has become too strong for us to be able to want happiness without knowledge or [to be able to want the happiness] of a strong, firmly rooted delusion; even to imagine such a state of things is painful to us! Restless discovering and divining has such an attraction for us, and has grown as indispensable to us as is to the lover his unrequited love, which he would at no price relinquish for a state of indifference - perhaps, indeed, we too are unrequited lovers. (Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality , trans. R. J. Hollingdale and ed. Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), , p. ) xvii Introduction Nietzsche sometimes calls a 'noble' life, is still to be possible. And he clearly believes that the major element of this possibility is his own effect onhislisteners. A great deal depends onhim (just as in the 'tragic age of the Greeks,'Socrateswasabletocreate,tolegislateanewformoflife).Inwhat way, goes the implied question or experiment, can a human being now tied to the 'earth' still aspire to be ultimately 'over-man,' Ubermensch ? How could one come to want such an earthly self-overcoming in these post-death-of-God conditions? Whence the right sort of contempt for one's present state, and aspiration for some future goal? Whatever the answer to such questions, Nietzsche clearly thinks that the character of Zarathustra's literary rhetoric must be understood in terms of this goal. Parallel to the paradox of a book for all and none, this problem suggests the paradox of how Zarathustra by 'going under ' and by destroying hopes fora'hinterworld' in the names of 'earth' and 'life' can prepare the way foranew form of 'going over ,' can prepare the transition between human beings as they now are and an 'overman.' One final version of essentially the same paradox: how can Zarathustra inspire and shame without being imitated, without creating disciples?


For example, in the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil , Nietzsche notes that our long struggle with and often opposition to and dissatisfaction with our own moral tradition, European Christianity, has created a 'magnificent tension ( Spannung ) of the spirit in Europe, the likes of which the earth has never known: with such a tension in our bow we can now shoot at the furthest goals.' But, he goes on, the 'democratic Enlightenment' also sought to 'unbend' such a bow, to 'make sure that spirit does not experience itself so readily as 'need.'' This latter formulation coincides with a wonderfully lapidary expression in The Gay Science . In discussing 'the millions of Europeans who cannot endure their boredom and themselves,' he notes that they would even welcome 'a craving to suffer' and so 'to find in their suffering a probable reason for action, for In EH, what distinguishes Zarathustra is said to be his capacity for contradictions like this (EH, , pp. - ). See also section , 'On Great Longing,' references to 'loving contempt' (p. ) and to the intertwining of love and hate for life in 'The Other Dance Song' (p. ). This is also the problem of 'exemplarity' in Nietzsche's Schopenhauer as Educator essay. There is an illuminating essay on this issue, 'Nietzsche's Perfectionism: A Reading of Schopenhauer as Educator ,' of great relevance to TSZ, by James Conant in Nietzsche's Postmoralism: Essays on Nietzsche's Prelude to Philosophy , ed. R. Schacht (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. - . Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil , transl. Judith Norman, ed. Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), preface, p. . xviii Introduction deeds.' In sum: 'neediness is needed!' ('Not ist notig') In TSZ, the point is formulated in a similar way: Beware! The time approaches when human beings no longer launch the arrow of their longing beyond the human, and the string of their bow will have forgotten how to whir!


