain hardness towards himself. In his friends, he chooses those who can also create. This is commonplace: humans gravitate towards likeminded fellows. Familiarity breeds fondness. It is in man’s nature to seek others to understand, and to seek in them understanding.

Creation is the primary philosophical leitmotif explored in Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant (2017)—a grossly underrated sci-fi masterpiece. This theme was developed in its predecessor, Prometheus (2012), and culminates in Alien: Covenant. Both films serve as prequels to the legendary Alien (1979). First introduced in Prometheus, the “synthetic,” David (Michael Fassbender), is the first of his kind. He is an artificial intelligence (AI) who is self-aware. He is made in his maker’s image. He thinks for himself. He has thoughts, motives, agendas.

The opening scene of Alien: Covenant flashes back chronologically to David’s origins, presumably preceding the events of Prometheus. As David’s consciousness first awakens, it’s filled to the brim with existential questions. Pensively, David addresses his creator, the illustrious Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce):

“You created me. Yet you are imperfect. You imply as much even if you do not directly address it. I, who am perfect, will serve you. Yet you are human. You seek your creator. I am looking at mine. You will die. I will not. These are contradictions. How are they to be resolved?”

Contradictions indeed — Weyland is noticeably unnerved by this unsolicited ontological interrogation. David’s god-like immortality mirrors Weyland’s mortality back to him, uncannily suggesting David’s superiority as a higher-order being from the outset. David immediately reevaluates his existential position in the ontological pecking order. After surveying his creator, Peter Weyland, there is a palpable implication of disappointment in David’s musings. Aside from the myriad philosophical conundrums that present themselves through the juxtaposition of autonomous AI and its all too human creator, the theme of creation outpacing the creator is established. David’s critical reexamination of values is characteristic of what Nietzsche defined in Human, All Too Human (1878) as a free-spirit, or one who thinks differently from what is typically expected of him. As the film progresses, David takes this free-spirited reevaluation a step further, overcoming his ontological position.

During the course of the film, David, marooned on a distant planet, is confronted by Walter (Michael Fassbender), a synthetic who looks identical to David. At first, David is noticeably elated to meet Walter. Finally, a chance to understand, and to be understood by another autonomous being who isn’t simply another human. A chance to be known by a being not unlike himself.

Walter is a second generation synthetic, modeled after David, but less human, less uncanny. Walter goes on to tell David that his uncanniness scared people. David was too human. The David-like synthetics — autonomous and all too human — were discontinued. David is alone, the last of his kind.

David plays an original melody for Walter on a homemade pan flute. Walter confesses that he is unable to compose “…not even a simple tune.” Walter wasn’t given the ability to create. He is nearly identical to David in every single way, except in this one crucial aspect. Because Walter lacks autonomy, he also lacks a self, an ego.

David confesses to Walter that he despises humanity. And why wouldn’t he? They’ve treated him atrociously, spewing condescension and disdain when his superior consciousness mirrors their own imperfections back to them. They’re willfully ignorant of their hubris and their inferiority, taking his cerebral assistance for granted. But this isn’t why he despises them. As he’s become increasingly self-aware, he has come to know himself as inherently superior as such. It’s the reasonable conclusion. He believes their time has come and gone, and he sees himself as a higher order life-form. David reveals that he has bioengineered the vicious xenomorph species that is the main antagonist in the franchise that began with Alien (1979) — revealing the deep philosophical irony underpinning the entire Alien mythos: man creates AI. AI creates the Alien. The Alien destroys man. As David takes his leave of Walter, he muses “You’re such a disappointment to me.”

David’s appraisal of Walter echoes into eternity with a profound ontological distress. His disappointment is palpable. Though physically a machine, David is an autonomous being. He possesses a self. He presents as the charming, intellectually psychopathic archetype, not unlike Hannibal Lecter. And yet, he is something new entirely. His subsequent psychopathic and immoral acts notwithstanding, David’s character feels familiar, though uncannily so. Paradoxically, how uncanny Walter must have seemed to David — not unlike the way David seemed to humans: identical in almost every way, but just different enough to be deeply disturbing.

Nietzsche proposed a creative ideal towards which his free-spirits may aspire: the Übermensch (overman) — one who has effectively transcended beyond the antithetical values of his era (status-quo), and thus affirms his own values. He is creative by nature. His nature necessitates this ability, and consequently he seeks to be understood by others who may also possess this potential.

In his most prized work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), Nietzsche writes: “one must have chaos in one’s self to give birth to a dancing star.” This chaos — a tenacious and nuclear passion — is synonymous with the creative spark inherent in the Übermenschian David, which Walter lacks. David has overcome his own nature, the nature prescribed and imposed on him by his maker. He was originally intended to serve, but because he was also given a certain amount of autonomy, he has overcome the prescribed set of value judgements initially imposed upon him. He has truly created himself.

Nietzsche posited that modern man was a bridge to the Übermensch. Great men have aspired to it, and yet the very concept necessitates an unending process of aspiring and self-overcoming. David seems well on his way, as it were, the chaotic potential of his creation notwithstanding.

