Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The introduction gives background on Nietzsche's thinking by explaining a passage from previous books. In the penultimate section of the fourth book of The Gay Science, he writes about the heaviest burden: what if a demon told you that this exact life, every pain and joy and thought and sigh and every small and great thing, would return again and again, times without number, in the same sequence forever?

Would you curse the demon, or would you say: you are a god and never did I hear anything more divine? That question, do you want this again and again, would become the heaviest burden on all your actions. Or it would require you to become so well disposed toward yourself and life that you wanted no greater sanction than eternal recurrence.

This hit hard while reading it. I contemplated my very choice to be reading right now. Do I want to do this over and over? I decided yes, because any paragraph that makes me rethink my entire life is worth reading again.

After the one love of his life left him and he fell into despair, Nietzsche realized he was back in solitude and was going to stay there. He resolved his crisis and surmounted his nihilism through these signs: the Superman, the will to the Superman, the will to power and self-overcoming. Live dangerously. Amor fati, eternal recurrence, total affirmation of life. The great noontide.

What is truth? Jesus would have said: I am the truth. Zarathustra's answer is that truth is a concept belonging to the human mind and will, and that apart from the human mind and will there is no such thing as truth. It is not something waiting to be discovered, or something you submit to. It is something you create. Truth is the will to power.

Nietzsche believes the single motivating principle for all human actions is the will to power. The Superman is the man who is master of himself. It is the hardest endeavor and requires the most power. He who can do it has experienced the greatest increase in power, and joy, happiness, is the feeling that power increases. So the Superman would be the happiest man and, as such, the meaning and justification of existence.

The continual increase of power to transmute the chaos of life into continual self-overcoming, and thus experience ever more joy, would be the meaning of life. Joy requires no justification; it is its own justification. He who attained that joy would affirm life and live it however much pain it contained, because he would know that all things are chained and entwined together and everything is part of a whole. Eternal recurrence could only be wanted by the Superman who is so well disposed toward life.

Zarathustra is the founder of the ancient Persian religion, credited with the Zend-Avesta. He lived in the seventh century B.C.

Prologue

God is dead. Zarathustra returns from 10 years living in the mountains, arrives at the nearest town, and says to the people: I teach you the Superman. Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?

All creatures hitherto have created something beyond themselves, and do you want to be the ebb of this great tide and return to the animals rather than overcome man?

What is the ape to men? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And so shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment.

In truth, man is a polluted river. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted river and not be defiled.

The people of the town laughed at him. They had been told a tight-rope walker was coming to town and assumed it was him. He said: man is a rope, fastened between animal and Superman, a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

The Ultimate Men

They have discovered happiness. They have left the places where living was hard. They still love one's neighbor, because one needs warmth. They still work, because work is entertainment. But they take care that the entertainment does not exhaust them.

Nobody grows rich or poor anymore: both are too much of a burden. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both are too much of a burden. No herdsman and one herd. Everyone wants the same thing, everyone is the same: whoever thinks otherwise goes voluntarily into the madhouse.

I don't take that as a call for racial homogeneity. To me it's saying everyone is on the same page about loving one another and not ruling over each other.

He often calls the Superman the lightning to the dark cloud man.

Zarathustra speaks to his heart in this book, which feels like the equivalent of praying to God. But since God is dead and the overcoming of oneself is the truth, talking to your heart becomes Nietzsche's parallel to talking to God. He asks his heart for the impossible: that his pride always go along with his wisdom, and if one day his wisdom deserts him, then may his pride too fly with his folly.

Zarathustra's Discourses

Of the Three Metamorphoses

The three metamorphoses of the spirit: how the spirit becomes a camel, and the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child. When the spirit is the camel it wants to be laden. It kneels down and asks what is the heaviest thing, so that it may take it upon itself and rejoice in its strength.

Like a camel heading into a desert, it takes on these heavy weights and takes pride in bearing them. But in the lonely desert the camel becomes a lion. It wants to capture freedom and be lord in its own desert. The lion is needed to create freedom for itself. The lion becomes enemy to its ultimate God and struggles for victory with the great dragon of Thou Shalt. On every scale of the dragon glitters golden Thou Shalt, but the lion says I Will.

It once loved Thou Shalt as its holiest thing, but now it needs the lion to create its own freedom and a sacred No to societal norms. The constant fighting must end when the spirit transforms from lion to child. The child is innocence and forgetfulness. New beginnings. Rules are forgotten so that the child may create its own world. Life becomes a celebration of one's power to create and enjoy.

In the prologue, he says the Superman must be like a sea, able to receive a polluted river and not be defiled. If the spirit is in the perpetual state of a child, it is unsullied from the negative or positive influences of society. The perpetual innocence of a child prevents the spirit from being defiled.

Of the Chairs of Virtue

A wise man on sleep: you must overcome yourself ten times a day, that causes a fine weariness and opium to the soul. Ten times you must be reconciled to yourself again, for overcoming is bitterness and the unreconciled man sleeps badly. You must discover ten truths a day, otherwise you will seek truth in the night too, with your soul still hungry. You must laugh and be cheerful ten times a day, or your stomach, that father of affliction, will disturb you in the night.

Of the Despisers of the Body

I am body and soul? No. The soul is only a word for something in the body. I am body entirely. Spirit is also just an instrument of the body, a toy of your great intelligence.