Beware! The time approaches when human beings will no longer give birth to a dancing star. Beware! The time of the most contemptible human is coming, the one who can no longer have contempt for himself. [p. ] In these terms Nietzsche is trying to create something like a living model for a new, heroic form of affirmation of life (something like the way Montaigne simply offered himself to his readers), and by means of this model to re-introduce this 'tension' of spirit so necessary for self-overcoming. This picture of a living, complex Zarathustra and his unsettledness, his inability to rest content either in isolation or in society, his uncertainty about a form of address, his apostrophes to various dimensions of himself, his illness and recovery, are all supposed to provide us with both an archetypal picture of the great dilemma of modernity itself (the problem of affirmation, a new striving to be 'higher'), but also to inspire the kind of thoughtfulness and risk taking Zarathustra embodies. In his more grandiose moments Nietzsche no doubt thought of Zarathustra's struggles and explorations as reaching for us the same fundamental level as Homer's Odysseus, as Moses, as Virgil's Aeneas, as Christ. TSZ is somehow to be addressed to the source of whatever longing, striving, desire gives life a direction, inspires sacrifice and dedication. And it will be a very difficult task. There is a clear account of the basic issue in Ecce Homo : The psychological problem apparent in the Zarathustra type is how someone who to an unprecedented degree says no and does no to everything everyone has said yes to so far, - how somebody like this can nevertheless be the opposite of a no-saying spirit. GS, . See also 'On Unwilling Bliss' in the third part, where Zarathustra speaks of the 'desire for love' (p. xxx). For more on Nietzsche's relation to Montaigne and the French psychological tradition, see my Nietzsche moraliste fran cais. La conception nietzsch eenne d'une psychologie philosophique ,forthcoming, , Odile Jacob. Emerson is also clearly a model as well. See Conant, Nietzsche's Postmoralism . EH, , pp. - . xix


And this way of putting the point makes it clear that Nietzsche also imagines that the experiment in so addressing each other might easily and contingently fail and fail catastrophically; it may just be the case that a sustainable attachment to life and to each other requires the kind of more standard, prosaic 'illusion' (a lie) that we have also rendered impossible. The possibility of such a failure is also an issue that worries Zarathustra a great deal, as we shall see.


The problem, then, that Zarathustra must address, the problem of 'nihilism,' is a kind of collective failure of desire, bows that have lost their tension, the absence of 'need' or of any fruitful self-contempt, the presence of wretched contentment, 'settling' for too little. And these discussions of desire and meaning throw into a different light how he means to address such a failure. As we have seen, even texts other than TSZ are overwhelmingly literary, rhetorically complex, elliptical, and always a matter of adopting personae and 'masks,' often the mask of a historian or scientist. He appears to believe that this is the only effective way to reach the level of such concern - to address an audience suffering from failed desire (without knowing it). Nietzsche clearly thinks we cannot understand such a possibility, much less be both shamed and inspired by it, except by a literary and so 'living' treatment of such an existential possibility. And Nietzsche clearly thinks he has such a chance, in the current historical context of crisis, collapse, boredom, and confusion, a chance of shaming and cajoling us away from commitments that will condemn us to a 'last man' or 'pale atheist' sort of existence, and of inspiring a new desire, a new 'tension' of the spirit. Hence the importance of these endless pictures and images: truth as a woman, science as gay, troubadours, tomb robbers, seduction, romance, prophets, animals, tightrope walkers, dwarves, beehives, crazy men, sleep, dreams, breeding, blonde beasts, twilight of the gods, and on and on. (It makes all the difference in the world if, having appreciated this point, we then appreciate that such notions as 'the will to power' and 'the eternal return of the same' belong on this list , are not independent 'philosophical' explanations of the meaning of the list. It is not an accident that Nietzsche often introduces these notions with the same hypothetical indirectness that he uses for the other images.) For an extensive discussion of the issue of masks in TSZ see Stanley Rosen, The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche's Zarathustra (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). xx Introduction


However, as in many dramatic and literary presentations of philosophy (such as Platonic dialogues, Proust's novel, Beckett's plays, and so forth) there are not only things said, but things done, and said and done by characters located somewhere and at a time, usually within a narrative time that is constantly changing contexts, conditions of appropriateness, aspects of relevance, and the like. On the face of it this means that one ought to be aware of who says what to whom when, and what is shown rather than said by what they do and what happens to them. In this case, Zarathustra had left the human world when he was thirty and stayed ten years in the mountains. We are not told why, although it is implied that he had psychologically 'burned up'; he carried his own 'ashes' up to the mountain. In the section 'The Hinterworldly' he also tells us that he managed to free himself (he does not tell us how) from the view that the finite human world was an imperfect copy of something better, 'the work of a suffering and tortured god,' that such views were a kind of disease he had recovered from, and that he now speaks of 'the meaning of the earth' (p. ). But we are not told exactly when this event occurred, before or after his voluntary exile, and the speech can be misleading unless, as just discussed above, it is read together with a number of others about selfovercoming. That is, it turns out not at all to be easy ,having abandoned a transcendent source of ideals, to live in a way true to this meaning of the earth or to understand in what sense this is a 'self-overcoming' way. The latter is not a mere 'liberationist' project, but one that in some ways is even more difficult than traditional self-denying virtue.


