NIETZSCHE’S THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA
Nietzsche regarded Thus Spoke Zarathustra as his most important
philosophical contribution because it proposes solutions to the prob
lems and questions he poses in his later books for example, his cure
for the human disposition to vengefulness and his creation of new
values as the antidote to nihilism. It is also the only place where he
elaborates his concepts of the superhuman and the eternal recurrence
of the same. In this Critical Guide, an international group of distin
guished scholars analyze the philosophical ideas in Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, discussing a range of topics that include literary parody
as philosophical critique, philosophy as a way of life, the meaning of
human life, philosophical naturalism, fatalism, radical flux, human
passions and virtues, great politics, transhumanism, and ecological
conscience. The volume will be invaluable for scholars and students
interested in Nietzsche’s thought.
is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Warwick. He is the author and editor of a number of
books on Nietzsche, including Nietzsche contra Rousseau, Nietzsche’s
Search for Philosophy, Nietzsche’s Dawn: Philosophy, Ethics, and the
Passion of Knowledge (with Rebecca Bamford), Nietzsche and Modern
German Thought (ed.), A Companion to Nietzsche (ed.), and The
Nietzsche Reader (ed. with Duncan Large). He was elected Honorary
President of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society in .
. is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Puget Sound. He is the author, editor, and translator of a number of
books on Nietzsche, including The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra,
Nietzsche’s Metaphilosophy (ed. with Matthew Meyer), Unpublished
Fragments from the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Vols. and
(trans. with David F. Tinsley), and Dionysus Dithyrambs (trans. with
David F. Tinsley).
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Titles published in this series:
Aristotle’s On the Soul
.
Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation
Kant’s Prolegomena
Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences
Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed
Fichte’s System of Ethics
Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
Hobbes’s On the Citizen
Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit
.
Kant’s Lectures on Metaphysics
.
Spinoza’s Political Treatise
.
Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae
Aristotle’s Generation of Animals
Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
. ’
Spinoza’s Ethics
.
Plato’s Symposium
é
Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right
Aquinas’s Disputed Questions on Evil
. .
Aristotle’s Politics
Aristotle’s Physics
(Continued after the Index)
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NIETZSCHE’S
THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA
A Critical Guide
KEITH ANSELL-PEARSON
University of Warwick
PAUL S. LOEB
University of Puget Sound
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[W]hat is more important is that Zarathustra is more truthful than
any other thinker. His teaching, and his alone, has truthfulness as
the supreme virtue in other words, the opposite of the cowardice
of the ‘idealist’ who flees from reality, Zarathustra has more
courage in his body than all thinkers put together. To tell the
truth and to shoot arrows well, that is the Persian virtue.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo
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Contents
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Note on Texts, Translations, and References
List of Abbreviations
page ix
x
xi
xii
Introduction
Keith Ansell-Pearson and Paul S. Loeb
Laughter As Weapon: Parody and Satire
in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Benedetta Zavatta
Philosophy As a Way of Life in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Keith Ansell-Pearson and Marta Faustino
What Makes the Affirmation of Life Difficult?
Paul Katsafanas
Zarathustra’s Response to Schopenhauer
Christopher Janaway
Nietzsche’s Naturalism and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Matthew Meyer
Nietzsche’s Solution to the Philosophical
Problem of Change
Paul S. Loeb
Zarathustra’s Moral Psychology
Neil Sinhababu
Zarathustra’s Great Contempt
Scott Jenkins
vii
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Contents
viii
The Great Politics of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Paul Franco
Joyful Transhumanism: Love and Eternal Recurrence
in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
Gabriel Zamosc
Nietzsche on the Re-naturalization of Humanity in
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Kaitlyn Creasy
Bibliography
Index
Published online by Cambridge University Press
Contributors
- is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Warwick.
is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at California State
University, San Bernardino.
is a research fellow at the Nova Institute of Philosophy
(IFILNOVA), where she coordinates the Art of Living Research Group.
is Professor of Government at Bowdoin College.
is Professor of Philosophy at the University
of Southampton.
is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kansas.
is Professor of Philosophy at Boston University.
. is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Puget Sound.
is Professor of Philosophy at The University
of Scranton.
is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the National
University of Singapore.
is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Colorado Denver.
is a philosophy researcher attached to the Institut
des textes et manuscrits modernes (ITEM) in Paris, a research unit
belonging to CNRS and the École normale supérieure.
ix
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the editorial staff at Cambridge University Press,
especially Hilary Gaskin, Hal Churchman, and Thomas Haynes. We are
also grateful to our copy editor Abigail Rothberg.
x
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Note on Texts, Translations, and References
The following abbreviations of Nietzsche’s works are used in this volume.
The specific English translations used by each author are listed in a
footnote after the first reference to a translated passage. The
Bibliography provides a complete information about all translations used
as well as all the cited secondary literature and the cited primary sources for
Nietzsche’s texts. In the references to Nietzsche’s works, Roman numerals
generally denote the volume number of a set of collected works or the
standard subdivision within a single work, and Arabic numerals generally
denote the relevant section number. “P” is the abbreviation for the preface
(or in the case of Z, the Prologue) to a given work (except for the preface to
the edition of BT). Page numbers are added when sections are long,
providing more precise information about the relevant text. In citing
Nietzsche’s unpublished fragments in KSA, references provide the volume
number followed by the relevant fragment number. In cases where
Nietzsche’s works are cited from KSA, a page number is typically provided.
In citing KSB, the volume number is followed by the letter number.
xi
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Abbreviations
Abbreviations for Nietzsche’s collected works in the original German
KGB
Friedrich Nietzsche: Briefwechsel. Kritische Gesamtausgabe
KSA
Friedrich Nietzsche: Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe
KSB
Friedrich Nietzsche: Sämtliche Briefe. Kritische Studienausgabe
Abbreviations for titles of published works
AOM
Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche (republished in in
Menschliches, Allzumenschliches II); translated as Assorted
Opinions and Maxims
BGE
Jenseits von Gut und Böse; translated as Beyond Good and Evil
BT
Die Geburt der Tragödie; translated as The Birth of Tragedy. The
“Attempt at a Self-Criticism” added to the edition is cited
as “Attempt” followed by the relevant section number
CW
Der Fall Wagner; translated as The Case of Wagner
D
Morgenröthe; translated as Daybreak or Dawn
GM
Zur Genealogie der Moral; translated as On the Genealogy of
Morals or On the Genealogy of Morality
GS
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft; translated as The Gay Science
HH
Menschliches, Allzumenschliches; translated as Human, All Too
Human. References to the two-volume edition are
indicated by Roman numerals (HH I and HH II)
HL
Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben
(Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen II); translated as On the Uses and
Disadvantages of History for Life
RWB
Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen IV)
SE
Schopenhauer als Erzieher (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen III);
translated as Schopenhauer as Educator
xii
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List of Abbreviations
TI
UM
WS
Z
xiii
Götzen-Dämmerung; translated as Twilight of the Idols.
References include an abbreviated chapter title and
section number.
Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen; translated as Untimely Meditations
Der Wanderer und sein Schatten (republished in in
Menschliches, Allzumenschliches II); translated as The Wanderer
and His Shadow
Also sprach Zarathustra (Part IV originally published privately);
translated as Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In most of the chapters in
this anthology, references include the part number in Roman
numerals and an abbreviated chapter name that is sometimes
followed by the section number in Arabic numerals. For
example, (Z:I “Prologue” ) refers to the third section of the
Prologue, and (Z:III “Convalescent” ) refers to the second
section of the chapter entitled “The Convalescent” in Part III.
Alternatively, references list the part number in Roman
numerals followed by “P” for “Prologue” or the chapter number
in Arabic numerals (not included in Nietzsche’s manuscripts),
sometimes followed by the section number in Arabic numerals.
For example, (Z P:) refers to the first section of the Prologue
and (Z III.:) refers to the second section of the chapter
entitled “The Convalescent” in Part III
Abbreviations for private publications, authorized manuscripts,
and unpublished works
A
Der Antichrist; translated as The Antichrist and The Anti-Christ
EH
Ecce homo; translated as Ecce Homo. References include an
abbreviated chapter title and section number. For example,
(EH “Destiny” ) refers to the third section of the chapter
entitled “Why I Am a Destiny.” In the chapter entitled “Why
I Write Such Great Books,” the section numbers within the
material devoted to one of Nietzsche’s books is preceded just
by the abbreviation of the relevant book title. For example,
(EH BT:) refers to the second section of the material in the
chapter “Books” devoted to BT
GSt
“Der griechische Staat;” translated as “The Greek State”
(references are to page numbers)
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List of Abbreviations
xiv
PPP
PTAG
“Die vorplatonischen Philosophen;” translated as The
Pre-Platonic Philosophers (references are to page numbers)
“Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen;”
translated as Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
Abbreviations for Nietzsche’s unpublished notebooks and translations
of notebook material
CWFN
The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche. For volumes that
include Nietzsche’s unpublished writings, these are cited by
volume number and fragment number; for volumes that are
translations of Nietzsche’s published works, they are
referenced by the abbreviation of the translated work and
corresponding year of publication
WLN
Friedrich Nietzsche: Writings from Late Notebooks (cited with
page number)
WP
Der Wille zur Macht; translated as The Will to Power
(always cited with the corresponding entry from KSA)
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Introduction
Keith Ansell-Pearson and Paul S. Loeb
Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and for
No One (TSZ) (–) is a text that was celebrated by creative artists
and writers in the twentieth century and it continues to have a wide
readership outside academia. This book has also been appreciated by some
seminal thinkers in the history of continental philosophy – notably Martin
Heidegger, Eugen Fink, Karl Löwith, and Gilles Deleuze. However, recent
philosophical scholarship tends to marginalize TSZ and to downplay its
significance in our engagement with Nietzsche’s thought. This neglect is
no doubt understandable. The text is perhaps the best example we have of
his self-confessed philosophical heterodoxy, and he himself pointed out its
unusual relation to the rest of his corpus: “Suppose I had published my
Zarathustra under another name, for example, that of Richard Wagner—
the acuteness of two thousand years would not have been sufficient for
anyone to guess that the author of Human, All-Too-Human is the visionary
of Zarathustra” (EH “Clever” ; EH ).
The aim of this volume is to remedy this current neglect of TSZ by
highlighting its importance for a fuller understanding of Nietzsche’s contribution to philosophy. Our hope is that this new collection of essays by
leading figures in the international community of Nietzsche scholars will
help show why he was right to claim that TSZ needs to assume a central
role in any informed appreciation of his style of philosophical practice as
well as of the fundamental content of his core ideas. We also expect that
this collection will help bring TSZ into better contact with the kinds of
questions, problems, and debates that animate contemporary philosophy.
More specifically, the chapters in this Critical Guide separately endeavor
to (a) help explain Nietzsche’s claim that TSZ strives to resolve the
important problems that are posed, but not resolved, in his other, more
widely discussed texts (like BGE and GM) – for example, how to cure the
human disposition to vengeful thinking and how to give meaning to
human life; (b) help explain why Nietzsche’s turn to art, poetry, and
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fiction in TSZ is central to Nietzsche’s project during the mature phase of
his thinking, for example as a new kind of parodic and satirical critique, or
as a narrative exemplification of circular time; (c) help show how TSZ
addresses fundamental philosophical problems and questions that preoccupy contemporary philosophers today, such as the problem of persistence
through change or the question of how human action is motivated; (d)
help explain how TSZ contributes to the ongoing revitalization of the
practice of philosophy as a way of life; and (e) help show how TSZ is
pertinent to pressing contemporary concerns, such as the emergence of a
widespread ecological conscience and the debate about transhumanism.
Because our guiding question is why philosophers today should care
about TSZ, the chapters in this book do not offer purely exegetical
treatments of this text and do not concentrate on scholarly questions about
the place of this text in the history of philosophy or in Nietzsche’s
philosophical development. Also, since the Cambridge Critical Guides
are intended for scholars and graduate students, these essays do not present
introductory-level discussions, outlines, or commentaries on TSZ.
Accordingly, this volume does not attempt to provide a comprehensive
coverage of Nietzsche’s text and its concepts, or of the various interpretive
controversies concerning this text and its concepts. Instead, the focus is a
philosophical discussion of topics that are the subject of interest today in
the field of philosophy and within the community of philosophical
Nietzsche scholars. However, we realize that philosophical readers who
harbor misgivings about this text and its concepts may be disinclined to
consider the philosophical relevance of TSZ. So we would like to address
some common complaints before we provide an overview of the chapters
in this Critical Guide. We hope that these brief framing remarks will
facilitate a more open-minded approach to Nietzsche’s book and to this
collection of essays.
Some Common Complaints about TSZ
Thus Spoke Zarathustra is unique among Nietzsche’s central philosophical
works, and indeed in the history of philosophy, because it is not written in
the author’s own voice and is instead constructed in the form of a biblical
narrative with a fictional teacher named “Zarathustra” taking the place of
Jesus. In the course of this book, just as in the Gospels of the New
Testament, this teacher offers an extended string of speeches, sermons,
parables, and prophesies to the beloved disciples who have chosen to
follow him. In addition, the narrative depicts events in the teacher’s life
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Introduction
that closely resemble the events in the Gospels. For example, the protagonist is tested by the devil (Z III.); he rages against self-proclaimed good
and just people who are identified as Pharisees (Z III.:); he is asked to
heal those who are blind and crippled (Z II.); he calls himself a fisher of
men and struggles with the doubts and apostasies of his disciples
(Z IV.; Z III.); like Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, he suffers
excruciating self-doubt about his mission during a pivotal moment of
solitude away from his disciples (Z II.); and he gathers a select group
of followers for a last supper (Z IV.). Most importantly, at the end of the
book that Nietzsche published without Part IV, Zarathustra experiences a
self-sacrificing martyrdom and crucifixion that allows him to redeem
humankind from all sin (Z III.:, Z III.) – after which he is resurrected
to live again for all of eternity (Z III.:, Z III.). At certain points in this
book that Nietzsche called his “Testament” or “fifth Gospel” (KSB : ,
), there even appears a narrative voice that is historically distant from the
events in the story, thus imitating the different kinds of narrative voices and
sources in the New Testament compilation (Z IV., Z IV.:).
Confronted with such a strange design, many philosophers, historians of
philosophy, and even scholars of Nietzsche’s philosophy have been at a loss
as to how to approach this book and have tended to marginalize it, dismiss
it, or just ignore it altogether. The reasons for their resistance and negative
valuation are not hard to understand. Since few of them are Christian, they
see no reason to investigate the details of some imitation or parody of the
Christian bible. Also, they are not trained as literary critics, much less as
biblical exegetes, and they have little interest in doing the background
work that would help them to understand and appreciate the unique style
of this book. Perhaps there was a time when this book felt compelling to a
majority of philosophers with a Christian background, but that time is
long gone – maybe even due to the tremendous early influence of this very
book. It is all well and good that readers of the Bible are persuaded by
image-laden allegories, sermons, and parables, but this is anathema to
philosophers who look for logic, reason, and argumentation. Most of what
See Loeb (: –, –); and Loeb (b).
This is not the only literary model for Nietzsche’s design, but it is certainly the dominant one. Other
literary and artistic models include ancient Buddhist lore, ancient Greek and Persian mythology, the
Homeric epics, the Old Testament, ancient Greek tragedies and satyr plays, Pindar’s odes, Plato’s
philosophical dramas, Menippean satire, Lucretius’ philosophical poem, Goethe’s Faust, Emerson’s
essays, Hölderlin’s poetic narratives, and Wagner’s operas. See also the helpful explanatory notes in
Parkes ().
See Gadamer ().
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Nietzsche’s protagonist says is conveyed with an air of authority that is
supposed to compel our assent, but this is just what Aristotle long ago
called the logical fallacy of appealing to authority. Moreover, Nietzsche
himself teaches that Christianity is a completely bankrupt system of
thought, so why study a book that is based on the paradigm for all
Christian thinking? Indeed, since we can simply read Nietzsche’s later
works – in which he communicates the same things, but this time in his
own voice, and thankfully with a much clearer logic – why bother with this
bizarre biblical palimpsest? This is especially the case since the philosophical books that Nietzsche wrote afterward, notably BGE and GM, presumably convey a more developed and sophisticated version of his earlier
Zarathustra ideas – ideas such as the vengeful inspiration of moral judgment and the post-Christian nihilistic predicament. Perhaps Nietzsche
wrote Zarathustra so as to better communicate with a much wider audience outside the world of academically trained philosophers (KSB : ),
in which case this is all the more reason for simply passing it over in favor
of those later works that he wrote especially for philosophers. In any case,
as one Nietzsche scholar has recently commented, there is something
aesthetically unpleasant about the whole literary exercise:
In linguistic style, it has an affected, archaic air, with resonances of the Luther
Bible. One of the key interpretive questions is whether it is a parody of a
religious book, or meant to be taken ‘straight,’ as a kind of quasi religious
mystical outpouring. My own view is that it is downright unbearable (some
choice passages aside) unless one takes it as a rather arch sendup of a religious
book, and even then it is tough going. (Huddleston : )
These are all serious worries about the book that is the subject of this
Critical Guide. Nevertheless, we think there is an appropriate response to
be found in the extended advice Nietzsche offered for understanding his
book. For the most part, this advice can be found in Ecce Homo, where he
presents a review of his life and philosophical career. Indeed, it is quite
striking that Nietzsche spends most of his time in Ecce Homo introducing,
quoting, explaining, praising, and celebrating TSZ as his most important
book. He gives many reasons for this claim, including especially its
extraordinary aesthetic qualities and the intensity of feeling that inspired
its composition. But for our purposes here, what matters most is his
assertion that this book is the only place where he presents the constructive
See also Gadamer (), Tanner (), and Huddleston ().
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Introduction
and affirmative solutions to the questions and problems he poses in the
critical, skeptical, and polemical books that came later (EH: BGE). His
most precise statement of this point is his claim that only TSZ contains
the counter-ideal to the ascetic ideal that he explains, diagnoses, and
criticizes in the third essay of his Genealogy of Morality (EH: GM). This
statement is supported by his claim at the end of the second essay of GM
that only Zarathustra will be able to redeem reality and humankind from
the curse placed upon them by this ascetic ideal – that is, from the great
nausea, from the will to nothingness, from nihilism. Only Zarathustra will
be able to liberate the will and once again give the earth its goal and hope
to humankind. In fact, Nietzsche even concludes this second essay by
deliberately silencing his own authorial voice for fear that he will interfere
with the redemptive task that can only be accomplished by the superior
teacher he envisions arriving in a stronger and healthier future (GM
II:–).
It is true, then, that Nietzsche distances himself from his fictional
protagonist – but not, as many critics assume, because he does not fully
endorse his protagonist’s philosophical views. Instead, it is because he
thinks that these views are actually superior to his own views, that is, to
the views he teaches in his own voice in the works he wrote after TSZ.
Given what he says in EH, this means that he thinks of his own philosophical task as merely critical, not constructive. In terms of the distinction, he defends in BGE , this means that he thinks of himself as a
philosophical laborer who is only able to prepare the ground for genuine
philosophers who are able to create new values. He investigates historical
origins, codifies past value-creations, offers methodological arguments, and
criticizes the ideas of his contemporaries. He presents credible and arduous
intellectual processes of inquiry, as well as skeptical and irreligious modes
of thinking – including of course, and especially, his savage critique of the
Gospels (A –). But the genuine philosopher of the future, who is
envisioned only in TSZ, is someone who will make use of all these
preliminary labors in order to issue commands and laws that will determine the destiny and purpose of humankind (BGE ; KSA :[],
KSA :[]). This is why Nietzsche presents his fictional protagonist as
an authoritative pedagogical orator rather than as a contemplative thinkerwriter who offers logical analyses and arguments. Again, this is not because
these logical analyses and arguments are absent. Instead, Nietzsche wants
us to keep in mind everything he has taught us in his later books as the
essential support and background – indeed, as the launching platform – for
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Zarathustra’s central teachings. For example, we should keep in mind
everything he has taught us in his post-Zarathustra works about the
inherent weakness and illness of humankind as the background for
Zarathustra’s inaugural command and law that the human species should
sacrifice itself for the sake of a stronger and healthier superhuman species
(Z P:–). According to Nietzsche, all the philosophical labor in his later
books is presupposed by Zarathustra’s creation of new values that are no
longer centered, as has always been the case before (JS ), around the
survival and preservation of humankind. This new command introduces a
new meaning and goal for humankind that redeems it from the Christian
ascetic ideal and from the great nausea, nihilism, and will to nothingness
that grew out of this ideal.
It is no coincidence, then, that Nietzsche begins his Zarathustra narrative
with the hermit saint telling Zarathustra that God is already dead (Z P:).
For Nietzsche thinks that his own acceleration of the collapse of the year-old system of Christian belief is required before Zarathustra’s future
millennial project can begin. In GM II:– Nietzsche baptizes his protagonist, whom he elsewhere calls his son and heir (KSB : ), as “the
Antichrist,” “the conqueror of God,” and “Zarathustra the Godless.” This is
because Zarathustra’s philosophical invention of new values that are centered around the self-overcoming of humankind is the whole key to dispelling all the remaining shadows of God. Thus, far from being a new kind of
religious book, or a “quasi-religious-mystical outpouring,” TSZ is supposed
to represent the ultimate triumph of philosophy over religion – of Dionysus
over the Crucified (EH “Destiny” ). When Nietzsche tells us that his
Zarathustra book came to him as a kind of divinely revealed truth (EH
Z:, ), this has nothing to do with the kind of religious revelation that is
claimed as the source of the biblical texts he is imitating and parodying.
What he has in mind instead is the philosophizing god Dionysus (BGE
–) who is the circulus vitiosus deus and the personification of cosmic
eternal recurrence (BGE ).
This brings us back, then, to Nietzsche’s reason for repurposing the
Christian New Testament as a means of communicating his most important philosophical insights. In the first place, these are insights that he does
not want to communicate in his own voice because he would then be
Hence Nietzsche’s remark in The Antichrist that Zarathustra, like all great intellects, is a skeptic
(A ). For further discussion of this point, see Ansell-Pearson ().
For further discussion of this point, see Loeb and Tinsley (: –) and Loeb (b).
See Loeb (: –, ).
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Introduction
usurping and undermining the task that demands a stronger and healthier
philosopher in the future. In particular, Nietzsche confesses in Ecce Homo
that he himself, having been corrupted by nineteenth-century German
“idealist” culture, is not strong enough to command the self-overcoming of
humankind or healthy enough to affirm the eternal recurrence of his own
life. Still, he is able to extrapolate from his own weaknesses and pathologies
in order to envision what kind of future philosopher is required to do these
things. Indeed, he suggests, this very act of depicting the heir to his legacy
might be sufficient to call forth this philosopher. Some exceptionally
strong and healthy human beings in the future might be seduced into
crowning themselves with the name “Zarathustra.” So Nietzsche asked
himself what would be the best literary means of luring these figures to his
side. And his answer was that he should appropriate the most widely-read
and intensely-studied book ever written – indeed, the very book that
occasioned the invention of the printing press. Not only would he be able
to count on his readers already knowing this book almost by heart, he
would also be able to bypass the vagaries of academic fashion, intellectual
squabbling, and ivory-tower obscurity. In addition, as Benedetta Zavatta
explains in the opening chapter of this collection (Chapter ), Nietzsche
saw that this choice would allow him to expel from the Gospels the
religious meanings of its original writers and infuse them instead with
his own new philosophical meanings. For example, he has Zarathustra
teach that Jesus’ idea of turning the other cheek is actually inspired by
vengeful motives and must be left behind if we are ever to overcome the
spirit of revenge (Z I.). What better way to seduce his readers away from
the heart and soul of the Christian ascetic ideal and toward his new postChristian goal of humankind’s self-overcoming? Indeed, in the notes he
wrote while composing TSZ, Nietzsche explains that his appropriation of
Luther’s linguistic style and of the poetic form of the Bible is what
especially allows him to accomplish this seduction:
Lastly: we [Germans] are still very young. Our last major event is still Luther,
our only book is still the Bible. [. . .] For continual repetition
[
[
etc. the rhythm of rhymed verse, we are musically too sophisticated (aside
from misunderstood hexameter!) How beneficial the poetic form of Platen
and Hölderlin has been to us already! But much too strict for us! Playing
with the most diverse meters and occasionally unmetrical verse is the right
thing: the freedom that we have achieved already in music through
For further discussion of this point, see Loeb (a).
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- .
RhichardiWhagneri! we can certainly take this for our poetry! In the final
analysis: it is the only kind of poetry that speaks strongly to our hearts!
Thanks to Luther! [. . .] The language of Luther and the poetic form of the
Bible as the basis for a new German poetry: this is my invention! Making
things classical, the rhyme scheme is all wrong and does not speak
profoundly enough to us: not even Wagner’s alliteration! (KSA :
[, ]; CWFN : )
Returning now to the list of standard complaints about Nietzsche’s
book, we can see that they depend on various misunderstandings.
Students of Nietzsche’s philosophy will not find what he thinks are his
most important insights anywhere outside of TSZ. These insights are not
in any way superseded by what he wrote in his later works. In fact, he tells
us, these later works are all merely critical and skeptical analyses that pose
questions and problems that await their resolution in the ideas he had
already presented in TSZ. Scholars often cite Nietzsche’s remarks that his
later works say the same things as TSZ, although very differently
(EH “Destiny” ; KSB : ), but he does not mean by this that TSZ
says the same things as these later works. And in fact it does not, because
the two most important ideas in this book – the self-overcoming of
humankind and the eternal recurrence of the same – are not revisited
again in the texts written afterward (they are only mentioned or alluded
to). Again, this does not mean, as some scholars have supposed, that
Nietzsche abandoned these ideas after completing TSZ. Instead, he held
them in reserve for readers to study once they had digested his devastating
critique of their most cherished modern dogmas. These two central ideas
can best be understood by philosophical readers who take the time and the
See also BGE : “The masterpiece of German prose is therefore, fairly enough, the masterpiece of
its greatest preacher: the Bible has so far been the best German book. Compared with Luther’s Bible
almost everything else is mere ‘literature’—something that did not grow in Germany and therefore
also did not grow and does not grow into German hearts: as the Bible did” (BGE ).
Recently, it has become common practice for scholars to rest their whole interpretation of eternal
recurrence on the mere preview of this doctrine that Nietzsche offered in a single paragraph of The
Joyful Science (JS ). See Loeb (, ) for a critique of this attempt to avoid discussing the
book-long treatment of this doctrine in TSZ. See also Loeb (, b) for a commentary on
TSZ that shows how eternal recurrence informs not just Zarathustra’s teachings about this doctrine
but also the chronological narrative of the book as a whole.
By contrast, Nietzsche’s later texts do include a substantial, and in some respects more
sophisticated, treatment of the other most important idea in Zarathustra, the will to power. See
Loeb (a).
For a critique of the interpretive suggestion that Nietzsche has Zarathustra abandon his ideal of the
Übermensch as the narrative of TSZ progresses and that this ideal plays no role in the works he wrote
after TSZ, see Loeb (, n. , –, and Chapter ). See also Part IV of TSZ (Z.: ,
, ) and EH (“Books” Z , Z , and “Destiny” ).
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Introduction
trouble to study his use of the New Testament as a literary model, just as
they take the time and the trouble to learn about his philosophical
engagement with Schopenhauer and the neo-Kantians, or about his philological study of the history and culture of Ancient Greece. Biblical
exegetes have offered persuasive interpretations of Jesus’ life and teachings,
and so Nietzsche encourages us to do the same with his presentation of
Zarathustra’s life and teachings. And just as these interpretations of the
New Testament are supposed to uncover fundamental truths, so too
Nietzsche expects us to find deep truths in his own fifth Gospel:
“[W]hat is more important is that Zarathustra is more truthful than any
other thinker. His teaching, and his alone, has truthfulness as the supreme
virtue” (EH “Destiny” ). There is no use in disgruntled scholars complaining about the perceived difficulty of TSZ, or about their lack of talent
or expertise for dealing with the complex literary strategies employed in
this book, or even about the aesthetic displeasure they feel when studying
this book. If our goal is to achieve a complete and proper understanding of
Nietzsche’s contributions to philosophy, we have no choice but to accept
his demand that we master his prized Zarathustra text.
Summary of The Essays
In keeping with the points just made, it is noteworthy that half of the
essays collected in this volume are concerned with the two central ideas of
TSZ that are not treated officially, or at length, anywhere else in
Nietzsche’s published corpus: eternal recurrence and the Übermensch.
Paul Katsafanas, Matthew Meyer, and Paul S. Loeb concentrate on the
former, Scott Jenkins on the latter, and Paul Franco and Gabriel Zamosc
on both. Also, in keeping with the state of philosophical discussion today,
it is noteworthy that half of the essays in this volume explore Nietzsche’s
metaphilosophical commitments in TSZ. Benedetta Zavatta outlines
Nietzsche’s design of TSZ as a new kind of philosophical critique,
Matthew Meyer, Paul S. Loeb, and Kaitlyn Creasy reflect on Nietzsche’s
philosophical naturalism in TSZ, while Keith Ansell-Pearson and Marta
Faustino jointly investigate Nietzsche’s idea in TSZ that philosophy should
be practiced as a way of life.
Zavatta’s chapter opens our collection with a discussion of the parodic
and satirical aspects of Nietzsche’s book. Scholars have heeded Nietzsche’s
For a recent collection of essays on Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy, see Loeb and Meyer (Cambridge
University Press, ).
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instruction that we should think of TSZ as a kind of parody (GS P), but
there has been a great deal of uncertainty about what exactly he means by
this. Zavatta helpfully clears up the debate by surveying the genres of
literary and musical parody prior to Nietzsche’s time and showing how he
appropriated these genres in TSZ so as to invent a new form of philosophical critique. His central insight, she argues, is that the target of criticism –
in this case, the principal text of the Christian tradition – can be imitated
and modified in such a way that its original flawed meanings are expelled
from within and replaced with new legitimate meanings. Those who have
been corrupted by the original text will bring to the imitation all the same
fervor they had invested in the original text and this will help them to
process the criticism, move away from their commitment to the original
flawed meanings, and more easily come to accept the new legitimate
meanings. This new conception of philosophy as a kind of parodical recoding is an affirmative critical weapon that can be usefully deployed
against many other kinds of targets besides the Christian worldview. Or
it can even be aimed from a different perspective entirely, as for example in
Luce Irigaray’s feminist re-coding of TSZ in her Marine Lover of Friedrich
Nietzsche (Irigaray ).
Ansell-Pearson and Faustino also emphasize the aesthetic design of
Nietzsche’s book. Building on Pierre Hadot’s influential reminder that
thinkers in the ancient world used to practice philosophy as a total way of
life, they show that Nietzsche was inspired by these precursors to craft TSZ
as a narrative exemplification and personification of this ideal. In their
view, Nietzsche presents his performative book as a crucial intervention in
an age when professionalized philosophy has become a merely theoretical
and contemplative exercise that is textually propagated by universitydwelling scholarly specialists who have little interest in the kind of commitment to knowledge and wisdom that would transform them and their
lives. Nietzsche knew that the philosophical texts he wrote in his own voice
could be easily assimilated into this bloodless academic culture, so he
deliberately designed a new kind of philosophical text that would resist
any such assimilation. His fictional protagonist actually practices philosophy as a way of life and this is shown by the narrative of his transformative
travels; his fully lived pedagogical relationships with his beloved disciples;
his self-imposed solitude wherein he gains wisdom and experiences deep
personal crises as a result; his fully embodied sensory communion with the
natural world around him; and his joyful determination to live dangerously
in order to shape the destiny of humankind. Instead of just arguing that
philosophy should be practiced as a way of life, Nietzsche writes a new
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Introduction
kind of philosophy book that dramatically models this practice and hopes
to provoke a radical spiritual conversion in its readers. This innovation has
had a far-reaching impact, inspiring for example Sartre’s Nausea, Camus’
The Stranger, and Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game.
In the next two essays, Katsafanas and Janaway discuss a major theoretical and practical question that was introduced by Plato at the very start of
the history of philosophy – is life worth living, and if so, why?
Schopenhauer followed Plato in providing a negative answer to this
question. But Nietzsche opposes both of them and is therefore confronted
with the task of refuting the grounds of their negative answer while at the
same time offering compelling support for Zarathustra’s resounding affirmative answer at the end of the published TSZ (Z III.). In Twilight of
the Idols, Nietzsche points out that our answer to this question cannot be
objective since the living are an interested party (TI “Socrates” ). So he
interprets the negative answers of Plato and Schopenhauer as symptoms of
degenerating life and his own affirmative answer as a symptom of ascending life. The real question, then, is what makes life worth living for
ascending life? Nietzsche’s answer is what he calls life’s self-overcoming,
that is, living beings creating something that will surpass them (Z II.).
Thus, the meaning of Nietzsche’s own ascending life was to create the
superior type, Zarathustra, who teaches that the meaning of ascending
human life in general is to create a superior species, the Übermensch.
However, this emphasis on creative perfectionism raises two problems,
both of which are confronted directly in TSZ, and both of which are
supposed to be solved through the thought of eternal recurrence.
The first problem, according to Katsafanas, is the tendency to negate
what presently exists in favor of an imagined future ideal. This tendency is
dramatized in Zarathustra’s overwhelming urge to be rid of the rabble and
the small human (Z II.; Z III.). At the same time, however, Nietzsche
insists that life-affirmation should be unconditional, meaning that it
should not depend on the possibility of removing objectionable elements
from life. This is why Zarathustra needs the thought of life’s eternal
recurrence. Since all such objectionable elements must eternally recur as
the same, his attitude to this thought serves to reveal any conditionality in
his claim to affirm life. Zarathustra must seek to affirm the eternal
recurrence of life because only in this way will he be pursuing his higher
values while at the same time affirming life as it is actually lived in the
present moment. The second problem, according to Janaway, is that the
unchangeable past appears to overwhelm the future in such a way that it is
impossible for us to create anything new. This is the meaning of that key
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- .
moment in TSZ where Zarathustra is devastated by the pessimistic teaching that all is empty, all is the same, all has been (Z II.). If he cannot
creatively transform the present-day human into his envisioned future
superhuman, Zarathustra loses his reason for living. But then he awakens
his dormant thought of eternal recurrence and realizes that he can in fact
create the past from the perspective of the present moment. Given the
thought of eternal recurrence, the past is no longer closed and hence the
future remains open too. In both of these essays, another window is
opened onto Nietzsche’s stylistic choice for TSZ, namely, as a kind of
Bildungsroman in which the protagonist must overcome major external and
internal impediments on the way to fulfilling his destiny.
Matthew Meyer and Paul S. Loeb both discuss the intensely debated
topic of Nietzsche’s philosophical naturalism, but they approach it in
different ways. For Meyer the key is Nietzsche’s study of Schopenhauer,
while for Loeb the crucial text is Nietzsche’s JS . For Meyer Nietzsche’s
argument has to do with completing the project of naturalism that
Schopenhauer thinks cannot be completed, whereas for Loeb the argument has to do with removing anthropomorphic projective errors from our
concept of nature. Meyer and Loeb both think that Nietzsche’s naturalism
in TSZ leads him to endorse the truth of cosmological eternal recurrence,
but they have different interpretations of what he takes to be the implication of this truth. According to Meyer, this truth entails for Nietzsche a
kind of fatalism that leads us beyond a morality of good and evil and
beyond the conception of agency that underlies this morality. By contrast,
Loeb think that this truth entails for Nietzsche a solution to the problem
of radical flux and a means of curing the human feeling of impotence and
spirit of revenge that is provoked by this radical flux. Given these different
conclusions, Meyer and Loeb also have different understandings of the
aesthetic design of TSZ. Meyer thinks that Nietzsche constructed a narrative in which Zarathustra comes to abandon his non-naturalized conception of himself and his agency, thereby attaining a childlike state of
innocence beyond good and evil. Loeb, on the other hand, claims that
Zarathustra gains an even stronger sense of agency because his new
understanding of the reality of circular time enables him to have a causal
influence on the past – an influence which is embodied and displayed in
the chronological narrative of TSZ.
Neil Sinhababu and Scott Jenkins are both interested in showing the
significance of TSZ for today’s philosophical work in moral psychology.
According to Sinhababu, this book is the only place where we can find
Nietzsche’s most compelling critique of the rationalist idea that reason is
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Introduction
independent of the passions and constitutes a person’s true self as well as
the ground of his virtue. Through a close examination of two chapters
from the start of TSZ, Sinhababu shows how Nietzsche defends the
Humean claim (as perhaps absorbed from his reading of Schopenhauer)
that the bodily passions use reason as their tool and constitute a person’s
self and virtues. He also shows how Nietzsche anticipates and rebuts the
recently influential counterarguments of Christine Korsgaard and John
McDowell. In Sinhababu’s analysis, Nietzsche would have rejected
Korsgaard’s unified agent requirement and would have argued that the
phenomenology of bodily passions is sufficient to explain McDowell’s
idea of perceptual saliences. In the next essay, Jenkins concentrates on
the specific passion of self-contempt that plays such a large role in the
Prologue of Nietzsche’s book where the Übermensch is introduced. This
evaluative emotional state sounds unpleasant and unhealthy, but Jenkins
shows why Nietzsche recommends it as a distinctive self-critical stance that
is actually grounded in true self-love. We must be careful, Jenkins says, not
to confuse it with the two familiar varieties of contempt discussed by
Nietzsche, noble indifference and moral vengefulness. Instead, we should
regard it as Nietzsche’s secular transposition of religious-ascetic contempt.
Here we take a critical attitude toward our present state as falling short of a
superior future ideal that lies within us, which we love and yearn to realize.
This is why Zarathustra says, paradoxically, that he loves humans and
wants them to perish for the sake of a superior Übermensch species.
The last three chapters in this Critical Guide have to do with philosophical questions and issues that are the subject of controversy in the areas
of applied ethics and political theory. According to Paul Franco, Nietzsche
constructed TSZ as a political drama in which the protagonist overcomes
his reluctance to rule and accepts his political responsibility. His reluctance
to rule springs from his compassion for the suffering that his disciples will
have to endure as a result of his teaching. And his political responsibility is
to teach eternal recurrence as a cultivating philosophical idea that creates a
new ruling class that will help bring about his goal of the Übermensch – a
collective goal that will rescue modern Europe from its nihilistic democratic trajectory. In this essay, Franco explains how Nietzsche’s “great”
politics presents a radical challenge to our usual assumptions about the
need for a shared political life and for politics in the mundane and
institutional sense. In the next essay, Gabriel Zamosc argues that a proper
understanding of TSZ will help to advance the contemporary transhumanist movement that often claims to be inspired by Nietzsche’s philosophy
of the Übermensch. According to Zamosc, Zarathustra warns us against
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- .
falsely or sickly transcendent versions of his superhuman ideal that are
actually a veiled hatred of our unchangeable human-all-too-human past.
Indeed, this is why he teaches eternal recurrence, in order to show us how
to love this past as an embodiment of our creative will to power. The
transhumanist movement must therefore incorporate this doctrine so as to
secure a joyful version of itself that embraces our transitional destiny of
forever remaining mere bridges to the superhuman. Finally, in the concluding essay of this volume, Kaitlyn Creasy broadens the scope of this
political and ethical discussion to include what TSZ has to say about how
we should relate to the ecosphere in which we live. According to Creasy,
TSZ is the work in which Nietzsche’s most fully presents his protoecocentric vision for humanity’s re-naturalization. What she means by this
is Nietzsche’s call for us to develop an ecological conscience: that is, to
attune ourselves to the other-than-human world so that we may come to
know ourselves better as natural beings and in that way identify and pursue
the kinds of tasks that will most empower us and allow us to affirm life in
its totality. This vision, she argues, can make important contributions to
contemporary environmental philosophy and policy, especially as a critique of those anthropocentric frameworks and ideologies according to
which the natural world has merely instrumental value (for example, as a
resource).
In this Critical Guide, then, readers will find a multi-faceted Nietzsche.
He is an immanent critic of the Christian worldview, a teacher of philosophy as a way of life, a life-affirming anti-pessimist, a philosophical
naturalist, a philosopher of time, a moral psychologist, a political theorist,
an early transhumanist, and an environmental thinker. This wide variety of
roles is in keeping with the multi-faceted aesthetic style of TSZ, the book
he spent the longest time writing. As we have seen, this text is parody and
satire, imitative pedagogy, Bildungsroman, agential narrative, chronological
puzzle, psychology manual, self-enhancing futuristic ideal, political drama,
transfiguring experience, and a poetic paean to the earth. We shouldn’t
think that this book’s aesthetic form can be reduced to any one of these
categories or even to just these categories. Nor should we rigidly expect
that any one of these forms is inseparable from the philosophical content
or indispensable for understanding this content. What matters instead is
that we approach Nietzsche’s book as a philosophical resource that has
much to teach us in whatever way we are best inclined to learn from it.
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Laughter As Weapon
Parody and Satire in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Benedetta Zavatta
. Introduction
Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a work of philosophy presented in the form of a
fictional narration. It is a prose work. But due to the pervasive use of such
rhythmic devices as assonance and alliteration, along with rhetorical figures, the prose in which it is written is very close to poetry. Moreover,
woven into the text of Zarathustra are many arduously decipherable images
and symbols. Indeed, the book as a whole is composed of the most various
elements, such as parables, visions, dreams, songs, and so on. Zarathustra is
a text that cannot be appreciated, and engaged with, if one comes to it with
the expectation that it must conform to the argument-based style of doing
philosophy that is the norm in the academic practice of philosophy. The
consequence of this has been that the book has tended to play only a
marginal role in research on, and teaching of, Nietzsche. As Robert Pippin
notes in his introduction to the volume of the Cambridge University Press
edition containing Zarathustra, it appears only rarely on reading lists in
university courses dealing with Nietzsche (Pippin : xiii). Indeed,
leading commentators on Nietzsche have often shown themselves only
too eager to bury this particular work in their overviews of the philosopher’s production. In the introduction to his large tome on Nietzsche,
Richard Schacht declares that he has deliberately neglected, in this monumental synoptic review of the philosopher’s work, the literary experiments, “including not only his many epigrams, ‘songs,’ and poems, but
also his most famous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra” (Schacht : xiii–
xiv). At best Zarathustra has tended to be read as a work of philosophy
whose philosophical sense can be extracted, with some effort, from beneath
its bizarre form and its even more bizarre use of language.
See Hollingdale (: ), and Fleischer (: ).
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But to marginalize in this way, let alone outright to exclude, Zarathustra
from research and from university teaching would not only be to disparage
the personal judgment of Nietzsche, who famously considered it his “best”
book (KSB : , ) and hoped to see, one day, “chairs and professorships” specifically devoted to its study (KGB III/: a); it would also,
and above all, be to deprive ourselves of a book that is in fact the “single
most important, comprehensive work of the mature Nietzsche of the
s” (Pippin : ). It is an equally serious error to try to separate
the philosophical thoughts contained in this work from the form in which
they are presented and to strip away the latter so as to better focus one’s
attention on the former. As Ferruccio Masini has rightly observed, in order
to correctly interpret Thus Spoke Zarathustra we must accept that, in this
work, “the form is the content” (Masini : ; see also Zittel :
). That is to say, we must grasp the necessary connection tying these two
elements to one another and, starting from this connection, work our way
back to Nietzsche’s fundamental intentions in this book.
. “Incipit tragoedia,” ergo “incipit parodia”
Nietzsche does not provide us with many elements with which to construct a correct interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He really gives us
just a single piece of information to work with, albeit a precious one
reiterated at several points. It is that the idea of “the eternal recurrence
of the same” forms “the fundamental conception of the book” (EH Z:).
This thought, as Lampert recognizes, is “the thought for which the book
exists” (Lampert : ). In Ecce Homo the thought of eternal recurrence is defined as “the highest possible formula of affirmation” (EH Z:)
and, a little later in the same passage, Nietzsche explains that the spirit
which pervaded him during the period in which he conceived Zarathustra
was that “affirmative pathos par excellence” which, so Nietzsche goes on,
“I have named the tragic pathos” (EH Z:). We must, then, try to clear up
the question of just what it is that is affirmed in the notion of eternal
recurrence and in just what way this affirmation is linked to the “tragic
pathos” that Nietzsche refers to.
As D’Iorio () has noted, the “thought-experiment” of imagining
one’s own life repeating itself over and over, identical each time in every
detail, was a topos often adopted in the “pessimistic” philosophical
The following translations are used in this chapter: A (); BT (); D (); EH (); GS
(); TI (); Z ().
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Parody and Satire in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
literature of Nietzsche’s era as a way of engendering a view of human life –
even of the life of the most fortunate human beings – as an intolerable
burden. In other words, where there is placed in prospect the eternal
recurrence of everything, over and over without the slightest change, life
loses all possibility of redemption and reveals itself to be completely aimless
and meaningless. This sufficed, for pessimists like Schopenhauer and
Leopardi, as grounds for denying all value to human life. The new
perspective introduced by Nietzsche is that it is conceivable that this
prospect of an “eternal recurrence of the same” might also be a prospect
welcomed and joyfully embraced; or, in other words, that it is possible to
affirm the value of life even when there has been stripped away from it all
idealizing falsifications, such as the notion of life’s having a final “purpose”
or “aim.” This is why Nietzsche defines the thought of eternal recurrence
as “the highest possible formula of affirmation”: it is the supreme affirmation of life because it occurs in the face of conditions which would incline
most people rather to deny and refuse life.
Nietzsche describes the state of mind in which there is pronounced the
joyful “‘yes’ to life” that he has in mind as a “tragic pathos” because it is
precisely in Greek tragedy – or rather in the Dionysiac spirit from which
Greek tragedy originates – that he discovered for the first time a disposition suitable for affirming life as it is, despite all the suffering inevitably
contained in it. Dionysiac art, Nietzsche tells us in the “Attempt at SelfCriticism” which he added as a preface to the second () edition of The
Birth of Tragedy, has its origins “in strength, in overbrimming health, in an
excess of plenitude” and these things form the prerequisite for being able to
say “yes” to life notwithstanding “all that is fearsome, wicked, annihilating
and fateful at the very foundations of existence.” What swept away the
“tragic” vision of existence developed by the Greeks was “the moral
interpretation and significance of existence,” which reached its culmination in the doctrine of Christianity. “Behind this way of thinking and
evaluating,” Nietzsche goes on to say in the “Attempt at SelfCriticism,” “I had . . . always felt its hostility to life, a furious, vengeful
enmity toward life itself.” Behind the “belief in ‘another’ or ‘better’ life”
Nietzsche reads an explicit will-to-death (BT “Attempt” ). Instead of this
“no” to life uttered by Christianity, Zarathustra – whom Nietzsche
describes on more than one occasion (for example, at BT “Attempt” )
as precisely a “Dionysiac monster,” in other words, as bearer of a specifically “tragic” wisdom – aspires, on the contrary, to create conditions such
On the antecedents of the doctrine of eternal return, see D’Iorio () and Zavatta (: f.).
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that life, stripped of all falsifying idealization, may still be embraced with
an affirming “yes.” According to the book by Hellwald, Culturgeschichte
in ihrer natürlichen Entwicklung bis zur Gegenwart (), which
Nietzsche was reading in the summer of when he chose
Zarathustra as the protagonist of his own book, the Persian wise man
Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, was the first to introduce “the illusion
[Wahngebilde] of a moral order in the world” (Hellwald :;
D’Iorio ). The idea at the basis of the book follows directly on from
this: Nietzsche imagines Zarathustra returning to earth to correct the error
that he had committed in propagating this “illusion” and to wipe from the
face of existence this moral perspective (EH “Destiny” ).
That Nietzsche’s intention with Zarathustra was to restore “tragic
pathos”, in other words, the capacity to affirm the value of life even once
life has been stripped of all metaphysical consolations, can also be gleaned
from aphorism of The Gay Science. This aphorism, the last in the
edition of , anticipates almost word for word the first section of the
Prologue of Zarathustra and is entitled, very significantly, Incipit
Tragoedia. However, what may surprise or even baffle the modern reader
is that in Zarathustra Nietzsche makes use of a textual strategy which, in
Nietzsche’s own era at least, was generally classified rather as a subgenre of
the comic, namely, parody. In the preface to the second () edition of
The Gay Science, Nietzsche issues a sort of interpretative caveat to his
readers: “Incipit tragoedia, we read at the end of this suspiciously innocent
book. Beware! Something utterly wicked and mischievous is being
announced here: incipit parodia, no doubt” (GS P:, ). From these
remarks of Nietzsche’s we can infer that he envisaged parody and tragedy
What Nietzsche aspires to with Zarathustra is, needless to say, not simply a return to a culture like
that of the ancient Greeks. Once he had lost his faith in Wagner and Wagner’s cultural project, it
became clear to Nietzsche that such a return to the past was neither possible nor indeed to be wished
for (see KSA :[]). Rather, the aim that Nietzsche sets for himself with the notion of eternal
return is that of making possible new styles of life and new values which affirm and embrace life as
it is.
With a view to sweeping away the moral interpretation of existence Zarathustra attacks above all the
Christian vision of the world. But this is not his only target. His polemics are directed also against the
Western metaphysical tradition that begins with Plato and also against certain contemporary political
tendencies such as socialism.
Hatab notes that today we normally consider “tragic” and “comic” as two opposite states, the former
characterized by a negative situation, which will in turn tend to give rise to a negative state of mind,
and the latter characterized by a positive situation giving rise to a positive state of mind (Hatab :
). For the ancient Greeks, however, both tragedy and comedy were to be situated under the sign of
the “Dionysian” and were thus intimately linked to one another: “For the Greeks, tragedy and
comedy expressed a two-sided affirmative response to negation, limits, and finitude” (Hatab
: ).
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Parody and Satire in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
as being, in his Zarathustra, inextricably linked. The thesis I intend to
advance here is that the choice of the textual strategy of parody is no mere
whim on Nietzsche’s part, but rather something perfectly expedient to the
overcoming of the Christian worldview, to the restoration of “tragic
pathos,” and thus to the creation of the conditions required in order to
explore new styles of life freed of both Christian morality and metaphysics.
. Thus Spoke Zarathustra as Parody of the New Testament
There exists no universal definition of “parody” since this latter is a literary
genre that has, down the centuries, assumed a whole series of different
forms and functions (Dentith : ; Hutcheon : ).
Nevertheless, the common denominator between the various theories
which have succeeded one another throughout history might be summed
up as follows: parody involves appropriating the form and the stylistic
features of an existing text, emptying these latter of their original content,
and adapting them in such a way that they convey a new content different
from the initial one and indeed in many cases critical and even directly
oppositional to it. Parody, then, might be said to be a way of dialoguing
with, while simultaneously freeing oneself from, an existing tradition,
inasmuch as, in parody, the past is at the same time re-evoked and shown
up as something that must be overcome. Despite the fact that one finds in
Zarathustra almost innumerable critical allusions to problems and authors
belonging to the Western philosophical tradition, the book is nonetheless
clearly recognizable as a parody of the Bible (Löwith : ).
Specifically, the many allusions to the life and person of Christ, the fact
that Zarathustra speaks in parables addressed to disciples, and many other
textual details, mean that, among the numerous books and texts that make
up the Biblical canon, it is the New Testament that is by far most
frequently and constantly referenced here by Nietzsche. Indeed,
Nietzsche himself confirms that he intended Zarathustra to be read and
received as an “anti-gospel” or “counter-gospel”, describing its manuscript
version (albeit in ironical tone) as a “fifth gospel” in a letter addressed to his
“Parody,” from the Greek παρῳδία, suggests the idea of a song or an ode “sung in imitation of
another” (Rose : ). The notion of imitation, in turn, implies repetition involving a moment of
difference: according to Householder, the basic sense of “parodos,” to parody, is “singing in
imitation, singing with a slight change” (Householder : ). Lelièvre too (: ) confirms
this interpretation, defining the verb “parodon” as “singing after the style of an original but with a
difference.” Within the notion of “parody,” then, there are comprised both the notion of “nearness”
and that of “opposition.”
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publisher Schmeitzner in (KSB : ). He also refers to the book, in
a note of , as his “Zarathustra-Evangelium” (KSA :[]).
As we have already noted above, in Nietzsche’s era parody was generally
considered to be a subgenre of comic writing and a decidedly inferior
literary form the products of which could not possibly aspire to anything
like the same degree of artistic dignity as the parodied originals. As
Gilman (, ) has pointed out, however, Nietzsche was significantly marked and formed, in his earliest years, by the influence of certain
“parodistic” practices which had flourished in nineteenth-century German
music and which had involved the executing of re-elaborative variations on
an existing musical prototype. Significantly, all comedic intent is absent
from this type of parody and the musical artefacts arising from it aspire to
be of equal artistic value with the original compositions. The musical
parody, then, can be defined as “a mode of continuing and altering the
prototype through variations on the musical structure of the original”
(Gilman : ). One key example cited by Gilman is the contrafactum,
a subgenre of musical parody that flourished in the nineteenth century and
consisted in “a religious restructuring of a secular song” in which “the
melody [was] preserved . . . and the words . . . altered” (Gilman :
). Taking such contrafacta as his models and points of reference,
Nietzsche tried his hand at creating, during his later schoolboy years at
Schulpforta, parodies of Goethe, Eichendorff, and other Romantic poets.
See also Sloterdijk (), who holds that Nietzsche, in order to spread his “Good News,” decided
to write a book that could be perceived as a formal extension of the Gospel, but with antithetical
content: substantially, a parody (Sloterdijk : ). “But Nietzsche,” adds Sloterdijk, “did not
want to be a mere Gospel parodist: he did not want merely to synthesize Luther with the dithyramb
and swap Mosaic tablets for Zarathustrian ones” (). Rather, with Zarathustra Nietzsche wanted to
free language “from the inhibitions with which resentment, itself coded by metaphysics, had
stamped it” (). To overcome the language of metaphysics, which denigrates the world and
human beings (), Nietzsche invented new “strategies of expression” () that were finally
“decoupled” from metaphysics and able to disclose the “eulogistic” power of language ().
This way of understanding parody relies on Schiller’s notion of comedy and the comic. Schiller
addresses, in his aesthetics, not just the categories of the “beautiful” and the “sublime” but also
those of the “coarse” and the “low.” For Schiller the “low” possesses no aesthetic dignity; it can find
its place in art only by virtue of its aptitude to provoke laughter. Parody, he argues, consists precisely
in the presentation of objects and actions that are “inherently coarse” or in the parodist’s treating
objects and actions “in a low manner” with the sole aim of giving rise to laughter (Gilman :
–).
The Goethean conception of parody, which is opposed to the Schillerian one, presents, in fact,
similar characteristics to the musical notion exemplified in the contrafactum. As Gilman recognizes,
however, this Goethean conception was probably unknown to Nietzsche whereas it was hardly
possible for him not to know the musical parody (Gilman : ).
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Parody and Satire in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
These parodies, like the contrafacta from which the young Nietzsche drew
his inspiration, did not set out to provoke laughter but rather simply to
reinterpret, in a new key, certain themes of the original model. Indeed, the
aim was to achieve a result that was aesthetically valuable in its own right
(Gilman :). I am of the view that, despite Nietzsche’s having
experimented with this type of non-comedic parody only during his
secondary-school years at Schulpforta, he continued nonetheless also at
later periods, when comic effect had become an integral part of his notion
of the parodic, to understand his parodic literary productions not as mere
denigrations of the noble works they parodied but rather as works of art
potentially on the same aesthetic level. This is certainly the case with
Zarathustra. Although it is possible to assign it to the genre of parody, it
is described by Nietzsche as his “masterpiece” by virtue of the high
aesthetic level he believed he had attained due to his meticulous work on
the book’s language. Moreover, Nietzsche aimed to produce an existential impact on the world comparable to that of the great work Zarathustra
parodies: the New Testament itself. From letters written to his friends we
learn that Nietzsche intended to bring about an epoch-making revolution
through this work, one that would “split the history of humanity into two
halves” (KSB : ). For this reason, Higgins’ interpretation, whereby
Zarathustra can be considered a sort of “comic book” and legitimately
assigned to the genre of “tragi-comedy” (Higgins : ), seems to me
untenable. Rather, as Griffin emphasizes, one would need, in order to
define Zarathustra, to coin a new literary genre altogether. This could be
called “parotragoedia” (Griffin : ) since, in this work, Nietzsche
uses comic parody to express his “deepest seriousness [tiefster Ernst]” and
“entire philosophy” (KSB : ).
As compared to the notion of parody developed by Nietzsche in his
youth, the parodistic literary practices of Nietzsche’s mature years – and
exemplified by Zarathustra in particular – are distinguished by the addition
of two further elements, namely: comic effect and critical function. We
need, then, to draw into the equation a second important influence on
Nietzsche writes, for example, on nd of February, to his friend Rohde of how he “fancies
that, with this Zarathustra, [he has] brought the German language to a state of consummate
perfection” (KSB : ).
In one such letter he speaks of how “disgusted” he feels at the idea that Zarathustra might be
received by the reading public as a “book intended just to entertain [Unterhaltungsbuch]” (KSB :
). See also KSB : , .
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Nietzsche’s appreciation, and deployment, of parody. This is the influence
exercised by Schopenhauer. In his “Theory of the Ludicrous” contained in
The World As Will and Representation, Schopenhauer describes the genesis
of the comical in the following terms: “the origin of the ludicrous is always
the paradoxical, and thus unexpected, subsumption of an object under a
concept that is in other respects heterogeneous to it” (Schopenhauer :
). Laughter, then, signifies the perception of an incongruity between
concept and object. The greater and more unexpected this incongruity is,
the more violent will be the laughter. “In everything that excites laughter,”
writes Schopenhauer, “it must always be possible to show a concept and a
particular: that is to say, a thing or event which can of course be subsumed
under that concept yet . . . in another . . . respect . . . differs strikingly from
everything else thought through that concept” (Schopenhauer : ).
Our imagination, Schopenhauer explains, creates an ideal, theoretical
instance of a thing falling under the concept in question and this theoretical instance conflicts with the instance actually perceived; out of this
conflict there arises a sense of incongruity; and out of the incongruity
there arises laughter. Parody, which Schopenhauer understands as a
subgenre of comedy, takes advantage of just this mechanism. It consists
“in substituting for the incidents and words of a serious poem or drama
insignificant, inferior persons, or petty motives and actions. It therefore
subsumes the plain realities it sets forth under the lofty concepts given in
the theme, under which in a certain respect they must now fit, whereas in
other respects they are very incongruous therewith” (Schopenhauer
: ).
This is precisely the dynamic by means of which Nietzsche executes his
parody of the New Testament. As Pippin has observed, in Part
I Zarathustra’s discourses are directed principally against types of behaviour that are typically Christian, whereas the discourses of Part II appear to
be directed against types of human beings who prove to be personifications
or incarnations of certain typically Christian attitudes (Pippin : ).
The comic effect arises out of the contrast between, on the one hand, the
exalted concepts and types evoked by Zarathustra and, on the other, the
“human, all too human” – that is to say, low and coarse – forms in which
these concepts and types find real incarnation. Let us consider, for example, the passage On the Sublime Ones:
In turn, Schopenhauer draws on Kant, considered to be “the father of the ‘incongruity theory’ of
laughter” (Weeks : ). In the Critique of Judgment Kant explains that laughter arises from a
collision between “incompatible conceptual frameworks” (Weeks : ).
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Parody and Satire in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
I saw a sublime one today, a solemn one, an ascetic of the spirit; oh how my
soul laughed at his ugliness!
With his chest sticking out like those who hold their breath he stood there,
the sublime one, silently;
Adorned with ugly truths, his hunter’s spoils, and rich in tattered clothing;
many thorns clung to him also but I saw nary a rose. (Z:II “Sublime”)
Here Nietzsche is critiquing the Christian conception of virtue as a
struggle against the animal passions present in the human being. The
“sublime” individual, on the Schillerian view of things, is precisely the
individual who has succeeded, through the force of reason, in restraining
these passions (Schiller : ff ). But where we might have expected
to behold a figure radiant with beauty, fulfilled and happy, Nietzsche
shows us a man with torn clothes and a gaze made grim from having
condemned a part of his own being as something wicked and as having
inflicted mutilations on himself in the effort to root it out.
Another such case is the speech of Zarathustra entitled “On the
Teachers of Virtue,” in which Nietzsche parodies the famous “blessed
are. . .” verses from the Sermon on the Mount that established all those
virtues which were to become most central to Christianity (meekness,
mercy, humility, “poverty in spirit”). Nietzsche imagines a paradoxical
situation in which a wise man gathers listeners at his feet and urges them to
practice just such virtues – but only because their practice is conducive to
sound sleep. Here, the comic effect is generated by the contrast between
the exalted concept of “virtue” and the base triviality of its realization in
this case: as a mere remedy for insomnia.
. Parody and the Overcoming of Ressentiment
Rather than try to identify and analyze all the passages in which parody is
employed in the text of Zarathustra, it is surely more interesting to pose
the question as to what function Nietzsche assigned to parody here and
as to how it is connected with the essential aim of the work. Campioni
(; ) argues that the whole of Zarathustra can be read as a
sustained struggle against ressentiment and the spirit of revenge. In the
Also, in personal biographical terms Nietzsche can be said to have been attempting, through writing
Zarathustra, to cleanse his soul of all those “impulses of revenge” and “ressentiment” (KSB : ),
which he himself recognized to have arisen in him after the deceit and betrayal he felt he had
suffered at the hands of his friends Lou von Salomé and Paul Ree. In a letter to Overbeck, Nietzsche
underlines the fact that such sentiments conflict profoundly with his philosophy and vision of the
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chapter, “On the Tarantulas,” Zarathustra declares: “That mankind be
redeemed from revenge: that, to me, is the bridge to the highest hope and a
rainbow after long thunderstorms” (Z:II “Tarantulas”). Redemption from
the spirit of revenge and from ressentiment is central to Nietzsche’s book
because it is in just such sentiments as these that the value system of
Christian morality has its genesis. One cannot consider oneself to have
definitively overcome it, nor can any truly new values which might replace
it emerge, until he or she has freed himself or herself from these feelings.
Zarathustra himself is exposed, in the course of the eponymous narrative,
to the temptation of ressentiment against which he struggles vigorously.
This struggle is particularly evident in Part III. It is very philosophically
significant that this should be so, given that it is in Part III that Zarathustra
is slowly circling toward engagement with the thought of “eternal recurrence” (Pippin : ). Fundamental to the message of Part III is the
parable “On Passing By,” which describes Zarathustra’s encounter with a
“fool [Narr]” who has been completely taken over by a spirit of revenge
and ressentiment against “the big city,” in other words, against modernity.
This “fool,” significantly, is also “called by the people ‘Zarathustra’s ape.’”
He represents a kind of Doppelgänger for Zarathustra, an inner adversary
against whom he must always be on his guard. The “fool” does nothing
but curse and hurl invectives, foaming with fury. But Zarathustra
teaches him: “Where one can no longer love, there one should – pass
by!” (Z:III “Passing By”). Invective is a form of critique – or rather, of
accusation – driven by anger against someone: specifically by an anger that
finds no physical outlet and that can, therefore, be called ressentiment in
Nietzsche’s sense of this term. In the discourse called “Before Sunrise”
Zarathustra recounts how he too had once been a hater and had poured
out all his hatred on everything and everyone that negated and devalued
life. He then goes on to emphasize his self-overcoming, declaring: “I have
[now] become a blesser and a Yes-sayer” (Z:III “Before Sunrise”). But
when Zarathustra states that he has overcome his own ressentiment and
become “a blesser” this does not mean that he has become innocuous.
world (KSB : ). Significantly, we also find among the notes of the same affirmation
repeated no less than three times: “Purification from revenge is my morality” (KSA :[], see also
KSA :[] and KSA :[]).
See also Sloterdijk (: ), who maintains that Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is aimed at an
overcoming of resentment, intended as “a mode of production of the world” (). In other
words, Nietzsche sees resentment lying at the basis of everything that up to now has been called
culture, religion, and morality. His “fifth Gospel,” Sloterdijk states, “take(s) a stand against the
millenarian-old forces of reversal, against everything that has been called Gospel to date” () and
praises “affirmation as liberation of the wholeness of life” ().
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Parody and Satire in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
On the contrary: it is only now that he succeeds in becoming truly
efficacious in the task of dismantling and destroying the Christian vision
of the world. This is because he has now left off blaming and accusing and
begun to focus rather on himself and on his own task. He “kills” only
involuntarily, in the course of affirming his own self.
In order better to understand the importance of this indirect manner of
annihilating, it is useful to recall the discourse “On the Three
Metamorphoses” in Part I of the book, in which Nietzsche describes
allegorically the path that needs to be taken in order to overcome
Christian morality and make oneself a creator of new values.
Significantly, the highest point in this evolution of the spirit is represented
by a child. We may detect in this detail a parody of Christ’s exhortation to
his disciples to “become like little children” if they are to enter the
Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew :–). Just as children are completely
dependent on adults, Christians are called upon to make themselves
humble and recognize their absolute dependence on God. In sharp contrast to this, the path of spiritual evolution described by Nietzsche in the
“Three Metamorphoses” passage is one which leads individuals toward
emancipation from all authority and toward greatness, understood as the
full realization of their own individual nature. The child personifies the
final stage in the process of overcoming of Christian morality because he
sets forth his personal values in a manner completely oblivious to all that
which is going on around him. Children are completely focussed on
themselves and on their game: the game of creation. What one creates in
this spirit proceeds solely from the affirmation of one’s own nature and not
from opposition to something or someone different from oneself. If, in
order to affirm his own self, the creator of new values destroys something,
he does so with just this childlike, absolute disregard and thus with an
entirely good conscience.
Parody, unlike invective, is perfectly compatible with this new condition
since it is not born out of hatred or the wish for revenge. The reality
described is inevitably disqualified and cancelled out once it is revealed that
See Zavatta (:f.) The figure of the child presented in the discourse “On the Three
Metamorphoses” corresponds to an ideal which Nietzsche also describes in aphorism of The
Gay Science. This is “the ideal of a spirit that plays naively, in other words not deliberately but from
overflowing abundance and power, with everything that was hitherto called holy, good,
untouchable, divine.” There corresponds to this attitude a “human, superhuman well-being and
benevolence.” This means that, when one destroys, one does not do so with hatred but rather with
that childlike nonchalance and absolute good conscience to which we have just referred. Such an
ideal also resembles the Heraclitean child that Nietzsche describes in PTAG .
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it cannot in fact be subsumed under the concept it claims to instantiate. But
the soul of the observing subject remains serene and innocent in this act of
annihilation, and this is because he or she cannot feel responsible for it. The
annihilation, the “nothingness” of the reality in question, is experienced here
as a simple matter of fact. It is for this reason that Zarathustra teaches his
disciples, “Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughing” (Z:I “Reading and
Writing”). With these words, Zarathustra means to convey the idea that it is
surely not by means of invective suffused with anger that Christian morality is
to be overcome, since this latter morality itself takes its origin from ressentiment. Rather, what serves most effectively to sweep Christian morality out of
the way is the laughter of a soul that is serene and self-focused: a soul which
simply observes the incongruence between the sublime and exalted notions of
Christianity and their human, all too human realization.
.
The Strange Case of Zarathustra IV
The question of whether Nietzsche originally conceived of Thus Spoke
Zarathustra as a work consisting of four, or rather only of three parts, is one
which remains controversial among scholars even today. Nietzsche wrote
and published Parts I, II and III of Zarathustra separately and, after
completing the third, declared to his friends that the book was “completely
finished” (KSB : ). Indeed, even in Ecce Homo, looking back to the
time of Zarathustra’s composition, Nietzsche confirms this version of the
facts and claims to have completed the book with the writing of its third
part. However, already during the period of the writing of Zarathustra’s
Here Nietzsche is referring to the laughter engendered by parody. In Nietzsche we find many kinds
of laughter and not all of them are meant to “kill.” I substantially agree with Mark Alfano that
Nietzsche was “a pluralist about the functions of humor and laughter,” in other words, that he
displays “some affinity for each of the three major theories of humor”: namely, the “contempt
theory,” the “relief theory” and the “incongruity theory” (Alfano : ff.). In GS we find a
laughter of relief that arises as a spontaneous reaction after those illusions that weigh, in various
ways, upon our actions have been swept away (see also Froese : , ). This type of laughter is
evoked at many points in Zarathustra, the antithesis of “the spirit of gravity,” the archenemy of the
book’s eponymous protagonist. An example of this type of laughter would be the laugh that bursts
forth out of the young shepherd after he has bitten off the head of the black snake that has slithered
into his mouth (see Z:III “On the Vision and the Riddle” ). The laughter provoked by parody, as
we have seen, arises instead from the perception of an incongruence between two conceptual
frameworks. Finally, we also find in Nietzsche a laughter of contempt or, to be precise, selfcontempt: the laughter of satire. On the different types of laughter in Nietzsche see also BGE ;
Weeks (: ); and Wirth (: ).
See also KSB : , , , , .
“The following winter [], under Nice’s halcyon skies . . . I discovered the third book of
Zarathustra—and was finished” (EH Z:).
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Parody and Satire in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
second and third parts we find among Nietzsche’s papers plans for a
continuation of or sequel consisting of yet another three parts, to which
Nietzsche envisaged giving the collective title Midday and Eternity
(KSA :[], see also KSA :[]). Nietzsche completed only
the first part of this projected new work, the most frequently mentioned
potential title for which is The Temptation of Zarathustra. This was in the
end privately printed by Nietzsche, at his own expense, as the fourth and
last part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Indeed, Nietzsche had at the time
broken off all relations with his publisher Schmeitzner who, he felt, was
insufficiently committed to the promotion of his works (KSB : ).
When, in , he returned to his old publisher Fritzsch, Nietzsche had
him bind the still-extant copies of Zarathustra I, II and III together into a
single volume bearing the title “Thus Spoke Zarathustra. A Book for All and
None. In Three Parts,” with no mention at all being made of any fourth
part. For this reason, many scholars hold the view that “Thus Spoke
Zarathustra as it exists today is . . . a whole (parts I-III) plus a fragment
(part IV) of a larger whole that does not exist” (Lampert : ). Other
scholars, however, stressing the fact that Nietzsche described Part IV of
Zarathustra to those few friends to whom he sent privately-published
copies, as the “sublime finale” of his work (KSB : ), argue rather that
the plan for a new book entitled Midday and Eternity was most likely just a
device with which he hoped to attract a new publisher (see KSB : ;
Loeb [: ]; Pippin [: n. ]; Nehamas [: n. ]) and
that, in fact, The Temptation of Zarathustra had all along been conceived as
the fourth and concluding part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Paul Loeb () has distinguished two schools or trends among
Nietzsche scholars as regards this specific problem of the composition of
Zarathustra. On the one hand, there are the “literalist” readers of the work
who tend to marginalize Part IV as not belonging to Nietzsche’s original
plan for Zarathustra and who look on the text as effectively ending with the
end of Part III. On the other hand, there are the “ironist” readers who hold
Part IV to be not only an integral part of Zarathustra but indeed, as
Nietzsche sometimes suggested, its “grand finale” in which there is first
fully revealed that intention of the philosopher to examine and question
his own project which had animated the whole work from the very start
Nietzsche began to work in detail on the book project Midday and Eternity in the summer and
autumn of that same year and also, in this same period, decided to give to its first part the title The
Temptation of Zarathustra (KSA :[]).
See KSB : , ; and Schaberg (, f.).
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(see Loeb : ). Higgins (), for example maintains that Thus
Spoke Zarathustra recounts the drama of a master who fails to find his
audience. In Part IV, Higgins contends, Nietzsche is mocking Zarathustra,
showing up the clumsy and ridiculous aspects of his own philosophical
project. Nietzsche’s intention in doing this, she argues, was that of extending the reflections contained in the work to also include a reflection on the
necessary limitations of the message conveyed by it, indeed on the limitations of any philosophical affirmation made after the death of God. In
short, Higgins sees Part IV of Zarathustra as a parody of Part I, II and III:
one intended to strip away any claim of absolute validity from the
philosophical assertions and contentions advanced in all these preceding
parts of the work.
Pippin () also reads the work as, in essence, a staging of the distance
between Nietzsche and his own disguise, Zarathustra. According to
Pippin, Nietzsche recounts here the drama of a master who finds it
impossible to carry out the task he has set himself. This master utters
pronouncements that advocate a highly specific ethical ideal: namely the
Uebermensch. At the same time, however, he undermines the authority of
these very pronouncements inasmuch as he also calls into question the
possibility of “truth” in the traditional sense of this term (Pippin :
). Pippin argues that the work’s Part IV conveys, notwithstanding its
comic tone, a profoundly tragic lesson because Zarathustra, finding
himself back in the same situation as he was in in the work’s Prologue,
finally comes to see that there is simply no way out of this paradox
(Pippin : ).
The objection that must be raised first and foremost against the position
expounded by these “ironist readers” is that Nietzsche did not, either in
According to Loeb (), the “ironist readers” include such scholars as Higgins , ;
Conway , , ; Magnus ; Pippin ; Shapiro ; Schacht ; Cauchi
; and Nehamas . Neither “literal” nor “ironist” is Loeb’s () interpretation which
views Z IV as indeed an integral part of the work but not as its “finale” from the narrative viewpoint.
