Thus Spoke Zarathustra E-Book

Friedrich Nietzsche

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Capstone Classics
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 503

Beschreibung

A startling and thought-provoking work from one of the most powerful philosophers in the Western canon Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Philosophy Classic, is Friedrich Nietzsche's classic masterpiece of philosophy and literature. Nietzsche writes from the perspective of Zarathustra who, after years of meditation, has come down from a mountain to provide his wisdom to an unsuspecting world. He offers enduring observations on God, the Übermensch, the will to power, and the nature of human beings. This deluxe hardback Capstone edition includes an insightful introduction from leading Nietzsche scholar Dirk R. Johnson Perfect for students and scholars of philosophy, literature and history, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Philosophy Classic belongs in the libraries of anyone interested in the philosophy of Nietzsche and in his powerful explorations of God, life, power, and humanity.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

AN INTRODUCTION

WHO IS ZARATHUSTRA?

NIETZSCHE'S EARLY YEARS

WANDERING YEARS

CAMPAIGN AGAINST MORALITY

DARWINIAN NATURALISM

THE BIRTH OF

ZARATHUSTRA

PUBLICATION

THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA – OUTLINE

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

PART FOUR

RECEPTION AND INTERPRETATION

THE ÜBERMENSCH

ZARATHUSTRA

'S NEW PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM?

ZARATHUSTRA

’S ULTIMATE MESSAGE

NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

NOTES

ABOUT DIRK R. JOHNSON

ABOUT TOM BUTLER‐BOWDON

PART ONE

Zarathustra's Prologue

Zarathustra's Discourses

THE THREE METAMORPHOSES

THE ACADEMIC CHAIRS OF VIRTUE

BACKWORLDSMEN

THE DESPISERS OF THE BODY

JOYS AND PASSIONS

THE PALE CRIMINAL

READING AND WRITING

THE TREE ON THE HILL

THE PREACHERS OF DEATH

WAR AND WARRIORS

THE NEW IDOL

THE FLIES IN THE MARKET‐PLACE

CHASTITY

THE FRIEND

THE THOUSAND AND ONE GOALS

NEIGHBOR‐LOVE

THE WAY OF THE CREATING ONE

OLD AND YOUNG WOMEN

THE BITE OF THE ADDER

CHILDREN AND MARRIAGE

VOLUNTARY DEATH

THE BESTOWING VIRTUE

PART TWO

THE CHILD WITH THE MIRROR

IN THE HAPPY ISLES

THE COMPASSIONATE

THE PRIESTS

THE VIRTUOUS

THE RABBLE

THE TARANTULAS

THE FAMOUS WISE ONES

THE NIGHT‐SONG

THE DANCE‐SONG

THE GRAVE‐SONG

SELF‐SURPASSING

THE SUBLIME ONES

THE LAND OF CULTURE

IMMACULATE PERCEPTION

SCHOLARS

POETS

GREAT EVENTS

THE SOOTHSAYER

REDEMPTION

MANLY PRUDENCE

THE STILLEST HOUR

PART THREE

THE WANDERER

THE VISION AND THE ENIGMA

INVOLUNTARY BLISS

BEFORE SUNRISE

THE BEDWARFING VIRTUE

ON THE OLIVE‐MOUNT

ON PASSING‐BY

THE APOSTATES

THE RETURN HOME

THE THREE EVIL THINGS

THE SPIRIT OF GRAVITY

OLD AND NEW TABLES

THE CONVALESCENT

THE GREAT LONGING

THE SECOND DANCE‐SONG

THE SEVEN SEALS (OR THE SONG OF YES AND AMEN)

PART FOUR

THE HONEY SACRIFICE

THE CRY OF DISTRESS

TALK WITH THE KINGS

THE LEECH

THE MAGICIAN

OUT OF SERVICE

THE UGLIEST MAN

THE VOLUNTARY BEGGAR

THE SHADOW

NOONTIDE

THE GREETING

THE SUPPER

THE HIGHER MAN

THE SONG OF MELANCHOLY

SCIENCE

AMONG DAUGHTERS OF THE DESERT

THE AWAKENING

THE ASS‐FESTIVAL

THE DRUNKEN SONG

THE SIGN

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover Page

Table of Contents

Series Page

Title Page

Copyright

An Introduction

About Dirk R. Johnson

Begin Reading

End User License Agreement

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THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA

The Philosophy Classic

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

With an Introduction byDIRK R. JOHNSON

This edition first published 2022

Introduction copyright © 2022 Dirk R. Johnson

This edition of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is based on the English translation of 1909 by Thomas Cotton, which is in the public domain.

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AN INTRODUCTION

Dirk R. Johnson

Friedrich Nietzsche c. 1875, by German photographer and portrait painter Friedrich Hermann Hartmann.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra arrived like a lightning bolt in the history of Western literature and thought. Nothing Nietzsche had written prior to Zarathustra foreshadowed the ambition of this endeavor. He himself commented on its singularity: the combined acuity of two hundred years, he claimed, could not have guessed that the same author of his earlier work was the visionary of Zarathustra.1

It stands out in its combination of poetry, narrative, parody, self‐mockery, grandeur, and sublimity, all while leaving its possible messages and intentions hidden from view. Zarathustra was a leap beyond anything else Nietzsche had written, but it was also a break from the history of philosophy. One need only contrast its enigmatic nature with that of the work of Nietzsche's immediate predecessor, Immanuel Kant.

