Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. Would you like to tell us about a lower price? Thus Spake Zarathustra is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between and The book chronicles the fictitious travels and speeches of Zarathustra.
Zarathustra's namesake was the Persian founder of Zoroastrianism, usually known in English as Zoroaster. Nietzsche is clearly portraying a "new" or "different" Zarathustra, one who turns traditional morality on its head. He goes on to characterize "what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth, the mouth of the first immoralist: It possesses a unique experimental style, one that is, for instance, evident in newly invented "dithyrambs" narrated or sung by Zarathustra.
Likewise, the separate Dithyrambs of Dionysus was written in autumn , and printed with the full volume in , as the corollaries of Zarathustra's "abundance". Read more Read less. Kindle Cloud Reader Read instantly in your browser. Customers who bought this item also bought. Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1.
Beyond Good and Evil [with Biographical Introduction]. Why I Am Not a Christian. His writing included critiques of religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science, using a distinctive style and displaying a fondness for aphorism. Nietzsche's influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy, notably in existentialism and postmodernism. Nietzsche began his career as a philologist before turning to philosophy. At the age of 24 he became Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, but resigned in due to health problems, which would plague him for most of his life.
In he exhibited symptoms of a serious mental illness, living out his remaining years in the care of his mother and sister until his death in Product details File Size: January 19, Sold by: Is this feature helpful? Thank you for your feedback. Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. See all customer images. Showing of reviews.
Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. I cannot think of one book that has more influence on me than Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It is a book that I once read at least once a year and it never failed to fill my mind with hope and ideas.
I totally disagree with those who consider Nietzsche to be hard, stern, and without hope. I find nothing but hope in the works of Nietzsche. He deepest desire was to see humans remove the yoke of any oppressive ideologies which hindered thoughts and imagination. My initial reading of Zarathustra was very disappointing.
I was not ready for the very stylized language he used but subsequent reading made me look beyond the style and see the thoughts behind them and then yielded the wisdom beneath. I make no claims to entirely understand Nietzsche but someone who dropped out before reaching high school I believe I have a fairly good grasp of his overall principles. His ideas are not so abstract that only scholars can understand them. I have now read most of his major works and consider him the single greatest influence on my own life and the perceptions of various institutions.
As an atheist I was naturally drawn to his hostility towards most forms of organized religionsthe exception for Nietzsche being Buddhism--but he was not grim or dour about this and always championed the "yay-saying" and discouraged the "nay-saing". His words can come across as a bit hard and cold but he felt he was in a desperate battle with a force that was robbing humanity of it's humanity and there was no sense mincing words about the consequences. He would have hated the Nazis. They were everything he despised about the regressive nature of humanity.
The were devoid of all hope and their perverse use of the philosophy would have sickened him. This is a book that is still very valid and vital to the health of humanity. It should be read and reread. A very good and dense book. I don't know if it was the prose, the translation, or the age of language in the text, but I found myself reading a few passages multiple times to really understand it. But all-and-all, a great read. People have spent decades writing long explanations and commentary on the book, so I'll simply say that much of it I could relate to my own challenges and experiences in life and that its message resonated with me.
This is a good, straightforward and fairly literal translation, with helpful notes -- not too many, but useful. I much prefer it to the work of Walter Kaufmann which has for a long time been standard fare for university reading. Walter was better than the Nazified edition with the author's sister to speak for him. But there is a great deal of self-important nonsense by Mr. Kaufmann in his edition. It is a discourse against all those who confound virtue with tameness and smug ease, and who regard as virtuous only that which promotes security and tends to deepen sleep.
Here, Zarathustra gives names to the intellect and the instincts; he calls the one "the little sagacity" and the latter "the big sagacity". Schopenhauer's teaching concerning the intellect is fully endorsed here. From beginning to end it is a warning to those who would think too lightly of the instincts and unduly exalt the intellect and its derivatives: This is an analysis of the psychology of all those who have the evil eye and are pessimists by virtue of their constitutions.