Gooding-Williams (: ), on the other hand, maintains that Z IV is the work’s finale – though
for a different reason. As Gooding-Williams sees it, the parable “On the Three Metamorphoses”
describes Zarathustra’s own evolution throughout the course of the book’s action – and it is only in
Part IV that Zarathustra can be said to attain the envisaged “third metamorphosis” into a child.
See also Shapiro (), who compares Part IV to a medieval carnival and sees Nietzsche’s decision
to transform the tragedy into a comedy as a renunciation of the text’s claim to narrative authority.
These “ironist” interpretations also look for support in the fact that, in the dramatic competitions
held in Athens and elsewhere during the Classical Greek era it was usual for the dramatists to
present a tetralogy, or three tragedies followed by a satyr play which, essentially, mocked or parodied
the heroes and gods who had formed the dramatis personae of the respective preceding tragedies. See
Hatab , and KSA :[].
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Parody and Satire in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
or at any other time, actually publish Part IV of Zarathustra.
Groddeck (), for example, makes a strong argument that Part IV is
most properly categorized among the “posthumous writings” of Nietzsche.
At best, it can be said to belong in that category lying between “published”
and “posthumous”: Privatdruck. I concur with this view to the extent that
it is indeed the case that, although it did appear in printed form, it did so
without any date on the cover and in a tiny print run of only forty-five
copies, with only nine of these forty-five ever being distributed to readers
(Schaberg : ). Moreover, at the end of , after having
expressed the intention to request the return even of these very few copies
that had been sent to his closest friends, Nietzsche showed no hesitation
about “cannibalizing” the text of Part IV and using it as working material
for the Dionysus Dithyrambs. As Groddeck rightly points out, this choice
surely indicates a decision on Nietzsche’s part not to let Part IV of
Zarathustra count among his published philosophical statements
(Groddeck : XVII). In this light, it seems impossible to sustain the
philological claim of the “ironist readers” that this Part IV was intended by
Nietzsche as the “grand finale” to Zarathustra through which all that which
had preceded it in this work alone acquired its true sense. Moreover, if
Nietzsche had truly understood Part IV in this way, it seems incomprehensible that he should have persisted, to the very end of his active
intellectual life, in allowing the circulation of a work in three parts. We
would then have to assume that he was giving his reader the text in the
form of a mutilated stump that would be impossible for the reader
to understand.
Additionally, it seems to me that the drama that Nietzsche presents to
us in this work is not Zarathustra’s difficulty in finding disciples, but rather
Zarathustra’s own confrontation with the thought of “eternal recurrence.”
Nietzsche kept one copy for himself and the remaining thirty-five undistributed copies stayed in
Köselitz’s apartment in Venice until (Schaberg : ).
On the basis of an analysis of the posthumous notes Groddeck proves that, in the autumn of ,
Nietzsche still planned to publish Part IV of Zarathustra as an independent work with the title The
Temptation of Zarathustra (Groddeck : LH). It was perhaps for this reason that, at the end of
this year, Nietzsche communicated to Koselitz his intention to recover all the undistributed printed
copies of this fourth part – a text which, in fact, Nietzsche does, on this occasion, designate by the
term “ineditum” (KSB : ).
It is in January that Nietzsche authorizes publication of these Dionysus Dithyrambs, a work
which included six poetic compositions written in , entitled The Songs of Zarathustra, and three
poetic compositions originally included in Zarathustra Part IV (“Only a Fool! Only a Poet!”
“Among the Daughters of the Desert,” and “Ariadne’s Lament”). The first edition of Thus Spoke
Zarathustra as a work in four parts, which is the form in which we read the book today, appeared in
when Nietzsche had already become permanently mentally incapacitated.
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It is only in the work’s Prologue that Zarathustra is shown failing to find
an audience and this is so because, naively, Zarathustra chooses here to
address the mass of the people. This mass, being composed of instances of
what he himself later calls the contemptible “last man,” cannot do otherwise than misunderstand and deride him. But already in the course of
Part I Zarathustra finds disciples who come to venerate him as a guide and
teacher. Among their gifts to him is a staff, whereby they implicitly confer
on him the role of shepherd to their “flock.” The parody of the Gospels
here is impossible to overlook. Zarathustra, however, refuses this role,
explaining to them that he wants neither to be an object of veneration
or faith, and least of all an object of imitation. He bids them “lose me and
find yourselves,” adding that “only when you have all denied me will
I return to you” (Z:I “Bestowing Virtue” ). And indeed Zarathustra does
return among his disciples during the events narrated in Part II which
transpire almost entirely in the “blessed isles.” Part III is of a more
introspective character and Zarathustra engages more in solitary discourses
with himself than in discourses addressed to others. This stage of introspection is required by the structure of the narrative: Zarathustra must
come to terms with the thought of “eternal recurrence,” which he has great
difficulty accepting. These inward struggles, however, do not mean that he
gives up his role as a spiritual master. Parodying the passage in the New
Testament in which Christ exhorts his disciples to follow him, saying “I
am the way, the truth and the life,” Zarathustra says to his friends: “‘This –
it turns out – is my way – where is yours?’ This is how I answered those
who asked me ‘the way.’ The way, after all – it does not exist!” (Z:III “Spirit
of Gravity” ). As Pippin has rightly noted, Nietzsche is proposing here
once again the model of the “true teacher” that he had already proposed in
Schopenhauer As Educator. The true spiritual or intellectual master is not
someone who transmits to his disciples any “one truth” of his own, but
rather someone who exhorts these disciples, leading and teaching by
example, to seek their own truths, and by accepting the necessary risk
involved in pursuing this path (Pippin : xviii n. ). Likewise on the
For a perfect portrait of the “last man,” a human being “without passion or commitment”, see
Ansell-Pearson (: f.).
The “blessed isles” are not, as is claimed by Santaniello (: ), a reference to the years when
Nietzsche was a regular guest at Wagner’s villa in Tribschen and thus to the broken friendship with
Wagner. As Paolo D’Iorio (: ) has shown, “the blessed isles” is rather an evocation of that
“cloister for free spirits” that Nietzsche tried to establish in Sorrento in together with a few
close friends and that, initially, he even envisaged extending on a much larger scale, across all
of Europe.
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Parody and Satire in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
plane of moral conduct, the true “master” does not wish to be imitated but
rather emulated. What Zarathustra wishes for his disciples is that they
learn, as he learned, to make themselves creators of their own values. In
conclusion then, although Zarathustra is indeed portrayed by Nietzsche as
a “master” of a highly unconventional type, it is precisely in this guise
that he succeeds in imparting those specific teachings that he aims
to impart.
My view, then, is that any interpretation of Part IV needs to take into
account Nietzsche’s specific intentions in composing it, which do not
coincide with those motivating the composition of the work’s first three
parts – even though the concerns of Part IV can be effectively integrated
into the work’s earlier parts. The intention behind Nietzsche’s writing of
Part IV becomes clear when we consider the title that Nietzsche most
frequently assigns to it in his posthumous notes: The Temptation of
Zarathustra. It is a declaration confirmed, moreover, by what Zarathustra
himself reveals in the final chapter of Part IV entitled “The Sign.” In this
chapter, Zarathustra realizes that the soothsayer encountered at the beginning of Part IV had caused him to hear the cry of distress of the “higher
men” so as to subject him to the temptation of compassion, which he
finally overcomes. Once again, we are faced with the parody of a passage
from the New Testament: specifically, that of Satan tempting Christ in the
wilderness. In the version of the story told in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus,
after being baptized, fasted for forty days and forty nights in the wilderness. During this time Satan tempted him three times. The first temptation played on Jesus’s hunger. Satan urged him to turn the stones around
him to bread so he could eat. The second appealed to his pride and vanity.
He should throw himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple so that
angels would be sent to catch him and the whole world would see that he
was the Son of God. The third temptation appealed to the lust for power.
Satan promised Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of
them” if he would only “fall down and worship him.” The temptation that
Zarathustra must overcome, instead, is that of compassion, the Christian
Daniel Conway has argued that the refusal of the traditional model of the “master” occurs in
Zarathustra’s case only gradually, that is, in the course of the book’s narrative. Zarathustra becomes
progressively more aware that his own role as “master” stands in contradiction to the teaching that
he wishes to impart and that, if he can truly teach at all, this can only be, at best, indirectly and by
way of example (Conway : ). In my view, however, Zarathustra has acquired this (self-)
awareness already as early as the end of the Prologue. On Zarathustra as a parody of the figures of
the teacher and the lawgiver, see also Ansell-Pearson (: f.).
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virtue par excellence which, instead, in Zarathustra’s own system of values is
considered a weakness and a vice which not only degrades and damages
him to whom it is shown but also – and above all – harms the person who
feels and shows it by distracting him from his own personal task. The
objects of Zarathustra’s compassion are, as I have indicated, the “higher
men.” Whereas that “crowd of the marketplace” to whom Zarathustra had
tried to preach in the Prologue have learned nothing of the death of God
and therefore live content with their petty happiness and petty virtues,
these “higher men” are inwardly torn and profoundly dissatisfied individuals because they are all too conscious of the fact that the old values can no
longer be sustained and neither can the ways of life that were premised
upon these old values. For this reason, these “higher men” find themselves
unable to adapt to life in the modern world; indeed, they are disgusted by
it. Nietzsche describes them as “the people of great longing, of great
nausea, of great surfeit” (Z:IV “Welcome”). They suffer deeply and have
turned to Zarathustra to seek help. Zarathustra does not deny them his ear,
or the shelter of his cavern, since already their dissatisfaction with the
modern way of life, with the progressive “diminishment” (Verkleinerung)
of the modern human being, and even with those traits they find in
themselves that betray their sharing in this modern decadence, all indicate
that these men stand far above the “crowd of the marketplace.” Zarathustra
therefore says to them: “And truly I love you for not knowing how to live
today, you higher men! For thus you live – best!” (Z:IV “Higher Man” ).
In the end, however, Zarathustra understands that the “higher men” are
too weak and exhausted by their own disgust to be appropriate material for
the creation of the overman and, after these “higher men” have all fled
before the roaring of his lion, he remains alone in his cave to await the
expected advent of his “children.”
Campioni (: ) has shown that in a note from , Nietzsche
makes use of the French expression homme supérieur to refer to “those who
oppose the growing stultification and vulgarization of Europe” (KSA :
[]). This expression was in fact highly characteristic of the cultural
See Zavatta (: ff.)
I concur with Gooding-Williams, who sees in this expression an allusion to those “philosophers of
the future” or “new philosophers” whom Nietzsche evokes also in Beyond Good and Evil. Their task
will be to create new values in the manner of the child, in other words, “in playing” (GoodingWilliams : ). Nevertheless, this fact does not appear to me to show, as Gooding-Williams
claims it does, that Z IV forms the finale of the work. I would argue rather that this text from
anticipates certain themes that were to be fully developed only in Beyond Good and
Evil ().
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Parody and Satire in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
climate in France in Nietzsche’s era. The phrase was also used by Paul
Bourget in his Essais de psychologie contemporaine () and Nouveaux
essais de psychologie contemporaine (), in which he diagnosed the
décadence of contemporary culture by examining the psychology of a series
of highly representative contemporary figures. In Baudelaire, Renan,
Flaubert, Taine, and Stendhal, Bourget saw merely different expressions
of the same life-denying spirit: “What germs of death must float invisibly
in the air of our civilization if these very best amongst us . . . display this
phenomenon of an appetite for nothingness equal to that of adherents to
even the most sombre of Far Eastern doctrines?” Bourget asks in the Essais
(: ). In The Temptation of Zarathustra Nietzsche raises more or
less the same question and, in forms personified by the various “higher
men,” analyses the various expressions of modern décadence, such as
exoticism, the cult of the primitive and the innocent, the religion of
compassion and suffering, Tolstoyism and Wagnerism (Campioni :
). In certain of the “higher men” it is possible to recognize the traits of
culturally eminent individuals of Nietzsche’s era, such as, for example
Schopenhauer, Wagner, and Tolstoy. These historical figures are “typified” by Nietzsche, that is to say, represented rather under the forms of
“ideal types.” Although these “ideal types,” in other words, manifest in
exemplary fashion certain key characteristics displayed by the real historical
personalities that inspired them, they do not aspire to be faithful and
accurate portraits of these historical personalities. In fact, Nietzsche’s
intention is not to strike critical blows at individual people but rather to
Nietzsche read Bourget’s Essays for the first time in winter . See Campioni (: ). The
book Nouveaux Essais, which is preserved in his personal library, features many underlinings and
comments added in the margins. See Campioni, D’Iorio, Fornari, Fronterotta, Orsucci (:
f.).
It is above all in Renan that Bourget sees the perfect representative of the homme supérieur,
inasmuch as Renan stood out in his struggle against the mediocrity of modern life and the
general degradation caused by democracy. “To use a phrase expressive in its simplicity, he is a
‘superior man’,” writes Bourget; “One might almost, indeed, say that he is the Superior Man”
(Bourget : ).
In “Soothsayer,” the proclaimer of the “great weariness,” the great majority of commentators have seen a
personification of Schopenhauerian pessimism (Cartwright : ; Cauchi : ), while in “the
Magician” there is clearly recognizable a portrait of Wagner (indeed, in The Case of Wagner and elsewhere,
Nietzsche does often refer to Wagner as “the old magician”). It is certainly fascinating to consider the
hypotheses advanced by Santaniello () to the effect that the “last Pope” bears certain of the
characteristics of Franz Liszt (Santaniello : ) and that “the Conscientious of Spirit” may be a
reference to Erwin Rohde (Santaniello : ). These latter hypotheses are in fact developments of
intuitions of Nietzsche’s great biographer Janz (: ).
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denounce certain general tendencies of his age. In other “higher men” it is
possible to identify attitudes of mind that had been adopted and then
transcended by Nietzsche himself, such as historicism, punctilious scientific probity, and a certain metaphysical tension. Nietzsche’s intention is
not biographical: even where he directs his gaze to his own life, he is
aiming thereby to identify certain tendencies in the decadent culture of
modernity. In Ecce Homo he describes himself as “a decadent [but] . . . the
opposite as well” (EH “Wise” ) precisely because he too had experienced
in his own person such temptations but, instead of yielding to them, had
succeeded in the end in overcoming them.
In light, then, of the intentions behind this work – intentions which are
made clear enough already by Nietzsche himself, but are now made even
clearer by the comparison with Bourget’s work which we have sketched
out above – we must conclude that, despite its featuring numerous
situations which parody those described in the Christian Gospels, the ethos
that characterizes The Temptation of Zarathustra is no longer that of parody
but rather that of satire. Satire and parody are – particularly since
Zarathustra is composed with a comic and therefore critical intent – two
genres which are often confused with one another. Above all, however,
they tend actually to pass over into one another: there are satires that make
use of parody as a textual strategy and, vice versa, parodies into which
satirical elements are woven. The terms through which the two genres can
be most clearly distinguished from one another are the following: whereas
parody consists in the re-elaboration – often in comical vein and with
For example, in “the Conscientious of Spirit” there can be recognized that painstaking philological
exactitude, myopic and impersonal, which found embodiment not only in Nietzsche’s close friend
Rohde but also, during his many years as a brilliant professional philologist, in Nietzsche himself.
See also Froese (: f.). “The Shadow” is clearly the nihilistic counterpart to the “Free Spirit.”
It is a figure that had already appeared in the earlier work The Wanderer and His Shadow. See
Zavatta (: ).
Several interpreters (Oppel , Higgins , Babich , ) believe that Thus Spoke
Zarathustra was written on the semi-serious model of the Menippean satire, a genre that
Nietzsche knew well since his university years in Leipzig. Indeed, in November Nietzsche
gave a lecture in front of the Philological Association on The Cynic Menippus and the Satires of
Varro. In this lecture Nietzsche alluded specifically to the “serio-comic” genre invented by
Menippus, the so-called spoudogeloion (KSB : . See also KSB : and ). Nietzsche,
however, maintained an interest in the genre of satire his entire life, as is demonstrated, for example,
by an appreciation of the Venetian Pietro Buratti, an outstanding exponent of Italian satire, which
we find in Nietzsche’s notes in , immediately after the completion of Part IV (KSA :[]);
or his praise of Voltaire’s satire on the immortality of the soul (KSA :[]); or, finally, his
celebration of the Satyricon of Petronius for its having freed sexual desire from the shadow of sin
(KSA :[]).
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Parody and Satire in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
critical intent – of a text, satire consists in the holding up to ridicule, in this
case with an even more marked and prominent critical intent, of a real
situation in its various social, cultural, moral and political aspects
(Ben-Porat : ).
As Higgins has correctly observed, whereas the first three parts of Thus
Spoke Zarathustra are characterized by a serious, prophetic tone – even if
Zarathustra does, even in these parts, laugh from time to time, or preach
the virtues of laughter – the work’s fourth part recounts a story “that is not
only funny but often raucous” (: ). According to Higgins, and the
other “ironist readers,” this is due to the fact that in the fourth part of
Zarathustra Nietzsche sets about making fun of his protagonist and of the
serious and prophetic discourses he had delivered in the first three parts. In
my view, however, a more convincing explanation is that in the first three
parts of Zarathustra it was Nietzsche’s intention to parody the Bible – or,
to speak more precisely, the Gospels of the New Testament – with the aim
of sweeping away the moral vision of existence that these texts convey. In
order to achieve this aim, Zarathustra is indeed obliged to mimic that
seriousness from which he intends to liberate himself. The fundamental
intention behind The Temptation of Zarathustra, instead, is that of critiquing, by means of satire, the various aspects of a decadent modernity. The
mechanism employed by satire in order to provoke laughter is completely
Nietzsche explicitly recognizes satire’s function of social, cultural, and political critique when he
criticizes Cervantes for having railed, with his Don Quixote, rather against the educated Spanish
public’s taste for stories of knightly adventure than against the real evil of his day, namely the
Inquisition. This leads Nietzsche to judge Cervantes to be an expression of “the decadence of
Spanish culture” in the sixteenth century, and even to call him a “national disaster [nationales
Unglück]” (KSA :[]). Social, cultural, and political critique was also the aim behind the
satires of Mark Twain, whose work Nietzsche knew well and liked very much. During the Human,
All Too Human period Nietzsche took up certain of the American’s pungent observations about the
way of life and mentality of his own country and used them to focus on certain tendencies in
Europe which were, he felt, taking a dangerous turn in the same direction (see Zavatta ).
Loeb claims that, when Nietzsche added Part IV to the first three parts, he understood it as a sort of
extended flashback which in fact fits into the narrative at a point prior to the end of Part Three (to
be more precise, between the beginning of the chapter “On Old and New Tablets” and the
beginning of the chapter “Convalescent”) (Loeb : ). Part IV, according to Loeb,
“supplements, clarifies, and expands the details of one final and essential advance on the way to
the complete fulfillment at the end of Part III: namely, Zarathustra’s overcoming of his final test
and obstacle, the temptation to pity or commiserate with the higher human” (Loeb : ). This
hypothesis is compatible with my analysis of the content of the work. In order to affirm “eternal
recurrence” Zarathustra must in fact overcome not only the ressentiment felt by “the meanest men”
but also the nausea felt by “the greatest,” these latter – and their nausea – being the protagonists of
Part IV.
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different from that employed by parody, and the comic effect is much
more marked with respect to that produced by parody. Laughter here does
not arise, as it does in the case of parody, from the discrepancy between an
exalted concept and its human, all too human realization but rather from
the sense of the ridiculous engendered by attitudes accentuated ad absurdum. Satire, therefore, makes use of exaggeration, paradox, and other
rhetorical tools in order to render ridiculous and grotesque those mores,
practices, and personalities that it sets out to critique. This is just the
operation performed by Nietzsche with his invention of the “higher men,”
who display in an especially emphatic way the decadent tendencies present
in modernity. Consequently, the comic effect in Part IV is much more
marked than in the three preceding parts.
At this point we may ask ourselves how it could possibly have come
about that Nietzsche chose to use the mode of satire to carry out a similar
analysis of modern décadence to that which his French contemporary
Bourget had carried out, in his Essais, in a tone and style of analytic
seriousness. The laughter produced by the satire in Part IV is undeniably
a laughter of contempt. It is, however, neither a laughter of the kind
condemned by Hobbes as a sign of arrogance and vanity, nor a laughter
like that with which the crowd assembled in the market square responds to
Zarathustra at the beginning of Part I. The contempt here, in fact, is a
contempt directed not so much toward something or someone external to
those who are laughing. Instead, it is a contempt directed at ourselves, the
laughers, to the extent that we too participate in the decadent tendencies of
modernity. The laughter provoked by satire, in other words, is a laughter
at oneself born of self-contempt which, in turn, is aimed at setting in
motion a process of self-overcoming. Mark Alfano (: , )
claims that, for Nietzsche, the sense of humour is a virtue essentially allied
with the “pathos of distance.” Without entering here into an analysis of the
sense of humour in general, it is certainly possible to agree that there exists
a certain affinity at least between the capacity to laugh at oneself – and thus
to feel a certain contempt vis-à-vis one’s own self – and this “pathos”
which Nietzsche repeatedly evokes. Indeed, the “pathos of distance”
consists in the feeling not only of a distance between ourselves and others
See Gilman (: f.).
See Lippit (: ).
See Froese (: ).
This is the reason why in Part IV Zarathustra insists so strongly, in the teaching he imparts to the
“higher men,” on laughing at oneself (Z:IV “Last Supper”).
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Parody and Satire in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
but also, and above all, in that of a distance between ourselves and that
“higher self” that we strive to attain (the awareness of this latter distance
giving rise to self-contempt). The “pathos of distance,” in other words,
arises not from arrogance, but rather from our awareness of our own
distinctive individuality and of the task incumbent upon us of developing
this individuality. Viewed from this perspective, this “pathos” can with
good reason be looked on as the opposite counterpart, but also as the
antidote, to the great temptation against which Zarathustra struggles in
Part IV: namely, pity.
In the last analysis, then, we may say that, through that technique
of satire which he employed in Part IV, Nietzsche was not aiming
simply at describing, or even at simply critiquing, decadent modernity,
but rather at setting in motion – and reviving, in the highest and best of
its representatives, the “pathos of distance” and its attendant selfcontempt – a genuinely active process of overcoming the decadence
of modernity.
. Conclusion
Today there is a greater awareness that the philosophical tradition comprises within itself works that are very different from one another as regards
both genre and style of composition. Indeed, a very large number of
important philosophical works in the history of thought have been written
in literary, sometimes even in outright poetic, form. To name just a few:
Parmenides’ On Nature; the dialogues of Plato; Lucretius’ De Rerum
Natura or, in the modern era, Pope’s Essay on Man; Voltaire’s Candide;
right up to such recent works as Sartre’s Nausea. For such works GoodingWilliams has coined the term “philosophical narratives” (:), meaning that here philosophical questions are addressed by such inventive
means as narrations, dialogues, personalities and events, as opposed to
philosophical essays and treatises of the more conventional type. If, then,
there persists, even today, a degree of stubborn resistance to viewing Thus
Spoke Zarathustra as part of the philosophical tradition, this may no longer
be due, as it surely once was, solely or largely to the predominance of the
strictly argumentational standards set up by the “analytic revolution” in
On the influence that Ralph Waldo Emerson exerted on Nietzsche in this regard, see Zavatta (:
) and Conant (: ).
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twentieth-century philosophy (Luchte : ). The fact is that, above
and beyond its non-conformity with the argumentational norms of the
conventional philosophical “treatise,” Zarathustra also challenges the
habits and expectations of today’s readers in yet one further way.
Zarathustra (considered as a book in three parts) belongs to the narrative
genre of the parody, that is, to a genre which has, traditionally, functioned
as a form of communication among a certain “elite.” What this means
is that, in order for a parody to function at all, its reader must be
sufficiently cultured to recognize and decipher the way that the author is
mimicking the stylistic features of an existing text and filling them with
new meaning. If this does not occur, then the reader will not grasp the
parody and will interpret the text before him in directly literal terms,
entirely misunderstanding the intention behind it. By writing
Zarathustra as a parody, then, Nietzsche intended it as just that which
he states it to be in its subtitle: “a book for all and none.” That is to say, as
a work that may be usefully read by everyone but that will, because it is so
dense in its hidden references and allusions, be fully understood, perhaps,
by no one at all.
Up until the s, literary critics tended to pay little attention to
parody, considering it to be a minor artistic form of no especial relevance
for an appreciation of the broader history of literature (Rose : ). But
with the rise of “post-modern” styles of criticism and analysis, the situation
has changed radically, and parody has come to be appreciated as the
intertextual, self-reflexive literary form par excellence, that is to say, as the
main way in which an author can develop dialogues with the great works
of the past, or critically reflect upon the past or present canons of a specific
art form. The principal theories of parody emerging in recent years
(Rose , ; Genette ; Hutcheon , ; Dentith )
insist very strongly that this notion of parody as just the debasement and
ridiculing of an existing work is typical only of a certain historical period
and cannot be generalized to the whole history of the form. Today,
parody tends to be defined in much broader terms, namely as a dialogue
Pippin observes that Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a work that is “basically inaccessible” while being at
the same time “obviously accessible” (Pippin : ). In other words, Thus Spoke Zarathustra can
be read on several different levels and a genuinely exhaustive understanding of this work is
something that Nietzsche conceived only as an unrealizable “regulative ideal.”
Dentith emphasizes that, although Aristotle, in his Poetics, deals with parody in its specifically comic
sense, the term “parody” was used, in Greek and Latin culture, in a much more general way,
namely, to refer to a “practice of quotation, not necessarily humorous, in which both writers and
speakers introduce allusions to previous texts” (: ). Dentith himself, therefore, defines
parody in a very broad sense as “any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical
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Parody and Satire in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
between texts belonging to different epochs and different traditions, in
which interpretation stresses out the differences between these texts.
Hutcheon, very interestingly, describes parody as an operation of
“re-coding” which establishes “difference at the heart of similarity”
(Hutcheon : ). Parody’s way of repeating the past while at the same
time introducing a moment of difference into the repetition becomes a
means of freeing oneself from that past and affirming and embracing the
new; parody functions, in short, as “a mode of emancipation” (Hutcheon
[:, ]; see also Erlich [: , ]).
Nietzsche, then, by refusing the narrow conception of parody that was
still dominant in his era, proves himself to have been also in this regard a
decidedly “untimely” thinker: one who reached back to the past in order to
anticipate the future. In the case of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the
“re-coding” that Hutcheon speaks of can, with good reason, be called a
“transvaluation”: the vocabulary of the tradition is emptied of its old
significance and filled with a new one. Egoism becomes a virtue and
compassion a sin, heroism a vice and scepticism a value, the obliging
friend the worst of enemies and the brave enemy a benefactor. In other
words, Nietzsche enters into the principal text of the Christian tradition
and empties it of its significance from within, filling all its stylistic features
with a new meaning. Through the textual strategies that he adopts in order
allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice” (: ), the term “polemical” here
alluding to the “evaluative aspect of parody.” In support of this much broader notion of parody, we
might note that Hutcheon too emphasizes that Euripides was considered, in his own era, to have
been “parodying” Aeschylus and Sophocles when, in his Medea, he replaced the male protagonist
traditional in Greek tragedies not just with a female but with one not belonging to any eminent
Greek family. The intention behind such a gesture, not to elicit laughter but rather to call into
question a whole tradition (Hutcheon : ). Rose (: ), confirms that parody only began to
acquire its more restricted modern meaning of “a mimicking intended to ridicule” from about the
middle of the sixteenth century onward.
On the topic of “repetition” (which contains in itself an element of difference) as a form of
affirmation of individuality countervalent to the logic of generality, see Deleuze (). Deleuze
cites as his references Kirkegaard and Nietzsche, who made of repetition “the fundamental category
of a philosophy of the future” (). Moreover, these writers did not engage with the theme of
repetition from a merely theoretical point of view but actually put repetition into practice,
conveying it through their style (Deleuze : ).
On Nietzsche’s criticism of heroism as an ally of the ascetic ideal, see Z:II “Sublime Ones,” and
Campioni (: –). See also D and KSB : .
The great number of neologisms that Nietzsche includes in Zarathustra is surely due precisely to his
intent to parody Christianity using all its favorite expressions. For example, the expressions “flight
from one’s neighbour [Nächsten-Flucht]” and “love of the farthest [Fernsten-Liebe]” are coined by
Nietzsche by way of parody, and thereby of assault, on the Christian value of “loving thy neighbour
[Nächtstenliebe]” (Z:I “Neighbor” ). See Zittel (: ff.) and Weichelt (: f.).
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to structure Zarathustra as a parody of the New Testament, Nietzsche
takes his place as a key precursor of a literary and artistic practice which, a
century and a half later, come to play fundamental and vital role in the
cultural and intellectual life of our own present age. He is, then, a total
innovator when it comes to the practice of philosophy.
Gadamer () describes Zarathustra as “a long series of variegated parodies” and correctly
identifies this textual strategy as “a discourse which takes up linguistic formulations that lie
already to hand but re-forms them, often developing them in unaccustomed directions, and often
distorting them in a mocking way” (). Nonetheless, Gadamer considers the style of Zarathustra to
be excessively rhetorical and overloaded with pathos. In other words, he states that such a style
belongs irretrievably to the past and finds no resonance among Germans of his generation (, ).
Gadamer seems not fully to grasp the specific intentions that Nietzsche was pursuing in Zarathustra
through the use of parody; or at least, he seems to call these intentions into question. Indeed, in
Gadamer’s judgment, Nietzsche’s choice of imitating the style of a past epoch seems to be an
unnecessary and an unfortunate one.
I express all my gratitude and sincere thanks to the editors of this anthology for providing their
constant feedback, thought-provoking comments, and insightful suggestions. They helped me
substantially improve my essay both substantively and stylistically.
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Philosophy As a Way of Life in Thus Spoke
Zarathustra
Keith Ansell-Pearson and Marta Faustino
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.
Emerson
From the beginning of his career Nietzsche is engaged in a search for
philosophy, and he asks a number of fundamental questions: What is
philosophy? What type is the philosopher? What is philosophy’s relation to
culture and to a people? Just what can the philosopher as a solitary, even
aloof, figure offer to others? Nietzsche is especially concerned with the fate
of philosophy under conditions of modernity. If we take cognizance of his
Basel lectures on the future of educational institutions, for example, it
becomes clear that Nietzsche is attempting to save philosophy from the
threats posed to it by modern educational developments in which philosophy is becoming increasingly professionalized and, in Nietzsche’s words,
“policed,” being “limited by governments, churches, academies, customs,
and human cowardice to scholarly pretence” (HL ). Does philosophy
have any rights, he asks, if it is little more than “inwardly restrained
knowledge without effect?” (HL ) Even though modern universities have
reduced philosophy to an empty “critique of words by means of other
words,” Nietzsche believes that the touchstone of true philosophy is
“whether one can live in accordance with it” (SE ).
Much of what Nietzsche says in his writings about the modern condition of philosophy is in accord with the more recent insights developed by
Pierre Hadot (–). Hadot has lamented the decline of philosophy
from being a total way of life, as it was for the ancients, to becoming a
purely theoretical discipline, an academic specialism with its own technical
jargon, circulating only among scholars in the university, without any
fundamental relation to the life and character of those who practice it.
Against current academic practice, Hadot argues that at its origins, and for
a good part of its history, philosophy was not a mere body of theoretical
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and abstract knowledge, but an eminently practical activity with a strong
existential orientation, the aim of which was the transformation of the
individual in order to reach the good or flourishing life. In his famous
formulations, philosophy was an “art of living” or a “way of life,” that is “a
mode of existing-in-the-world . . . the goal of which was to transform the
whole of the individual’s life” (Hadot : ). For real wisdom, Hadot
writes, does not merely cause us to know: it makes us be in a different way
(Hadot : ).
Even though Hadot’s focus is mainly on ancient philosophy, he cites
Nietzsche, among other figures such as Schopenhauer, as an example of a
modern thinker who was influenced by the model of ancient philosophy
and reacted against the university (Hadot : ). According to Hadot,
Nietzsche conceived of philosophy “not only as a concrete, practical
activity, but also as a transformation of our way of inhabiting and perceiving the world” (Hadot : ). At present we are witnessing a resurgence of interest in this idea of philosophy as a way of life. John Sellars has
recently characterized it as a “metaphilosophical option that . . . can still be
taken up today” (Sellars : ) and Michael Chase has argued that this
conception might offer a “third way” of doing philosophy that is neither
analytical nor continental (Chase : ). Bringing Nietzsche into
dialogue with Hadot, who is largely responsible for introducing the idea
of philosophy as a way of life into contemporary intellectual discourse,
offers a fruitful avenue of research: while Hadot’s considerations on
philosophy as a way of life shed light on Nietzsche’s novel philosophical
practice, Nietzsche might offer an important contribution for current
debates inspired by Hadot on what philosophy is – and even should be.
In this contribution, and inspired by Hadot’s suggestions, we endeavour
to illuminate how this practice of philosophy is at work in Thus Spoke
Zarathustra. Although Nietzsche’s thinking undergoes significant developments after his early writings, we wish to show that Zarathustra is an
especially fertile text to look at in the light of philosophy as a way of life. In
this highly distinctive text in his corpus not only do we see Zarathustra
intensifying Nietzsche’s criticism of “scholars” and putting forward his
own conceptions of knowledge and wisdom as a transformative practice,
we witness Zarathustra embracing and embodying this practice of philosophy, undergoing a process of self-transformation and promoting the
transformation and indeed conversion of his readers to a new way of life.
We will start by tracking the evolution of Nietzsche’s conception of
philosophy in the texts preceding Zarathustra. We will show how
Nietzsche’s ideal of philosophy as a practice that entails a particular mode
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Philosophy As a Way of Life
of life in his earlier texts becomes more complex with the advent of his
middle writings and his commitment to “the passion of knowledge,” until
it assumes a dramatic form in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Section . will deal
with Nietzsche’s critique of “scholars,” “wise men” and academic philosophy in Zarathustra. We will discuss Zarathustra’s key discourses on the
topic, showing their connection with the middle writings, which we hold
are particularly relevant to a comprehension of Zarathustra’s fundamental
philosophical notions and imagery. The final section (.) is focused on
the practice of philosophy as a way of life in the text. In particular, we
show how Hadot’s notions of incorporation of truth and of selftransformation and conversion are at work in Zarathustra. We conclude
by outlining some considerations on the pertinence of reading Zarathustra
in the light of philosophy as a way of life.
. Nietzsche and Philosophy As a Way of Life
When we think of philosophy as a way of life, we think essentially of a
conception of philosophy that privileges practice over theory, and even life
over truth. Inspired by the Stoics, Hadot makes a distinction between
“discourse about philosophy” and “philosophy itself ”: whereas the former is
empty and vain if not incorporated and translated into practice, real
philosophy corresponds to a practice and a particular mode of living
(Hadot : ). Hadot further stresses that the goals of this conception
of philosophy are often therapeutic since the philosophical life that is
aimed at is deeply connected with an ideal of human flourishing, perfection, or completeness. This is particularly evident in antiquity, especially in
the Hellenistic schools such as the Epicureans and the Stoics who explicitly
presented philosophy as a practice intended to bring peace of mind and
cure mankind’s suffering and anguish. In recent reinventions of the model
the matter becomes more complex and a therapeutic effect must not be
assumed – as John Sellars points out, and as evident in Nietzsche himself,
“it may turn out that philosophy is no consolation at all” (Sellars : ;
see D ).
Nevertheless, Hadot’s characterization of philosophy as a way of life has
led to some concerns that we would like to address before analysing
Nietzsche’s commitment to it as a model of philosophical practice.
Indeed, an important question raised in recent negotiations with the topic
is whether the goals of this conception of philosophy are compatible with
the goals of genuine philosophical inquiry, notably the goal of securing
truth or “truths” about ourselves and about the world. As Tom Stern has
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noted, if it is to be serious, philosophy must commit itself to the concern
of finding the truth and this concern has to trump any attempt to make us
as human agents in the world simply feel better (Stern ). This concern
has been echoed by John Sellars who has recently argued that although
“really good philosophy” worthy of the name needs to take seriously the
idea of philosophy as way of life, this cannot be at the expense of the desire
to understand the world as it is, and this means that philosophy cannot be
construed simply as a project aimed at making us feel good because “truths
can sometimes be uncomfortable” (Sellars : ).
An appreciation of Nietzsche as a figure who practices philosophy as a
way of life needs to take these concerns seriously, and in this chapter we
shall show how a concern with truth and knowledge and a concern with
self-transformation are linked together in Zarathustra. It must be noted,
however, that the aforementioned concern stems mainly from a misunderstanding of Hadot and of the schools of thought that inspired him in
his conception of philosophy as a way of life. An easy route to attaining
mental serenity is offered neither by the Epicurean school nor the Stoic
school of philosophy. In both schools the aim is not to make human
beings “feel better” in any simple-minded or straightforward manner. In
the case of Epicureanism, difficult and uncomfortable truths have to be
faced and incorporated; in the case of Stoics to practice virtue as a way of
life is a constant task, involving a great deal of self-discipline and mental
focus. It is often said that in Epicurean doctrine physics is subordinated to
ethics and to the detriment of our knowledge of the world: we learn as
much as is necessary to live a blessed life here and now. But this is a
distortion of their actual practice of teaching. Tim O’Keefe is helpful here:
[T]he Epicurean arguments in physics are supposed to establish that their
conclusions are true, not merely that believing them helps us feel good. The
pragmatic justification comes in, instead, to answer the question of why we
should bother to engage in the activity of trying to understand the workings
of the world in the first place. (O’Keefe : )
With respect to Stoic teaching, so severe are the demands placed on human
beings seeking to practice the life of virtue that a number of thinkers have
seriously doubted whether such a life is actually attainable by human
agents, let alone even desirable. Emerson, to take one example, writes:
“There is no permanent wise man except in the figment of the Stoics”
(Emerson : –). Similarly, Malebranche notes that such is the
Stoic person’s passion for glory that he strives for an impossible ideal of
invulnerability (Malebranche : ). Nietzsche himself raises a
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Philosophy As a Way of Life
deep-seated suspicion about the Stoic practice of philosophy, and from a
decidedly modern psychological perspective, when he quizzes the pursuit
of virtue that we find emphasized in the writings of figures such as Seneca
and Epictetus (GS ). In fact, even Hadot acknowledges the difficulty of
the task involved in these philosophies when he writes that “both the
grandeur and the paradox of ancient philosophy are that it was, at one and
the same time, conscious of the fact that wisdom is inaccessible, and
convinced of the necessity of pursuing spiritual progress” (Hadot :
). It would, therefore, be mistaken to construe these philosophies as
presenting easy routes to attain mental serenity, or as downplaying the role
of truth in the philosophical life. The fact that they privilege practice over
theory does not imply that theory or truth are undervalued. On the
contrary: according to this model of philosophical practice, truth is so
important that it must not only be learned but incorporated and actually
lived through. If its aims are therapeutic, this is because truth is conceived
as something that transforms, heals, and redeems. But to have this effect it
must be truth we are incorporating and not some kind of fiction designed
to make us feel better. Any worthwhile conception of philosophy as a way
of life, then, not only must not undervalue philosophy’s commitment to
truth, but it must translate it into a way of life.
Let us now examine in a more focused manner how these issues bear on
an appreciation of Nietzsche, taking into account that he has an intellectual development, and a complex one at that. We begin by noting that
Nietzsche has an interest from the beginning in philosophy as entailing a
particular mode of life, and he makes this clear in his untimely meditations
on history and on Schopenhauer. One of the earliest references to
Epicureanism, for example, is an incidental remark in Schopenhauer as
Educator where Nietzsche says that to write today in favor of an education
that sets goals beyond money and acquisition, that takes a great deal of
time, and that also encourages solitude, is likely to be disparaged as
“refined egoism” and “immoral cultural Epicureanism” (SE ). In the
meditation on history he laments the fact that today we have only “weak
personalities” and adds that “[n]o one dares to fulfil the law of philosophy
in himself, no one lives philosophically, with that simple, manly loyalty
that compelled an ancient, if he had once declared loyalty to the Stoa, to
act as Stoic wherever he was and whatever he did” (HL ). In contrast to
The following translations are used in this chapter: A (); AOM (); BGE (); D ();
EH (); GM (); GS (); HH (, ); HL (); PT (); SE (); TI
(); WP (); WS (); Z ().
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the impoverished and constrained version of philosophy that Nietzsche
saw operating in his own time, he models his own ideal of philosophical
practice on the Greek schools of thought: “I profit from a philosopher only
insofar as he can be an example.. . . But this example must be supplied by
his outward life and not merely in his books—in the way, that is, in which
the philosophers of Greece taught, through their bearing, what they wore
and ate, and their morals, rather than by what they said, let alone by what
they wrote” (SE ).
With the advent of the middle writings upon the publication of Human,
all too Human in , matters become much more complex when it
comes to construing Nietzsche as a thinker dedicated to the practice of
philosophy as a way of life. In these writings, we may note, he has a
commitment to the methods and procedures of scientific truth and sceptical inquiry (HH –), a dedication to the passion of knowledge
(D , ; GS , , , , , , ), and a concern with
how human beings can make instinctive, and endure, the incorporation of
truth and knowledge (GS , ). Commencing with Human, all too
Human Nietzsche conceives philosophy as a practice of a sober mind that
cools down human beings who are prone to neurosis. Philosophy, in
concert with science, has the task of tempering emotional and mental
excess. Indeed, Nietzsche defines the philosopher as a human being who
speaks “from a cool, invigorating resting place” (WS ). Nietzsche
maintains that by fixing on the question of what knowledge can do for
the happiness or well-being of human beings, ancient philosophy has
served only to retard the advance of scientific inquiry (see HH ).
However, by the time of the second installment of Human, all too
Human Nietzsche appears to no longer attach himself to an ideal of pure
knowledge, and he is now keen to relate the story of a natural history of
humankind in a way that aids the tasks of human emancipation. For
example, in Mixed Opinions and Maxims he writes:
Natural history, as the history of the wars and victories of moral spiritual
force in opposition to fear, imagination, indolence, superstition, folly,
should be narrated in such a way that everyone who hears it would be
irresistibly impelled to strive for spiritual physical health and maturity, to
feel gladness at being the heir and continuer of humanity, to sense his need
for ever nobler undertakings. (AOM )
This citation is a significant one since it brings into relief in a highly
instructive manner Nietzsche’s two main enlightenment concerns: a commitment to naturalism that is to be pursued through the study of natural
history, and a concern with an emancipatory philosophical program. It is
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Philosophy As a Way of Life
interesting to reflect on the fact that Nietzsche conceives natural history “as
the history of the wars and victories of moral-spiritual force,” and he is
clearly stating his Enlightenment-minded agenda when he refers to the
need to combat “fear, imagination, indolence, superstition, and folly.”
So, although aspects of Nietzsche’s commitment to science continue in
the subsequent volumes of Human, all too Human, there is a fundamental
reorientation with him now positively reappraising Socrates and antique
philosophers such as Epicurus and Epictetus (WS ). It can be noted, for
example, that although Epicurus is first and foremost an ethical teacher, he
also embodies Nietzsche’s ideal of the philosopher, and this is even
acknowledged in Human, all too Human where he is said to be sober
and rational, with his teaching serving to make us “colder and more
sceptical” (HH ). With respect to figures such as Epicurus and
Epictetus, these are to be regarded thinkers in whom wisdom assumes
bodily form (AOM ). Admittedly, in his late writings Nietzsche comes
to have a decidedly more complex appreciation of key Hellenistic figures.
In these writings, Nietzsche has the legitimate worry that Epicurus’ garden
teaching of philosophy as a way of life results in lassitude, revealing an
uncanny and troubling attachment to a “hypnotic feeling of nothingness”
(GM III: ; see also the description of him as a “typical decadent” in
A ). Nevertheless, even in the late writings Nietzsche continues to
express an important, and overlooked, identification with the Epicurean
“bent for knowledge,” and to the extent that he is content to “look like an
Epicurean” (GS ; for further insight see Wotling ). It is clear,
then, that Nietzsche’s conception of ‘flourishing’ possesses unique features,
bound up as it ultimately is with a commitment to Dionysian joy (over
mere Epicurean delight), with self-overcoming, and even the surpassing of
the human (see KSA :[], WP ; Z:I “Prologue”).
As his projects unfold in the middle writings, Nietzsche is in search of a
blending together of knowledge and wisdom (AOM ), as well as a
philosophy of spiritual health (AOM ). He holds up Epictetus as
a teacher of wisdom in whom wisdom “is the whispering of the solitary
with himself in the crowded marketplace” (AOM ). It is with the aid of
the teachings of the antique schools that Nietzsche will endeavour to
refashion the tasks of morality. He writes, for example, of transforming
the passions of humanity into ‘delights’ (WS ; see also Z:I “Of Joys and
Passions”), of a morality of continual self-mastery and self-overcoming in
both the largest and smallest of things (WS ), of an ethics based on the
individual virtues such as justice and peace of mind (WS ). In all of
this, the task is to become “spiritually joyful, bright, and sincere” (WS ).
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More than this, free spirits are willing to “look directly at the great task
of preparing the earth for a growth in the greatest and happiest fertility”
(WS ). If we call upon the thinker for assistance we do so not simply as
an educator but rather “as someone self-educated,” one who has experience
(WS ).
We hold that it is clear that this conception of the self-educator, one
who has educated himself through “experience,” is fully at work and on
display in the narrative of Zarathustra. However, although Nietzsche draws
heavily in Zarathustra on the themes, motifs, and imagery he has sketched
out in his middle writings, his conception of philosophy as a way of life, as
opposed to an appreciation of philosophy as pure knowledge, now takes on
a highly dramatic form with philosophy given the task of generating in
free-spirited beings the desire for self-transformation, involving willing
their own down-going (Untergang), and heralding a transformation of
the earth. Before we come to this, let us consider how Nietzsche’s
conception of philosophy and criticism of scholars is dramatized in Thus
Spoke Zarathustra.
. The Critique of Philosophy and of Wise Men
in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The conception of philosophy as a way of life contains in itself a sharp
criticism of academic philosophy. Hadot contrasts it very explicitly with
the way philosophy is conceived and practiced in current universities,
where philosophy is reduced to mere philosophical discourse or discourse
about philosophy: “modern philosophy,” Hadot claims, “is first and foremost a discourse developed in the classroom and then consigned to books”
(Hadot : ). Its aim is no longer the education of individuals
toward complete and flourishing lives but the formation of specialists,
who are then supposed to train other specialists in the context of the state
educational institution. It has thus become a purely academic specialism
with no practical effect or implications. As such, Hadot complains, “in
modern university philosophy, philosophy is obviously no longer a way of
life or form of life – unless it be the form of life of a professor of
philosophy” (Hadot : ).
We have seen how in his earlier and middle writings Nietzsche criticizes
the modern professionalization of philosophy and endorses a similar model
of philosophical practice. Zarathustra is a text that can be brought into
close rapport with both the early and middle Nietzsche in a number of
ways, and indeed in a letter to Franz Overbeck of Nietzsche writes
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Philosophy As a Way of Life
wittily, referring to Zarathustra, that he “did the commentary before
writing the text” (KSB : ). This is particularly evident in Nietzsche’s
conception of philosophy and corresponding critique of scholarly or purely
theoretical philosophy, which in many ways anticipates the main traits of
Hadot’s account. For example, in the discourse entitled “On Scholars” in
Part II of Zarathustra Nietzsche can be seen as renewing the critique of
scholars he had first developed in Schopenhauer as Educator, and that then
features again in chapter six of Beyond Good and Evil. The problem with
scholars is that “they want to be mere spectators in everything,” taking care
“not to sit where the sun burns upon the steps,” choosing instead to simply
“stare at thoughts that others have thought” (Z:II “On Scholars”). They
“crack knowledge as one cracks nuts” and inhabit “dusty rooms” (Z:II “On
Scholars”). Zarathustra also echoes the key motifs Nietzsche has put into
play in his middle writings. The imagery of ‘dawn’ and heralding of
‘new dawns’ features prominently and in a recurrent manner in the text
(Z:III “On Old and New Law-Tables” ). In addition, Nietzsche once
again proffers the idea that human society is to be regarded not as a
contract but as an “experiment” (Z:III “On Old and New Law-Tables”
; compare D ), and the text highlights the intellectual virtues he has
stated in the middle writings as being of special importance for the
philosophical practice of modern free spirits, including “one of the youngest virtues,” namely, honesty (Z:I “Of the Afterworldsmen”; D ).
Furthermore, the human “will to truth” needs to be earth-bound,
harnessed to “the humanly-conceivable” and “the humanly-palpable”
(Z:II “On the Blessed Isles”). As is made clear in this discourse in the text,
enlightened free spirits – that is, spirits who have incorporated into their
practice of truthfulness elements of cold, sceptical, rational and sober
inquiry – can feel at home “neither in the incomprehensible nor in the
irrational” (Z:II “On the Blessed Isles”). Furthermore, all the conceptions
of classical metaphysics, such as “the one,” “the perfect,” “the unmoved”
and “the intransitory,” are to be regarded as ‘misanthropic’ (Z:II “On the
Blessed Isles”).
The discourse on “The Famous Wise Men,” featured in Part II of
Zarathustra, contains valuable clues as to the nature of Nietzsche’s appreciation of philosophy, in particular how he conceives the free-spirited
philosopher as a figure who is “the enemy of fetters” and “the nonworshipper,” and who dwells in a particular domain, namely, the forests.
This discourse affords valuable insight into how we can productively
construe Nietzsche as advocating in Zarathustra a particular practice of
philosophy as a way of life, and it rests on a critique of alternative
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conceptions of philosophy, including and most notably philosophy conceived as a form of contemplation and in the manner of “immaculate
perception.”
The discourse on “the famous wise men” makes it clear that for
Nietzsche ‘truth’ is a free-spirited notion, and this means it cannot be
found wherever the will to truth is placed in the service of the common life
of the people since this is to restrict truth to the “superstitions of the
people,” as well as, one might add, to their prejudices and presumptions
(Z:II “On the Famous Wise Men”). Of necessity, then, since their commitment is to finding and positing uncommon truths, the free-spirited
philosopher is not a figure who resides in the town or city but rather
outside their walls, and hence Nietzsche’s reference in this discourse to the
genuine philosopher as a dweller of the forests. Again, it is in the middle
writings that we find valuable clues needed to make sense of this curious
reference to the forests. In The Wanderer and His Shadow Nietzsche
outlines, with special reference to Epicurus, a conception of philosophical
practice as ‘heroic-idyllic’ (WS ). Epicurus is well-known for practising
philosophy in his garden and with a community of friends and likeminded free spirits. Although references to gardens and garden philosophy
abound in Zarathustra, Nietzsche now conceives of the genuine philosopher as dwelling in a specific location, namely, the forest. In Mixed
Opinions and Maxims, and inspired by the example of Goethe, Nietzsche
writes of a “poetry of the future” and assigns to poetry (Dichtung) a specific
task. He suggests that the role of the poet is not to portray present times or
to reanimate and condense the past, but rather to show the way to the
future. The poet – the artist in the broadest sense as one who “invents” and
“creates” – is to do this by composing and recomposing “images of
beautiful human beings,” and by indicating that such humans are still
possible “in the midst of our modern world” (AOM ). This is not an easy
task when we take into account what Nietzsche says elsewhere in this text,
chiefly, that today’s poets live in too close a proximity to “the sewers of the
big cities” (AOM ). This theme is continued in The Gay Science where
Nietzsche writes of the need for “preparatory courageous human beings”
who will emerge out of, and in spite of, “the sand and slime of present-day
civilization and metropolitanism” (GS ). We can note that the concern
with the cultivation of beautiful human beings greatly occupies Nietzsche’s
attention in Zarathustra, notably in the discourse on “The Sublime Ones,”
where Zarathustra says that one should return from “the forest of knowledge”
not in a state of gloominess, and as does the sublime human who displays
“ugliness” and needs to become a “penitent of the spirit.” In the discourse, the
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beautiful is configured in terms of notions of gracefulness, generosity of spirit,
and self-overpowering, “Beauty is unattainable to all violent wills” (Z:II “On
the Sublime Ones”). Furthermore, in “The Greeting” chapter in Part IV of
Zarathustra, Nietzsche has Zarathustra invite his guests to speak to him of his
“gardens,” his “Blessed Isles” and his “beautiful new race.”
Another important discourse for an appreciation of Nietzsche’s conception of philosophy in Zarathustra, including the possibilities it offers for a
renewed conception of philosophy as a way of life, is the discourse from
Part II entitled “Of Immaculate Perception.” It brings together in a single
discourse many of Nietzsche’s concerns that are played out in the book as a
whole, including his criticism of the commitment to pure knowledge that
echoes Epicurus’ attack on purely contemplative philosophy or the pursuit
of knowledge as an end in itself, his attachment to a notion of beauty and
the motif of the dawn of day. The discourse commences with a reference
to the moon rising the day before and Zarathustra expecting it to give birth
to a sun, so pregnant does it seem. This is a clear reference to “cold”
knowledge containing within it the seeds of new possibilities of thinking,
feeling and willing; in short it is a reference to the passion of knowledge
(see D ). However, Zarathustra has allowed himself to be deceived by
the moon, and there is more of man in it than there is woman. This is not
much of a man, though, since he reveals himself to be a “timid nightreveller”; he is “catlike” and “without honesty.” This is a parable that
Zarathustra narrates to “sentimental hypocrites of ‘pure knowledge’.”
Although full of lust, their desire is not focused on the need for difficult
or hard (unsentimental) knowledge that allows the philosopher to posit
new conceptions and emotions of the kind that lead to self-transformation
and even the creation of new peoples (see Z:III: “On Old and New Law
Tables” , ).
Although the seekers of pure knowledge love the earth and all things
earthly, they have a bad conscience in their love and are just like the moon.
Their love of things of the earth is combined with a healthy contempt of
the earthly too, but this does not then express itself as a desire for
transforming the earth. Rather, they want to love the earth only as the
moon does, touching its beauty “with the eyes alone” (Z:II “On
Immaculate Perception”). They wish, in short, only to gaze and not to
create: “And let this be called by me my immaculate perception of all things:
that I desire nothing of things, except that I may lie down before them like
a mirror with a hundred eyes” (Z:II “On Immaculate Perception”). To this
Zarathustra sternly replies, “Truly, you do not love the earth as
creators, begetters, men joyful at entering upon a new existence!”
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(Z:II “On Immaculate Perception”). Zarathustra then makes an appeal to
“innocence” and “beauty,” declaring that beauty resides in a courageous will,
namely, where one has to will with all one’s will, including where the will
welcomes its own perishing, so that “an image may not remain merely an
image” (Z:II “On Immaculate Perception”). At work in this whole discourse
may be an oblique set of references to the image of the sun in Plato, the
contemplative philosopher of ideal forms par excellence, and how we are to
emerge from the cave so as to contemplate the eternal form of the Good
represented by the sun. Clearly, the sun is operating quite differently in
Nietzsche, signalling the arrival of new life and new dawns, in short, new
possibilities of life. We can also note that aspects of Nietzsche’s criticism of
the famous wise men may also be directed at Aristotle, who famously
construes contemplation as the highest mode of a philosophically-inspired
existence (on Nietzsche on Aristotle, see Loeb a).
In linking together so potently in this discourse the will to love with the
will to one’s death, Nietzsche is harking back to his conception of the
genuine philosopher in Dawn where he argues that the most beautiful
virtue of the great thinker radiates from the magnanimity “with which he,
as a person of knowledge, undauntedly, often ashamed, often with sublime
mockery and smiling—offers himself and his life in sacrifice” (D ). It is
worth noting that this aphorism from Dawn is in large part an attack on
the likes of Rousseau and Schopenhauer, both of whom professed, following the motto of Juvenal, to have dedicated their lives to truth, but who,
Nietzsche holds, did not possess the intellectual maturity that would have
enabled them to dedicate truth to life. Rather, both thinkers were vain and
sought only in truth and knowledge a mirror of themselves. For Nietzsche
this is especially the case with Schopenhauer, whose philosophy is to be
regarded as the mirroring of a “character,” a melancholic one at that, and
that reveals an “interesting vehement ugliness” (D ).
The idea that the passion of knowledge is a practice of knowledge that
requires a self-sacrificing humanity is one that Nietzsche has already
floated in The Gay Science in his account of preparatory human beings.
He describes these preparatory ones in a specific way: they will be “silent,
solitary, resolute”; they will be distinguished “by cheerfulness, patience,
unpretentiousness, and contempt for all great vanities as by magnanimity
in victory and forbearance regarding the small vanities of the vanquished”;
and, finally, in addition to having their own festivals, working days, and
periods of mourning, they will be “more endangered human beings, more
fruitful human beings, happier beings!” (GS ). In living dangerously,
the preparatory ones will be prepared to make sacrifices, that is, sacrifices of
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Philosophy As a Way of Life
themselves and for the benefit of a future to come. This mode of life is
their pride, their happiness, and their reason for existence. Nietzsche
concludes this aphorism as follows: “Soon the ages will be past when
you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer. At long last
the search for knowledge will reach out for its due; it will want to rule and
possess, and you with it!” (GS ).
Let us return to Nietzsche’s attack on the practitioners of pure knowledge
in “Of Immaculate Perception.” He labels them “deceivers” and “contemplatives,” clearly revealing his consternation at the fact that the philosopher
can have a desire for knowledge without wanting this to have any transformative effects. He even acknowledges that he too once thought there was no
better art than the art of pure knowledge, and this self-criticism may be
directed at the position he had promoted in Human, all too Human (see HH
). The discourse concludes on a powerful note with Nietzsche indicating
that through knowledge we can elevate ourselves and come to cultivate
within ourselves, as experiments and sites of self-overcoming and selfsacrifice, a non-vain desire for the advancement and enhancement of life.
The conception of knowledge advanced here is fully in accord with the
depiction of the philosopher’s magnanimity presented in aphorism of
Dawn and a clear expression of philosophy as a way of life:
But I approached you: then day dawned for me
the moon’s love affair had come to an end!
Just look! There it stands, pale and detected
and now it dawns for you
before the dawn!
For already it is coming, the glowing sun its love of the earth is coming!
All sun love is innocence and creative desire!
Just look how it comes impatiently over the sea! . . . It wants to suck at the
sea and drink the sea’s depths up to its height . . . It wants to be kissed and
sucked by the sun’s thirst, it wants to become air and height and light’s
footpath and light itself!
Truly, like the sun do I love life and all deep seas.
And this I call knowledge: all that is deep shall rise up
“On Immaculate Perception”)
to my height! (Z:II
. Self-transformation and Conversion in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
We have attempted to show how from his earlier writings until Thus Spoke
Zarathustra Nietzsche develops a substantial critique of scholarly philosophy and endorses a model of philosophical practice that resonates with
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Hadot’s conception of philosophy as a way of life. Let us now see how this
model is displayed and put into practice in Thus Spoke Zarathustra on the
level of self-transformation and conversion to a new way of life.
According to John Sellars, transformation of one’s way of life is the
ultimate motivation of philosophy conceived as a way of life (Sellars :
). In one of his multiple formulations, Hadot defines it as “a method of
spiritual progress” that demands “a radical conversion and transformation
of the individual’s way of being” (Hadot : ). This conversion and
transformation are achieved through the constant pursuit and activation of
wisdom, which as we have seen is not to be externally acquired or simply
learned, but incorporated or embodied, in such a way that it becomes a
way of life, that is, a total “mode of existing-in-the-world” (Hadot :
). We have shown how in his middle writings, such as Dawn and The
Gay Science, Nietzsche has sought to clarify what it means to cultivate the
passion of knowledge and defined our new task today as one of learning
how to incorporate truth and knowledge. These conceptions are dramatically put to work in Thus Spoke Zarathustra when through its main
character Nietzsche’s passion of knowledge assumes “bodily form” and
gives itself the task of enhancing the human species and giving a new
meaning to the earth. Zarathustra is precisely that thinker who “considers
truthfulness to be the highest virtue” and as such “has more courage in his
body than all thinkers put together”; his peculiar virtue, Nietzsche claims,
is “to speak the truth and shoot well with an arrow” (EH “Destiny” ). In so
doing, Zarathustra brings together that “species of courage” and “extravagant generosity” that has hitherto “been lacking in mankind” (D ),
that kind of wisdom that out of its honesty, coldness, vigour and exuberance opens up new ways of thinking, feeling and living and “tells us
something of the possible” (EH “Destiny” ).
The possible is, in this case, Zarathustra’s own way of life, which is also
his true teaching. It is not a coincidence that Nietzsche considers
Zarathustra “a new sacred book” (KSB : ) or a “fifth ‘Gospel’”
(KSB : ) and that many of its stylistic aspects and motifs are modelled
after the Bible. Just like Christ in the New Testament, Zarathustra is the
message, the wisdom and the truth, the possibility of a new dawn, a new
meaning of the earth, a new redemption of the world and, above all, the
expression of Nietzsche’s hope in a self-overcoming of mankind. For
Zarathustra, people are “something unformed, matter, an ugly stone that
needs a sculptor” (EH Z:) and, as the Prologue famously declares, “Man
is something that should be overcome” (Z:I “Prologue” ). As a sculptor of
a future humanity, Zarathustra teaches a new kind of faith that “shall be
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Philosophy As a Way of Life
the meaning of the earth” after the death of all gods – a meaning that must
be built and created anew through the same courage, magnanimity and
self-sacrificing spirit that Zarathustra embodies and aims to cultivate in
free-spirited human beings:
And this is the great noontide: it is when man stands at the middle of his
course between animal and Superhuman and celebrates his journey to the
evening as his highest hope: for it is the journey to a new morning.
Then man, going under, will bless himself; for he will be going over to the
Superhuman; and the sun of his knowledge will stand at noontide.
“All gods are dead: now we want the Superhuman to live” let this be our last
will one day at the great noontide! (Z:I “Of the Bestowing Virtue” )
The metaphors of the “great noontide” and the “new morning” – just as
“midday,” “dawn” and others that abound in the text – are of great
significance here and show how Thus Spoke Zarathustra is perhaps the
moment in Nietzsche’s work where his philosophical practice comes
closest to what Hadot described as philosophy as a way of life. The
metaphors point to the ideas of renewal, renovation, rebirth, and they
indicate the appearance or eruption of something new, which even though
bearing a relation with the past also implies a break, a scission, a rupture
with a previous condition or state of affairs. Both the idea of rupture and
the idea of a new start or a new beginning are involved in what Hadot
describes as the “philosophical conversion” that is at the core of philosophy
as a way of life, especially but not exclusively as conceived among Stoics
and Epicureans. Indeed, Hadot holds that throughout the history of
Western thought, philosophy has been “essentially an act of conversion”
(Hadot : ), and by this he means the following:
In all its forms, philosophical conversion is the tearing away from and
breaking with the everyday, the familiar, the falsely ‘natural’ attitude of
common sense. It is the return to the original and the originary, to the
authentic, to interiority, to the essential. It is absolute new beginning, a new
starting point which transforms past and future. . . . In any way it presents
itself, philosophical conversion is the access to inner freedom, to a new
perception of the world, to authentic existence. (Hadot : )
Hadot characterizes it as a “decisive illumination” (Hadot : ), one
that provokes a radical transformation of one’s way of life. Significantly,
Zarathustra is compared to a sun that must “descend into the depths” in
order to “bring light to the underworld” (Z:I “Prologue” ).
Retrospectively, Nietzsche calls Zarathustra a “revelation of truth”
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(EH Z:), something that “throws you down and leaves you deeply
shaken” (EH Z:). Both in the religious and in the philosophical contexts,
it is this moment of awakening and enlightenment that makes us question
our most ordinary and rooted habits, thoughts and feelings and embrace a
totally new way of thinking, feeling and inhabiting the world.
This is a process that does not come about spontaneously, but rather
requires the intermediation and guidance of somebody who has himself
gone through this process of self-transformation and is able to communicate to others his own experience and awaken in them the desire to go
through the same process of conversion to another way of life. Mirroring
the figure of the wise man in antiquity, Zarathustra is an educator who has
first educated himself, a converter who is himself “converted” or, in the
formulations of Zarathustra, “an awakened-one” speaking to “the sleepers”
(Z:I “Prologue” ). The means of communication are extremely important
in this context, which is why in ancient philosophical schools, just like in
Zarathustra, “the means of rhetoric and logic are put in service of the
conversion of souls” (Hadot : ). In philosophy as a way of life, and
as evident in Zarathustra’s speeches, discourse is not meant to simply
convey a theory to listeners or readers, but rather to provoke this awakening, inviting individuals to remove themselves from their common ways of
life and calling for a new way of being and existing in the world.
If this performative use of language can be generally attested in
Nietzsche’s highly unconventional style – at least when compared to the
traditional forms of philosophical discourse – it is clearly exacerbated in
Zarathustra, where self-transformation and conversion might be said to lie
at its core. Thus, Zarathustra’s speeches – just as all the allegories, parables,
visions, riddles, enigmas, poems, anecdotes, songs and dances that compose the narrative – are clearly not meant to merely teach something to his
listeners or readers, but also aim to actually do something to them. In their
performative aspects they are essentially tools to cultivate in human beings
a desire for self-transformation and the creation of a new humansuperhuman way of life. Particularly noteworthy in this regard are the
spiritual gymnastics that Zarathustra undergoes throughout the text in
order to deal with the numerous challenges and obstacles that he finds in
his way, as well as the powerful images of self-overcoming and selftransformation that he not only displays but often incorporates, most
notably the image of the shepherd biting the “heavy, black snake” after
which he is “no longer a shepherd, no longer a man” but “a transformed
being, surrounded with light, laughing,” with a “laughter that was no
human laughter” (Z:III “On the Vision and the Riddle” ) – a
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Philosophy As a Way of Life
transmutation that Zarathustra himself undergoes at the end of Part III,
signaling the end of the “down-going” that he had started in the Prologue
(Z:III “The Convalescent” ). In this context, it has been noted how these
spiritual gymnastics that Zarathustra undergoes throughout the narrative,
and most notably the thought of the eternal return, the incorporation and
acceptance of which produces the radical self-transformation just mentioned, can be equated to the spiritual exercises with which Hadot characterizes the practice of philosophy as a way of life (see Hadot :
–). These exercises are practices specifically designed to change our
way of living on the basis of a new perception of the world and indeed, as
Ure notes, the eternal return is “an exercise through which we transform
our present life such that we would desire its eternal repetition” (Ure :
). By embodying not only a new way of life, but also the spiritual
exercises and transitions needed to get there, Zarathustra teaches this new
way by experiencing it and also putting it to the ultimate test of seeing
“whether one can live in accordance with it” (SE ).
According to Hadot, philosophical conversion has the same radical and
totalizing character as religious conversion (Hadot : ), and
Zarathustra certainly plays with this religious dimension in which “God’s
initiative irrupts into the world, introducing a radical novelty into the
course of history” that is “often delivered in a sacred book, demands
absolute adhesion, a complete break with the past, a consecration of one’s
whole being” (Hadot : ). As Michel Foucault makes clear in his
analysis of Cynic conversion, however, what distinguishes the philosophical form of conversion from the religious one is that whereas the latter
constitutes a movement to “an other life” as the condition for access to “the
other world” (l’autre monde), philosophy aspires to and aims to build a “life
which is other” (une vie autre) as a means to promote a “world which is
other” (un monde autre) (Foucault : , , translation modified).
We see this intention at play in the whole of Zarathustra, which in the
twenty-two speeches that make up the first part of the narrative, summarizes the main traits of the “life which is other” that Zarathustra aims to
promote, cultivate and indeed convert us to.
The idea of otherness is here fundamental, firstly because it is mainly in
opposition to our current life that Zarathustra’s new way of life emerges,
and second because it is precisely otherness that it aims to teach and
promote: otherness in the way we think, feel and evaluate, otherness in
the way we judge ourselves, others and the world, otherness in the way we
conceive ourselves and our life possibilities to be. Zarathustra wants to free
human beings from the fear and superstition of religious phantasms,
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slavish moralities, and life-denying ideals that demand the same “Thou
shalt” for all, and to awaken them to the infinite possibilities of thinking,
feeling, judging, doing and being otherwise. Above all, Zarathustra is
concerned with another sense of gratitude, beauty and joyful being in
the world – a world that in the lives of those who accept the challenge of
creation, experimentation and self-overcoming, also becomes other, thus
providing a new meaning to the earth. As Zarathustra pleads in his last
speech of the book’s first part:
Stay loyal to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue! May
your bestowing love and your knowledge serve towards the meaning of the
earth! Thus I beg and entreat you. [. . .]
Lead, as I do, the flown away virtue back to earth yes, back to body and
life: that it may give the earth its meaning, a human meaning! [. . .]
May your spirit and your virtue serve the meaning of the earth, my
brothers: and may the value of all things be fixed anew by you. To that
end you should be fighters! To that end you should be creators!
There are a thousand paths that have never yet been trodden, a thousand
forms of health and hidden islands of life. Man and man’s earth are still
unexhausted and undiscovered. (Z:I “Of the Bestowing Virtue” )
Throughout the narrative, Zarathustra stresses several times that such a
transformation of human beings and the human world cannot come about
without much destruction and sacrifice, and indeed without willingness to
perish for the sake of this new meaning of the earth, which Zarathustra
epitomizes in the superhuman. In this context, it has been argued that the
superhuman repeats the same pattern that we find in the case of the ascetic
ideal, in which human life is accorded value only to the extent that it is a
means to something that brings about its negation (see Clark : ).
This concern can perhaps be allayed by appealing to a note from the time
of Dawn where Nietzsche says that there is need for a new “non-ascetic
renunciation of the world” (KSA :[]). This significantly distances his
position from any residual attachment to the ascetic ideal: the concern is
not with creating anything otherworldly or transcendent, anything
unearthly, as is the case with ascetic ideals, but rather with fostering a
richer, deeper and more beautiful humanity, indeed, to the point where
there would emerge a new species. This does not imply a simple negation
but a self-overcoming or, one could say, a self-sublation of current humanity that would mark, in Hadot’s words, an “absolute new beginning,” a
“new starting point which transforms past and future.”
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Philosophy As a Way of Life
It is worth stressing the extent to which Nietzsche has been foregrounding a discourse on sacrifice, with reference to both an experimental selfsacrificing humanity and the character of the magnanimous philosopher,
well before Zarathustra and the positing of the superhuman. Clark wishes
to focus critical attention on the figure of the superhuman in Nietzsche,
but she fails to appreciate the extent to which the key philosophical project
at work in his middle writings is an anticipation of, and preparation for,
what is being presented and posited in Zarathustra (see, for example, D ,
; and GS ). So, although one might have concerns about the
positing of the superhuman they need to be informed by an appreciation
of the middle writings, one that would show the extent to which the idea
of a self-sacrificing humanity is far from being an idiosyncratic feature of
Nietzsche’s philosophizing.
. Conclusion
Nietzsche’s global concern with the earth and the human as a species in
Zarathustra is an aspect that distinguishes his philosophical project from
the much narrower and limited aims of Hellenistic philosophers. Even
though Nietzsche’s philosophy can also be considered therapeutic on a
cultural level – and perhaps even on an individual one in his middle
period – it is clear that the goals he sets for himself, as well as for free
spirits and future philosophers in different moments of his work, go
beyond the prescription of a way of life intended to secure peace of mind
and freedom from suffering or disturbance of the soul. And yet, if there is
something that Nietzsche never abandons throughout his entire productive life it is the conviction that philosophy should not be allowed to
become a purely abstract and innocuous discipline, consigned to “dusty”
books and sterile classrooms, with no impact on one’s life and character.
For Nietzsche, just as for the Hellenists, and in coincidence with Hadot’s
account, philosophy is a deeply performative and transformative practice,
one that demands total commitment from its practitioners and that opens
up the possibility of a radical conversion of one’s whole being.
As we have tried to show, however, Nietzsche does not restrict the
conception of philosophy as a way of life to a single task. Sometimes
philosophy is identified in Nietzsche with Bildung or self-cultivation, as in
his Basel lectures on the future of educational institutions, and this is a
theme one might see at work in the middle writings and also informing
parts of Zarathustra. Also at work in Nietzsche is an appreciation of
philosophy as the mode of thinking and way of being in the world that
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discovers “beautiful possibilities of life” (PT –), and we see this at
work in his early work on the pre-Platonic philosophers and then renewed
in Human, all too Human (for example, HH ). Finally, especially in
Zarathustra, philosophy is to apply itself to the task of cultivating noble
and singular individuals, and ultimately therefore, in Nietzsche philosophy
as a way of life is to dedicate itself to the cause of promoting superior
human types, ones who are able to affirm life and provide a new meaning
to the earth (Z:I “Of the Tree on the Mountainside”).
We have sought to show how this conception of philosophy develops
throughout Nietzsche’s early and middle writings until it reaches its most
dramatic and expressive form in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which is perhaps
the best example in Nietzsche’s corpus of him not only advocating but
practicing and teaching philosophy as a way of life. With Zarathustra
Nietzsche has clearly chosen to write in a specific manner, eschewing the
forms of the treatise and the essay, even the quasi-scientific report, and
constructing an alter ego instead of writing in his own voice. Within these
choices we can identify a criticism of, and alternative to, the academic and
professionalized practice of philosophy that today has become the norm.