We also have no clear sense of what Zarathustra did all day, every day for ten years; he seemed mostly to think, contemplate, and talk to animals, especially his favorites, his snake and eagle (already an indication of a link between the low and the high in all things human). But we do know that something happened to him one day, his 'heart transformed,' and he resolved to re-enter the human world. We might assume, given Nietzsche's own diagnosis of the age, that this change was brought about by a sense of some coming crisis among humans. That is, Nietzsche is well known for calling this crisis 'nihilism,' and eventually many of Zarathustra's speeches express this urgency about our becoming the 'last human beings,' humans who can no longer 'overcome themselves.' But initially Zarathustra's return is promoted by motives that are explicit and xxi Introduction somewhat harder to understand. He had become 'weary' of the wisdom gained while in isolation and needs to distribute it, much as the sun gratuitously 'overflows' with warmth and light for humans; he would be in some way fatigued or frustrated by not being able to share this overflow. In a brief exchange with a hermit on the way down, we learn two further things about Zarathustra's motives. His generosity is prompted by a love of human beings , and those who remain in hermit-like isolation can do so only because they have not heard that 'God is dead.'


Thesereferences to love, gift-giving, and Zarathustra's potential weariness are quite important since they amount to his further figurative answers to questions about the intended function and purpose of TSZ; it is a gift of love and meant to inspire some erotic longing as well. (This assumes that Zarathustra's fate in some way allegorizes what Nietzsche expects the fate of TSZ to be and, while this seems credible, Nietzsche also ironicizes Zarathustra enough to give one pause about such an allegory.) The images suggest that the lassitude, smug self-satisfaction, and complacency that Zarathustra finds around him in the market place and later in the city define the problem he faces in the unusual way suggested above. It again suggests that what in other contexts he could call the problem of nihilism is not so much the result of some discovery, a new piece of knowledge (that God is dead, or that values are ungrounded, contingent psychological projections), nor merely a fearful failure of will, a failing that requires the rhetoric of courage, a call to a new kind of strength. As noted, the problem Zarathustra confronts seems to be a failure of desire; nobody wants what he is offering, and they seem to want very little other than a rather bovine version of happiness. It is that sort of failure that proves particularly difficult to address, and that cannot be corrected by thinking up a 'better argument' against such a failure. The events that are narrated are also clearly tied to the question of what it means for Zarathustra to have a teaching, to try to impart it to an audience suffering in this unusual way, suffering from complacency or dead desire. Only at the very beginning, in the Prologue, does he try to 'lecture publicly,' one might say, and this is a pretty unambiguous failure. He is jeered at and mocked and he leaves, saying 'I am not the mouth for these ears' (p. ). The meaning of his attempt, however, seems to be acted out in an unusual drama about a tightrope walker who mistakenly thinks he is being called to start his act, does so, and then is frightened into a fall by a 'jester' who had attempted to leap over the tightrope walker. It xxii


is not uncommon in TSZ that Zarathustra later returns to some of these early images and offers an interpretation. In Part ,inthe section called 'On Old and New Tablets,' Zarathustra remarks, This is what my great love of the farthest demands: do not spare your neighbor ! Human being is something that must be overcome. There are manifold ways and means of overcoming: you see to it! But only a jester thinks: 'human being can also be leaped over .' (p. ) This is only one of many manifestations of the importance of understanding Zarathustra's 'love' and his intimations of the great difficulty involved in his new doctrine of self-overcoming. Here it is something that must be accomplished by each (' you see to it!') and even more strikingly, the reminder here of the Prologue appears to indicate that Zarathustra himself had portrayed his own teaching in a comically inadequate way, preaching to the multitudes as if people could simply begin to overcome themselves by some revolutionary act of will, as if the overman were a new species to be arrived at by 'overleaping' the current one. We come closer here to the parodic elements of the text; in this case a kind of self-parody.