In this discourse Zarathustra opens his exposition of the doctrine of relativity in morality, and declares all morality to be a mere means to power. Needless to say that verses 9, 10, 11, and 12 refer to the Greeks, the Persians, the Jews and the Germans respectively. Nietzsche's views on women have either to be loved at first sight or they become perhaps the greatest obstacle in the way of those who otherwise would be inclined to accept his philosophy.
Women especially, of course, have been taught to dislike them, because it has been rumoured that his views are unfriendly to themselves. Now, to my mind all this is pure misunderstanding and error. German philosophers, thanks to Schopenhauer, have earned rather a bad name for their views on women. It is almost impossible for one of them to write a line on the subject, however kindly he may do so, without being suspected of wishing to open a crusade against the fair sex.
Despite the fact, therefore, that all Nietzsche's views in this respect were dictated to him by the profoundest love; despite Zarathustra's reservation in this discourse, that "with women. And what is the fundamental doctrine which has given rise to so much bitterness and aversion? What Nietzsche strives to combat and to overthrow is the modern democratic tendency which is slowly labouring to level all things, even the sexes.
The human world is just as dependent upon women's powers as upon men's. It is women's strongest and most valuable instincts which help to determine who are to be the fathers of the next generation. By destroying these particular instincts, that is to say, by attempting to masculinise woman, and to feminise men, we jeopardise the future of our people. The general democratic movement of modern times, in its frantic struggle to mitigate all differences, is now invading even the world of sex. It is against this movement that Nietzsche raises his voice; he would have woman become ever more woman and man become ever more man.
Only thus, and he is undoubtedly right, can their combined instincts lead to the excellence of humanity. Regarded in this light, all his views on woman appear not only necessary but just see Note on Chap. It is interesting to observe that the last line of the discourse, which has so frequently been used by women as a weapon against Nietzsche's views concerning them, was suggested to Nietzsche by a woman see "Das Leben F.
He disliked the evil it suggested, and in rechristening the act Voluntary Death, i. An important part of Nietzsche's philosophy is brought to light in this discourse. His teaching, as is well known, places the Aristotelian man of spirit above all others in the natural divisions of man. The man with overflowing strength both of mind and body, who must discharge this strength or perish, is the Nietzschean ideal.
To such a man, giving from his overflow becomes a necessity; bestowing develops into a means of existence, and this is the only giving, the only charity, that Nietzsche recognises. In paragraph 3 of the discourse we read Zarathustra's healthy exhortation to his disciples to become independent thinkers and to find themselves before they learn any more from him see Notes on Chaps.
Nietzsche tells us here, in a poetical form, how deeply grieved he was by the manifold misinterpretations and misunderstandings which were becoming rife concerning his publications. He does not recognise himself in the mirror of public opinion, and. In verse 20 he gives us a hint which it were well not to pass over too lightly; for in the introduction to "The Genealogy of Morals" written in he finds it necessary to refer to the matter again and again with greater precision. The point is this, that a creator of new values meets with his surest and strongest obstacles in the very spirit of the language which is at his disposal.
Words, like all other manifestations of an evolving race, are stamped with the values that have long been paramount in that race. In "The Dawn of Day" Nietzsche actually cautions young writers against the danger of allowing their thoughts to be moulded by the words at their disposal. While writing this, Nietzsche is supposed to have been thinking of the island of Ischia, which was ultimately destroyed by an earthquake.
His teaching here is quite clear. He was among the first thinkers of Europe to overcome the pessimism which godlessness generally brings in its wake. He points to creating as the surest salvation from the suffering which is a concomitant of all higher life.
The tarantulas are the Socialists and Democrats. This discourse offers us an analysis of their mental attitude. Nietzsche refuses to be confounded with those resentful and revengeful ones who condemn society from below , and whose criticism is only suppressed envy.
This refers to all those philosophers hitherto who have run in the harness of established values and have not risked their reputation with the people in pursuit of truth. The philosopher, however, as Nietzsche understood him, is a man who creates new values, and thus leads mankind in a new direction. Here Zarathustra sings about the ideals and friendships of his youth. Verses 27 to 31 undoubtedly refer to Richard Wagner see Note on Chap. In this discourse we get the best exposition in the whole book of Nietzsche's doctrine of the Will to Power. I go into this question thoroughly in the Note on Chap.