As Hadot notes, the intention of an author is inscribed not only in the
content but also in the form of his or her works, such that “the first way to
recognize the author’s intention is to look for the literary genre to which
the text belongs” (Hadot : ). In the case of Zarathustra, and
similarly to other works in the philosophy as a way of life tradition, it is
clear that the form and genre of the text is strictly dependent on the effect
of (trans)formation Nietzsche wanted to provoke in his readers. In fact, the
majority of Nietzsche’s works are written in unconventional forms and
designed to have a similar effect of formation in the context of a genuine
philosophical education, one which modern universities are unable to
provide. What is particular about Thus Spoke Zarathustra is that
Zarathustra personifies the theories, doctrines and values he wishes to
convey. Zarathustra is not simply a fictional substitute of Nietzsche. He
teaches through his speeches and, most importantly, he teaches through
his own example, his own life and his own experience. His journey is itself
a journey of self-transformation and self-formation (with many difficulties,
resistances, self-overcomings) that he wishes to share with others. So, it
might be claimed, what he shares and what he teaches is first and foremost
his way of life. In so doing he comes close to the wise human being in
antiquity, whose philosophy was conveyed not only by his teachings but
also by his own life. In this sense, Zarathustra recovers, to a great extent,
the personal, communal and dialogical character of philosophy in
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Philosophy As a Way of Life
antiquity, as well as the form of “teaching by example”, which, as Hadot
stresses, was so fundamental and yet has been almost irremediably lost in
contemporary academic philosophy (see Hadot : ff.).
In short, with Zarathustra, which features all of his mature teachings
and ideas, Nietzsche appears keen to gain a wider and more practically
oriented audience than academic philosophy allows for. We wish to
contend, therefore, that taking seriously a philosophical work like Thus
Spoke Zarathustra is of the utmost importance today. With the rise of
neoliberalism, education is perhaps even more threatened by increasing
professionalization and policing than it was in Nietzsche’s (or even
Hadot’s) time. Students are increasingly treated as consumers, with
teachers expected to be dispensers of readily digestible information. In
today’s university culture there is a growing absence of genuine education
and a lack of genuine educators who would teach the virtues of selfcultivation and self-overcoming. Nietzsche saw the crisis coming and
Hadot valiantly reacted against it with his appreciation of philosophy as
a way of life. Their conceptions of philosophy as a way of life retain
their pertinence and potency today, not only as important forms of
resistance to current university educational practices, but also as important
reminders of the original vocation of philosophy and its role in transforming human lives.
The authors wish to thank Paul Loeb for his pertinent and challenging feedback that has helped us
improve the essay and finesse our interpretation of Nietzsche.
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What Makes the Affirmation of Life Difficult?
Paul Katsafanas
Nietzsche repeatedly claims that Zarathustra is his most important philosophical work (EH P:; EH Z:; EH Z:). He tells us that the core idea of
Zarathustra is the eternal recurrence (EH Z:, ). Moreover, he associates
eternal recurrence with “the highest formula of affirmation that is at all
attainable” (EH Z:; see also BGE , EH “Clever” ). And he suggests
that most of us will fail to attain this highest form of affirmation; most of
us, when confronted with the thought of eternal recurrence, will either fail
to appreciate the thought or will be plunged into despair (GS ). In
short: Nietzsche thinks that his most important thought in his most
important work is that most of us cannot truly affirm life.
That much is clear; unfortunately, much else is mysterious. The idea of
eternal recurrence is evocative but cryptic. There are a number of scholarly
controversies concerning how it should be interpreted and what problem it
is intended to pose. I think we can make progress on these matters by
asking a very simple question: why is affirming eternal recurrence supposed
to be more difficult than affirming a non-recurring, singular life? Once we
raise this question, a number of traditional interpretations of eternal
recurrence begin to look problematic.
Section . introduces the problem, arguing that an adequate interpretation of eternal recurrence will have to show why affirming recurring lives
is more difficult than affirming singular lives. The next four sections
consider some influential interpretations of eternal recurrence, which
attribute the difficulty of affirming eternal recurrence to the inescapability
of suffering (Section .), the interconnectedness of events (Section .),
the valuation of permanence (Section .), and vengefulness (Section .).
The following translations are used in this chapter: BGE (); BT (); EH (); GM ();
GS (); TI (); Z ().
Of course, this is coupled with a more positive thought: we can strive to become capable of affirming
life. GS is sandwiched between GS , which discusses Socrates’ condemnation of life, and GS
, which points us toward Zarathustra, who ultimately succeeds in affirming life.
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What Makes the Affirmation of Life Difficult?
I argue that none of these interpretations can offer a good account of why
affirming recurring lives would be more difficult than affirming singular
lives. In Section ., I offer a new interpretation of eternal recurrence,
which attributes its difficulty to the conditional nature of ordinary affirmation. Affirmation is conditional when it depends on the possibility of
excising objectionable elements from the object of affirmation. What
Nietzsche means to reveal, with eternal recurrence, is that even the most
apparently affirmative individuals often manifest only a conditional affirmation of life, a form of affirmation that conceals a tacit negation. Eternal
recurrence brings this hidden negation to light, thereby encouraging us to
move toward an unconditionally affirmative stance. In Section .,
I conclude by reflecting on why Nietzsche takes the distinction between
conditional and unconditional affirmation to be such an important philosophical idea. I argue that those who devote themselves to challenging,
long-term goals will face psychological pressures that tend to deform
unconditional affirmation into conditional affirmation.
. The Affirmation of Life
We can all think of things that might make life seem problematic.
Pervasive suffering; the collapse of traditional sources of meaning or
direction; the entanglement of good events with bad ones; ennui; the
perceived valuelessness of pursuits; the banality of many forms of modern
life. Or, to pick some non-Nietzschean candidates: injustice; the viciousness of human beings; unending conflict and war; environmental collapse;
and one could go on and on.
Suppose you are worried about these things. And suppose that you come
to a view like this: although there is plenty that is bad about the world, you
see a way of being positively disposed toward it. You think life is worth
living, despite these objectionable features. Moreover, you do not think this
affirmative attitude rests on any false presuppositions or reflectively unstable
beliefs. You have thought carefully about life, you have cleared away illusions
and false beliefs, and you have found a way of affirming life. Your affirmation could be grounded in any number of ways: perhaps it is mindful
engagement with particulars; perhaps it is having some great creative goal
to which you are devoted; perhaps it is throwing yourself into political
struggle; perhaps it is love; perhaps it is the quiet comforts of home.
I want to emphasize that many people find themselves in this position.
Over the years, I have discussed Nietzsche’s ideas about affirmation with
hundreds of students and dozens of philosophers, and by far the most
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common reaction that I have encountered is the belief that life is affirmable.
It is rare to find anyone who thinks that life is perfect; but it is equally rare to
find those who reject life. Most people take themselves to affirm life, though
of course it is unusual for them to put it this way until they are introduced to
the Nietzschean terminology.
It is possible that these individuals are self-deceived, confused, or
thoughtless. It is possible that if we cleared away these distortions and
deceptions, these individuals would negate life. Perhaps most of us are in
that state: after all, Nietzsche emphasizes the opacity of the human mind,
the mendacity of individuals, the pervasiveness of self-deception, the
inability to understand our own motives and values. In short: it is possible
that most or all cases of apparent life-affirmation would turn out to be
illusory once we clear away these sorts of epistemic failings.
But even if that were true, it would not by itself explain why the thought of
eternal recurrence is supposed to render affirmation difficult. To see this, let us
imagine one of these perfectly ordinary individuals, someone who takes
herself to affirm life. She is thoughtful, serious, and thorough in her reflections: she attends to all of the horrors of existence but nonetheless thinks that
life is on balance affirmable, perhaps because she sees the bad in life as
potentially correctible, or perhaps because she sees the good in life as potentially outweighing the bad. Then you confront her with the thought of eternal
recurrence. You tell her: your life, as you have lived it, will repeat endlessly,
with no details changed. Everything will come back to you, again and again.
You will have no capacity to alter anything.
How might the putatively affirmative individual respond? Nietzsche
expects a dramatic reaction:
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the
demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous
moment when you would have answered him: “You are a god, and never
have I heard anything more divine.” If this thought gained power over you,
as you are it would transform and possibly crush you; the question in each
and every thing, “Do you want this again and innumerable times again?”
would lie on your actions as the heaviest weight! Or how well disposed
would you have to become to yourself and to life to long for nothing more
fervently than for this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal? (GS )
And Nietzsche knows this. First, consider his discussions of the last men: “‘we have invented
happiness,’ say the last men, and they blink.” (Z:I “Prologue” ). The last men are content, albeit
superficially so. Second, Nietzsche defines the “omni-satisfied” as “those who consider everything
good and this world the best . . . Always to bray Yea-Yuh—that only the ass has learned, and whoever
is of his spirit” (Z:III “Spirit of Gravity”). Although both the last men and the omni-satisfied are
presented in disparaging ways, Nietzsche acknowledges that they take themselves to affirm life.
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What Makes the Affirmation of Life Difficult?
Nietzsche lists two possible reactions to the thought of recurring lives:
despair, which he suggests is the most common reaction; and joy, which is
rare. Nietzsche thus suggests that someone who believes that she affirms life
can find herself devastated by the thought of eternal recurrence. Indeed,
Nietzsche’s texts emphasize just this point: putatively affirmative individuals typically despair when confronted with eternal recurrence. This is,
after all, what happens to Zarathustra: he takes himself to be the teacher of
how to reconcile oneself with existence, how to be well-disposed toward
life (Z:I “Prologue”). But then he is confronted with eternal recurrence and
he is broken (Z:III “Vision and Riddle”). He is incapacitated; he cannot
go on until he finds a way of reorienting himself in light of this thought
(Z:III “Convalescent”). And a similar dynamic occurs in GS: from GS
onward, Nietzsche repeatedly emphasizes that people who seem content with
the death of God may be unaware of some deeper problem: the “shadows of
god,” the lingering concepts, values, and orientations that permeate our lives
but that presuppose a religious context. And he urges us to become welldisposed toward life, discovering the malleability in our ways of experiencing
events, striving for ever more affirmative modes of experiencing life (see esp.
GS , , , , , ). In GS , we are told that the seemingly
affirmative Socrates, who especially in Nietzsche’s time was taken as a sign of
exuberant, affirmative life, had in fact tacitly rejected life. And then in the next
section we are presented with eternal recurrence, prompting us to ask whether
the same might be true of us: even if we think we are well disposed toward life,
might we be incapable of affirming life in some deeper sense? GS then
invites us to read Zarathustra.
If we keep this context in mind, we can see that Nietzsche intends
eternal recurrence to present even the most apparently affirmative individuals with a problem. Contemplating eternal recurrence is supposed to be
more difficult than contemplating a singular life. Someone who thinks that
she is affirming life, that she is well-disposed toward it, could be traumatized by contemplating eternal recurrence.
Accordingly, Nietzsche must think that eternal recurrence presents
some new, distinctive problem, a problem that either does not arise or is
not apparent when contemplating singular lives. If we are to understand
The final sentence of GS , especially when taken as leading into GS and Z, suggests that
someone who is traumatized by eternal recurrence might strive to change that fact, moving toward a
fully affirmative reaction.
Compare KSA :[], which suggests that eternal recurrence can be “the most extreme form of
nihilism”; it can drive home the thought that existence is “without meaning or goal” and thereby
deprive us of traditional forms of protection “from despair.”
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eternal recurrence, we will need to understand what this problem is. I will
treat this as a criterion of adequacy for interpretations of eternal recurrence:
an acceptable interpretation of eternal recurrence must explain why it is
more difficult to affirm recurring lives than singular lives.
. Affirmation Is Difficult Because Life Is Full of Suffering
We want to know what might make it difficult to affirm recurring lives. Let us
start by considering the stance that Nietzsche opposes: pessimism. We can
define pessimism as the claim that the bad in life inevitably and invariably
outweighs the good. Schopenhauer argues for a particular version of pessimism,
in which he both identifies goodness with the absence of suffering and argues
that facts about the nature of willing guarantee that suffering is omnipresent and
inescapable (Schopenhauer : –). Although Schopenhauer inaugurates these debates, they continue beyond him. The clash between Pessimists
and their opponents, the Optimists, is one of the dominant intellectual
movements from the s onward, continuing through Eugen Dühring,
Eduard von Hartmann, Philipp Mainländer, Julius Bahnsen, and others.
It is uncontroversial that Nietzsche is gripped by the Pessimism debates.
And there is an obvious connection between the Pessimism debates and
eternal recurrence: eternal recurrence, like the Pessimism debates, is concerned with whether an unprejudiced view of life leads us to despair. This
has led some readers to think that eternal recurrence is responsive to
Schopenhauer’s concerns about suffering. But this is too quick. If
Nietzsche were merely concerned with Schopenhauer’s problem, then
eternal recurrence would do no additional work. If someone already
accepts the idea that the pains of life necessarily outweigh the pleasures,
then eternal recurrence would not matter. Schopenhauer, for example,
thinks that even the prospect of living life once is sufficient to motivate
pessimism, once we see what living actually involves. So the person who
An interpretive note: many commentators assume, often without argument, that what renders
eternal recurrence difficult are facts about the agent’s own past. I find it very strange that this
assumption has gripped the literature (it is present most explicitly in Nehamas and Anderson
, but it is quite widespread). In Z, Zarathustra evinces no concern whatsoever with his own past;
what he finds troubling is more general features of his world, specifically the presence of the “small
man” or the “rabble” (Z:III “Convalescent”; Z:III “Redemption”). So, while it has become standard
to present eternal recurrence as if Nietzsche wanted us to focus on our own pasts and our own
choices, that assumption is not warranted by the texts.
Beiser provides a helpful introduction to these figures. For Nietzsche’s discussions of
pessimism, see for example WS ; D , ; GS , , , , , , .
See Reginster and Janaway .
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What Makes the Affirmation of Life Difficult?
accepts Schopenhauer’s arguments will already have the pessimistic reaction to life, independently of the eternal recurrence.
And the reverse also seems true: if you have reconciled yourself to life
despite the pervasiveness of suffering, then eternal recurrence should not
bother you. If suffering is not an objection to living once, it should not be
an objection to living twice, five times, or an infinite number of times.
After all, while the total amount of suffering would be increased as lives are
multiplied, the ratio of suffering to whatever one sees as redeeming
suffering would remain constant. Being content with a singular life despite
suffering while rejecting a repeating life because of the very same suffering
would be incoherent; it would be involve treating the very same thing in
opposite ways depending exclusively on the number of times it occurs.
Of course, another form of pessimism is manifest in what Nietzsche likes to
call “the wisdom of Silenus”: that the best thing is never to have been born, and
the second best is to die soon (BT ). It is possible to read eternal recurrence as
expressing the inescapability of life: the second best option, that of dying soon, is
not available, because your life will repeat eternally. There is no escape from the
cycle of death and rebirth, no escape from willing. Perhaps eternal recurrence is
supposed to target this thought. But, aside from the fact that this is a fairly
obvious point and thus hard to square with Nietzsche’s claims about the novelty
of eternal recurrence, it does not generate any additional problem for recurring
lives. Someone who is satisfied with a singular life is not going to be trying to
escape from that life; someone who rejects a singular life already is. So eternal
recurrence, interpreted merely as claiming that we cannot escape from life,
would be of limited import and limited originality.
Thus, we face a problem: this interpretation cannot fulfill the interpretive criterion. The alleged fact that suffering outweighs happiness is no
more of a problem for a repeating life than for a singular life. Affirming
eternal recurrence despite suffering should be no more difficult than
affirming a singular life despite suffering.
. Affirmation Is Difficult Because Everything Is Interconnected
Let us consider a more complex reading: Alexander Nehamas’ influential
interpretation of eternal recurrence. Notice that when eternal recurrence is
discussed in Zarathustra, the interconnectedness of events is emphasized:
Soll also makes this point. For an argument against it, see Loeb .
Compare Jenkins (: ), who also emphasizes that this kind of thought is unoriginal and
cannot be the content of eternal recurrence.
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Have you ever said Yes to a single joy? O my friends, then you said Yes to
all woe. All things are entangled, ensnared, enamored; if you ever wanted
one thing twice, if you ever said, ‘You please me, happiness! Abide,
moment!’ then you wanted all back. All anew, all eternally, all entangled,
ensnared, enamored oh, then you loved the world. (Z:IV “Sleepwalker’s
Song”; see also Z:III “Vision and Riddle” and EH BT:)
Drawing on passages on this type, Nehamas argues that Nietzsche rejects
the distinction between accidental and essential properties. Instead, he
accepts a view that we can call (following Anderson ) inverse superessentialism: every property is equally essential to who you are. If this is
right, then any change in a person’s life would result in a new person.
Nehamas thinks that Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence presupposes this
metaphysical thesis. Nietzsche asks us to consider reliving just this life,
with no detail changed, because reliving any other life would not count as
reliving one’s own life. As Nehamas puts it, “If my life were to recur, then
it could recur only in identical fashion” (Nehamas : ). So, if we are
to affirm our lives, we have to affirm our lives with no details changed.
That is the problem that eternal recurrence poses.
I am skeptical that Nietzsche actually endorses inverse superessentialism, but let us set that aside. I want to focus on a simpler point: if
Nietzsche were interested in the difficulty of affirming life given the
interconnectedness of events, then eternal recurrence would be unnecessary. Suppose Nehamas is correct in claiming that Nietzsche accepts
inverse superessentialism. And suppose I hesitate to affirm X (say, my life)
because X is connected to Y (say, a past misfortune). Whether X and
Y repeat (and especially whether they repeat eternally) is irrelevant. Any
difficulties generated by Nehamas’ version of eternal recurrence are generated not by the idea of eternal repetition, but by inverse superessentialism.
The point about interconnectedness is doing all the work. Eternal recurrence adds nothing.
So we could imagine a demon appearing on the shoulder of some
superficial optimist and saying: your life as you live it depends, for its
particularities, on all the horrors of history, on the Holocaust and on
disease and massacre and war and death. If you are genuinely affirmative
Why be skeptical of this? Simply put, the passages that suggest inverse superessentialism can be read
more modestly: Nietzsche seems to me to be emphasizing that () events are interconnected in
complex and unexpected ways, and that () in light of this certain ways of drawing the distinction
between accidental and essential properties are untenable. But you can endorse those points without
committing yourself to the much stronger claim that () all distinctions between essential and
accidental properties are equally arbitrary.
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What Makes the Affirmation of Life Difficult?
toward your life, you also have to affirm all of that. Can you do it? No
doubt this is a difficult question. But it has nothing to do with infinite or
eternal repetition. It does not help us to understand the question that
eternal recurrence poses.
So the interconnectedness of events does not generate a special problem
for recurring lives, as compared to singular lives. It does not make affirming repeating lives any more difficult than affirming a singular life.
. Affirmation Is Difficult Because We Crave Permanence
Bernard Reginster claims that eternal recurrence is difficult because accepting it “requires a revaluation of values” (Reginster : ). In particular, it requires that change the way in which we evaluate “being” and
“becoming.” Reginster argues that many philosophers have valued being or
permanence over becoming. He writes:
In objecting to the aspiration for the eternal life, which is characteristic of
Christianity but is also shared by a great many philosophers since Plato,
Nietzsche is in fact objecting to their valuation of permanence, or “being,”
and their corresponding devaluation of “becoming”: “Death, change, age, as
well as procreation and growth, are for them objections refutations even.
What is, does not become; what becomes, is not . . . Now they all believe,
even to the point of despair, in that which is” (TI “Reason” ; GM III:).
(Reginster : )
So Reginster’s claim is that many philosophers devalue “becoming” and
value “being” or “permanence.” If we envision our lives eternally repeating,
we envision a world in which nothing can be attained once and for all. Any
attained ends are undone; time repeats. Permanence is impossible. Insofar
as we continue to value permanence, eternal recurrence will therefore be
troubling. Insofar as we value becoming, eternal recurrence need not be
troubling. Eternal recurrence thus plays a role in revaluation: if we were
committed to values that require permanence, we would need to shift to
values compatible with transience. As Reginster puts it, “to live in accordance with the eternal recurrence requires a revaluation of the condemnation of becoming” (Reginster : ).
While Reginster’s claims are intriguing, this interpretation faces difficulties. Firstly, as Soll () points out, the notion of eternal recurrence is
compatible with a type of permanence – indeed, it is compatible with the
This is, more or less, the question in Wallace .
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only type of permanence most of us actually care about. Let me illustrate
this with an example. Suppose a scientist is struggling to develop a vaccine
to a dangerous disease. She is making progress and hopes to have a
successful treatment in a few years, thereby savings thousands of lives.
But then you tell her: your attainment will not be permanent; time will
revert, the disease will recur. Why should that matter? It will not change
the fact that thousands will be saved during her actual lifetime. I think this
is the only form of permanence most of us desire: not permanence in the
sense of unending, eternal stasis, but permanence in the sense of something’s lasting for a reasonable amount of time. If you told the scientist
that the world would be destroyed a day after her discovery of the vaccine,
then the pursuit of the vaccine would look senseless; if you told her the
world would be destroyed a hundred years afterwards, its pursuit would
be sensible.
Secondly, Reginster seems to me to underestimate the number of values
that are compatible with the idea of becoming. Reginster claims that “a
paradigmatic manifestation” of the values that would be compatible with
eternal recurrence is “creative activity” (Reginster : ). He argues
that the creative individual continuously seeks to establish and then
overcome particular goals, never merely abiding in her particular goals or
states of accomplishment, and thus being committed to unending becoming (Reginster : ff ). But is creative activity really so distinctive?
Here are some valued activities that do not seem to depend on permanence: experiencing sensual pleasures, such as the pleasures of eating or
having sex; listening to music; reading a novel; going for a nice walk;
playing a game of basketball; going for a swim; taking a vacation; spending
time with one’s family and friends. None of those seem to depend on
permanence, and yet these are the very activities and goals that most of us
see as infusing our lives with value. And even if we focus on activities that
more directly aim at some lasting accomplishment, it is not clear that we
typically care about the permanence of that accomplishment. Picture the
philosopher who spends years writing a book on some topic. It would be
laughable if the philosopher thought his book would be read for all
eternity, or would have an effect that lasted for all eternity. Most of us
are perfectly content to have our writings read by a few contemporaries; we
are under no illusions that we will attain more than that, and yet the
activities still seem meaningful.
In light of these points, let us consider an individual who affirms his
own singular life on the basis of these perfectly ordinary values. Will such
an individual be troubled by the thought of his attainments being undone?
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What Makes the Affirmation of Life Difficult?
It is not at all clear to me that he would. If he genuinely wanted
permanence, eternal recurrence would be dispiriting; but I have suggested
that most of us do not want that kind of permanence. Insofar as ordinary
values seem sufficient to underwrite the affirmation of a singular life, no
additional difficulties would be generated by thoughts of recurring lives.
.
Affirmation Is Difficult Because We Are Vengeful
Scott Jenkins reads eternal recurrence as Nietzsche’s attempt to “think
pessimism through to its depths” (BGE ). According to Jenkins, this
means that Nietzsche wants to discover “the features of human psychology
that either produce or dispose one to accept pessimistic worldviews”
(Jenkins : –). And Jenkins notes that “Nietzsche consistently
identifies a single need lurking behind a pessimistic valuation of existence –
the need for revenge” (Jenkins : ).
If this is right, then eternal recurrence must be connected to vengefulness (that is, the need for revenge). But what, exactly, is the connection?
Jenkins claims that vengefulness “is an orientation within time, and in
particular, toward the past. Intuitively, a vengeful person is preoccupied or
even obsessed with the past” (Jenkins : ). Vengefulness is
backward-looking: it concerns past harms, dwelling on them again and
again (see also Z:II “Tarantulas”; Z:II “Redemption”; and Z:III “Tablets”).
Suppose a vengeful person tries to cultivate an affirmative attitude
toward life. In being vengeful, he will see some past harm as highly
objectionable. But, as we all know, there are ways of remaining affirmative
despite this. For example, we can see the future as compensating us for
these past harms: yes, the past was bad, but the future is bright. Imagine an
individual of that form. He sees life as affirmable because and to the extent
that life compensates him for past harms. Then we confront him with the
thought of eternal recurrence. He will need to experience those past harms
again and again. This could be traumatic, leading to despair. A nonvengeful person, by contrast, need not in the same way be bothered by
the thought of the past’s return.
I think this reading comes close to the truth, but is not quite right. Here
is the key problem: it is not true that “revenge is completely backwardslooking” (Jenkins : ). Perhaps some people seek revenge in order to
escape from, suppress, or compensate for past harms. But others – indeed,
the very people for whom the term “vengeful” seems most accurate – are
devoted to bringing about future harms to the offending object or person.
Vengefulness manifests as a desire to harm, to detract. This need not be
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actualized; it can be mere fantasy (see also GM I:–). But it does
generate an orientation toward an imagined future. So Jenkins is right that
the vengeful person broods, dwells, and in that sense orients himself
toward the past; but he neglects the fact that just as essential is an
orientation toward the future, in which the vengeful person seeks to
retaliate against his object. Max Scheler, in his analysis of Nietzschean
ressentiment, offers what seems to me an accurate description of the
vindictive or vengeful person:
The vindictive person is instinctively and without a conscious act of volition
drawn toward events which may give rise to vengefulness, or he tends to see
injurious intentions in all kinds of perfectly innocent actions and remarks of
others. Great touchiness is indeed frequently a symptom of a vengeful
character. The vindictive person is always in search of objects, and in fact
he attacks in the belief that he is simply wreaking vengeance. This
vengeance restores his damaged feeling of personal value, his injured
“honor,” or it brings “satisfaction” for the wrongs he has endured.
(Scheler : )
The vengeful person, so described, could welcome eternal recurrence. After
all, the repetition will bring ever more opportunities for harming and
disparaging the rejected object. Let us call this diabolical vengefulness.
Diabolical vengefulness is a complex psychological state: one wants to
damage or destroy the resented object, and in that sense wants to be rid of
it; but one also needs the resented object, in order to react against it. While
this state is complex, I think it is perfectly ordinary. As Nietzsche points
out in the Genealogy and elsewhere, psychological complexes of this form
are common, perhaps ubiquitous. We are often attracted to that which we
condemn: the ascetic priest seeks the very dominance that he consciously
disparages; the sufferer thirsts after the very suffering that he wants to
escape; “people no longer protested against pain, they thirsted after pain;
‘more pain! more pain!’ thus cried the longing of his disciples and initiates
for centuries” (GM III:). In analogous fashion, the diabolically vengeful
person wants both to destroy and to preserve the object of his vengeance:
he needs an “opposite, external world” in order to express his vengeful
values (GM I:). (Again, this can take the form of fantasy or imaginative
reaction, as in the discussion of the diabolical revenge fantasies of
Tertullian and Aquinas in GM I:.)
Jenkins sees eternal recurrence as designed to distinguish the vengeful
person from the life-affirmer. But if the diabolically vengeful person can
Thanks to Mark Migotti for suggesting the term diabolical.
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What Makes the Affirmation of Life Difficult?
crave eternal recurrence, then Jenkins cannot be right. It cannot be
vengefulness as such that is at issue. I want to suggest that the problem
posed by recurrence is much simpler: whether one can bear the return of
the detested object. I will expand this point in the next section.
. What Makes Affirmation Difficult Is the Desire to Eliminate
Certain Aspects of Life
Let us take a step back. Consider an individual who seems to affirm his
actual life, but despairs when confronted with the thought of recurring
lives. Anyone who affirms life will have some basis for that affirmation,
something in life that they take to render it affirmable. This might be a
value, an ideal, a goal. For an individual with a vengeful ideal, we would
have this structure:
I affirm life on the basis of A.
I value A because it negates B.
Eternal recurrence presents me with the prospect of B’s continual return.
Let us think about that third step. Suppose I welcome the opportunity to
negate, again and again, the rejected object B. For example, suppose I am a
resentful priest in the Roman era who sees the collapse of archaic warrior
morality. My primary focus is on harming my enemy, the noble. Insofar as
I relish the harming of the noble, I could welcome the continuous return
of the noble: after all, the continuous return of the resented object gives me
something to damage, to destroy.
This points to an ambiguity in the notion of revenge or reactivity. We
can distinguish:
The desire for revenge on X, which takes the form of desiring to harm X.
The desire to eliminate X, which takes the form of desiring that X not
exist.
The desire for revenge, so construed, is not problematized by eternal
recurrence. The person who desires revenge in this sense can welcome
the prospect of eternal recurrence. But the desire for elimination, construed in the second sense, is problematized by eternal recurrence. Insofar
as the rejected object’s existence is seen as intolerable, eternal recurrence
will be intolerable; for it will entail that the rejected object cannot be
eliminated. It continuously returns.
Let us now relate this to our original question. What eternal recurrence
seems to be revealing is not simple reactivity or vengefulness but
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something more profound: the inability to sustain affirmation of life so
long as life contains certain features, events, or things. With a singular life,
one can envision the rejected object being eliminated once and for all.
With repeated lives, the rejected object keeps returning, and is never truly
gone. Thus, what is being revealed is whether the person’s affirmation of
life is conditional on life’s being purified of the rejected object.
Let us call this conditional affirmation, and define it as follows:
Conditional affirmation: I affirm life on the condition that an aspect or
feature of life can be eliminated.
Unconditional affirmation: I affirm life just as it is.
We can relate these notions to the plot of Zarathustra. Consider:
initially, Zarathustra wants to rid existence of the rabble. He cannot bear
that thought that life contains the rabble: “Life is a well of joy; but where
the rabble drinks too, are wells are poisoned” (Z:II “Rabble”). He describes
himself as “gagging” on the rabble:
The bite on which I gagged the most is not the knowledge that life itself
requires hostility and death and torture crosses but once I asked, and
I was almost choked by the question: What? does life require even the
rabble? Are poisoned wells required, and stinking fires and soiled dreams
and maggots in the bread of life? (Z:II “Rabble”)
And he repeatedly returns to this theme: “the great disgust with man – this
choked me and crawled into my throat” (Z:III “Convalescent”).
So how does Zarathustra manage to affirm life? By isolating himself
from the rabble:
verily, I had to fly to the highest spheres that I might find the fount of
pleasure again. Oh I found it, my brothers! Here, in the highest spheres, the
fount of pleasure wells up from me! And here is a life of which the rabble
does not drink. (Z:II “Rabble”)
Zarathustra affirms life by isolating himself from the rabble and fantasizing about a future in which the rabble has been eliminated; indeed, he
admires those who “do not know how to live” without seeing themselves as
a bridge to something future, in which the present has “gone under,”
presumably never to return (Z:I “Prologue”). And this carries him along
well enough; he takes himself to be affirmative, to love life
(Z:I “Prologue”). But then he encounters the Soothsayer, who tells him
that “All is empty, all is the same, all has been!” (Z:II “Soothsayer”).
Nothing is fundamentally new; we just get more of the same, over and
over. And this leads into Zarathustra’s discussion of eternal recurrence, in
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What Makes the Affirmation of Life Difficult?
which he envisions the continuous return of the rejected object. He
“chokes” on it, chokes on his knowledge that the rabble will return
(Z:III “Convalescent”). His initial affirmation of life is revealed to be
conditional: he can affirm life only insofar as it is purged of the rabble.
(Though I will not argue for that here, I believe Part III shows Zarathustra
recognizing the conditionality of his affirmation and struggling to render it
unconditional; he finally succeeds in Z:III “Seven Seals”.)
Nietzsche makes analogous points about other approaches to life. In BT,
for example, we are told that the Dionysian stance involves affirming life
conditional upon the purported recognition of a mystical primal unity
(BT ; BT –); and that the Socratic stance portrays the pursuit of
wisdom as redeeming life conditional upon its having the capacity to
mitigate or even eliminate suffering, an assumption that Nietzsche presents
Socrates himself as seeing through (BT –). In both cases, the affirmation is conditional: on the possibility of individuality being eliminated; on
the possibility of suffering and unreason being removed.
If we employ this distinction between conditional and unconditional
affirmation, we can see why affirming a singular life would be easier than
affirming a recurring life. A singular life can be seen as purified of the
objectionable elements. Or, absent that, the purification can at least be
seen as underway: one envisions a future in which the objectionable
element has been eradicated. A recurring life blocks this possibility. The
objectionable element will return, endlessly.
Thus, if your affirmation of life is conditional, the thought of eternal
recurrence will undermine this affirmation. It will be more difficult to
affirm eternal recurrence than to affirm a singular life: conditional affirmation is sufficient for affirming a singular life, but not recurring lives.
Moreover, this can make the thought of eternal recurrence useful for
diagnostic purposes. Take someone who affirms singular life, and ask her if
she can affirm eternal recurrence. If she despairs, this is an indication that
her affirmation was conditional.
But, one might argue, doesn’t this require that we treat eternal recurrence as a true description of the universe? Doesn’t it require us to assume
that life actually recurs? After all, suppose I can only affirm life conditionally. Then my affirmation of life is dependent upon the assumption
that some feature – let us say, dire poverty – can be eliminated. And
suppose further that it is not true that the past recurs. Then my affirmation
of life is conditional, but this might seem unproblematic: I affirm the
Karl Löwith () and Bernd Magnus () address this point.
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actual world, in which dire poverty can be eliminated once and for all;
I just would not be able to affirm a different world, in which life and hence
dire poverty recurred. In short: conditional affirmation is not problematic
if the condition can be met!
But this objection misses its mark. Contemplating a counterfactual
scenario can reveal deficiencies in one’s relation to an actual scenario.
Consider an example: Suppose I ask you whether your relationship with
your partner would continue in the same fashion were your partner to
suffer a debilitating illness, such as Alzheimer’s. And suppose that in the
actual world that will never be the case: you and your partner will enjoy
good health to the end of your days. Nonetheless, we can distinguish two
people: one of whom says “of course! I’d continue to love her, continue to
relate to her in just the same way,” and another of whom says “I’m not
sure. I don’t think I’d be able to go on with her.” Assuming that these
statements are sincere and accurate, they pick out different ways of relating
to one’s relationship: the former embodies a fuller, more complete form of
commitment than the latter. And this is true regardless of the fact that the
counterfactual scenario will never occur.
Just so with eternal recurrence: even if we stipulate that actual life does
not recur, the way in which one relates to the prospect of life’s repetition
can reveal provisionality, deficiency, or incompleteness in one’s relation to
life. In short: eternal recurrence can be false as a description of the actual
world, and yet our reaction to it can still reveal crucial information about
our relation to the actual world.
With that in mind, let us relate my interpretation of eternal recurrence
to some of the previous interpretations. Consider: Reginster is correct to
think that eternal recurrence has something to do with permanence. But
the question is not whether our values presuppose permanence; few of
them do. The question is whether our affirmation of life is conditional on
the possibility of eliminating detested features of life. When we contemplate eternal recurrence, we envision the detested object being a permanent, ineliminable feature of life. But what generates the problem is not
the temporality of the value or the detested object (i.e., whether it is
transient or permanent); what generates the problem is the fact that the
agent’s affirmation is conditional upon the possibility of eliminating the
detested object. So eternal recurrence does not problematize the temporality of values but the logical structure of values.
Jenkins is correct to think that eternal recurrence is connected to
something like vengefulness or reactivity. But this is not the full story,
because some forms of vengefulness are compatible with eternal
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What Makes the Affirmation of Life Difficult?
recurrence. Indeed, vengefulness in its purest form would desire the return
of the resented object, in order to negate it all the more. What eternal
recurrence brings to light is something more than vengefulness: the desire
to purge existence of certain elements. And what it reveals is not so much
an orientation toward the past as a defective relation to the present. Eternal
recurrence is concerned neither with what has happened nor with what
will happen but with what is happening.
. Conditional Affirmation and Higher Values
I want to close by tying some points together. I have argued that the
question of whether we affirm a singular life cannot easily distinguish
between a case of conditional and unconditional affirmation, whereas
contemplating recurring lives brings this distinction to the fore. The
function of eternal recurrence, then, is to diagnose the nature of one’s
affirmation, revealing it to be either conditional or unconditional. One
potential worry about this interpretation is that it is fairly simple: it does
not involve abstruse metaphysical theses about interconnectedness, profound revaluations of being and becoming, or complex analyses of temporality. So why would Nietzsche think this distinction was so important?
Why present it as his most profound philosophical insight?
To answer this question, we need to take a step back. Recall that
Nietzsche repeatedly claims that we can reconcile ourselves to existence
only by accepting some evaluative framework that renders existence sensible. As he puts it in the Gay Science, we need an interpretation that can
“promote the life of the species, by promoting the faith in life. “Life is
worth living,” every one of them shouts, ‘there is something to life, there is
something behind life, beneath it; beware!’” (GS ). This is the central
theme in BT, GS, Z, and GM, and is also discussed in most of Nietzsche’s
other texts. The “Why?” must find some answer: “life ought to be loved,
because—!” (GS ). Absent an answer to that question – absent a way of
filling in the blank –we suffer: “[Man] did not know how to justify,
explain, affirm himself: he suffered from the problem of his meaning”
(GM III:).
I do not mean to suggest that Zarathustra is completely unconcerned with the past. In “On
Redemption” and elsewhere, Nietzsche considers ways in which will to power and eternal
recurrence might connect to certain ways of relating to the past. I lack the space to address these
points here. Instead, I am making a more limited point: vengefulness is not simply an orientation
toward the past (Sections . and .); and Zarathustra is not simply concerned with events in his
own past (Section .).
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What makes existence sensible, according to Nietzsche, is some religion,
morality, ideal, or, more generally, some vision of human life (GS ). Just
to have a neutral term to describe these things, let us call them evaluative
perspectives. We are given examples: Christianity; Renaissance humanism;
Socratism; Greek tragedy; the Homeric warrior ethic; and Nietzsche’s willto-power centered perspective. In each of these, we have some vision of the
good life, some vision of what makes life worth living.
Some of these evaluative perspectives explicitly reject life, as in
Schopenhauer or the Christian ascetic. Others can seem more affirmative
but are, Nietzsche thinks, in the process of collapsing: here he cites the
Socratic perspective or the prioritization of truth (BT, GM III). The
evaluative perspective offered by Zarathustra initially seems different. It
is supposedly fully affirmative; Zarathustra loves life and will teach us how
to do so as well (Z:I “Prologue”). But problems with his ideals emerge.
First, Zarathustra’s initial ideals have the same structure as the Christian
and Socratic goals: they see the present as imperfect, as in need of
redemption by some future goal. Man must be redeemed by the overman; a better world lies hidden beyond this one, if only we can serve as
bridges to it (Z:I “Prologue”). Zarathustra’s ideals thus deprecate the
present by relating it to a putatively more valuable future: “The now and
the past on earth – alas, my friends, that is what I find most unendurable;
and I should not know how to live if I were not also a seer of that which
must come” (Z:II “On Redemption”). So already there is a temptation to
live for the sake of the future, to bear life in the hopes of changing it.
Although this does not logically necessitate the condemnation of actual
life, it does make it very tempting to think that actual life needs to be
purified of objectionable elements in order to be affirmed.
Second, and relatedly, Zarathustra’s ideals may be motivated – either at
their outset or as they continue to manifest over time – by resentment or
reactivity. What is primarily focused upon is getting rid of what is actual,
in favor of some putative and rather hazily described future. This is
why Zarathustra repeatedly “chokes” on his “great disgust with man”
(Z:III “Vision and Riddle”); it is why the Soothsayer, who says that there
is never anything new and there can be no escape from the past, terrifies
Zarathustra (Z:II “Soothsayer”); it is why Zarathustra attempts to
suppress the past, keeping it encased behind iron gates and glass coffins
(Z:II “Soothsayer”). Regardless of how Zarathustra’s ideas originate – and
if Zarathustra is right they originate out of an active, joyous, creative “yes
See Clark (: –) and Anderson ().
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What Makes the Affirmation of Life Difficult?
saying” – the focus, as these goals are lived, is increasingly on what is
rejected, rather than what is sought.
What would be best, by Nietzsche’s lights, is to have some evaluative
perspective that placed full value in the present, allowing it to be affirmed
unconditionally. But this introduces a new problem. Let me explain.
At the beginning of this essay, I noted that an ordinary person devoted
to ordinary goals, a person who contents himself with everyday life,
needn’t have much trouble with eternal recurrence: most of us will find
that mundane pursuits infuse our lives with enough value to make our lives
worth affirming. I think Nietzsche is aware of this. His “last men” are those
who embrace simple pleasures and ordinary pursuits, who are indeed
incapable even of understanding why one would pursue great, difficult,
challenging goals. They lack any ideals that might inspire devotion,
commitment, achievement. Any ideal that requires “exertion” is derided:
pursuing such ideals is madness, and the last man tells us that “formerly all
the world was mad” (Z:I “Prologue” ).
The last men would view the eternal recurrence in the same way they view
everything else: as a mild diversion that provokes no great troubles. And, as
I pointed out in Section ., this is just the reaction that eternal recurrence
tends to provoke in our contemporaries. But suppose we focus not on the last
men but on those striving for something more. Elsewhere, I have argued that
the distinguishing feature of the last men is that their evaluative perspective
lacks higher values. A large part of what disgusts Zarathustra about the last men
and the rabble is the absence of higher values. Higher values are overriding,
incontestable, and resistant to critical scrutiny. In addition, they confer a sense
of meaning or significance on the activities that they regulate. Socrates’ higher
value is something like understanding or truth; Zarathustra’s is, at the outset,
the overman. In each case there is a difficult goal to be striven for, something
that can confer meaning on the activities it regulates. So in both GS and Z we
have individuals who espouse higher values and are beginning to recognize
ways in which they are problematic.
Suppose eternal recurrence is meant to address those whose evaluative
perspectives include higher values. People with higher values differ from
the last men in that they see striving for great tasks as worthwhile,
See Richardson (); Chapter .
“‘What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?’ thus asks the last man, and he
blinks” (Z:I “Prologue” ; see also Z:I “Prologue” ). The descriptions of the last men consistently
emphasize their inability to understand the pursuit of great, challenging goals, the very sorts of goals
that higher values underwrite. See Katsafanas () for a discussion of this point. Relevant passages
include GS ; BGE ; Z Prologue; KSA :[]; KSA :[]; and KSA :[].
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meaningful, or meritorious. They embrace goals that mandate devotion,
compliance, and sacrifice of competing goods. They endorse the values of
achievement and growth, the values that Nietzsche associates with the
manifestation of will to power (see Katsafanas a; b).
When confronted with eternal recurrence, those with higher values face
a deep and difficult problem. Can we be unconditionally affirmative while
still harboring higher values? This is very hard. The focus on some valued
goal that is not yet attained tends to lead us into a devaluation of the
present, as we see in Zarathustra: because the value of the present activities
is seen as lying in some future state, the present tends to be experienced as
deficient relative to the imagined future. If the attainment of the future
goal is the source of the present’s value, then the value of the present seems
to seep into the future; the present is denuded, and life is lived for the sake
of the conjectural future. Schopenhauer makes this point in a lovely
passage from his Parerga and Paralipomena:
We look upon the present as something to be put up with while it lasts, and
serving only as the way towards our goal. Hence most people, if they glance
back when they come to the end of life, will find that all along they have
been living ad interim: they will be surprised to find that the very thing they
disregarded and let slip by unenjoyed, was just the life in the expectation of
which they passed all their time. (Schopenhauer , Section )
Schopenhauer is not making a point about the contents of particular
values or goals; he is not claiming that some pursuits lead us to a devaluation
of the present, whereas others might not. He is making a deeper and
perfectly general point: that the very having of a goal etiolates the present,
drawing our attention to the future; and more so, to the extent that the goal
is invested with great import. Our orientation toward goals displaces our
interest into the future; we lose life as it is lived, in favor of an imagined
future, so that the present is experientially barren and evaluatively deficient.
And the greater the distance between the ideal and the actual, the greater the
danger that this will occur. That is why higher values pose such a challenge.
Something like this, I suggest, worries Nietzsche. He does not follow
Schopenhauer in thinking that the process described above is inevitable or
inescapable (much of Nietzsche’s work is designed to provide an alternative account of the relation between valuing, willing, and temporality).
But he does agree with Schopenhauer that it is a real danger. Indeed, we
See in particular his reflections on will to power, discussed in Katsafanas (a). Put simply,
Nietzsche thinks that rather than adopting means for the sake of ends, we sometimes adopt ends for
the sake of the challenges that their means afford.
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What Makes the Affirmation of Life Difficult?
can see the tension embodied in Nietzsche’s own life. Nietzsche wants to
be “only a yes-sayer” (GS ), and yet anyone who reads his polemics and
critiques can see how tenuous his grip on that aspiration is. The danger is
not just that his higher values will turn out to be reactive: the danger is
that even values which start out as fully affirmative, fully active, can be
deformed into their opposites. This movement is on display in
Zarathustra. I think Zarathustra has the familiar structure of a
Bildungsroman, with the early parts showing Zarathustra succumbing to
various misunderstandings and errors, the middle parts portraying
Zarathustra’s realization that his putatively affirmative ideals are expressions of reactive stances, and the later parts showing him restructuring his
task in order to overcome these mistakes. But regardless of whether this
is true of Zarathustra, it is clear that Nietzsche is interested, throughout his
career, in teasing out the underlying structure of ideals, showing that
apparently condemnatory ideals also express an attachment to life
(GM III), or that apparently affirmative ideals also express a condemnation
of life (GS , GM III). For Nietzsche is not only interested in the
content of our ideals. He is also interested – arguably more interested – in
what sustains our commitment to those ideals. What the eternal recurrence
can reveal, and what the contemplation of a singular life occludes, is the
deformation of an affirmative ideal into its opposite. Or, perhaps put in
terms of a problem: it can suggest that any attempt to manifest an
And, conversely, condemnatory ideals can be transformed into affirmative ones. It is also worth
noting that these are extremes. In addition to ideals being transformed into their opposites, there
will be cases in which ideals come to be mixed or contaminated with contrary elements: an ideal
that is originally purely affirmative will come to incorporate reactive or condemnatory elements,
without sliding all the way into total negation. See especially BGE .
In BGE Nietzsche claims that his higher individual needs the rabble. The higher individual requires
a form of social hierarchy; in order for this hierarchy to exist, some people need to be at the bottom
(BGE –). So, in endorsing a form of hierarchy and the establishment of a “pathos of
distance,” Nietzsche cannot endorse the elimination of the rabble. Arguably this points to a
difference between Nietzsche’s ideals and the ideals that Zarathustra originally endorses: whereas
Nietzsche wills even the existence of the rabble, Zarathustra, in preaching the overman, originally
falls short of this. So Zarathustra must overcome his own disgust at the rabble, his own reactive
attitudes, in part by coming to see the rabble as a necessary constituent of the ideal that he affirms.
And, although I lack the space to develop this point, this relates to the role of the overman concept
in Z. Some commentators argue that the notion of the overman is progressively abandoned as Z
unfolds (e.g., Lampert ); others disagree, thinking that Zarathustra maintains his commitment
to that notion (e.g., Loeb ). I think Ansell-Pearson () is right to distinguish two different
ways in which the overman can be understood: the overman as a fundamentally new, redemptive,
transfigured humanity (which I take Zarathustra to endorse early in Z and reject later in Z) and the
overman as an image of the person who bears an unconditionally affirmative attitude toward life
(which is the picture that emerges in Z III). In short: Zarathustra abandons one notion of the
overman and replaces it with another.
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unconditionally affirmative ideal will be beset by tensions, perennially
tempting the adherent to negate what is actual in favor of what is ideal;
and the more so, to the extent that the ideal takes the form of a higher
value. The question, for Nietzsche, is whether we can cleave to an ideal
while simultaneously affirming a world in which that ideal is everywhere
and always absent. To do so would be the purest form of affirmation.
Reginster () points out that Nietzsche associates one form of nihilism with the commitment to
unrealizable ideals. We should be careful to distinguish unrealizability in Reginster’s sense from the
type of commitment I am discussing above. Certain ideals are unrealizable because they have false
presuppositions. For example, Nietzsche takes otherworldly ideals to be unrealizable, for the simple
reason that there is no sense to be given to the notion of the otherworldly. Eternal recurrence, as
I am interpreting it, does not focus on that kind of unrealizability. It instead confronts us with the
thought that any goal, even if it is realized, will be undone. Nothing is realizable once and for all. But
this is different from nothing being realizable at all. So the type of unrealizability with which eternal
recurrence confronts us is not the same as the type of unrealizability that Nietzsche associates with
nihilism. (Though compare KSA :[], which suggests that eternal recurrence can be “the most
extreme form of nihilism”; it can drive home the thought that existence is “without meaning or
goal” and thereby deprive us of traditional forms of protection “from despair.”)
For helpful comments on this paper, thanks to Keith Ansell-Pearson, Paul Loeb, Kaitlyn Creasy,
Justin Remhof, Allison Merrick, Alexander Prescott-Couch, Mark Migotti, Tsarina Doyle, Andrew
Huddleston, Rebecca Bamford, Ian Dunkle, Matthew Meyer, Richard Elliott, and the participants
at the session on “Nietzsche, Nihilism, and Life-Affirmation” at the meeting of the Society for
Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.
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Zarathustra’s Response to Schopenhauer
Christopher Janaway
. Introduction
If Arthur Schopenhauer had been blessed (or, as he might say, cursed) with
an exceptionally long life, he would have been years old just as
Nietzsche entered his last productive year, and could in principle have
read all of Nietzsche’s published works. We might imagine him intrigued
by The Birth of Tragedy, perhaps vindicated by Schopenhauer as Educator,
almost certainly offended by most of what came later, though at least he
could be reassured that someone was continuing to read him seriously. But
what would Schopenhauer have made of Thus Spoke Zarathustra? Would
he have recognized any of his doctrines, or himself, in it? My aim here is to
look at the text of Thus Spoke Zarathustra with these questions in mind.
An important recurring character in Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the
Soothsayer (der Wahrsager), who appears in Part II, speaking of a “great
mournfulness come over humankind” (Z:II “Soothsayer”), and in Part IV
to tempt Zarathustra to Mitleid (compassion or pity) for the higher
humans. It has become conventional to regard the Soothsayer as representing Schopenhauer. However, in what follows I challenge this orthodoxy. Firstly, I show that it is at best over-simple to identify the Soothsayer
with Schopenhauer. He has many roles: in his first appearance he expresses
Quotations from Z use the translation by Parkes (Z ) unless otherwise stated. I occasionally
discuss other translations and translators’ notes for Z (, , , ). The following other
translations are used in this chapter: BGE (); BT (); D (); EH (); GM ();
GS ().
See Section . for interpretations of Mitleid.
The convention is long-standing, and sometimes asserted with bland confidence. In notes to the
Thomas Common translation of Zarathustra, Anthony Ludovici says the Part II “Soothsayer”
chapter “refers, clearly, to Schopenhauer” (Z : ; see also –.) Graham Parkes likewise
says: “The soothsayer is clearly a portrait of Nietzsche’s erstwhile mentor Schopenhauer” (Z :
, ). See also Hollingdale in Z (: , n. ); Lampert (: ); Cartwright (:
); Ward (: ).
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a reaction to pessimism; then in Part IV, while he is said to advocate a form
of pessimism, his main function is to assist Zarathustra in transcending
pessimism and overcoming compassion. Secondly, rather than being
condensed into one character, Schopenhauer’s philosophy pervades the
whole. That is not surprising, given the dialogue with Schopenhauer
evident in Nietzsche’s other works of the early s. Zarathustra may
not be “a mere collection of didactic speeches,” but it contains many such
speeches, and a significant subset of them constitute a precisely aimed
response to Schopenhauer. Fixating on the Soothsayer figure can distract
us from this fact.
In his notes Nietzsche commented that “the Soothsayer spreads black
pessimism” (KSA :[]), and in the text the Soothsayer is “the
proclaimer of the great weariness, who taught: ‘All is the same, nothing
is worthwhile, world is without meaning, knowing chokes’” (Z:IV “Cry of
Need”). Given Schopenhauer’s status as the spearhead of the pessimistic
“school” in German philosophy, and his verdict that “we should be sorry
rather than glad about the existence of the world” (WWR : ), it is
plausible that in this passage the Soothsayer is meant to stand for a
Schopenhauerian pessimist (though, as we shall see, the slogans do not
represent Schopenhauer accurately). Nietzsche clarifies that the Soothsayer
in Part IV is the same figure Zarathustra encountered in the Part II chapter
entitled “The Soothsayer.” However, I suggest that if Nietzsche wanted the
Soothsayer simply to be Schopenhauer, he would appear to have overlooked what he had written in that earlier section. For in Part II the
Soothsayer’s relation to the pessimistic teaching is significantly different –
it is not his teaching.
Kerkmann (: ) argues that the Soothsayer successively represents “an observer,” “the
incarnation of Schopenhauer,” and “the complete nihilist,” who has “lived nihilism through to the
end” and has it “behind him” (see KSA :[].).
Eighteen sections of Daybreak () and sections of The Gay Science () discuss Schopenhauer
by name. See Janaway (: –). Discussions of Mitleid at D , , , , and GS
relate to Schopenhauer. In March , Nietzsche wrote to Malwida von Meysenbug, saying
“These days I leaf though Schopenhauer sometimes” (KSB : ). The “leafing” was not just casual:
Nietzsche copied out excerpts from Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation and On the
Basis of Morals. See KSA :[], [], [], [], [], [].
Loeb (: ).
“Pessimism” for Nietzsche embraces the post-Schopenhauerian pessimists such as Mainländer,
Bahnsen and von Hartmann, though he treats them in a far more dismissive way than he does
Schopenhauer (GS ). On these figures see Beiser () and Plümacher ().
Schopenhauer’s published works are cited in this chapter as follows: BM On the Basis of Morals
(Schopenhauer, ); PP , PP Parerga and Paralipomena, Vols. and (Schopenhauer );
WWR , WWR The World as Will and Representation, Vols. and (Schopenhauer, , ).
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Zarathustra’s Response to Schopenhauer
. The Soothsayer in Zarathustra II
The Soothsayer suddenly appears for the first time in Chapter of
Zarathustra Part II. Here in full is what he says:
“ and I saw a great mournfulness [Traurigkeit] come over humankind.
The best became weary of their works.
“A teaching went forth, and a belief along with it: ‘All is empty, all is the
same, all has been!’
“And from the hills it echoed again: ‘All is empty, all is the same, all has been!’
“We have indeed harvested: but why did all our fruits turn rotten and
brown? What fell down to us here last night from the evil moon?
“In vain was all our work; our wine has turned to poison; an evil eye has
scorched our fields and hearts yellow.
“Dry have we become; and should fire fall on us, we are scattered like ashes:
and even fire itself we have made weary.
“All our wells have dried up. And even the sea has retreated. All ground
wants to tear open, but the depths do not want to devour!
“‘Ah, where is there yet a sea in which we can drown’: thus resounds our
lament echoing over shallow swamps.
“Verily, we have even become too weary to die; now we are still awake and
live on in burial chambers!” (Z:II “Soothsayer”)
The Soothsayer reports a state into which human beings have fallen. They
have become sad, weary, empty of joy and purpose, despairing of change for
the better. The speech refers to a teaching or doctrine (Lehre), which says “All
is empty, all is the same, all has been,” and is accompanied by a belief
(Glaube), presumably a widely held one, since its message “echoes from the
hills.” But note that this teaching simply “went forth [ergieng]” from an
unspecified origin. The Soothsayer is not identified as its source; he simply
reports what he sees happening when the echo is picked up by humankind. If
the Lehre in question is meant to be Schopenhauer’s philosophical pessimism,
the Soothsayer in this passage is more like an observer who foresees the
mournful consequences of that pessimism, and cannot find a way out of it.
His stance is that of a Nietzschean type of observer – though, as with the
“madman” in Gay Science , it is not Nietzsche’s own final stance.
Pippin (: –) characterizes the “madman’s” voice as that of a persona rather than of
Nietzsche himself.
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The Soothsayer does not even sound like Schopenhauer. The
Soothsayer describes an unfolding process, whereas Schopenhauer’s vision
is static. The emphasis in the above passage is on what human beings have
become: the verb werden, to become, is used five times in the passage, and
everything is in the past tense. The Soothsayer is seeing the end of a
process that has happened, in which human beings have implicitly lost
some purpose that they had before. They worked, they had goals, they
harvested, but then all became in vain. Schopenhauer indeed describes any
human life as “an empty, sorrowful, always uncertain existence, embittered
by troubles of every sort” (WWR : ), and teaches that “absolutely
nothing is worth our strivings, efforts and struggles, that all goods are null
[nichtig] that the world is bankrupt in every way, and that life is a business
that does not cover its costs” (WWR : ) – but with an important
difference. Schopenhauer does not think that human beings have become
mournful or empty of purpose through some temporal process. Whatever
character the human condition has, for Schopenhauer it has that character
timelessly in the guise of a Platonic Idea. For example:
the history of the human race, the thronging of events, the changing times,
the many shapes that the form of human life takes in different countries and
centuries all this is only the accidental form of appearance of the Idea [. . .]
and is as alien, inessential and indifferent to the Idea itself as the figures are
to the clouds that show them, the shapes of the eddies and foam are to the
stream, and the images of trees and flowers are to the ice. (WWR : )
Schopenhauer’s message is that the human condition never really changes:
if there is mournfulness, it is a condition essential to existence as such, and
appropriate: “The truth is: we should be miserable and we are miserable”
(WWR : ).
Thus the Soothsayer’s narration is not spoken in Schopenhauer’s voice,
but is similar to that of the “madman” of GS , or perhaps to the train of
thought in Nietzsche’s later notes on “European Nihilism”: an implied
past in which meaning was found and despair held off, and a changed
present in which meaning has been lost and despair has become a terminal
threat. The Soothsayer’s words are called a prophecy (Weissagung), and
Zarathustra reacts to them by becoming mournful himself, and fearful
about the future (“just a little while and this long twilight will be upon us”
[Z:II “Soothsayer”]). Once again, Schopenhauer does not prophesy a
“One interpretation has collapsed, but because it was considered the interpretation, it appears as
though there is no sense in existence whatsoever, as though everything is in vain” (KSA :[],
translation in Ansell-Pearson and Large [: ]).
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Zarathustra’s Response to Schopenhauer
worse future for humankind, because he thinks that things are already as
bad as they could be. The prophesying is Nietzsche’s. More explicit support
for this interpretation comes from a passage in Book Five of The Gay Science
(GS ), where, in another version of the “death of God” narrative,
Nietzsche says that Schopenhauer’s “honest atheism” has swept away the
“Christian interpretation” that allowed Europeans to regard nature as inherently good, history as rational and purposeful, and the individual soul as on a
path to salvation. All of that “is over now,” Nietzsche declares, a thing of the
past (vorbei). Here again a transformation has occurred that removes comforting defenses against despair. Result: “Schopenhauer’s question immediately comes at us in a terrifying way: Does existence have any meaning at all?”
(GS ). This parallels the Soothsayer’s vision, now naming Schopenhauer
as the catalyst for change. The Soothsayer sees the teaching “All is empty, all
is the same, all has been” as bringing a transformative mournfulness upon
humanity; Nietzsche sees Schopenhauer’s teaching as bringing a terrifyingly
transformative question before humanity. If the teaching in the Soothsayer’s
vision is Schopenhauer’s, the vision or prophecy of the resulting decline
is Nietzsche’s.
At the end of the “Soothsayer” section Zarathustra keeps the Soothsayer
close to him as a dinner guest, and hopes to show him “a sea in which he
can drown,” a way out of despair. The Soothsayer and Zarathustra belong
together because they represent respectively the Nietzschean diagnosis and
the possibility of a (so far undisclosed) Nietzschean cure. Some commentators have recognized that the Soothsayer is a facet of Zarathustra’s
predicament, or of Zarathustra himself, rather than an independent philosophical voice. Robert Gooding-Williams accepts the Soothsayer “personifies Schopenhauer’s voice from within the horizon of a distinctively
Zarathustran philosophical perspective” (: –). Jan Kerkmann
identifies the two: the Soothsayer is “Zarathustra while in the embrace of
nihilism,” and Zarathustra is “the Soothsayer who has overcome” pessimism, in the sense of seeing it as the opportunity for the creation of new
value (Kerkmann : ). This reading is strengthened by Nietzsche’s
repeated description of Zarathustra himself as “also a Soothsayer” (see Z:III
“Seven Seals”; Z:IV “Cry of Need” (end); Z:IV “Superior Humans” ;
Z:IV “Drunken Song” ). In fact, the Soothsayer is portrayed as having a
strikingly “inward” acquaintance with Zarathustra’s psyche: his despairing
sadness transmits immediately and profoundly to Zarathustra, and later he
uniquely divines Zarathustra’s hidden attachment to Mitleid.
I am grateful to Gudrun von Tevenar for these points.
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When the Soothsayer returns in Part IV, the observer of pessimism and
its author have effectively collapsed into one: he remains the prophetic
“proclaimer of the great weariness,” but has now become the one who
himself taught “All is the same, nothing is worthwhile, world is without
meaning, knowing chokes” (Z:IV “Cry of Need”). Note that the formulation of the “teaching” has now altered – and not in an authentically
Schopenhauerian way. For Schopenhauer the world has, and must have, a
“moral meaning”: to think otherwise is the greatest perversity, as he says in
Parerga and Paralipomena: “That the world has a mere physical but no
moral significance [Bedeutung] is the greatest, most ruinous and fundamental error, the real perversity of the mind and . . . it is certainly that
which faith has personified as the antichrist” (PP : –). Nietzsche
knew the passage and referred to it. The meaning of the world, its
moralische Bedeutung, is that it is to be lamented and ultimately redeemed
through selfless negation of the will. So even when the Soothsayer is made
the bearer of a pessimistic teaching, the teaching is not strictly
Schopenhauer’s.
.
Schopenhauer and Zarathustra on Self and Will
So far, the “teaching” we have seen is a meager affair, comprising a mere
eighteen words in its longest variant, and we have not stopped to
examine Schopenhauer’s real teachings. Schopenhauer claimed that “we
should be sorry rather than glad about the existence of the world; that its
non-existence would be preferable to its existence; that it is something that
fundamentally should not be, etc.” (WWR : –) But he did not
simply propagate a hopeless, gloomy outlook: he had reasons for his
verdict on the world, stemming from his analysis of will. Furthermore,
for him there is redemption (Erlösung) through entering a state of willlessness. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is scrupulously timeless in its dramatic
setting, so Zarathustra cannot debate with Schopenhauer by name – but
In a note from , Nietzsche writes that “what follows on from pessimism is the doctrine of the
senselessness of existence [Sinnlosigkeit des Daseins]” (KSA :[]). But in BT “Attempt” ,
where he refers to the Parerga passage on “perversity of mind,” Nietzsche is clearly aware that for
Schopenhauer the world must have a moral meaning. See Janaway () and Janaway (b).
The identification of the Soothsayer with Schopenhauer is encouraged by the unwary assumption
that a pessimist must think the world has no meaning. Thanks to Andrew Huddleston for bringing
out this point.
For different wordings of the “teaching” see Z:II “Soothsayer”; Z:III “Convalescent” ; Z:IV “Cry
of Need.”
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Zarathustra’s Response to Schopenhauer
this does not prevent his utterances from tracking, and challenging,
Schopenhauer’s accounts of will and redemption.
Will is Schopenhauer’s central and most innovative concept. Will is an
in-built disposition to strive, desire, and act upon drives that constitutes
the essence of any human individual, and indeed of any living thing. But
willing is a deleterious condition, because it opens us to suffering and
brings no genuine fulfilment. Erlösung, redemption, is the promise of
escape from this predicament. For Schopenhauer, the supreme moral agent
feels a boundless compassion, and has an immediately felt insight that the
well-being and suffering of all sentient beings is on a par. Such a person
comes to see the will of the particular human individual as of no consequence, and at the extreme ceases to will altogether, remaining as a purely
cognitive subject who gazes upon the whole world with passive equanimity. If we read The World as Will and Representation in linear fashion (as
Nietzsche did), it culminates in the question of affirmation and negation
of the will to life, and the ultimate valorization of negation of will as “the
only thing that can staunch and appease the impulses of the will forever . . .
the only thing that can redeem the world” (WWR : ). As Nietzsche
understood it, Schopenhauer’s teaching promotes an elevated, supreme
selflessness that redeems the world through negation of the will. Note that
this is not a state of sadness, mournfulness or despair, rather one of
tranquillity and blissfulness. Sadness would remain for someone who still
willed and experienced the inevitable lack of fulfilment that comes with
willing. But the will-less state is also not happiness, which Schopenhauer
equates with temporary satisfaction of the will. The blissfulness he describes
is beyond the will altogether, and not a state in which will can be either
frustrated or satisfied.
Schopenhauer equates will with will to life (Wille zum Leben): “it is a
mere pleonasm and amounts to the same thing if, instead of simply saying
‘the will,’ we say ‘the will to life’” (WWR : ). Essential to every being
that has life is its drive to perpetuate its existence, and to produce new life
(“the satisfaction of the sex drive [. . .] expresses the most decisive affirmation of the will to life” [WWR : ] – so it is not just a will to live).
Schopenhauer makes will the essence not only of every living thing, but of
See Lemanski on alternatives to the “linear” reading. Shapshay argues for a reading in
which will-less resignation need not be the final message of The World as Will and Representation.
For this will-less state Schopenhauer uses terms such as “peace” (Ruhe), “blissfulness” (Säligkeit) and
“sublimity” (Erhabenheit) (see WWR : ). Other terms occur for this state, but not Glück,
“happiness.” See Janaway (: –).
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the world, and so if “will” means will to life, it must seem as though the
whole world is aiming at living and making more living things:
Everything strains and drives towards existence [zum Daseyn], towards
organic existence if possible, i.e. towards life, and then towards the highest
possible level of this: in animal nature it is obvious that will to life is the
tonic note of its essence, its only immutable and unconditional property.
Just consider this universal straining for life, look at the infinite zeal, ease
and wantonness with which the will to life everywhere and at every moment
strains wildly to exist in millions of forms. (WWR : )
To this Zarathustra replies directly by reporting the words of Life
personified:
“He surely missed the mark who shot at the truth with the words ‘will to
existence’ [Willen zum Dasein]: this will does not exist!
“For what does not exist cannot will, yet what already exists, how could that
then will to exist!
“Only, where life is, there too is will: though not will to life, but
you will to power!
so I teach
“Much is valued by the living more highly than life itself, but out of this
very valuing there speaks will to power!”
Thus did Life once teach me. (Z:II “Self Overcoming”)
Walter Kaufmann quotes part of this passage, then asserts that the doctrine
of will to power is likely to be based on “empirical data,” and “not on any
dialectical ratiocination about Schopenhauer’s metaphysics.” Kaufmann
helps his case by not quoting the first sentence with its unusual singular
reference: “He . . . who shot at the truth with the words ‘will to existence.’” But a very natural way to read these words is as referring to
Schopenhauer. Whatever the basis for this doctrine of will to power
(Zarathustra simply accepts it on testimony from Life), the doctrine is
clearly meant to supersede Schopenhauer’s notion of will to life.
Schopenhauer gives the will a complex role in his account of the self: ()
will is the inner kernel or essence of the human being; () the entire body
Kaufmann (: –).
My emphasis. Zarathustra’s opponents are more often plural (the despisers of the body, the
preachers of death, the priests, those who pity) or abstract (“thus did madness preach,” Z:II
“Redemption” ).
Jaspers (: ) and Gooding-Williams (: n. ) link the passage straightforwardly
with Schopenhauer.
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Zarathustra’s Response to Schopenhauer
is a manifestation of will; () will has hegemony over the self-conscious
“I” of cognition, the subject of experience that we “find ourselves as”;
() will is untiring and unchanging throughout the individual’s ordinary
existence (that is, barring any exceptional onset of will-lessness). For
example, he says:
[W]e are used to regarding the subject of cognition, the cognizing I, as our
real self, this I that grows weary at night and vanishes in sleep and shines
brightly in the morning with renewed vigour. But this is a mere function of
the brain and not our ownmost self. Our true self [wahres Selbst], the kernel
of our being, is what lies behind this brain function and really knows
nothing but willing and not willing. (WWR : )
Zarathustra echoes this:
“I” say you, and are proud of this word. But the greater thing in which
you do not want to believe is your body and its great reason: it does not
say I, but does I.
. . . Tools and toys are senses and spirit [Geist]: behind them there yet lies
the Self [das Selbst].
. . . Your Self laughs at your I and its proud leapings. “What are these
leapings and soarings of thought to me?” it says to itself. “A detour to my
purpose. I am the leading reins of the I and the prompter of its concep
tions.” (Z:I “Despisers of the Body”)
In Schopenhauer’s case the body is the will of the human being: “We can
say: my body and my will are one” (WWR : ), and this will is the
unchanging core or essence of the individual: “What someone truly wills,
the striving from his innermost essence and the goal he pursues accordingly – this is something we could never alter” (WWR : ); “The
will . . . is absolutely tireless and never lethargic, its activity is its essence
and it never stops willing” (WWR : ). Zarathustra does not say that
the underlying bodily “Self” is the will, but there may be the shadow of the
Schopenhauerian view in his saying “Yes, something invulnerable, unburiable, is within me, something that explodes rock: that is my will. Silently it
strides and unchanging through the years” (Z:II “Grave-Song”).
In one respect such similarities are superficial. For Schopenhauer the
will is metaphysical: it is the thing in itself, an inner, timeless core of being,
See WWR : .
Geist could be rendered as “mind” or “intellect.” Doing so in this passage would reveal the
assimilation to Schopenhauer’s position even more clearly. I thank Paul Loeb for
this observation.
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of which empirical things are an emanation or “objectification.” There is
nothing to suggest that Zarathustra posits a metaphysics of the thing in
itself to replace Schopenhauer’s, tweaking it into a “will to power” instead
of “will to life.” In that respect Kaufmann was making a good point.
Nonetheless, Zarathustra regards the self in a way analogous to
Schopenhauer: the “I” of self-consciousness is secondary and under the
hegemony of a powerful “true Self” that is expressed in the body; every
living thing manifests will; and he himself has his own deep, enduring and
unchanging will. From Zarathustra’s point of view, Schopenhauer correctly identifies the core of the self as a will inherent in living things, but
fails to grasp that life strives after power, not merely after selfperpetuation.
. Will-lessness and Redemption
The Schopenhauerian will and the Zarathustran will must be akin for a
further reason: there is otherwise no justification for Zarathustra to be so
appalled by the thought of the will’s absence or negation. This crucial part
of Schopenhauer’s teaching is the crucial part of what Zarathustra
must oppose.
Schopenhauer splits the self into two: the urgent, driving will at the core
of the embodied living being, versus the “I” of cognition, the objectrepresenting self-conscious subject that we “find ourselves as” in experience, otherwise called the subject of cognition (Subjekt des Erkennens).
Although Schopenhauer builds up the credentials of the will as what is
primary, essential, durable, and fundamentally real, it is to the secondary,
“merely apparent” subject of cognition that he ultimately assigns the
greater value. Schopenhauer advocates the elimination of all willing in
favor of “pure cognition” (Erkennen). The notion of “immaculate
Erkenntniss” that Zarathustra seeks to undermine is thus pointedly
Schopenhauerian. Translation can mask this: for the sake of a play on
words, translators have tended to make the English title of the relevant
section “On Immaculate Perception.” But, regardless of how we translate
In his non-fictional works Nietzsche is strongly critical of Schopenhauer’s conception of the will.
But “will” is a multi-faceted term for Schopenhauer. Nietzsche’s criticisms (e.g., BGE ) chiefly
target Schopenhauer’s idea that the “willing” is a unitary state with which a subject has immediate
and privileged acquaintance in introspection (see WWR : –).
Kaufmann, Hollingdale, Parkes, and Del Caro all translate unbefleckte Erkenntniss as “immaculate
perception.” Parkes explains the pun with unbefleckte Empfängnis, “immaculate conception”
(: ).
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Zarathustra’s Response to Schopenhauer
Erkenntniss, the truth is that Zarathustra and Schopenhauer clash over its
nature: Schopenhauer champions its being pure and will-less, and
Zarathustra rejects its being pure and will-less.
In a state of temporary aesthetic suspension, according to
Schopenhauer, we lose all desire and world-directed motivation, and
“continue to exist only as pure subject, the clear mirror of the object”
(WWR : ), a state of “liberation of cognition from service to the
will . . . and the elevation of consciousness to the pure, will-less, timeless
subject of cognition” (WWR : ). In the Genealogy (GM III:)
Nietzsche directly targets Schopenhauer’s notion of the “pure, will-less,
timeless subject of Erkenntniss” as a myth. And Zarathustra is critical of the
same notion:
“This would be for me the highest thing” thus your lying spirit talks to
itself “To look upon life without desire and not like a dog with its tongue
hanging out:
“To be happy in looking, with a will that has died, without the grasping or
greed of selfishness the whole body cold and ashen, but with drunken
moon eyes! . . .
“And let this be for me the immaculate perception [Erkenntniss] of all
things: that I want [will] nothing from things, that I may lie there before
them like a mirror with a hundred eyes.”
