Thus Spoke Zarathustra

 Thus Spoke Zarathustra 

By Friedrich Nietzsche 

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Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra was composed and published in four parts between 1883 and 1885. Having spent ten years of solitary meditation in a cave, Zarathustra descends into the human world to impart his overflowing wisdom and undertake the prophetic role of heralding the advent of a new epoch and a new species. Named after the Persian prophet Zoroaster, he recognizes the disastrous outcome of surrendering to conventional wisdom and its rigid dichotomy between good and evil.   

About the Author: 

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher whose intellectual work influenced diverse fields including literature, philology, and most importantly, Western philosophy. In this book, Nietzsche breaks new ground in utilizing a highly poetic and literary framework to propound important philosophical notions of "will to power" and the "eternal recurrence" of all things.  

What it's all about: A literary-philosophical battle against the forces of nihilism. 

Although articulated during a different historical context, the ideas propounded in the book have acquired greater significance over time and are relevant to understanding our turbulent contemporary times. The absence of any positive values, or nihilism, plagues the world after the breakdown of institutions of traditional support–religion or any system of objective values or morality. Human beings, in Zarathustra's perspective, must reorient themselves, to strive to transcend their selves and achieve an improved state of being, the "Ubermensch" or the "overman." They must avert the impending calamity–a sterile world of the contented "last humans" who would be incapable of struggle, improvement or change. The challenge constitutes decrying God and transcendental values and embracing earthly life and the principle of 'self-overcoming.' 

In this book, you will discover: 

1. The universally relevant principle of 'self-overcoming' and the dynamic nature of human life. 

2. The threat of approaching nihilism and the differing attitudes of the rabble and the nonconformists towards it. 

3. The fallacy of establishing a rigid dichotomy between good and evil, body and soul. 

 

 

 

The Stranglehold of Nihilism 

To awaken the humans from their contented slumber, Zarathustra must "go under" and descend into his humanity again to teach them the possibility of "going under," of overcoming their self to become the 'overman.' His love for humankind guides him; the old hermit who warns him can only sustain solitude by being unaware of the approaching calamity of nihilism, the death of God and all traditional pillars of support. At the town of the Motley Cow, he seeks to enlighten the people about the despisers of earthly joys who have condemned their souls to a despicable contentment by fuelling hopes in a transcendental, extra-terrestrial life. An embrace of the bodily and an awareness of the overman's potential can turn their pitiful complacency into nausea against their sterile virtue and values of justice, piety, and chastity.  

Human beings are not the purpose but merely a bridge between the animals and the overman. The tightrope walker dramatizes the human crossing over to the overman; his fall is occasioned by an interruption from the laughing jester who leaps over another man. This episode reveals the inadequacy of Zarathustra's preaching; self-overcoming demands intense individual commitment rather than a dictated set of precepts. Nevertheless, he succeeds in comforting the dying tightrope walker by warding off his fears about hell. God is dead, and so is the devil, which is not to deny their existence but their role in defining human life. Unimaginative conformity, sterile love, a life devoid of struggle characterizes the existence of the good, the just, and the virtuous, who remain unaware of the nihilism that strangles their world. Instead of acting as their shepherd, Zarathustra decides to lure the creative ones, capable of creating their values, away from the ignorant herd.  

Good and Evil 

To acquire transcendence–to achieve the overman, not God–requires chaos, commitment, and self-contempt. The Zeitgeist of nihilism threatens to curb these values, giving rise to the "last human being," the most contemptuous of all, content in a bovine happiness, incapable of self-contempt and therefore incapable of evolving into the overman. The teachers of virtue preach peace and reconciliation with God and neighbour as well as obedience to authority that would yield an undisturbed and slumbered existence. Those lacking in courage and will to overcome their weariness, proclaim a comfortable and delusional faith in a heavenly, metaphysical world. They consider everything earthly and bodily as imperfect and conducive only to suffering. They deny the creative ego capable of infusing human existence with a new meaning. Asserting the primacy of the soul, they despise the body, embracing penitence, shame, suffering and melancholic self-flagellation. The soul, however, is merely an instrument of the body. The creative will of the body transcends the generic virtue of the multitudes that are governed by the statutes of divine law promising contentment and an illusory heaven. What is understood as evil and sinful is also an essential part of the creative virtue that privileges human fallibilities and experience. A denial of the body by an unnatural insistence on chastity for all makes for a restless life.  