Nietzsche was not an iconoclast from choice. Those who hastily class him with the anarchists or the progressivists of the last century fail to understand the high esteem in which he always held both law and discipline. In verse 41 of this most decisive discourse he truly explains his position when he says: These belong to a type which Nietzsche did not altogether dislike, but which he would fain have rendered more subtle and plastic.
It is the type that takes life and itself too seriously, that never surmounts the camel-stage mentioned in the first discourse, and that is obdurately sublime and earnest. To be able to smile while speaking of lofty things, and not to be oppressed by them, is the secret of real greatness. He whose hand trembles when it lays hold of a beautiful thing has the quality of reverence, without the artist's unembarrassed friendship with the beautiful.
Hence the mistakes which have arisen in regard to confounding Nietzsche with his extreme opposites, the anarchists and agitators. The question of taste plays an important part in Nietzsche's philosophy, and verses 9, 10 of this discourse exactly state Nietzsche's ultimate views on the subject. In "The Spirit of Gravity" he actually cries: He reproaches his former colleagues with being sterile and shows them that their sterility is the result of their not believing in anything. In the lats two verses he reveals the nature of his altruism. How far it differs from that of Christianity we have already read in the discourse "Neighbour-Love", but here he tells us definitely the nature of his love to mankind; he explains why he was compelled to assail the Christian values of pity and excessive love of the neighbour, not only because they are slave-values and therefore tend to promote degeneration see Note B , but because he could only love his children's land, the undiscovered land in a remote sea; because he would fain retrieve the errors of his fathers in his children.
An important feature of Nietzsche's interpretation of life is disclosed in this discourse. As Buckle suggests in his "Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge", the scientific spirit of the investigator is both helped and supplemented by the latter's emotions and personality, and the divorce of all emotionalism and individual temperament from science is a fatal step towards sterility.
Zarathustra abjures all those who would fain turn an impersonal eye upon nature and contemplate her phenomena with that pure objectivity to which the scientific idealists of to-day would so much like to attain. He accuses such idealists of hypocrisy and guile; he says they lack innocence in their desires and therefore slander all desiring. Already after the publication of "The Birth of Tragedy", numbers of German philologists and professional philosophers had denounced him as one who had strayed too far from their flock, and his lectures at.
People have sometimes said that Nietzsche had no sense of humour. I have no intention of defending him here against such foolish critics; I should only like to point out to the reader that we have him here at his best, poking fun at himself and at his fellow-poets see Note on Chap. Here we seem to have a puzzle.
Zarathustra himself, while relating his experience with the fire-dog to his disciples, fails to get them interested in his narrative, and we also may be only too ready to turn over these pages under the impression that they are little more than a mere phantasy or poetical flight. Zarathustra's interview with the fire-dog is, however, of great importance.
In it we find Nietzsche face to face with the creature he most sincerely loathes, the spirit of revolution, and we obtain fresh hints concerning his hatred of the anarchist and rebel. Not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new values, doth the world revolve; inaudibly it revolveth. This refers, of course, to Schopenhauer. Nietzsche, as is well known, was at one time an ardent follower of Schopenhauer. He overcame Pessimism by discovering an object in existence; he saw the possibility of raising society to a higher level, and preached the profoundest Optimism in consequence.
Zarathustra here addresses cripples. This is doubtless a reference to a fact which is too often noticeable in the case of so many of the world's giants in art, science or religion. This discourse is very important. In "Beyond Good and Evil" we hear often enough that the select and superior man must wear a mask, and here we find this injunction explained. At a time when individuality is supposed to be shown most tellingly by putting boots on one's hands and gloves on one's feet, it is somewhat refreshing to come.