Its quality of mystery has intrigued and confused interpreters. What is Zarathustra about? What is its goal? Does it have one? Does it appeal to a future higher humanity or is it merely self‐indulgent, reveling in its own allusiveness, playfulness, and literary perfection?

Part of its enduring appeal is that it leaves these questions unanswered, intentionally. At the same time, its suggestiveness has motivated intrepid readers to try to decipher its mysteries and unravel its riddles. Like a Rorschach test, it invites its readers to make sense of its countless metaphors, symbols, and images. It is intimately connected with the spirit of the time that it reflects, yet rejects that spirit, and wishes to speak to and overcome it.

For this very reason, every generation approaches the text with fresh eyes and sensibilities. While the first generation of readers saw in it a blueprint for a future humanity, a more recent generation may be drawn to its playful, open‐ended, and resonant language. Indeed, first‐time readers are often transported or overwhelmed by its evocative images and metaphors. There are those who only read Zarathustra among Nietzsche's writings, and who consider it their favorite work. Others have the opposite reaction and appreciate Nietzsche's other texts while shunning the visionary Zarathustra.

Zarathustra is indeed difficult to interpret. This task of understanding is further complicated if one is unaware of the rest of Nietzsche's philosophy. While first‐time readers can appreciate it without knowledge of those writings, they should approach the work with guarded enthusiasm and caution as well as humility. Especially if one considers that Nietzsche regarded his entire philosophical work to be a running commentary to his greatest masterpiece: Zarathustra.

WHO IS ZARATHUSTRA?

The historical Zarathustra was a legendary Iranian religious figure. Living approximately in the second millennium BCE, he is considered the world's first prophet. During the Enlightenment, both Voltaire and Mozart treated him as a noble, tolerant forerunner of a pre‐Christian religion. In his comic opera, The Magic Flute, Mozart incorporated a version of Zarathustra – or Zoroaster, in his more common designation. Their cultural example may have served as one inspiration.

The vagueness of the historical figure must have equally attracted Nietzsche. The fact that little was known about him, and yet he assumed a mythic stature, allowed Nietzsche to utilize the character of Zarathustra to awaken grander associations and aspirations. At the same time, he could fill the empty vessel with his philosophical content. In that way, he channeled the mythic quality of the legendary prophet and placed him into a modern setting that reflected the ambivalences and tensions of his times.

Above all, Nietzsche directed his readers' attention to the major reason he had chosen the figure. Nietzsche stated that Zarathustra was the first to have seen the struggle of good and evil as the true wheel of human history – morality as a form of metaphysics. Since he had created the fateful error, he would have to be the first to recognize his mistake.2

For Nietzsche's purposes, and our understanding of the text, it is irrelevant if Zarathustra could be made responsible for such a momentous historical event. It was only important that Nietzsche used him for his personal objective of discovering the error of morality.

If Zarathustra is about anything, then, it is about the uncovering, and his protagonist's personal overcoming, of historical morality – that fateful error.

NIETZSCHE'S EARLY YEARS

All roads did not lead to Zarathustra. Nietzsche's early career as a student of philology paved the way for a future vocation as a professor. By all accounts, he was a promising scholar of antiquity. He received a position at the University of Basel, in 1869, at the precocious age of twenty‐four, solely based on a recommendation from his mentor. His academic future was set.

Then the unexpected happened: Nietzsche published a controversial interpretation of the ancient world, The Birth of Tragedy (1872). This text turned the mainstream views of the Hellenic age on their head. It was an ambitious reconfiguration influenced by his friendship with Richard Wagner. Nietzsche had met Wagner as a student in Leipzig, in 1868, and the composer enlisted him in his project of cultural rejuvenation.

In trying to establish an intellectual grounding for Wagner's enterprise, Nietzsche challenged the consensus verdict on ancient Greece. The traditional view was that the culture was the product of noble, ethically superior individuals. He suggested instead a darker undercurrent. He uncovered two conflicting forces at work: the Apollonian and the Dionysian. While the Apollonian reflected the sober and rational side of Greek life, the Dionysian flipside of their being tended toward irrational excess. The result of that productive tension was Attic tragedy, the cultural height of ancient Greece.

Two insights here were of great importance connected to Nietzsche's later Zarathustra. One was the study's focus on the Greek god Dionysus and his profound significance for the ancient world. The other was Nietzsche's suggestion that ancient Greek tragedy was at its highest point when it was killed off by Socrates. He could not grasp the deeper significance of the tragic worldview, and his rationalism undermined the basis for tragic art.

Despite its undisputed brilliance, The Birth of Tragedy elicited a fierce backlash among academic colleagues. They criticized it for its overarching speculations and its lack of scholarly grounding. An academic review by a young, up‐and‐coming scholar damaged Nietzsche's reputation. It led him to distance himself from his profession and ultimately to retire from it completely.