The holy dictum that preaches love for the neighbour is, similarly, born out of a desire for self-affirmation engendered by a denial of selfishness or self-love. The old values forbid revenge; however, for Zarathustra, however, an enemy who wrongs does one good, and one must requite the act with adequate revenge and ire. The good and the just adopt virtues as gestures, contrary to their inclinations; they are driven by fear of punishment and longing for reward rather than a genuine desire to be virtuous. Sex, the lust to rule, and selfishness are the most condemned and slandered things in the world. Sex is despicable for those who deny the body, yet it can be an affirmation of earthly happiness for the free and strong-willed. The lust to rule similarly drives the forces of change and improvement in a world of flux. Selfishness is similarly a trait of an invigorating self that despises the self-denying servility and world-weariness of the "selfless." "The spirit of gravity" preaches that earthly life is a burden of woes redeemed only by universal and rigid notions of good and evil; one must, however, create an individual system of values and taste because one single way of living does not exist.   

The Rabble 

Writers who compose with passion, with their blood, appeal to the highest humans and write not merely to be understood and appreciated by the rabble. They have happy and dancing spirits, unfettered to mediocrity. The new idol that enslaves the superfluous is that of the monster of the state, scrambling for wealth and power by catering to the masses. True nobility that inspires the creation of new values is bred in solitude and silence; in the conformity and mediocrity of the marketplace, only the pretenders to greatness exhibit loud and boastful vanity and a sycophantic flattery to establish power. The truly noble strive for a strong will, despise comfort, and exemplify the "bestowing virtue." The life of solitude and belief in the overman is characterized by purity and power resembling vigorous and mighty winds that run contrary to the warm contentment and complacency of the rabble. Zarathustra equates the proponents of democracy, equality, and justice with tarantulas; their clamour for equality is born out their inability to enact vengeance against those who hold power. The world is necessarily unequal and hierarchical; it generates constant struggle for power that leads to the overman. The "wise men" remain comfortable in a lukewarm life, courting the favour and flattery of the rabble, encouraging their prejudices, and persecuting the free and the nonconformists who seek true knowledge amidst the icy-coldness of suffering.   

The Non-Conformists 

A pale criminal, motivated only by a desire to kill, follows his reason and commits a murder-theft. He confesses and is racked by his conscience that holds him answerable to a system of morality, of what constitutes good and evil. On a mountainside, he encounters a young man who he compares to a prisoner seeking freedom from binding norms of mediocrity and encourages him to sustain his hopeful quest. Like a tree that grows isolated on a mountain, aspiring to the heights of achievement requires strong earthly roots, a creation of one's values and morality, and an acceptance of what is rejected as the bodily, the evil, and the sinful. Thus, those who aspire towards greater heights are subjected to contempt and loneliness by the good and the just. The marketplace of good and evil is driven by power; whatever accentuates the power and glory of people against their neighbours, whatever appears extremely difficult yet indispensable and liberating is deemed good and holy. The creative ego, on the other hand, annihilates all prior human meaning to construct another and is therefore considered evil. Jesus Christ aspired to create new values and was crucified. However, according to Zarathustra, he died too early to have gained a mature love for earthly joys besides an immature indulgence in melancholy. 

The Will to Power 

The pursuit of knowledge is likened to a battle; one must struggle like warriors to acquire wisdom and to overcome oneself. A friend must pierce through one's fallibilities; he must act like a comrade, even an enemy, who drives one's struggle for self-overcoming. The human spirit capable of evolution undergoes three metamorphoses; it becomes a camel desirous of carrying the burden of efforts in the quest for truth, inviting fear and contempt from those who hurt one's pride. As a lion, it denies binding commandments and servility to inherited values to arrive at a child-like freedom and innocence that supports the creation of one's values. Instead of a transcendental being that is eternal, irrational and incomprehensible, Zarathustra prefers the liberating creative will which is human and historical and produces the overman.  