The other plot events in the book also continue to suggest a great unsettledness in Zarathustra's conception and execution of his project, rather than a confident manifesto by Nietzsche through the persona of Zarathustra. He had shifted from market place preaching to conversations with disciples in Part , and at the end of that Part he decides to forgo even that and to go back to his cave alone, and warns his disciples to 'guard' themselves against him, and even 'to be ashamed of him' (p. ). At the beginning of Part he begins to descend again, and again we hear that he is overfull and weary with his gifts and with love (the image of love has changed into something more dramatic: 'And may my torrent of love plunge into impasses!'), but now we hear something new, something absent from his first descent: he is also concerned and impatient. 'My enemies have become powerful and have distorted the image of my teaching.' He will seek out his friends and disciples again (as well as his enemies this time, he notes) but he seems to have realized that part of the problem with the dissemination of his teachings and warnings xxiii Introduction lies in him, and not just the audience. He admits that his wisdom is a 'wild' wisdom that frightens, and that he might scare everyone off, even his friends. 'If only my lioness-wisdom could learn to roar tenderly!' he laments, a lesson he clearly thinks he has not yet learned.


The crucial dramatic event in Part is what occurs near the end. Until then many of Zarathustra's themes had been similar to, or extensions of, what he had already said. Again he seeks to understand the possibility of aform of self-dissatisfaction and even self-contempt that is not based on some sense of absence or incompleteness, a natural gap or imperfection that needs to be filled or completed, and so a new goal that can be linked with a new kind of desire to 'overcome.' He discusses that issue here in terms of 'revenge,' especially against time, and he begins to worry that, with no redemptive revolutionary hope in human life, no ultimate justice in the after-life, and no realm of objective 'goods in themselves' or any natural right, human beings will come to see a finite, temporally mutable, contingent life as a kind of burden, or curse, or purposeless play, and they will exact revenge for having been arbitrarily thrown into this condition. What he means to say in the important section 'On the Tarantulas' is something he had not made clear before, least of all to himself. Indeed, he had helped create the illusion he wants to dispel. He now denies that he, Zarathustra, is a historical or revolutionary figure who will somehow save all of us from this fate, and he denies that the overman is a historical goal (in the way a prophet would foretell the coming of the redeemer) but a personal and quite elusive, very difficult new kind of ideal for each individual. In this sense TSZ can be a book for all, for anyone who is responsive to the call to self-overcoming, but for none, in the sense that it cannot offer a comprehensive reason (for anyone) to overcome themselves and cannot offer specific prescriptions. (It is striking that, although Zarathustra opens his speeches with the call for an overman, that aspect of his message virtually drops out after Part .) Indeed Zarathustra's role as such an early prophet is again part of what makes his early manifestation comic, a parodia. He is clearly pulling back from such a role: But so that I do not whirl, my friends, bind me fast to the pillar here! I would rather be a stylite than a whirlwind of revenge!


For more detail on the relation between the first two parts and the last two, see Pippin, 'Irony and Affirmation.' xxiv


Indeed, Zarathustra is no tornado or whirlwind; and if he is a dancer, nevermore a tarantella dancer! (p. ) Even so, this dance of some escape from revenge is hardly an automatic affirmation of existence as such. Throughout Part , there are constant reminders of how hard this new sort of self-overcoming will be. The 'Famous Wise Men' did not know the first thing about what 'spirit' truly was: Spirit is life that itself cuts into life; by its own agony it increases its own knowledge - did you know that? And the happiness of spirit is this: to be anointed and consecrated by tears to serve as a sacrificial animal - did you know that? (p. ) Other dimensions of this 'agony,' and the failed hopes of the beginning of his project start appearing. He says that 'My happiness in bestowing died in bestowing, my virtue wearied of itself in its superabundance' (p. ). Paradoxical (to say the least) formulations arise. 'At bottom I love only life - and verily, most when I hate it!'