The disappointment with the opposition to his first work, along with recurring ill health, were the main factors that led him to relinquish his position at Basel. But another overriding factor was the cooling of his relationship with Wagner and his disenchantment with their shared cultural ideal. Nietzsche now regarded his earlier commitments, both to his profession and to Wagner, as a false start and a distraction from his own preoccupations and concerns.

WANDERING YEARS

Nietzsche now embarked on a ten‐year (1879–1888) itinerant lifestyle that took him further away from his native Germany and to a range of European locales: Sils in Switzerland, Nice in France, Genoa and Turin in Italy. All the while he read widely. Aside from the ancients, whose works, as a scholar of antiquity, he already knew well, he added to the list more contemporary literature, such as the French moralists and novelists, English moralists, and Russian authors, as well as classical works of European literature.

Nietzsche also began to examine specialized scientific treatises on physiology and biology, and other texts dealing with the wider natural sciences. Most of all, he was intrigued by literature emerging on the question of morality and human development. Darwin was the hidden reference point for these naturalist investigations.

His reading at the time reflects the two sides of Nietzsche's complex nature. On the one side he was drawn to the cultural tradition of ancient Greece as well as the cultural output of the West. Since his youth, he had dabbled in literary production, writing mocking sketches as well as drafts for plays. He was also well versed in the rich German musical tradition. He was an accomplished pianist, though his own compositions are not highly regarded today. (Later, he suggested that the entire Zarathustra should be considered music.3) And throughout his life he wrote poetry. Having grown up in an intensely fertile cultural period, Nietzsche always harbored an ambition to make his mark on culture.

On the other side, there was a probing, scientifically inclined intellect that could get to the heart of the matter with incredible vigor and precision. This part of his nature was sharpened further by his rigorous philological studies, which trained him to parse ancient texts with a cool, analytical mind. Nietzsche's boundless curiosity also drew him to the advances in a wider range of academic disciplines, including the natural sciences. These gave him both a greater field of content as well as exposing him to new methods and insights into the areas that interested him most – above all, history, philosophy, religion, and the arts.

Despite having grown up in a religious household – his father was a Lutheran pastor – Nietzsche had come a long way from his childhood roots. Deciding early on to pursue an academic career in philology (displeasing his pious mother, who had wanted him to study theology), Nietzsche had taken gradual, though decisive, steps away from his Christian upbringing. He later claimed that his childhood faith had just slipped away, and he had encountered no struggle with it. It is an illuminating remark from a thinker whose masterpiece would initiate a radical break with Christianity.

CAMPAIGN AGAINST MORALITY

Nietzsche later stated that with the second book of his itinerant life, Daybreak (1881), he embarked on a campaign against morality.4 All three books from those years – the latter text, along with the earlier Human, All‐Too‐Human (1878) and the subsequent The Gay Science (1882) – present bold new investigations into human history, culture, society, political life, and religion.

These works reveal traces of progressive Enlightenment thought. They explore humanity from a non‐religious, humanistic point of view. Nietzsche probed into the cultural rituals and behaviors of humankind and presented rational, naturalistic accounts for many of our practices and cultural institutions. In this period, Nietzsche employed the symbol of the free thinker to characterize his philosophizing.

DARWINIAN NATURALISM

Nietzsche started writing these works in the late 1870s. By that point, Charles Darwin's findings were already disseminated – The Origin of Species was published in 1859 – and had achieved widespread scientific acceptance in Germany.

It is clear from reading his texts of this period that naturalistic investigations into human history and development had influenced his thinking. Darwin's Descent of Man (1870), where Darwin applied his theory of evolution to man's moral development, gave Nietzsche additional context. He could now draw from a wider range of studies promoting Darwinian theories in relation to humankind.

But Nietzsche was beginning to introduce original perspectives that deviated from the theories of Darwin and others. Above all, he speculated on the specific question of morality and offered alternative hypotheses concerning its origins and dissemination. Instead of treating morality as a historical given, he had become interested in how belief in morality had arisen and how it had displaced other non‐moral perspectives. He speculated about what belief in morality could reveal about the individual who espoused it. This eventually led him to establish a dual history for morality: a master morality versus a slave morality.

Whereas the master morality adhered to values promoting health, vitality, and affirmation of life, slave morality looked with suspicion at examples of human thriving and excellence. It was an important distinction, which he explored further in his most influential post‐Zarathustra work, the Genealogy of Morality (1887). Nietzsche's fundamental insight was that morality did not derive from a transcendent source, but was simply the product of a worldly power struggle.

Nietzsche's critical view of morality led him to suspect a literary tradition that had unquestioningly accepted the moral point of view as the only one. He also started to distrust the scientific rhetoric that was being applied to man and his place in nature. He believed it to be a rhetoric colored by an implicit moralism.

At this point, Nietzsche had reached a critical juncture: either to continue to write within a tradition he had intellectually undermined and which he felt to be spiritually bankrupt, or nihilistic – or to break free from the spiritual and linguistic stranglehold of the moral tradition.

It is here where the idea for Zarathustra came to him – or rather, as he later stated, it overtook him.5

THE BIRTH OF ZARATHUSTRA

The main inspiration for Zarathustra was the thought of the “eternal return” – the idea that universe is cyclical and that everything that happens is destined to endlessly recur. Nietzsche claimed to have thrown the idea onto paper in Silvaplana, Switzerland, in August 1881 – “6,000 feet beyond people and time.”6

Another inspiration was more earthbound: a young Russian woman named Lou Salomé, to whom he had been introduced in Rome in April 1882.