Oh, you sentimental hypocrites, you lechers! You lack innocence in your
desire, so now you slander desiring itself! (Z:II “Immaculate Perception”)
Passages in the Genealogy elucidate the charges of hypocrisy and lechery:
“There are few things about which Schopenhauer speaks so certainly as
about the effect of aesthetic contemplation: he says of it that it counteracts
precisely sexual ‘interestedness’ [. . .] he never grew tired of glorifying this
breaking free from the ‘will’ as the greatest merit and use of the aesthetic
condition” (GM III:). But it is quite possible that “sensuality is [. . .] not
suspended at the onset of the aesthetic condition, as Schopenhauer
believed, but rather only transfigures itself and no longer enters
Older translations of Schopenhauer use “knowing” and “knowledge” for erkennend, Erkennen and
Erkenntniss. But Erkenntniss is distinct from Wissen, discursive, conceptual knowing or “abstract
cognition” (See WWR : –). The pure cognition that Schopenhauer finds in aesthetic
experience is intuitive rather than abstract cognition.
Gooding-Williams (: n. ) notes the link with Schopenhauerian aesthetic experience, but
misleadingly refers to “the Kantian/Schopenhauerian subject”: the ideas of “a will that has died” and
the subject as a “mirror” are pure Schopenhauer and have little to do with Kant. On the differences
between Kant and Schopenhauer, see Janaway (: –).
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consciousness as sexual stimulus” (GM III:). So proponents of the
Schopenhauerian view of pure, will-less Erkenntniss would be “lechers”
(lüsterne) and “hypocrites,” in that their advocacy of liberation from will
arises out of will, an erotic drive that they manage to disguise even from
themselves. Will-less Erkenntniss, an utterly dispassionate mirroring of
the world, would then be an impossibility. In Zarathustra we find that
“In Erkenntniss [. . .] I feel only my will’s joy in begetting and becoming”
(Z:II “Isles of the Blest”). Cognition, knowing, or understanding is
dynamic and creative for Zarathustra.
Thus far Zarathustra’s engagements with Schopenhauer’s teaching have
occurred in the text before the first mention of the Soothsayer. In the
immediately following section, however, “On Redemption” (Von der
Erlösung), matters come to a head, with Zarathustra openly contesting
Schopenhauer’s doctrine of redemption and replacing it with a counterdoctrine. Schopenhauer finds allegorical truth in the notion of original sin:
“Our existence looks like nothing so much as the result of a false move, of
a craving that deserves punishment [. . .] Every great pain, whether physical or mental, tells us what we deserve, because it could not befall us
unless we deserved it” (WWR : –). Both the offence and the
punishment fall upon the will:
The world is precisely what it is, because the will, whose appearance it is, is
what it is, because that is what it wills. The justification for suffering is that
the will affirms itself in this appearance too; and this affirmation is justified
and balanced out by the fact that the will bears the suffering. This gives us a
glimpse into eternal justice. (WWR : )
Hence the only remedy is a negation of the will:
the great fundamental truth of Christianity as well as Brahmanism and
Buddhism, namely the need for redemption from an existence given over to
suffering and death, and our ability to attain this redemption by means of
the negation of the will, that is, by assuming a decisive stand in opposition
to nature, this is incomparably the most important truth that there can be.
(WWR : )
The will is supposed to negate itself (in a way that is admittedly hard to
fathom) with the assistance of no outside agency: “the negation of the will to
A passage in Part II of Zarathustra seemingly runs counter to this. Zarathustra talks of Erkenntniss as
“learning to smile and be without jealousy,” the will being “unharnessed” and “desire falling silent
in beauty” (Z:II “Sublime”).
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Zarathustra’s Response to Schopenhauer
life [. . .] signifies [. . .] the mere act of not-willing [Aktus des Nichtwollens];
the same thing that willed hitherto wills no more” (PP : ).
When Zarathustra warns against the preachings of “madness” in “On
Redemption,” he all but quotes Schopenhauer:
And because there is suffering in whatever wills, from its inability to will
backwards thus willing itself and all life were supposed to be punish
ment! [. . .]
“Morally things are ordered according to justice and punishment. Oh
where is there redemption from the flux of things and the punishment
‘existence’?” Thus did madness preach. [. . .]
“Unless the will should at last redeem itself and willing become not willing
[Nicht-Wollen] ”: but you know, my brothers, this fable song of madness!
(Z:II “Redemption”)
In speaking of Erlösung coming only through Wollen turning to NichtWollen, this voice of “madness” is speaking in pure Schopenhauerian
language. Zarathustra’s counter-doctrine is that willing liberates, and
that the will can redeem itself by willing the past, “to re-create all ‘It
was’ into a ‘Thus I willed it!’ —that alone should I call redemption.”
A succinct passage in Part III makes clear the contrast between
Zarathustran and Schopenhauerian redemption, and shows that the latter
is the consequence of the pessimistic teaching identified by the Soothsayer:
“To their ears it sounds delightful when it is preached: ‘Nothing is worth
while! Ye shall not will!’ But this is the preaching of servitude. [. . .] Willing
liberates: for willing is creating; thus I teach” (Z:III “Old and New
Tablets” ). In other words, Zarathustra’s redemption reverses the view
that because existence is in vain, the only redemptive solution is to cease
willing – Schopenhauer’s view. Schopenhauer understands suffering as
Particularly hard to fathom is how the same thing can be the will to life while not willing life, or be
the will while being free from any willing. Schopenhauer was challenged on this by his follower
Frauenstädt in (see Schopenhauer (: –); in reply he simply asserts: “That [will]
can become detached from willing is shown, in the human being, by asceticism in Asia and Europe,
over millennia” (, my translation).
As is stated by Gooding-Williams (: ). Others have linked this passage to Nietzsche’s
reading of Anaximander. See Lampert (: ), and Shapiro, who rightly says also that “the
preaching of madness sounds increasingly like Schopenhauer’s doctrine that the only form of
redemption available to humans is abandoning the will” (: ). Paul Loeb parses “willing
become not willing” as death (: ). This seems to ignore Schopenhauer’s vision of a
redemption that occurs in life by ceasing to will. On the other hand, Schopenhauer accepts that
“the complete negation of the will can reach the point where even the will needed to maintain the
vegetative functions of the body through nutrition can fall away,” resulting in “death by voluntary
starvation” (WWR : ).
See Gooding-Williams (: n. ).
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the inhibition or non-fulfilment of willing (WWR : ). Zarathustra
identifies the past as the most recalcitrant obstacle to the will: we suffer
because we can never will it to be different, and redemption from this
suffering is to be found in willing rather than not-willing, specifically in
“re-creating all ‘It was’ into a ‘Thus I willed it!’”
The notion of “willing the past” is obscure and contested. At one
extreme one may be skeptical and regard it as not a real case of willing,
but rather a self-gratifying falsification of one’s past attitudes, a mere recasting the past under the guise of its having been willed. At the other
extreme is the interpretation by Paul Loeb, according to which Zarathustra
manifests a superhuman “power over time” and comes to embody the
circularity of time in his experience, so that he can literally will backwards. If we take the skeptical view, Zarathustra’s “redemption” offers to
erase suffering from one’s understanding of the past by a fictionalizing
portrayal of it in which nothing goes against one’s will. The “power over
time” view shares with Schopenhauer the notion that the will is selfsufficient in its capacity to bring about redemption: while Schopenhauer
advocates the will’s transforming itself into a non-willing, Zarathustra envisages the will’s self-transformation into something that can will the past. In
both cases ordinary human willing is to be left behind. For Schopenhauer,
blissful redemption belongs to the rare kind of figure he calls a saint; for
Zarathustra, redemption is a task that he alone has discovered, and which
extant humans cannot accomplish. But however precisely we are to understand “willing the past,” Zarathustra’s positive notion of redemption makes
most sense as an attempted reversal of the doctrine of redemption closest to
hand for Nietzsche, namely Schopenhauer’s.
So far, we have found Schopenhauer’s true voice in the doctrine of
redemption preached by “madness”; in the posture of the “hypocritical
lechers” who yearned for pure will-less cognition; and in the one who shot
at the truth with “will to existence” – all doctrines singled out for rejection
by Zarathustra. This is enough to support the claim that Schopenhauer is
consistently an antagonist in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Moreover, this would
be the case had the character of the Soothsayer, whatever he represents,
never appeared in the book. Zarathustra has ample materials for a critical
response to Schopenhauer’s teaching. Schopenhauer is in a way correct to
This is suggested in an unpublished work by Richard Elliott, “Eternal Recurrence, ‘On
Redemption’ and the Risk of Self-Deception.” See Loeb (: –) for citations of similar
views in the literature.
See Loeb (: ).
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Zarathustra’s Response to Schopenhauer
grasp will as the key notion in understanding human existence and in
attaining redemption from it, but his conception must be radically altered.
Will must be reinterpreted as will to power, and redemption cannot come
from the will’s eliminating itself, but rather “the will that is will to power”
(Z:II “Redemption”) has to be the agent of its own liberation.
It at least seems clear that “willing the past” intimates the all-important
theme of eternal return. So it is of note that Schopenhauer had already
thought of a kind of eternal return, imagining “[s]omeone . . . who, after
calm reflection, could wish that his life as he has experienced it so far
would be of endless duration, or of perpetually new recurrence [immer
neuer Wiederkehr]” (WWR : ). We do not really know what
Schopenhauer has in mind here: it may be an ongoing renewal of life
afresh, rather than its circular return. But any such thing could be willed
only by someone “without . . . any personal experience or far-reaching
insight into the continuous suffering that is essential to all life” (WWR :
). A person with that insight could not will the recurrence of life, or
even living once more: “[P]erhaps there will never be a man who, clearheaded and sincere at the end of his life, would want to do it all again – he
would much rather choose complete non-existence instead” (WWR :
). The full insight into suffering would put an end to life-affirmation:
Wherever he looks, he sees the sufferings of humanity, the sufferings of the
animal kingdom, and a fleeting, fading world.[. . .] Given what he knows
about the world, how could he affirm this very life by constant acts of will,
binding himself ever closer to it, embracing it ever more tightly? [. . .] The
will begins turning away from life: it shrinks from each of the pleasures in
which it sees life being affirmed. (WWR : )
One would be taken to this point by a heightened universal compassion
(Mitleid) from which springs the redemptive negation of the will to life
(WWR : –). In Part III, Zarathustra seems aware of this antagonism between compassion and affirmation, because he first says that
Mitleiden “is the deepest abyss: as deeply as the human being sees into
life, so deeply does it see into suffering,” and then immediately counters
Mitleid with courage, which says, “Was that life? Well then! One more
time!” (Z:III “Vision and Riddle” ). Zarathustra thus agrees with
Schopenhauer: only by overcoming the abysmal, compassionate insight
into suffering could one want life again. So now it becomes important to
examine Mitleid, and whether it can or should be overcome.
See Lampert (: ); Cartwright (: –).
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. Zarathustra against Mitleid
The term Mitleid (along with the verbal noun Mitleiden) is notoriously
difficult to translate into English. Most recent translators opt for “pity” or
“compassion.” Kaufmann again appears blind to the connection with
Schopenhauer when he writes that “Aristotle, Spinoza, and La
Rochefoucauld, of whose precedent Nietzsche makes much, have all been
translated in the past as criticizing ‘pity.’” These are not the most reliable
reference points if we trust Nietzsche’s prominent statement that it was
“almost solely” with Schopenhauer that he had to struggle over the value of
“the instincts of Mitleid, self-denial, self-sacrifice” (GM P:). In a note
from , he confirms that he found the greatest danger in Mitleiden,
calling it “that virtue of which Schopenhauer taught that it was the highest.” So in order to discover what merited so much struggle, it is
Schopenhauer’s conception of Mitleid we must consider. It has been
argued convincingly that we understand Schopenhauer’s Mitleid best by
linking it to compassion. Thus should Nietzsche’s uses of the term be
rendered as “compassion” when he is engaging Schopenhauer’s conception? David Cartwright has argued to the contrary that while
Schopenhauer advocates compassion, Nietzsche criticizes pity, thereby
possibly misidentifying his target. In response, Gudrun von Tevenar
argues that, although Nietzsche challenges the value of pity, compassion
is nonetheless the target of his distinctive objection that Mitleid is detrimental to the one who gives it.
There is a danger in concentrating too much on translations. Martin
Liebscher warns that “Instead of trying to understand Nietzsche’s thinking, this approach adapts his philosophy to the English-speaking mind.”
However, the issue is deeper than the mere words. Schopenhauerian
Mitleid consists in “willing the well-being of the other” for its own sake,
motivated entirely non-egoistically by the other’s pain per se. The compassionate agent sees the other as “I once more,” and feels the other’s
suffering in an immediate participatory manner, to the extent of an
extreme identification which breaks down all distinction between self
and other (see BM:–; –). Schopenhauer’s Mitleid is
Loeb uses “commiseration” for Mitleid, chiming with “misery” for Leid (see Loeb [: ]).
Kaufmann (a: ).
KSA :[].
Cartwright (); Tevenar (). Frazer () views Nietzsche’s anti-Schopenhauerian target as
compassion. Cartwright () and Abbey (: ) emphasize that Nietzsche’s struggle over
Mitleid is with Schopenhauer, but consistently refer to pity.
Cartwright ().
Tevenar (: ).
Liebscher (: ).
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Zarathustra’s Response to Schopenhauer
supreme selflessness, which at the limit involves self-sacrifice: one of his
favorite examples is that of the Swiss patriot Arnold von Winkelried,
clutching all the enemy Austrian spears to himself in order to die saving
his comrades. Thus “pity,” which has connotations of disparagement and
distance from the sufferer, suggests an attitude that diverges significantly
from what Schopenhauer intends. Schopenhauer also assimilates Mitleid to
Christian agape (WWR : ), and holds that all pure love (without selfinterest) is identical to compassion (WWR : ). It is perhaps better to
talk simply of “Schopenhauerian Mitleid,” and to realize that if Nietzsche’s
struggle is against Schopenhauerian Mitleid, his struggle is not simply
against pity.
Zarathustra is persistently averse to Mitleid. In the section entitled “Von
den Mitleidigen” (translated as “On Those Who Pity”), he first associates
Mitleid with shame:
[T]he noble bids himself not to shame others: he bids himself have shame
before all that suffers.
Verily, I do not like them, the merciful, who are blessèd in their Mitleiden:
too lacking are they in shame.
If I must be mitleidig, then I do not want to be called such; and if I am
[mitleidig], then rather from a distance. (Z:II “On Those Who Pity”)
Here Mitleid sounds like pity: the other’s being seen as suffering shows
them in a demeaning light, and shames them, but to bring shame on
others is also shameful: one should not want to be the pitier who looks on
and thereby lights up the other’s suffering. But later in the same section
Zarathustra is at pains to state that “great love” is above Mitleiden. This
seems odd if we are still thinking of pity: does it need stating that loving
someone is not the same as observing their suffering in a way that shames
them and ourselves? This comment is more likely addressed to someone
like Schopenhauer for whom “pure love” is identical with Mitleid.
Zarathustra’s point is that you love someone by allowing them their
suffering rather than removing it, whereas those who count Mitleiden as
a virtue “have no reverence for great misfortune” (Z:IV “Ugliest Man”).
Nietzsche’s best explanation of the benefits of allowing someone their
“[P]ity permits . . . the expression of non-sympathetic attitudes of condescension and contempt.
Hence it follows that pity, and not compassion, is open to the much voiced objection of allowing,
and perhaps even fostering, feelings of superiority and contempt and thus of shaming and
humiliating its recipients” (Tevenar : ). Frazer (: –) makes a similar point.
Schopenhauer contrasts the two forms of love: “Selfishness is erōs, compassion is agapē” (WWR :
–), the latter linked with selfless morality, the former with the will to life (see WWR : ).
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suffering comes in The Gay Science: we cannot guess the significance of
anyone’s suffering for them merely from its being categorized as suffering,
and its significance is revealed only by grasping its place in the “whole
inner sequence and interconnection” of which it is part (GS ). Thus
Zarathustra’s recommendation – “Become hard!” (Z:III “Old and New
Tablets” ) – need not be read as an injunction to cruelty, rather as “resist
the imperative to remove suffering!” the imperative instilled by the system
of values Nietzsche calls the “religion of Mitleid” (GS ), which makes
prevention of suffering the sole criterion of well-being and thereby impoverishes human beings, in Nietzsche’s view. Also in Gay Science
Nietzsche speaks of the disvalue of Mitleid to the one who gives it,
and it is this that has greater relevance to what happens in Part IV of
Zarathustra, where Mitleid is revealed as Zarathustra’s greatest obstacle.
. The Temptation of Mitleid
Part IV of Zarathustra is framed by the Soothsayer’s new challenge to
Zarathustra. In Z:IV, “The Cry of Need” (or “of distress,” Nothschrei), the
Soothsayer tells Zarathustra that the Munch-like Schrei that is heard in the
world is a call of help from the “higher human.” The Soothsayer says “I
come that I may seduce you to your ultimate sin,” and the sin is that of
Mitleiden for the higher human in answer to the cry of distress. Right at
the end Zarathustra recognizes this as his ultimate sin, and can overcome
it: “Mitleiden for the higher human! . . . Well then! That—has had its
time!” (Z:IV “The Sign,” translation modified). If there is any point to the
Soothsayer’s “being” Schopenhauer, it had better be Schopenhauerian
Mitleid, or compassion, that seduces Zarathustra. On the other hand,
the would-be identification can only be ironic, because Schopenhauer could
never refer to Mitleid as a sin. The Soothsayer’s function once again is not
to advocate a Schopenhauerian position, but, from within Nietzsche’s
Zarathustran framework, perhaps from within his psyche, to prompt
Zarathustra to realize what he has to overcome.
In referring to Mitleid as a temptation or seduction for Zarathustra,
Nietzsche comes close to autobiography. When he has Zarathustra say,
See Janaway (a: –).
Cartwright, for whom “Schopenhauer is the soothsayer” (: ), highlights the irony in its being
Schopenhauer who tells Zarathustra his Mitleid is a sin. He thinks the Soothsayer has two aims: to
convince Zarathustra that “all is the same, nothing is worthwhile” and to set Zarathustra on his own
unique anti-Schopenhauerian path (). In my view, the Soothsayer’s aims are just antiSchopenhauerian.
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Zarathustra’s Response to Schopenhauer
“In caring and Mitleiden my greatest danger has always lain” (Z:III “Return
Home”), he is virtually quoting himself. The Gay Science reads:
“Where lie your greatest dangers? —in Mitleiden.” And Nietzsche stuck to
this theme. In , he wrote in a letter: “From childhood on, the
proposition ‘my greatest dangers lie in Mitleiden’ has confirmed itself again
and again,” and in notebooks from the same year “Mitleiden my weakness,
which I am overcoming.” A further published passage written in
Nietzsche’s own voice strengthens this impression of autobiography:
I, too, know with certainty that I need only expose myself to the sight of
real distress [Noth] and I, too, am lost! If a suffering friend said to me,
“Look, I am about to die; please promise to die with me,” I would promise
it; likewise the sight of a small mountain people [Bergvölkchens] fighting for
its freedom would make me offer my hand and my life [. . .] Yes, there is a
secret seduction even in all these things which arouse compassion and call
out for help. (GS , translation slightly modified)
The tone is personal, and the seductive trait sounds like Schopenhauerian
Mitleid, for in these examples the self-neglect and total absorption in the
well-being of the other are quite unlike pity. We might even reflect that
Schopenhauer’s prime case of the Swiss von Winkelried literally is someone
dying for a mountain people fighting for its freedom! In the same passage
Nietzsche makes it clear, again in personal sounding terms, that immersing
oneself in the suffering of others has a seductive power because it relieves
one of a difficult task: “I know, there are a hundred decent and praiseworthy ways of losing myself from my path . . . [F]or our ‘own way’ is so hard
and demanding and so far from love and gratitude of others that we are
by no means reluctant to escape from it and our ownmost conscience”
(GS , translation slightly modified).
So Mitleid is a temptation or seduction because it is comfortable, less
demanding, a distraction from one’s own course. Zarathustra’s final realization in Part IV recapitulates this point: “My suffering and my
Mitleiden – what does that matter! Am I striving then for happiness?
I am striving for my work!” (Z:IV “The Sign”). Whatever Zarathustra’s
work were to be, Mitleid could seduce him away from it. But Mitleid is
doubly significant here if Zarathustra’s work is to teach (and even to
embody) eternal return. For if Schopenhauer is right, a person seized
sufficiently by Mitleid will meet an inevitable obstacle to affirming the
Letter to Franz Overbeck, September (KSB : ); KSA :[]. See also Parkes
(: –).
As in Loeb’s account (: ).
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eternal return: “how could he affirm this very life by constant acts of
will, binding himself ever closer to it, embracing it ever more tightly?”
(WWR : ).
Zarathustra’s temptation is not a Schopenhauerian universal Mitleid,
but Mitleid solely for the “higher human.” However, Nietzsche apparently
succumbs to something like this temptation, when he professes a “higher”
Mitleid for those who are harmed by the imperative to protect the weak
from suffering:
Our Mitleid is a higher, more far sighted Mitleid: we see how humanity is
becoming smaller, how you are making it smaller! [. . .] [I]n the human
being there is also creator, maker, hammer hardness, spectator divinity and
seventh day [. . .] And our Mitleid don’t you realize who our inverted
Mitleid is aimed at when it fights against your Mitleid as the worst of all
pampering and weaknesses? (BGE )
This is a paradoxical version of Mitleid, because it reacts to a harm that
comes from not suffering, a diminishment of the creative, power-willing
side of humanity that requires its suffering in order to flourish. Nietzsche
does not see this “higher Mitleid” as something to avoid, yet for
Zarathustra an apparently similar attitude is a “sin.” Why this difference?
We might venture two answers. The first answer is that Nietzsche portrays
himself and Zarathustra differentially, with Zarathustra able to overcome a
temptation to “higher Mitleid” that he himself cannot. This would sit with
a reading by Paul Loeb (), according to which Nietzsche deliberately
places himself in contradistinction to Zarathustra, whom he calls “a
younger one . . . a stronger one than I am,” one uniquely capable of a
redemptive affirmation and “great health” (GM II:–). A second resolution that does not require this differentiation (though it is compatible
with it) is the view, proposed by Michael Frazer, that “overcoming”
Mitleid does not mean not feeling it, but rather feeling it and mastering
it. Evidence for this view comes from Ecce Homo:
I consider the overcoming of Mitleid a noble virtue: I have written about the
case of “Zarathustra’s temptation” [. . .] To stay in control [Herr bleiben], to
keep the height of your task free from the many lower and short sighted
impulses that are at work in supposedly selfless actions, this is the test, the
final test, perhaps, that a Zarathustra has to pass his real proof of strength.
(EH “Wise” )
Frazer comments, “Zarathustra does not pass the greatest test of his
strength by purging compassion from his psyche. To the contrary, he
affirms his painful experience of the emotion as creativity-enhancing and
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Zarathustra’s Response to Schopenhauer
life-promoting” (Frazer : –). So the “overcoming” of which
Nietzsche speaks need not involve hardening oneself to the point of not
feeling compassion, but rather being master of it. Zarathustra need not
lack compassion, so long as he is noble enough not to be seduced from his
work when he feels its call. Likewise, Nietzsche can in principle remain
susceptible to his “higher Mitleid” for the greatness and creativity in
humanity, but not inevitably lose his “own path” by letting Mitleid
obliterate all his other impulses.
. Conclusion
We asked what Schopenhauer would have made of Thus Spoke
Zarathustra. He might have recognized the slogans “All is empty, all is
the same, all has been” and “nothing is worthwhile, world is without
meaning” (the latter not actually Schopenhauer’s view) as a simplistic
attempt to encapsulate his own teaching. He would have seen this teaching
attributed to the Soothsayer character in Part IV. But he would also have
seen the Soothsayer deployed against Schopenhauerianism: first to prophesy that pessimism is about to cause a slide into nihilism, then that
Zarathustra is susceptible to Mitleid in a detrimental way that will block
his ability to teach or affirm eternal return. In light of these roles, we
should stop saying that the Soothsayer “clearly portrays” Schopenhauer.
Furthermore, I have argued that attention to the Soothsayer masks the
substantial presence of the real Schopenhauer as a systematic foil that
allows Zarathustra to develop his core ideas. Schopenhauer would have
found Zarathustra preoccupied with will, redemption and compassion,
trying to modify will into a striving for power, and bent on inverting the
crucial ideas that compassion is a step toward redemption, and that
redemption itself comprises the self-abolition of the will, the will turning
to not-willing. While naturally thinking that the attempted reversals of his
doctrines were mistaken, Schopenhauer might at least have been pleased
that Zarathustra sounds like someone who has been reading
Schopenhauer. Whatever its other distinctive features, Thus Spoke
Zarathustra embodies a philosophical polemic quite as much as
Nietzsche’s other works.
Thanks to Keith Ansell-Pearson, Ken Gemes, Andrew Huddleston, Paul Loeb, Matthew Meyer and
Gudrun von Tevenar for comments on earlier drafts.
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Nietzsche’s Naturalism and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Matthew Meyer
Philosophical naturalism is one of the predominant movements in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. It is therefore not surprising that
interpreting Nietzsche as a naturalist has become one of the dominant
approaches to his thinking in Anglophone scholarship (Leiter : ).
However, the push to fit Nietzsche within the contemporary discourse of
naturalism may have come at a cost. One such cost is that it has contributed to the marginalization of the text Nietzsche understood to be his
magnum opus, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as well as two views that play a
central role in the text: the cosmological understandings of the eternal
recurrence and the will to power. Although there are reasonable debates
about Nietzsche’s commitments to the cosmological formulations of these
doctrines, there is little doubt about the significance Nietzsche attaches to
Zarathustra, a work he considers his “greatest gift” to humankind
(EH “Preface” ). Thus, the worry is that the push to make Nietzsche
into a naturalist has created a significant discrepancy between the way we
want to understand Nietzsche and the way Nietzsche understood himself.
This discrepancy, however, is not due to reading Nietzsche as a naturalist per se – for if Nietzsche is in fact a naturalist, and I think he is, then
there will be no such discrepancy – but rather due to certain features of the
naturalist reading that has gained prominence through the work of Brian
Leiter. From the beginning, Leiter ( and ) has opposed his
naturalist reading to Alexander Nehamas’ () aestheticist reading of
Nietzsche. Because Zarathustra seems to be a work of drama or poetry
rather than science or systematic philosophy, it falls by the wayside when
we focus on Nietzsche’s naturalism at the expense of his aestheticism.
Moreover, Leiter rejects the cosmological formulations of the will to power
and (presumably) the eternal recurrence as forms of “crackpot metaphysics,” and he openly encourages interpreters to look for ways to distance
I have sought to reconcile these interpretive strands in Meyer ().
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Nietzsche’s Naturalism and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Nietzsche from these views (: ). Because Zarathustra provides
evidence for such views, those who want to distance Nietzsche from these
ideas have correspondingly sought to downplay the significance of
Nietzsche’s magnum opus.
In this chapter, I try to overcome the disjunction between reading
Nietzsche as a naturalist and the significance Nietzsche attaches to
Zarathustra and the ideas expressed therein. In Section ., I argue that
we should understand Nietzsche as a naturalist, but not in the way Leiter
construes the term. Specifically, we should focus more on Nietzsche’s
context and understand him as embracing the naturalism that his predecessor, Arthur Schopenhauer, rejects. For Schopenhauer, naturalism is
opposed to metaphysics or the belief in entities that go beyond the limits
of experience and transcend the natural world, and, in Section .,
I suggest that Nietzsche adopts the cosmological versions of the will to
power and the eternal recurrence to complete a project of naturalism that
Schopenhauer believes cannot be completed. This is significant because
both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche agree that naturalism destroys the
foundations for morality, but whereas Schopenhauer opposes naturalism
to preserve the basis for his life-denying morality, Nietzsche makes naturalism central to a life-affirming project that goes “beyond good and evil.”
In Section ., I apply this framework for thinking about Nietzsche’s
naturalism to Zarathustra. Because Nietzsche presents both the will to
power and the eternal recurrence in their cosmological formulations in
Zarathustra, I argue that Zarathustra is the work in which Nietzsche
completes the aforementioned naturalism and thereby goes “beyond good
and evil.” I then provide some remarks about how the drama of
Zarathustra centers around the difficulty Zarathustra has in accepting the
fatalistic implications that naturalism has for his self-understanding and
sense of agency. If this is right, Zarathustra is an essential feature of
Nietzsche’s naturalism, and Zarathustra can be understood as providing a
dramatic portrayal of what it is like to be naturalized.
. Nietzsche’s Naturalism in Context
Although there now seems to be broad agreement that Nietzsche is a
naturalist, there is still significant disagreement about the kind of naturalist
More precisely, Leiter makes these claims about the will to power, but I think he would also apply this to
the cosmology of the eternal recurrence. Indeed, he sees it as an “ethical doctrine” that “has only a
tangential connection to Nietzsche’s naturalism” (: ). I thank Paul Loeb for noting this.
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Nietzsche is supposed to be. According to Leiter’s most recent account,
Nietzsche is best understood as a speculative methodological naturalist. On
this view, there is a continuity between philosophical inquiry and the
methods of the successful sciences. The continuity of method lies in the
fact that Nietzsche’s philosophical investigations use “general principles” to
provide deterministic explanations of human phenomena. His naturalism
is nevertheless speculative because Nietzsche’s claims about human nature
neither are “confirmed in anything resembling a scientific manner” nor do
they “win support from any contemporaneous science” (: –), even
though Nietzsche grounds his speculations on observation and evidence
(: –).
To be sure, there is nothing inherently mistaken about the sort of
naturalism Leiter attributes to Nietzsche. Nietzsche embraces – at least
in Human, All Too Human – the methods of the natural sciences, and he
provides what are arguably deterministic explanations for natural phenomena. However, Leiter’s definition of naturalism omits any essential claim
about rejecting transcendent or metaphysical entities. Even though this is
taken for granted by many interpreters, this is perhaps the most important
feature of Nietzsche’s naturalism, and the significance of this feature
should not be underestimated for reasons I explain below. Leiter’s definition also eschews any substantive connection to the results of the natural
sciences. This, however, is also crucial to Nietzsche’s project, as he appeals
to such results to justify claims he makes about the fundamental constituents of nature.
One of the difficulties of specifying the nature of Nietzsche’s naturalism
is that he rarely uses the term, and when he does, it is hard to extract an
operative definition. Nevertheless, we can get a better sense of how
Nietzsche might be a naturalist by turning to his sources. Although
Leiter references historical figures such as Ludwig Büchner and Friedrich
Lange (: n. ), there is textual evidence indicating that the key to
understanding Nietzsche’s naturalism lies in his engagement with
Schopenhauer’s rejection of naturalism in the section, “On Humanity’s
Metaphysical Need,” from the second volume of The World as Will and
Representation.
My point here is not to deny the influence of other figures on Nietzsche’s understanding of
naturalism. Lange is undoubtedly important, and so are others. For instance, Keith Ansell-Pearson
(: –) has argued that the work of Jean-Marie Guyau can shed light on
Nietzsche’s naturalism.
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Nietzsche’s Naturalism and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
For Schopenhauer, naturalism is opposed to metaphysics. By metaphysics, Schopenhauer understands “any cognition that claims to go beyond
the possibility of experience, which is to say beyond nature or the given
appearance of things, in order to disclose something about that which [. . .]
conditions appearance; or [. . .] about what is hidden behind nature and
makes it possible.” In contrast, “genuine naturalism” is “a physics” which
asserts “that its explanations of things [. . .] were really adequate and hence
accounted exhaustively for the essence of the world.” For Schopenhauer,
physics is “concerned with the explanation of phenomena in the world.”
Therefore, we can say that naturalism is a “physics without metaphysics” and
so “a theory that makes appearance into the thing in itself,” and
Schopenhauer points to figures who were naturalists in this sense:
Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, D’Holbach, Lamarck, and Cabanis
(WWR II:).
In defending metaphysics, Schopenhauer explains why this sort of
naturalism necessarily fails. Here, he points to two fundamental imperfections. First, he claims that physics tries to explain the phenomenal world
by referring to “laws of nature” that rest on “forces of nature.” The
problem is that this explanatory system establishes a chain of causes and
effects in which the beginning can never be reached. Because each event is
explained by a previous one, the chain of causes and effects recedes “in
infinitum,” and this infinite regress leaves the entire chain unexplained.
The second problem is that efficient causation, from which everything is
explained, “rests on something completely inexplicable.” By this,
Schopenhauer means that qualities such as weight, hardness, and elasticity
are manifestations of natural forces. However, these forces are occult and
inexplicable qualities. Thus, Schopenhauer writes, “there is not a single
shard of broken clay, however worthless it may be, that is not composed of
quite inexplicable qualities” (WWR II:). Because of these explanatory
gaps, Schopenhauer thinks that the naturalist will never be able to claim
victory over the metaphysician and extinguish our need for metaphysics.
Schopenhauer’s critique of naturalism is also an attempt to defend the
metaphysical basis of morality. Schopenhauer believes that metaphysics
provides a necessary foundation for morality, and therefore naturalism,
Schopenhauer’s published works are cited in this chapter as follows: BM On the Basis of Morals
(Schopenhauer, ); PP I, PP II Parerga and Paralipomena, Vols. and (Schopenhauer ,
); WWR I, WWR II The World as Will and Representation, Vols. and (Schopenhauer,
, ).
For more on forces as occult qualities, see Poellner (: –), who traces this objection back
to Berkeley.
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which destroys metaphysics, puts an end to his moral project. Thus,
Schopenhauer claims that “the necessary credo of everyone just and good”
is “I believe in a metaphysics” (WWR II:). The key to understanding the
connection between morality and metaphysics lies in Schopenhauer’s
understanding of free will. Although our empirical characters are destined
or fated to be what they are, we can nevertheless transcend the principle of
sufficient reason and deny the very will that expresses itself in the empirical
world. Thus, metaphysics makes free will possible, and free will consists
not in the choice of how we act or who we become – for this is already
determined – but in whether we affirm or deny the will itself (WWR I:).
In other texts, Schopenhauer stresses the connection between metaphysics and morality. In On the Basis of Morals, he claims that both
philosophical and religious systems agree that “the ethical significance of
actions must be at the same time a metaphysical one,” and therefore “in
ethics the need of a metaphysical basis is all the more urgent” (BM ). In
Parerga and Paralipomena, Schopenhauer stakes out an even stronger
position: “That the world has only a physical and not a moral significance
is a fundamental error, one that is the greatest and most pernicious, the real
perversity of the mind [Perversität der Gesinnung]. At bottom, it is also that
which faith has personified as the antichrist” (PP II ). In other words, a
world with a purely physical significance eliminates any sort of metaphysical significance, and since a metaphysical significance is necessary for
ethical significance, a purely physical or natural interpretation of the world
destroys ethics or morality. In this way, a proponent of naturalism would,
according to Schopenhauer, rightfully be understood as the antichrist.
The fact that Schopenhauer casts the naturalist as an immoralist and
even the antichrist gives us prime facie evidence for thinking that
Nietzsche, who openly embraces these epithets, is a naturalist in
Schopenhauer’s sense. Further evidence for this reading can be found in
Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics and a related program of naturalism in
Human. Nietzsche begins the work by opposing his own “historical
philosophy” to “metaphysical philosophy,” and he links the former to
the methods as well as the results of the natural sciences (HH ). After
devoting the remainder of the first chapter to attacking metaphysics as
such, he then eliminates, in the next three chapters, metaphysical beliefs
from the realms of morality, religion, and art.
In this chapter, I’ve used the following translations: BGE , BT , EH , GS , GM
, HH , PPP , PTAG , TI , WP , Z .
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Nietzsche’s Naturalism and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
In each of the first four chapters of Human, Nietzsche targets
Schopenhauer’s notion of a “metaphysical need” from the second volume
of The World as Will and Representation. In the first chapter of Human,
Nietzsche explicitly refers to Schopenhauer. Although he praises
Schopenhauer for including much science in his philosophy, Nietzsche
criticizes him for letting the old “metaphysical need” eventually dominate
(HH ). In the second chapter, he speaks of a “historical knowledge” that
may one day serve as an axe that will cut the root of the “metaphysical
need” (HH ). In the third chapter, Nietzsche criticizes Schopenhauer’s
allegorical interpretation of religion for operating under the demands of
the metaphysical need (HH ), and, in the fourth chapter, Nietzsche
bids the metaphysical need farewell (HH ).
In his later writings, we find additional evidence that Nietzsche is
embracing the very naturalism Schopenhauer rejects. Nietzsche was well
aware of Schopenhauer’s opposition between naturalism and ethics
because he quotes, in a Nachlass note, the aforementioned passage from
On the Basis of Morals (KSA :[]). In Beyond Good and Evil,
Nietzsche again mentions the “metaphysical need” and connects it to a
project of overcoming the “atomistic need” in both natural science and
psychology (BGE ). Moreover, he begins section five, entitled “Natural
History of Morals,” by quoting directly from On the Basis of Morals. Here,
Nietzsche claims that basing morality on metaphysics will come across as
“insipidly false and sentimental” to anyone who believes that the essence of
the world is will to power (BGE ).
Just after writing Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche penned prefaces to a
number of his earlier works, and, in the preface to The Birth of
Tragedy, he explicitly quotes the phrase, “perversity of mind [Perversität
der Gesinnung],” that Schopenhauer associates with both naturalism and
the antichrist. Nietzsche claims that The Birth of Tragedy betrays a spirit
that will “one day fight [. . .] the moral interpretation and significance of
existence,” and that his book represents “a pessimism ‘beyond good and
evil’.” As the rest of the section makes clear, Nietzsche’s objection to
Schopenhauer’s morality is that it represents “‘a will to negate life’, a secret
instinct of annihilation.” The Birth of Tragedy opposes this morality with
an antichristian Dionysianism that offers an aesthetic justification and
affirmation of existence (BT “Attempt” ).
Jörg Salaquarda (: –, –) has shown that Nietzsche was influenced by
Schopenhauer on this point. Also see Janaway (b: ).
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For my purposes, the phrase, “perversity of mind,” enables us to
connect Nietzsche’s attack on morality to the very naturalism
Schopenhauer rejects. Again, a “perverse mind” insists on a natural interpretation of the world at the expense of a moral interpretation, and
Nietzsche pledges his allegiance to the former in this preface. But if
Nietzsche is a naturalist in Schopenhauer’s sense, he first needs to be
committed to a scientific account of nature that reduces everything to
force and he then needs to find a way to respond to the two objections that
Schopenhauer raises against the naturalist’s attempt to eliminate metaphysics. In Section ., I argue that Nietzsche is committed to such an
ontology of force and that the cosmological formulations of the will to
power and the eternal recurrence, both of which are grounded in this
ontology, can be understood as Nietzsche’s response to Schopenhauer’s
twofold challenge to naturalism.
. Nietzsche’s Crackpot Naturalism?
One of the problems that confronts the cosmological interpretations of the
will to power and the eternal recurrence is that a number of readers deny
that Nietzsche intended these doctrines to be understood in this way. The
cosmological reading of the will to power is the claim that all reality is will
to power. The cosmological interpretation is often contrasted with a
biological reading – in which all life is will to power – and a psychological
reading – in which persons are said to be motivated by power in some
important sense. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, Leiter refers to
this cosmological idea as “crackpot metaphysics” and argues that we would
do Nietzsche the philosopher “a favor” if we expunged this view from his
thought (: ). The cosmological reading of the eternal recurrence
has met a similar fate. Such a reading understands the view to be making a
truth claim about the cosmos: all events repeat themselves in the same
order and in the same way, and these events have already happened an
infinite number of times in the past and will happen an infinite number of
times in the future. After early readings that took the view to be cosmological in nature – readings which highlighted problems inherent in the
view – many commentators now hold that the eternal recurrence is a
practical thought experiment that makes no truth claim about the cosmos
(Anderson ). Although not always explicit, the underlying idea seems
For a general overview, see Anderson (: Sec. ., .).
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Nietzsche’s Naturalism and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
to be that we would do Nietzsche a favor by reconstructing his thought so
as to avoid attributing to him this crackpot cosmology.
In divorcing Nietzsche’s thought from the cosmological versions of
these views, commentators often invoke the principle of interpretive
charity (Clark : ; Leiter : ). This principle allows the
interpreter to elevate the evidentiary threshold that needs to be met to
attribute a philosophically questionable view to a thinker. When the
principle of charity is invoked, we might say that the evidence must show
“beyond a reasonable doubt” that Nietzsche holds a suspect view rather
than looking at a mere “preponderance of the evidence.” Having elevated
the evidentiary standard, charitable commentators then look to shed doubt
on evidence for these views from both the Nachlass and Zarathustra.
Whereas the Nachlass is discounted because Nietzsche never published
the ideas therein, Zarathustra is disregarded as a work of fiction. Doubt is
then cast on the remaining passages from the published works read in
isolation from each other. It is then concluded that because no single
passage – such as GS or BGE – provides clear-cut evidence that
Nietzsche endorses the cosmological versions of the eternal recurrence or
the will to power, we should, as a matter of charity, avoid attributing these
“crackpot” views to him.
To respond to such readings, I want to pursue a two-step argument that
I will develop in the opposite order in which I describe it. First, I want to
attack the idea that we need to exercise the principle of charity in these
cases by understanding the cosmological versions of these views in context.
Although I do not provide a defense of these doctrines as positions that
contemporary philosophers should accept, I argue that even if these views
are judged as “crackpot” by contemporary standards, they are nevertheless
part of what might be called Nietzsche’s “crackpot naturalism” that is
nevertheless quite sensible when read in the context of Schopenhauer’s
critique. Second, although it is familiar terrain, I briefly highlight some of
the textual evidence for attributing these views to Nietzsche. However,
I proceed in a way that contrasts sharply with the method used by the
aforementioned charitable commentators. Rather than isolating the various pieces of evidence from each other and casting doubt on each in turn,
I argue that when we combine passages from Zarathustra with other
passages from the published works and then supplement our interpretation
of the published passages with Nachlass notes as well as Nietzsche’s
Commentators such as Leiter have also argued that Nietzsche wanted his Nachlass burned or
destroyed (see Leiter : –). For an important corrective to this story, see Huang ().
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historical sources, we find substantial evidence for attributing to Nietzsche
the cosmological formulations of the eternal recurrence and the will
to power.
I start with the cosmological formulation of the eternal recurrence.
There are two sections from Zarathustra III in which evidence for such a
reading is found: “On the Vision and the Riddle” and “The
Convalescent.” In the former, Zarathustra presents the idea in a showdown
with the spirit of gravity, and the explication of the concept is clearly
cosmological. Not only does Zarathustra ask whether all things “are
knotted together so firmly that this moment draws after it all that is to
come,” but also whether “this slow spider, which crawls in the moonlight,
and this moonlight itself, and I and you in the gateway” must not “have
been there before” (Z:III “Riddle”). In the latter, Zarathustra’s animals
explain what Zarathustra teaches: “that all things recur eternally, and we
ourselves too; and that we have already existed an eternal number of times,
and all things with us. [. . .] there is a great year of becoming, a monster of
a great year, which must, like an hourglass, turn over again and again so
that it may run down and run out again” (Z:III “Convalescent”). Taken
together, it is clear that Zarathustra is presented as the teacher of a
cosmological version of eternal recurrence.
So far so good. But can we infer from the fact that Zarathustra is
presented as the teacher of a cosmological version that Nietzsche himself
understands the eternal recurrence to be a truth claim about the nature of
the cosmos? Not necessarily. However, Nietzsche presents the doctrine in
Ecce Homo as an essential part of his own “tragic philosophy,” and he
compares it to the cosmological theories of Heraclitus and the Stoics
(EH BT:). Elsewhere, Nietzsche claims to be the teacher of the eternal
recurrence (TI “What I Owe” ), and he seems to present the view as his
own near the end of the edition of The Gay Science (GS ).
Although many question whether this aphorism commits Nietzsche to
making a cosmological claim, it uses the same language of “this spider and
this moonlight” as the cosmological version in “The Riddle,” and the
metaphor of “the eternal hour glass of existence” is also found in “The
Convalescent.”
If there are still doubts about the status of the view in GS , it is
important to note that GS is not the first mention of the doctrine in
The Gay Science. Nietzsche also references the view in passing in GS ,
“the eternal recurrence of war and peace,” and he speaks of a “musical
See Loeb (: ) on this point.
For more on this aphorism, see Loeb (b).
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Nietzsche’s Naturalism and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
box” eternally repeating its tune in GS . The reference in GS is
undoubtedly oblique and some have raised concerns that it is one of the
“aesthetic anthropomorphisms” that Nietzsche is critiquing in the passage
(Clark : ). However, by way of its title, “Let Us Beware,” we can
see that Nietzsche is thinking about the eternal recurrence in relation to
cosmological debates of his day. First, we can connect the title of GS
to at least three notes from this time in which this phrase is used, and,
in these notes, Nietzsche formulates the eternal recurrence in cosmological
terms (KSA :[], [], []). Second, Paulo D’Iorio has shown
that Nietzsche first encountered this phrase, “let us beware,” in Eugen
Dühring’s Course of Philosophy, and Dühring uses the phrase in the context
of discussing questions about the beginning of the cosmos (: ).
Taken together, it becomes clear that the first mention of the eternal
recurrence in Nietzsche’s work should be understood cosmologically.
However, if Nietzsche presents the eternal recurrence in GS as a
truth claim about the cosmos, it would be unlikely that he would recast the
idea in the same work as a mere thought experiment in GS , and if GS
is not a mere thought experiment, then it seems highly unlikely
Nietzsche would present it as a mere thought experiment in Zarathustra.
Thus, once we take passages from Zarathustra, connect them with other
published passages (GS and ), supplement our interpretation of
these passages with information from the Nachlass (KSA :[]), and
place these ideas in their historical context (Dühring), we have good
reasons for thinking that Nietzsche presents the eternal recurrence in
Zarathustra not merely as a thought experiment he knows to be false,
but rather as a view about the cosmos he takes to be true.
In Zarathustra, there is less evidence for the cosmological reading of the
will to power than the eternal recurrence. The concept is mentioned in
three different passages, and the strongest evidence for the view occurs in
the section, “On Self-Overcoming.” However, the evidence presented
there seems to limit the claim to the psychological and biological realms.
On the one hand, we are told that a presumably psychological notion of
the “will to truth” is really “a will to power.” On the other hand, Nietzsche
claims that “only where there is life is there also will” and that the “will to
life” is the “will to power” (Z:II “On Self-Overcoming). Thus, based on
the evidence here, it seems that Nietzsche has yet to endorse a cosmological
version of the will to power.
There are, however, two points in response to this reading. First, just
because he speaks about or applies the concept to a particular sphere in a
given note or passage, it does not follow that Nietzsche’s understanding of
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the view is limited to that sphere. Thus, it could be that although we only
have evidence attesting to Nietzsche’s application of the concept to the
realm of “life” in Zarathustra, it is nevertheless possible that Nietzsche is
thinking in cosmological terms. Second, and more importantly, we know
from his Nachlass that Nietzsche was, at the time of writing
Zarathustra, thinking of the will to power as a modification of
Schopenhauer’s “will to life” (KSA :[]), and this is a point substantiated by Nietzsche’s talk of a “will to life” and a “will to existence” in “On
Self-Overcoming.” This is important because we know that
Schopenhauer understood the will to life to be synonymous with the will
and that the will expresses itself in both the organic and inorganic
world (WWR I: and WWR II:). In short, Schopenhauer understands
the will to life in cosmological terms. Thus, although Nietzsche’s language
in Zarathustra seems to limit the will to power to the realm of life,
the context of his remarks indicates that he has the cosmological version
in mind.
Turning to Nietzsche’s post-Zarathustra writings, we encounter a wide
range of textual evidence attesting to a cosmological reading of the will to
power. In the fifth book of The Gay Science, Nietzsche argues that the “will
to power” is the “will of life” (GS ). In the Genealogy, Nietzsche asserts
that the will to power is operating in “all events” (GM II:). In Beyond
Good and Evil, Nietzsche claims that “life itself is will to power” (BGE )
and he speaks of “a world whose essence is will to power” (BGE ).
Elsewhere, he claims that “life simply is will to power” and that the “will to
power” is “the will of life” (BGE ). Again, some of these statements are
explicitly cosmological, while others suggest that the will to power is a
modification of Schopenhauer’s will to life. Read in isolation from each
other, no one passage provides indubitable proof that Nietzsche holds a
cosmological version of the will to power. However, taken together, the
evidence begins to mount in favor of attributing such a view to Nietzsche.
This brings us to BGE , the most discussed aphorism in which
Nietzsche presents the cosmological version of the will to power. On a
straightforward reading of the passage, Nietzsche presents a series of
hypothetical claims that, if true, would give him “the right to determine
all efficient force univocally as—the will to power” (BGE ). Although
Maudemarie Clark has proposed what has been called an ironic reading of
See Chapter .
I thank Kaitlyn Creasy, Ian Dunkle, and Paul Loeb for pressing me on this point.
See Loeb (a) for a detailed analysis of the section.
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Nietzsche’s Naturalism and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
the text in which Nietzsche has knowingly constructed a bad argument
relying on false premises (: ff.), Tsarina Doyle has shown that
Clark’s reading rests on a misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s views on the
causality of the will (: –). Although I think Doyle is right, if
there is any doubt about the meaning of the passage, it seems perfectly
reasonable – even obligatory – to look to Nachlass notes for help. One such
note became the final section of unpublished book, The Will to Power, and
although Leiter has claimed that Mazzino Montinari has “conclusively
discredited” the passage (: ), what Montinari actually says is that
Nietzsche no longer felt compelled to publish the note because BGE
already expresses its main sentiment (: –), namely, that the
world, in Nietzsche’s mirror, “is the will to power—and nothing besides!
And you yourselves are also this will to power—and nothing besides!”
(WP /KSA :[]).
There are, of course, a number of other Nachlass notes that further attest
to Nietzsche’s commitment to a cosmological version of the will to power.
However, I now want to turn to the task of making sense of these views in
context. We can start by recalling some points from Schopenhauer’s
discussion of naturalism. The first is that naturalism is the attempt to
use the results of the natural sciences to provide a complete explanation of
natural phenomena without recourse to metaphysical entities, which
Schopenhauer calls things-in-themselves. According to Schopenhauer,
the natural sciences of his day have reduced the natural world to “natural
forces,” and the naturalist tries to explain phenomena by appealing to
laws of nature that rest on these natural forces (WWR II:).
Schopenhauer further claims that this project cannot be completed
because these natural forces are unknown qualities, thereby failing to
provide the basis for a proper explanation, and because the chain of
causes and effects lacks an initial cause, the entire chain is left unexplained. For these reasons, science can only provide relative or conditional explanations, and therefore a complete explanation of reality must
be supplemented by metaphysics.
A defender of naturalism could respond to Schopenhauer by insisting
that we ought to give up the need for ultimate explanations, perhaps
undergoing therapy to extirpate this need. Here we would root out the
metaphysical need by taking an axe to what we might call the “explanatory
need.” In this way, we would just head off – as a sort of sickness – any
impulse to “wonder” at the phenomena or to ponder the “riddle” of
existence. Although Nietzsche certainly engages in this sort of therapy
regarding the metaphysical need, I think he still wants to indulge the
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explanatory need, and the primary function of the cosmological versions of
the will to power and the eternal recurrence is to complete the project of
naturalism by conceiving of the natural world as a self-enclosed and selfexplanatory entity. Once this project is complete, there will no longer be
any need to wonder about what reality might be like behind or beyond
the phenomena.
Although the argument is a compressed one, I think there is a fairly clear
path to seeing how the will to power and the eternal recurrence are part of
Nietzsche’s naturalist program. We can begin by connecting Nietzsche’s
naturalism to his interest in the results of the natural sciences in general and
his view, which follows Schopenhauer, that the natural sciences reduce the
world to interrelated forces. Evidence for such a view can be found
throughout Nietzsche’s writings. In his lectures on Pre-Platonic philosophy, Nietzsche claims that the main proposition of the natural sciences is
that “all things flow” because we “always come in the final analysis to
forces” (PPP, ). Although the text does not explicitly mention force, the
first chapter of Human appeals to the methods and results of the natural
sciences to claim that all material things – including the atom – have been
reduced to motion (HH ). In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche makes a
similar assertion. In his rejection of soul atomism, he claims that the
physicist-mathematician, Roger Boscovich, has taught us to “abjure the
belief in the last part of the earth that ‘stood fast,’” namely, the particleatom (BGE ). Although there is no mention of force in the passage, we
know from Nietzsche’s letters that he appeals to Boscovich’s work to claim
that everything is force (KSB : ).
The ontology of force that Nietzsche finds in Boscovich forms the basis
for his claim that the world is will to power. In BGE , the interpretation
of scientific forces as wills to power is explicit: Nietzsche presents a series of
propositions that would, if true, give him the right to “determine all
efficient force univocally as—will to power.” In relationship to
Schopenhauer’s critique of naturalism, the significance of this transformation cannot be overlooked. Specifically, Nietzsche responds to
Schopenhauer’s charge that forces are explanatorily vacuous not by introducing a numerically distinct metaphysical entity like Schopenhauer’s will
to do this explanatory work, but rather by re-interpreting natural forces as
equally natural (non-metaphysical) wills to power. In the language of oftcited Nachlass notes from this period, Nietzsche is taking the “victorious
concept of ‘force’” from physics and ascribing an inner quality or world to
See Meyer (: -) for a further explication of this claim.
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Nietzsche’s Naturalism and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
it that he calls will to power (WP /KSA :[]; WP /KSA :
[]), and it is this inner quality that provides the explanatory principle
needed to complete the project of naturalism.
Let us now look at the eternal recurrence. To recall, Schopenhauer
claimed that the second problem facing the naturalist is that she could not
point to a beginning that explained the entire chain of causes and effects,
and this left the entire chain of events unexplained. That the cosmological
version of the eternal recurrence provides a response to this challenge
should go without saying. In short, the doctrine eliminates the need for
a beginning by conceiving of the events of the world as a self-explanatory
circle or a “ring of being that remains faithful to itself” (Z:III “The
Convalescent” ).
That Nietzsche was thinking in these terms can be substantiated by the
Nachlass. First, we know that Nietzsche’s attempted proofs for the doctrine – like his concept of the will to power – start from the scientific
concept of force. Nietzsche claims that if force is finite but time is infinite,
it follows that the course of events must repeat itself at some point (KSA
:[]; WP /KSA :[]). Second, Nietzsche states that this
“eternally self-creating, eternally self-destroying” world has no beginning
and no end (WP /KSA :[]). Thus, “we need not worry for a
moment about the hypothesis of a created world” because the world is
something that “becomes” and then “passes away” but “it has never begun
to become and never ceased from passing away” (WP /KSA :
[]). In short, the cosmological version of the eternal recurrence eliminates the need for a first cause of the natural world and thereby addresses
the second of the two objections Schopenhauer raises against naturalism.
Here some might be concerned that Nietzsche is hardly using science to
complete his naturalist program. Although the cosmological versions of
both the will to power and eternal recurrence are rooted in the scientific
concept of force, they nevertheless extend beyond what the natural sciences – either then or now – might justify. In response, one could argue
that the eternal recurrence can be inferred from the results of the natural
sciences, and one could point to evidence from biology to show how
Nietzsche might justify the will to power. However, I tend to think of
both ideas as conscious interpretations that are neither fully justified nor
contradicted by the natural sciences, and Nietzsche adopts these as preferred interpretations to put an end to the metaphysical-moral interpretation of existence and replace it with a naturalism that makes possible the
aesthetic affirmation of existence. As I have argued elsewhere (Meyer :
–), there are reasons for thinking that Nietzsche presents the will to
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power as a self-conscious interpretation of natural forces, and he acknowledges that events of the natural world can be interpreted in an alternative
fashion (BGE ). If we ask why Nietzsche chooses the will to power as an
explanatory principle rather than, say, laws of nature, it is because the will
to power most promotes life (BGE ). Although there is stronger evidence
that he thinks the eternal recurrence can be inferred from the results of the
natural sciences, Nietzsche presents the idea in a poetic context with an air
of mysticism (EH Z:; GS ) that arguably parallels his description of
Thales’ intuition that everything is water (PTAG ). Thus, even though
the idea might not be entirely justified by the results of the natural
sciences, we should nevertheless privilege the cosmological version of the
doctrine over other cosmologies because it eliminates the need for metaphysics, overcomes the moral interpretation of existence, and makes possible a complete affirmation of life.
.
The Naturalism of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
If this understanding of the relationship between Nietzsche’s naturalism
and the cosmological formulations of the will to power and the eternal
recurrence is correct, then we have reason to think that Zarathustra, the
work in which Nietzsche presents both ideas together for the first time, is
essential to Nietzsche’s naturalism. In this concluding section, I support
this claim by making two points. First, I provide evidence that Nietzsche
understands Zarathustra as the work in which the metaphysical-moral
tradition comes to an end. Although there could be other reasons why
Nietzsche associates Zarathustra with the overcoming of this tradition,
I think reading Zarathustra as a contribution to Nietzsche’s naturalism
provides the best explanation of these associations. I then argue that
Zarathustra is essential to Nietzsche’s naturalism because it provides a
dramatic portrayal of what it is like for the main character, Zarathustra,
to be naturalized by incorporating these ideas into his own being. As
I contend, naturalism has consequences for how Zarathustra understands
himself and his sense of agency, and it is only near the end of the drama in
Zarathustra III that he is prepared to accept the consequences of
his naturalism.
One important piece of evidence for the naturalist reading of
Zarathustra comes from Twilight of the Idols. There, Nietzsche provides
an account of how the so-called “true world” – and by this he means the
metaphysical world – became a fable. After listing a series of five stages,
some of which can be mapped onto the history of philosophy and others
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Nietzsche’s Naturalism and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
onto Nietzsche’s works, he describes a sixth and final stage in which the
distinction between the true and apparent world is abolished. Here, he
refers to both “noon” – a key motif in Zarathustra – and “INCIPIT
ZARATHUSTRA” (TI “Fable”). This latter phrase refers to the title of
the final aphorism of the edition of The Gay Science, “incipit
tragoedia,” in which Nietzsche first pens the opening lines of Zarathustra
(GS ). Taken together, this passage indicates that Zarathustra is the
work in which () the metaphysical tradition comes to an end, () the
distinction between the true and apparent world is abolished, and ()
the apparent or natural world now becomes the true world. Given that
Schopenhauer defines naturalism as a view that eliminates the appearancereality distinction and makes the apparent world into the real world, this
passage alone is sufficient to demonstrate that Nietzsche understands
Zarathustra to be a work of naturalism in Schopenhauer’s sense.
Turning to Zarathustra, we see that the work both assumes and then
furthers the rejection of metaphysics. The book begins with Zarathustra
descending from his cave, and after meeting the old saint in the forest,
he reveals something that the saint appears not to know: “God is dead”
(Z:I “Prologue” ). Although the death of God itself does not represent the
end of the metaphysical world – Schopenhauer is an example of an atheist
metaphysician – it is clear that God’s death, already announced in works
like The Wanderer (WS ) and The Gay Science (GS , ), represents a significant step in this direction. Zarathustra then presents his
teaching of the superhuman to the townspeople, commanding them to
“remain faithful to the earth” and not to “believe those who speak to you of
otherworldly hopes!” (Z:I “Prologue” ). Zarathustra further elaborates on
his rejection of the metaphysical world in “On the Afterworldly.” There,
he explains how the belief in a metaphysical Hinterworld arises from
dissatisfaction with our selves (Z:I “On the Afterworldly”).
As we have seen, Schopenhauer thinks that the destruction of metaphysics also entails the destruction of morality, and Nietzsche understands
Zarathustra as a work that goes “beyond good and evil.” In Ecce Homo, he
explains that he chose the figure of Zarathustra to undo what the historical
Zoroaster did, namely, transpose good and evil into the metaphysical
machinery of things. In contrast, Zarathustra is the “annihilator of morality” (EH “Books” ), who executes a self-overcoming of morality out of
See Meyer (: –) for such an account. See Clark (: –) for an alternative account.
Nietzsche originally planned to have Zarathustra, not the “madman,” announce God’s death in The
Gay Science (KSA :–).
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truthfulness (EH “Destiny” ). In a later Nachlass note, entitled, “The
Great Noon,” Nietzsche asks, “why Zarathustra?” And he answers, “the
great self-overcoming of morality” (KSA :[]).
That Zarathustra occupies this amoral standpoint is also suggested by a
range of textual evidence. In the poem, “Sils Maria” from The Gay Science,
Nietzsche presents Zarathustra as emerging from “beyond good and evil.”
In “Before Sunrise,” Zarathustra states that “all things have been baptized
in the well of eternity and are beyond good and evil; and good and evil
themselves are but intervening shadows and damp depressions” (Z:III
“Before Sunrise”). Near the end of Zarathustra III, life tells Zarathustra
that they have found their island and green meadow “beyond good and
evil” (Z:III “The Other Dancing Song”), and in “The Retired,” the old
pope tells Zarathustra that his “overgreat honesty will yet lead you beyond
good and evil” (Z:IV “The Retired”).
One of the primary functions of the will to power in Zarathustra is to
provide a naturalistic explanation of the origin of good and evil. In its first
appearance in the text, Zarathustra claims that “a tablet of the good hangs
over every people” which represents their “overcomings” and “the voice of
their will to power” (Z:I “On the Thousand and One Goals”). In its
second appearance, Zarathustra claims that “what the people believe to
be good and evil” betrays “an ancient will to power” (Z:II “On SelfOvercoming”). In short, the notion of the will to power plays an important
role in replacing metaphysical explanations with natural explanations of
morality, thereby moving us to a standpoint “beyond good and evil.”
We also know that Nietzsche connects the eternal recurrence with the
notion of “beyond good and evil.” In the aforementioned Nachlass note in
which Nietzsche proclaims that the world is will to power, he associates the
notion of “beyond good and evil” with an eternally recurring cosmos (WP
/KSA :[]). This conceptual link also appears in numerous
book and chapter titles for a project that eventually became Beyond Good
and Evil. In one note, we have a proposed book title of “The New
Enlightenment” with a subtitle, “Toward a Philosophy of the Eternal
Recurrence,” and a chapter title, “Beyond Good and Evil” (KSA :
[]). In another note, we find “The Eternal Recurrence” as a book title
with “Beyond Good and Evil” as a section title (KSA :[]).
In another, “Beyond Good and Evil” is the title of the book, and
“A Prelude to a Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence” is the subtitle
(KSA :[]).
Thus, Nietzsche clearly associates Zarathustra and the doctrines
expressed therein with the overcoming of the metaphysical-moral
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Nietzsche’s Naturalism and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
tradition. Given that naturalism is the antipode to both metaphysics and
Schopenhauer’s life-denying morality, these associations provide good
reasons for thinking that Zarathustra is essential to Nietzsche’s naturalism.
Nevertheless, such a reading of Zarathustra still leaves us wondering why
Nietzsche would embed these doctrines in a dramatic work of poetry or
literature that he associates with the genre of tragedy (GS ). The
answer, I think, lies in the fact that naturalism also entails a form of
necessity that undermines free will, and this is a consequence that
Zarathustra – like Oedipus – finds difficult to accept.
To see why this is the case, we can again turn to Schopenhauer’s
concerns about the implications of naturalism. According to
Schopenhauer, a metaphysical notion of the thing-in-itself is a necessary
condition for the kind of freedom needed to deny the will. For
Schopenhauer, the natural world is governed by the principle of sufficient
reason and is therefore the realm of necessity. Indeed, Schopenhauer
denies that we have any sort of freedom or liberum arbitrium indifferentiae
to determine who we are or what we do within this realm. Our characters
are fixed in advanced, and everything we do follows from who we are.
However, Schopenhauer argues that there is a freedom associated with the
“will-in-itself” in which metaphysical knowledge can act as a quieter of the
will. By going beyond the principle of sufficient reason, knowledge opens
up a realm of freedom that Schopenhauer calls the “kingdom of grace.”
This sort of freedom makes it possible to deny the will, and it is through
this act of freedom that one is “reborn” as a “new man” who now
renounces both the will and the world (WWR I:).
If, however, we reject metaphysics and therefore the metaphysical basis
for freedom, we are only left with nature or what Schopenhauer calls the
realm of necessity, and we must confront the fact that we are destined to
become the very characters that we are. We can neither change the details
of who we are nor engage in a metaphysical denial of the will. In my view,
it is precisely these fatalistic consequences of naturalism that Zarathustra
initially finds so hard to accept, and it is Zarathustra’s initial reluctance but
then ultimate acceptance of his role as the teacher of the eternal recurrence
that constitutes the drama of Zarathustra.
Indeed, it has long been noted by commentators that the cosmological
version of the eternal recurrence can be connected to the notions of
necessity and fate. However, scholars such as Ivan Soll () and Bernd
Magnus () have objected to the cosmological version of the eternal
recurrence for precisely this reason. On their reading, the ethical or
existential version of the eternal recurrence is supposed to intensify “the
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dynamics of choice” (Clark : ), and the fatalism implied by the
cosmological version undermines these dynamics. This is especially true if,
as Paul Loeb has argued (: –), there is no first cycle in which the
choices I make determine the course of events that will be repeated
infinitely. Instead, for any iteration of the cycle, what I am going to do
has already been done, and there is no sense in which I can undo or alter
this sequence of events. In this way, the cycle of events eternally is what it
is and cannot be otherwise.
In contrast to those who think that the disjunction between ethical
decision-making and the deterministic or fatalistic implications of the
eternal recurrence cosmology are good reasons to reject the cosmological
reading, I think this disjunction simply reinforces the idea that Nietzsche
intends the cosmological version to take us beyond a morality of good and
evil and the conception of agency that underlies this morality (GM I:).
That Nietzsche links the eternal recurrence to the concept of necessity is
suggested by GS , and this is supported by numerous notes from the
Nachlass, most notably in variants to GS (KSA :[]) and GS
(KSA :[]). That Nietzsche links the eternal recurrence to the notion
of fate is evidenced by the placement of the eternal recurrence and amor
fati in the fourth book of The Gay Science. Whereas the book begins
with the task of learning to love fate and thereby becoming a “yes-sayer”
(GS ), the book ends with the presentation of the eternal recurrence
(GS ) and the tragedy of Zarathustra (GS ). Thus, if there is any
sort of existential task associated with the eternal recurrence, it lies in
learning to love oneself (GS ; ZIII: “On the Spirit of Gravity”) and
one’s fate (GS ). Indeed, this is just what a Nietzschean tragedy would
be: after some initial reluctance and even outright resistance, a tragic hero
like Zarathustra must come to terms with his fate and the world.
Another, yet related, way of construing the drama of Zarathustra is to
think of it as a process in which Zarathustra is “naturalized” by accepting
his role as the teacher of the eternal recurrence and thereby “incorporating”
the doctrine into his soul (KSA :[]; GS ). In my view,
Zarathustra’s incorporation of the eternal recurrence amounts to his “going
under” (Z:III “The Convalescent” ) and even his “death.” However, his
death is not to be understood in biological terms. Instead, it is a death of a
Elsewhere, Nietzsche links amor fati to the love of necessity (GS ; KSA :[]), wanting
nothing to be different for eternity (EH “Clever” ), and wanting “the eternal cycle” (WP /
KSA :[]).
See Loeb () for an important reading that stresses the death of Zarathustra but construes this
death differently.
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Nietzsche’s Naturalism and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
non-naturalized conception of oneself and one’s agency. In short, it is the
death of a self in which the agent believes she can stand above or outside
nature and control it. At the same time, Nietzsche seems to associate the
transformation that occurs with the incorporation of the eternal recurrence
with the old–new man dynamic that Schopenhauer finds in Christianity
and attributes to his own philosophy. However, the “new man” that
emerges from Zarathustra’s incorporation of the eternal recurrence is not
Schopenhauer’s will-denying ascetic but rather the child foreshadowed in
Zarathustra’s first speech, “On the Three Metamorphoses.”
Evidence for connecting the teaching of the eternal recurrence to the
child can be found in the first presentation of the eternal recurrence in the
Nachlass. There, Nietzsche explains that by incorporating the eternal
recurrence we place ourselves as children before that which previously
constituted “the seriousness of existence” (KSA :[]). One essential
feature of the child is the ability to play, and, in his earlier works, Nietzsche
connects the child to both the cycle of creation and destruction exhibited
in tragedy (BT ) and the ability to find “play in necessity” (PTAG ).
The other essential feature of the child is its “innocence.” In the
Nachlass, Nietzsche associates the eternal recurrence with “the play of life”
and “necessity and innocence” (KSA :[]). In his earlier works,
Nietzsche contrasts the innocent play of the child with Schopenhauer
and Anaximander’s moral condemnation of the world: “In this world only
play, play as artists and children engage in it, exhibits coming-to-be and
passing away, structuring and destroying, without any moral additive, in
forever equal innocence” (PTAG ). In “On the Three Metamorphoses,”
Zarathustra explains that “the child is innocence, a new beginning, a game,
a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred ‘Yes’” (Z:I “On the Three
Metamorphoses).
In Zarathustra, we can see the innocent play of the child as the antithesis
to the moral seriousness represented by the “spirit of gravity,” an attitude
that Zarathustra overcomes by accepting his fate as the teacher of the
eternal recurrence. Understanding Zarathustra as a work that moves us to a
childlike state of innocence beyond good and evil is what we would expect
if, as I have argued, Nietzsche agrees with Schopenhauer about the
consequences that naturalism has for morality and constructs Zarathustra
to complete the project of naturalism. By teaching the cosmological
versions of the will to power and the eternal recurrence, Nietzsche understands Zarathustra as bringing the metaphysical tradition to an end. At the
Also see Seung (: xviii).
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same time, the destruction of the metaphysical world entails the destruction of a moral interpretation of existence that condemns this world for
failing to live up to what it ought to be. In this way, the naturalism of
Zarathustra restores “the innocence of becoming” (TI “Errors” ) and
makes possible a complete affirmation of existence in which one “wants
to have what was and is repeated into all eternity” (BGE ). So understood, we can begin to see why Nietzsche attributed such significance to
Zarathustra and why it would be a mistake for those who read Nietzsche as
a naturalist to marginalize the work and the ideas contained therein.
Thanks to Keith Ansell-Pearson, Kaitlyn Creasy, Ian Dunkle, Chris Janaway, Scott Jenkins, Paul
Katsafanas, Paul Loeb, Allison Merrick, Mark Migotti, Alexander Prescott-Couch, and Justin
Remhof for comments on an earlier draft.
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Nietzsche’s Solution to the Philosophical
Problem of Change
Paul S. Loeb
My topic in this chapter is Nietzsche’s claim to have provided a new
solution to the problem of change that sparked the ancient Greek invention of philosophy and that has preoccupied philosophers ever since.
According to this problem, there is a dilemma involved in our attempt
to understand the nature of change. On the one hand, suppose we claim,
as Aristotle first did in his response to Parmenides (Physics I.–), that
there is always some underlying subject of change that stays the same
throughout the change. In that case, as process philosophers have argued,
it would appear that we are contradicting ourselves by using the absence of
change to explain the pervasive and fundamental reality of change. On the
other hand, suppose we claim that there is no such continuous subject of
change and that nothing ever stays the same in any respect whatsoever. In
that case, as Plato first objected against the Heracliteans, it would appear
that we are conceding our inability to understand the phenomenon of
change. This is because we cannot identify what comes before or after the
change, much less re-identify what comes after the change in terms of what
comes before the change. Throughout his early career, Nietzsche rejected
the first horn of the dilemma and embraced the second. But he could not
find a way to respond to Plato’s objection until August , when he
claimed to have discovered that all change is not just “absolute” (as he puts
See for example James (), Chapter XV; Bergson (), Chapter VI; Whitehead (), Part II,
Chapter X; Deleuze (), Chapter I.
See Theaetetus a, Cratylus a–b; Aristotle, Metaphysics a, a, b.
See PPP (: , –, –); PTAG (: –); HL (: ); HH (–, , –,
). For some discussion, see Poellner (: –), Richardson (: ff.), Welshon (:
–, –), Small (: ff.). Most philosophers today (cf. Gallois []) cite common
sense and ordinary experience as reasons for embracing the first horn of the dilemma. But see
Nietzsche’s argument below that these are both intellectual constructs which incorporate the lifeand species-preserving projective error of diachronic self-identity.
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it), but also eternally recurring. What he means by this is that nothing
ever stays the same in any way from one moment to the next, but also that
everything – including this succession and sequence of moments – stays
exactly the same from one cycle of the eternally recurring cosmos to the
next. Thus, there is always a recurring synchronic sameness in the midst of
absolute diachronic change that allows us to identify and re-identify what
comes before and after any change. In this way, Nietzsche concludes, we
are able to avoid contradiction and incoherence in our philosophical
understanding of change.