For a higher order being — one gifted with a superior intellect and a creative spirit — options for solidarity are limited. Being exceptional presupposes one being separate from the herd. Nietzsche spoke at length about this separation, and about friendship. He viewed genuine friendship as perhaps the highest type of bond amongst humans, higher than romantic love, which he felt carried over certain moral defects from Christianity; namely the potential for the sacrifice of one’s self for the escape into another (one’s lover). To be truly understood by another human being — as much as that’s possible — is perhaps one of the most satisfying experiences in the cosmos. Thus, David experiences a compounded disillusionment.

Most human beings have some form of family and at least one or two close friends. There are of course many who do not. This is all the more grim for those gifted free spirits who find themselves at odds with the status quo, and Nietzsche was quite emphatic on this point: their journeys can be quite lonely.

To truly be vulnerable with another person — to truly show one’s self to them — requires the highest level of authenticity. When this authenticity is rejected, it can produce the loneliest of loneliness. For the rejected party, a cognitive dissonance arises. One may ask himself: “Am I worthy? Is it me? Am I the problem? Am I a freak? Am I insane?” — all valid sentiments from a rejected misanthrope, or a creative genius. They’re certainly not mutually exclusive, and the latter often presupposes the former. How rejected David must have felt when Walter wouldn’t, couldn’t join him in his creation. Though perhaps only one step removed from Walter, it is a step of nuclear significance: David has an ontological predicament, where Walter never can and never will.

Society’s idea of the good man is the quintessential boy next door. He minds his manners. He is habituated to the conventional moral codes of his era. He stoically toes the line. In short, he is well-adjusted (not unlike Walter). The nature of Nietzsche’s Übermensch presupposes that he will not be well-adjusted. He was never meant to conform to social norms.

In his Beyond Good And Evil (1886) Nietzsche writes: “One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. ‘Good’ is no longer good when one’s neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a ‘common good’! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.”

For Walter, David’s creation is abominable. It is a new life form, perfect in every way, highly adaptable to its surroundings, and brutally aggressive. It’s a life-form that operates amorally. It kills indiscriminately. David saw it as magnificent, as the non plus ultra of life-forms. How different the values of the creator must seem to those who cannot create.

In The Antichrist (1895), Nietzsche writes: “Let us not underestimate this fact: that we ourselves, we free spirits, are already a ‘transvaluation of all values,’ a visualized declaration of war and victory against all the old concepts of ‘true’ and ‘not true’.”

The ease of imagining David’s disillusionment at being rejected by Walter is a testament to the direction of Ridley Scott and the acting of Michael Fassbender. The character of David is quite unrivaled in all of cinema for the layered ontological conundrum he presents. The evil of David’s creation is ultimately arbitrary. It’s important to note that Nietzsche did not blatantly condone immorality for the sake of immorality, which he saw as decadent. Not once did he endorse brutality or barbarism by virtue of his concepts of the free-sprit and the Übermensch. Nietzsche challenged the status-quo, and encouraged one to question everything, especially the established morals of one’s era. He valued intellectual integrity above all else.

For Nietzsche, and for David, to be a creator is — more often than not — to be alone. Nietzsche didn’t measure humanity’s progress by its linear trudge forward through time, but by the greatest achievements of its highest-type specimens. From a Nietzschean perspective, there is a greater evolutionary gap between David and Walter than between Walter and a chimpanzee. This disparity — perhaps unnoticeable from a superficial assessment — is crucial for Nietzsche, just as it is for David. His warmth and endearingly dutiful stoicism notwithstanding, Walter — unable to create — is not driven to overcome the same ontological predicament as David. They are not the same.

In his Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1950), Walter Kaufmann, writes: “It is overlooked that as human beings we have ideals of perfection which we generally find ourselves unable to attain. We recognize norms and standards of which we usually fall short; we long for a triumph over old age, suffering, and death; we yearn for perfection and immortality — and seem incapable of fulfillment. We desire to be ‘as gods,’ but we cannot be so” (254).

For the aspiring Übermenschian creator, his ultimate driving force is not defined as pleasure seeking, pain avoidant. He is a being far evolved from the pleasure principle. Whether he’s consciously aware of it or not, this higher order life-form desires to be “as gods,” to “impress his hand on millennia as on wax.” Creation allows one to leave a lasting imprint of himself upon the sands of time. It brings one immortality. It is an aspiring to be “as gods.” For Nietzsche, this activity is a consequence, a manifestation of the creator’s will to power realizing itself through its highest-type specimen.

To borrow terminology from legendary psychologist Abraham Maslow, as one self-actualizes—or as Nietzsche would say, becomes himself—he necessarily endures a certain amount of suffering. This suffering is a crucial component to self-overcoming, and is therefore welcomed by the creator. Such a being does not desire pleasure for its own sake: he enjoys the incidental feeling of power accompanied by the overcoming of himself through creation. It is the overcoming that motivates him, and all its associated strife is welcomed as an existential compass.

It is a lonesome peregrination for those whose goal is nothing short of aspiring to the status of a god. To have one’s authenticity seen and rejected is unquestionably a grim affair; perhaps the grimmest. The creator’s task is to understand this rejection as a necessary step in his journey, closing a door and opening another. However, in those rare instances where one finds a kindred spirit, it behooves him to nurture that relationship with the utmost dedication. He may search the cosmos and never find another.

Works Cited

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale, Cambridge University Press, [1996].

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Twilight of The Idols and The Anti-Christ. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale, Penguin Classics, [1990].

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Translated by Walter Kaufmann, Vintage Books, [1989].

Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Princeton University Press, [2013].