This will to power creates values underlying any culture; these values, however, are subject to the flux of time and are never permanent. Creation of a new system of values requires the destruction of the old one; those who are not courageous enough to destroy and create follow the ones who command.  The serious and sublime seekers of truth need to adopt levity of spirit, laughter, and love for the earth, grace, and kindness to acquire a calm beauty that conceals a powerful will. Modern people lack the will to power; their motley-like life borrows values and gestures from past ages. Those pretenders to contemplation and pure perception repress their creative will to merely perceive and reflect, like the moon, the beauty of the earth. Similarly, the scholars simply accumulate knowledge without being creative. The "preachers of death" invoke the human inability to change the past as the source of suffering and punishment on the earth. However, instead of relinquishing the will in response, one must accept past events also as products of one's will. Human beings remain profoundly inadequate in sustaining an overall creative will; the soothsayer predicts the advent of a period wherein all creativity would be paralyzed amidst a comfortable existence devoid of struggle. 

Eternal Recurrence 

Embarking on his final challenge, the last and most difficult peak, Zarathustra strives to confront the doctrine of eternal recurrence. The "spirit of gravity" threatens to overcome him with melancholy; however, his courage and indomitable will allow him to come to terms with the eternal recurrence of all events. Zarathustra's vision of the shepherd choking on a snake exemplifies his nausea at the possibility of the return of the rabble and its mediocrity. It overturns his earlier conviction about an epochal and irreversible historic change that would overthrow the last humans and establish the overmen. However, the shepherd bites off the snake's head and evolves into a laughing and illuminated being. In his absence, the people have become even smaller; their insistence on contentment and happiness is born out of cowardice and a sterile will, and they mask their mediocrity and tame servility under the cloak of virtue. Giving in to solitude, amidst the teeming superfluous and coward conformists, the young followers of Zarathustra have abandoned their creative will to embrace piety and devotion towards a God concealed in darkness. 

The Higher Men 

Zarathustra, back to the solitude of his mountain, must confront his final sin–pity for the higher man whose cry of distress he hears. He encounters several incarnations of the higher man who reflect some of Zarathustra's philosophy, yet remain profoundly flawed in some manner. He meets the two kings who seek freedom from the pettiness and power squabbles of the deceptive rabble disguised as nobility at the court. The one "conscientious of spirit" attracts leeches to his bloodied hands in a symbolic gesture of freeing his knowledge from prejudice. The magician pretends to be indulging in penitence and bemoans that his desire for greatness remains unfulfilled. The last pope finds himself anchorless as God was killed by pity; he later admits to God's secrecy, slyness, and equivocal nature. Similarly, Zarathustra encounters the ugliest man who despises pity, the self-willed beggar who learns from the cows how to "chew the cud" or acquire profound knowledge, and his own shadow. He acknowledges that the overman is yet to come; the higher men he has invited to his cave still exhibit severe shortcomings. They resort to their nostalgia for certainty and self-affirmation by worshipping an ass. However, a lion outside his cave signals that the overman is coming. 

Key Message: 

The servile, retiring, and the readily yielding seek to blind themselves to the necessity of change; these constitute the rabble that sticks stubbornly to old value systems to maintain their complacent and content existence. They persecute the nonconformists and refuse to confront the truth that dynamism and flux define life; no system of values can remain permanent for long before being overthrown. Similarly, human beings are constantly in the process of overcoming themselves to evolve into the overman. The old tablets of outworn wisdom which slanders the earthly and the bodily must be overthrown to embrace and cultivate a creative will to power that fuels the becoming of the world and the hourglass of the eternal recurrence of all things. It necessitates that the world remains in constant flux–that happiness and suffering, joy and pain, virtue and sin remain entwined. 

Stand out Sections: 

• Like the higher men who continue to exhibit certain signs of enslavement to old systems, Zarathustra's (and Nietzsche's) views on women indicated in the section entitled 'On Little Women Old and Young' of Book One appear erroneously tied to sexism. He envisions women's role and their ultimate aim in seeking male companionship as the breeding of the overman. 

• The section entitled 'On Self-Overcoming' in Book two and 'On Old and New Tablets' in Book three provide Nietzsche's views on his philosophical notions of "will to power," "self-overcoming", and "eternal recurrence."