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Nietzsche practically tells us here that it is not he who intentionally wears eccentric clothes or does eccentric things who is truly the individualist. The profound man, who is by nature differentiated from his fellows, feels this difference too keenly to call attention to it by any outward show. He is shamefast and bashful with those who surround him and wishes not to be discovered by them, just as one instinctively avoids all lavish display of comfort or wealth in the presence of a poor friend. This seems to me to give an account of the great struggle which must have taken place in Nietzsche's soul before he finally resolved to make known the more esoteric portions of his teaching.
Our deepest feelings crave silence. There is a certain self-respect in the serious man which makes him hold his profoundest feelings sacred. Before they are uttered they are full of the modesty of a virgin, and often the oldest sage will blush like a girl when this virginity is violated by an indiscretion which forces him to reveal his deepest thoughts. We must know how persistently he inveighed against the oppressing and depressing influence of man's sense of guilt and consciousness in order fully to grasp the significance of this discourse. Slowly but surely, he thought the values of Christianity and Judaic traditions had done their work in the minds of men.
What were once but expedients devised for the discipline of a certain portion of humanity had now passed into man's blood and had become instincts. This oppressive and paralysing sense of guilt and of sin is what Nietzsche refers to when he speaks of "the spirit of gravity". This creature half-dwarf, half-mole, whom he bears with him a certain distance on his climb and finally defies, and whom he calls his devil and arch-enemy, is nothing more than the heavy millstone "guilty conscience", together with the concept of sin which at present hangs round the neck of men.
Nietzsche is able to think cheerfully and optimistically of the possibility of life in this world recurring again and again, when he has once cast the dwarf from his shoulders, and he announces his doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence of all things great and small to his arch-enemy and in defiance of him. That there is much to be said for Nietzsche's hypothesis of the Eternal Recurrence of all things great and small, nobody who has read the literature on the subject will doubt for an instant; but it remains a very daring conjecture notwithstanding, and even in its ultimate effect, as a dogma on the minds of men, I venture to doubt whether Nietzsche ever properly estimated its worth see Note on Chap.
What follows is clear enough. Zarathustra sees a young shepherd struggling on the ground with a snake holding fast to the back of his throat. The sage, assuming that the snake must have crawled into the young man's mouth while he lay sleeping, runs to his help and pulls at the loathsome reptile with all his might, but in vain. At last, in despair, Zarathustra appeals to the young man's will. Knowing full well what a ghastly operation he is recommending, he nevertheless cries, "Bite! Never on earth laughed a man as he laughed!
This, like "The Wanderer", is one of the many introspective passages in the work, and is full of innuendos and hints as to the Nietzschean outlook on life. Here we have a record of Zarathustra's avowal of optimism, as also the important statement concerning "Chance" or "Accident" verse Man shall now exploit chance, he says again and.
This requires scarcely any comment. It is a satire on modern man and his belittling virtues. In verses 23 and 24 of the second part of the discourse we are reminded of Nietzsche's powerful indictment of the great of to-day in "The Antichrist" Aphorism Our politics are morbid from this want of courage! The aristocracy of character has been undermined most craftily by the lie of the equality of souls; and if the belief in the 'privilege of the many' makes revolutions and will continue to make them, it is Christianity, let us not doubt it, it is Christian valuations, which translate every revolution merely into blood and crime!
Nietzsche thought it was a bad sign of the times that even rulers have lost the courage of their positions, and that even a man of Frederick the Great's power and distinguished gifts should have been able to say: To this utterance of the great sovereign, verse 24 undoubtedly refers. Once again we find Nietzsche thoroughly at ease, if not cheerful, as an atheist, and speaking with vertiginous daring of making chance go on its knees to him. In verse 20 Zarathustra makes yet another.
Notes on "Thus Spake Zarathustra"
The last verse introduces the expression, "the great noontide! Dawn is behind us. The childhood of mankind is over. Now we know ; there is now no longer any excuse for mistakes which will tend to botch and disfigure the type man. But my feeling changes suddenly, and breaks out as soon as I enter the modern period, our period.
He is one of those at whose hands Nietzsche had to suffer most during his lifetime, and at whose hands his philosophy has suffered most since his death. In this respect it may seem a little trivial to speak of extremes meeting; but it is wonderfully apt. Many have adopted Nietzsche's mannerisms and word-coinages, who had nothing in common with him.