Nietzsche was intrigued by Salomé and began to court her. He aspired to win the intelligent young woman over to his philosophy, but Salomé proved to be too independent. The breakdown of their passionate friendship, by late 1882, precipitated a crisis in his family. His scheming sister Elisabeth had become jealous of Salomé and plotted against them.

Nietzsche was thrown into emotional turmoil. The affair had dashed his last hope for an intimate partnership. But it triggered an intense outpouring of his creative energies. Zarathustra was born in a series of short, inspired bursts each lasting ten days, according to Nietzsche.7 The known facts concerning its composition bear out his claim.

PUBLICATION

Zarathustra is comprised of four parts and a prologue. Zarathustra I was published in August 1883 in a print run of 1,000 copies.8 The book, and its subsequent parts, sold even more poorly than his previous works. He designated it a poetic work, and it departed in style and content from his earlier writings.

Before Zarathustra I was even published, Nietzsche was working on a second part. In the summer of 1883, during a three‐month stay in Sils, Nietzsche completed Zarathustra II within two weeks, in July 1883. He sent the manuscript to his publisher and received page proofs in September 1883. It too was printed in a run of 1,000 copies.

He was now busy at work on Zarathustra III. He completed the manuscript no later than January 1884, and it appeared in April, once again in a run of 1,000 copies. The design and format of all three volumes were the same – in blue card covers with red ink. The title page listed the book's title and publisher within a lined marginal border. The only distinction between volumes was the inclusion of a number to indicate the respective parts.

In February 1885, Nietzsche announced to a friend that he had completed a fourth (and final) part. Unlike the other three, he self‐published the final part. It was printed in a limited run of just forty‐five copies, and he distributed nine of them to select friends in April 1885. It is unclear what happened to the remaining stock.

All four parts of Zarathustra are today printed together as a single volume, and there is a unity that underlies them. But it is important to keep in mind that the fourth part came as a later addition not intended for the public, while the first three published parts represented a finished whole.

THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA – OUTLINE

Zarathustra opens with a prologue in ten sections that sets the stage for its narrative. It introduces the protagonist – a man who has lived ten years alone in the mountains and now wants to descend to impart his wisdom to the people (Prologue 1).

Arriving as a prophet in a town, Zarathustra presents the ideal of the Übermensch to a crowd on a marketplace (Prologue 3). This higher being will transcend our present conception of man and will become the new meaning of the earth. He will be as superior to our current man as man now is in relation to the ape. (In English, Übermensch is variously translated as “Superman,” “Overman, “Uberman,” “Superhuman,” or “Overhuman.”)

Zarathustra then contrasts his vision of the Übermensch with the reality of the “last” man (Prologue 5). This last man shuns risk and seeks only comfort and conformity. He is like a flea that has overrun the earth with his mediocrity. Despite Zarathustra's disgust with the vision of the last man, the people in the town end by mocking his ideal and clamoring for the last man instead.

Nietzsche then inserts a dramatic interlude with a tightrope walker. He is there to offer the raucous crowd some entertainment (Prologue 6). While crossing over to the other side, the tightrope walker is pushed off by a scheming jester and falls to his death. The crowd is indifferent, but Zarathustra is moved by his plight. Fearful of the mood in the town, he sneaks out at night and buries the body (Prologue 8). Though the tightrope walker was scorned by the crowd, Zarathustra considers him a soulmate who made a vocation out of danger.

The next morning, Zarathustra has a sudden insight. He will no longer preach to the crowd but will seek solitary companions to lure away from the masses. These individuals will become his future target audience (Prologue 9). Zarathustra now embarks on a journey to find sensitive, alienated souls receptive to his superhuman ideal (Prologue 10).

In the space of ten short sections, Zarathustra has undergone a major pivot. No longer a message for humankind, the ideal of the Übermensch has now been narrowed down to a secret promise for a select few.

PART ONE

Part One is made up of 22 speeches or discourses. There is little dramatic action. Rather, Zarathustra declares in grandiose terms his views on various topics – friendship, the modern state, war, women, suicide, chastity, the scholarly life, and so on.

Most of these speeches do not suggest any correctives or concrete alternatives but critique aspects of modern society. There is a chord of cynicism in Zarathustra's words, reflective of someone who has suffered from life, but there is also deep longing.

In Part One, Nietzsche recapitulates many perspectives from his previous works. It is the end product of his free‐thinking middle years, where he had systematically unmasked the ideals of society. Nietzsche bundles these insights and themes into the separate sections of the text. However, they reveal a common undercurrent: skepticism towards all ideals upheld by modern society.

At the conclusion of Part One, Zarathustra departs from his followers. He enjoins them to forget him and go their own way. It is a curious ending. He has lured solitary individuals away from the masses – and mass thinking – but then offers them nothing concrete to embrace. His original vision of a transcendent human type remains diffuse and undefined.

PART TWO

In Part Two Zarathustra decides to return to his followers. Still animated by his superhuman ideal, he resumes with his speeches critical of society.