In what follows, I show how Nietzsche expressed and defended these
points in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. As helpful clarifying context, I also cite
some of the notes he wrote while exploring his new thought of eternal
recurrence and while composing this book. First, I outline those places in
which Nietzsche asserts the reality of absolute diachronic change while at
the same time proposing an error theory of diachronic sameness. Second,
I examine his presentation of a new cosmological truth concerning the
eternal repetition of all absolute diachronic change. And, finally, I discuss
those places in which Nietzsche claims that this new truth entails a new
concept of synchronic self-identity that solves the philosophical problem of
change. Since Zarathustra is a fictional book that dramatizes the narrative
arc of the protagonist’s engagement with his thought of eternal recurrence,
my exposition concentrates on two sets of passages: () Zarathustra’s
announcement at the end of Part II that the reality of absolute diachronic
change is the single most important philosophical problem; and ()
Zarathustra’s anticipation at the end of Part II, and his confirmation at
the start of Part III, that his thought of eternal recurrence is the key to
solving this problem.
. Eternal Flux
There are four chapters in Zarathustra where Nietzsche makes general
assertions about the reality of diachronic change. These are, in the order in
which they appear, “Upon the Blessed Isles,” “On Redemption,” “On the
Vision and the Riddle,” and “On Old and New Tablets.” In the first of
Nietzsche uses the phrases “absolut Fluss,” “absolut Werden,” and “absolut Bewegung,” in his
unpublished notes. See, for example, KSA :[, , ], KSA :[], KSA :[].
See the Introduction to this anthology as to why the fictional form of Nietzsche’s book does not in
any way undermine his endorsement of the views he attributes to his protagonist. In Loeb and
b, I argue that this fictional form reinforces Zarathustra’s teaching of eternal recurrence through
a narrative depiction of his eternally recurring life.
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Nietzsche’s Solution to the Philosophical Problem of Change
these, Zarathustra says that the best allegories should speak of time and
becoming and should be a praise and vindication of all impermanence. At
the same time, he rejects the idea of diachronic sameness by attacking
those who teach concepts of permanence as well as those who claim that
time does not really exist and that all impermanence is actually a lie. In this
speech, however, Zarathustra confines himself to speaking of what is
healthy, beneficial, and necessary for humans to think about, especially
creative types who are always in the process of being transformed, giving
birth, and perishing. However, in his later speech on redemption,
Nietzsche goes on to suggest that these best allegories actually describe
the nature of reality. Here Zarathustra introduces the idea of time’s “it was,”
meaning that everything is always changing and passing away. He also
describes it as the view that time does not run backward, meaning that it
flows in only one direction, from the past to the present and into the
future. In an allusion to the ancient Greek mythological figure of Kronos,
he says that time is greedy and devours its own children, meaning that time
kills every present moment to which it gives birth by consigning it to
the past.
Next, in his speech on old and new tablets, Zarathustra alludes to
Heraclitus’ famous river fragments and offers a brief metaphorical argument for the universality of diachronic flux. Because we compare a flowing
river to the fixed timbers that span it and to the firm footbridges and
railings that leap over it, and because we see even the river stop flowing
when it turns to ice during the winter, we mistakenly suppose that there is
no credibility to the view that everything is always in flux. Indeed, in
another attack on the idea of diachronic sameness, Zarathustra explains
that this temporary seasonal change is the source of the false teaching that
basically everything stands still. Soon enough, however, the seasons change
again and the thawing wind arrives and then the ice breaks and melts,
causing even the ice-encrusted footbridges and railings to break and to fall
into the river that is now flowing again, thus revealing the true reality of
universal diachronic flux.
Finally, in the chapter entitled “On the Vision and the Riddle,”
Nietzsche makes it clear that he regards all change as absolute and eternal,
that is, as happening at every moment and in every respect for all eternity.
This dialogue is centered around Zarathustra’s vision of a gateway named
The following translations are consulted in this chapter: CWFN (, , , forthcoming);
GS (, ); HL (); JS (); SE (); WLN (); WP (, ); Z (, ,
, , forthcoming).
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“Moment” that has two faces, one pointing ahead and one pointing
behind. There are also two long and seemingly eternal lanes that extend
on either side of the gateway and that seem to collide and contradict each
other inside the gateway. This idea of a contradiction is somewhat obscure
and has provoked a lot of debate, but I think Nietzsche just has in mind
his concept of change. As he explains in a contemporaneous note:
“Everything has two faces: one of passing away, one of coming into being”
(KSA :[]). Since he (along with the philosophical tradition) defines
change in terms of passing away and coming into being, this note just
means that everything is always changing. The gateway thus represents the
present moment in which change happens, the lane behind represents
the past into which everything passes away, and the lane ahead represents
the future where everything comes into being. Hence, inside the gateway
of the present moment, where these two lanes meet, there appears to be a
collision and a contradiction between passing away and coming into being.
According to Zarathustra, this constant change in every present moment is
true of anything that is able to run on the lanes and of anything that is able
to happen – by which he just means, anything that is able to come into
being and pass away. As examples, he offers himself and his archenemy
who are whispering together inside the gateway, along with the slow spider
crawling in the moonlight, and the moonlight itself. Moreover,
Zarathustra adds, even this gateway itself is something that is able to run
on the lanes – meaning that every present moment is also constantly
changing, that is, coming into being and passing away in order to make
way for a new present moment.
These are the Zarathustra places, then, where Nietzsche asserts the
reality of universal, eternal, and absolute diachronic change. But what
are Nietzsche’s reasons for this assertion? Some scholars have suggested
that Nietzsche thinks this reality is shown by the empirical evidence of our
senses, as perhaps extended through the discoveries of the natural sciences. However, Nietzsche criticizes this idea in his contemporaneous
notes by arguing that our senses, even when empowered and extended by
the natural sciences, are in no way acute enough to detect the reality of
radical flux. Indeed, he argues, our senses, and also the natural sciences that
incorporate our intellectual constructs, actually lead us to project into
reality a kind of diachronic sameness that does not exist there at all.
See for example Meyer (: –).
See, for example, KSA :[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []. As a remedy,
Nietzsche advises the improvement of the natural sciences through the methodological correction of
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Nietzsche’s Solution to the Philosophical Problem of Change
Hence, if we want to gain insight into this reality, the best we can do is
systematically subtract from our conception of reality as much of this
projective error as possible. As we have seen, this is the kind of reasoning
that Nietzsche proposes in Zarathustra. So it is not the case, as many
scholars assume, that Nietzsche begins by assuming the self-evident reality
of radical flux and then rejects our concepts of diachronic sameness
because they falsify this reality. Instead, he begins by systematically criticizing all these concepts of diachronic sameness as involving projective
error, until eventually – through a kind of extrapolated via negativa – he
arrives at the reality of universal, eternal and absolute diachronic change.
In the “Redemption” chapter that is placed halfway through the book,
Zarathustra delivers a speech that identifies this reality as the source of the
most difficult existential problem facing humankind. The problem, he
says, is that human beings (like all living creatures) strive to exert their
power over everything they can but are unable to do so with respect to
what lies in the past. Although he does not mention it here, Nietzsche’s
background assumption, which he emphasizes earlier in HL and later in
GM II:–, is that their mnemonic abilities allow humans to recognize a
realm over which they have no control, that is, the realm of the past into
which everything passes away. This feeling of impotence causes them great
suffering and leads them to seek a displaced revenge wherever they can.
When transposed into intellectual terms, these vengeful feelings drive
them into thinking that they suffer in this way because they deserve it,
that their existence is a kind of punishment, and that the only thing left for
them to do is to stop trying to influence and control anything at all.
According to Zarathustra, these are all insane and foolish responses to the
problem posed by the reality of absolute diachronic change. What is
needed instead, he implies, is a sane and wise response to this problem.
It is thus his task to show how human beings can find redemption,
salvation, or liberation from the flux of things (die Erlösung vom Fluss der
Dinge) and in this way be rid of their feelings of impotence and vengefulness. The proper solution, he says, would be to teach them how they can
feel in control of their remembered past despite the irreversible forward
direction of time. And the key to doing this, he explains next, is his
their anthropomorphic projective errors, as for example with Boscovich’s replacement of material
atoms with centers of dynamic force (cf. BGE , KSA :[, ]; Letter to Köselitz, March
, KSB : –). Indeed, Nietzsche argues, de-anthropomorphism has always been the
essence of the scientific method, but up to now it has not been deliberately, systematically, or
comprehensively applied.
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discovery that all absolute diachronic change is identically and
eternally repeating.
.
Eternal Repetition
Nietzsche includes strong intimations of the doctrine of eternal recurrence
at the end of Part II of Zarathustra, but it is only in Part III that he offers a
full and explicit treatment of this doctrine. In fact, Nietzsche shows
Zarathustra unveiling this doctrine in just the same place where he most
fully asserts the reality of universal, eternal, and absolute diachronic
change—in the chapter entitled “On the Vision and the Riddle.”
Nietzsche’s basic reasoning here is quite simple and is one that he repeatedly invokes in his notes from until the end of his career. If we
assume that an eternity lies in the past, then it must be the case that all
possible changes have already occurred. Thus, any change we are observing
at this present moment must have already happened at some point in the
eternal past. Now, since any change is by definition a coming to be and
passing away, it follows that whatever passed away during that change in
the eternal past must have come back into being during this present
moment. Hence, we can also infer that whatever is passing away during
the change we are observing in the present moment will eventually come
back into being at some point in the future. And since this general
argument can be recursively applied, it follows that all change is eternally
recurring. As an example, Zarathustra cites the present moment in which
he is whispering this proof to his archenemy: this event must have
happened already in the eternal past and hence must happen again in
the future, and eternally so.
.. Qualitative Identity
Nietzsche’s reasoning becomes more complex when we consider more
closely his associated ideas about identity and temporality. In the first
place, he insists that the recurring changes in the eternal past, in the
present moment, and in the future, are all identically the same. But the
sense of identity he has in mind cannot be numerical, since by definition
these changes all involve a coming back into existence (Wiederkehr,
Wiederkunft) of that which has passed away. Instead, then, he has to
Nietzsche’s frequent use of the term “repetition” (Wiederholung) to describe his doctrine (cf. EH BT:) also
rules out numerical identity. Moreover, Nietzsche’s claim in JS and in Z:III “Convalescent” that
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Nietzsche’s Solution to the Philosophical Problem of Change
mean qualitative identity, and this means that he denies Leibniz’s principle
of the identity of indiscernibles. Or rather, he claims that the truth of
cosmological eternal recurrence shows that reality does not conform to this
logical principle.
Second, there is the question of when exactly these recurring changes
happen in relation to each other. The usual interpretation is that Nietzsche
thinks there are sequential cycles located in some kind of absolute or substantival time wherein the recurring changes follow each other by vast periods of
intervening time. So, for example, the idea would be that Zarathustra’s
encounter with his archenemy in the present moment has already happened
eons earlier and must happen again eons later, and so on. In terms of the Stoic
terminology that Nietzsche himself introduces in the “Convalescent” chapter,
the idea is that this encounter has already happened one “great year” earlier in
absolute time and must happen again one “great year” later in absolute time,
and so on. However, this cannot be right because it would mean that the
recurring changes are not qualitatively identical after all, since they would be
differentiated by their sequential positions in absolute time. Also, Nietzsche is
clear throughout his career that he dismisses the concept of absolute time as an
anthropomorphic projective error.
So it must be the case instead that the recurring changes are synchronic,
that is, they all happen at the same time. Again, however, this sameness has
to mean qualitative identity, not numerical identity. For the temporal
moments in which the changes happen are also changing and recurring
in the sense that they themselves come back into existence after they have
passed away. Moreover, it would be a contradiction to say that numerically
distinct temporal moments – the moment in the eternal past, the present
moment, and the moment in the future – are numerically identical. But
what does it mean to say that numerically distinct temporal moments are
qualitatively identical? Since there is no absolute time, this can only
everything must be repeated in exactly the same way down to the smallest detail only makes sense if he has
qualitative identity in mind. In an important preparatory note for the “Convalescent” chapter, Zarathustra
explicitly excludes numerical identity when he says that his doctrine “has not yet been taught on earth: that
is, on this particular earth and in this particular great year” (KSA :[], CWFN [: ]). For further
discussion, see Loeb ().
See, for example, Soll (: , , ); Magnus (: ); Clark (: –);
Reginster (: ); Ure (: –); Richardson (: n. ).
See for example Gooding-Williams (: ).
Thus, contrary to Leibniz and those who follow his lead, Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternally recurring
qualitative identity includes what are now called “extrinsic” properties just as much as “intrinsic”
properties (a distinction which is excluded by Nietzsche’s metaphysics of relational forces). See Loeb
() for an extended textual analysis of this point with respect to temporal moments. Also, in the
“Convalescent” chapter Zarathustra says that he must return to the identical spatial location (this sun, this
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mean that they have identical relations to other moments in time. Thus, if
the present moment is located exactly halfway through the sequence of
moments that constitute one great year, then the moment that has already
happened must be located exactly halfway through its respective great year,
and the moment that returns in the future must be located exactly halfway
through its respective great year. And of course these great years must all be
qualitatively identical to each other in the sense that they are constituted of
exactly the same vast number of temporal moments that are arranged in
exactly the same succession and sequence. In sum, all these recurring
moments share the qualitatively identical location in each of the qualitatively
identical great-year cycles and are for that reason not occurring at any
differentiating earlier or later positions in some kind of absolute time.
..
Circular Time
Here, then, we arrive at the part of Nietzsche’s formulation that is the most
difficult, obscure, and controversial – both exegetically and philosophically. Up to this point in his career Nietzsche had believed that all change
happens in linear time. So here he constructs Zarathustra’s proof of eternal
recurrence in such a way that we are led to understand his shift to a new
conception of circular time. Thus, he begins by telling his archenemy that
there is an eternal duration in each of the two lanes that meet and
contradict each other inside the gateway. He also tells him that no one
has traveled either of these lanes to the end, but then asks him what would
happen if someone did travel much further down either one of the lanes.
Would the two lanes eternally contradict each other? His implication is
that there is actually some point incredibly far away from the gateway
where they no longer contradict each other. This is because the lanes curve
around and join together to form a single circular running lane – or as he
elsewhere calls it, a circular course (Kreislauf) – that is enormous but still
finite in extent and that starts and finishes at the same place. In response,
Zarathustra’s archenemy murmurs contemptuously: all that is straight lies,
all truth is bent, time itself is a circle. Nietzsche’s point here, usually lost on
commentators, is that this response does indeed confirm what Zarathustra
was implying. The only reason Zarathustra rejects this response is that he
thinks his archenemy, the spirit of gravity, is making things too easy for
earth), thus ruling out Georg Simmel’s famous analogy of recurrence-duplicates living in qualitatively
identical but spatially distant worlds (Simmel :; see also Magnus : ; and Clark :
). Thanks to Scott Jenkins for his question on these issues.
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Nietzsche’s Solution to the Philosophical Problem of Change
himself – or quite literally, too light (leicht), too weightless. What he means
by this is that his archenemy’s contemptuous attitude, and the language he
uses, show that he is trying to avoid being crushed by the weight of
thinking his own eternal recurrence. He is doing so by adopting a
God’s-eye transcendent perspective that is contemptuous of all immanent
reality. This is the kind of perspective which, as we have seen from the
“Blessed Isles” chapter, involves the claim that time does not really exist
and that everything impermanent is actually a lie. Yes, the dwarf agrees, the
time of immanent reality is circular, but this does not bother him because
he believes that time does not exist in the true world of the one, the
plenum, the unmoved, and the everlasting.
There is also strong further evidence that Zarathustra is endorsing the
view that time is a circle, despite his rejection of his archenemy’s mouthing
of this view. By contrast with his archenemy, Zarathustra presents himself
as an advocate of the circle when he is calling forth his thought of eternal
recurrence (Z:III “Convalescent” ); he proclaims his love of the ring of
rings, the ring of eternal recurrence (Z:III “Seven Seals”); and he is stung
by the thought of the golden round ring (Z:IV “Noon”). In addition,
Zarathustra says that every ring strives and turns to reach itself once again
(Z:II “On the Virtuous”); and he whispers to the superior men about
the ring’s will wrestling in the joy that wants itself, that bites into itself
(Z:IV “Sleepwalker’s Song” ). Similarly, Zarathustra’s animals sing
about the bent path of eternity, about the wheel of being that rolls
eternally, and about the ring of being that remains eternally loyal to itself
(Z:III “Convalescent” ). And Nietzsche himself, when writing in his own
voice in the books that came after Zarathustra, explains eternal recurrence
with the concept of a circulus vitiosus deus (BGE ) and defines it as the
unconditioned and infinitely repeated circulation of all things (EH BT:).
Even in the unpublished notes that seem intended just for his own
consumption, Nietzsche repeatedly writes about the flux of things turning
back into itself and constantly refers to eternal recurrence as a circular
process. Perhaps the clearest evidence is this note, written shortly after
discovering his thought of eternal recurrence, in which he describes the law
of the circle as a primordial law that has always existed and that applies
without exception to everything that is ever-changing within the circle:
Let us beware of ascribing to this circulation any kind of striving, any kind
of goal; or of assessing it, in keeping with our needs, as boring, stupid, etc.
For more support of this reading, see Loeb (: –).
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Certainly it includes the highest degree of irrationality just as much as the
opposite: but it is not to be measured according to this, rationality or
irrationality are not predicates for the universe. Let us beware of thinking
of the law of this circle as having come into being, in keeping with the false
analogy of circular motion within the ring: there was not a chaos in the first
place and afterward, gradually, a more harmonious and finally a fixed
circular movement of all forces: rather, everything is eternal, not having
come into being: if there was a chaos of forces, then the chaos too was
eternal and recurred in every ring. The circulation is not something that has
come into being, it is the primordial law, just as the amount of force is the
primordial law, without exception and without violation. All becoming is
within the circulation and the amount of force; therefore the circulations
that come into being and pass away, e.g. the stars or ebb and flood day and
night seasons, are not to be applied by false analogy as characteristics of the
eternal circulation. (KSA :[]; see also KSA :[])
Let us suppose, then, that Zarathustra’s exposition in the “Vision and
Riddle” chapter is supposed to show that eternal recurrence requires a
circular conception of time. Why does Nietzsche think this is the case?
The answer, again, has to do with identity and temporality. Even if we
leave aside the idea of time as absolute, a relational time that is linear still
excludes the possibility of qualitative identity among recurring changes.
This is because the only way to make sense of the idea of a series of
recurring great-year cycles in an infinitely extending straight linear time
is to think of them as qualitatively different from each other in terms of
their sequential place in this linear time. And this difference will ensure that
the recurring moments, despite their identical locations within their
respective great-year cycles, will still be qualitatively different. For example,
since the sequential order of the great years is fixed and invariable, any
moment in the great year preceding our own great year cannot be identical
to the recurring moment in the year following our great year. This is a
perfectly general argument that can be applied to any moments at all
anywhere in the entire chain of moments that constitutes any great-year
cycle. And if no recurring moments can be qualitatively identical, then
neither can any recurring changes that happen in these recurring moments.
Hence, given a linear conception of relational time, eternal recurrence
is impossible.
By contrast, if we assume a relational time that is circular, there is still a
fixed and invariant sequence of great-year cycles. But now each great-year
cycle begins and ends with a full circular rotation. This means that all the
great-year cycles are exactly superimposed on each other and, consequently, that all the moments that constitute each great-year cycle are
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Nietzsche’s Solution to the Philosophical Problem of Change
always in exactly the same position on the circle. Hence, all the recurring
moments are qualitatively identical in every way, which means that all the
recurring changes that happen in these recurring moments can be qualitatively identical. Some scholars have argued that this conception is
incoherent because it covertly presupposes a linear time in which we are
keeping track of all the completed circular rotations. But this objection
ignores Nietzsche’s insistence that the moments of time come into being
only within the circle itself and that there is no God’s-eye point of view
from which to view these moments outside the circle. Moreover, these
immanent moments of time within the circle itself cannot be used to keep
track of any completed circular rotations. This is because there is a finite
number of such moments in any great year and the last of these moments
at the end of each completed rotation is followed by a recurring first
moment at the start of each new rotation. In other words, time is
restarted at the end of each great year and therefore cannot be used to
measure any accumulation of great years. It is certainly true that these
great-year cycles, as recorded by completed rotations around the circle, are
numerically distinct (otherwise they would not be recurring), but this does
not entail that they are temporally distinct (see Loeb ).
One helpful way to track Nietzsche’s shift in thinking from linear time
to circular time is to compare this account with his earlier discussion of the
Pythagorean doctrine of eternal recurrence (HL ). Using the now controversial example of Columbus’ discovery of America, Nietzsche explains
that the Pythagoreans believed in the following idea. Whenever the stars in
the heavens stand in an identical configuration, the event of Columbus’
discovery is identically repeated on earth, down to the most individual and
most minute detail. The earth, he writes, always begins its theatrical play
all over again after the final act, and the event of Columbus’ discovery
In Loeb (), I argue that this means that every moment is “colossal” (ungeheuer) in the sense that
it must contain within itself its own infinite repetition.
In his attempt to refute Nietzsche’s proof of cosmological eternal recurrence, Welshon finally
concedes that Nietzsche’s assumption of circular recurring time is sufficient to sustain this proof,
but then simply claims that “rejecting the linearity of time is an extraordinarily high price to pay,
and there is no reason, either philosophical or scientific, for paying it” (: ).
See for example Small (: ).
Notice that there are also a finite number of moments in each completed great year segment of
linear time. There is no contradiction between this finitude and the premise of infinite time in
Nietzsche’s proof of eternal recurrence (see Section ..). This is because the moments will simply
keep coming into existence as needed until all the (finite number of ) possible combinations have
been realized – after which the moments and the combinations start repeating. There is no preexisting substantival container of infinite moments waiting to be filled in with possible
combinations. Thanks to Ian Dunkle for this question.
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identically recurs at those fixed intervals in which there is a return of the
identical constellation of celestial bodies. Here, then, is Nietzsche’s presentation of a theory of eternal recurrence that presupposes a temporality
that is both absolute and linear. Time is absolute because it is determined
by the positions of the stars and, according to the Pythagoreans, these stars
are unchangeable and endure forever. And time is linear because the fixed
intervals of time that separate the identical reconfigurations of the stars are
sequentially fixed in an infinitely extending straight line. However, from
Nietzsche’s later and more careful perspective, this means that Columbus’
discovery of America is not identically repeated down to the most individual and most minute detail. If we suppose that the stars return to their
configurations every great year, then the last time Columbus discovered
America in is one great year earlier in the expanse of absolute time
recorded by enduring existence of the stars. So his discovery in that earlier
great year is not temporally identical to his discovery in our current great
year. Moreover, since the last time Columbus discovered America has to
precede but not follow our own historical era, while the next time has to
follow but not precede our own historical era, it turns out that these
recurring events cannot be temporally identical.
..
Negative Cosmology
In Nietzsche’s view, then, previous theories of eternal recurrence, such as
that of the Pythagoreans, did not actually entail that all changes are
identically repeated. This is because they presupposed a conception of
time as linear rather than circular. Supposing this is right, we still need to
ask what are Nietzsche’s reasons for thinking that all changes are indeed
identically repeated. A lot of ink has been spilled on this question, most of
it having to do with the proofs Nietzsche outlined in his notebooks, and
most of it concluding – in line with Georg Simmel’s alleged refutation –
that these proofs are inadequate. The problem is that all this discussion
simply omits to mention the methodological argument that Nietzsche
offered in his first published unveiling of his theory in Section of
The Joyful Science. This argument provides crucial context for the proofs
that Nietzsche outlines in his notes and shows why Simmel’s alleged
refutation does not work.
Immediately following his announcement at the start of Book III that
the Christian God has become unbelievable (JS , ), Nietzsche
For further discussion, see Loeb (b).
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proceeds in JS to outline a new methodological argument for dispelling all the remnants of this belief. Because he thinks that this belief in God
is an enormous projective error that has led us to anthropomorphize the
cosmos as a whole, his new method consists in a systematic identification
and withdrawal of all the remnants of this projective error (which he calls
“the shadows of God”). The result, he says, is that none of our aesthetic
and moral judgments apply to the cosmos a whole – which we now
discover to be “in all eternity chaos, in the sense not of a lack of necessity
but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever
other names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms” (JS ).
More specifically, Nietzsche argues, we will no longer anthropomorphically believe that the cosmos as a whole has a purpose or is constructed for
a purpose, that it is rational, or that it obeys any laws. Also, we will no
longer believe, from a biomorphic standpoint, that the whole cosmos is
like an organism or living creature that is expanding and growing, that it
has an instinct for self-preservation, or that it has a cycle of birth and death.
And finally, we will stop geocentrically projecting into this whole cosmos
the unique astral order in which we live, and we will no longer posit
generally and everywhere anything as exceptional as the cyclical movements of our neighboring stars.
In JS , then, Nietzsche describes what might be called a negative
cosmology, meaning that which is left over after all the remnants of the
deifying projective error have been withdrawn from our concept of the
cosmos as a whole. At the very end of his list of remnants, however,
Nietzsche singles out two more such errors that turn out to be essential
to his new doctrine of eternal recurrence. These are the ideas that the
world eternally creates new things and that there are eternally enduring
substances (such as matter or atoms). Both of these ideas are “shadows of
God”: the first derives from the theological assumption of a boundlessly
creative divine force, and the second derives from the theological assumption of an eternally enduring divine substance. We have already seen how
Nietzsche thinks that the second of these errors also depends upon the
projective error of diachronic sameness and that withdrawing this error
This new method should not be interpreted as part of the ascetic ideal whereby humankind belittles
itself and displaces itself from the center (GM III: ). To the contrary: by teaching humankind
how to reclaim the value-creating powers it had erroneously projected into anthropomorphic
divinities, or into the world as a whole, this method actually enhances humankind’s pride and
self-esteem (GS ) and is therefore a strong weapon against the ascetic ideal. Thanks to Matthew
Meyer for this question.
Nietzsche includes atoms in his preparatory note (KSA :).
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unveils a reality of universal, eternal, and absolute diachronic change.
However, his criticism of the first of these projective errors, eternal novelty,
leads him to say something completely new about this reality of change
and becoming, namely, that it is eternally repeated. This is why he says,
just a little bit earlier, that judged from the standpoint of reason the whole
music box eternally repeats its tune, a tune which may never be called a
melody. This is a metaphorical expression of his cosmological doctrine of
the eternal recurrence of the same. It is the same doctrine that he invokes
by name a little later when he writes in JS that the man of renunciation will desire the eternal recurrence of war and peace. And it is the
same cosmological doctrine that he invokes just a little later still when he
has a demon reveal in JS , just prior to Zarathustra’s entrance in JS
, that the hourglass of existence is turned over again and again. Of
course, we can immediately notice the anthropocentric character of these
images of a music box, war and peace, and the hourglass. So it might seem
that this theory is hardly the result of applying the new methodological
argument Nietzsche has outlined here. However, Nietzsche is careful to
emphasize, against the Pythagoreans, that the actual “music” of the cosmos
can never be called harmonious. Moreover, as we will see next, this
objection misunderstands the way in which Nietzsche, like his mentor
Heraclitus, is using these images to convey a radically de-anthropomorphic
vision of the cosmos as a whole.
.. Nietzsche’s Proof
In JS Nietzsche does not explicitly say that his new cosmological
doctrine of eternal recurrence is true. Nor does he offer a proof in support
of this doctrine, if by this we mean a deductive account offered independently of the methodological argument I have just outlined. Nevertheless,
if we look at the context that he provides for this key sentence and for this
section, and also the contemporaneous notes that extend what he says in
this section, we can see that he has both of these in mind. Having outlined
all the dispelled cosmological remnants of our belief in the Christian God,
Nietzsche ends JS by saying that matter, regarded as an eternally
enduring substance, is as much of an error as the God of the Eleatics. This
See D’Iorio () for a detailed analysis of Nietzsche’s preparatory notes for JS . In these notes,
Nietzsche asserts his own cosmological theory of eternal recurrence in opposition to the well-known
cosmological theories of his contemporaries such as Vogt, Caspari, Hartmann, Dühring,
and Thomson.
For a further discussion of JS , see Loeb (b).
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point already suggests that he thinks that the result of correcting this error
is the discovery of truth. And, indeed, in the last sentence of JS
Nietzsche suggests that our de-deification of nature unveils a pure,
newly discovered, newly redeemed nature. At the very start of the next
section (JS ), he then mentions what he has just said at the end of JS
. He argues that in the past the human intellect had been producing
and incorporating nothing but species-preserving projective errors, such as
the anthropomorphic idea that there are changeless and enduring things,
substances, and bodies. It is only very recently, he says, that such propositions have been denied and doubted in order that the truth might
emerge. Thus, the question and the experiment today, he suggests, just
as he did in his very first unpublished note about eternal recurrence (KSA
:[]), is to what extent can we incorporate the truth of our new
discoveries – that is, the discoveries about the cosmos as a whole that we
have just made through the application of our new methodological argument. Since one such discovery is the identical and eternal repetition of all
absolute diachronic change, it is clear that he is proposing the truth of this
cosmological theory.
As for the question of Nietzsche offering a proof for this theory, we need
to look more closely now at the context of the sentence in which he
introduces his image of the whole music box that eternally repeats its nonmelodic tune. From a rational standpoint, he writes, die verunglückten
Würfe are by far the rule, and the exceptions to this rule are not the secret
aim, and even that phrase is already an anthropomorphism that includes a
reproach – as if we could reproach the whole cosmos. Following
Kaufmann, this German phrase is usually translated as “unsuccessful
attempts.” However, the literal meaning that Nietzsche uses elsewhere
is bad or unlucky throws of the dice, which means that the exceptions to
this rule would be good or lucky throws of the dice. This meaning also
makes more sense when we notice that Nietzsche’s preparatory note for JS
, in which he uses the same German phrase, does not mention the
music box, but rather says, more naturally, that the whole game eternally
repeats itself (die ganze Spiel wiederholt sich ewig) (KSA :). His
The prevalent interpretation today claims that Nietzsche’s published presentations of eternal recurrence
are only concerned with a counterfactual thought experiment that can be used to test and enhance our
ability to affirm life (cf. Anderson ). But see Loeb (, ) for an exegetical refutation of this
claim. Also, Nietzsche’s two conditions for life-affirmation are that we must affirm life as it actually is
and that we must affirm life’s eternal repetition. The only way both these conditions can be met is if life
actually does eternally repeat. See Loeb (: –) and Loeb ().
See JS (), (), (), and (forthcoming).
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language here thus recalls his argument against the Pythagorean doctrine of
eternal recurrence in his early essay on history: “the true historical connexus of causes and effects, once completely known, would only prove that
nothing wholly identical could ever again be produced by the dice game of
the future and of chance (dem Würfelspiele der Zukunft und des Zufalls)”
(HL ). What he meant by this is that the Pythagoreans were relying on a
false astrological story of deterministic causes and effects, but that a true
historical account of causes and effects would reveal the role of chance in
preventing any future identical repetition. In JS , Nietzsche keeps his
image of the dice game and in that way continues to insist on the essential
role played by chance in the unfolding of historical change. But he no
longer believes that this chance factor is enough to keep the whole game
from identically repeating itself. As we have seen, he now thinks that this
belief is actually derived from the background theological idea of a boundlessly creative divine force. Indeed, in a very helpful note from ,
Nietzsche explains that it is only this religious assumption that has kept
us from recognizing the scientific truth that all change is identically and
eternally repeating:
[T]he world has no goal, no final state, and is incapable of being. But the
old habit of thinking about all events in terms of goals, and about the world
in terms of a guiding, creative God, is so powerful that a thinker has to
make an effort not to fall back into thinking of the very aimlessness of the
world as intention. This notion that therefore the world intentionally
avoids a goal and even knows artifices for keeping itself from entering into a
circulation must occur to all those who would like to find in the world a
capacity for eternal novelty, that is, to find in a finite, definite force of
unchanging magnitude as is ‘the world,’ the miraculous capacity for an
infinitely novel refashioning of its forms and states. The world, even if it is
no longer a god, is still supposed to be capable of a divine creative force, of
an infinite transformative force; it is supposed to deliberately prevent itself
from returning to one of its old forms, it is supposed to have not only the
intention, but also the means of guarding itself from every repetition, to that
end, it is supposed to control each of its movements at every moment so as
to escape goals, final states, repetitions and whatever else may follow from
such an inexcusably insane way of thinking and desiring. This is still the old
religious way of thinking and desiring, a kind of longing to believe that in
some way or other the world is after all the same as the old beloved, infinite,
boundlessly creative God that in some way or other “the old God still
lives” after all that longing of Spinoza’s which was expressed with the
phrase “deus sive natura” (he even felt “natura sive deus”
). But what,
then, is the principle and belief that most clearly formulates the decisive
turning point, the now attained upper hand of the scientific mind over the
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religious mind that invents gods? Is it not: the world, as force, may not be
conceived as unlimited, for it cannot be so conceived we forbid ourselves
the concept of an infinite force as something that is incompatible with the
concept “force.” Therefore the world also lacks the capacity for eternal
novelty. (KSA :[])
Returning, then, to his image of the dice game, and leaving aside this
“shadow of God,” Nietzsche approaches the end of his philosophical career
in with the following deductive proof of eternal recurrence:
If the world may be thought of as a determinate magnitude of force and as a
determinate number of centers of force and every other idea remains
indeterminate and therefore useless then it follows that, in the great dice
game of its existence [im grossen Würfelspiel ihres Dasein], it must pass
through a calculable number of combinations. In an infinite time, every
possible combination would at some time or another have been realized; what
is more, it would be have been realized an infinite number of times. And
since between every “combination” and its next “return” all other possible
combinations must have come and gone, and each of these combinations
conditions the entire sequence of combinations in the same series, a circula
tion of absolutely identical series is thus demonstrated: the world as a
circulation that has already repeated itself infinitely often and plays its game
in infinitum [der sein Spiel in infinitum spielt]. (KSA :[])
.. Simmel’s Refutation
Although Nietzsche’s Nachlass includes many iterations of his proof of
eternal recurrence, this is probably the most famous one. This is probably
because early in the history of Nietzsche reception Georg Simmel targeted
this specific proof for refutation in the only footnote included in his book
on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Here is how Simmel introduces this
footnote: “Even if we wanted to admit that the world-process takes place
in infinite time among finite elements, then it is by no means proven that a
configuration of these elements, once established, must repeat itself at
some point, even in infinite time; this can of course be the case, but a
combination of the cosmic elements is conceivable in which it does not
take place” (Simmel []: n., my translation). In this footnote
For Nietzsche’s first, and less systematic and complete, unpublished presentations of this
methodological argument, see KSA :[], [], [], and [].
For Nietzsche’s first unpublished presentations of this proof of eternal recurrence having to do with
finite force and infinite time, see KSA :[], [], [], [], [], []. For his
published presentation of this proof, see Z:III: “On the Vision and the Riddle” and Loeb
().
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Simmel then offers his famous thought experiment of three wheels of equal
size, all aligned on a straight line at the start, but then each set into rotation
at a different speed around the same axle. Since Simmel stipulates that the
rotation speed of each of these three wheels is n, n, and /π, he concludes
that, due to the nature of the number π, the aligned starting position of
the three wheels can never be repeated. Hence, he writes, “the possibility
just sketched is sufficient by itself to render this so-called proof of the
eternal return of the same an illusion.”
Over a century after Simmel first published this discussion, scholars still
keep citing this refutation as reason to dismiss Nietzsche’s proof of his
doctrine. But I hope it is obvious from the summary I have given above that
this thought experiment, in assuming that the wheels are rotating independently of each other at different speeds, simply leaves out of consideration
Nietzsche’s crucial assumption that the cosmic dice throws are all necessarily
connected. More importantly, this thought experiment leaves out of consideration Nietzsche’s background methodological argument for thinking that
there must be such a necessary connection – namely, his new de-deified and
de-anthropomorphic conception of the cosmos as a whole. Instead of
Nietzsche’s ceaselessly fluctuating centers of force, Simmel imagines enduring
substances (the wheels) in an initial, static and identical position (the starting
alignment of all the wheels); instead of Nietzsche’s dynamic struggles among
these forces, Simmel imagines a permanent and stable configuration of
enduring substances (the wheels all turning together on the same axle);
instead of Nietzsche’s completely relational and interdependent existence of
these forces, Simmel imagines the causally independent movement of these
enduring substances (the rotation of the wheels at different speeds); instead of
Nietzsche’s self-subsisting and purposeless cosmos as a whole, Simmel imagines a human mind setting up and conducting an experiment; and, finally,
instead of Nietzsche’s eternal law of the circle that guides the cosmos as a
whole, Simmel imagines merely the intermittent circular physical motion of
an element within this cosmos. More generally, instead of chaos and a game
of dice, Simmel imagines order, reason, and purpose; instead of absolute
necessity, he imagines the conditional laws of mathematics and physics;
instead of flux, forces, and contest, he imagines permanence, enduring substances, and equilibrium; and instead of eternal identical repetition, he
imagines eternally created novelty. We can see, then, why Nietzsche might
respond that Simmel is still being guided by an unwitting and ulterior
theological motive that deifies the cosmos as a whole – that is, by humankind’s enormous projective errors of anthropocentrism, biocentrism,
and geocentrism.
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Nietzsche’s Solution to the Philosophical Problem of Change
. Redemption from Eternal Flux
I want to return now to the question why Nietzsche thinks that the eternal
repetition of all radical flux (as demonstrated in the “Vision and Riddle”
chapter of Zarathustra), solves the existential problem of radical flux (as
presented in the “Redemption” chapter of Zarathustra). This problem, as
we saw, has to do with the human capacity for memory – or, as Nietzsche
later formulated it, the human ability to suspend its active faculty of
forgetting (GM II:–). Human beings, in contrast with other animals
(HL ), are able to use their mnemonic abilities to recognize radical flux.
Or rather, they are able to suspend their active forgetting of this radical
flux. What this means is that they are able to notice that whatever they are
experiencing in the present moment is constantly passing away and going
out of existence. But since they remember what has passed away, they have
access to the realm of the past, or as Zarathustra calls it, the “it was.” Like
all other animals, humans want to control everything around them, but
unlike other animals, they are able to notice a vast area of their experience
that they cannot control because it no longer exists. This leads them to feel
impotent, which in turn leads them to feel vengeful, which ultimately leads
them to become sick and suicidal. Because they can remember the nonexistent past over which they have no control, human animals are the
masters of self-destruction (GM III:).
It should be no surprise, then, that Nietzsche’s solution to this existential problem also has to do with the human capacity for memory. Since he
takes himself to have discovered the truth of cosmic repetition, he believes
that the same mnemonic abilities that lead human beings to recognize that
everything passes away can also lead them to recognize that everything
returns. The more they suspend their forgetting of radical flux, the more
they also suspend their forgetting of the eternal repetition of this radical
flux. For example, while I am writing this sentence, my memory tells me
that my thoughts are passing away and going out of existence into the
realm of the past where it seems that I no longer have any control over
them. However, my memory also tells me that these thoughts are
In HL Nietzsche also uses this phrase, “Es war,” to describe that problematic aspect of existence
that humans encounter once they grow out of childhood and are called out of their state
of forgetfulness.
See Loeb (, , b) for an extended and detailed discussion of Nietzsche’s narrative
depiction of Zarathustra’s memory of his life’s eternal repetition.
Nietzsche expresses something like this sentiment at the very end of BGE.
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qualitatively identical repetitions of the thoughts that I have already had at
this same moment in every last great year. As Nietzsche puts it in one of
his preparatory notes for Zarathustra, “Do not fear the flux of things: this
flux turns back into itself: it flees itself not just twice. / All ‘it was’ becomes
an ‘it is’ again. The past bites all that is future in the tail” (KSA :[];
CWFN (): ). In other words, although I am now recognizing that
my thoughts are passing away into the realm of “it was,” I am also
recognizing that they have returned into the realm of “it is.” Hence, in
feeling the control I have right now over these thoughts, I am at the same
time feeling empowered with respect to my qualitatively identical thoughts
in the realm of “it was.” And this means that I can say to these past
thoughts not just “Thus I willed them!” but also “Thus I will them!” This
is an instance of what Nietzsche calls “retrospective” or “backward” willing
(Zurückwollen). Further, since the truth of cosmic repetition ensures that
I will be having these same thoughts again at this same moment in every
next great year, I can also say right now to my current thoughts: “Thus
I shall will them!” (Z:II “Redemption”; Z:III “Tablets” ).
Nietzsche’s solution to the existential problem of radical flux thus points
the way toward his background resolution of the classic philosophical
problem of change. This problem, as we saw, concerns the question as
to how we are able to understand and explain a radical flux that does not
allow any diachronic self-identity. If, for example, my thoughts while
writing this sentence are not in any way the same from one moment to
the next, how am I able to identify my thoughts before or after they
change, much less re-identify them through the course of this change?
Nietzsche’s answer, again, is that I remember, or rather, stop forgetting,
the cosmic repetition of these thoughts and of their change. Because each
moment in time is identically repeated in every identical great year, along
with any thought I might be having at that moment, I can use my memory
to recognize this synchronic repetition. Thus, my memory tells me that
Simmel (: ) also makes the influential objection that we cannot remember eternal
repetition without this memory introducing a difference. But this objection begs the question by
assuming that this memory is not itself an identical repetition of the memory in every preceding
great year extending backward for all eternity (since there is no first or original great year). See Loeb
(: –).
This does not mean changing the past (which Nietzsche thinks is impossible), but only having a
retroactive influence on what the past unchangeably is. Nor does it mean merely reinterpreting the
meaning of the past, which is the usual scholarly interpretation of these passages (cf. Anderson
, ; Richardson : ), or merely wanting the past to return (cf. Parkes : ;
Jenkins : , ). For more discussion, see Loeb (: –).
In a couple of notes written shortly after discovering eternal recurrence (KSA :[, ]),
Nietzsche points out that human memory is based on seeing the same and taking things to be the
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my infinitely repeating thoughts at any given moment in time are synchronically self-identical. This is how I actually identify my thoughts
before and after they have changed. As for re-identifying my thoughts
through the course of that change, the key point to notice is that after the
change I have a memory of the synchronic self-identity of my thoughts as
they were before the change. Thus, although there is nothing in the
thoughts themselves that persists over time as they change, I myself have
a memory of their synchronic repetition and this memory is what connects
them for me through the course of their change.
The shift in thought from Nietzsche’s early essay on history is again
instructive here. In that essay, where he had rejected the idea of eternal
recurrence, Nietzsche had imagined “the most extreme example, a human
being who does not possess the power to forget, who is condemned to see
becoming everywhere.” Such a person, he wrote, “would no longer believe
in his own being, would no longer believe in himself, would see everything
flow apart in turbulent particles, and would lose himself in this stream of
becoming; like the true pupil of Heraclitus, in the end he would hardly
even dare to lift a finger” (HL ; HL []: ). But now, in his later
Zarathustra book, which he considers his most important contribution to
philosophy, Nietzsche has come to accept the idea of eternal recurrence
and is able to propose a very different Heraclitean outcome: “I teach you
redemption from the eternal flux: the flux flows back into itself again and
same, hence on seeing inaccurately. But here he has in mind the falsification of multiplicity and
diachronic change, not the falsification of synchronic repetition.
This is not the traditional logical and atemporal conception of synchronic self-identity that
Nietzsche also rejects as an anthropomorphic projective error (JS –, BGE ). See Green
(: –, –) and Meyer (: –, –) for further discussion.
Notice that Nietzsche’s definition of memory as the suspension of our usual active forgetting allows
him to avoid the objection that the reality of radical flux prevents the formation of memory as some
kind of persistent and stable trace. This is why Nietzsche says in HL that the person with the most
perfect memory, that is, no forgetting at all, would also have the most accurate perception of the
reality of absolute flux.
See Loeb (b) for a further discussion of Nietzsche’s Heraclitean interpretation of
eternal recurrence.
Nietzsche includes the phrase “redemption from the flux of things” in the preaching that
Zarathustra attributes to madness, but this does not mean he is saying that we must overcome
our need for this redemption. Instead, Nietzsche repeats within this preaching all of his various
formulations of the problem (everything passing away, the law of time that it must devour its
children, the need for redemption from the flux of things, the immovability of the stone “it was,”
the impossibility of annihilating any deed) while at the same time emphasizing the insanity of all the
Anaximandrian and Schopenhauerian solutions to this problem (everything deserving to pass away,
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.
again, and you step into the same flux again and again, as the same
ones.”
. Conclusion
Anyone who is moderately acquainted with Nietzsche’s work knows that
he is obsessed with change, becoming, flux, and transformation. If we had
to choose one philosophical theme that runs throughout his career, from
start to finish, it is his insistence on the pervasive and fundamental reality
of change. What is less well-known, however, is his view that human
beings find this reality deeply problematic. This is because he mostly
emphasizes this view in his favorite book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra – a book
that is not taken very seriously by scholars since Nietzsche did not write it
in his own voice. Even less well-known, and perhaps not understood at all,
is his claim in this same book to have discovered the solution to this
problem of change – namely, that all change is identically and eternally
repeating. Thus, he argues, whereas human beings have always felt impotent with regard to everything they remember as having changed and
passed away, they (or rather, their superhuman descendants) will feel
empowered once they incorporate the cosmological truth that everything
always comes back into existence in order to undergo an identical change.
Although Nietzsche does not emphasize the point, this resolution is also
relevant to the questions about change that philosophers have been posing
since the time of the ancient Greeks. Writing against most of the tradition,
Nietzsche insists that diachronic change is universal, eternal, and absolute –
meaning that nothing ever persists through time. Whatever ideas philosophers have proposed as ensuring diachronic self-identity – including, for
example, numerical identity, substance, matter, atoms, or even the self –
Nietzsche rejects as projective errors (KSA :[]). But there is another
possibility that he thinks philosophers have never considered, namely, that
the justice that is carried out when time devours its children, the idea of existence as eternal
punishment for eternal guilt, and the cessation of willing). Thanks to Scott Jenkins for
this question.
KSA :[].; CWFN (: ). See also KSA : [], CWFN (:): “Redemption
from the eternal flux.” And KSA :[], CWFN (:): “Do not forget this about me! I told
h<umans> to create superhumans, I taught noon and eternity and redemption from flux [. . .].”
Nietzsche’s concluding qualification, “as the same ones” (als die Gleichen), points to his claim that
the reality of eternal flux and eternal repetition includes personal identity: although we are
constantly changing (cf. HL ; AOM ), we are also eternally recurring as the same (Z III:
“The Convalescent” ). See Loeb () for further discussion.
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Nietzsche’s Solution to the Philosophical Problem of Change
the whole cosmos eternally repeats itself in such a way that there is always a
recurring synchronic self-identity in the midst of all the absolute diachronic change. According to Nietzsche, this is actually the truth and this
is what allows human beings to understand their radically changing selves
and the radically changing world around them.
Thanks to Keith Ansell-Pearson, Rebecca Bamford, Ian Dunkle, Scott Jenkins, Paul Katsafanas,
Matthew Meyer, Mark Migotti, and Justin Remhoff for their helpful comments on this chapter.
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Zarathustra’s Moral Psychology
Neil Sinhababu
Nietzsche’s moral psychology combines his radical criticisms of morality
and his insightful psychological observations. He responds to Platonic and
Kantian rationalist orthodoxy by arguing that passion, not reason, constitutes our selves and our virtues. Rationalism dominates contemporary
moral psychology. Christine Korsgaard (, , ) argues that
treating all motivation as grounded in passion won’t explain the self’s role
in action, and John McDowell () argues that it won’t explain the
perceptual salience of moral considerations to the virtuous. Zarathustra
anticipates Korsgaard and McDowell’s influential arguments and shows
why they fail.
First I’ll lay out this millennia-old historical debate. Then I’ll locate
Zarathustra’s answer to Korsgaard in the chapter from Part I of Thus Spoke
Zarathustra entitled “On the Despisers of the Body” (henceforth
“Despisers”) and his answer to McDowell in the chapter from Part I of
Zarathustra entitled “On Enjoying and Suffering the Passions” (henceforth
“Passions”).
.
Hume and Nietzsche against the Rationalist Tradition
David Hume in his Treatise (), describes the rationalist orthodoxy
that he and Nietzsche oppose:
Nothing is more usual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to talk
of the combat of passion and reason, to give the preference to reason, and
assert that men are only so far virtuous as they conform themselves to its
dictates. Every rational creature, it is said, is obliged to regulate his actions
by reason; and if any other motive or principle challenge the direction of his
conduct, he ought to oppose it, till it be entirely subdued, or at least
brought to a conformity with that superior principle. On this method of
“Zarathustra” here refers to the book, “Zarathustra” to the character.
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Zarathustra’s Moral Psychology
thinking the greatest part of moral philosophy, antient and modern, seems
to be founded; nor is there an ampler field, as well for metaphysical
arguments, as popular declamations, than this supposed pre eminence of
reason above passion. The eternity, invariableness, and divine origin of the
former have been displayed to the best advantage: The blindness, uncon
stancy, and deceitfulness of the latter have been as strongly insisted on. In
order to shew the fallacy of all this philosophy, I shall endeavour to prove
first, that reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will; and
secondly, that it can never oppose passion in the direction of the will.
(:..)
My psychological terminology may require clarification. Hume uses
“passion,” also a translation for Nietzsche’s Leidenschaft, where contemporary philosophers use “desire.” These terms can refer to many things,
including the motivational state with hedonic and attention-directing
properties that I refer to here. In contemporary debates I use “desire,”
defining it to have many features Hume and Nietzsche attribute to
passion, but here I use “passion” for continuity with the historical texts.
Passions come in different emotional flavors. One is positive desire, which
includes typical passions for food, sex, and victory. Thoughts of its
satisfaction excite us, and thoughts of its frustration disappoint us. (In this
paper “desire” refers only to positive desire.) Another is aversion, which
includes typical passions for avoiding such things as death, public humiliation, and financial disaster. Thoughts of things we’re averse to cause
anxiety, and thoughts of avoiding them bring relief. Unifying desire and
aversion is the Hedonic Aspect of passion: thoughts of what we want bring
pleasures of excitement or relief, while thinking of not getting it brings
displeasures of disappointment or anxiety. I take Trieb, translated as
“drive,” to refer to a passion or a group of passions aiming at something
relatively unified. Whatever “reason” is, all agree that it can form beliefs.
The rationalist view Plato and Kant accept, which Hume and Nietzsche
oppose, is that beliefs with normative content can determine our motivation without any help from antecedently-existing passions. This allows
beliefs about the form of the good or the categorical imperative to motivate
us. Humeans deny this, claiming that belief alone cannot motivate action
Radcliffe (, ) provides a clear articulation of Hume’s arguments for this view.
More precisely, “Desire that E combined with increasing subjective probability of E or vivid sensory
or imaginative representation of E causes pleasure roughly proportional to the desire’s strength times
the increase in probability or the vividness of the representation. (With decreasing subjective
probability of E or vivid sensory or imaginative representation of not-E, it likewise causes
displeasure)” (Sinhababu : ).
Sinhababu ().
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or create new passions through reasoning. This leaves no way for Kantian
or Platonic reason to direct the goals of action. Passion is necessary for all
motivation, and the only reasoning that creates passions is the instrumental
sort, where passion for an end produces passion for a believed means.
Plato holds that if spirit and passion fail to obey reason, the soul lacks
justice, the greatest virtue. He sees passions as virtuous only insofar as they
obey reason. Hume’s immediate predecessors, Ralph Cudworth, Samuel
Clarke, and John Balguy, emphasize another feature of Platonism. They
hold that human reason has the power to grasp objective moral truths
independently of sensory experience. They regard morality and mathematics as realms of objective a priori facts, following Plato’s picture of
reason grasping the abstract form of the good and motivating us accordingly. Hume responds to Platonic ontology and epistemology with a
naturalistic ontology and an empiricist epistemology. He responds to
rationalist moral psychology by arguing that passion determines the goals
of action and that reason merely finds ways to achieve these goals – the
Humean Theory.
If rationalist moral psychology has a greater advocate than Plato, it’s
Kant who argues that actions with moral worth are motivated entirely by
reason’s recognition of duty. Kant regards acts of will motivated by passion
as heteronomous. Heteronomous willing cannot be free, rational, or
morally worthy, unlike autonomous willing motivated by reason alone.
This is why in the Groundwork Kant says of passions and other inclinations
that it must “be the universal wish of every rational being to be altogether
free from them” (: IV, ). Here Kant reacts to the moral psychology of British sentimentalists like Hume, whose metaphysics and epistemology of causation famously roused him from his “dogmatic slumber.”
Nietzsche explicitly opposes Kant and Plato’s rationalist moral psychology on Humean grounds. He describes Socrates and Plato as “innocently
I formulate the Humean Theory in terms of two theses, with “A” for action, “E” for end, and “M”
for means. First is the “Desire-Belief Theory of Action: One is motivated to A if and only if desire
that E is combined with belief that one can raise E’s probability by A-ing.” Second is the “DesireBelief Theory of Reasoning: Desire that M is created as the conclusion of reasoning if and only if
the reasoning combines desire that E with belief that M would raise E’s probability. It is eliminated
as the conclusion of reasoning if and only if the reasoning eliminates such a combination”
(Sinhababu : ). Desire thus directs all action, including all reasoning leading to action (this
reasoning is about finding means to desired ends).
Frede ().
Gill ().
Beam () and Kail () note similarities between Nietzsche and Hume in these areas.
Leiter discusses a “Humean Nietzsche . . . who aims to explain morality naturalistically” (Leiter
: ). The Humean Theory they share serves this ambition by showing how moral motivation is
driven by passion rather than beliefs about non-natural moral facts.
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Zarathustra’s Moral Psychology
credulous in regard to that most fateful of prejudices, that profoundest of
errors, that ‘right knowledge must be followed by right action’” (D ).
He rejects Kant’s conception of affectless action driven by reason: “An
action demanded by the instinct of life is proved to be right by the pleasure
that accompanies it; yet this nihilist with his Christian dogmatic entrails
considered pleasure an objection” (A ). He criticizes both for developing
the idea that motivation is generated by conscious rational deliberation
rather than pre-existing passion: “The nonsense of the last idea was taught
as ‘intelligible freedom’ by Kant – perhaps by Plato already” (TI “The Four
Great Errors” ).
Daybreak displays Nietzsche’s Humean commitments. The lengthy
discussions of human reason, love and hatred, and pride and humility in
Hume’s Treatise all conclude with sections arguing that animal reason, love
and hatred, and pride and humility operate similarly. Nietzsche extends
the thought: “The beginnings of justice, as of prudence, moderation,
bravery—in short, of all we designate as the Socratic virtues, are animal: a
consequence of that drive which teaches us to seek food and elude enemies
[. . .] it is not improper to describe the entire phenomenon of morality as
animal” (D ). Where Hume argues that beliefs alone don’t motivate
action, Nietzsche claims that “The most confident knowledge or faith
cannot provide the strength or the ability needed for a deed, it cannot
replace the employment of that subtle, manyfaceted mechanism which
must first be set in motion if anything at all of an idea is to translate itself
into action” (D ). Nietzsche’s account of how we control strong drives is
a brilliant development of the Humean position. Nietzsche argues that “in
this entire procedure our intellect is only the blind instrument of another
drive which is a rival of the drive whose vehemence is tormenting us”
(D ). While Kantians and Platonists take cases of self-control to show
that we have a type of reason that is independent of our drives and can
control them, Nietzsche says that:
at bottom it is one drive which is complaining about another; that is to say:
for us to become aware that we are suffering from the vehemence of a drive
presupposes the existence of another equally vehement or even more
vehement drive, and that a struggle is in prospect in which our intellect is
going to have to take sides. (D )
Here Nietzsche suggests that drives explain what Kantians and Platonists
call the effects of reason. As Nietzsche assigns drives the same properties as
The following translations are used in this chapter: D (); GM (); GS (); Z ().
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Humean passions, he here develops the Humean position that passions
drive all action, while reason has no independent motivational force. We
might imagine Plato playing the opening against Hume for reason against
passion, with Kant and Nietzsche taking over their respective sides of the
chessboard for the middlegame. Nietzsche’s moves go beyond Humean
positions as middlegame tactics go beyond opening positions, making
creative use of Humean resources to refute attacks from Kant and his
rationalist followers.
How did Nietzsche come to share Hume’s conception of how passion
drives us? He seems to have regarded Hume only as the source of the
epistemology and metaphysics that woke Kant from his dogmatic slumber.
But it appears that he unwittingly absorbed Hume’s practical philosophy
from Schopenhauer, who regarded Hume highly and approached publishers with a proposal to translate his work into German. (Sadly for
philosophy, Schopenhauer’s book proposal was rejected. If you have had
a book proposal rejected, you can still be a great philosopher.) When
twenty-one-year-old Nietzsche read The World as Will and Representation
with fascination, he encountered Schopenhauer’s subjectivism about the
good: “every good is essentially relative; for it has its essential nature only in
its relation to a desiring will. Accordingly, absolute good is a contradiction”
(: IV, ). Kantian and Platonic metaethical theories must deny
Schopenhauer’s claim, as they require goodness not grounded in passion,
accessible only to reason. Hume articulates the similar subjectivist view that
calling something evil merely means “you have a feeling or sentiment of
blame from the contemplation of it. Vice and virtue, therefore, may be
compared to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern
philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind” (:
..). The section is titled “Moral distinctions not derived from reason,”
and the opponents against whom Hume urges this subjectivism are the
British Platonists who preceded him. Nineteenth-century citation practices
may have kept Nietzsche from knowing that in appreciating Schopenhauer,
he was appreciating Hume. But the Humean parts of Schopenhauer’s work
seem to have greatly attracted him. Nietzsche shares Schopenhauer’s preference for explanations in terms of primal motivational forces rather than
reason, and here Schopenhauer follows Hume.
Spinoza and Hobbes have similar views. Hume was well-acquainted with both. As Brobjer ()
describes, Nietzsche encountered Spinoza through secondary literature only in at age thirtyfive, after reading Schopenhauer at twenty-one. Wherever one begins the chain of influence leading
to Nietzsche’s views of motivation, Hume is a likely link.
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Zarathustra’s Moral Psychology
To bring us to contemporary debates, I will present two of the most
influential rationalist arguments in moral psychology – Korsgaard’s argument that the Humean Theory cannot account for the self, and
McDowell’s argument that virtue requires responsiveness to objective
reasons. Zarathustra anticipates both. I will outline his responses before
exploring them deeply in the last two sections (. and .).
Korsgaard argues that the Humean Theory leaves it mysterious why our
bodily movements are our actions, because it explains them in terms of
passion rather than the self. “Self-Constitution in the Ethics of Plato and
Kant” (, ) describes Hume’s picture of passions pushing against
each other to determine action as a “‘Combat Model’ of the soul” (:
). She criticizes this model: “I think that there are a few questions Hume
should have asked first, for the Combat Model makes very little sense”
(: ). “If the movement is to be assignable to the agent in the way
that the idea of action requires, then the agent must be something over and
above the forces working in her and on her, something that can intelligibly
be said to determine herself to action” (: ). Her criticism is that
Hume leaves out the unified acting self that is the agent, only giving us a
picture of the forces causing the action. And since action essentially involves
a unified agent, how can this be action at all? This objection may originate
with Kant, who uses “reason” and “alien influences” where Korsgaard uses
“the agent” and “forces working in her and on her”:
Reason must regard itself as the author of its principles independently of
alien influences; consequently, as practical reason or as the will of a rational
being it must be regarded of itself as free, that is, the will of such a being
cannot be a will of his own except under the idea of freedom, and such a
will must in a practical respect thus be attributed to every rational being.
(Kant : IV, )
Many contemporary rationalists join her in this view. Jay Wallace
(: ) argues that the Humean theory “leaves no real room for
genuine deliberative agency. Action is traced to the operation of forces
within us, with respect to which we as agents are ultimately passive, and in
a picture of this kind real agency seems to drop out of view.” Korsgaard
(: ) offers a further argument that passion cannot constitute
agents: if mere parts of the self like passion drive our actions, we cannot
“explain how an agent achieves the kind of unity that makes it possible to
attribute her movements to her as their author.”
In Humean Nature (), I respond that the passions are the self’s
motivational parts. This thesis, called Humean Self-Constitution, entails
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that actions caused by passion are caused by parts of the self. So passion
motivating action is the self-motivating action. Korsgaard’s unity requirement fails to explain how half-hearted, reluctant, and akratic people can be
genuine agents despite their disunity. Early chapters of Humean Nature
build up to an argument for Humean Self-Constitution, explaining how
passion shapes our pleasant and unpleasant emotions, and therefore our
value judgments (via its Hedonic Aspect). They also explain how passion
shapes our reasoning by directing our attention toward its objects (which
I call its Attentional Aspect). As Humean Nature defends the Humean
Theory of Motivation, it argues that passion explains our actions as well.
Thus, if the nature of one’s self is supposed to explain such things as the
nature of one’s emotions, value judgments, attention, reasoning, and
motivation, the passions must be parts of the self. They explain what the
self is supposed to explain, empirically revealing they are parts of the self.
So to treat passion as driving action is to give the self its place in action.
Zarathustra’s arguments in “Despisers” convinced me of Humean SelfConstitution before I read Hume or any contemporary Humeans.
Zarathustra succinctly and poetically makes the same explanatory argument I offer in Humean Nature. He shows that regarding the self as
constituted by passion will explain not only how we’re motivated, but
how we think and feel. In Zarathustra’s words, the “self” tells the “ego”
“Feel pain here!” and “Feel pleasure here!” explaining the ego’s “respect
and contempt” and “why it is made to think.” As Section . discusses,
“Despisers” describes how passion’s Hedonic and Attentional Aspects
explain emotion and rational thought, including the reasoning and value
judgments expressive of human selfhood. It also describes how acting
selves can be disunified, rejecting Korsgaard’s unity requirement. I could
not properly credit Nietzsche for this in Humean Nature, as interpreting
“Despisers” requires considerable work. Here I can do so.
McDowell argues that virtuous people recognize moral reasons for
action by using a perceptual capacity that is independent of passion.
Where Hume likens human psychology to animal psychology and
Officially, “Agents are constituted in part by all of their desires, and aren’t constituted by any other
motivational states” (Sinhababu : ). This makes desire the only motivational part of the
self. It allows the self to have other non-motivational parts, including belief. This follows Hume’s
view that the self is “nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each
other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement” (: ..).
Zarathustra develops this Humean view to address motivation.
“Desire that E disposes one to attend to things one associates with E, increasing with the desire’s
strength and the strength of the association” (Sinhababu : ).
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Zarathustra’s Moral Psychology
Nietzsche describes morality itself as animal, McDowell () writes that
“reliably kind behaviour is not the outcome of a blind, non-rational habit
or instinct, like the courageous behaviour – so called only by courtesy – of
a lioness defending her cubs” (). He thinks virtue also requires a “reliable
sensitivity to a certain sort of requirement that situations impose on
behaviour” (). Explaining this sensitivity to something salient in terms
of a passion for it – a “non-cognitive extra that would be analogous to
hunger” () – seems to him “highly implausible” (). As he reiterates,
“perceptions of saliences resist decomposition into ‘pure’ awareness
together with appetitive states” (). He criticizes the Humean Theory
as “a philosophy of mind that insists on a strict separation between
cognitive capacities and their exercise, on the one hand, and what
eighteenth-century writers would classify as passions and sentiments, on
the other” (). McDowell has the cognitive capacities including a faculty
of reason that perceives moral reasons and motivates action accordingly.
The phenomenology of salient moral considerations that McDowell
describes is more elegantly explained by treating virtues as passions. The
Hedonic and Attentional Aspects give desire and aversion a phenomenology in which their objects are salient. Hungry people attend to food, and
are pleased by opportunities to eat it. Similarly, benevolent people attend
to others who need help, and are pleased by opportunities to help them.
Their altruistic desires thus explain the perceptual salience of others in
need. People in wildernesses attend to dangerous animals, becoming
anxious when they approach. Similarly, conscientious people attend to
their commitments, becoming anxious if they risk being unable to fulfill
them. Their aversions to violating commitments thus explain the perceptual salience of unfulfilled commitments. The Humean Theory explains
“perceptions of saliences” using exactly the entities McDowell thinks it
can’t – the phenomenology of passion, plus awareness of what is happening. As I argue (), this leaves McDowell’s additional faculty of reason
explaining nothing. It’s an extravagant addition to psychology for Occam’s
Razor to cut away.
Zarathustra’s picture of passions as virtues in “Passions” is founded on
the salience that passion bestows on its object. Desire makes its object look
good because of the Hedonic Aspect. Then desirers can see themselves as
virtuous for desiring the good. Nietzsche’s view is founded on the phenomenological effects of passion that McDowell misattributes to reason.
Their views also differ in that Zarathustra treats value and virtue as
subjective while McDowell treats them as objective. But this difference
concerns the metaphysics of value rather than moral psychology. Those
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who accept Zarathustra’s moral psychology and the objectivity of value,
can add the claim that objective value inheres in some objects of passion.
Zarathustra’s moral psychology explains the saliences McDowell describes
all the same.
While considerable recent scholarship examines Nietzsche’s moral psychology, Zarathustra receives relatively little attention, even from scholars
who do excellent work on Nietzsche’s other writings. Many cannot find
well-developed philosophical positions and arguments in the poetry of
Zarathustra. This makes some question whether such positions and arguments are even to be found in a work of such unusual form. But while
many sections of Zarathustra have dialogue or narrative form, “Despisers”
and “Passions” largely consist in Zarathustra discussing how parts of our
minds might interact with each other. While his phrasing has a Biblical
flavor, the Bible itself communicates considerable descriptive content this
way, as a Lutheran pastor’s son would know well. So the form of these
sections suggests trying to extract the ideas from the poetry as Nietzsche’s
father might from a Bible verse.
Listen closely to Zarathustra’s poetry, and you will hear him rejecting the
views of selfhood and virtue favored by Plato, Kant, and Christian ascetics in
favor of a Humean view that grounds them in desire. Those who can find
such views elsewhere in Nietzsche’s work are encouraged to reveal them;
I know of no similarly detailed articulation. I assume that Zarathustra’s
views in the cited passages are Nietzsche’s unless textual evidence suggests
otherwise, but I’ll attribute these views to Zarathustra himself so that readers
who think otherwise can criticize my interpretation more easily. As I deal
with these sections as a whole, covering them from beginning to end, my
interpretation will include more than Zarathustra’s answers to Korsgaard
and McDowell’s arguments. This helps to support my interpretive claims
and to more fully express Zarathustra’s views.
. How Passions Constitute Selves in “On the Despisers
of the Body”
Zarathustra begins with harsh words for the despisers of the body:
“I would not have them learn and teach differently, but merely say farewell
While Hume and Nietzsche agree that value is not an objective feature of reality, their views of
moral value differ. Hume thinks moral value can be retained in noncognitivist or subjectivist form.
As Foenander () shows, Nietzsche is an error theorist.
Alfano (), Anderson and Cristy (), Mitchell ().
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Zarathustra’s Moral Psychology
to their own bodies – and thus become silent.” As I will soon argue with
textual evidence from later in the “Despisers” section, “body” refers to
one’s passions collectively. Zarathustra argues that despising the body is
being averse to one’s own passions, and therefore one’s self. Against the
despisers’ assumption that their selves are independent from passion, he
advances Humean Self-Constitution, which treats selves as constituted
by passion.
Zarathustra considers two ways of speaking about oneself. First, one
might say “Body am I, and soul.” He describes this as a child’s way of
speaking, though he makes clear that he does not reject it: “And why
should one not speak like children?” He compares it to what the “awakened and knowing say: body am I entirely, and nothing else; and soul is
only a word for something about the body.” What the awakened and
knowing say entails what the children say. The children indeed are both
body and soul. But they have not yet chosen between a dualistic view that
the body and soul are two distinct and independent things, or the view
that the soul is something about the body and not a separate thing – in
metaphysical parlance, constituted by the body. The awakened and knowing reject dualism and see the body as constituting the soul in some way.
What does Zarathustra mean by “body” and “soul?” His one similarly
extensive discussion of body–soul relations is told to the crowd in the
marketplace: “Once the soul looked contemptuously upon the body, and
then this contempt was the highest: she wanted the body meager, ghastly,
and starved. Thus she hoped to escape it and the earth. Oh, this soul
herself was still meager, ghastly, and starved: and cruelty was the lust of this
soul” (Z Prologue ). Here the soul is presented as having aversive attitudes
toward the body – cruelty and contempt. Humean Self-Constitution treats
this as the body containing aversions toward the whole of itself.
Zarathustra then considers how the body is disposed toward the soul,
asking “But you, too, my brothers, tell me: what does your body proclaim
of your soul? Is not your soul poverty and filth and wretched contentment?” The body can proclaim such things in a fairly literal sense if it is
constituted by mental states like passions. It is unclear how body parts like
the elbow or the esophagus would proclaim anything of the soul. But
passions can easily be understood as proclaiming such criticisms of a soul
that frustrates their satisfaction. This supports interpreting “body” as
referring to all of one’s passions, with “soul” referring to the subset of
I follow Richardson (), who understands “body” as consisting of instinctual drives. He notes
that in “Despisers,” “body” seems broader, fitting my view that it includes all drives.
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these passions currently controlling one’s reflective thought. Passions
figure more straightforwardly in the relations Zarathustra describes than
flesh itself would.
If “body” refers to passions, conflicts between body and soul are
conflicts between passions. For the soul to look contemptuously upon
the body is for the passions dominating reflective thought to conflict with
other passions. Then reflective thought judges passion harshly, as the
Genealogy illustrates. Slave moralists’ unselfish values condemn their selfish
passions; the bad conscience delivers harsh judgments of one’s immoral
passions; ascetics loathe their own animal passions and seek to dominate
them. The Genealogy tells us that reflective condemnation of the body in
each of these cases is constituted by sublimated passion. Slave moralists
have passions for revenge against the masters; the bad conscience is an
aggressive passion opposed to one’s other passions; ascetics have passions
for power over their animal passions. Nietzsche bemoans how these
passions conflict with bodily passions, hoping they can be realigned with
the body. Here Zarathustra similarly agrees with bodily passion that the
soul should change.
The next sentence of “Despisers” describes the body as “a great reason, a
plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a shepherd.” The
last three metaphors treat the body as composed of separate things that can
sometimes unite, which is how Humean Self-Constitution treats the
passions composing the self. Calling the body a plurality or a herd implies
that separate entities compose it. Calling it war implies conflict between
these entities. Unity is achieved when the plurality has one sense, when
war gives way to peace, and when the herd follows its shepherd. These
metaphors describe how passions can conflict, or be aligned and unified.
Zarathustra then says, “An instrument of your body is also your little
reason, my brother, which you call ‘spirit’ – a little instrument and toy of
your great reason.” Here Zarathustra repeatedly identifies one’s “great
reason” with the body. This helps us understand Zarathustra’s subsequent
remark that “the body and its great reason . . . does not say ‘I,’ but does
‘I.’” According to the Humean Theory, all my action is driven by my
passions. If the balance of my passions favors an action (given what
This thesis is stronger than Humean Self-Constitution, which allows other mental states like belief
to be non-motivational parts of the self. But since any view that includes the passions in the self will
answer Korsgaard’s objection, the differences are not important here.
This can be achieved by stronger drives subordinating weaker drives, as Richardson () and
Katsafanas () describe.
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Zarathustra’s Moral Psychology
I believe about its effects), I will do it. Otherwise, I won’t. This is why my
passions collectively are what does “I.”
The “spirit,” or “little reason,” seems to be one of the self’s informationgathering instruments, much like the senses. The German term is Geist,
also translated as “intellect.” Zarathustra describes how the self “seeks with
the eyes of the senses” and “listens with the ears of the spirit.” He describes
what sense and spirit detect as never having “its end in itself,” saying that
they mislead us into thinking they are “the end of all things.” The German
expressions are in sich sein Ende and aller Dinge Ende, both reminiscent of
famous Kantian expressions. One is Ding an sich, “for things-in-themselves,” the Kantian term for the metaphysical foundation of reality.
Another is Zweck an sich, for the Kantian conception of rational agency
as an end in itself, deserving respect rather than mere use as a means.
Zweck is often translated as “purpose.” Ende is closer to the meanings of
the English word “end” as a spatial or temporal final part. While the
connection to Kant would have been unmistakable with Zweck,
Zarathustra generally doesn’t name-drop philosophical concepts of
Nietzsche’s era so explicitly, and Ende goes well with his spatial metaphor
that the self is “behind” spirit and sense. Zarathustra rejects the rationalist view that the spirit is the end of all things, behind all of one’s
psychological activity. Instead, he takes the totality of one’s desires, which
makes up one’s self, to be behind everything. He notes that the self is
behind the ego too.
Having identified the body with “great reason,” Zarathustra further
identifies it with the “mighty ruler” and “unknown sage” called the “self,”
saying that it stands behind one’s thoughts and feelings. Zarathustra also
says of the self, “he is your body.” While Zarathustra uses a bewildering
variety of terms for psychological entities throughout this section, he
clarifies that many of them refer to the same things. This leaves us with
only two psychological components at the end. He says that the “body,”
“great reason,” and the “self” all refer to one thing that stands behind and
controls another thing, variously referred to as the “soul,” “little reason,”
the “spirit,” and the “ego.”
Zarathustra then describes how the self controls the ego’s thoughts: by
making it feel pleasure and pain. Since our passions explain much of what
pleases and displeases us, this is further evidence that passions constitute
Nietzsche generally avoids placing Zarathustra in a specific real-world place or time. Consider the
one substantive change from GS and Z:I “Prologue” – “Lake Urmi” becomes “the lake of his
home.” He likewise avoids distinctively Kantian phrases.