If w now read what the fool says to Zarathustra, and Note the tricks of speech he has borrowed from him; if we carefully follow the attitude he assumes, we shall understand why Zarathustra finally interrupts him. Out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird take wing; but not out of the swamp! It is clear that this applies to all those breathless and hasty "tasters of everything" who plunge too rashly into the sea of independent thought and heresy, and who, having miscalculated their strength, find it impossible to keep their head above water.
They soon clamber back to the conventions of the age they intended reforming. The French then say, "le diable se fait hermite" , but these men, as a rule, have never been devils, neither do they become angels; for, in order to be really good or evil, some strength and deep breathing is required.
Those who are more interested in supporting orthodoxy than in being over-nice concerning the kind of support they. This is an example of a class of writing which may be passed over too lightly by those whom poetasters have made distrustful of poetry. From first to last it is extremely valuable as an autobiographical Note. The inevitable superficiality of the rabble is contrasted with the peaceful and profound depths of the anchorite.
In verse 30 we are told that pity was his greatest danger. The broad altruism of the law-giver, thinking over vast eras of time, was continually being pitted by Nietzsche, in himself, against that transient and meaner sympathy for the neighbour which he more perhaps than any of his contemporaries had suffered from, but which he was certain involved enormous dangers, not only for himself, but also to the next and subsequent generations see Note B, where "pity" is mentioned among the degenerate virtues. Later in the book we shall see how this profound compassion leads him into temptation, and how frantically he struggles against it.
In verses 31 and 32, he tells us to what extent he had to modify himself in order to be endured by his fellows whom he loved see also verse 12 in "Manly Prudence". Nietzsche's great love for his fellows, which he confesses in the Prologue and which is at the root of all his teaching, seems rather to elude the discerning powers of the average philanthropist and modern man. He cannot see the wood for the trees. A philanthropy that sacrifices the minority of the present-day for the majority constituting posterity completely evades his mental grasp, and Nietzsche's.
Nietzsche tried to be all things to all men; he was sufficiently fond of his fellows for that: Nietzsche is here completely in his element.
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Three things, hitherto best-cursed and most calumniated on earth, are brought forward to be weighed. Voluptuousness, or sensual pleasure, is a dangerous thing to discuss nowadays. If we mention it with favour we may be regarded, however unjustly, as the advocate of savages, satyrs, and pure sensuality. If we condemn it, we either go over to the puritans or we join those who are wont to come to table with no edge to their appetites and who therefore grumble at all good fare.
There can be no doubt that the value of healthy innocent voluptuousness, like the value of health itself, must have been greatly discounted by all those who, resenting their inability to partake of this world's goods, cried like St Paul: I counsel to innocence in your instincts. As I have already pointed out, his philosophy is quite esoteric. It can serve no purpose with the ordinary, mediocre type of man. I, personally, can no longer have any doubt that Nietzsche's only object, in that part of his philosophy where he bids his friends stand "Beyond Good and Evil" with him, was to save higher men, whose growth and scope might be limited by the too strict observance of modern values, from foundering on the rocks of a "Compromise" between their own genius and traditional conventions.
Verses 20 to 30 afford an excellent supplement to Nietzsche's description of the attitude of the noble type towards the slaves in Aphorism of the work "Beyond Good and Evil" see also Note B. See Note on Chap. We should try to understand this perfectly before proceeding; for it is precisely views of this. Already in the last of the "Thoughts out of Season" Nietzsche speaks as follows about modern men: In his feverish scurry to find entertainment and diversion, whether in a novel, a newspaper, or a play, the modern man condemns his own age utterly; for he shows that in his heart of hearts he despises himself.
One cannot change a condition of this sort in a day; to become endurable to oneself an inner transformation is necessary.