But Nietzsche now inserts more introspective sections. They hint at a deeper sense of melancholy and reveal a more human, relatable side to Zarathustra. He loses his prophetic aura and certitude and confronts a lingering spirit of heaviness and gravity.

THE THREE SONGS

In the midway point of Part Two, there are the three “Song” sections: “The Night Song,” “The Dance Song,” and “The Grave Song.” In “The Night Song,” Zarathustra compares his yearning soul to a gushing night time fountain. He transfigures the pain of his solitude into a poem of exquisite beauty. Zarathustra revels in his own independence but remains cut off from the world around him.

The section initiates a transition. While Zarathustra first sought converts to the Übermensch, he now retreats into himself and finds solace in an unfulfilled yearning.

This mood continues and deepens in “The Dance Song.” Zarathustra encounters a group of girls frolicking in a woodland enclave. Though enchanted, his mood darkens, and he complains about a spirit of gravity. Two (metaphoric) women vie for his attention: Life and Wisdom. While Life is seductive and tries to pull him back into life, Wisdom beckons him to uncover life's mysteries.

In “The Grave Song,” Zarathustra lashes out at his enemies. They are the figures in his childhood that ruined his immediacy and naiveté towards life by (dis)orienting him to false (Christian) ideals. They sullied his spontaneous childlike affirmation of life.

This deep‐rooted suspicion toward life stands at the core of his personal spirit of gravity. It always threatens to pull Zarathustra away from life and towards false, otherworldly ideals, and it triggers a residual disgust with the world.

THE SOOTHSAYER AND THE STILLEST HOUR

In “The Soothsayer,” Zarathustra relates a mysterious dream to his disciples. In it, a black coffin bursts open and spews forth “a thousand caricatures of children, angels, owls, fools, and child‐sized butterflies.”

The dream reveals an underlying psychic tension and a gnawing ambivalence. Whereas he first descended to humankind in the role of self‐assured prophet, he must now acknowledge the graves of his past that impede his way to the goal of affirmation of life as it is.

In the closing section of Part Two, entitled “The Stillest Hour,” Zarathustra relates how a night time voice whispers to him to confront what he already knows. In prior sections, he had revealed greater vulnerability and signs of emotional turmoil. But he had not garnered the strength or courage to excavate the deeper meanings of his moods.

PART THREE

Part Three opens with Zarathustra's ascending a treacherous mountain path (“The Wanderer”). He is ready to scale his “ultimate peak.”

THE VISION AND THE ENIGMA

In this section, Nietzsche first hints at his famous notion of the eternal return. Voyaging on a ship, he relates a story to sailors onboard. It is in the form of a riddle, and Zarathustra suggests that the sailors are in the best position to guess its meaning.

In his parable, Zarathustra strides through a gloomy landscape in defiance of the spirit of gravity. He discovers a dwarf straddling his shoulders. The dwarf jumps off, and Zarathustra confronts him with an elaborate cosmology concerning the nature of time. This enigmatic, cyclical model seems to have features of an eternal return but before he can finish explaining it, Zarathustra is interrupted by a howling dog and notices the dwarf has vanished.

He suddenly catches sight of a reclining shepherd, who has a black snake lodged in his throat. He calls on the shepherd to rip it out, and he bites off its head and spits it out. The shepherd then stands up like a transformed being and laughs. That concludes Zarathustra's enigmatic riddle. It leaves the eternal return tantalizingly vague.

THE CONVALESCENT

In “The Convalescent,” Zarathustra presents the fullest (and only) articulation of his enigmatic concept, the eternal return. It is tempting to think that the first iteration presented within the riddle was its true expression. But Zarathustra was not yet in the position to call it forth. His encounter with the writhing shepherd was both a vision and a premonition – a premonition of his own future confrontation with the thought.

In “The Convalescent,” Zarathustra sees himself ready to face his greatest thought – “Up, abysmal thought, out of my depth!” The process of extracting the thought from his innermost being is so grueling and exhausting that he must recuperate for seven days. Only after he has recovered can he give voice to the experience.

Zarathustra attempts to convey his personal encounter with the thought of the eternal return. This time it is not a description of a concrete reality outside himself but the articulation of his subjective feelings (a thought) toward an inner experience.

He conveys the thought that all signs of past greatness reveal a root pettiness, and that even the greatest are but small on closer inspection and will eternally return as small. Everything great fails to withstand closer scrutiny. Humankind does not progress or improve, but forever repeats the same pattern and produces the same types.

If the small eternally return and the great can no longer inspire, and if even past greatness conceals recurring human weakness, pettiness, and resentment, then that knowledge will cripple and suffocate. But by confronting the awareness and ripping it out, Zarathustra can move beyond it and incorporate it into his overall life affirmation.

It was latent disgust with life – specifically, his own life – that first inspired his ideal of a higher human type. But now his deeper insights into man have forced him to reconcile with life as it is and will always be.

THE SECOND DANCE SONG

In the penultimate section of Part Three, “The Second Dance Song,” Nietzsche again encounters the wily temptress, Life. Having internalized the thought of the eternal return, he has overcome the spirit of gravity that weighed him down. He can approach Life with greater confidence, and he now engages with her in a playful, bantering exchange. It is an exchange of equals, and wily Life chastises him for his brash attempt at mastery over her. She even envies his wisdom and fears he might leave her.