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the body, which Zarathustra also calls the self. Humean Self-Constitution
has the self consisting of all passion and controlling the ego, which is
responsible for rational thought. Zarathustra expresses this in the voice of
the self: “I am the leading strings of the ego and the prompter of its
concepts.” The self says to the ego, “Feel pain here!” and “Feel pleasure
here!” making the ego think about how to avoid whatever pained it and
attain whatever pleased it. This is how the ego is “made to think.” Humean
Self-Constitution gives the passions that constitute the self considerable
control over pleasure and displeasure, via the Hedonic Aspect. Being
pleased by something makes us think it is good. Being displeased by
something makes us think it is bad. Zarathustra explains that the ego is
not independently discovering goodness or badness, as its advocates who
distinguish it from passion might think. Passions constituting the self
explain these feelings. This is Zarathustra’s explanatory argument for
Humean Self-Constitution, which I develop in Humean Nature.
What is the ego, and what is the significance of the self’s control over it?
“Ich” is usually translated as “I,” but Kaufmann renders it as “ego” when
Nietzsche uses it as an ordinary singular noun, as in “the self says to the
ego.” The previous section, “On the Afterworldly,” is the only one where
“ego” is used as much as “On the Despisers of the Body.” There
Zarathustra describes how the ego can recover from an unhealthy focus
on the afterlife and learn to love the body and this life:
Indeed, this ego and the ego’s contradiction and confusion still speak most
honestly of its being this creating, willing, valuing ego, which is the
measure and value of things. And this most honest being, the ego, speaks
of the body and still wants the body, even when it poetizes and raves and
flutters with broken wings. It learns to speak ever more honestly, this ego:
and the more it learns, the more words and honors it finds for body
and earth.
Zarathustra understands the ego to have a central role in creating, willing,
and valuing. The ego can perform these operations favorably or unfavorably toward the body. When it regards the body unfavorably, the result
may be the sort of internal conflict between values and passions described
in the Genealogy – slave moralists opposing their own violent passions, the
bad conscience condemning unruly passion, and ascetics wishing to control their animal passions. When the ego regards the body favorably, values
and passions are in line with each other. This is psychological health.
Here he follows James Strachey’s influential translation of Freud’s The Ego and the Id (Freud ).
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Internal conflicts between the self and the ego (now referred to as spirit)
are Zarathustra’s next topic. He tells the despisers of the body that their
own values are merely expressions of their passions. He explains the
pleasant and unpleasant feelings explaining the phenomenology of the
spirit’s valuing in terms of the body’s ability to generate the experiences
of pleasure and pain: “The creative self created respect and contempt; it
created pleasure and pain. The creative body created the spirit as a hand for
its will.” Just as animals are pleased to discover food, ascetics feel the
pleasure of high self-regard when they reflect on their feats of self-control.
And just as animals are displeased to have their food taken away, ascetics
feel the displeasure of contempt when they reflect on giving in to temptations they regard as beneath them. The hedonic phenomenology of
respect and contempt reveals that they are manifestations of the same
bodily passions toward which ascetics are contemptuous.
Having laid out these premises of his critique, Zarathustra delivers the
conclusion: “Even in your folly and contempt, you despisers of the body,
you serve your self.” Fifteen sentences earlier, Zarathustra clarified that
“body” and “self” refer to the same thing. Here he tells the despisers of the
body that they themselves serve their bodies. If the body is all of one’s
passions, Zarathustra is telling the despisers of the body that their passions
have turned against passion itself. The ascetic’s passion not to be ruled by
mere passions is one example. The Kantian passion to escape heteronomy
by not letting one’s passions rule oneself is another. Ascetics and Kantians
both deny that these cherished motivations are merely passions. The
hedonic phenomenology these motivations share with uncontroversial
instances of passion is evidence against their claims.
Zarathustra concludes this section by diagnosing what has gone
wrong with the despisers of the body. They view worldly things with
too much aversion and too little desire. If they had stronger desires for
worldly things, these passions would engross them in creative activity
and enjoyment of life. But a self that looks on standard objects of passion
with aversion instead “wants to die and turns away from life.” As he tells
them, “Your self wants to go under, and that is why you have become
despisers of the body. For you are no longer able to create beyond
yourselves.”
. How Passions Explain Perceptual Saliences in “Passions”
“Passions” describes how a despiser of the body might be healed, with
passions unifying in favor their worldly objects and becoming virtues.
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Central to Zarathustra’s explanation is the idea McDowell rejects – that
passions make their objects salient.
The “Passions” section begins with Zarathustra advising against referring to one’s virtue in the words of a public language. Instead, one’s virtue
should be “too exalted for the familiarity of names.” His concern is
unusual: if you name your virtue, you will have its “name in common
with the people” and “become one of the people and herd with your
virtue.” No other virtue ethicist I know of argues against naming one’s
virtues. Traditional virtue ethicists explicitly discuss virtues like honesty
and kindness at length. They might not see any possibility of leaving one’s
virtues “inexpressible and nameless,” thinking the virtues have all received
names in a public language. What motivates Zarathustra’s unusual view?
While he certainly appreciates distinctive forms of individual excellence, it
is hard to see why naming one’s virtue would undermine one’s individuality. Perhaps he thinks that naming the virtue would lead others to
develop it, undermining one’s distinctiveness. As I will explain, the subjective nature of value on Zarathustra’s view prevents anything from being
objectively virtuous, and thus describable as a virtue by everyone.
Zarathustra tells us how to speak of our virtues:
Then speak and stammer: “This is my good; this I love; it pleases me
wholly; thus alone do I want the good. I do not want it as divine law; I do
not want it as human statute and need: it shall not be a signpost for me to
overearths and paradises. It is an earthly virtue that I love: there is little
prudence in it, and least of all the reason of all men. But this bird built its
nest with me: therefore I love and caress it; now it dwells with me, sitting on
its golden eggs.”
Zarathustra rejects traditional views of virtue as objective and universal. He
tells us to accept the subjectivity of virtue with open eyes, explicitly
rejecting philosophical devices for giving it a more objective nature.
These include divine law, human law, prudence, and any sort of universal
reason. Moreover, having a virtue is not a matter of choice or rational
decision to have the virtue. Instead, virtue is likened to a bird that chooses
for herself where to build her nest. Zarathustra then refers to “your virtues”
as “passions you enjoyed,” implying that virtues are passions. To demonstrate the significance of this Humean commitment, I will explain how it
makes virtues subjective, individual, and not determined by
rational choice.
Katsafanas (b) notes that drives direct attention. This property of drives is explained by the
attention-directing powers of the passions that compose them.
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Zarathustra’s Moral Psychology
First, it is natural to understand passions as making their objects subjectively valuable. Passions confer the subjective values of deliciousness on food
and beauty on art. Platitudes like “there’s no accounting for taste” and
“beauty is in the eye of the beholder” express the subjective nature of these
values. Because desires can make their objects subjectively valuable, they can
turn themselves into subjective virtues. This is a consequence of the
generally accepted view that desiring the good is virtuous. Desire makes
its object good to the desirer. Desire for food makes its object delicious to
the hungry. Aesthetic desire makes its object beautiful to the appreciator or
creator. The creative desire driving Nietzsche to write the above passage of
Zarathustra made it beautiful to him. His desire therefore aimed at creating
the value that is beauty, and made itself a virtue, as desires for valuable things
are. In third-personal admiration of aesthetic virtue, we admire other people
who have created artworks we appreciate. If Nietzsche appreciates Stendhal’s
Le Rouge et le Noir, regarding it as aesthetically valuable, he will admire
Stendhal as an artist for creating it. Here another person is the artist, but
admiration works similarly when one is the artist oneself. Artists delighted by
their own artworks can admire themselves for valuing and creating wonderful things, seeing virtue first-personally. Zarathustra recognizes that all
desires make their objects subjectively valuable, and therefore make themselves subjective virtues.
This is why Zarathustra tells us to stammer of our virtues. Such
stammering won’t express the proposition that our passions are virtues as
an objective truth, but rather as a subjective truth relativized to ourselves as
people who have these passions. If Nietzsche regards Zarathustra as beautiful, the passion that drove him to write it will be a virtue to him. But if
Quine Zarathustra simply unpleasant to read, Nietzsche’s creative passion
will be a vice to Quine. Calling Zarathustra good or Nietzsche’s creative
passion an artistic virtue falls short of standards of objective truth, just as
stammering falls short of standards of clear expression. But Zarathustra
commends stammering to us anyway, treating it as the only way the good
can be appropriately discussed.
Sinhababu () uses this to algebraically derive a formula for the virtue of agents.
Hurka () defends this view, noting historical advocates including Aristotle.
Nietzsche defends Stendhal’s view of aesthetic appreciation as grounded in creativity against Kant’s
rationalist view (GM III:).
Hunt () requires some agency to assign functions to passions in order to make them virtues,
while I think the passion itself can do the work.
Gooding-Williams () understands stammering as involving a frustration of intentions. But
Zarathustra does not here express any clear wish that the stammerer’s intentions be frustrated. He
does however explicitly reject many conceptions of non-subjective value.
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Second, virtue grounded in passion this way is an individual matter. If
being virtuous were a matter of desiring to promote an objective good, it
wouldn’t be so individual. Passions, however, are individualized psychological states that others may not share, and they confer subjective value on
things that may not have any prior objective value. As the Humean theory
suggests, passions don’t arise automatically in response to objective value –
otherwise we might be more morally motivated and more similar in our
motivations than we actually are.
Third, the Humean Theory explains why a virtue that is a passion
would have “little prudence in it, and least of all the reason of all men.”
If all reason can do is serve and obey passions, reasoning that it
would be prudent for me to change my passions in a particular way will
not make my passions become that way. I can gain instrumental
motivation from reasoning. If I desire whiskey and believe that I can get
it at the bar, I can desire to go to the bar. But this is different from
prudential reasoning, which proceeds from belief about what advances
one’s well-being rather than desire. If I believe that not desiring
whiskey anymore would enhance my well-being, that will not end
the desire.
Zarathustra holds that virtues are passions and that they make their
objects perceptually salient, as passions generally do. Zarathustra’s stammerer clearly sees something as good. Recognizing that this is just how
passion makes its object look allows Humeans to explain the perceptual
saliences McDowell discusses. Desire for food makes us see it as delicious.
Desire for those we love makes us see them as beautiful. Contrary to
McDowell’s rationalist assumption, perceptions of these saliences simply
are perceptions of the objects of passions. If virtue makes its objects look
that way, it is evidence that virtues are passions.
Zarathustra suggests that having strong and unified passions prevents
one from worrying about whether the objects of passion have objective
value. The Humean Theory explains this. To care about whether the
objects of one’s passions have objective value, one needs a passion for them
to have objective value. If nothing has objective value, this passion will not
Higgins () emphasizes the individuality of passion.
Swanton () attributes a similar combination of sentimentalism and response-dependent virtue
ethics to Hume and Nietzsche, also contrasting this with McDowell’s view.
Hayward () makes this point about love. Lenman () considers a broad range of
ordinary passions.
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Zarathustra’s Moral Psychology
be satisfied, and one will look upon one’s passions with dissatisfaction. But if one lacks such a passion, one will not care about whether
the objects of passion have objective value. We have such attitudes
toward obviously subjective sorts of value. Moral error theorists, who
believe that nothing is objectively valuable, can still regard food as
subjectively valuable. Their passions for food make it delicious to
them and motivate them to eat it, despite their belief that it lacks
objective value. Hungry people usually aren’t averse to eating food
that lacks objective value, just as they are not averse to using utensils
that lack a decorative pattern. One might require a truly great meal
to stammer, “This is my food; this I love; it pleases me wholly; thus
alone do I want the food.” But this would actually fit Zarathustra’s
metaphor in the chapter from Part II entitled “On Those who are
Sublime”: “all of life is a dispute over taste and tasting. Taste—that is
at the same time weight and scales and weigher.” The hungry can
regard their food as valuable while denying that this value is
grounded in divine law or any other objective and metaphysically
robust source.
Zarathustra then describes how people like the despisers of the body
from the previous section can become virtuous: “Once you suffered
passions and called them evil. But now you have only your virtues left:
they grew out of your passions. You commended your highest goal to the
heart of these passions: then they become your virtues and passions you
enjoyed.” This seems to be possible no matter what one’s passions are, as
Zarathustra lists many often criticized passions as becoming virtues: “And
whether you came from the tribe of the choleric or of the voluptuous or of
the fanatic or of the vengeful, in the end all your passions became virtues
and all your devils, angels.” Several metaphors for the transformation of
bad things into good things follow – “Out of your poisons you brewed
your balsam.”
How do devilish passions become angelic virtues? Zarathustra follows
his metaphors about passions becoming virtues by saying “And nothing
evil grows out of you henceforth, unless it be the evil that grows out of the
fight among your virtues.” If evil grows out of a fight between virtues, and
virtues are passions, evil will grow out of a fight between passions. This
explains why the passions were not virtues beforehand: other passions were
fighting them. This is one source of dissatisfaction with merely subjective
value – a passion for not having passions toward objects of merely
subjective value. From the perspective of this passion, many of one’s other
passions are evil. Slave morality, the bad conscience, and ascetic ideals all
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promote passions hostile to life. Nietzsche opposes them all in their battle
against our natural instinctual passions.
The rest of the section discusses the danger of a conflict between one’s
passions, the same thing that prevented passions from being virtues before.
Zarathustra says that “if you are fortunate you have only one virtue and no
more.” While the unity of the virtues has long been a popular idea among
virtue ethicists, Zarathustra here embraces a disunity of virtues. Rather
than being compatible with each other or even necessary for each other’s
presence, “Each virtue is jealous of the others, and jealousy is a terrible
thing. Virtues too can perish of jealousy.”
Zarathustra’s subjectivism about value and a standard view of the valuevirtue relationship together entail his thesis that strong and well-unified
sets of passions are virtuous, while weak passions and conflicts between
passions detract from virtue. This standard view is that desires for good
things are virtuous, desires for bad things are vicious, aversions to good
things are vicious, and aversions to bad things are virtuous. These relations
connect moral value, virtue, and vice, but they may also connect nonmoral
value, virtue, and vice as well. Then if every desire makes its object good, as
subjectivism says, every desire is to some extent virtuous – it is a desire for
something good. Every aversion is virtuous too – it makes its object bad, so
it is an aversion to something bad. Strong passions are especially virtuous.
A strong desire is an intense love of something wonderful, and a strong
aversion is firm opposition to a terrible thing. Weak passions do not do
much to raise one’s virtue, as they are weak motivations toward things of
insignificant value.
This also entails that conflict between passions detracts from virtue, as
Zarathustra explains later in the section. Having some desire and some
aversion for something makes it somewhat good and somewhat bad to
you. Then you desire the bad and are averse to the good, which are vices.
They offset your virtue in desiring the good and being averse to the bad.
Those averse to their own desires and to the objects of their own desires –
despisers of the body – have especially vicious character. All their desires
are bad, and their desires are for subjectively bad things. This is why
Zarathustra inveighs so strongly against them. His view explains why both
desire and aversion have a complicated perceptual salience. Dieters see
delicious but unhealthy foods as guilty pleasures, bearing both positive and
negative value at once. When instinctual passions conflict with ascetic
ideals, the bad conscience, or values created by ressentiment, people see
value in a similarly conflicted way.
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Zarathustra’s Moral Psychology
As “Despisers” and “Passions” together reveal, Zarathustra doesn’t want
us to see value with such conflicted eyes. Strong and unified passions let us
see value in its full glory. Recognizing the subjectivity of this value might
leave us able only to stammer of it. But even those who stammer can see its
full beauty if their passions are strong and pure.
These ideas came to me early in my studies, so I must thank all the instructors and classmates who
tolerated my wild enthusiasm about them in Nietzsche seminars. Two wonderful teachers deserve
special thanks. Melissa Barry introduced me to analytic metaethics and saw promise in the term
paper where I first advanced this response to Korsgaard. Her encouragement led me to develop it
further in my undergraduate thesis under the kind and helpful supervision of Raphael Woolf. Their
thoughtful support showed me that ideas from Zarathustra could impress philosophers working in
other areas, giving me confidence to do the work that launched my career.
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Zarathustra’s Great Contempt
Scott Jenkins
Zarathustra announces early in Thus Spoke Zarathustra that he is delivering
a gift to humanity (Z:I “Prologue” ), and at the beginning of his first
speech we learn that his gift takes the form of a teaching: “I teach you the
Übermensch. Humanity is something that shall be overcome. What have
you done to overcome it?” (Z:I “Prologue” ). He then proceeds to tell his
listeners what they can do to follow his teaching and assist in this project of
overcoming humanity – they can come to experience contempt for
themselves:
What is the greatest experience you can have? It is the hour of the great
contempt [Verachtung]. The hour in which your happiness, too, arouses
your disgust [Ekel], and even your reason and your virtue.
The hour when you say, “What matters my happiness? It is poverty and
filth and wretched contentment. But my happiness ought to justify exis
tence itself.”
The hour when you say, “What matters my reason? Does it crave knowl
edge as the lion his food? It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.”
(Z:I “Prologue” )
This certainly does not sound like a great experience, and as Zarathustra
proceeds to characterize this hour of great contempt as one that also targets
a person’s virtue, justice, and compassion, its status as “the greatest
experience you can have” does not become any clearer. Being disgusted
with oneself and feeling contempt for oneself (or for some aspect of
oneself ) seems both unpleasant and unhealthy.
I have relied on Kaufmann’s translation of Zarathustra (Z ), though I occasionally modify it to
address issues of gender or to create a more standard terminology in English. I leave the term
“Übermensch” untranslated. Other translations consulted in this chapter are: A (); BGE ();
CW (); GM (); GS (); SE ();
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Zarathustra’s Great Contempt
I aim to show that the great contempt that Zarathustra recommends in
the Prologue of Zarathustra is the most extreme form of a distinctive
critical attitude toward oneself that Nietzsche regards as both healthy
and constitutive of true self-love. While this variety of contempt is essential
to the teaching of the Übermensch, I argue that Nietzsche also recommends
it independent of Zarathustra’s project of overcoming humanity. I begin in
Section . by providing a framework for understanding contempt as an
evaluative emotional state and sketching three common varieties of contempt that appear in Nietzsche’s writings – noble contempt, moral contempt, and religious-ascetic contempt. In Section ., I consider how those
three varieties interact in Zarathustra’s most extensive discussion of contempt (Z:III “Passing By”), and how that interaction points forward to
Zarathustra’s notion of great contempt. In Section ., I then turn to
Zarathustra’s claim that this is the greatest experience we can have and
consider the relation between great contempt and self-love. In Section .,
I complete my account of great contempt as a descendent of noble
contempt and religious-ascetic contempt by showing how, in great contempt, we take a critical stance toward the present from the standpoint of a
superior future. I then appeal to this temporal quality in elucidating the
role that great contempt plays in Zarathustra’s teaching of the Übermensch.
. Three Varieties of Contempt
Contempt is an attitude that essentially involves looking down on someone
or something. When we contemn, we regard the object of contempt as
beneath us, inferior, and perhaps even unworthy of respect or regard.
Thus contempt employs a standard of value in relation to which its object
is found wanting. While contempt surely involves more than just an
evaluative stance (for example, it is associated with the feeling of disgust
[Ekel] and an aversive response to its object), Nietzsche approaches contempt primarily as an instance of valuing. The varieties of contempt that
he catalogs will all differ with respect to the evaluative height from which
we contemptuously look down.
The German “verachten” could be translated as “to despise,” “to scorn,” or “to disdain,” but I will
often employ the somewhat archaic “to contemn” in order to maintain continuity with the noun
“contempt” and to avoid the occasionally awkward construction “to have contempt for.”
In focusing more on the evaluative height from which we contemn than on the object targeted by
contempt, my discussion of the varieties of contempt in Nietzsche differs from that of Alfano (:
sec. .).
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Nietzsche’s well-known distinction between two fundamentally different kinds of values in his On the Genealogy of Morality – noble values and
moral values – generates a distinction between two fundamentally different
kinds of contempt associated with these values. The persons Nietzsche
terms ‘noble’ employ as their standard of value the excellence they perceive
in themselves and those like them. To use Nietzsche’s examples from the
time of the Jewish–Roman War, the Roman noble regards himself as good
because he instantiates Roman martial virtues, while the Jewish noble
regards himself as good because he instantiates the Jewish ideal of purity.
The bad person, by contrast, is the ignoble, common person who lacks
such virtues. Thus for the noble mode of valuation, “its negative concept
‘low’, ‘common’, ‘bad’ is only a subsequently-invented pale, contrasting
image in relation to its positive basic concept” (GM I:; see also BGE
). According to Nietzsche, nobles often viscerally experience this
difference between themselves and those who lack their virtues, and this
‘pathos of distance’ structures aristocratic societies: “The pathos of nobility
and distance, as aforesaid, the protracted and domineering fundamental
total feeling on the part of a higher ruling order in relation to a lower order,
to a ‘below’—that is the origin of the antithesis ‘good’ and ‘bad’” (GM I:).
Since the contempt that a noble person feels for a common person
expresses this felt distance between the height of instantiating human
excellence and the lowliness of lacking it, noble contempt typically presents
its object as unworthy of regard. In contempt the noble person pays no
heed to the contemned object, or perhaps simply “looks away” from it
(GM I:).
Moral contempt, by contrast, typically takes the form of indignation or
outrage directed at a person on the basis of an action that person has
performed. Nietzsche’s genealogy of morality postulates that this impassioned fixation on the target of moral contempt originates in the nonmoral
reactive attitude of ressentiment – the vengeful hatred of one who has done
us harm. While the details of Nietzsche’s genealogy of moral values lie
outside my scope, two points are worth emphasizing. First, Nietzsche
pursues the genealogical hypothesis that moral attitudes originate in ressentiment partly because he sees the same reactive structure in both cases.
See Bell (: sec. .) for further discussion of passive noble contempt as it appears in Nietzsche
and Aristotle. As will be evident in my exposition of great contempt, I disagree with Bell’s claim that
this is the variety of contempt that Nietzsche advocates.
Mason () provides a useful account of moral contempt and notes the incompatibility between
this variety of contempt and Nietzschean nobility.
For further details see Jenkins ().
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Zarathustra’s Great Contempt
Just as the vengeful person reacts negatively to the action of another, moral
judgment originates in a negative reaction: “While every noble morality
develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the
outset says No to what is ‘outside,’ what is ‘different,’ what is ‘not itself’;
and this No is its creative deed” (GM I:). This contrast with the noble
mode of valuation yields a second point – while the noble height
from which one recognizes excellence or contemns its opposite emerges
from an act of self-affirmation, the moral height necessary for moral
contempt emerges only through a process of self-deception. Nietzsche
maintains that vengeful agents who desperately wish they were capable
of taking revenge manufacture for themselves a semblance of self-respect
by reinterpreting their inability to act as the choice to be morally good
(GM I:, GM I:). This reinterpretation is motivated in part by “the will
of the weak to represent some form of superiority” (GM III:), and from
this new, moral ‘height’ they contemn others for their immoral acts
(which include the very same acts of revenge they wish they could
themselves perform).
The contempt for oneself that Zarathustra terms “great contempt” must
be different from these two familiar varieties of contempt. Contempt for
oneself is easy to understand if that contempt is moral in nature. People
who take their actions to fall short of what is required by morality can have
contempt for themselves just as easily as they can for another. But
Zarathustra’s great contempt cannot be moral contempt because it is
grounded not on the moral assessment of a particular action but on an
evaluation of the person’s experiences, character, and abilities. And while
noble contempt, by contrast, is grounded on the evaluation of the person,
its disdainful “looking away” is quite different from the passionate concern
about oneself characteristic of the great contempt. In addition, noble selfcontempt would seem to be a contradiction in terms since contempt for
oneself appears incompatible with the affirmation of oneself that is constitutive of nobility: “the noble soul has reverence for itself” (BGE ; see
also CW “Epilogue”). To put the point another way, if noble contempt
employs one’s own excellence as the evaluative standard in relation to
which the contemned object falls short, noble self-contempt would appear
to be incoherent insofar as one cannot simultaneously possess and lack the
virtue that serves as this standard.
While Nietzsche speaks of “noble morality” in GM I: and BGE , I will follow his more
common usage by refraining from classifying noble values as a form of morality.
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Just prior to his recommendation of great contempt, Zarathustra points
to a third variety of contempt – what I will term religious-ascetic contempt –
that more closely resembles great contempt:
Once the soul looked contemptuously upon the body, and then this
contempt was the highest: it wanted the body meager, ghastly, and starved.
Thus it hoped to escape the body and the earth. Oh, this soul itself was
still meager, ghastly and starved: and cruelty was the lust of this soul.
(Z:I “Prologue” )
Zarathustra will illuminate this religious-ascetic worldview early in
Zarathustra I, first by offering a psychological explanation of belief in a
metaphysical beyond (Z:I “Afterworldly”) and then by drawing on
that explanation in his address to those who despise or contemn their
bodies (Z:I “Despisers”). Here in the Prologue he focuses exclusively on
the distinctive contempt for self that is made possible by identifying
ourselves with immaterial souls that are distinct from our material bodies
and denizens of a “higher” realm. Even though we are nothing beyond our
bodies, and our contempt for those bodies is rooted in the cruelty of those
very bodies, the belief in an immaterial soul makes possible a critical
attitude toward our bodies. Religious ascetics look down on everything that
constitutes them as human animals – their bodily needs and urges, and
even life itself (Z:I “Prologue” ). Similarly, a person who experiences
Zarathustra’s great contempt looks down on everything that constitutes
them as a spirit or soul – their happiness, reason, virtue, and so on
(considered, of course, as nothing more than capacities of human bodies).
This similarity suggests that Zarathustra models great contempt on a
religious ascetic’s contempt for everything that is “body,” or “world.” So
understood, great contempt is part of Zarathustra’s project of teaching new
values by inverting or transposing more familiar ways of valuing. The task
we face as readers is to follow Zarathustra in his revisioning of religiousascetic contempt for oneself.
. Zarathustra and His Ape
Zarathustra’s only discussion of the varieties of contempt appears in his
speech “On Passing By,” which he addresses to a “foaming fool” whom he
Nietzsche’s phrase is “Von den Verächtern des Leibes,” which could be translated “On those who have
contempt for the body.”
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Zarathustra’s Great Contempt
encounters at the gate to a great city. As Zarathustra attempts to enter the
city, this figure blocks his way and delivers his own extended, impassioned
speech on the dangers that await Zarathustra there. In short, the citizens
are said to be inauthentically pious, mindlessly at odds with one another,
self-indulgent, and enamored with gold above all else, and these values
ensure that in the city “great thoughts” and “great feelings” only decay over
time. In condemning the city, this “fool” appropriates Zarathustra’s phrasing and many of his concerns about the culture of his time (e.g., that
newspapers are venues of unoriginal thought and interpersonal strife
[Z:I “The New Idol”]) – a tendency that has earned this figure the title
“Zarathustra’s ape.” Zarathustra is disgusted by this aping of his words and
cuts off the fool by exclaiming, “Stop at last! Your speech and your manner
have long disgusted [ekelt] me” (Z:III “Passing By”). As he elaborates the
nature of his disgust – the feeling that occasions contempt – he implicitly
draws on the three varieties of contempt described above and gestures
toward his own notion of great contempt.
Zarathustra expresses the organizing thought of his speech in the phrase
“I have contempt for your contempt [Ich verachte deine Verachtung].” He
recognizes the ape’s speech as contemptuous, but at the same time holds
that contempt itself in low regard. This attitude by itself does not entail a
commitment to multiple varieties of contempt, though Zarathustra
quickly distinguishes his contempt from the ape’s by distinguishing the
psychological grounds of these states. While Zarathustra takes his
own contempt to emerge “out of love alone,” he diagnoses the ape’s as
rooted in revenge. Thus Zarathustra and the ape use the same words to
express different, even opposed psychological states. This fact introduces a
central theme of Nietzsche’s discussions of contempt—that contemptuous
speech is ambiguous when considered independent of its motivations
or grounds.
Zarathustra begins his diagnosis of the ape’s contempt by asking why, if he
regards the city as pernicious, the ape has chosen to live there. Leaving such a
city would, of course, be Zarathustra’s choice. He then asks of the ape:
Zarathustra never articulates the relation between the visceral reaction of disgust and the more
intellectual stance of contempt, though a remark in “On Passing By” is suggestive. After noting that
his disgust was triggered by what he finds putrid in the ape’s outburst, he states, “Out of love alone
shall my despising and my warning bird fly up” (Z:III “Passing By”). Here the “warning bird” is
surely the previously mentioned reaction of disgust, which warns Zarathustra that he should distance
himself from the ape (just as disgust for rotting food or feces serves as a warning to us). The visceral
warning precedes the more intellectual contempt. For more on the relation between disgust and
contempt, see von Tevenar (), von Tevenar (), and Alfano (: ch. ).
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What was it that first made you grunt? That nobody flattered you suffi
ciently; you sat down to this filth so as to have reason to grunt much to
have reason for much revenge. For all your foaming is revenge, you vain
fool; I guessed it well. (Z:III “Passing By”)
The ape remains in the city simply in order to take revenge on it. His
contemptuous “grunting” of Zarathustra’s words is an act of revenge
performed in response to an injury done to him by the city. He had hoped
to be recognized and esteemed by others in the city – to be “flattered” –
and was hurt when that recognition did not come his way. Lacking
Zarathustra’s ability to love and pursue an ideal of his own, the ape lurks
around the city’s gate and spews invective as a way of covering up and
compensating for the pain of being rejected. We might recognize in the
ape those young, lonely readers of Nietzsche who appropriate his words in
lashing out at a society that seems not to recognize or esteem them.
I believe that Zarathustra’s response to the ape points toward Nietzsche’s
advice to such a reader, and I will return to this reading of Zarathustra’s
speech. But the main point of the beginning of the speech is that the ape’s
reaction to the city distorts Zarathustra’s teaching by deploying it within a
fundamentally reactive, moralizing framework. Recognizing his new wine
in these old wineskins, Zarathustra proclaims “even if Zarathustra’s words
were a thousand times right, still you would always do wrong with my
words.” What the ape aims to do is to harm the city – and, perhaps, to
procure for himself a cheap feeling of superiority over its inhabitants. And
from the height of his own excellence, Zarathustra looks down on these
ignoble aims.
Despite his noble contempt for the ape’s vengeful contempt,
Zarathustra eventually leaves him with a gift in the form of a teaching:
“Where one can no longer love, there one should pass by [vorübergehen].”
This teaching, which yields the title of this speech, is Zarathustra’s one
piece of advice to the figure that represents a particular kind of reader of
Nietzsche – one who vengefully apes his words. At first this advice seems
rather simple; the fool should cease his attacks on the unwelcoming city
and pass it by in search of a more congenial locale. But the affinity between
this “passing by” and the act of “looking away” characteristic of noble
contempt (see again GM I:) points to a deeper psychological benefit of
this teaching. Trading his reactive fixation on the city for a passive
indifference characteristic of noble contempt would create in the fool a
Zarathustra also discusses contempt and passing by in Z:II “Creator.”
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Zarathustra’s Great Contempt
psychic space in which an original, non-reactive project might grow. Thus
passing by is also sage advice for a person already engaged in such a project,
but tempted toward vengeful retaliation upon suffering a harm.
Zarathustra, for example, recognizes that he has been harmed by the fool’s
theft and distortion of his teaching (which is, of course, Zarathustra’s most
prized “possession”). He asserts, “your fool’s words injure me, even where
you are right.” But he resists the temptation to take revenge for that injury
and thereby avoids the pointless and distracting cycle of harm and retaliation described in his earlier speech on revenge (Z:II “Tarantulas”). Upon
concluding his speech, Zarathustra follows his own advice and simply
passes by the fool to continue on own his path, thereby exhibiting for us
the practical and psychological benefits of noble contempt.
Since Zarathustra’s speech “On Passing By” recommends that we avoid
the vengeful fixation of moral contempt and cultivate instead the indifference of noble contempt, it is surprising that at the end of his speech we
find Zarathustra far from indifferent toward the city he confronts. Just
before he relates his teaching of passing by, he remarks:
I am disgusted by [mich ekelt] this great city too, and not only by this fool.
Here as there, there is nothing to better, nothing to worsen. Woe unto this
great city! And I wish I already saw a pillar of fire in which it will be burned.
For such pillars of fire must precede the great noon. But this has its own
time and its own destiny. (Z:III “Passing By”)
It might seem that by experiencing disgust and wishing for the fiery
destruction of this city, Zarathustra indulges in the same vengeful contempt that he identifies and contemns in the fool. His exclamation “woe
unto this great city” would appear to confirm that suspicion. This phrase
echoes a passage from the biblical Book of Revelation, which Nietzsche
The benefits of noble contempt extend beyond the narrowly ethical realm since this attitude closely
resembles one that Nietzsche regards as essential to affirming life as it is. At the beginning of the
fourth book of The Gay Science, Nietzsche states that his goals of loving fate (amor fati) and being
only a “Yes-sayer” in relation to all things requires that he first cultivate an indifference toward those
things that he might instead “accuse” of being unlovable or unaffirmable objections to life: “I do not
want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse the accusers. Let looking away [Wegsehen] be my only
negation!” (GS ). Where Nietzsche cannot affirm, he simply looks away – just as Zarathustra
counsels that where one cannot love, one should pass by. Nietzsche also recognizes that in order to
say “Yes” to all things, he must first refrain from condemning even the attitude of condemnation that
he seeks to avoid. Likewise, by passing by the fool Zarathustra avoids the trap of vengefully
contemning the fool’s vengeful contempt. There is much more to be explored on this topic,
especially in connection with Nietzsche’s presentation of Zarathustra’s relation to life as an
interpersonal relation (Z:II “Dancing Song”; Z:III “Other Dancing Song”). I want only to
emphasize that in both contexts, the passive negation of its object that defines passing by or
looking away is portrayed as superior to any moral attitude toward it.
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later describes as “the most wanton of all literary outbursts that vengefulness has on its conscience” (GM I:). So what are we to make of
Zarathustra’s contemptuous outburst toward the city?
There are plenty of indications that Zarathustra is not in the grip of
vengeful, moral contempt. First, it is unclear why Zarathustra would wish
to take revenge against a city that has not done him any harm. Consider as
well the context of Zarathustra’s utterance: “He looked at the city, sighed,
and long remained silent [. . .] at last he spoke.” A sigh followed by quiet
reflection would be a strange prelude to a vengeful outburst. Finally,
Zarathustra’s talk of pillars of fire preceding the “great noon” –
Zarathustra’s vision of the high point of humanity (see Z:I “Gift-Giving”
; Z:IV “The Sign”) – points away from an interpretation of his words as
vengeful. Since Zarathustra’s contempt derives from his wish for these
antecedents or preconditions of the great noon, he must not want to
simply harm the city.
I maintain that Zarathustra’s wish for the destruction of this city
expresses a variety of contempt different from passive, noble contempt
and vengeful, moral contempt. Zarathustra does not simply look away
from the city; he instead focuses on it and takes up a passionate negative
attitude toward it. However, unlike the fool’s reactive moralizing,
Zarathustra’s contempt emerges “out of love alone” – love of an ideal that
generates his vision of the great noon. In the particular case of the city, the
teachings in relation to which it comes up short are those social ideals that
Zarathustra aims to realize. While he says little in this speech about those
ideals or their realization, it is clear that the height from which Zarathustra
contemns is neither the noble height of an existent ideal nor the counterfeit height of vengeful moral judgment. Instead, from the standpoint of an
imagined future for which he yearns, Zarathustra judges that the great city
that confronts him comes up woefully short and thus ought to perish in
order to make way for that superior state of affairs. The otherworldly
height of John’s contempt is replaced by the earthly “beyond” of a superior
future.
It is striking that just as the fool appropriates Zarathustra’s words in
vengefully contemning the city, Zarathustra appropriates the words of the
Christian prophet in expressing his own contempt for the city.
Graham Parkes notes this Biblical reference in his translation of Zarathustra.
This is one example of how a single entity can be the target of two different varieties of contempt.
See Alfano (: sec. ..) for further discussion of Nietzsche’s distinctive contempt for
the world.
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Zarathustra’s Great Contempt
Zarathustra’s “aping” of John likewise inverts the sense of those words.
While they previously expressed vengefulness toward Rome, and toward
“this” world as a whole, in Zarathustra’s mouth the words “woe unto this
great city” express only his love for the earthly ideal he aims to realize.
Thus by echoing the Book of Revelation in his outburst toward the city,
Zarathustra provides yet another example of the potential ambiguity of
contemptuous speech. More importantly, however, Zarathustra’s contempt for the city serves as a model for the great contempt that he
recommends to his listeners.
.
Great Contempt As the Greatest Experience
In both the Prologue and “On Passing By,” Zarathustra compares familiar
notions of religious contempt with the varieties of contempt that he either
advocates or experiences. Religious-ascetic contempt for everything bodily
resembles great contempt for everything in our conscious, spiritual lives,
while John’s contempt for Rome and everything “worldly” resembles
Zarathustra’s contempt for the city and the larger society that he confronts. In this section, I will draw on these parallels as I begin to
articulate a more complete account of great contempt as an earthly,
historical transposition of religious-ascetic contempt, one that trades an
otherworldly evaluative standpoint for the standpoint of a possible earthly
future. This difference between religious-ascetic contempt and great contempt will also illuminate Zarathustra’s reasons for describing the latter as
the greatest experience one can have.
There are three main points of contact between Zarathustra’s contempt
for the culture of his time and the great contempt for oneself that he
advocates. The first point concerns their unrestricted nature. Just as
Zarathustra maintains that everything in the city ought to pass away, great
contempt concerns every aspect of human existence. As a dissatisfaction
with one’s own happiness, reason, virtue, justice, and compassion
(Z:I “Prologue” ), it targets feeling, thought, character, social life, and
interpersonal relations, respectively. It is difficult to identify a dimension of
In another crucial moment of Zarathustra, the character called “the spirit of gravity” merely appears
to agree with Zarathustra’s talk of eternal recurrence by asserting “time itself is a circle” (Z:II “Vision
and Riddle”). We know that this agreement is merely apparent because the words are “murmured
contemptuously [verächtlich].” For further discussion see Loeb (: –).
It is unclear whether Zarathustra’s attitude toward the city is the same great contempt that he
advocates in the Prologue, though Zarathustra later speaks of the great contempt preaching “away
with you” to the faces of cities and empires, until they say “away with me” (Z:III “Evils” ).
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modern life not targeted by this contempt. Second, in both cases one’s
dissatisfaction derives from a perceived shortcoming of that trait or capacity in relation to an ideal. Zarathustra states, for example, that in the hour
of the great contempt, a person may lament “what matters my happiness?”
because they think that “my happiness ought to justify existence itself” – or
“what matters my reason?” because they hold that their reason ought to
“crave knowledge as the lion his food” (Z:I “Prologue” ). These ideals are
inchoate in this early speech, but Zarathustra’s aim here is not to advocate
a particular theory of happiness or reason. Rather, he means to advocate a
critical stance toward one’s own happiness or reason, regardless of what
form they presently take. And third, both instances of contempt are
grounded in love for that ideal. Zarathustra’s contempt for the city clearly
emerges “from love alone” – his love for the great noon – and his first
words to another person, “I love human beings [Ich liebe die Menschen]”
(Z:I “Prologue” ), precede his discussions of contempt for human beings
in his opening speeches. What he in fact loves in human beings is their
potential to overcome themselves as individuals, and eventually, thereby,
as a species. As he clarifies in his second address to the masses, “what can
be loved in the human being is that it is an overture [Übergang] and a going
under [Untergang]” (Z:I “Prologue” ). Thus Zarathustra loves humanity
for its relation to the superior future he imagines (that of the Übermensch),
and from the standpoint of that future contemns what presently exists. We
find the same relation between love and contempt in Zarathustra’s later
remarks on relations we ought to bear to ourselves. Consider his revision of
the gospel of Mark: “Do love your neighbor as yourself, but first be such
as love themselves—loving with a great love, loving with a great contempt”
(Z:III “Virtue” ). Here a genuine love of oneself is described as including
or entailing contempt for oneself, presumably contempt for what one
presently is. Zarathustra presents this point in more general terms earlier in
the work: “Yourself you love, and therefore you contemn yourself, as only
lovers contemn. The lover would create because he contemns. What does he
know of love who did not have to contemn precisely what he loved?” (Z:I
“Creator”). This contempt that spurs creation is, I suggest, contempt for
one’s present self, regarded as falling short of an ideal. Only such a standpoint
would spur creation as opposed to other sorts of self-regulating activity.
This is one aspect of the value of self-overcoming that Zarathustra ascribes to life itself (Z:II “SelfOvercoming”).
The view that proper self-love brings with it a creative contempt for oneself appears in an instructive
form in Nietzsche’s early discussion of the relation of an individual to their culture: “It is love alone
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Zarathustra’s Great Contempt
These points of contact between Zarathustra’s contempt for the city and
the great contempt for oneself that he advocates to his listeners suggest that
both instances of contempt are secular transpositions of more familiar
religious varieties of contempt. Just as the otherworldly height of John’s
contempt for Rome is replaced by the height of the “great noon” that
Zarathustra imaginatively projects into the future, the otherworldly height
of an incorruptible, immaterial soul is replaced by the height of an
imagined, future person. From this height, we are to look down on our
present happiness, reason, virtue, justice, and compassion as aspects of our
lives that ought to be overcome. While these aspects of life typically fill us
with pride because they distinguish us from apes and other lower forms of
life (Z:I “Prologue” ), just as our education might distinguish us from
goatherds (Z:I “Prologue” ), in great contempt we experience extreme
dissatisfaction with even these distinguishing traits and aim to overcome
them. It is because of this link between great contempt and self-enhancement that Zarathustra regards it as the self-critical stance constitutive of
true self-love. In this state, we love the ideal that lies within us, and from
the standpoint of its future realization, contemn the present reality that
falls short of it.
The intimate connection between great contempt and the loving
pursuit of an ideal higher than oneself sheds some light on why
Zarathustra would describe such contempt as “the greatest experience
you can have (Z:I “Prologue” ). Considered objectively, this yearning to
overcome oneself as one presently exists is the mark of will to power,
which Zarathustra identifies as the essence of life and the root of all value
(Z:I “Goals”, Z:II “Self-Overcoming”). Though Zarathustra never explicitly connects great contempt, self-overcoming, and will to power, that
connection is clearer in Nietzsche’s later writings. Here is his most detailed
discussion of how the will to power generates contempt and thereby shapes
the person who possesses this “force”:
Here the material upon which the form giving and ravishing nature of this
force [of will to power] vents itself is the person itself, its whole ancient
animal self and not, as in that greater and more obvious phenomenon,
some other person, other people. This secret self ravishment, this artists’
cruelty, this delight in imposing a form upon oneself as a hard, recalcitrant,
that can bestow on the soul, not only a clear, discriminating and contemptuous [verachtenden] view
of itself, but also the desire to look beyond itself and to seek with all its might for a higher self as yet
still concealed from it” (SE ). Here Nietzsche identifies a higher, hidden self as what we seek
through self-love and self-contempt. What we are to love in ourselves is just this higher self, which
offers a standpoint from which we can look down on ourselves as we currently exist.
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suffering material and in burning a will, a critique, a contradiction, a
contempt [Verachtung], a No into it, this uncanny, dreadfully joyous labor
of a soul voluntarily at odds with itself that makes itself suffer out of joy in
making suffer eventually this entire active “bad conscience” you will
have guessed it as the womb of all ideal and imaginative phenomena, also
brought to light an abundance of strange new beauty and affirmation.
(GMII:)
Nietzsche describes this phenomenon as an active bad conscience in order
to distinguish it from the primitive bad conscience that emerges in human
beings once they find themselves in social contexts that prohibit the
expression of animalistic drives (see GM II:, GM II:). In both cases,
human beings take a critical stance toward the drives that constitute them
as persons – just as religious ascetics (whose guilt concerning their bodily
drives develops out of this primitive bad conscience [see GM II:]) aim to
control those drives using any means necessary. But while the primitive
bad conscience and the guilty conscience measure drives against a given
standard of value, this active bad conscience is a painful dissatisfaction with
oneself in relation to a self-imposed, “artistic” standard of character. The
subject is voluntarily at odds with itself insofar as this dissatisfaction with
its present state and its yearning to take on a new form both emerge from
its own will. And it is this exercise of will that underlies an experience of
the suffering associated with change as a “delight” or even a “joy” – the
suffering marks growth toward an ideal.
As integral to the joyous and veridical awareness of one’s growth
through self-fashioning, this variety of contempt is also experienced subjectively as great. Such greatness is wholly lacking in other forms of
contempt for self. For example, ascetics whose contempt for themselves
is grounded in a metaphysical denigration of everything bodily simply
submit to what they regard as the objective authority of that standard of
value. The same is true of those who contemn themselves for acting
contrary to the moral law, or for living contrary to the standards of their
place and time (i.e., the morality of mores). None of these people experiences the delight or joy that Nietzsche describes in the Genealogy, or that
Zarathustra himself experiences. Just prior to his final confrontation with
Life, Zarathustra says to himself, “O my soul, I taught you the contempt
In a related discussion, Nietzsche states that in a human being, “creature and creator are united,” and
that we typically have too much compassion for the suffering creature, and not enough for the
creator (BGE ). In connection with GM II:, we might say that Nietzsche values the
characteristic delights and joys of the creator more highly than those of the creature.
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Zarathustra’s Great Contempt
that does not come like the worm’s gnawing, the great, the loving contempt that loves most where it contemns the most” (Z:III “Longing”). The
greatness of this contempt is found, in part, in Zarathustra’s experience of
it as free from a gnawing feeling of lowliness.
To be sure, not every aspect of the subjective experience of great
contempt is positive. Zarathustra describes the hour of great contempt as
one “in which your happiness, too, arouses your disgust [Ekel], and even
your reason and your virtue” (Z:I “Prologue” ). The disgust that is
associated with all contempt surely feels unpleasant, though the presence
of positive affects and attitudes would mitigate this negative aspect of great
contempt. And it may be that by foregrounding the disgust constitutive of
great contempt, Zarathustra means to emphasize that we should not look
for the greatness of this state in the subjective experiences of pleasure or
comfort, which Zarathustra derides as “wretched contentment”
(Z:I “Prologue” ; see also GS ). What matters is how this tension
between what one is and what one yearns to become furthers the development of the subject.
. The Role of Nobility
There is an additional aspect of great contempt that is merely implicit in
Zarathustra’s teaching, namely the pathos of distance constitutive of noble
contempt. Nietzsche describes this element in his next work, Beyond Good
and Evil, which is more concerned with the details of moral psychology
and the historical origins of our values, practices, and attitudes. In this
section, I will consider how Nietzsche’s remarks on nobility and contempt
in Beyond Good and Evil ought to shape our interpretation of Zarathustra’s
teaching of great contempt, which might otherwise appear as a straightforward inversion of religious-ascetic contempt that Zarathustra aims to
achieve simply through his activity as a prophet.
Part Nine of Beyond Good and Evil, entitled “What is Noble,” begins by
considering a topic that is central to Zarathustra’s first speech on the
Übermensch and great contempt – the development of humanity beyond
its present state. It begins with an assertion concerning the importance of
social structure for human enhancement: “Every enhancement of the type
‘human’ [jede Erhöhung des Typus ‘Mensch’] has so far been the work of an
aristocratic society” (BGE ). Nietzsche’s ultimate concern here is not
social, but psychological. He wants to consider how the order of rank that
structures an aristocratic society, and the feeling of difference in social rank
that he calls the “pathos of distance,” serve as preconditions and building
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blocks for psychological states that promote the enhancement of
humanity:
Without that pathos of distance which grows out of the ingrained difference
between strata when the ruling caste constantly looks afar and looks down
upon subjects and instruments and just as constantly practices obedience
and command, keeping down and keeping at a distance that other, more
mysterious pathos could not have grown up either the craving for an ever
new widening of distances within the soul itself, the development of ever
higher, rarer, more remote, further stretching, more comprehensive states
in brief, simply the enhancement of the type “human”, the continual
“self overcoming of the human”, to use a moral formula in a supra moral
sense. (BGE )
Nietzsche describes the interpersonal relation of looking down on those
who occupy lower social strata as a predecessor and precondition of the
intrapersonal relation that interests him. While he does not use the term
“contempt” here, a related discussion of the “ruling group” identifies
contempt as that group’s characteristic attitude and asserts that for them,
“‘good’ and ‘bad’ means approximately the same as ‘noble’ and ‘contemptible’” (BGE ). Thus it is reasonable to read BGE as contrasting two
varieties of contempt – interpersonal aristocratic contempt and an intrapersonal contempt that at least closely resembles Zarathustra’s great contempt. Nietzsche’s principal idea here is that the contemptuous feeling that
one’s present state ought to be overcome in pursuit of a higher state is a
descendent of the aristocratic belief that lower castes exist for the sake of
the higher. In addition to taking on a new object, namely oneself, this
intrapersonal contempt acquires two novel characteristics in relation to
aristocratic contempt. First, while the difference between castes is
“ingrained,” – that is, experienced as simply given and objective – the
distance between aspects of the subject is something that one craves and
always seeks to develop. Second, and relatedly, the height from which
one feels contempt for oneself is always as-yet-unrealized and imaginatively
projected into the future. This is how a noble contempt for oneself, which
might appear to be a contradiction in terms (see Section .), first becomes
It is not clear exactly what relation Nietzsche postulates between these two forms of contempt. See
Alfano (: ).
There is a hint of paradox in Nietzsche’s characterization of this intrapersonal contempt as involving
both the pursuit of an ideal and the attempt to increase our separation from our ideals by creating
“ever new widening of distances within the soul itself” (BGE ). How could we aim both to
bridge this gulf and to expand it? Nietzsche’s answer would surely appeal to the notion of selfovercoming, which he characterizes as essential to understanding life as a pursuit of ends that is also
“an opposition to ends” (Z:II “Self-Overcoming”).
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Zarathustra’s Great Contempt
possible. The height of humanity that constitutes nobility is no longer
found in the existent traits of a higher caste, but rather in the merely
imagined traits of a higher form of life. In this way, the relation of
“obedience and command” previously located within a relatively static
social structure can fuel the growth and development of an individual.
Nietzsche explicitly connects these notions of a noble height and noble
contempt with an ascetic-religious relation to oneself in his remark concerning the “self-overcoming of the human.” This new, intrapersonal
contempt fuels self-overcoming in a “supra-moral” (übermoralisch) sense
insofar as it does not employ the religious-ascetic ideal of controlling and
starving the human body in order to liberate the immaterial soul, but
rather the earthly ideal of continual growth and development of the human
being – either as individual, or as species. Of course, there are important
formal similarities between these two varieties of contempt. Both involve
looking down on what is merely “given” or “animal” in us. Zarathustra, for
example, laments that too much in humanity remains “ape” or “worm”
(Z:I “Prologue” ), and Nietzsche describes what is shaped by our selffashioning activity as the “whole ancient animal self” (GM II:). And we
might say that both varieties of contempt attach a bad conscience to
aspects of us that appear lowly and thereby spur us to overcome these
aspects by working on ourselves. But once the metaphysical height of
religious-ascetic contempt is replaced by an imagined future height of
human (or super-human) excellence, this contempt takes on a new character. The self-overcoming of the human becomes the enhancement of
embodied capacities, not their control or elimination. And our present
state comes to be regarded as the raw material (GM II:) or instrument
(BGE ) for this task – or as Zarathustra would express it, something
valuable only as a “rope” or “bridge” to the future (Z:I P:). Nietzsche
sums up this contrast between the opposed ideals of Zarathustra and the
religious-ascetic priest at the end of the second essay of the Genealogy, in
Some potentially disturbing qualities of aristocratic society even seem virtuous in the context of
noble contempt for oneself. For example, while an aristocratic indifference to the suffering of those
who occupy lower social strata might strike us as objectionably cold, an indifference to one’s own
suffering seems both permissible and integral to the task of pursuing an ideal. Thus one could
condemn Nietzsche’s interest in aristocratic noble contempt as anti-egalitarian (as does Bell :
–) and still advocate the intrapersonal noble contempt that emerges from it.
This way of valuing of our embodied capacities, which lies between the religious-ascetic rejection of
them and the modern satisfaction with them that Zarathustra aims to undermine, is roughly a
matter of taking them to possess instrumental value. A more complete description of their value
would need to take into account that in self-overcoming we do “love” what exists (presumably as
more than a mere instrument) even as we “oppose” it (Z:II “Self-Overcoming”).
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which he describes Zarathustra as “the redeeming person of great love and
contempt” who will replace our religious-ascetic fixation on the beyond
with a creative engagement with reality (GM III:).
The role of noble height in the contempt for self that Nietzsche
recommends is not explicit in Zarathustra itself, though in his first speech
Zarathustra provides an excellent example of craving “the development of
ever higher, rarer, more remote, further-stretching, more comprehensive
states” (BGE ). By advocating contempt for oneself from the standpoint of the Übermensch, which is imagined to exist in the distant future
and to bear the same developmental relation to humanity that humanity
bears to the ape (Z:I “Prologue” ), he means to introduce an evaluative
standpoint that exceeds anything available to his listeners. From that
standpoint, they are to regard the human being as “a laughingstock or a
painful embarrassment” (Z:I “Prologue” ), and thus something that ought
to “go under” (Z:I “Prologue” ). The connection between nobility and
great contempt is clearer in The Antichrist, in which Nietzsche ascribes to
his ideal reader two marks of nobility – love for oneself and reverence for
oneself (A “Preface”; see also BGE ; CW “Epilogue”). He then introduces a third feature of his ideal reader, namely contempt for humanity
itself: “One must be above humanity in strength, in loftiness of soul—in
contempt” (A “Preface”). Both of these instances of great contempt target
our present existence simply qua human beings.
In other contexts, including his revision of the biblical maxim “love thy
neighbor” (Z:III “Virtue” ), Zarathustra advocates contempt for self of
the same variety – a transposition of religious-ascetic contempt – but of a
lesser degree insofar as the standpoint from which we contemn is located
closer to the present. From the standpoint of a particular, higher self that
we might become, we contemn ourselves not as human beings, but as
individuals. Regardless of which form our great contempt takes, it spurs
the overcoming of our present traits and capacities in the direction of
future heights.
Zarathustra clearly describes as great contempt some relations to oneself that do not employ the
evaluative standpoint of the Übermensch, and do not target one’s humanity as such (see also Z:I
“Criminal”). However, it could be that in speaking of great contempt in the Prologue, Zarathustra
means to designate a contempt that is both of the variety he advocates and of a maximal degree
insofar as it employs the standpoint of the Übermensch. While the texts are unclear, I find it
significant that of the multiple varieties of contempt, only Zarathustra’s transposition of religiousascetic contempt fuels the self-overcoming of individuals in the direction of the Übermensch. This
arguably marks any degree of this contempt as “great.”
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Zarathustra’s Great Contempt
This connection between great contempt and the value of selfovercoming underlies Zarathustra’s implicit adoption of great contempt
as the standard of nobility that he himself employs in his interactions with
others. In short, Zarathustra loves and contemns in response to another’s
ability to love and contemn, and not in response to any particular human
trait. He states, for example, “I love those with great contempt [die grossen
Verachtenden] because they are the great reverers [die grossen Verehrenden]
and arrows of longing for the other shore” (Z:I “Prologue” ). And
following his failed attempt to move the masses, he returns to this standard
in remarking to the higher human beings who still fall short of his
expectations, “that you contemn [verachten], you higher humans, that lets
me hope” (Z:IV “Higher Humans” ). In contrast, Zarathustra regards the
figure he calls “the last human [der letzte Mensch]” as the “most contemptible” of all human beings (Z:I “Prologue” ). As a figure wholeheartedly
content with its lowly enjoyment of small pleasures, the last human longs
for nothing, experiences no internal tension, and has no standpoint from
which it might bear a critical relation to itself. It represents one possible
endpoint of the development of humanity, which means that in relation to
Zarathustra’s longing to overcome humanity, the last human can only be
an impediment.
. Conclusion
I have argued that we should understand the great contempt that
Zarathustra recommends to us as a descendent of the religious-ascetic
contempt described in his first speech and the noble contempt
that Nietzsche considers in greater detail in later works. Great contempt
trades the otherworldly standpoint from which the religious ascetic
looks down on everything that is “body” or “world” for the earthly
standpoint of a higher self, or higher form of life, from which we look
down on the present day. While simply as contempt this state is
This connection between contempt and a future-oriented attitude also appears in the selfdescription of the youth whom Zarathustra counsels: “My contempt and my longing [Sehnsucht]
grow at the same time; the higher I climb, the more I contemn the climber” (Z:I “Mountainside”).
It is likely no coincidence that Zarathustra first introduces the great contempt as a relation to one’s
happiness, characterized as “poverty and filth and wretched contentment” (Z:I P:). The danger he
sees in his time (which of course resembles our time) is that all too many people seek out the
happiness of small pleasures and regard inner tension or critical assessment of oneself as states to
be avoided.
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characterized by disgust with our present existence, and thus cannot be an
unalloyed joy, it remains for Zarathustra the greatest experience we can
have due to the creative self-overcoming it makes possible. It is a state we
may wish to cultivate even independent of Zarathustra’s project of overcoming humanity itself.
I am grateful to Keith Ansell-Pearson, Brad Cokelet, Paul Loeb, and Gene McHam for their
comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.
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The Great Politics of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Paul Franco
Thus Spoke Zarathustra is in many ways Nietzsche’s most political work,
with Beyond Good and Evil running a close second. It marks a departure
from the relatively apolitical ideal of the free spirit that animates
Nietzsche’s middle works and ushers in the concern with “great politics”
that pervades his later works. In Zarathustra, Nietzsche seeks to redeem
modern European humanity from its nihilistic predicament by establishing
a common goal for it to pursue, namely, the Übermensch, as well as a ruling
class to help bring this goal about. The idea of the eternal recurrence plays
a crucial role in the latter regard, serving as the great cultivating idea for the
new ruling class. Much of the drama of Zarathustra revolves around
the eponymous hero’s struggle to overcome his compassion for humanity
as he assumes the heavy burden of teaching the terrible idea from which
many will “bleed to death” (KSA :[]).
In keeping with the dramatic character of the work, Zarathustra’s
understanding of the task he has undertaken develops and deepens over
the course of the book. In a note from to , Nietzsche highlights
the developmental character of Zarathustra: “Zarathustra growing progressively greater—his teaching progressively unfolding along with this increasing greatness” (KSA :[]). A major part of Zarathustra’s development
consists in his overcoming his reluctance to rule and his acceptance of
political responsibility. It is this political drama that I follow in this essay.
A recent article that explores the relationship between Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Nietzsche’s great
politics is Loschenkohl (). Loschenkohl argues that Nietzsche’s great politics in Zarathustra
involve a bottom-up process by which a people collectively overcomes itself and gives itself new
values. My interpretation goes in a much less democratic direction, attempting to do justice to the
aristocratic dimension of Nietzsche’s great politics without endorsing the “aristocratic radical”
interpretation that takes Nietzsche to be defending actual aristocratic political institutions (see
note ).
The following translations are used in this chapter: A (); BGE (); CWFN (, ); D
(); EH (); GS (); GSt (); HH (); SE (); TI (); UM ();
Z ().
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The aristocratic idea of a “new nobility” with which the drama culminates
nevertheless leaves many questions unanswered. What exactly does the rule
of this new nobility involve? What is its relationship to the many and to
democracy in general? To answer these questions, I draw on Beyond Good
and Evil and some of Nietzsche’s later notebook entries. I conclude that
while these sources certainly help to clarify the great politics of Zarathustra,
they do not necessarily resolve all the problems that bedevil them.
. A New Political Goal
The political character of Thus Spoke Zarathustra announces itself in the
opening section of the book (which, slightly modified, is also the concluding section of the edition of The Gay Science). Zarathustra has lived
for ten years as a free spirit in the solitude of his mountain cave acquiring
knowledge. He now declares that he is sick of his (gay) wisdom, “like a bee
that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to receive it.
I would give away and distribute, until the wise among men find joy once
again in their folly, and the poor in their riches” (Z:I “Prologue” ).
Zarathustra’s desire to give to others here contrasts sharply with the
birdlike aloofness of the free spirit; and his beneficence is further amplified
in the next section when he tells the saint that he loves man and brings him
a gift (Z:I “Prologue” ). Zarathustra is no longer content merely to pursue
knowledge; he seeks to redeem humanity from the terrible illness that
afflicts it.
This illness is, of course, the nihilism that results from the death of God.
The latter event, which Nietzsche evoked in all its terrifying reality in the
aphorism on the madman in The Gay Science (), is mentioned in
Zarathustra merely as an aside after the eponymous hero’s encounter with
the saint. Its potential consequences, however, are clearly depicted in
Zarathustra’s portrait of the contemptible “last man,” who has no ideals or
goals to strive or die for, is without love or longing, and seeks only
“wretched contentment” (Z:I “Prologue” , ). It is to avert this nihilistic
goallessness that Zarathustra brings his gift of a new goal to strive and die
for, namely, the Übermensch. “All beings so far,” Zarathustra declaims to
the people gathered in the marketplace, “have created something beyond
themselves.” Such self-overcoming, we learn later in the book, is the
essence of life. The pursuit of comfortable self-preservation à la the last
Based on some of the entries in his notebooks, Nietzsche seems originally to have thought of this
aphorism as part of Zarathustra (see KSA :[, , ]).
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The Great Politics of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
man contradicts this fundamental will of life, which is the will to power.
Therefore, man as he currently exists is “something that shall be overcome.” Hence the need for the Übermensch or “overman” (Z:I “Prologue”
; Z:II “Self-Overcoming”).
The concept of the Übermensch has, of course, been a source of
considerable confusion in the reception of Nietzsche’s philosophy, conjuring up images of a biological master race, not to mention a comic-book
superhero. But for Nietzsche it refers primarily to the great human being,
the human being with the most comprehensive soul that contains the
greatest amount of diversity, opposition, and struggle without falling into
disunity (see EH Z:; Z:III “Tablets” ). Such great human beings or
Übermenschen have been produced in the past by accident – Goethe, for
example – but it is only now, after the death of God, that their creation
becomes the self-conscious goal of humanity (see A , ). Hitherto the
goal of humanity has been to preserve the species at the expense of the
individual. Now, Nietzsche writes, “the goal can be set higher”: no longer
merely to preserve mankind but to overcome it (KSA :[, ]). The
goal is to produce the most manifold and therefore most powerful individual or group of individuals. Instead of serving merely as a means, the
individual is now to be made the “fruit of the communal entity” (KSA :
[]; see also KSA :[]).
When Zarathustra presents his gift of the Übermensch to the people, he
is met with laughter and derision. By the end of the Prologue, he resolves
never to speak to the people at large again but only to companions. It is to
the search for the right companions with which to pursue the goal of the
In what follows, I reject Laurence Lampert’s claim that the teaching on the Übermensch in
Zarathustra is a merely provisional teaching that is ultimately rendered obsolete by the teaching
on the eternal recurrence (Lampert : –, –, ). Without the new ideal of the
Übermensch, the idea of the eternal recurrence would be unendurable, the endless repetition of
wastefulness, pointlessness, and meaningless, in accordance with the teaching of the Soothsayer.
Only the Übermensch is capable of fully affirming and incorporating the idea of the eternal
recurrence. See also Pippin, who treats the idea of the Übermensch ironically as a “solution that
deconstructs itself” (: ).
The translators of Nietzsche’s Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra reject
the identification of the Übermensch with individual great human beings like Goethe, Napoleon, and
Cesare Borgia, arguing instead that it refers to a “new and future species that will be superior to the
human species” (Loeb and Tinsley ). I do not see these two interpretations of the Übermensch as
being necessarily in conflict with one another, unless one takes “species” in a literal, Darwinian sense.
The Übermensch certainly represents a new, higher type of human being, as different from current
human beings as the latter are from apes. But what differentiates Übermenschen from present-day
human beings is that they are individuals in the great, exceptional sense delineated by Nietzsche
throughout his writings. Such individuals (e.g., Goethe, Napoleon, Caesar) have existed in the past
as lucky accidents, but they have never been consciously willed or bred as a “species” (again see A ,
). This is the project of Zarathustra and of Nietzsche’s great politics in general.
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Übermensch that the rest of Zarathustra is devoted. This again points to the
political dimension of the book. After his initial failure to persuade the
masses, Zarathustra searches for the appropriate audience for his teaching,
the relevant political community that can join with him to produce the
Übermensch. In the end, he does not find it and realizes that he must create
such a community; he must, in other words, become a founder. This is the
political significance of the subtitle of Zarathustra: A Book for All and None.
Zarathustra begins by addressing his teaching of the Übermensch to everyone but ends up reserving it for a group of companions, a “new nobility,”
that does not yet exist but must be created.
Apart from the Prologue, the most politically significant sections of Part
I are “The New Idol” and “On the Thousand and One Goals.” In the first,
Zarathustra famously describes the modern state as the “coldest of all cold
monsters.” It is, of course, the liberal state that he has in mind. Nietzsche’s
antipathy for the liberal state goes all the way back to his earliest writing on
politics, “The Greek State,” where he describes it as merely guaranteeing
the “most undisturbed coexistence possible” so that everyone can “pursue
their own purposes without restriction.” Instead of representing an end for
which individuals sacrifice themselves, the liberal state is viewed as a mere
means for people to achieve their selfish aims (GSt –). In “The
New Idol,” Zarathustra contrasts this instrumental understanding of the
state with what he calls a “people.” Unlike a people, which is animated by a
faith, a love, a table of good and evil above it, the liberal state merely
guarantees peace and allows individuals to pursue happiness in their own
way. Coldly, it hangs a “a sword and a hundred appetites” over the
superfluous many, but it does not specify a goal, a love, a value to give
their lives meaning. Instead of a singular table of good and evil, the state
accommodates all such tables and thereby becomes a “confusion of tongues of good and evil” (Z:I “New Idol”).
With his talk of “peoples,” though, Zarathustra does not mean to
induce a romantic longing for the warmth of premodern community as
an escape from the rootlessness of atomistic modern society. He makes this
clear in “On a Thousand and One Goals,” where, after defining a people in
terms of a collective esteeming and valuing based on what it finds difficult
and has overcome through its “will to power,” he comments that, whereas
at first peoples were the creators of values, now it is individuals; and he
adds that “the individual is himself the most recent creation.” In the past,
“peoples hung a tablet of good over themselves”; the good conscience was
identified with the community or herd, and the bad conscience with the
ego. For Nietzsche, this is what differentiates the premodern morality of
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The Great Politics of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
custom from modern moral sensibility (see D ; GS ). The task now is
to go beyond the parochial morality of peoples and establish an overarching goal for humanity. Thus Zarathustra pronounces: “A thousand goals
have there been so far, for there have been a thousand peoples. Only the
yoke for the thousand necks is still lacking: the one goal is lacking.
Humanity still has no goal” (Z:I “Goals”). It is just such an overarching
goal or ideal that he aims to provide with his teaching about the
Übermensch.
. The Transition to Ruling
Part II of Thus Spoke Zarathustra begins very much like Part I, with
Zarathustra back in the solitude of his mountain cave. As in Part I, his
wisdom has grown to the point that, overfull, he seeks to give to others,
specifically to the friends he left behind rather than to the masses at large.
Unlike in Part I, he awakes from a bad dream in which he sees that his
“teaching is in danger,” having been distorted by his enemies. Zarathustra
resolves that he must go down again and help his friends. He is not at all
unhappy to do so, for his “impatient love overflows in rivers, downward,
toward sunrise and sunset . . . Let the river of my love plunge where there
is no way! How could a river fail to find its way to the sea?” Zarathustra
welcomes the opportunity to rearticulate and expand upon his teaching for
his friends, for “a new speech comes to me; weary I grow, like all creators,
of the old tongues. My spirit no longer wants to walk on worn soles”
(Z:II “Child with Mirror”).
Zarathustra does not immediately indicate in what way his teaching has
been distorted by his enemies. Instead, he goes to his friends on the Blessed
Isles and elaborates on his teaching of the Übermensch. He makes even
clearer now than he did in Part I that the Übermensch is the successor to
the ideal of God: “Once one said God when one looked upon distant seas;
but now I have taught you to say: Übermensch” (Z:II “Blessed Isles”). As
Nietzsche puts it in a note from the time of Zarathustra: “God is dead: and
it is time for the Übermensch to live” (KSA :[]; see also Z:IV
“Higher Man” ). But in his speech on the Blessed Isles, Zarathustra
focuses less on the fact that God is dead and more on the fact that he is a
Loschenkohl problematically argues that, even though Nietzsche denies that peoples are any longer
the creators of values, this does not mean that “overcoming won’t become a collective process once
again, if circumstances change. Just as overcoming and creating once was a collective task for ancient
peoples, so it might be once again in newly emerging peoples that constitute themselves beyond the
modern state” (Loschenkohl : ; see also –).
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conjecture that reaches beyond the creative will of human beings. The will
to truth demands that our conjectures be limited to what is “thinkable for
man, visible for man, feelable for man.” But even more damning for the
conjecture of God is that it idealizes “the One and the Plenum and the
Unmoved and the Sated and the Permanent” and thus denies the value of
impermanence, which is the very condition of human creativity.
“Creation,” Zarathustra declares, “is the great redemption from suffering,
and life’s growing light. But that the creator may be, suffering is needed
and much change.” Therefore, creators “are the advocates and justifiers of
all impermanence.” Anticipating what he is going to say later about selfovercoming, Zarathustra states that he has already passed through a
hundred souls, and it is in just this sort of Protean self-transformation
that human liberty consists (Z:II “Blessed Isles”).
At the end of his speech on the Blessed Isles, Zarathustra returns to the
political dimension of his teaching about the creative will. Such a will does
not rest content with ceaseless self-transformation and self-creation, at least
not in Zarathustra’s case. Rather, it impels him “ever again toward man;
thus is the hammer impelled toward stone.” As he develops this image of
the sculptor, Zarathustra highlights the violence and cruelty involved in
the Übermensch project: “O men, in the stone there sleeps an image . . .
Alas that it must sleep in the hardest, ugliest stone! Now my hammer rages
cruelly against its prison. Pieces of rock rain from the stone: what is that to
me? I want to perfect it; for a shadow came to me . . . The beauty of the
Übermensch came to me as a shadow” (Z:II “Blessed Isles”; see also KSA
:[]). The violence and cruelty contained in this image become
increasingly prominent as the drama of Zarathustra unfolds.
After further elaborating on various aspects of his teaching – pity,
priests, virtue, and the rabble – Zarathustra finally comes to the distortion
he mentioned at the outset of Part II in his speech “On the Tarantulas.”
He uses the image of the tarantula to characterize the “preachers of
equality” – Nietzsche also uses it in relation to the arch egalitarian,
Rousseau (see D P:). Like the tarantula, the preachers of equality are
motivated by revenge: “Revenge sits in your soul: wherever you bite, black
scabs grow; your poison makes the soul whirl with revenge.” As Nietzsche
does in his later discussions of slave morality, Zarathustra here traces the
drive for equality back to impotence and ressentiment. And he is especially
concerned that his own teaching about the creative will of the individual
not be confused with any sort of egalitarianism. “Some preach my doctrine
of life and are at the same time preachers of equality and tarantulas,” he
declares. “I do not wish to be mixed up and confused with the preachers of
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The Great Politics of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
equality. For to me justice speaks thus: ‘Men are not equal.’ Nor should
they become equal. What would my love of the Übermensch be if I spoke
otherwise” (Z:II “Tarantulas”; see also BGE ).
Here we arrive at one of the central pillars of Nietzsche’s political
philosophy – its rejection of equality and, along with it, democracy –
and it is important to understand the reasoning behind it. In this regard, it is
significant that Zarathustra not only denies that men are equal but that they
should be equal. His teaching about life is that it involves constant selfovercoming; it requires opposition, contest, war, and victory. Inequality is
inherent in this process: there is no overcoming without something to
overcome, without something to stand victorious over and look down upon.
Zarathustra makes this point in one of Nietzsche’s most revealing passages on
why there needs to be inequality: “Life wants to build itself up into the heights
with pillars and steps; it wants to look into vast distances and out toward
stirring beauties; therefore it requires height. And because it requires height, it
requires steps and contradictions among the steps and the climbers. Life wants
to climb and to overcome itself climbing” (Z:II “Tarantulas”).