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Too long have we lost ourselves in our friends and entertainments to be able to find ourselves so soon at another's bidding. Rather is it of all arts the finest, subtlest, last and patientest. In his teaching he does not coerce us, nor does de overpersuade; he simply says: Nietzsche himself declares this to be the most decisive portion of the whole of "Thus Spake Zarathustra". It is a sort of epitome of his leading doctrines. In verse 12 of the second paragraph we learn how he himself would fain have abandoned the poetical method of expression, had he not known only too well that the only chance a new doctrine.
Just as prophets centuries ago often had to have recourse to the mask of madness in order to mitigate the hatred of those who did not and could not see as they did, so to-day the struggle for existence among opinions and values is so great that an art-form is practically the only garb in which a new philosophy can dare to introduce itself to us. Many of the paragraphs will be found to be merely reminiscent of the former discourses.
The last verse of par.
Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Freedom, which, as I have pointed out before, Nietzsche considered as dangerous acquisition in inexperienced or unworthy hands, here receives its death-blow as a general desideratum. In the first part we read under "The Way of Creating One" that freedom as an end in itself does not concern Zarathustra at all. What doth that matter to Zarathustra? Clearly, however, shall thine eye answer me: Here we have a description of the kind of altruism Nietzsche exacted from higher men.
This refers, of course, to the reception pioneers of Nietzsche's stamp meet with at the hands of their contemporaries. He likens life unto a stream. But foot-bridges and railings span the stream, and they seem to stand firm. Many will be reminded of good and evil when they look upon these structures; for thus these same values stand over the stream of life, and life flows on beneath them and leaves them standing.
When, however, winter comes and the stream gets frozen, many inquire: Fundamentally everything standeth still. It breaks the ice, and the ice breaks down the foot-bridges and railings, whereupon everything is swept away. This state of affairs, according to Nietzsche, has now been reached. Have not all railings and footbridges fallen into the water? Who would still hold on to 'good' and 'evil'? So far, this is perhaps the most important paragraph. It is a protest against reading a moral order of things in life.
Even to call life "activity", or to define it further as "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations", as Spencer has it, Nietzsche characterises as a "democratic idiosyncrasy". He says to define it in this way "is to mistake the true nature and function of life, which is Will to Power. Life is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of its own forms, incorporation and at least, putting it mildest, exploitation. These deal with Nietzsche's principle of the desirability of rearing a select race.
Darwin, in his remarks relative to the degeneration of cultivated types of animals through the action of promiscuous breeding, brings Gobineau support from the realm of biology. The last two verses of par. This, like the first part of 'The Soothsayer", is obviously a reference to Schopenhauerian pessimism. We must be careful to separate this paragraph, in sense, from the previous four paragraphs.
It was to save this man that Nietzsche wrote. Heroism foiled, thwarted, and wrecked, hoping and fighting until the last, is at length overtaken by despair and renounces all struggle for sleep. The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: And one shall also help them thereto. Here we see that he had anticipated the most likely form their criticism would take see also the last two verses of par. Verses 11 and 12, however, are particularly important. There is a strong argument in favour of the sharp differentiation of castes and of races and even of sexes; see Note on Chap.
What modern men desire above all, is peace and the cessation of pain. But neither great races nor great castes have ever been built up this way. Both are too burdensome. The tame moral reading of the face of nature, together with such democratic interpretations of life as those suggested by Herbert Spencer, are signs of a physiological condition which is the reverse of that bounding and irresponsible healthiness in which harder and more tragic values rule.
This should be read in conjunction with "Child and Marriage".
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In the fifth verse we shall recognise. This, however, must not be taken too literally. I do not think Nietzsche's profoundest views on marriage were ever intended to be given over to the public at all, at least not for the present. They appear in the biography by his sister, and although their wisdom is unquestionable, the nature of the reforms he suggests render it impossible for them to become popular just now. Nietzsche was not an iconoclast from predilection. No bitterness or empty hate dictated his vituperations against existing values and against the dogmas of his parents and forefathers.
He knew too well what these things meant to the millions who profess them, to approach the task of uprooting them with levity or even with haste. I need hardly point out, therefore, how deeply he was conscious of the responsibility he threw upon our shoulders when he invited us to reconsider our position.