At the end of their encounter, Zarathustra accepts the boundaries that Life has drawn for them – a love that respects each other's freedom and independence – and affirms his relationship with her.

Nietzsche thus completes the main arc of his philosophical drama.

It started with an ambitious search to solve modern man's malaise. It concludes on a quiet, personal note. His protagonist Zarathustra has set aside his wisdom and learns to honor the mystery and inscrutability of life – and to find (temporary) joy and fulfillment in its sublime, transitory moments.

PART FOUR

There has been much scholarly speculation as to why Nietzsche appended a “fourth and final part” to Zarathustra.

He originally planned to conclude the text with Part Three, but decided to have Part Four published privately. He had difficulty finding a publisher for it, but might also have considered the material too raucous, almost blasphemous, and therefore decided to limit its audience to friends.

Commentators have also expressed ambivalence about its literary qualities. Whereas the first three parts are composed in an elevated, lofty style, the tone of Part Four is farcical, even slapstick. A likely model for it may have been the comic satyr play that followed the performance of a trilogy of Greek tragedies.

At the start of Part Four, a now aged Zarathustra encounters an assortment of “higher men” on his wanderings, including two kings, an old magician, and the pope, among others. Nietzsche even introduces an ass, which the figures end up worshipping. They take its braying to be a form of affirmation of the eternal return. Here Nietzsche parodies his greatest thought. He seems to want to warn against those who would turn his thought into a set doctrine or the basis for a substitute religion.

ZARATHUSTRA AND THE OVERCOMING OF PITY

Nietzsche offers textual evidence for his motivation for composing Part Four.

First among these are Zarathustra's opening passage to Part Four, his words in the second section “The Cry of Distress” as well as his concluding remarks in the final section (“The Sign”). He says: “O you higher men, your distress was it that the old soothsayer foretold to me yestermorn. Unto your distress did he want to seduce and tempt me.” He had also played with the idea of subtitling Part Four “The Temptation of Zarathustra,” which hints at the Soothsayer's attempt to seduce Zarathustra by evoking his pity.

Zarathustra indicates that overcoming pity of “higher types” is his ultimate challenge, his real proof of strength. By appealing to his innate pity for them, the soothsayer hoped to lure Zarathustra away from his Dionysian isolation and to throw him back into despair.

In the work's final section, “The Sign,” Zarathustra slips out of his cave in the early morning. His lion joins him. The lion roars and the remaining cast of characters scamper off. Zarathustra interprets this as a sign that his time has come. He recognizes that the cry of distress had been the soothsayer's trick all along to distract him from his higher calling. He declares his children are near and that the “noontide” will rise. He leaves the cave, “glowing and strong, like a morning sun.”

RECEPTION AND INTERPRETATION

The history of Zarathustra is in many ways the history of its reception. There have been numerous efforts to interpret this complex text, and it is only fitting it has eluded a definitive interpretation. This aura of mystery challenges each generation, and each individual reader, to find their own meaning in the work.

THE ÜBERMENSCH

Two strands of interpretation stand out. On one side, there has been a preoccupation with the notion of the Übermensch. Since Zarathustra declares this vision to be the new meaning of the earth and announces it in prophetic terms in the prologue, readers have expected that the entire text is meant to conceptualize and promote a future human ideal.

If one also considers that the work appeared during the dissemination of Darwin's findings and Zarathustra even seems to refer to a model of human evolution, it is understandable that many early commentators assumed Nietzsche had proposed an evolutionary ideal for humankind.

But Zarathustra is a literary work. It works with all the conventions and subtleties of narrative, and that requires us to be cautious and never to take at face value what it seems to promote. Even though Zarathustra proclaims the future of the Übermensch early in the prologue, he already distances himself by the end of it and suggests it will be a promise for only a select few.

Later in the text, the Übermensch almost disappears completely from view. The narrative then centers on the protagonist's personal crises and sets the stage for his impending encounter with the eternal return (Parts Two and Three). Significantly, the supposed visionary ideal rarely appears in the rest of Nietzsche's writings. This is surprising if one believes it to be a central premise of his philosophy.

Instead, one should see Nietzsche playing with the expectations of an audience already formed by Darwinian ideas. The initial readers were inclined, then, to see in the concept of an Übermensch a future‐projected higher human type according to the popular theory of evolution. But Zarathustra's mounting anxiety as the narrative progresses is not due to his concern that he is failing to win over followers to his ideal – but because he has begun to doubt the basis for his original prophetic mission.

ZARATHUSTRA'S NEW PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM?

Closely related to the first interpretation is one that believes that its three central metaphors – the Übermensch, the will to power, and the eternal return – were intended to be the pillars of a future philosophical system. In the popular imagination Nietzsche is most identified with those concepts, and it is no small part due to the influence and prophetic tenor of this work.

While Nietzsche considered Zarathustra to be his greatest achievement, his high estimation of it does not need to imply that he saw it to be the foundation for a future philosophical system – or philosophy at all. There is also no indication that he meant for its three most famous concepts to be extracted from it and to become the dominant constituents of his philosophy. Instead, he inserted the concepts into a suggestive narrative whole, and through the text he both plays with and subverts the metaphors that it seems to promote. Most of all, the concepts are intimately connected to the narrative strategies and objectives of this specific literary text.