Zarathustra’s teaching about life receives its definitive statement in his
speech “On Self-Overcoming,” where he finally identifies it with the will
to power. This crucial concept in Nietzsche’s philosophy is mentioned
seven times in this speech, as opposed to twice in the rest of Zarathustra. In
his earlier speech “On the Thousand and One Goals,” Zarathustra
speaks of the will to power in relation to the esteeming activity of peoples:
“A tablet of good and evil hangs over every people. Behold, it is the
tablet of their overcomings; behold, it is the voice of their will to power”
(Z:I “Goals”). In “On Self-Overcoming,” he continues to identify the will
to power with such esteeming activity or value creation. It is philosophers,
those “who are wisest,” who are most responsible for legislating values,
even though they usually misunderstand their creative activity in terms of
the will to truth. In this sense, philosophy represents the “most spiritual
will to power” (BGE ; see also BGE ). Driven by their will to power,
philosophers also are responsible for destroying old values as they create
new ones. For this reason, Zarathustra says that:
good and evil that are not transitory, do not exist. Driven on by themselves,
they must overcome themselves again and again. With your values and
words of good and evil you do violence when you value . . . But a more
violent force and a new overcoming grow out of your values and break egg
and eggshell. And whoever must be a creator in good and evil, verily, he
must first be an annihilator and break values. Thus the highest evil belongs
to the highest goodness: but this is creative. (Z:II “Self Overcoming”)
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Zarathustra’s speech “On Self-Overcoming” plays a pivotal role in Part
II and, indeed, in Zarathustra as whole. It sums up his teaching about the
will, freedom, creativity, and self-overcoming to this point, encapsulating
it in the concept of the will to power. But by tying this teaching specifically
to the value-creating, legislative activity of the philosopher, the speech also
prepares for the supreme act of philosophical legislation that is to come. As
a creator of new values, Zarathustra must destroy the old ones. In this
respect, he must appear violent, cruel, and in the highest sense evil. This is
the burden that weighs him down in the rest of Part II and into Part III.
With his speech “On Self-Overcoming,” Zarathustra begins to approach
the heart of his philosophical great politics. But before he can present the
central idea of that politics, namely, the idea of the eternal recurrence, he
needs to make clear the sort of great politics he does not have in mind.
This he does in his conversation with the fire hound in “On Great Events.”
The fire hound is the emblem of the revolutionary spirit in Europe that
seeks to overthrow all the institutions of society in the name of freedom.
Nietzsche’s hostility to this revolutionary spirit, which he traces back to
Rousseau and associates primarily with socialism and anarchism, goes all
the way back to Human, All too Human (see HH , ). With respect
to such revolutionary “scum and overthrow devils,” Zarathustra states:
“Freedom is what all of you like best to bellow; but I have outgrown the
belief in ‘great events’ wherever there is much bellowing and smoke.” And
he follows this with his own view of what constitutes a great event and
hence great politics, namely, philosophical legislation: “Believe me, friend
Hellishnoise: the greatest events—they are not our loudest but our
stillest hours. Not around the inventors of new noise, but around
the inventors of new values does the world revolve; it revolves inaudibly”
(Z:II “Great Events”).
The chapter “On Great Events” begins with the strange image of
Zarathustra’s flying Doppelgänger announcing, “It is time! It is high time!”
and it ends with Zarathustra asking, “High time for what?” (Z:II “Great
Events”). The next two chapters, “The Soothsayer” and “On
Redemption,” begin to answer the latter question. In the first, a soothsayer
foresees the coming nihilism and the sense of weariness that accompanies
it: “And I saw a great sadness descend upon mankind. The best grew weary
of their works. A doctrine appeared, accompanied by a faith: ‘All is empty,
all is the same, all has been.” The sea of faith has withdrawn, the Christian
God has died, and all that remains is a depressing sense of meaningless and
the “in vain.” Zarathustra himself is depressed by this prophecy, for he sees
that it threatens his teaching of the creative will and the Übermensch: “Alas,
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The Great Politics of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
how shall I save my light through [this long twilight of nihilism]?” he asks.
“It must not suffocate in this sadness. For it shall be a light for distant
worlds and even more distant nights” (Z:II “Soothsayer”).
Zarathustra begins to discern the answer to his question in the following
chapter, “On Redemption,” which marks the climax of Part II. The
chapter begins with a rearticulation of Zarathustra’s teaching on the
creative will and the Übermensch. Encountering a group of cripples at a
bridge and telling one of them that he has seen even worse, inverse cripples
or hypertrophic geniuses who have “too little of everything and too much
of one thing,” Zarathustra comments to his disciples: “Verily, my friends,
I walk among men as among the fragments and limbs of men. This is what
is terrible for my eyes, that I find man in ruins and scattered as over a
battlefield or a butcher-field. And when my eyes flee from the now to the
past, they always find the same: fragments and limbs and dreadful accidents—but no human beings.” Nietzsche uses this same image of fragments of human beings scattered over a field in “Schopenhauer as
Educator,” where he imagines the fragments calling out: “come, assist,
complete, bring together what belongs together, we have an immeasurable
longing to become whole” (SE ). Zarathustra, too, speaks of the desire to
gather together the fragments of men to create a whole human being:
“And this is all my creating and striving, that I create and carry together
into One what is fragment and riddle and dreadful accident”
(Z:II “Redemption”). A couple of entries from Nietzsche’s notebooks
provide helpful glosses on this passage and connect it more explicitly to
Zarathustra’s teaching of the Übermensch. In one, he declares that “most
men represent pieces and fragments of man: one has to add them up for a
complete man to appear.” The task of history is precisely to unite the
fragments that have developed separately over the course of human evolution in order to produce the “synthetic man” (KSA :[]). In
another note, Nietzsche claims that a “single individual can under certain
circumstances justify the existence of whole millennia—that is, a full, rich,
great, whole human being in relation to countless incomplete fragmentary
men” (KSA :[]).
Zarathustra now ties all this back to the theme of the chapter: “To
redeem those who lived in the past and to recreate all ‘it was’ into a ‘thus
I willed it’—that alone should I call redemption.” But standing in the way
of such redemption is the fact the will that liberates is itself “still a
This image originally comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar” (Emerson
: ).
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prisoner.” This is the meaning of Zarathustra’s dream about becoming a
night watchman and guardian of tombs: “Powerless against what has been
done, [the will] is an angry spectator of all that is past. The will cannot will
backwards; and that it cannot break time and time’s covetousness, that is
the will’s loneliest melancholy.” Unable to affect the past, the will turns
vengefully against itself; and it is this vengefulness, according to
Zarathustra, springing from the “will’s ill will against time and its ‘it
was,’” that has been the source of all moral and religious doctrines hitherto,
culminating in Schopenhauer’s complete denial of the will and the nihilistic doctrine of the soothsayer (Z:II “Redemption”). The genuine redemption of humanity requires that the will be delivered from the spirit of
revenge that springs from its inability to will backwards. As we find out in
Part III, this is what the doctrine of the eternal recurrence seeks
to accomplish.
The political bearing of all this is made explicit in the final chapter of
Part II, “The Stillest Hour.” Having understood what is necessary for
redemption, Zarathustra resists speaking aloud the redemptive word of the
eternal recurrence. His stillest hour—to which the greatest events belong,
namely, the invention of new values—chastises him for refusing to assume
the responsibility of commanding great things: “To do great things is
difficult; but to command great things is more difficult. This is what is
most unforgivable in you: you have the power, and you do not want to
rule” (Z:II “Stillest Hour”). In his notebooks, Nietzsche explains that
Zarathustra’s reluctance here springs primarily from his concern for his
friends and companions: “The most profound suffering is not for his own
sake, but rather for the sake of those dearest to him who bleed to death on
account of his doctrine” (KSA :[]). This is the most difficult part
about ruling: it requires the imposition of suffering not only on oneself but
on others: “This is the problem for those who rule: they must sacrifice those they
love to their ideal” (KSA : []).
“The Stillest Hour” marks a crucial turning point in Zarathustra.
Nietzsche describes it in his notebooks as the “transition from the free
spirit to the having to rule” (KSA :[]). It is precisely this transition
that constitutes the drama of Part III. To be a free spirit is no longer
enough; Zarathustra must leave the Blessed Isles and accept the responsibility of ruling by teaching the horrific doctrine of the eternal recurrence.
In a note on Part III, Nietzsche writes: “Z . against the complacency of the
sages—against ‘joyful science’ [fröhliche Wissenschaft]. The downfall of the
Blessed Isles awakens [Zarathustra]” (KSA :[]). And in another
note, he explains why it is so difficult for Zarathustra to leave behind his
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The Great Politics of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
free-spirited enjoyment of multiplicity: “To rule? Ghastly! I do not want to
impose my type. My happiness is multiplicity! Problem! . . . against all those
who merely enjoy things (KSA :[; see also KSA :[]).
Zarathustra has reached a turning point that proves to be the turning
point of history. He must give up merely enjoying things in order to teach
the eternal recurrence, the hammer by which to bring about the
Übermensch (see KSA :[]).
. A New Aristocracy
Part III begins with Zarathustra leaving the comfort of the Blessed Isles
and the pleasures of the free-spirited quest for knowledge. His greatest
challenge lies before him: the challenge of ruling by teaching the idea of
the eternal recurrence: “I stand before my final peak now and before that
which has been saved up for me the longest. Alas, now I must face my
hardest path.” Only now, his stillest hour tells him, “are you going your
way to greatness.” We are reminded of Nietzsche’s comment on the
development of Zarathustra’s character over the course of the book, how
he grows “progressively greater—his teaching progressively unfolding
along with this increasing greatness” (KSA :[]). A major part of
this increasing greatness involves Zarathustra’s overcoming of his compassion for his friends and disciples as he prepares to teach the doctrine from
which they may “bleed to death.” Again his stillest hour speaks to him:
“Now what was gentlest in you must still become hardest. . .. Praised be
what hardens!” (Z:III “Wanderer”).
There follows, finally, the first – and the most fully developed –
presentation of the idea of the eternal return. It is of crucial importance
that Zarathustra presents the idea to the dwarfish spirit of gravity, the spirit
of morality that has hitherto reigned supreme on earth and is Zarathustra’s
“devil and archenemy” (Z:III “Vision and Riddle”). The clear implication
is that the idea of the eternal return is first and foremost designed to
vanquish the spirit of gravity or morality. The idea that things are so
knotted together that, given an infinite amount of time, they will combine
and recombine in exactly the same way over and over again completely
undermines the ideas of reason, purpose, and responsibility that undergird
all ethical systems. All ethical teachers, Nietzsche tells us elsewhere, have
come on the scene in order to make “what happens necessarily and always
spontaneously and without any purpose . . . appear to be done for some
purpose and strike man as rational and an ultimate commandment.” They
want to make sure that we take life seriously and “do not laugh at existence,
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or at ourselves” (GS ). It is precisely this sort of tragic seriousness and
gravity that the idea of the eternal return renders meaningless, restoring
chance and innocence to things and delivering them from “their bondage
under purpose” (Z:III “Sunrise”).
Having vanquished the spirit of gravity, Zarathustra now has a vision of
a young shepherd who is gagging on a black snake that has crawled down
his throat. With this horrifying image Nietzsche conveys just how difficult
it is for Zarathustra to incorporate the idea of the eternal recurrence.
Earlier in the book, Zarathustra indicates that the “bite on which
I gagged the most” was the thought that even the rabble is necessary for
life (Z:II “Rabble”). And toward the end of Part III, he makes even clearer
why he experiences such nausea at the idea of the eternal recurrence: “The
great disgust with man—this choked me and had crawled into my
throat . . . ‘Eternally recurs the man of whom you are weary, the small
man’—thus yawned my sadness” (Z:III “Convalescent” ). But what is the
meaning of the shepherd’s biting off the head of the snake and spitting it
out, and why does it lead to his transformation into a being that is
“no longer shepherd, no longer human—one changed, radiant, laughing?”
(Z:III “Vision and Riddle” ). That Zarathustra here envisages the transformation of the shepherd into an Übermensch through the incorporation
of the idea of the eternal recurrence seems clear, but what does this have
to do with the biting off and spitting out of the head of the snake? One
possibility is that the incorporation of the idea of the eternal recurrence
requires that Zarathustra accept the exclusion of the rabble from his
redemptive project, that he abandon his hopes for the redemption of
all – indeed, most – of humanity. On this view, the phrase “no longer
shepherd” takes on added significance. In a number of his notes from the
time of Zarathustra, Nietzsche identifies the shepherd with the herd, even
calling him the “gilded tool of the herd” (KSA :[]; see also KSA [,
, ]). The Übermensch will play no such role in Zarathustra’s
political project.
In the chapter immediately following “On the Vision and the Riddle,”
Zarathustra’s thoughts turn once again to his companions. The search for
the right companions has been a leading theme of Zarathustra from the
opening scene of the book when the eponymous hero disastrously presents
his teaching of the Übermensch to the masses. Zarathustra now realizes that
Commenting on the image of the shepherd biting off the head of the snake in a note, Nietzsche
writes: “We created the weightiest thought—now les us create the being for whom the thought is light
and blissful” (KSA :[]).
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The Great Politics of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
the companions he desires do not exist but must first be created:
“Companions the creator once sought, and the children of his hope; and
behold, it turned out he could not find them, unless he first created them
himself.” Such creation involves strengthening and toughening up his
former companions. Imagining his former companions as trees standing
together in his garden on the Blessed Isles, he says: “one day I want to dig
them up and place each by itself, so that it may learn solitude and defiance
and caution. Gnarled and bent and with supple hardness it shall then stand
by the sea, a living lighthouse of invincible life.” It is by being exposed to
the rough elements that each of Zarathustra’s potential companions
“shall be known and tested, whether he is of my kind and kin,
whether he is the master of a long will, taciturn even when he speaks,
and yielding so that in giving he receives—so that he may one day
become a companion and fellow creator and fellow celebrant of
Zarathustra” (Z:III “Involuntary Bliss”).
The key test to determine whether someone is of Zarathustra’s “kind and
kin” is, of course, the idea of the eternal return of the same. Nietzsche does not
state this explicitly in the text of Zarathustra, but in his notebooks from the
time of its composition he repeatedly refers to the winnowing and cultivating
function of the eternal recurrence, how it destroys the sick and the weak and
strengthens the healthy and the strong (see KSA :[], [], [],
[]; KSA :[, , , ]). It is the “hammer” with which
Zarathustra hopes to sculpt men and ultimately form a new aristocracy (see
KSA :[, ]; [], [], []; KSA :[]; [, ]; [,
]). Those who are unable to bear the idea of the eternal recurrence “stand
condemned; those who find it the greatest benefit are chosen to rule” (KSA
:[]). From the former, destructive consequence of the eternal recurrence come some of Nietzsche’s most notorious statements about the “extermination of millions of failures” (see KSA :[, , ]). The latter
consequence points to the political dimension of the eternal recurrence, which
serves as the “foundation of an oligarchy above peoples and their interests:
education to a universally human politics” (KSA :[]).
The “oligarchy above peoples” referred to in this note is taken up by
Zarathustra in his remarks on the “new nobility” in the important chapter
“On Old and New Tablets.” He introduces this topic in what seems a
strange way, speaking of his “pity for all that is past: I see how all of it is
abandoned . . . to the pleasure, the spirit, the madness of every generation,
which comes along and reinterprets all that has been as a bridge to itself.”
A new nobility is needed to counter the democratic rabble’s obliviousness
of history, its abandonment of the spiritual inheritance of the past, and its
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reinterpretation of “all that has been as a bridge to itself.” By focusing on its
opposition to the rabble’s despotism over history, thought, and culture,
Zarathustra makes clear that he thinks of this new nobility in primarily
cultural, rather than narrowly political, terms. Paradoxically, he sees the
new nobility’s recuperation of the past as contingent on its orientation
toward the future. Indeed, it is precisely this future orientation that differentiates the new nobility from the old: “O my brothers, your nobility should
not look backward but ahead! . . . Your children’s land shall you love: this
love shall be your new nobility—the undiscovered land in the most distant
sea. . .. In your children you shall make up for being the children of your
fathers: thus shall you redeem all that is past” (Z:III “Tablets” –).
A little later in “On Old and New Tablets,” Zarathustra makes clear
that the new aristocracy he has described is ultimately destined to
rule: “For, my brothers, the best should rule, the best also want to rule”
(Z:III “Tablets” ). But what exactly he means by “ruling” remains
ambiguous. In order to flesh it out, we must turn to Beyond Good and
Evil, which contains perhaps the clearest statement of what Nietzsche
understands an aristocratic society to be and why he finds it desirable:
Every enhancement of the type “man” so far has been the work of an
aristocratic society and it will be so again and again a society that
believes in the long ladder of an order of rank and differences in value
between man and man, and that needs slavery in some sense or other.
Without that pathos of difference which grows out of the ingrained differ
ence between strata when the ruling caste constantly looks afar and looks
down upon subjects and instruments and just as constantly practices
obedience and command, keeping down and keeping at a distance that
other, more mysterious pathos could not have grown up either the
craving for an ever new widening of distances within the soul itself, the
development of ever higher, rarer, more remote, further stretching, more
comprehensive states in brief, simply the enhancement of the type “man,”
the continual “self overcoming of man,” to use a moral formula in a supra
moral sense. (BGE )
Strauss emphasizes the nonpolitical character of Nietzsche’s conception of the new nobility and
criticizes it for its abdication of political responsibility (: –, –).
On the relation between the historical sense and future orientation, see GS , where Nietzsche
mentions the idea of a “new nobility” for the first time (see also KSA :[]; KSA [, ]).
One might look to Part IV of Zarathustra for further clarification, but in many ways this part merely
repeats in a comic vein Zarathustra’s fruitless quest for proper companions and fellow rulers. The
higher men he encounters turn out to be “not high and strong enough” for the political task
Zarathustra has in mind; they are not the “warriors” or “laughing lions” he requires (Z:IV
“Welcome”). He concludes, disappointedly, that these higher men “are not my proper
companions” (Z:IV “Sign”).
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The Great Politics of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
There are several things to note in this remarkable paragraph. First, the
goal of Nietzsche’s aristocratic great politics is the “enhancement of
the type ‘man,’” a phrase he repeats twice. His concern is not with the
happiness of a few individuals but with what Daniel Conway calls the
“fundamental question of political legislation: what ought humankind to
become?” Second, there is nothing in the paragraph to suggest that
Nietzsche is concerned to establish aristocratic political institutions. For
him, an aristocratic society is understood to be a “society that believes in
the long ladder of an order of rank and differences between man and man,”
one that is characterized by the “pathos of distance” between strata. He
mentions a “ruling caste” and “subjects,” but the sort of rule he has in
mind seems to be spiritual or cultural rather than strictly political. None of
this is to suggest that Nietzsche is not defending aristocracy in some sense,
only that he associates it primarily with a system of values, an ethical and
cultural outlook, rather than a literal set of political institutions.
Finally, and perhaps most troublingly, Nietzsche asserts that the
enhancement of the type man requires “slavery in some sense or other.”
He is even more explicit in the aphorism that follows BGE , stating
that in a healthy aristocracy an untold number of human beings must be
sacrificed, “reduced to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to instruments,” for the sake of the higher, more spiritual human beings”
(BGE ). Nietzsche, however, has a rather broad understanding of
“slavery.” In Human, All too Human, he defines a slave as anyone “who
does not have two-thirds of his day to himself” (HH ). And in a note
from , he claims that slavery exists in every society, “whether you
want it or not: for example, the Prussian civil servant, the scholar, the
monk” (KSA :[]). It is slavery in just this sort of sense that
Nietzsche sees as gaining ground in Europe as a result of democracy.
The process of democratization has created a “supra-national and nomadic
type of man” who is eminently trainable, adaptable, and even intelligent.
Such a “useful, industrious, handy, multi-purpose herd animal” is fit for
“slavery in the subtlest sense” (BGE ; KSA :[]).
Somewhat unexpectedly, Nietzsche sees an opportunity in the leveling
and “dwarfing” tendencies of democracy. Indeed, he argues that there is a
way in which the democratization of Europe is inadvertently creating
conditions for a new and even more refined aristocracy: “The very same
new conditions that will on average lead to the leveling and mediocritizing
of man . . . are likely to give birth to exceptional human beings of a most
Conway (: ).
Clark () makes this point very effectively.
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dangerous and attractive quality.” The process of democratization thus
serves as a training ground not only for “slavery in the subtlest sense” but
for the “cultivation of tyrants” in the most spiritual sense (BGE ; see
also KSA :[]). Nietzsche even goes so far as to suggest that the
development of a new aristocracy out of the democratic movement that
creates the industrious, intelligent, and adaptable herd animal of Europe
might constitute something like a justification of that movement: “And
would it not be a kind of goal, redemption, and justification of the
democratic movement itself if someone arrived who could make use of it
—by finally producing beside its new and sublime development of
slavery . . . a higher kind of dominating and Caesarian spirits who would
stand upon it, maintain themselves by it, and elevate themselves through
it?” (KSA :[]).
Here and elsewhere Nietzsche uses the image of base and superstructure
(not in the Marxian sense) to describe the relationship between the few
and the many. In The Antichrist, he speaks of high culture as a “pyramid”
that requires a broad, sturdy base to support the lofty spiritual achievements of the few (A ). And in a late note, he puts it this way: a high
culture “can stand only upon a broad base, upon a strong and healthy
consolidated mediocrity” (KSA :[]; see also KSA :[, ]. Why
is such a broad base necessary? In the first place, it serves to protect society
against the destructive potential of great human beings, who are “dangerous, accidents, exceptions, tempests” that threaten to blow up “things
slowly built and established” (KSA :[]; GS ; TI “Expeditions”
). Secondly, the great human being requires the “opposition of the
masses . . . a feeling of distance from them! he stands on them, he lives
off them” (KSA :[]).
The base–superstructure analogy suggests something else about the
relationship of the few to the many, namely, that the former do not “rule”
or “lead” the latter in any sort of conventional political sense. A note from
the time of Zarathustra brings this out nicely. Describing the relationship
between the last men and the Übermenschen, Nietzsche writes: “The goal is
not at all to conceive of the latter as the masters of the former: but rather:
the two species should exist alongside one another—as segregated as
Nietzsche’s use of the base–superstructure analogy to understand the coexistence of democracy and
aristocracy goes all the way back to Human, All too Human and its sequels. Contrary to scholars who
claim that Nietzsche’s support of democracy in his middle works contrasts sharply with his later
great politics, I would argue that, even in his middle writings, Nietzsche’s allegiance to democracy is
purely instrumental and wholly in the service of aristocratic values (see especially WS ). For a
fuller defense of this position, see Franco (: –).
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The Great Politics of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
possible; the one like the Epicurean gods, having no concern for the other”
(KSA :[]). This image of the aristocratic few and the mediocre many
existing in separate spheres can be found in many of the notes from
Nietzsche’s later years. In one, he writes: “Main consideration: not to see
the task of the higher species in leading the lower . . . but the lower as a base
upon which the higher species performs its own tasks (KSA :[]; see also
:[]). In another, he says of the “master race” excoriated by so many of
Nietzsche’s critics that it is not a race “whose sole task is to rule, but a race
with its own sphere of life, with an excess of strength for beauty, bravery,
culture, manners . . . a hothouse for strange and choice plants” (KSA :
[]). The “masters of the earth” do not seek to impose their values on the
herd – what could their values have to do with the needs of the herd (KSA
:[]; KSA :[])? – rather, they exist far apart from the herd,
creating and self-legislating in their own sphere, working artistically on
themselves as a means of enhancing the type “man” (KSA :[]).
This interpretation of Nietzsche’s great politics, which sees the aristocratic
few and the mediocre many as existing in separate spheres having little to do
with one another, contrasts sharply with “aristocratic radical” interpretation
that views Nietzsche as literally advocating an aristocratic political system in
which the gifted few rule over, manipulate, oppress, enslave, and sometimes
even exterminate the mediocre many. Indeed, it suggests that Nietzsche’s
aristocratic great politics are not necessarily incompatible with democracy.
This is not to say that they are in any way democratic, as some scholars have
maintained. Like Tocqueville, Nietzsche regarded the “democratization of
Europe [as] inevitable” (WS ); and he even believed, as we saw above, that
such democratization could provide a secure and durable foundation for his
new nobility. But he never saw the former as anything more than instrumental to the latter; and he never doubted that the system of valuation belonging
to his new aristocracy was utterly at odds with the democratic belief in
equality. Nietzsche ultimately defends a cultural or spiritual aristocracy within
democratic political institutions, with the former serving, again, as “a kind of
goal, redemption, and justification of the democratic movement itself.”
On Nietzsche’s vision of future society as consisting of two radically separate spheres, a high cultural
one, and a lower democratic one, see Drochon (: , –, –).
The locus classicus of this “aristocratic radical” interpretation of Nietzsche’s politics is Detwiler
(). For similar interpretations, see Dannhauser (: –, –); Dannhauser (:
–); Ansell-Pearson (: –, –, –, –); Abbey and Appel ();
Appel (); Dombowsky (); Gillespie (: ix, xiii–xiv, –, , , , –,
–, –).
See Warren (); Connolly (); Honig (); Owen (); Hatab ().
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The question that inevitably confronts such an interpretation of
Nietzsche’s great politics is, what makes it political at all? If Nietzsche’s
new aristocracy is perfectly compatible with democratic political institutions, what difference politically does it make? There are two points to
make in response. First, following from the quote above, Nietzsche’s
conception of a new nobility – and ultimately of the Übermensch – provides a goal that counters the nihilistic aimlessness of democracy and
thereby serves as a kind of redemption and justification of it. Second,
Zarathustra provides the means by which to educate, test, and cultivate a
ruling caste – most importantly through the idea of the eternal return –
and thereby establishes a kind of structure or institution of rule. In many
ways, this structure or institution of rule resembles what Nietzsche elsewhere describes as a church. “A church,” he writes in the fifth book of The
Gay Science, “is above all a structure for ruling that secures the highest rank
for the more spiritual human beings and that believes in the power of
spirituality to the extent of forbidding itself the use of all the cruder
instruments of force; and on this score the church is under all circumstances a nobler institution than the state” (GS ).
While this perhaps resolves one of the difficulties surrounding Nietzsche’s
deeply ambiguous aristocratic great politics, it by no means answers them all.
It remains extremely unclear just how these politics would actually work.
The idea of a set of aristocratic values that is completely divorced from the
surrounding democratic political institutions seems highly problematic from
a sociological point of view. And the tremendous gulf between the mediocre
many and the aristocratic few would seem not only to render the existence
and influence of the latter quite precarious but also to destroy the possibility
of any sort of common life. Finally, Nietzsche’s preoccupation with culture
and the cultivation of the individual, which he shares with the whole Bildung
tradition of German thought going back to Humboldt and Goethe, leads
him to neglect politics in the mundane, institutional, and utterly necessary
sense. We who live in the shadow of the atrocities of the twentieth century
and the looming crises of the twenty-first do not have that luxury.
On the German Bildung tradition and its susceptibility to political irresponsibility, see Bruford
() and Lepenies ().
Thanks to Keith Ansell-Pearson and Paul Loeb for their helpful comments on the first draft of
this essay.
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Joyful Transhumanism
Love and Eternal Recurrence in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
Gabriel Zamosc
. Introduction: Toward a Joyful Transhumanism
Many have noticed that there are some affinities between the contemporary transhumanist movement and Nietzsche’s philosophy of the
Übermensch or the superhuman. Perhaps Sorgner (a, b, c,
d) is the commentator who has done the most to defend the view
that these affinities are real and that they run deep. He believes that
Nietzsche and the transhumanists share important similarities in fundamental principles and aims, particularly in their belief in the enhancement
of humanity through the overcoming of human limitations. For Nietzsche
this enhancement was to be achieved through cultural education. But
given the structural analogy between education and technology, Sorgner
concludes that Nietzsche probably would not have opposed the transhumanist goal of using technological enhancement in order to realize the
superhuman (Sorgner b: –).
While I do not have qualms with the transhumanist aspiration to
employ technological means to break human cognitive, emotional, or
I will follow Loeb’s and Tinsley’s () translation of Übermensch as superhuman. However, unlike
them, I am not inclined to read the superhuman as the conception of a new superior species that can
replace humanity. I interpret the superhuman as the ideal of a new spiritually superior type of
human. In my view, we can think of the ideal as entreating us to develop the sort of profound
spiritual qualities that would put a human being to shame, so that, much in the same way as today
we would feel ashamed of perceiving in ourselves comportments that remind us of the spiritual
limitations of being an ape, so too we would feel ashamed of discovering in ourselves comportments
that remind us of the spiritual limitations of being human (Z P:). Exploring these issues further is a
topic for a different essay, but among the things this spiritual labor of enhancement might require is
the overcoming of the default moral qualities that generally typify humankind, such as guilt, and,
perhaps, compassion. In what follows, I provide an example of what the overcoming of guilt might
entail. In my reading, the overcoming of these spiritual limitations does not constitute a radical
break with our humanity that culminates in a new species. This is partly because – as I argued in
Zamosc (b) – among the things that eternal recurrence might teach us is that the ideal of the
superhuman is only imperfectly realizable.
The debate is usefully collected in Tuncel (a).
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physical limitations in order to develop capacities that greatly exceed the
maximum attainable by any currently living person (Bostrom ), I am
skeptical about whether such a policy of enhancement would capture what
Nietzsche meant by the superhuman. Like some scholars, I suspect that
Nietzsche probably would have been a critic of much of the transhumanist
movement, just as he criticized the modern science of his time (e.g.,
Ansell-Pearson ; Skowron ; Babich ). Nietzsche’s criticisms
of science, however, were not meant as an indictment of all science, for he
thought we could become practitioners of a more joyful science. Similarly,
the transhumanist movement could benefit from a fresh philosophical
rapprochement with Nietzsche’s philosophy so as to secure a joyful version
of itself.
In this essay, I contend that securing such joyful transhumanism
requires coming to terms with Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which Nietzsche
considered his most important book. In particular, following Loeb
(a), I will argue that transhumanists cannot productively claim an
affinity with Nietzsche’s philosophy until they incorporate the doctrine of
eternal recurrence, which some of them are reluctant to do (for example,
More ). Sorgner himself, while conceding that transhumanists may
benefit from taking eternal recurrence seriously, insists that the doctrine is
not really necessary for achieving the movement’s goals (Sorgner c:
). In the ensuing analysis, I hope to prove him wrong on that score.
My argument will proceed as follows: in Section ., I discuss some of
the ways in which Zarathustra calls attention to the worry of confusing the
superhuman with a false kind of transcendence. Section . outlines
Zarathustra’s diagnosis of why this danger exists and how the doctrine of
eternal recurrence might prevent it, thereby guaranteeing that the superhuman ideal – or any ideal that might be reasonably integrated into its orbit –
will not be suspect. However, against Loeb, I suggest in Section . that
the solution does not consist in the acquisition of a new skill, but rather in
cultivating a love of life that allows us to affirmatively embrace our tragic
destiny of always remaining transitional creatures. Finally, in Section .,
I argue that Zarathustra is a propaedeutic to the art of love of life and, thus,
that it is unlikely that its pedagogical purpose can be achieved through
technological interventions like those envisioned by transhumanists.
. The Broken Wings of False Transcendence
From the start, Zarathustra warns its readers against confusing the superhuman ideal with false or sickly versions of it. The prologue’s tightrope
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Love and Eternal Recurrence in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
scene prefigures this theme, “man is a rope fastened between animal and
superhuman—a rope over an abyss,” Zarathustra exclaims just a few
moments before the tightrope walker steps into the scene to metaphorically enact the very transition from animality to superhumanity being
mentioned (Z P:–; translation modified). However, his movement
along the rope is abruptly interrupted midpoint by the jester who, in his
rush to get to the other side, leaps over him, making him fall toward the
crowd and his eventual death. The import of the episode is hard to miss:
humanity needs to transition to superhumanity, but rushing or making a
mockery of the whole process will result in our and the ideal’s perdition.
Other chapters pick up this theme. In “On the Hinterworldly,”
Zarathustra himself admits to having pursued problematic projects of
transcendence in the past, like those commonly championed by hinterworldly people, and suggests that suffering and impotence are the reasons
behind these transcendental miscarriages. Indeed, prefiguring the theme of
“On the Despisers of the Body,” Zarathustra suggests that hinterworldly
people are dissatisfied with their own body and would like to “jump out of
their skin.” In language that strongly recalls the jester’s hasty attempt to
reach the end of the rope in one lethal jump, he claims that it is “weariness
that wants its ultimate with one great leap, with a death leap; a poor
unknowing weariness that no longer even wants to will: that created all
gods and hinterworlds” (Z I.).
In the chapter “On the Tree on the Mountain,” echoes of this leaping
jester-like figure appear to hover over the noble youngster who confesses to
being weary of the heights and ashamed of all his climbing, for he “often
skip[s] steps when [he] climbs” (Z I.). His jester-like hastiness frustrates
his efforts at rising, like the tree, “high beyond humans and animals.”
Zarathustra suggests that it is his spirit’s lack of freedom that is responsible
for his failures and warns that his weariness can lead him to become –
much like the prologue’s jester – “a mocker, an annihilator” (Z I.). This
possibility seems related, again, to contempt for the body. Zarathustra
reintroduces the metaphor of the broken wings used to characterize the
transcendental poeticizing of hinterworldly humans in his exhortation to
the youngster not to follow the path of those nobles who lost their heroic
soul and became libertines. They said, “spirit is lust too” and, in doing so,
“the wings of their spirit broke, and now it crawls around and soils what it
gnaws” (Z I.). Since contempt for the body is responsible for fracturing
In this chapter, I use the translations from the Cambridge University Press editions of Nietzsche’s
works, indicating my alterations in parentheses.
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the wings of the hinterworldly, presumably the same is true for
the libertine.
This reading can be confirmed if we reflect further on the resonances
between the claim that spirit is also lust and the overall naturalist and
reductionist tendency of the “awakened and knowing one” in “On the
Despisers of the Body” who has expressed the conviction that “body I am
through and through and nothing besides, and soul is just a word for
something about the body” (Z I.). For the knowing person, the conceptual categories of the soul, such as “spirit,” “ego,” and the like, are really
epiphenomenal manifestations of the body and its instruments and tools,
since, as Zarathustra puts it, “the creative body created spirit for itself as
the hand of its will” (Z I.). However, the initial reductionist remark of the
“awakened one who knows” is actually contraposed to the child’s claim
that “body I am, and soul,” which was followed by Zarathustra’s rhetorical
question: “And why should one not speak like children?” (Z I.) The
question invites readers to endorse the child’s perspective, making it
ambiguous whether Zarathustra really means to wholeheartedly sanction
the beliefs of the awakened and knowing person. This suspicion is compounded by the fact that, as we know from an earlier speech, the child is
the ultimate transformation of the spirit in its path to liberation and selfovercoming (Z I.). Our reflections on the plight of the noble youngster
throw some unexpected light on this situation (which has been the subject
of some debate in the literature), and confirm the idea that Zarathustra is
in fact aligning himself with the child’s position. For, consider that the
metaphor of the broken wings mentioned in conjunction with the impulse
to despise the body contrasts with the metamorphosed child-spirit and its
fully-abled “butterfly wings” that is the subject of “On the Three
Metamorphoses.”
If Zarathustra is endorsing the child’s position, then his contraposing it
to the remark of the one who is “awake and knows” is presumably meant
to signal that this latter character is in danger of becoming one of those
despisers of the body that are the real subject matter of his speech – if he
has not already become one. Indeed, some of the language in Zarathustra’s
speech appears to indicate that the knowing person is on the verge of
despising his body. Take this way of addressing the knowing person: “Your
self laughs at your ego and its proud leaps. ‘What are these leaps and flights
of thought to me?’ It says to itself” (Z I.). It is hard not to hear in this
laughter a jester-like contempt, an impulse to humiliate the pride of the ego
Gerhardt (); Riccardi (b); Daigle ().
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Love and Eternal Recurrence in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
(also that of his “spirit” and “sense” that had been called “vain”), which –
by the knowing one’s own admission – is just the body itself, hence, an
impulse of the body to despise itself. My suggestion is not that the language
confirms that the awakened one despises his body, but that it shows he is
already well on his way to doing so. Another point to consider is that in
Zarathustra’s universe being “awake” is not univocally positive. Among the
reasons that Zarathustra singles out to explain the noble youngster’s
disgust and weariness at his own climbing is the fact that his seeking has
made him “sleep-deprived and over-awake” (Z I.). Later, in the soothsayer’s divination, we will encounter a similar idea: “we have already
become too weary to die,” the soothsayer will say, “now we continue to
wake and we live on—in burial chambers!” (Z II.; emphasis added).
Thus, being awake is not necessarily a blessing for the “one who knows,”
and Zarathustra’s seeming endorsement of the child’s position might be
read as implying that – in order to fulfill the self’s longstanding desire to
“create beyond itself” – the creative body better adopt the daydreaming
attitude of the child who, in truly transfigured fashion, turns the spirit, not
so much into the hands, as into the wings of his will (Z I.). The lesson
seems to be that we can avoid turning Zarathustra’s ideal of superhumanity
into a destructive mockery of itself only when we learn to dream in active
mode, while awake, and spiritualize our body by giving it wings.
. Eternal Recurrence and the Will’s Liberation
Let this suffice to demonstrate Nietzsche’s concern with alerting the reader
to the dangers of turning Zarathustra’s superhuman ideal into a buffoonish
caricature of itself. Given these repeated warnings, it is not surprising that
critics of the modern transhumanist project have argued that transhumanists fall prey to the very dangers Zarathustra worries about and instantiate
false transcendences.
Both Babich () and Ansell-Pearson (), for instance, suggest
that modern transhumanism is a form of the ascetic ideal which Nietzsche
considers inimical to life insofar as it seeks to produce an “improved
humanity” that is really no more than a weakened and flattened out
version of ourselves (GM III:). Babich, moreover, calls attention to the
fact that there are oppressive, totalitarian and oligarchic tendencies animating much of the transhumanist movement (Babich : –).
Following similar lines of reasoning, both Tuncel and Woodward, argue
that, by seeking to eliminate suffering, transhumanism alienates itself from
any recognizable Nietzschean project of transcendence which will
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necessarily include pain and suffering as essential components (Tuncel
b: –; Woodward : –). Yet others, like Skowron,
attempt to show that the transhumanist ideals of developing a happy,
healthy and – if possible – immortal life, are ones that Nietzsche more
readily equates with the Last Man and, certainly, not of the sort that the
superhuman would instantiate (Skowron : –, –).
Even those, like Bamford, who adopt more neutral, perhaps even favorable, positions with respect to technological enhancement, raise concerns
about the values animating much of these efforts. For Nietzsche, traditional morality is likely to stupefy, not promote, the self-overcoming of
humanity. Thus, Bamford suggests that transhumanists would benefit
from taking more seriously Nietzsche’s critique of the morality of compassion that seems to frame most of their assumptions about what type of
moral enhancements ought to be pursued (Bamford : –).
I broadly agree with much of what these and other commentators have
said concerning the relation between Nietzsche’s philosophy and contemporary transhumanism. However, I also agree with some things Sorgner
says in reply to critics. Sorgner correctly notes that there are no necessary
connections between transhumanism and the kind of problematic positions with which these interpreters appear to want to saddle the movement
(Sorgner c: , –). In fact, there is a rich debate concerning
the aims and methods, as well as the general political and ethical orientation of transhumanism. If there is something that unites this diversity of
views, it is the idea that we should employ technology to break the limits
of our humanity and significantly alter our lives. Beyond this very general
statement of intent, however, participants in the movement answer the
question of how to carry out their mission in accordance with the overarching narratives they respectively favor concerning what human beings
should become and what type of life it is best to lead. Still, as Sorgner
points out, there may be some general tendencies that are discernible. For
instance, most transhumanists appear to be naturalists who reject metaphysical dualisms and uphold a strict this-worldly understanding of reality
in which minds are thoroughly embodied. Sorgner often uses these perceived commonalities to defend his own version of Nietzschean transhumanism against criticisms. Accordingly, he argues that, since most
transhumanists are naturalists, they cannot be in the grips of the ascetic
ideal, which aims at otherworldly goals and aspires to an immaterial
Ranisch and Sorgner () discuss some of these issues.
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Love and Eternal Recurrence in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
personal immortality that is simply incompatible with a naturalistic stance
(Sorgner c: , –; d: ).
One could, of course, quibble with some of these claims. After all, from
a Nietzschean point of view, whether or not transhumanism instantiates
the ascetic ideal will depend wholly on what one understands this ideal to
mean in Nietzsche’s philosophy, which is a thorny question. Thus, instead
of engaging in a tug of war for the right to call the transhumanist
movement an ally or an enemy of Nietzschean philosophy, I believe that
we would be better served by considering some of the ways in which
Nietzsche’s ideas could help advance the debate along more productive
paths. And it is here, I think, that Zarathustra can prove useful for steering
the discussion further in the right direction.
I began by calling attention to the manner in which Nietzsche’s book
alerts us to the difficulties involved in ensuring that the pursuit of the
superhuman is genuine and salutary. Assuming that Zarathustra’s worries
are warranted, and that the transhumanist project of technological
enhancement is not incompatible with the superhuman, then presumably
the same difficulties he worries about would be operative in evaluating
whether transhumanism constitutes an instance of false or sickly transcendence. Notice here that an appeal to perceived commonalities within the
movement will simply not do. Even if naturalism is representative of
transhumanism as a whole, this feature on its own will not guarantee the
purity of any transcendent effort. That was Zarathustra’s point in warning
the youngster about being overly awake and vigilant in the manner of
those knowing people who trust too much in their naturalistic beliefs
about the materiality of their ego and the thoroughly embodied conceptions of their spirit. Those conceptions and beliefs can end up diverting
our transcendent efforts into projects that, in reality, break the wings of
our spirit and, instead of contributing to its growth beyond the human,
merely turn it into a more sophisticated version of its very human-all-toohuman animal self: a libertine. Libertinism, then, is actually a veiled,
unconfessed hatred of the body and the earth, posing as if it were a
celebration of those things. It attempts to pass off abandonment of the
spirit to its bodily pleasures as a love of earth and the body when in fact it
expresses a weary hatred of those things and their immanent, but also
transcendent, possibilities.
This kind of danger should be especially salient to transhumanists who
often seem moved by motives that resemble those that worry Zarathustra.
Not only are some transhumanists, like Kurzweil (), constantly
inveighing against what they perceive to be romanticized notions of death
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and our biological limits, but they seem eager to promote an enhancement
that sounds just like technologically enabled libertinism. The goal is to
furnish our animal self with more fanciful body-gadgets and abilities that
will enable it to pursue its earthly pleasures in heretofore unimagined ways.
Against such “crawling” libertinisms with broken wings masquerading as
genuine transcendent projects, Nietzsche contraposes what, in On the
Genealogy of Morals, he will call that “cheerful asceticism of an animal
become fledged and divine, who rather than repose in life, floats above it”
(GM III:; translation modified). Such positive asceticism is the great
promise that is contained in the image of the genuine philosopher who is
capable of utilizing the most dangerous things, like all ascetic practices, not
as bridges to nothingness, but rather as bridges to independence and freedom
(GM II:, III:, –). But how is this great promise to be realized if, as
Nietzsche also suggests, genuine philosophers until now had to creep
about in the multiple guises of that “gloomy caterpillar form” of the ascetic
priest (GM III:)? So that today even analytic, continental, naturalist,
transcendental types of modern scientists and scholars continue – often in
secret, unacknowledged ways – to incarnate the weary, overly awake,
hating disposition toward life and the body that is responsible for derailing
all our efforts to grow beyond the animal and the human?
Fortunately for us – and perhaps also for transhumanists – Nietzsche’s
Zarathustra is also concerned with providing a cure for these problems so
as to ensure that our transcendent efforts do not flounder. Indeed, by
Nietzsche’s own admission, the story is constructed around the doctrine of
eternal recurrence, which constitutes the basic conception of the book as a
whole (EH Z:). This doctrine is inextricably connected to the superhuman because it is the thought that, when confronted and affirmatively
overcome, allows Zarathustra to evade the sort of weariness that could
spoil his superhuman ideal in the ways described above. Loeb is therefore
correct when he complains about the transhumanist strategy of cherrypicking Nietzsche’s thoughts while dismissing the philosophical connections that he himself established between those thoughts, on the hermeneutically uncharitable assumption that he must have been confused about
their relation (Loeb a: –). If transhumanists find Nietzsche’s
philosophy sufficiently valuable to appropriate his idea of superhumanity
and claim him as ally, then perhaps they should take more seriously
Nietzsche’s suggestion that eternal recurrence is an essential component
of his philosophical project. Doing so should lead them to conclude, as
See Skowron (: –).
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Love and Eternal Recurrence in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
Loeb suggests, “that eternal recurrence is actually required for there to be
any transhumanist progress in the first place” (Loeb a: ). My
reasons for agreeing with Loeb’s observation, however, are importantly
different from the ones he gives. To appreciate this difference, let me
describe in a little more detail the place that eternal recurrence occupies in
Zarathustra’s story.
Part II begins by warning its readers – yet again – about the dangers
confronting Zarathustra’s teaching of the superhuman, which his enemies
threaten to distort (Z II.). Thus, in the following speech, “On the Blessed
Isles,” Zarathustra tries to articulate again what he takes to be the importance of his teaching. Among the things we can surmise from his speech is
that the superhuman is a conjecture that represents the highest fruit and
version of the creative will. Since Zarathustra suggests in this chapter that
his teachings are like ripe figs that fall from the tree to his friends and
brothers, this is one of the ways in which Nietzsche connects Zarathustra’s
teaching of superhumanity both to his early philosophy and to the works
that came after Zarathustra. In the Untimely Meditations, Nietzsche had
suggested that the way to justify life was to pursue the cultural project of
procreating the genius, “the highest fruit of life” (UM III:). By the time
we reach the Genealogy, the free personality that is the genius has metamorphosed into that of the sovereign individual who is a master of a free
will and the ripest fruit that is promised as the final product of the cultural
labor of humankind on itself. This is a fruit and a promise that is described
as the paradoxical task that nature appears to have set itself in the case of
the human animal, but that seems, as of yet, unfulfilled (see GM II:–).
Zarathustra’s attempt to redirect humankind toward the superhuman can
be read as an attempt to truly fulfill the task and to finally realize the great
promise of freedom that is contained, still in chrysalis form, in the creative
will of the human being. That creative will, after all, as Zarathustra insists,
is a liberator and joy-bringer that can redeem us from the suffering that is
required to chisel out of the stone of humankind the still sleeping beautiful
image of the superhuman child with butterfly wings (Z II.).
As the events of Part Two unfold, however, we discover that the creative
will cannot really fulfill its destiny of being a liberator and redeemer. This
is because the creative will is itself a prisoner of the past which it regards as
an unmovable stone against which it gnashes its teeth in impotent melancholy (Z II.). In prior work I have argued that the chapter
Acampora () and Loeb () argue against identifying the sovereign individual with
Nietzsche’s/Zarathustra’s ideal. In Zamosc (), I defend the view that it is Nietzsche’s ideal.
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“On Redemption” where this theme is developed outlines two basic forms
of the will’s impotence: a retrospective and a prospective kind of impotence
(Zamosc b). The former usually manifests itself in the experience of
so-called negative affective responses like guilt and shame. The recollection
of past deeds that turned out badly, especially those in the execution of
which we failed to live up to some moral expectation we had of ourselves,
can be the source of great anguish that lingers on in the present and even
threatens to spill over and blot our future. This is why Zarathustra claims
that the most secret melancholy of the will is that it cannot break time or
will backwards (Z II.). A reverse causation, or a “backward-willing,”
seems like the perfect solution since it would allow us to alter the past and
make it more agreeable to our conscience by literally erasing or modifying
our causal role in bringing about the events that now torment us. The
second form of impotence mentioned consists in a prospective powerlessness that manifests itself in our incapacity to stop the rapacious passage of
time and to prevent the present and the future from becoming the past.
Thus, the melancholic misery we experience with this second kind of
impotence will express itself in things like longing and nostalgia for our
bygone days; as well as in the anxious anticipation of aging, in which we
expect to be subjected to the unrelentless process of going kerflooey; to say
nothing of our fear at the prospect of that ultimate demise which will be
our death. Here, again, a kind of backward-willing might seem like a
perfect remedy insofar as it might rewind the clock, so to speak, and
reverse or stop the greedy advancement of time which appears to be
robbing us of precious moments with every turn of the dial.
Since the perfect solution to both forms of impotence seems to lie
outside its jurisdiction, given that it seems impossible to move the stone
that is the past and change it by willing backwards, Zarathustra suggests
that the will is forced to devise a different remedy for its misery which
quickly turns into anger. This remedy consists in venting its incapacity to
change the past into punitive acts of vengeance against everything that is
capable of suffering, including itself, in the hope that this might expiate the
leaden feeling produced by the past and finally alleviate it. Zarathustra calls
this solution a futile and insane “madness,” because “no deed can be
annihilated; how could it be undone through punishment?” (Z II.)
Loeb thinks “madness” does not reveal what the will’s powerlessness consists in (Loeb :
– n. ). But, since the will is susceptible to this “madness,” presumably the solutions it
offers indicate what is on the will’s mind. On my reading: principally, guilt or regret for past events
that it cannot alter. See WS .
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Love and Eternal Recurrence in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
Indeed, realizing that the past cannot be undone by producing harm
should lead us to conclude that our melancholic ill will toward the past
will never really stop weighing on us, save at that moment when we
ourselves cease to be, at which point the solution would come too late
and be most unwelcome. It is perhaps for this reason that Zarathustra
claims that the will’s vindictive attitude against the past ultimately crystalizes in a “fable of madness” that recommends, as a final solution, the
attempt to transform the creative will into a “not-willing,” on the assumption that willing itself is inherently evil and the source of all misery
(Z II.). This insane, nihilistic, will-denying solution is an expression of
what we may call the “sinful conscience” that lies at the center of the
ascetic ideal and of all ascetic religions, like Christianity and Buddhism,
and that is also championed in Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy.
This nihilistic attitude had been introduced just moments before by the
soothsayer who predicted that the earth was destined to become an
infertile land populated by walking-dead humans who tout the fatalistic
doctrine: “everything is empty, everything is the same, everything was”
(Z II:). Thus, what stands in the way of Zarathustra’s teaching of the
superhuman is the very real threat that the future of humankind will get
irretrievably lodged in the direction of these nihilistic attitudes and doctrines of will-denial that have their origin in the creative will’s powerlessness with respect to the past. Eternal recurrence, then, is the thought that
will allow Zarathustra to avoid this outcome and dislodge the will from
its current trajectory toward the sinful, nihilistic denial of itself.
Importantly – given his concluding remarks – if eternal recurrence allows
Zarathustra to redeem his creative will from its impotence with respect to
the past, it must do so by teaching it not just reconciliation with time but
something higher than all reconciliation, which – Zarathustra implies –
would be equivalent to teaching the will to will backwards (Z II:).
. Love’s Backward-Willing
For Loeb, this something higher than all reconciliation is a new skill he
calls prospective memory: the ability to actually will backwards by
influencing the past from the vantage point of the present and the future
(Loeb : –; a: –). This ability requires the knowledge
In his convalescent speech, Zarathustra relates eternal recurrence to the soothsayer’s saying
(Z III.:); and in his next speech he suggests that he liberated his soul by strangling the strangler
called sin (ZIII.).
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and truth of a cosmological recurrence in which every event will repeat
itself in exactly the same order for all eternity. But – importantly – it does
not give Zarathustra the capacity to alter the past, since, by his own
admission, the past is unchangeable (Loeb : –, –).
Still, Loeb insists that prospective memory constitutes a real power over
time because it allows the will to influence the past’s determination of the
present and impose its creative design on an open-ended future, thereby
overcoming the soothsayer’s prophecy that everything will always be the
same (a: ; : ). As I understand it, the idea is that, from its
present moment, the will can implant memories into its past younger
versions and these memories will enable it to see itself as actually helping to
produce those life-moments that it was indeed causally implicated in
producing, particularly those moments that it wants eternally returned to
it. On Loeb’s reading, this new recognition, which is retroactively enabled
from the present through subconscious mechanisms, lessens the creative
will’s feeling of impotence toward the past because it allows it to recognize
what was done as done in that way and not otherwise precisely because of
its present creative willing (Loeb : ). Thus, Loeb suggests,
backward-willing allows Zarathustra to become the artist creator of his
own life by enabling him to intentionally unify the fragmented, accidental
aspects of his past, making them necessary to his perfected future self
(Loeb : ).
This is the aspect that is most difficult to understand about Loeb’s
insightful and highly thought-provoking reading, and – admittedly – I am
not sure that I fully grasp how the past is supposed to be influenced by the
present self’s new mnemonic power, where that influence is not to be
understood in what I take to be the usual, straightforward sense of a causal
power to alter events (in this case, to alter the events of the past).
Regardless, given that Loeb admits that such a retrospective influence
cannot change the past, it seems to me that the solution it affords to the
will’s predicament – as outlined in Section . – will not be fully
satisfactory and might even make matters worse. In particular, this kind
of backward-willing does not help the creative will to cope with its
retrospective powerlessness. For, pace Loeb, the problem of retrospective
powerlessness is not that the will cannot regard itself “as having now had
any creative effect or influence on [its] past” (Loeb : ). Instead, the
problem is that the will cannot really erase the causal contribution that it
actually made to the past and that now has come back to torment it. This
is the more natural way to read Zarathustra’s suggestion that the will is
“impotent against that which has been” and “is an evil spectator of everything
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Love and Eternal Recurrence in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
past” (Z II.; translation modified). What the will cannot do is stop
seeing itself as evil contributor of what it has actually done. Precisely its
very real influence, back then, on the past having come to be what it
already has become, is what the will feels bad about and would like to
change. But what is already done cannot be undone. Notice that in the
context of this problem, learning that the will has the ability to somehow
influence its past actions from its present or future self by inserting
subconscious messages into its past self’s mind through its newly discovered mnemonic power, will simply add insult to injury. Our dissatisfaction
with our past actions would become more tormenting if we became aware
of our ability to send ourselves messages into that past in order to issue
proper warnings and advice to our older selves. After all, whatever advice
that ability may be able to encode into the past is – by hypothesis – causally
ineffective in altering the regrettable outcome that now torments us. Our
ability to perceive the presence of this causally ineffectual advice would
only serve to twist the knife that is already stabbing us.
Despite my problem with Loeb’s interpretation of what backwardwilling entails, I think that he is correct in arguing that it cannot involve
altering the past, as some commentators assume. He is also right in
registering dissatisfaction with interpretations, such as the one offered by
Nehamas (: ), that see backward-willing as a kind of metaphorical
or psychological operation whereby one retrospectively redescribes one’s
past in an affirming manner, thereby “changing” it so that it becomes new
For Nietzsche, evil is associated with the production of harm (GM I:–). This indicates that the
will’s recollection of the past is hurtful, which normally signals that guilt or regret is involved. This
explains why “sinfulness” (the real target of Nietzsche’s critique; Zamosc ) will quickly become
the main issue.
Loeb would say that Zarathustra’s present power to influence the past ensures that he does not feel
guilty about his past or want to change it because he has perfected his life by introducing unity and
meaning into it, so there is no knife that is stabbing him. But if – in the moment he is encountering
eternal recurrence – Zarathustra does not experience retrospective powerlessness in the form of
guilt, then he is not really mirroring the will’s problem with the past, and his overcoming of eternal
recurrence will not help the human will deal with its guilt and overcome its impotence. If, on the
other hand, Zarathustra experiences guilt when he encounters eternal recurrence, then the question
is how backward-willing unity into his life without altering or changing the cause of the guilt he is
feeling (i.e., the actual past he now regrets), would nonetheless allow him to get rid of that guilt (i.e.,
to now stop feeling it). One advantage of the solution I will offer in this section consists in
recognizing that guilt is not eradicated at all, precisely because the past that causes this guilt is not
being altered. Instead, the guilt is overcome or surpassed by love, which allows the will to continue
feeling guilty but, at the same time, to move forward from its guilt in an affirmative manner (i.e., to
not transform guilt into sin).
For example Gooding-Williams (: –); Pippin (: ); Lampert (: ).
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and different from what it was (Loeb : –). As Loeb notes,
Zarathustra denies that the past can be changed in any way. Thus, we need
to understand backward-willing in a manner that does not entail any actual
alteration of the past whether metaphorically or literally. In my view, love is
the way out of this predicament.
The kind of volitional engagement that is involved in love could help us
understand how to relate to something, like the past, in new intentionally
rich ways without needing to change it. Love involves a conative form of
valuation for the beloved that can motivate us to do all sorts of things, but
that need not motivate us to do anything in particular. We can care for the
thing we love, or we can actively seek to promote its interests, but we can
also just be in awe of it without doing anything other than valuing it for
what it is. Importantly, the objects of our love can be things we do not
have to endorse blankly or wholeheartedly. You can deeply love members
of your family that you cannot stand to be in the same room with, because
of their political views, or their religious values, or what have you.
Nietzsche himself, who had to personally contend with this sort of thing,
since he had a sister and a mother that he could not stand, writes in The
Gay Science that one should not assume that people who had to experience
severe pain and illness in their lives are necessarily incapable of being welldisposed toward life for, “love of life is still possible – only one loves
differently. It is like the love for a woman who gives us doubts” (GS P:).
This is a sentiment that is made even more poignant in Zarathustra’s
confession that “[a]t bottom I love only life – and verily, most when I hate
it!” (Z II.).
Trying to make sense of these phenomenological aspects of love,
Velleman argues that what is essential to love is that “it disarms our
emotional defenses toward an object in response to its incomparable value
as a self-existent end” (Velleman : ). It strikes me that this definition captures something important that might help us understand why
love could serve as model for the kind of backward-willing that Zarathustra
claims to have learned through his experience of eternal recurrence. If the
past were to become the object of our love, then what we would love
would be a self-existent end, one that is not to be brought about or
produced by our willing (since it already is). Thus, when we love the past,
we do not really seek to change it. Yet, in being as it is and being
See for example Higgins (: –); Clark (: –); White (: –); Strong
(: –); Richardson (: –).
See Z III.; Z I.; BGE .
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Love and Eternal Recurrence in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
unchangeable, the past – by commanding our loving attention – makes us
vulnerable, in the sense of lowering our emotional defenses with respect to
it so that we can be affected by it in new ways that can unleash in us
different motivational responses. A loving disposition toward the past is a
willing, and a willingness, to allow oneself to be emotionally touched and
motivationally aroused by whatever commands our loving affection for
the past.
Let me now integrate these considerations into the problem of liberating
the creative will from its impotent and hateful regard for the past. My
claim is that the thing that is higher than all reconciliation with time, and
that Zarathustra learns through his encounter with eternal recurrence, is
love for the past. The creative will needs to liberate itself from its hatred of
the past that threatens to break its wings and that weighs it down, making
it crawl around, soiling what it gnaws with gnashing teeth of impotence.
Indeed, this hatred has become a spirit of revenge (and a spirit of gravity)
that now prevents the will from moving forward, anchoring it – in
impotent regard – to the past, and tempting it to transform itself into a
not-willing-anymore. Transmuting this hatred into love allows the creative
will to relate itself to the past (hence, to will backwards) with different eyes,
releasing it from its anchor of hatred, and enabling it to fly off into the
future with newly restored wings. In my view, love of the past is a kind of
backward-willing with a forward intent. The thing in the past that lowers
our emotional defenses which had been raised by our hatred is the thing
that then propels us forward, or at the very least, that we carry forward as
we get on with our lives. This “carrying forward” will continue to have the
past in sight, or at least that in it which commands our love. What is
interesting about this emotional alchemy of transmuting hatred into love
is that developing a loving disposition to the past need not imply that one
stops hating it. What it does imply is that one’s hatred has been overcome
by one’s love, which now extends itself over the past in a sufficiently ample
emotional tent to be able to encompass and surpass one’s hatred through a
surfeit of positive emotion. The reason this is possible is that what
commands one’s love of the past – propelling one forward into the future –
need not be the same thing that makes one hate the past.
I have not said what about the past commands our love, nor have
I explained how eternal recurrence could be implicated in our falling in
love with it. I cannot fully delve into this question here, but let me
conclude this section by registering where I think the answer lies. In my
preliminary approximation to the very thorny problem of eternal recurrence, I argued that it can be understood as a parable about the (pro)
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creative will itself, the will to power, which is the fundamental engine of all
life that is constantly resurrected and returns to its self-same life in all its
transitory transformations through the stream of time and becoming
(Zamosc b). Among the things that confrontation with this thought
teaches Zarathustra is that the human being will never cease to be a mere
transit or bridge, destined to find itself still human-all-too-human in all its
attempts at growing “high beyond humans and animals” (Z I.;
Z III.:). But while this thought might initially make us weary and
afraid that all our creative efforts are in vain, it can also – when properly
incorporated into our lives – teach us to love our transitional destiny of
forever remaining mere bridges to the superhuman. If it does, what we
would have learned to love through this process is the creative will to
power itself, of which we are self-conscious surrogates while we remain in
existence. Thus, on my reading, love of the past is really love of what in the
past was creative will to power, which will recur eternally in the stream
of time.
Since the will to power is just the engine of all life, love of the past is also
equivalent to love of life. This is a love of that aspect in the past that is not
gone, because it is essential and unburiable – because, as Nietzsche puts it,
referring to his own past in Ecce Homo, “whatever was life in it has been
saved, is immortal” (EH “Epigraph”; translation modified). This love
liberates the creative will from its powerlessness with respect to the past,
affording it the freedom to fulfill its redemptive function, which
Zarathustra at one point describes thus: “All ‘it was’ is a fragment, a riddle,
a grisly accident—until the creating will says to it: ‘But thus I willed it’.
Until the creative will says to it: ‘But thus I will it! Thus shall I will it!’”
(Z II.; translation modified) What I interpret the will to will here, in
these three temporal modes of past, present, and future, is itself: its creative
activity of being a (pro)creative will. Of course, in willing its creative activity
and self across and through time, the will is subject to the accidental nature
of becoming which can manifest itself in the fact that the particulars of the
will’s creative activity may be something that it could come to regret. We
do not have absolute control of our creative willing, and this means that we
might feel dissatisfied by its results. By reflecting on what is eternal in its
My solution to the problem of backwards-willing does not depend on the truth of cosmological
recurrence because love of life is achieved by thinking about what is true in the parable, namely, that
what literally recurs eternally as the same are the operations of the will to power itself, not its
particular expressions which are finite and, perhaps, unrepeatable. Still, my interpretation can
incorporate desire for this latter kind of cosmological recurrence as confirmation that one has
indeed already achieved a love of life (GS ).
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Love and Eternal Recurrence in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
own nature (by thinking through the thought of eternal recurrence) the
creative will can learn to achieve reconciliation with its shortcomings, to let
go of the past. But it can also achieve something higher than all “letting
go,” namely love, which allows it to overcome its past shortcomings by
carrying forward that which is still lovable in them: itself.
Love of the past or love of life is, therefore, a form of self-love. But,
importantly, it is not a narrowly egoistic one. What one loves, after all, is that
aspect of oneself that is also in everything else that is, or was, or will be in
existence. Moreover, because human beings are self-conscious surrogates of
the creative will to power, in our particular case our self-love involves the
recognition of this self-conscious surrogacy, this humanity, in each other.
Through this love, then, we learn that we are not alone. In my view, this is
why Zarathustra uses the metaphor of the “rainbow bridge” in his convalescent speech when referring to eternal recurrence and the love of life it enables.
This theme had been prefigured by some of Zarathustra’s earlier remarks. In
the Prologue he had said, “I shall join the creators, the harvesters the
celebrators: I shall show them the rainbow and all the steps to the superhuman” (Z P:; translation modified). And in an important moment in Part
Two we had read: “For that mankind be redeemed from revenge: that to me is
the bridge to the highest hope and a rainbow after long thunderstorms”
(Z II.). Now convalescing, after confronting eternal recurrence,
Zarathustra tells his animals that each human being is a world in itself and
that we all seem eternally separated from each other despite the fact that, in
reality, we are also most similar to each other. The gap that separates us, then,
is really tiny and yet the most difficult to bridge. We can, nonetheless, bridge
this gap with the help of Zarathustra’s poetic words that seek to communicate
his newly learned love of life. Hence his claim that “with sounds, our love
dances on colorful rainbows” (Z III.:). The love of life that we learn
through eternal recurrence is an ecumenical love that connects us to each
other, through its rainbow bridges, by means of the mutual recognition that it
commands within us of that aspect which is the same in all of us: the creative
will itself and its ability to self-overcome. By connecting us to each other, this
love enables us to pursue the ideal of the superhuman: the ennoblement and
elevation of that aspect of ourselves that is unburiable, even if we ourselves are
It heeds, thereby, Zarathustra’s teaching that “whoever wants to become light and a bird must love
himself.” This is a lesson that, significantly – given the issue of moving the unmovable stone that is
the past – follows the claim that “whoever one day teaches humans to fly, will have shifted all
boundary stones” (Z III.:).
This love enables, then, Zarathustra’s neighborly love which consists in loving your neighbor as you
love yourself (Z III.:).
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not. We will perish, but our love will live on in others who, inspired and
invigorated by our efforts, can keep on pushing, keep on climbing, high above
the human and the animal.
. Conclusion: Humanity’s Murmuration
The association of rainbow bridges to eternal recurrence is accompanied by
the idea that a kind of artistic engineering is required to build these ties of
humanly and superhumanly love. Zarathustra’s poetic words concerning
eternal recurrence, and the sounds of love with which he hopes to teach us
how to dance on the tightrope that hangs over the abyss of our deep woe,
are illusory and lying words (Z III.:). With these artistic instruments,
a kind of performative experience is built into the book, so that – as
commentators have noted – Zarathustra himself enacts the experience of
thinking through and incorporating eternal recurrence. I will follow those
who suggest that these various stylistic and artistic tropes have some kind
of didactic function. Nietzsche intended Zarathustra as a propaedeutic to
the art of loving life. The artistic elements are there to make Zarathustra’s
teachings, particularly that of eternal recurrence, the object of an active
willing on the part of the reader rather than a mere passive exercise of
detached intellectual spectatorship. Accordingly – and against Stegmaier’s
() suggestion that they are meant to liberate the teacher – the poetic,
sometimes apparently contradictory, aspects of the book liberate the
learners by challenging them to appropriate the book’s lessons with their
body and soul. Nietzsche considered Zarathustra his most important
book because he wanted to gift humankind with the type of artistic
experience that, in his youth, he had argued Greek tragedy afforded its
audiences: a transfiguring experience that, once incorporated, injects you
back into the world with a renewed sense of purpose. This is the purpose
of augmenting nature by attempting to live an ennobled existence that can
embellish not just your own egoistic life, but humankind itself. The
Nietzsche praises solitude and is critical of herd mentality, but his goal always includes building a
higher, nobler community (Z I.:; Cf. UM III:, UM IV:). While love of humanity facilitates
that project, it should not be confused with impotent Christian love of humanity (BGE ; Z I.;
GM I:, –). The Nietzschean love of humanity is for the sake of the superhuman, which is the
“higher tendency” that gives this love the “subtlety and ambergris” that will allow us to fly higher
than any person has ever flown (BGE ).
Although this touches on the thorny issue of falsification, I will bracket the problem and focus
instead on how the artistic elements mentioned advance Zarathustra’s pedagogical function. Hatab
() tries to articulate a positive notion of falsification in Zarathustra.
See also Stegmaier (); Skowron ().
See also Zamosc (a: – n. ).
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Love and Eternal Recurrence in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
thought of eternal recurrence figures prominently in this pedagogical
exercise and organizes the book as a whole.
Thus, on my view, eternal recurrence is required for there to be any
transhumanist progress, not because this doctrine teaches us the type of control
over time that would be needed to take charge of our own evolutionary
process – as Loeb believes (Loeb a: –) – but, rather because it teaches
us the kind of love for our humanity that will enable us to pursue its highest
hope: the ideal of the superhuman. To learn this sort of love is to make
ourselves vulnerable to the fact that we cannot have absolute control over the
contingencies of nature. It is to reconcile ourselves to the notion that our efforts
at self-overcoming might fall prey to the vicissitudes of time and becoming in
such a way that we might come to regret them. But through our love we can
achieve something higher than all reconciliation by learning to move on and
carry forward the commanding affection we have for the free creative will that
we incarnate and that is the same in all of us. This love teaches us to take joy
and comfort in human freedom itself and its effects, even its tragic ones. While
our love does not eradicate our hatred for the past, it provides a force field that
keeps the gnawing worm of guilt, sin and resentment from spoiling the fruit of
our volitional faculties, so that, like the convalescent Zarathustra after his
encounter with eternal recurrence, we too can enjoy the pleasant smell of the
rosy apple of our creative freedom (Z III.:, ).
Learning this kind of love seems especially urgent for a movement such as
transhumanism, which often seems on the brink of being consumed by its
darker side. Some of the most visible voices within transhumanism are libertarian ideologues that subscribe to an exacerbated egocentric ethics, in which
anything that stands in the way of their narrow vision of personal aggrandizement through technologically enabled godlike capabilities ought to be
destroyed. Against this kind of unfettered individualism and its myopic negative
freedoms, Zarathustra teaches the love that does not free us from intervention
by others, but actually opens us up to each other’s hearts, connecting us through
our mutual recognition of what is eternal, universal, and the same in all of us:
the self-conscious, intentional, creative will to power itself. This uniting and
unifying love does not just make us hostage to fortune, but liberates us from it,
by allowing us to recognize that we are not alone. It is the kind of love with
which we can grow the spiritual wings needed to dance in that dance floor for
the divine dice throws of time and becoming that Zarathustra calls the skychance, and also the sky-innocence, the sky-mischief (Z III.).
This love promotes the ethical program of thinking mortal thoughts that Nussbaum recommends as
a corrective against godlike transhumanism (Nussbaum : ).
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And here I detect an important disanalogy between the educational experience that Zarathustra affords, and technological interventions like those
envisioned by transhumanists. Genuine pedagogical interventions of the kind
that Zarathustra aspires to be are liberatory in the sense that they require the
active participation of the learners. These learners must freely incorporate the
lessons that are imparted to them through their own efforts, thereby intensifying the very freedom that is being summoned to accomplish this learning.
The same need not be true of all technological interventions. Taking a pill
can, of course, sometimes enhance our freedom, when it helps remove
psychological or physiological barriers. But it can also rob us of our sense of
freedom by making us feel that we have surrendered it to an external force. To
me this danger looms somewhat more menacingly in the case of love.
Realizing that our love is not really sustained by our own efforts but is instead
the product of a pill, or some other technological device, might raise the
suspicion that our love is not genuine but artificially produced. There is thus
an advantage in pursuing the pedagogical program Nietzsche intended in
writing Zarathustra. By incorporating the book’s lessons we can truly enhance
our sense of freedom instead of diminishing it. We can also learn to love life in
a way that can more reliably rescue us from the spirit of revenge that threatens
to consume us, even if we are unaware of it. For, at the same time that this love
makes us vulnerable to time and to each other, it also connects us and gives us
the strength needed to continue climbing in the direction of the superhuman
with the knowledge that, despite our limitations, our efforts will live on in the
loving regard of those who will succeed us.
Murmuration is that well-known phenomenon by means of which a
flock of birds is able to fly through the sky in swooping, intricate, everchanging, and harmonious patterns. Nietzsche’s hope in writing
Zarathustra was to create an artistic work of joyful science and philosophy
that could free us to pursue the superhuman ideal that gives a new
meaning and direction to the earth by teaching us the commanding love
that will coordinate the murmuration of our hearts.
Nyholm () usefully discusses some of the ways in which enhancement-sustained love
attachments can be less desirable than the intrinsic good of love.
I am very grateful to the editors, Keith Ansell-Pearson and Paul S. Loeb, for their feedback and
editorial advice. I am especially thankful to Paul S. Loeb for his incisive criticisms, the majority of
which, regrettably, I could not address here. Many thanks are also due to my colleagues, Boram
Jeong, Jeffrey Golub, and Mark Tanzer for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Ideas for this paper
were first presented at the th International Conference of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society in
Tilburg, Netherlands. I thank the attendants for their observations and questions.
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Nietzsche on the Re-naturalization of Humanity in
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Kaitlyn Creasy
In this chapter, I contend that Nietzsche’s robust critiques of human
exceptionalism and the “humanization of nature [Vermenschlichung der
Natur],” as well as his positive, proto-ecocentric vision of the “naturalization of humanity [Vernatürlichung des Menschen],” afford contemporary
environmental philosophy a novel perspective from which to critique
anthropocentric conservation ideologies (according to which nature conservation ought to be motivated by the interests and aims of humanity,
especially economic development and prosperity). Importantly, I also
argue that Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the work in which Nietzsche’s positive
vision appears most conspicuously, as suggested by Zarathustra’s relationship to the natural world and his exhortations to “remain faithful to
the earth.”
As Nietzsche’s critique of anthropocentrism reinforces his positive project, I will begin by detailing Nietzsche’s rejection of human exceptionalism (Section .). In addition, I will analyze Nietzsche’s critique of the
“humanization of nature” (KSA :[]; :[]; :[]), emphasizing specific pernicious projections of human values onto the other-thanhuman world. Although these themes appear throughout Nietzsche’s body
of work, they are central to Zarathustra.
After describing Nietzsche’s critical project, I present his positive, protoecocentric vision for humanity’s re-naturalization, one he most emphatically endorses and fleshes out in Zarathustra (Section .). This positive
vision can be found in his calls for the human being to become more
natural and to cultivate a noble reverence and gratitude for the natural
world so that we may learn from it about ourselves – rather than falsifying
Although Nietzsche refers only to the “naturalization of humanity,” I frame this naturalization as a
re-naturalization, keeping in mind his claim that we must “translate the human being back into
nature” (BGE ). The following translations are used in this chapter: A (); BT (); D
(); EH (); GM (); GS (); HH (); TI (); TL (); UM ();
Z ().