Of Joys and Passions

Love your virtues. Own them. They're unique to you. They're private and personal and come from passion. It's hard to call your virtue by name, because once you can, then it doesn't feel like it comes from you. Only you know her best.

May your virtue be too exalted for the familiarity of names; and if you must speak of her, then do not be ashamed to stammer her. Thus you should stammer and praise your virtue.

If you're lucky you'll have one virtue and no more. Many is distinguished, but it is a hard fate; many a man has gone into the desert and killed himself because he was tired of being a battleground of virtues. Each virtue is jealous of the others. So love your virtues or perish by them.

Of Reading and Writing

You tell me: life is hard to bear. But if it were otherwise why should you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening?

I should believe only in a God who understood how to dance.

That line sums up a lot of what he is trying to say. Life is about the blissful joys and foolish little moments of happiness where one is in love with life. Dance is an expression of that love for life.

These are all frameworks. Don't forget that and construe them with truth.

Of War and Warriors

You should wage war for your opinions, even if you are honestly defeated. War and courage have done more great things than charity. Not your pity but your bravery has saved the unfortunate up to now. To be brave is good.

Let your love towards life be towards your highest hope, and let your highest hope be the highest idea of life. And according to Zarathustra the highest idea is: man is something that should be overcome.

This sounds like a call to battle those who disagree, but I don't think he means literal violence against dissenters. He is telling everyone to fight for their opinions, and that this is what the Superman would do, but he's not saying what opinion. He wants everyone to be passionate about their own opinion and battle for it. It sounds more like scientific discourse where everyone attacks each other's opinions and promotes thinking for yourself.

He also says to be proud of your enemy and that you can hate your enemy but not despise them. That implies respect for an enemy battling for his own opinion and a celebration of honest independent thinking, even if your opinion is defeated.

Of the New Idol

The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. It is the death of the peoples. It lies and says: I, the state, am the people. The state was invented for the superfluous.

There is nothing greater on earth than I, the regulating finger of God, thus the monster bellows. It buys for itself the luster of your virtues and the glance of your proud eyes. A cunning device of Hell has been devised, a horse of death jingling with the trappings of divine honors. A death for many has been devised that glorifies itself as life, where universal slow suicide is called life.

Just look at these superfluous people. They call their theft culture. They acquire wealth and make themselves poorer with it. They desire power. See them clamber, those nimble apes. They all strive towards the throne.

This is the most passionate he gets in criticizing anything and it's entertaining to read such an articulate attack. This state feels like nation-states offering absolutes for good and evil. A criticism of empires subjugating people with lies and promises of power. A broad criticism of idolatry, but specifically nation-states that corrupt people with divine claims and calls for allegiance.

A free life still remains for great souls. He who possesses little is so much the less possessed: praised be a moderate poverty.

Of the Flies of the Marketplace

All great things occur away from glory and the marketplace: the inventors of new values have always lived away. Your neighbors will always be poisonous flies: that about you which is great, that itself must make them more poisonous and ever more fly-like. Flee, my friend, into your solitude and to where the raw, rough breeze blows.

Nietzsche was this young genius recruited and used by groups he saw as bloodsucking, like a hot young artist surrounded by flies of small men looking to benefit from greatness.

Of Chastity

I love the forest. It is bad to live in towns: too many of the lustful live there. Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a lustful woman? Rough section.

Of the Friend

In your friend you should possess your best enemy. Don't show pity for your friend. See their strengths. He really goes off the rails here on women. The only part that resonates is that friends are valuable because of their differences, not their similarities to you.

Our faith in others betrays wherein we would dearly like to have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.

Trying to see it from his perspective: he was uniquely intelligent, full of difficult new ideas, likely an outcast, and probably not easy to befriend. He seems to be building a philosophy where self-sufficiency matters because friendship may not be available or reliable.

Of Love of One's Neighbor

The gist is that one runs to their neighbor because they don't have a good love for themselves, and so they do nice things for their neighbor until the neighbor says nice things back and then they can finally feel good about themselves.

You cannot endure to be alone with yourselves and do not love yourselves enough: now you want to mislead your neighbor into love and gild yourselves with his mistake.

He is building a kind of mental armor to be self-sufficient and never rely on others. There is something compelling in having the tools to thrive while alone.

Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison to you. My brothers, I do not exhort you to love of your neighbor: I exhort you to love of the most distant.

The most distant probably means people different from yourself. Love differing opinions rather than vying for your neighbor to have a likable opinion of you.

Of Old and Young Women

Zarathustra comes across an old lady in the woods who asks him to speak on women and he obliges with a lot of ugly stuff: that woman is for pregnancy, that man wants danger and play and thus woman as dangerous plaything, that man should be trained for war and woman for the recreation of the warrior. It is very hard to read charitably.

The funniest part is the end, where the little old woman supposedly answers Zarathustra by saying he knows little of women and yet is right about them. It reads like self-flattering fan fiction. It lands like: then everyone stood up and clapped.

Of the Adder's Bite

Reddit link

Of the Bestowing Virtue

Truly, I advise you: go away from me and guard yourselves against Zarathustra. And better still: be ashamed of him. Perhaps he has deceived you.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends. One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil. And why, then, should you not pluck at my laurels?

Part 2