As noted, Nietzsche stated that he had chosen his prophetic protagonist for a reason. As the first person to introduce morality to the world, Zarathustra would need to be the first to uncover the error. As the narration progresses, Zarathustra becomes aware that the higher moral ideal of the Übermensch he proposed is based on residual disgust with the way the human being is. His vision is a projection of a being that can transcend and overcome the pettiness of the current human type.

But Zarathustra harbors a spirit of gravity that weighs him down and undermines his confidence. He must confront the pain and anguish related to traumas in his past. No longer a self‐assured mighty prophet, Zarathustra is now a specific individual filled with all‐too‐human resentment.

By finding the courage to call forth his thought of the eternal return, Zarathustra must recognize that his specific life, and all the pain associated with it, cannot be redeemed through the hope of a higher ideal. Rather, his life is the one and only life that he must affirm.

He now also sees that all so‐called great men have not had the courage to embrace their lives but have sought out ideals. These were flights from the reality of life. The thought of the eternal return confronts him with the specter that life will not progress to higher, to better, but will eternally return just the way it has, with all its heartache, bitterness, and secret regret – but also with its transitory, sublime moments. Only with this recognition and its affirmation can one overcome the basis for morality and the spirit of resentment that underlies it.

ZARATHUSTRA’S ULTIMATE MESSAGE

Thus, paradoxically, Thus Spoke Zarathustra does lay out a promise for a future ideal – even as it challenges the bases for all ideals. It is an ideal of a humankind that will (through and with him) recognize the error of morality and embrace the ever‐present moment as the greatest gift. Humans must learn to vanquish temptations for a beyond and for future‐oriented distractions, and learn to master and convert even personal adversity into acceptance and affirmation of life.

This is a tall order for us fallible human beings, requiring perpetual self‐overcoming of our greatest fears, doubts, insecurities, and weaknesses. But because we have only one life to live, it is a noble goal worthy of our efforts.

NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION

The translation used for this edition is Thomas Common's of 1909. It was the second English translation after Alexander Tille's in 1896.

Common's version of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is slightly biblical in style, as he believed Nietzsche's own text had this feel. We have kept it largely intact, although some archaic words and phrases have been modernized.

This edition also excises an introduction by Elisabeth Förster‐Nietzsche, the philosopher's younger sister, hagiographer, and executor. She took advantage of his name to promote herself, and was a Nazi supporter and anti‐Semite from whom Friedrich grew apart.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Born in Röcken, Prussia in 1844. Nietzsche's father, who died when he was five, was a Lutheran minister, as was his grandfather.

Attended a boarding school in Pforta, then studied classical philology at the Universities of Bonn and Leipzig.

Discovered the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer in 1865.

Met the composer Richard Wagner in Leipzig 1868.

At 24 was made a professor at the University of Basle in classical philology.

Following time as a medical orderly in the Franco‐Prussian War, wrote

The Birth of Tragedy

.

Ill‐health forced him to resign his professorship. Living on a modest pension, he moved about Europe, writing from rented accommodation.

Wrote and published

Human, All Too Human

,

Daybreak

, and the

Gay Science

in 1878–1882.

Meets and breaks with Lou Andreas‐Salomé in 1882.

Wrote and published

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

in four parts (1880–1884).

Following

Zarathustra

, completed

Beyond Good and Evil

,

The Genealogy of Morals

,

The Twilight of the Idols

,

The Antichrist

, and the autobiographical

Ecce Homo

.

In 1889 suffered a mental breakdown in Turin. The cause is not clear, possibly syphilis or depression.

Nursed by his mother, then his sister, until his death in Weimar in 1900.

Nietzsche in 1882, the year Zarathustra I was published. Photographer Gustav Schultze.

Notes

1

Ecce Homo

, “Why I am so Clever” 4.

2

Ecce Homo

, “Why I am a Destiny” 3.

3

Ecce Homo

, “Also Sprach Zarathustra” 1.

4

Ecce Homo

, “Daybreak” 1.

5

Ecce Homo

, “Zarathustra” 1.

6

Ecce Homo

, “Zarathustra” 1.

7

Ecce Homo

, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” 4.

8

For the publication history of

Zarathustra

see William H. Schaberg,

The Nietzsche Canon

. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995, 87–119.

ABOUT DIRK R. JOHNSON

Dr. Dirk R. Johnson is Elliott Professor of German at Hampden‐Sydney College, Virginia. He is the author of Nietzsche's Anti‐Darwinism (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and “Zarathustra: Nietzsche's Rendezvous with Eternity” in The New Cambridge Companion to Nietszche (2019). Articles relating to Nietzsche have appeared in Nietzsche‐Studien, Rivista di filosofia, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, and Tijdschrift voor filosofie.

ABOUT TOM BUTLER‐BOWDON

Tom Butler‐Bowdon is the author of the bestselling 50 Classics series, which brings the ideas of important books to a wider audience. Titles include 50 Philosophy Classics, 50 Psychology Classics, 50 Politics Classics, 50 Self‐Help Classics, and 50 Economics Classics.