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it for our ends and then insisting that we are part of this other, falsified
nature. Only then, when we can see ourselves as natural beings – specifically, as living beings willing power, embedded in a world with other
living beings who do the same – can we identify tasks and pursue aims that
empower and strengthen us. In Nietzsche’s view, this recognition results
only from an attunement to the other-than-human world. Finally, after
adding a few important caveats to proto-ecocentric strains in Nietzsche’s
thought, I briefly explain the contributions his thought might make to
contemporary environmental philosophy and policy (Section .).
.
Nietzsche’s Critical Project
..
Against Human Exceptionalism
Nietzsche is consistently and explicitly critical of human exceptionalism,
the view that human beings have a special status among other living beings
and that their extraordinary value derives from certain distinctly human
capacities, including higher-order cognitive capacities (such as rational
reflection, logical thought, self-consciousness, memory, and morality).
As we will see in this section, Nietzsche is often explicitly critical of such
a view. Additionally, however, his skepticism about these characteristically
human capacities also functions as an implicit critique of human exceptionalism, informing his more explicit critique.
Explicit critiques of human exceptionalism appear throughout
Nietzsche’s work. In GS, he notes that “[humans] place themselves in a
false rank order in relation to animals and nature,” identifying this as one
of the defining errors of humanity (GS ). In unpublished notes,
he both claims that “humans do not represent progress over the animal”
(KSA :[]) and makes a point of referring to humanity only as “the
richest and most complex form [of life]” and “no longer the . . . ‘higher
type’” (KSA :[]). Nietzsche echoes these sentiments in The
Antichrist, where he remarks that “[h]umanity does not represent a development for the better, does not represent something stronger or higher the
See Ferré (: ) and Thompson (). The term “human exceptionalism” comes from
contemporary environmental ethical literature (and does not preclude human distinctiveness).
Note, however, that proponents of human exceptionalism typically make a further prescriptive
claim: that it is in virtue of these unique human capacities that human beings warrant special moral
consideration (in a way that other-than-human beings do not). For the purposes of this chapter, I do
not include this further claim in my definition of human exceptionalism (as the phenomenon of
which Nietzsche is critical).
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Nietzsche on the Re-naturalization of Humanity
way people these days think it does” (A ). Nietzsche explicitly speaks
against this tendency to understand human beings as “the goal of animal
evolution”; his aim, instead, is to “[stick] human beings back among the
animals” (A ). There, after first claiming that all beings, including
humans, “occupy the same level of perfection,” he then insists more
severely that “comparatively speaking, human beings are the biggest failures, the sickliest animals who have strayed the most dangerously far from
their instincts” (A ).
Nietzsche’s diagnosis here continues a theme that appears earlier in The
Antichrist: human beings are corrupt; they are living beings alienated from
their own will to power, which is the defining feature of all living things
(Z II.; BGE ; GS ; GM II:). Our tendency to “[prefer] things
that will harm [us]” (A ) in the form of nihilistic, life-denying concepts
and values turns us against our health and flourishing. In other species it
is a sign of grave sickness to prefer things that harm them or act in ways
that hinder their power, but this morbid disposition has become characteristic of the human species, given our habits of believing and valuing. For
this reason, humanity in general represents animal regression rather than
progress over the animal. To become stronger and healthier, then – and
before a higher type beyond humanity can emerge – humans must re-learn
how to be animals. At the level of our bodies, we must re-learn how to
will power in ways that promote our health – that is, in part, how to orient
our desires, thoughts, and actions around the healthy pursuit of power –
whatever this might look like in each case. In short, human beings need to
learn what comes naturally to other-than-human forms of life so that their
distinctly human drive to create meaning and value can manifest itself in
healthy and life-affirming ways.
Another, more subtle, aspect of Nietzsche’s critique of human exceptionalism is the way in which he questions the value of certain distinctively
human faculties, including intellect (Intellekt), reason (Vernunft),
To say that will to power is the defining feature of all living things is to say that living things are enddirected beings: they constantly engage in purposeful striving toward certain aims (where the
“purpose” involved is to engage in certain actions or activities [Katsafanas : ]). Though
living beings often have different aims depending on their form of life (in virtue of the drives of
which they are composed), their pursuit of these aims expresses a more basic or fundamental striving:
a striving after power as growth and development in their own form of life (A ). In order to flourish
on Nietzsche’s view, living beings must will power successfully. I discuss this biological interpretation
of the will to power again in Section ...
See Loeb and Tinsley () for an account of Nietzsche’s Übermensch as a re-naturalized,
superhuman species.
Nietzsche believes that human beings will also have to learn to judge their actions by the standard of
power: that is, whether they enhance or hinder power.
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consciousness (Bewusstsein), language, memory, and morality. His skepticism (and, at times, outright hostility) toward these all-too-human capacities functions as an especially provocative critique of human
exceptionalism. It is clear that Nietzsche intends it as such (HH ;
EH HH:): after all, it is in virtue of these capacities that many modern
thinkers believe humans to be the “crown of creation” (A ). Since
Nietzsche’s critical appraisal of these capacities has been covered extensively in the literature, I only sketch them below, emphasizing how they
indicate an implicit critique of human exceptionalism.
Throughout his body of work, Nietzsche questions the value of our
higher-order cognitive faculties and their results, thereby unsettling the
human exceptionalism that many moderns took for granted. At times,
he appraises these faculties in general terms, critically evaluating
thought (Denken), cognition (Erkennen), and intellect, as well as the
products of these capacities: knowledge (Wissen) and understanding
(Erkenntnis). In his early work, Nietzsche claims that our intellectual
faculties not only falsify as much of the world as they reveal (HH );
they also lead us to believe and act in ways that harm our form of life by
hindering our flourishing (HH ). This theme continues in Z, where
Nietzsche rebukes the glorification of pure, disinterested understanding
as well as the state of “contemplation [Beschaulichkeit]” (Z II.) one
must inhabit in an attempt to acquire it. After all, to inhabit such
a state would involve “viewing [the world] with a dead will” and
“desir[ing] nothing from things, except that [one] may lie there before
them like a mirror with a hundred eyes” (Z II.). According to
Nietzsche, it is impossible to inhabit a “contemplative” state of this
kind: the knowing human subject (or better, “subject-unity”) is an
embodied complex of drives and affects; all knowing is embodied,
gleaned from a diversity of (embodied) perspectives and affectinterpretations (GM III:) shaped by one’s will to power. Perhaps
more significantly, however, the pursuit of such a state slanders existence, stifles the will to power, and prevents us from being strong
enough to “create over and beyond” ourselves.
Elsewhere, Nietzsche questions the value of certain distinctively human
capacities, but his targets are more specific: one by one, he questions the
alleged merits of reason and rationality (Vernünftigkeit), consciousness,
language, memory, and morality. In the first book of Zarathustra,
Nietzsche deliberately diminishes reason, deeming it “your small reason
[deine kleine Vernunft]” and demoting it to the status of a mere “tool of
[the] body . . . a small tool and plaything of your great [embodied] reason”
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Nietzsche on the Re-naturalization of Humanity
(Z I.). Later, he reproaches the inventions of reason (“conceptual cobwebspinning”) and designates pure rationality as “impossible” (Z III.).
According to Nietzsche, human beings do not have special access to some
objective form of truth in virtue of their rationality; they come to “know”
in the same way other living beings do. Additionally, by assuming that
reason is truth-disclosing, we fail to attend to the ways in which it can
compel us into error (TI “Reason” ). As Nietzsche argues in GS, attempting to grasp the world solely via “our four-cornered little human reason
[. . .] demote[s] existence” by stripping it of its ambiguity (GS ). To
think the world can be reduced to something rationally intelligible is not
only mistaken but in poor taste, as it betrays a lack of reverence for things
not yet understood, for those aspects of our world that exceed our
intellectual understanding and that defy rational categorization (GS ).
In GS , as in Z I., Nietzsche purposefully depreciates reason qua
human reason; instead of an extraordinary human accomplishment, reason – “rationality at any cost, a cold, bright, cautious conscious life
without instinct, opposed to instinct” – is a “sickness” (TI “Socrates”
). Though we have come to view reason as “divine” (TI “Reason” ),
a crowning achievement of humanity, Nietzsche wants to reverse this
human exceptionalist evaluation. His critical assessment of consciousness
calls for a similar reversal. In a note from , Nietzsche decries our
“senseless overestimation of consciousness” that frames consciousness as
“the highest attainable form” (KSA :[]). Human beings typically
understand “every progress [as . . .] progress towards becoming-conscious;
every regress in becoming-unconscious” (KSA :[]) – and understand themselves, in turn, as a “higher type” of living being in virtue of the
comparatively advanced form their consciousness takes. Yet, according to
Nietzsche, this “old prejudice” (KSA :[]) mistakenly affirms our
“most impoverished and error-prone organ” (GM II:). Similar to his
assessment of reason as a tool of the body in Z, Nietzsche argues in an
note that consciousness is “just a tool” of embodied existence, an
organ that is perhaps the most “poorly developed,” “erroneous,” and
“defective” of all human organs (KSA : []). In this note,
Nietzsche questions the assumption that consciousness is a sign of more
advanced life forms, calls for us to recognize the value of our unconscious,
embodied life, and suggests that we “reverse the rank-ordering” of consciousness and unconsciousness, given that consciousness emerges as a tool
of unconscious, embodied life (as a “sign-language” of bodily existence).
See also GM III:.
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Other reasons Nietzsche offers for questioning the “achievement” of
consciousness include its status as belonging to “the community and
herd-aspects of [an individual’s] nature” – those aspects of one’s nature
that tend to work against one’s will to power – and its tendencies to
corrupt, falsify, make superficial, and overgeneralize (GS ).
For Nietzsche, the world’s debasement by consciousness connects to
how human consciousness invents and deploys concepts so that human
beings might communicate through language. In language, human beings
recast the world, deploying “a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and
anthropomorphisms” that reduces “unique and wholly individualized
original experience[s]” into mutually intelligible concepts, “equating what
is unequal” (TL ). Furthermore, insofar as the “seduction of language
(and the fundamental errors of reason petrified within it)” misleads us into
thinking that humans are free, responsible, individual subjects, it diverts
our attention from our nature as “driving, willing” animals (GM I:).
Nietzsche also critically evaluates memory – a capacity potentially present
in other living things (KSA :[]) but most developed in the human
being (Loeb : ) – and castigates conventional morality. These
distinguishing features of humanity, he argues, do not make us distinguished: both an abundance of memory (UM II:, AOM , Z P:;
GM I:) and conventional morality (HH ; GM I:–; TI “Morality”
; A ) tend to weaken the will to power, thus weakening strong forms of life
and harming us. Given Nietzsche’s calls for humanity’s re-naturalization, his
analysis of conventional morality – as that which weakens and domesticates the
human animal, all the while masquerading as an “improvement” of the “human
beast” (TI “Improvers” ) – is especially noteworthy.
Many of Nietzsche’s reflections on the potentially negative value of
general human faculties, cognitive capacities, and intellectual products
involve unequivocal attempts to de-center human beings and question
humanity’s significance. In the well-known opening of TL, Nietzsche calls
human beings “clever beasts” whose invention of cognition “was the most
arrogant and mendacious minute of ‘world history,’ but nevertheless, it
was only a minute” (TL ). Here, humanity is one species among many;
See Katsafanas (: –, –).
For more on the connection between consciousness and language in Nietzsche, see Abel (:
–), Katsafanas (: –), and Riccardi (a: ).
See also Nietzsche’s reflections on “language-metaphysics” in TI “Reason” and “philosophical
mythology” in WS .
See also Lemm (, ); Richardson ().
Thanks to Gary Shapiro for reminding me of this passage.
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Nietzsche on the Re-naturalization of Humanity
the celebrated human intellect, which we assumed distinguished us from
all other animals, is a fleeting, arbitrary, and ultimately pointless faculty.
This same tendency – to frame his critical assessments of humanity’s
faculties in ways that deliberately de-center human beings and resist
human exceptionalism – is present in his critical assessments of memory
(UM II:) and morality (HH , BGE ).
Nietzsche thus rejects human exceptionalism. In rejecting human exceptionalism, however, it is not the case that Nietzsche thereby denies the distinctiveness of human beings. After all, he designates human beings the deepest and
most “interesting” of all animals (GM I:; A ). Rather, Nietzsche does not
understand “humanity in general” (A ) as more valuable than other forms of
life simply in virtue of its all-too-human capacities. Indeed, we find that
Nietzsche is staunchly critical of human ways of being and thinking, arguing
that they tend to lead to an impoverishment of life as will to power. As a species,
Nietzsche argues that “humans are the biggest failures, the sickliest animals who
have strayed the most dangerously far from their instincts” (A ). Yet he also
believes there are stronger, healthier human beings who learn to embrace their
instincts, as well as a “higher type” beyond the human being, “a type of
Übermensch in relation to humanity in general” (A ) who overcomes these
failures of humanity thus far. As we see in Zarathustra, both stronger, healthier
individuals and that higher type become possible only when humanity is
re-naturalized. But this first requires nature to be de-humanized.
.. The De-humanization of Nature
In addition to his rejection of human exceptionalism, Nietzsche’s critique of
anthropocentrism also includes a critical evaluation of what he calls the
“humanization of nature [Vermenschlichung der Natur]” (KSA :[],
:[]). The humanization of nature is the tendency of human beings to
project their values and categories for understanding onto the natural world
(KSA :[]; BGE ; TI “Skirmishes” ). It is “the interpretation according to us” (KSA :[]) involving the erroneous teachings that “nature is
like man” (KSA :[]), that the natural world itself conforms to the
human categories we employ to make sense of it. In an note, Nietzsche
identifies this error and unequivocally calls for its correction: “Earlier,
According to Nietzsche, these features emerge as “happy accidents” from a host of bungled instincts
and uniquely human errors.
Loeb and Tinsley ().
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humanity and philosophers projected the human into nature—let’s
de-humanize nature! [entmenschlichen wir die Natur!]” (KSA :[])
De-humanizing nature, for Nietzsche, involves noticing and excavating
“aesthetic anthropomorphisms [ästhetischen Menschlichkeiten]” (GS ):
we must identify both our projection of rational order, beauty, wisdom,
purpose, and morality onto the world and our failure so far to recognize
these as human projections (instead of understanding the natural world as
itself manifesting these qualities). In a late note, Nietzsche describes the
humanization of nature and its danger in more detail:
All the values by means of which we have tried so far to render the world
estimable for ourselves and which then proved inapplicable and therefore
devaluated the world all these values are, psychologically considered, the
results of certain perspectives of utility, designed to maintain and increase
human constructs of domination and they have been falsely projected
into the essence of things. What we find here is still the hyperbolic naïveté
of man: positing himself as the meaning and measure of the value of things.
(KSA :[])
According to Nietzsche, it is only when we recognize our false, humancentric projections as such that we can begin to de-humanize nature, learn
more about the natural world as it is (as “for all eternity chaos” [GS ] or
“Chaos sive natura” [KSA :[]]), and come to know ourselves as
natural beings. We see this in Z, too, when Zarathustra praises the open
sky for its accidentality, purity, and innocence and attempts to clear it of
the “drift-clouds” of purpose, freeing it from “servitude” under the human
projection of purpose (Z III.). In Z, the open sky is a stand-in for the
natural world devoid of human projections and values. In Part Three, as
Laurence Lampert aptly notes, Nietzsche intends for Zarathustra to reveal
that beliefs in purposiveness – specifically, beliefs that understand natural
beings as participating in a shared, global purpose – are “‘human constructs of domination’ that have set themselves in the heavens as earth’s
necessity, purpose, or guilt” (Lampert : ). Such constructs “will be
justly cursed by [Zarathustra’s] new teaching on earth and sky” (Lampert
: ), a teaching that affirms the inexhaustible, chaotic richness of
the de-humanized natural world. Nietzsche’s call to “de-humanize” nature,
then, is a call for human beings to unearth human projections (qua
concepts and values that we impose in error on the natural world) and,
when possible, withdraw these projections from the natural world. Of
course, Nietzsche does not endorse a kind of disinterested realism, free of
drive-based, affective interpretations (GS ). Instead, he aims to disabuse
us of our conventional assumption that our erroneous, unnatural human
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Nietzsche on the Re-naturalization of Humanity
projections (especially metaphysical and theological constructs) are essentially truth-disclosing.
Nietzsche indicts humankind’s tendency to humanize nature in part
because such a tendency functions like other processes of the human
intellect mentioned above: nature humanized is nature falsified. Even more
critical from Nietzsche’s perspective, however, is that the unwitting
humanization of nature precludes the naturalization of humanity, as the
process of humanity’s naturalization follows nature’s de-humanization. In
an early note, he identifies his task as “the de-humanization of nature
[Entmenschung der Natur] and then the naturalization of man
[Vernatürlichung des Menschen], after he has attained the pure concept
‘nature’” (KSA :[]). This ordering is no anomaly: Nietzsche consistently frames the de-humanization of nature as a precursor to the
naturalization of the human being (GS , BGE , TI “Raids” ).
In Part Two of Z, Nietzsche has Zarathustra teach four consecutive lessons
that sketch the process of the de-humanization of nature and renaturalization of humanity. After Zarathustra foreshadows the importance
of naturalizing humanity by framing human beings as animals ashamed of
their instincts and recommending that the “seeker of knowledge wanders
among human beings as among animals” (Z II.), he describes how the
“false values and words of delusion” of the priests make human beings
ashamed of their naturalness and hide it from them: “Who created such
caves and stairs of penitence? Were they not those who wanted to hide and
were ashamed before the pure sky?” (Z II.). In this section, Zarathustra
hints that the only path to healthier individuals, life affirmation, and the
Übermensch is for individuals to attune themselves to their embodied, animal
nature. This involves resisting those all-too-human comportments and
values that have been dominant thus far so that they can recognize the
importance of natural, more-than-human values and “the pure sky [can
peek] again through the broken ceilings and down upon grass and red poppy
and broken walls” (Z II.). Zarathustra goes on to describe how the dehumanization of nature, as the excavation and removal of human projections, “tear[s] open the ground of [the] souls [of the virtuous]” (Z II.). In
order for human beings to become receptive to the natural world and their
own naturalness – to make room for more-than-human values, new ways of
envisioning virtue, and the creation of new goods – their all-too-human,
See also Loeb (b: –).
I say “more-than-human” values rather than “other-than-human” values here because on
Nietzsche’s view human beings can share certain values with other-than-human life forms.
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conventionally virtuous souls must be broken open via the “plowshare” of
Zarathustra’s teaching. Only then, when one excavates the projections of
humanity and other “rabble” values from the natural world (and from oneself
as a piece of nature), can one learn to become natural again, “neighbor to
eagles, neighbor to snow, neighbor to sun” (Z II.). Moreover, only by
becoming re-naturalized can individual human beings identify empowering
tasks and find a “wellspring of joy” in the “highest regions” where they can
“build our nest in the tree called future [and] eagles shall bring us solitary
ones food in their beaks” (Z II.).
When we humanize nature, we understand ourselves as beings with the
capacity to make sense of the natural world as it actually is, instead of
understanding the natural world (and our place in it) as a means through
which we can make sense of ourselves as we actually are (as living beings
willing power). Our tendencies to project human values onto the natural
world, and to understand human values as the only values, not only
prevent us from recognizing value in the natural world apart from human
projections; they also prevent a much-needed familiarity with how other
natural beings value that allows us to recognize who we truly are (living
beings willing power) and what is truly valuable (power in Nietzsche’s
sense). Before we can “re-translate the human being back into nature [Den
Menschen nämlich zurückübersetzen in die Natur]” (BGE ), then, we
must “become master over the many vain and overly enthusiastic interpretations and connotations that have so far been scrawled and painted
over that eternal basic text of homo natura” (BGE ). In sum, we must
() see how even humanity’s own naturalness has been humanized by a
host of projections and misunderstandings that function to obscure this
naturalness, () recover those pieces of nature in ourselves, and () adopt
or create values that enable us to flourish as the natural beings we are.
Nietzsche also resists human projections of agency (and corresponding
notions of moral accountability and duty) because they constitute an
unwarranted, falsifying humanization of nature. In HH, Nietzsche remarks
that man “has been accustomed to seeing in accountability and duty the
patent of nobility of his humanity” (HH ). Yet because his actions are
“nature and necessity [. . .] [just as] he stands before plants, so must he
stand before the actions of men and before his own. He can admire their
strength, beauty, fullness, but he may not find any merit in them”
(HH ). This early critique, which draws our attention to how
In his claim that we “may not find any merit” in our actions and the actions of others in HH ,
Nietzsche utilizes a conventionally moral sense of “merit.”
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Nietzsche on the Re-naturalization of Humanity
falsifying human projections of agency and moral accountability result in
unwarranted approbation and disapprobation, is preserved in Nietzsche’s
later work (GM I:). According to Nietzsche, humanity celebrates morality as a noble and characteristically human development. More specifically,
he argues that modern Europeans tend to understand actions congruous
with conventional Christian morality as praiseworthy accomplishments.
Yet Nietzsche suggests that learning how our actions are the result of
“nature and necessity” – that we could not have done otherwise – troubles
our understanding of accountability, leads us to doubt the merit of our
actions, and strips those actions of their all-too-human “patent of nobility.” When we recognize how our actions generally follow from nature and
necessity, we can begin to understand how we are more like plants than we
might otherwise be inclined to admit.
Nietzsche draws this same parallel between plants and human beings in
BGE , where he argues that a morality which strives for “the universal
green-pasture happiness of the herd” hinders the growth of “the plant
‘human’” – whereas “everything in him that is kin to beasts of prey and
serpents serves the enhancement of the species ‘man’ as much as its opposite
does.” Here Nietzsche explicitly calls the human being “the plant ‘human’”
to emphasize the shared nature of plants and human beings – their nature,
that is, as living beings – and argues that the human being’s most basic,
plant-like, animalistic instincts serve to improve humanity. Such reflections again indicate a Nietzschean agenda to re-naturalize humanity, to
recognize “the basic text of homo natura” (that is, “the human being as a
creature of nature” [Lemm ]), and to “re-translate the human back
into nature” (BGE ). Once this re-translation occurs – specifically,
once we understand human beings fundamentally as living beings willing
power – we will see that for morality to be “healthy” it must be “governed
by an instinct of life” (TI “Morality” ). Additionally, human beings can
understand what is good for us by understanding ourselves as natural,
living beings, as complexes of drives willing power, just like other living
beings. In short, when we re-translate ourselves back into nature, we
recognize the good as “[e]verything that enhances the feeling of power in
man, will to power, power itself” (A ).
In all of these critiques, we find Nietzsche de-centering humanity and
characteristically human capacities and pursuits, and instead directing our
attention to the animal (and even vegetable) qualities retained by the
human being as a living being who wills power. Nietzsche encourages
his readers to come to recognize and embrace these qualities and instincts
in themselves, to learn to repair that “forcible breach with [their] animal
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past” resulting from “a declaration of war against all the old instincts”
(GM II:). In each of these passages, Nietzsche calls for humanity’s
re-naturalization so that we may become healthier and flourish.
.
Nietzsche’s Positive Vision: Re-naturalizing Humanity
and Proto-ecocentric Strains in His Thought
Together with Nietzsche’s critique of human exceptionalism and his call to
de-humanize nature, we also find support for a positive, proto-ecocentric
view: a vision that recognizes the other-than-human world (both the biotic
community and the inorganic elements of our world that condition
human life) as a source of value. In such a view, living well and meaningfully requires one to acknowledge and incorporate other-than-human
sources of value into the living of one’s life, instead of projecting existing
human values onto the other-than-human natural world and understanding that world merely as a means to achieving one’s own (human-centric)
value/s. In this section, I detail three key elements of Nietzsche’s positive,
proto-ecocentric vision: () the value of other-than-human life; () his
project of the “naturalization of humanity”; and () his call for an ecological conscience.
Although we see glimmers of ecocentrism throughout Nietzsche’s corpus, they appear most clearly and forcefully in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It
will hardly be surprising that Nietzsche comes closest to articulating what
can be characterized as an environmental ethical view – a theory underpinning how human beings ought to relate to, and behave toward, the
natural, other-than-human world – in Zarathustra. After all, the text is rife
with symbolic natural imagery. Nietzsche situates Zarathustra’s
entire transformative journey in the natural world: he stumbles through
the desert wilderness, wanders through the forest, sails across the sea,
converses with the sun and open sky, and ascends the mountains in his
solitude. Zarathustra’s closest and most loyal friends are his animals,
his eagle and his serpent, who can sense truly elevated individuals who
do not breathe “bad air” and who breathe better air than the higher men
do (Z IV.).
Importantly, I am not arguing that we can infer that () the other-than-human world has value to
which we can attune ourselves from () Nietzsche’s claim that, when possible, we ought to
withdraw human projections from nature. Rather, I see these as two separate moments – the
withdrawal of human projections from nature and the recognition of more-than-human values – of
Nietzsche’s de-humanization/re-naturalization program.
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Nietzsche on the Re-naturalization of Humanity
.. The Value of Other-Than-Human Life
According to Nietzsche, humans are not the only beings with ends all their
own: all living beings have ends and goals toward which they direct
themselves (Z II.). Animals, plants, and even amoebae have their own
ways of being end-directed, of pursuing certain characteristic aims and
activities, and ultimately, of valuing (KSA :[]; :[]). These
are important upshots of Nietzsche’s biological conception of the will to
power (BGE ; GS ; GM II:), which he proposes for the first time
in the second book of Zarathustra, asserting that “only where life is, is there
also [. . .] will to power!” (Z II.).
In Nietzsche’s view, human values have their basis in our drives and the
aims we have in virtue of those drives. If I value economic flourishing, for
example, I must (at a minimum) possess activities associated with economic success as goals toward which I aim (in virtue of one or more of my
drives). Something similar is true of other-than-human living things,
according to Nietzsche, although we do not typically think of otherthan-human beings as having values of their own.
Let us consider an example. Imagine a pineapple sage plant (Salvia
elegans). On this view, since photosynthesis is an end-directed process
the pineapple sage must undergo to grow and thrive, one of a pineapple
sage plant’s aims is to photosynthesize. Because of this aim, the pineapple sage is situated in the world in a particular way: it has the potential to
be transformed in certain ways (by the presence or absence of light) and to
transform its world in certain ways (in this case, either using sunlight
to “split” water – separating hydrogen from carbon dioxide, and turning
carbon dioxide into sugars for energy – or failing to split water in the
absence of sunlight). For this reason, the pineapple sage can be said to have
a positive evaluative orientation toward sunlight. From this perspective,
then, understanding plants, animals, and other living beings as enddirected allows us to make sense of the claim that such beings have values
all their own. Otherwise put, the evaluative orientations other-thanhuman life forms have in virtue of their end-directedness (their nature as
living beings willing power) constitute other-than-human values. These
Richardson () famously frames the will to power as a biological principle. While I am in
agreement with this assessment, I do not agree with his interpretation in its entirety.
To say that the plant must photosynthesize to grow and thrive is to acknowledge that photosynthesis is an
activity through which the plant wills power in Nietzsche’s sense. Note that willing power here clearly does
not involve anything like a typical “will” as conscious intentionality.
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evaluative orientations emerge from the specific ways in which other-thanhuman life forms aim at ends as they will power.
My claim here is not that human and other-than-human values are
structurally identical. While other-than-human values can be fully
explained with an appeal to evaluative orientations to which living beings
are disposed in virtue of certain of their ends/aims (such that for a plant, to
value x is just to have x as an end/aim), human values require both an end/
aim and some second-order assessment of that end/aim (either a reflective
endorsement of that aim or, as Katsafanas argues, a lack of disapproval
when one is presented with that aim [Katsafanas : ]).
Additionally, on this Nietzschean view, it is still the case that “all attributions of . . . value are anthropogenic: originating in and dependent upon
human acts of evaluation [emphasis mine]” ([Thompson : ]
paraphrasing Callicott [: ]). Though plants have values of their
own (in virtue of their aims or ends), they do not attribute value to things.
For example, although the pineapple sage plant is positively disposed
toward sunlight, it does not attribute value to the sunlight. Nietzsche
draws our attention to this when he claims that “[i]t is we, the thinkingsensing ones, who really and continually make something that is not yet
there: the whole perpetually growing world of valuations, colors, weights,
perspectives, scales, affirmations, and negations” (GS ).
This account of other-than-human value might seem at odds with
Nietzsche’s well-known claim that “nature is always value-less—[it]
has . . . been given, granted value, and we were the givers and granters”
(GS ). But the aim of GS is not to assert that there are no
evaluative orientations other than those of human beings. Instead,
Nietzsche’s claim that “nature is valueless” brings attention to the fact that
those absolute, non-contingent values human beings have long projected
onto nature do not inhere in nature itself (KSA :[]). Indeed, the
evaluative orientations of other-than-human life forms are contingent on
the ends of the beings to which they belong; there are no absolute or noncontingent values in nature itself.
..
Toward the “Naturalization of Humanity”
In Section .., I fleshed out Nietzsche’s critical assessment of the
humanization of nature and his attempts to de-humanize nature. There
I also began to sketch the re-naturalization of humanity: what it means to
“re-translate the human back into nature” (BGE ) after engaging in
practices to de-humanize nature (including attempts to de-humanize
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Nietzsche on the Re-naturalization of Humanity
ourselves as natural beings) – that is, practices that allow us to recognize
and disentangle the natural world and ourselves from harmful and erroneous human projections. In this section, I expand this sketch, offering a
detailed account of the naturalization of humanity (Vernatürlichung des
Menschen): Nietzsche’s call for the human being to become more natural
(KSA :[]; :[]). It is only by seeing ourselves as natural
beings, as willing power in the world as will to power, that we can identify
our tasks and become strong individuals. In no other text is Nietzsche’s
project of humanity’s re-naturalization as central as in Zarathustra.
Nietzsche hints at his project of re-naturalization in the way he likens
features of Zarathustra and of other characters in the text to natural
features, and also the way he likens events and life-affirming values to
artifacts discovered in nature (those “colorful shells” [Z II.]). That “wellspring of joy” found in the “highest regions” flows forth into the overfull
sea of Zarathustra’s soul and thus cannot become “murky” (Z II.). As
with the “lightning” of the Übermensch (Z P:) and the “hailstorm” of the
annihilators of previous values (Z II.), Nietzsche likens Zarathustra to
natural weather events (he is a “strong wind to all lowlands” [Z II.]) and
his moods to seasons (Z II.). Nietzsche even naturalizes those who have
not yet been re-naturalized: priests are “black ponds” (Z II.) and the
rabble are described as poisoning “holy water” with their all-too-human
attitudes and virtues (Z II.).
At the beginning of Z, Zarathustra more explicitly describes his project.
First, he calls upon those who listen to “remain faithful to the earth” (Z P:)
so that a healthier, more life-affirming form of humanity can arise (Z P:).
In addition to instructing humans on how to become healthier living
beings, he also teaches “humans the meaning of their being, which is the
Übermensch” (Z P:), heralding a noble superhuman species made possible
by the existence of stronger, healthier human beings. In Zarathustra’s
claim that faithfulness to the earth is required for healthier human beings
and for the advent of a superhuman species, Nietzsche expounds his
project of humanity’s re-naturalization, a project that requires the affirmation of human life as embodied, driven life. To become re-naturalized, we
must not only recognize ourselves as animals, as living beings containing
bits of wild nature and complexes of drives willing power, but also to learn
to revere our naturalness, our embodiment, and our animality. Humanized
nature is the will of the weak, life-denying individuals who cannot accept
themselves and affirm themselves as pieces of nature; naturalized humanity
is the will of strong, life-affirming individuals who, in understanding
themselves as pieces of nature, learn healthy ways to value.
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Nietzsche’s call for humanity’s re-naturalization in Z is perhaps most
apparent in the contrast he draws throughout Z between tame, domesticated animals and wild animals or “beasts of prey.” The symbolic descriptions of these two different kinds of animals are exceptionally revealing.
Camels are burdened, weighed-down pack animals who take on lifedenying values with an attitude of reverence (Z I.); they represent human
beings weighed down by unnatural values that lead them to deny their
instincts (Z III.:). Nietzsche describes moles as blind, subterranean
animals who are lame (lahm) and paralyzing (lähmend) (Z III.:); they
symbolize human beings who prescribe universal goods and evils, values
that function to debilitate and paralyze the will to power (Z III.:).
Cows are lazy ruminants who avoid effort and make everything they eat
into something palatable (Z .). They, like the swine who “[chew] and
[digest] everything” (Z III.:) regardless of its value for them, represent
overly tolerant, “all-complacent” (Z III.:) human beings who aim for
comfort and small forms of human happiness and activity (including
“hectic work and unrest” [Z I.]). Their tolerance results in a failure to
discriminate among values, an inability to discern which values enhance
their instincts and which values hinder those instincts. In this respect, they
resemble the ass, the animal who affirms every human value with an
undiscriminating yes (Z III.:). In each of these cases, the type of
human being the animal represents is insufficiently natural; in each case,
the human being invests in human projections of value and characteristically human goals to the detriment of their instincts – and, ultimately, to
the detriment of their flourishing as a living being willing power. The
“animal tamers” who preach these all-too-human values and goals
(whether they be priests or humanists) are designated as such because they
preach the humanization of humanity’s naturalness. By domesticating the
human animal, these animal tamers turn the human being into “the most
bungled of all the animals” (A ); they make the human being “a heavy
burden to himself” (Z III.:).
On the other hand, Nietzsche’s descriptions of wild animals and “beasts
of prey” in Z are laudatory and aspirational. Nietzsche frames these
animals as proud inhabitants of the natural world who embrace it courageously despite its dangers as the venue in which they can retain their
wildness. Eagles are lofty and light; they fly high above the rabble and its
rabble-happiness (Z P:, Z II.). Though their loftiness and their height
make for a lonely and solitary existence (Z IV.), they fly proudly and
courageously: they embrace the unknown abyss of the open sky but retain
a lightness (Z IV.:). Zarathustra celebrates the lion as “hungry, violent,
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Nietzsche on the Re-naturalization of Humanity
lonely, godless” (Z II.) – representative of those human beings who
destroy previous values (Z I.) – and the wolf as wild, violent, and
evil (Z II.). The lion and the wolf are in stark contrast to those “wellfed, famous wise men” who live among the rabble to serve “the
people [. . .] and the people’s superstition,” functioning as “draft animals
[. . . who] remain servants and harnessed, even if they gleam in golden
harnesses” (Z II.).
To become re-naturalized, then, the human being must () be unburdened of harmful aspects of humanity – those human projections, activities, and tendencies that leave her in ill health and unable to affirm this life
and world – and () learn to recognize herself as a piece of nature, as a
living being willing power, and to affirm this discovery. In the language of
Zarathustra, the re-naturalization of humanity requires becoming less
domesticated and more like a wild animal. To become more natural, we
must immerse ourselves in the wild, natural world and come to see power
as the highest value by both observing natural beings willing power and
acknowledging our status as natural beings.
..
On Developing an Ecological Conscience
As demonstrated in Section .., Nietzsche’s project of the renaturalization of humanity requires human beings to recognize that we
are fundamentally natural beings, more like plants and other-than-human
animals than we like to admit. Importantly, Nietzsche’s vision for how this
can be accomplished includes his call for human beings to develop an
ecological conscience. Developing an ecological conscience in
Nietzsche’s sense involves () attuning oneself to the natural world and
() recognizing one’s status as a natural being. Human beings who develop
an ecological conscience cultivate a noble reverence and gratitude for the
Although I characterize Nietzsche as calling for human beings to develop an ecological conscience, it
is worth nothing that Nietzsche does not use the term “ecology [Ökologie]” when he issues this call.
In fact, there are good reasons for why Nietzsche doesn’t use the word “ecology” or describe his
project as “ecological.” First, Ernst Haeckel only coined the term Ökologie in , so it was
nowhere near as widely used then as it is today. Additionally, Haeckel’s use of Ökologie was
narrower than ours. While “ecology” today is a field that studies a variety of interactions between
organisms and their environment, Haeckel proposed “ecology” as a new branch of biology that
would exclusively study how organisms adapt to their environment. We can see, then, why
Nietzsche (though he read Haeckel) would not have adopted this term or characterized his
thought as “ecological” thinking. Nietzsche rejects Haeckel’s account of organisms’ development
through mere adaptation to their environment and understands Haeckel’s account as incompatible
with his account of the will to power (which, as a biological thesis, offers a “competing” account of
how organisms develop) (KSA :[]).
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natural world (BGE , KSA :[]) so that we may learn from it
about ourselves (KSA :[]; A ) rather than falsifying it for our
own ends (A ). Additionally, developing an ecological conscience
requires one to apprehend the fundamental relationality between oneself
and the natural world as an environment that conditions one’s existence.
According to Nietzsche, only when we can see ourselves as natural beings,
as willing power in the world as will to power just like all living things, can
we identify strengthening tasks around which our lives should be oriented
and become healthier, more life-affirming human beings.
A key strategy Nietzsche believes one can employ to develop an ecological conscience is taking time to distance oneself from human communities
and to situate oneself in natural places and environments, in solitude, to
observe how the natural world unfolds. To remain faithful to the earth –
to natural, embodied existence – one has to, after all, come to know it firstpersonally, in one’s own way. It is only by going into the desert
wilderness (Wüste), “suffering thirst with beasts of prey” (rather than
drinking from “poisoned” cisterns with camels and camel drivers) and
coming to know ourselves as living beings willing power that we can learn
how to become natural again (Z II:). Once one is situated in the natural
world, one must attune oneself to it, recognizing how living beings value
and which conditions promote their flourishing. We see the importance of
this attunement in the significance of a fundamental receptivity in
Zarathustra, a listening to the earth that recognizes that “[t]here are a
thousand paths that have never yet been walked; a thousand healths and
hidden islands of life” (Z I.:). Later, Nietzsche also reflects upon the
“unfathomable” parts of life, the depths of which man so far has been
unable to comprehend, in part because he is too busy bestowing his own
“virtues” onto her (Z II.) instead of listening for the wisdom of the
other-than-human world.
The significance of this attunement becomes especially clear when one
notices () how Nietzsche’s attunement to values he found in the natural
world – such as preservation, incorporation, and growth, all essential to
power – informed his critical thoughts on morality (as well as his positive
account of cultivation and self-overcoming) and () how Nietzsche ties the
potential of humanity (and individual human beings) to the quality of the
Zarathustra himself employs and recommends this strategy (Z P:; Z I.; Z II., ; Z III.,; and
so on).
For an earlier draft of this chapter, Keith Ansell-Pearson suggested a clear kinship between
Nietzsche and Thoreau on this point and others. Although a treatment of Thoreau is beyond the
scope of this chapter, I appreciate this generative suggestion.
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Nietzsche on the Re-naturalization of Humanity
“soil” in which they grow. Regarding the former, cultivating an ecological
conscience requires recognizing that striving to advance oneself in a world
in which limiting, artificial values efface natural values leads to an impoverishment of life. This recognition, however, involves being attuned to the
workings of life itself. When one attunes oneself to life, one can come to
realize that closing oneself off within “homo-exclusive” values (Acampora
) potentially forestalls expansive possibilities for being and acting.
Attending to values in the natural world, on the other hand, points the
human being toward stronger, healthier ways to will. After all, only a
“corrupt” being “chooses [. . .] prefers [. . .] what is injurious to it” (A ) –
and Nietzsche understands a tendency toward this kind of corruption as
typically human. Indeed, this tendency is responsible for the dominance of
Christianity, a belief system that Nietzsche argues teaches individuals to
despise their bodies and desires and ultimately denies life. Becoming a
healthier human being and a more life-affirming individual, then, requires
one to become more like the other-than-human, attuning oneself mindfully to conditions that promote one’s flourishing and seeking them out.
Becoming a healthier human being also requires recognizing the importance of the “soil” in which one grows. This too is a lesson that one can
learn from the natural world. Just as hardy plants and adaptive fauna learn
to live and thrive in harsh environments, the “richest” soil for the development of great human beings are wild, unpredictable, chaotic conditions,
“regions where it is hard to live” (Z P:) that can serve as arenas for strife
and struggle (Acampora ). Otherwise put, wilderness and wild nature
are exceedingly favorable conditions for the development of strong individuals (KSA :[]; GM I:; GM II:; TI “Skirmishes” ), though
the wilderness of which Nietzsche speaks here is usually the wild nature of
strong human beings as they will power in their own way.
The kind of ecological conscience for which Nietzsche calls is unique.
For example, one who possesses an ecological conscience of the kind
Nietzsche describes would not sacrifice the values of healthy, flourishing
human life to extra-human values with the belief that other life forms
ultimately take priority, or have more value. Instead, cultivating a
Nietzschean ecological conscience requires one to apprehend and appreciate one’s fundamental relationality: as a living thing among living things,
I say Christianity ultimately denies life because it is clear that Nietzsche believes it plays a lifepreserving function for a time insofar as it allows certain human beings to avoid “suicidal nihilism”
(GM III:).
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one wills power in the world as will to power. One who has developed an
ecological conscience affirms life in its totality, especially that complex
network of wills to power to which one belongs as inexhaustible wellspring
and experimental site for potentially new ways of being, living, and
creating meaning – that is, new forms of life. This network is a morethan-human ecosystem of sorts in relation to which human beings develop
and through which they can be empowered.
As an environmental ethical view – a view about how human beings
should relate to the natural world – Nietzsche’s view is also distinctive. As
I argue earlier, Nietzsche believes not only that all living beings have value,
but that other-than-human beings have lessons to teach us. Since the
comportment we ought to have toward other-than-human nature involves
recognizing its value to us, part of its value is instrumental. To call
attention to this emphasizes another distinctive feature of the protoecocentric strains in Nietzsche’s thought we have discussed so far: his
explanation for why we ought to respect the natural world. For
Nietzsche, a sizeable part of what should motivate such respect and
reverence (his meta-ethical explanation of why we should value what we
value) – apart from the overflowing gratitude of an overfull soul (Z III:;
EH BT:) – is the natural world’s status as the venue in which healthier
human beings become possible, in which they can discover new meanings
for themselves. In Nietzsche’s view, higher individuals are grateful to the
natural world because attending to natural values shows them new ways to
revere themselves. In this sense, the natural world is the condition of the
possibility of a stronger, healthier humanity. Without the fruitful chaos of
nature (Drenthen : ) and the superfluity of undiscovered values
that nature offers (for which we must listen [Z I.:]), we risk becoming
those shapeless, aimless, “objective” men from BGE (), or “last men”
(Z P:), comfortable with small pleasures and little conflict, assured of our
perspective on things.
Nietzsche’s environmental ethical view is distinctive in another way.
Rather than prescribing clear-cut, action-guiding principles for how we
ought to engage with the other-than-human world, he offers his readers a
theoretical framework that shapes how we relate to that world, an opportunity for his readers to come to know the natural world – and themselves –
differently. Although we human beings share in the same “nature and
necessity” (HH ) of other living things, coming to know ourselves as
natural beings akin to plants and animals will be transformative: this
Of course, insofar as will to power is a biological principle, the “world” here is the organic world.
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Nietzsche on the Re-naturalization of Humanity
knowledge will transform the necessity that we are. In HH , for
example, Nietzsche describes how knowledge functions not only to reveal
our necessity, but also to free us from external forces (customs and other
“ordinary fetters of life”) and to reconfigure the necessity that we are via a
rearrangement of our inner lives (in part by freeing us from “the thought
that one is not only nature or more than nature”).
Importantly, however, Nietzsche thinks we will not come to know
ourselves as natural beings unless we attune ourselves to the natural world,
cultivating an attitude of receptivity so that we might learn from it. Once
we develop this ecological conscience and come to know ourselves as
natural beings, he expects that we will be motivated to relate to the natural
world differently. We will learn to revere the natural, other-than-human
world (in part, as a site of self-knowledge) and affirm that world as part of
the ecosystem we inhabit that conditions our strength and growth, a venue
in which we can thrive.
. Nietzsche’s Significance for Environmental
Philosophy and Policy
The proto-ecocentric strains in Nietzsche’s thought outlined in Section
. have unique and valuable contributions to make to contemporary
debates in environmental ethics, not least because they afford us a perspective from which to critique anthropocentric environmental ethical
frameworks (according to which the natural world is either merely or
primarily instrumentally valuable). In them, we find a call to value the
ecosphere both in itself and as a way to experience a matrix of aims,
meanings, and values that allow us to recognize that we live in a meaningful world with values that both exceed us and can inform how we live.
Firstly, just as we limit and falsify the world when we try to apprehend it
via our “four-cornered little human reason” or make it intelligible by
inventing and deploying human concepts and values, so too can understanding the value of the natural world primarily in terms of human values
preclude us from recognizing more-than-human values that exceed limiting, conventional projections of human value. Projecting human values
onto the natural world and understanding the natural world as valuable
only with reference to those values simply constitutes a new way of
falsifying the world by making ourselves the “meaning and measure of
things.” In doing so, we run roughshod over the values of other-thanhuman life in a way that prevents a discernment of those values – a
discernment that is critical for Nietzsche.
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Additionally, Nietzsche claims that we have much to learn from the
natural world. In particular, attending to the natural world and more-thanhuman values can help us recognize how we, as living beings, value –
which can (and should) be transformative. For Nietzsche, then, anthropocentric environmental ethical views that prioritize strictly human values
would not only hinder our discernment of more-than-human values, they
would also function to potentially block transformative growth, health,
and well-being. By understanding the natural world’s value only in terms
of already-existing human values, they reinscribe conventional values
rather than revaluing values from life’s perspective and ends, as
Nietzsche recommends.
Nietzsche argues that when we incorporate lessons from the other-thanhuman world on how to live and value, we learn to affirm life in its totality.
Such a practice enables us to recognize that we live in a world of inexhaustible richness, an ecosphere full of other-than-human beings willing
power whose end-directedness and purposeful striving we share. This
recognition allows us to resist both () the otherworldly nihilism toward
which we tend when we avow humanity as the sole source of value and ()
the nihilism of self-denial (or affective nihilism) involving the suppression
of our instincts or the dissolution of our will. Inhabiting such a lifeaffirming stance both promotes reverence for the ecosphere generally and
the ends of its other-than-human denizens, and shapes how we think the
natural world ought to be treated. Nietzsche’s environmental thought can
inform environmental policy, then, because it offers us a perspective from
which we can critique overly anthropocentric, resource-oriented conservation ideologies, according to which conservation decision-making should
be oriented primarily around conventional human interests and values.
Moreover, in a time when the earth is increasingly dominated by humanity
and exploited in the interest of leveling conventional values, remaining
faithful to it is more important than ever – for the earth, but also for us.
Creasy ().
My sincere thanks to Keith Ansell-Pearson and Paul Loeb for their feedback on early versions of
this paper.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108855143.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press
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Index
aesthetic, , –, n. , ,
affirmation of existence,
anthropomorphisms, , ,
contemplation,
design of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ,
displeasure,
judgement,
justification of existence,
style of Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
virtue,
aestheticism,
affects, , ,
and interpretations,
See also: drives
agape, , n.
See also: eros; love
Alfano, M.,
allegory, , , ,
and Schopenhauer, ,
America, discovery of, –
amor fati, , n.
See also: fate
Anaximander, n. ,
animal(s), , , , , , ,
–, , , –, –,
, , , –,
and drives,
herd, –
and passions, ,
and self, , , –
and superhuman,
Zarathustra’s, , , ,
Antichrist, , , –
Antichrist, The (Nietzsche), , , –
ape (s), , –, , –, n. ,
n.
appearance, , , , , –
of the Idea,
and reality,
and thing in itself,
Aquinas, T.,
aristocracy, n. , ,
and contempt,
and great politics,
new, –, –
and new nobility,
and pathos of distance,
and society, , n. , –
Aristotle, , n. , , , , n. ,
n.
ascetic,
Christian, ,
contempt, , , , , , , –
ideal, –, n. , , n. , –,
, –,
and the passions, , –
Schopenhauer’s will-denying, ,
asceticism, n.
cheerful,
positive,
Asia, n.
ass, n. ,
atheism, ,
atomistic need,
Babich, B.,
Bahnsen, J.,
Balguy, J.,
Bamford, R.,
Basel, ,
Baudelaire, C.,
beauty, , –, , , , , , ,
,
and human beings/humanity, –,
and love,
and the sublime, n.
and the superhuman,
of the Übermensch,
and Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
becoming, –, , , , , –,
great year of, , –, –,
innocence of,
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Index
stream of, ,
and time, , ,
Beyond Good and Evil (BGE) (Nietzsche), , –,
n. , , , –, , –,
–, –, ,
Bible, the, –, –, , , ,
Book of Revelation,
Bildung, ,
See also: cultivation
Bildungsroman, , ,
Birth of Tragedy, The (BT) (Nietzsche), , ,
, ,
Blessed Isles, , , , –, –,
,
body, the, , , –, , –, ,
, , –, –,
creative, , –
despisers of, –, –, –,
–
and “great reason,” –, –
hatred of,
and Schopenhauer, , n.
and soul, –, , , –,
Boscovich, R., , n.
Bourget, P., –,
Brahmanism,
Büchner, L.,
Buddhism, ,
Cabanis, P. J. G.,
Caesar, Julius, n.
camel, ,
Campioni, G., ,
Camus, A.,
The Stranger,
Cartwright, D.,
categorical imperative,
Cervantes, n.
Cesare Borgia, n.
change, , , , , –, –, ,
–, –, –,
diachronic, , –, –,
n. , –
and eternal recurrence, –, –,
,
historical,
and the passions,
and the past, , , , n. , ,
–
and the present,
and the Pythagoreans,
and the soul,
and suffering, ,
chaos, , , , ,
Chase, M.,
cheerfulness,
child, , n. , , , , –
Heraclitean, n.
and hope, –
and innocence, ,
and new values, n.
superhuman,
Christ, Jesus, , , –,
Christian, –, , , , n. , , –, ,
agape,
ascetic ideal, –
God, , ,
Gospels,
interpretation,
love of humanity, n.
morality, –,
prophet,
value of loving they neighbor, n.
See also: ascetic
Christianity, , , , n. , , , , ,
, n.
and Schopenhauer,
city, the, , , –
Clark, M., –, –
Clarke, S.,
Columbus, C., –
comedy, n. , n. , , n.
and parody, , –
and Schopenhauer,
tragi-
companions, –, , –, n.
compassion, , , , –, , –,
–, , , , n. , ,
n.
religion of,
Schopenhauer and, –,
Zarathustra’s,
See also: Mitleid; pity
conscience, , ,
bad, , , , –, , ,
ecological, , , , –, n.
good, ,
sinful,
consciousness, –, –
self- ,
contempt: See self-contempt
Conway, D.,
cosmology, –, –,
crackpot,
and eternal recurrence, , , n. ,
negative, –
new,
and truth, , , , , n.
and will to power, –, –,
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Index
cosmos, , –, –, ,
eternally recurring, ,
cry of distress, , , –,
See also: distress, Nietzsche’s
Cudworth, R.,
cultivation, , ,
of beautiful human beings,
self- ,
of tyrants,
culture, n. , n. , , , n. ,
, –
of ancient Greece, , n. , n.
bloodless academic,
contemporary,
décadent, , n.
high,
idealist,
Latin, n.
and philosophy,
Spanish, n.
university,
Dionysus,
affirmation and, ,
D’Iorio, P., ,
disciples, –, , , , –, , –, ,
,
disgust, , , –, n. , –, ,
, , , ,
distress, Nietzsche’s,
Dithyrambs of Dionysus (Nietzsche), , n.
down-going (Untergang), ,
Doyle, T.,
dreams, , ,
and Zarathustra, ,
drives, –, , , –, n. ,
n. , n. , , –,
n. , , , ,
animal,
erotic, , ,
strong,
See also: affects
Dühring, E., ,
dance, –
danger, –, , , –,
greatest, ,
and humanization of nature,
living,
and love,
and Zarathustra, , n. , , ,
–, , ,
Dawn (Nietzsche), –, ,
dawn, imagery of, , –
Daybreak (Nietzsche). See Dawn (Nietzsche)
death, , –, , , n. , , ,
, , –, , ,
of all gods,
affirmation and, ,
becoming and,
cycle of, rebirth and, ,
preachers of, n.
of Zarathustra, , n. ,
will to, ,
see also: God
décadence, –, n. ,
Deleuze, G., , n.
democracy, n. , , , , n. ,
–
Democritus,
destiny, , , , ,
of humankind, ,
tragic,
Zarathustra’s,
D’Holbach, Baron,
Dionysiac monster,
Dionysian, n. , ,
joy,
eagles, , ,
Earth, the, , , , –, , –, –,
, , , n. , n. , , ,
, , , –, , , ,
, , –, ,
and faithfulness, , , , ,
love of, , , , –, ,
masters of,
and meaning, –, , ,
Ecce Homo (EH) (Nietzsche), , , , , , ,
, , –
ecology, n.
ecosystem, –
ego, , –, , ,
alter-,
egoism, , , –
Eichendorff, J. von,
Emerson, R. W., n. , n. , , n.
emotions, , ,
and passions,
see also: the passions
enlightenment, –,
new,
Epictetus, ,
Epicureanism, –
Epicurus, , –,
equality, –,
Eros, n.
See also: agape; love
eternal recurrence, , –, n. , –,
–, –, n. , –, –,
n. , , –, –, –,
–, , –, n. ,
n. , , n. , , n. , ,
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Index
–, –, –, –,
n. , –
See also: cosmology; fate
ethics, ,
applied,
egocentric,
environmental, , –
Homeric warrior,
Kantian and Platonic,
meta-, , n.
naturalism and,
physics and,
Schopenhauer and,
virtue, ,
ethos,
Europe/European, , n. , n. , ,
n. , , , ,
democratization of,
herd animal of, –
nihilism,
vulgarization of,
exceptionalism, human, –, , ,
fatalism, ,
fate, ,
and eternal recurrence, –
loving, n.
of philosophy,
and Zarathustra,
See also: amor fati; destiny
Fink, E.,
Flaubert, G.,
force (s), –, n. , n. , ,
–, –, , , , ,
chaos of,
creative,
divine, ,
efficient,
field,
infinite,
moral-spiritual, –
natural, –,
of nature,
ontology of, ,
of reason,
forest (s), –, , ,
Foucault, M.,
Frazer, M.,
free spirit, n. , n. , –, , ,
–, –
freedom, , , , , , , , ,
–, , –
creative,
intelligible,
friend (s), , –, –, , , , , ,
, , –, ,
and enemy,
future, the, , –, , , , –, –,
–, –, , , –, ,
–, –, , –,
–, n. , , n. ,
–, –,
and the past, ,
philosopher, , n. ,
poetry of,
and the present, ,
Schopenhauer on, , –
self, –
society, n.
species, n.
and the superhuman,
superior, , ,
Gay Science, The (GS) (Nietzsche), , , ,
, , , , , , , –,
–, –, , , , ,
,
Genealogy of Morality, On the (GM) (Nietzsche),
, –, , , , , , , , ,
, , , –
generosity, ,
genius, ,
Gilman, S. L., –
God, , , , , , , , , n. ,
, –, , –, –,
creative, –
death of, , , , , , n. ,
–
of the Eleatics,
shadows of, , , ,
son of,
gods, n. , , ,
death of all,
Epicurean,
Goethe, J. W., n. , , , ,
good, n. , , –, , , –, ,
, , , –, , , ,
absolute,
and bad, ,
conscience, , n. ,
and desire, ,
and dicethrows,
and evil, , , –, –, ,
form of the, , –
health,
life, ,
of love, n.
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Index
good (cont.)
morally,
news, n.
objective,
people,
philosophy,
and power,
universal,
Gooding-Williams, R., , ,
Gospel (s), –, , , n. , –, –
of Mark,
Nietzsche’s fifth, , , , n. ,
Synoptic,
gravity, spirit of, n. , , n. ,
, –, , n. , –,
greatness, , , –, ,
Greek tragedy: see tragedy
Greek State, The (Nietzsche),
Griffin, D. E.,
guilt, , n. , , , n. ,
n. , ,
eternal,
Guyau, J. M., n.
Hadot, P., , –, –, –
Haeckel, E., n.
happiness, , , –, , , ,
–, , , , ,
and contentment, n.
of the herd,
and last men, n.
petty,
rabble-,
Schopenhauer on, , n.
Hartmann, E. von,
Heidegger, M.,
Hellwald, F. von,
Heraclitus, , , , , , n.
herd, , , , , –, n. ,
,
See also: masses, rabble
hero, n. , –,
super-,
Zarathustra as tragic,
See also: soul
heroic-Idyllic,
heroism, , n.
Hesse, Hermann,
The Glass Bead Game,
Higgins, K., , ,
higher
caste, –
form of life,
individuals,
humans, , , ,
higher men, –, , , , n. ,
realm,
self, , , –
species,
type, –, –
values, , –
hinterworld, , –
historical sense, n.
Hobbes, T., , n.
Hölderlin, F., n. ,
Holocaust, the,
Homer, n. ,
honesty, , , , , ,
hourglass, ,
Human, all too Human (Nietzsche), , n. ,
–, , , , , , , ,
n.
humanity, , , , –, , –,
–, , n. , , , ,
–, –, –,
compassion for,
de-centering of,
future,
goal of, ,
healthier,
high point of,
history of,
impotent Christian love of, n.
love of,
and metaphysical need,
naturalization of, , , ,
Nietzschean love of, n.
overcoming of, –, ,
passions of,
redemption of, , ,
renaturalization of, , , –, ,
–, –
self-sacrificing, ,
sufferings of,
super-, , , –
transfigured, n.
Zarathustra’s love of,
Humboldt, W. von,
Hume, D., , –, , ,
immaculate perception, –, –
Irigaray, L.,
irrationality,
Jenkins, S., –,
Jesus. See Christ
joy, , , , , , , , , ,
-bringer,
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Index
Dionysian,
and suffering,
of the will, ,
and “yes to life,”
Joyful Science, The (Nietzsche). See The Gay
Science, The
justice, , , n. , , , , ,
eternal,
as the greatest virtue,
Juvenal,
Kant, I., n. , n. , –, , ,
, n.
and Plato, –,
and rationalist orthodoxy,
Katsafanas, P.,
Kaufmann, W., , , , ,
knowledge, , –, , –, –, ,
–, n. , , , , , ,
, , , ,
Epicurean bent for,
hard,
historical,
metaphysical,
passion of, , , ,
pure, , –, , ,
self-,
Korsgaard, C., , , –, , n.
Kronos,
Kurzweil, R.,
Lamarck, J. B.,
Lampert, L., ,
La Rochefoucauld, F. de,
Lange, F. A.,
last man, , n. , , n. , , ,
, ,
laughter, n. , –, , n. , –,
n. , , , –,
of contempt,
Schiller on, n.
Schopenhauer on
law, –, , ,
of the circle, –,
divine, ,
moral,
of philosophy,
of time, n.
laws of nature, , ,
lectures
on Pre-Platonic philosophy,
on the future of educational institutions, ,
Leibniz, G. W.,
Leiter, B., –, ,
Leopardi, G.,
Leucippus,
libertinism,
Liebscher, M.,
life, –, , –, n. , , , –,
n. , , –, –, –, –,
n. , –, , –, , , , ,
, , , , , , –,
–, , –, n. , ,
–, –, , , –,
, , , , –, –,
–
and affirmation, , , , , –, –,
–, , , , , n. ,
n. , , , –,
after-,
blessed,
Christ and,
common, , , ,
-denying, , , , , , , , ,
n.
egoistic,
enjoyment of,
essence of,
eternal,
and eternal recurrence, , , –, –,
n. , , , ,
everyday,
faith in,
good,
higher form of, ,
immortal,
Jesus’s,
love of, , , , , , –,
n. , ,
modern, , ,
new styles/ways of, , , , , , –
Nietzsche’s, , , , ,
other,
philosophical, , –
political,
possibilities of, , ,
Schopenhauer on the end of, ,
and self-overcoming,
social,
and taste,
and truth,
value of, –
wholeness of, n.
and (will to) power, , , –, ,
Zarathustra’s, , , n. , n.
See also: will to life
lion (s), , , , , –
laughing, n.
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Index
Loeb, P. S., ,
love, –, , , , , , , n. , ,
, , , , –, –,
n. , –, , , , ,
–
bestowing,
of children’s land,
and eternal recurrence,
of the farthest, n.
and fate, , n.
great, , ,
and guilt, n.
of neighbor, , , n.
and the past, –
pure,
and self-overcoming, n.
will to,
and Zarathustra, , , n. , , ,
, ,
See also: earth, the; humanity; life; self-love
Löwith, K.,
Lucretius, n. ,
Luther, M., , –, n. ,
madman, the, –, n. , n. ,
madness, , n. , –, , ,
n. ,
preachings of, –, n.
magnanimity, –,
Magnus, B.,
Mainländer, P.,
Malebranche, N.,
Masini, F.,
masses, , , , –, ,
See also: herd; rabble
McDowell, J., , , –, ,
mediocrity, n. , –
melancholy, , –
loneliest,
of the will,
memory, –, n. , n. ,
n. , , , , –
definition of, n.
prospective, –
Zarathustra’s, n.
Menippus, n.
Mitleid, , n. , , –
higher, –
See also: compassion; pity
Mixed Opinions and Maxims (Nietzsche), ,
metaphysics, , n. , , , –, ,
–, ,
classical,
crackpot,
Hume and, ,
and Kant,
Nietzsche’s, n.
Schopenhauer’s, , –
modernity, , –,
“Moment,” the gateway, –
Montinari, M.,
morality, n. , , , , n. , ,
–, , –, , –,
, –, , , , , ,
–, ,
as animal, ,
archaic warrior, ,
Christian, , –,
of custom, –
destruction of,
of good and evil, , ,
and metaphysics, –
of mores,
noble, , n. ,
and Schopenhauer, , –,
self-overcoming of, –
slave, , ,
and spirit of gravity,
mountains, , , ,
Napoleon, n.
naturalism, , , , –, –, ,
,
crackpot,
of Zarathustra,
nature, , , , –, , , , ,
n. , , , –, n. ,
, ,
animal, ,
concept of, ,
contingencies of,
de-deification of,
de-humanization of, –
human, ,
humanization of, , –
and necessity, –
one’s own, ,
and Schopenhauer,
as value-less,
wild, ,
See also: force (s); laws of nature
Nehamas, A., –, ,
neo-Kantians,
New Testament, –, , , , –, –, ,
,
See also: the Bible
nihilism, –, n. , n. , –, ,
, –,
affective,
and eternal recurrence, n.
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Index
otherworldly,
suicidal, n.
See also: Europe
nothingness, , ,
See also: will to nothingness
Occam’s Razor,
Oedipus,
O’Keefe, T.,
Old Testament, n.
Overbeck, F., n. ,
overman, , –, n. ,
See also: superhuman; Übermensch
paradox, , –, , , , ,
of ancient philosophy,
of Nietzsche on contempt, n.
Parmenides, ,
parody, –, , , , –, , n. ,
, –, –, –, n. ,
n.
Schopenhauer on,
passions, , , n. , , –
animal, ,
for glory,
and reason, , –
strong and weak, –
sublimated,
virtues as, , –
See also: emotions; knowledge; virtue (s)
pathos, n. , ,
affirmative,
of difference,
of distance, –, , –, –
tragic, –
perfectionism,
pessimism, , , –, , –, , ,
,
beyond good and evil,
Schopenhauer’s, n. , , ,
Petronius, n.
philosophy, –, –, , , n. ,
–, –, , –
academic practice of, , –
analytic revolution in, –
ancient, , –
Anglo-American,
as a way of life, , , –, –, ,
–, –
continental,
discourse about,
environmental, , –
of Eternal Recurrence,
of the future, n.
garden teaching of, ,
German,
Greek invention of,
Historical,
history of, , ,
Hume on, –
metaphysical,
of mind,
modern, ,
Nietzsche’s, , –, , , , , ,
–, –
Nietzsche’s political,
Schopenhauer, Hume, and,
Schopenhauer’s, , , , ,
systematic,
and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, , –, ,
tragic,
triumph of,
Pindar, n.
Pippin, R. B., , , ,
pity, n. , , , n. , –, , ,
See also: compassion; Mitleid
Plato, n. , , n. , , , , , ,
–,
Platonism,
poet (s), , n.
poetry, , –, –, , , , ,
a new German,
and Zarathustra, , –
politics, , , , n. ,
great, , –, n. , n. , ,
, n. , –
Pope, the
last, n.
old,
Pope, A.,
Essay on Man,
progress, –,
spiritual, ,
transhumanist, ,
prophet,
Christian,
Zarathustra as,
punishment, –, , n. ,
Pythagoreans, –, ,
Quine, Willard van Orman,
rabble, , n. , –, , n. , ,
, , , –
democratic,
happiness,
rationality, , –
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Index
reason, , , , , , –, , ,
, , , –, , , –
as divine,
for living,
great, , ,
little, , –,
principle of sufficient, ,
universal,
See also: passions
redemption, , , , –, –, , ,
, , , n. , , –,
, –,
new,
Schopenhauer’s doctrine of, –
Reginster, B., –,
religion, n. , , –
ascetic,
of compassion, ,
triumph of philosophy over,
Renaissance humanism,
Renan, E.,
resentment, n. , n. , ,
ressentiment, –, n. , , , ,
and Scheler, Max,
revenge, n. , –, –, , , ,
–, ,
and the past, n.
redeemed from,
spirit of, , , –, , ,
Rome, ,
John’s contempt for, –,
rope,
to the future,
See also: tightrope
Rousseau, J. J., , ,
sacrifice, , –, –,
self-, , , , –, , , ,
Sartre, J.-P.,
Nausea, ,
Satan,
satire, , –, n. , n.
and laughter, n.
Menippean, n. , n.
and parody,
and Voltaire, n.
scepticism, , , , ,
Schacht, R.,
Scheler, M.,
Schiller, F., n. ,
Schmeitzner, E. ,
Schopenhauer as Educator (Nietzsche), , ,
Schopenhauer, A., , –, , , , , ,
, , , , –, –, n. ,
n. , n. , n. , n. , n. ,
n. , , –, , , ,
, , –
and honest atheism,
and Hume,
and naturalism, –, –, , ,
and pessimism, , n. , –, –,
,
See also: comedy; compassion; future;
happiness; laughter; life; morality; nature;
pessimism; philosophy; redemption; will/
willing
Schulpforta, –
science, –, , , –, –,
, n. ,
joyful, , ,
self, , , –, , –, , , –,
, –, –, –, , ,
–, –, , –
animal, , –
and body,
creative,
and ego, , ,
future, –
higher, , n. , –
and other,
and the passions, , –
true, , –
See also: love, sacrifice
self-consciousness, , ,
self-contempt, , –, –, –,
–, –, n.
self-control, ,
self-cultivation, –
see also: cultivation
self-deception, ,
self-denial, ,
self-destruction,
self-disgust,
self-education,
self-fashioning,
self-identity, n. , , –
selfishness, , n. ,
self-legislating,
selflessness, , , n. ,
self-love, , , , , n. , , ,
self-mastery,
self-overcoming, –, , , , , –, ,
, –, –, –, n. ,
, –, n. , n. ,
–, , –, , , ,
, ,
of the human, –
of humanity, –, ,
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Index
of man,
of morality, –
and the Übermensch, n.
self-overpowering,
self-preservation, ,
self-transformation, –, , , , –,
, ,
Sellars, J., –,
Seneca, L. A.,
Sermon on the Mount,
serpents, –
shame, , n. , , ,
Simmel, G., n. , , –, n.
sin, , , , , , n. , n. ,
original,
ultimate,
Skowron, M.,
slavery, –
socialism, n. ,
Socrates, , n. , , , ,
Socratism,
solitude, , , , , , , n. ,
,
Soll, I., ,
Soothsayer, , n. , , , –, –,
, , n. , –, , –
Sorgner, S., –,
soul, , , , , , , , , ,
–, , –, , n. ,
, , –, , –
atomism,
heroic,
immaterial, n. , , ,
loftiness of,
most comprehensive,
noble,
overfull,
and revenge,
Zarathustra’s,
see also: the body
sovereign individual, , n.
Spinoza, B., , , n.
Stegmaier, W.,
Stendhal, ,
Le Rouge et le Noir,
Stern, T.,
Stoics, –, ,
sublime, n. , , –, , ,
mockery,
See also: beauty
Superhuman, , , , n. , –, –,
, n. , –, n. , ,
, , –, n. , –,
n. ,
descendants of,
and love,
and power over time,
See also: transhumanism, Übermensch
Taine, H.,
teacher (s), , , , ,
ethical, ,
of virtue,
of wisdom,
students and,
true,
Zarathustra as, , n. , , , –
Tertullian,
Tevenar, G. von, –
thing in itself, , , , ,
Thoreau, H. D., n.
tightrope,
walker, ,
time,
absolute, –, , ,
circular, , , –, –,
control over, –, , –
and dice throws, , ,
direction of, ,
eternal recurrence and,
flux of, , , –, , –,
n. , n. , n.
infinite, , , , , , , –,
n. , n. , , –, ,
linear, –
stream of,
See also: becoming; change; willing backwards
Tocqueville, A. de,
Tolstoy, L.,
Tolstoyism,
tragedy, n. , ,
Greek, –, n. , ,
of Zarathustra,
transhumanism, , , –, –,
–
truth (s), , , , , –, , , , ,
, , , , –, , , ,
,
allegorical,
as bent,
divinely revealed,
of eternal recurrence, , , –,
–, , , n.
incorporation of, , –,
and life, ,
moral,
new,
objective and subjective,
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truth (s) (cont.)
and reason, ,
scientific, ,
Socratic,
and Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
ugly,
uncommon,
See also: cosmology
truthfulness, , , ,
Tuncel, Y.,
Twain, M., n.
twilight,
of nihilism,
Twilight of the Idols (Nietzsche), ,
Übermensch, n. , , , , , –,
, , , –, –, ,
–, n. , , ,
and the shadow,
See also Superhuman.
Untimely Meditations (Nietzsche), ,
values, –, , –, –, , ,
, , , , , , ,
n. , , , , , ,
–, n. , –,
n. , –
aristocratic, n. ,
artificial,
eternal recurrence and, –,
extra-human,
false,
genealogy of,
and the herd,
logical structure of,
life-affirming,
life-denying,
natural, –
new, –, n. , –, n. , ,
n. , ,
noble, , n.
non-contingent,
old, ,
ordinary, –
and passions,
personal,
and plants,
rabble,
religious,
revaluation of,
subjective, –
unnatural,
unselfish,
vengeful,
See also: higher
Index
Velleman, D. J.,
virtue (s), , , , , , , , , ,
–, –, , , –,
, , , , , ,
aesthetic,
angelic,
and compassion, –
earthly,
and egoism,
greatest,
of the great thinker,
highest, ,
individual,
intellectual,
and justice,
and laughter, –
martial,
noble,
and the passions, , , n. , –
and Schopenhauer,
Socratic,
stammering,
and the Stoics, –
subjective,
and truthfulness,
unity of,
and vice, ,
youngest,
see also: ethics
Voltaire, n.
Candide,
Wagner, R., , n. , , n. , n. ,
the old magician, n.
Wagnerism,
walking, , , ,
-dead,
See also: tightrope
The Wanderer and His Shadow (Nietzsche),
n. ,
war, , , , , ,
Jewish-Roman,
and peace, , ,
tug of,
wilderness, ,
Christ and,
desert, ,
will/willing, , –, , , –, , –,
–, n. , , , , n. ,
, –, –, , –,
–, –, , –,
n. , ,
of the ascetic,
backwards, , , , –, n. ,
–, n.
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Index
and the body,
causality of,
courageous,
creative, , , , –, ,
–, –,
dead,
dissolution of,
and down-going,
and eternal recurrence, ,
free, , , ,
impotence o, –, n.
Kant on, ,
long,
and Mitleid, ,
and melancholy, ,
metaphysical, ,
negation of, –, ,
and the past, –, –, –,
n. , n. ,
power-,
and the ring,
and Schopenhauer, –, n. , n. ,
n. , n. , n. , ,
and spirit of revenge,
of the strong,
of the weak, ,
violent,
will to death, ,
will to life, –, n. , , n. ,
–,
will to love,
will to negate life, , ,
will to nothingness, –
will to power, n. , , n. , , ,
n. , , , , –, –,
, –, –, , n. ,
, –, –, –, ,
n. , n. , –, –,
n. ,
and eternal recurrence, , , –,
n. , , , , , ,
See also: cosmology
will to truth, –, , –
Winkelkried, A. von, ,
wisdom, , , , , , , , , ,
,
and Epictetus,
gay,
real,
of Silenus,
tragic,
wolf,
Woodward, A.,
Zoroaster, ,
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Titles published in this series (continued):
Kant’s Lectures on Ethics
Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling
Kant’s Lectures on Anthropology
Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason
Descartes’ Meditations
Augustine’s City of God
Kant’s Observations and Remarks
Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals
Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise
. .
Plato’s Laws
Plato’s Republic
.
Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations
Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason
Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim
é
Mill’s On Liberty
. .
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
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