As series editor for the Capstone Classics series, Tom has written Introductions to Plato's The Republic, Machiavelli's The Prince, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, and Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich.

Tom is a graduate of the London School of Economics and the University of Sydney.

www.Butler-Bowdon.com

PART ONE

Zarathustra's Prologue

1.

When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart changed, and rising one morning with the rosy dawn, he went before the sun, and spoke thus unto it:

You great star! What would be your happiness if you had not those for whom you shine!

For ten years have you climbed hither unto my cave: you would have wearied of your light and of the journey, had it not been for me, mine eagle, and my serpent.

But we awaited you every morning, took from you your overflow and blessed you for it.

Lo! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it.

I would fain bestow and distribute, until the wise have once more become joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches.

Therefore must I descend into the deep: as you do in the evening, when you go behind the sea, and give light also to the nether‐world, you exuberant star!

Like you must I GO DOWN, as men say, to whom I shall descend.

Bless me, then, you tranquil eye, that cannot behold even the greatest happiness without envy!

Bless the cup that is about to overflow, that the water may flow golden out of it, and carry everywhere the reflection of your bliss!

Lo! This cup is again going to empty itself, and Zarathustra is again going to be a man.

Thus began Zarathustra's down‐going.

2.

Zarathustra went down the mountain alone, no one meeting him. When he entered the forest, however, there suddenly stood before him an old man, who had left his holy cot to seek roots. And thus spoke the old man to Zarathustra:

“No stranger to me is this wanderer: many years ago passed he by. Zarathustra he was called; but he has altered.

Then you carried thine ashes into the mountains: will you now carry your fire into the valleys? Fear you not the incendiary's doom?

Yes, I recognize Zarathustra. Pure is his eye, and no loathing lurks about his mouth. Goes he not along like a dancer?

Altered is Zarathustra; a child has Zarathustra become; an awakened one is Zarathustra: what will you do in the land of the sleepers?

As in the sea have you lived in solitude, and it has borne you up. Alas, will you now go ashore? Alas, will you again drag your body yourself?”

Zarathustra answered: “I love mankind.”

“Why,” said the saint, “did I go into the forest and the desert? Was it not because I loved men far too well?

Now I love God: men, I do not love. Man is a thing too imperfect for me. Love to man would be fatal to me.”

Zarathustra answered: “What spoke I of love! I am bringing gifts unto men.”

“Give them nothing,” said the saint. “Take rather part of their load, and carry it along with them – that will be most agreeable unto them: if only it be agreeable unto you!

If, however, you will give unto them, give them no more than alms, and let them also beg for it!”

“No,” replied Zarathustra, “I give no alms. I am not poor enough for that.”

The saint laughed at Zarathustra, and spoke thus: “Then see to it that they accept your treasures! They are distrustful of anchorites, and do not believe that we come with gifts.

The fall of our footsteps rings too hollow through their streets. And just as at night, when they are in bed and hear a man abroad long before sunrise, so they ask themselves concerning us: Where goes the thief?

Go not to men, but stay in the forest! Go rather to the animals! Why not be like me – a bear amongst bears, a bird amongst birds?”

“And what doeth the saint in the forest?” asked Zarathustra.

The saint answered: “I make hymns and sing them; and in making hymns I laugh and weep and mumble: thus do I praise God.

With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I praise the God who is my God. But what do you bring us as a gift?”

When Zarathustra had heard these words, he bowed to the saint and said: “What should I have to give you! Let me rather hurry hence lest I take aught away from you!” And thus they parted from one another, the old man and Zarathustra, laughing like schoolboys.

When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: “Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest has not yet heard of it, that GOD IS DEAD!”

3.

When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest town which adjoins the forest, he found many people assembled in the market‐place; for it had been announced that a rope‐dancer would give a performance. And Zarathustra spoke thus unto the people:

I TEACH YOU THE SUPERMAN. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What have you done to surpass man?

All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and you want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass man?

What is the ape to man? A laughing‐stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Superman – a laughing‐stock, a thing of shame.

You have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once were you apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes.

Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?

Lo, I teach you the Superman!

The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman SHALL BE the meaning of the earth!

I conjure you, my brethren, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH, and believe not those who speak unto you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not.

Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!

Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth!

Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt was the supreme thing – the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth.

Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly, and famished; and cruelty was the delight of that soul!

But you, also, my brethren, tell me: What does your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self‐complacency?

Truly, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him can your great contempt be submerged.

What is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becomes loathsome unto you, and so also your reason and virtue.

The hour when you say: “What good is my happiness! It is poverty and pollution and wretched self‐complacency. But my happiness should justify existence itself!”

The hour when you say: “What good is my reason! Does it long for knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and wretched self‐complacency!”

The hour when you say: “What good is my virtue! As yet it has not made me passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty and pollution and wretched self‐complacency!”

The hour when you say: “What good is my justice! I do not see that I am fervor and fuel. The just, however, are fervor and fuel!”

The hour when you say: “What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loves man? But my pity is not a crucifixion.”

Have you ever spoken thus? Have you ever cried thus? Ah! would that I had heard you crying thus!

It is not your sin – it is your self‐satisfaction that cries unto heaven; your very sparingness in sin cries unto heaven!