But he seems also to be gaining some clarity about his earlier aspirations and about the nature of the theme that plays the most important role in TSZ, 'self-overcoming.' In a passage with that name, he comments on the doctrine most associated with Nietzsche, 'the will to power.' But again everything is expressed figuratively. He says that all prior values had been placed in a 'skiff' as a result of the 'dominating will' of the inventors of such values and he suggests that this 'river of becoming' has carried those values to a disturbingly unexpected fate. He counsels these 'wisest ones' not to think of this historical and largely uncontrollable fateasdangerous and the end of good and evil; rather the river itself (not a psychological will for power on the part of the creators) is the will to power, the 'unexhausted begetting will of life,' the current of radical historical change 'upon' which or in terms of which obeying and esteeming and committing must always go on. And he notes that he has learned three things about this process. ( ) Life itself (that is the possibility of leading a life) always requires 'obedience,' that is, the possibility of commitment to a norm or goal and the capacity to sustain such commitment. xxv Introduction


( ) 'The one who cannot obey himself is commanded.' (If we do not find a way of leading our life, it will be led for us one way or another.) And ( ) 'Commanding is harder than obeying.' He then adds what is in effect afourth point to these, that the attempt to exercise such command is 'an experiment and a risk'; indeed a risk of life. He tells us that with these questions he is at the very 'heart of life and into the roots of its heart' (p. ). There, in this heartland, he again confronts the problem he had discussed earlier in many different ways, the wrong sort of self-contempt, the absence of any arrows shot beyond man, no giving birth to stars, the bovine complacency of the last human beings. He asks again, that is, the question: without possible reliance on a faith in divine purposes or natural perfections (that river has 'carried' us beyond such options), how should we now understand the possibility of the 'intellectual conscience' without which we would be beneath contempt? That is, whence the experience that we are not as we could be, that what matters to me now might not be what should matter most, that our present state, for each individual, must be 'overcome?' Why? Since the summary 'secret' that Zarathustra has learned from life is expressed this way - 'And this secret life itself spoke to me: 'Behold,' it said, 'I am that which must always overcome itself ,'' - it appears that what is at stake for him is the possibility of coming to exercise power over oneself ; that is, to lead one's life both by sustaining commitments (right 'to the death,' he often implies, suggesting that being able to lead a life in such a whole-hearted way is much more to be esteemed than merely staying alive) and by finding some way to endure the altering historical conditions of valuing, esteeming, such that one can 'overcome' the self so committed to prior values and find a way to 'will' again. One could say that what makes the 'overman' ( Ubermensch ) genuinely selftranscendingisthathecanover-comehimself,accomplishwhennecessary this self-transcending ( Selbst -Uberwindung .) He thereby has gained power 'over' himself and so


realized his will to power: That I must be struggle and becoming and purpose and the contradiction of purposes - alas, whoever guesses my will guesses also on what crooked paths it must walk! Whatever I may create and however I may love it - soon I must oppose it and my love, thus my will wants it. (pp. - ) Likewise,Zarathustrastressesthatgoodandevil,anylife-orientingnormative distinctions, are hardly everlasting; rather they 'must overcome xxvi


themselves out of themselves again and again.' That is, self-overcoming is not transcending a present state for the sake of an ideal, stable higher state (as in a naturally perfected state or any other kind of fixed telos). All aspirations to be more, better than one is, if they are possible at all in present conditions, are provisional, will always give rise to further transformed aspirations. Zarathustra's questions about this do not so much concern traditional philosophical questions about such a form of life but a much more difficult one to address: could we bear , endure such a fate? Clearly Zarathustra's own starts and stops, and the effect these have on him, are meant to raise such an issue dramatically. (And it is not at all clear that this issue is in any way resolved, or that a resolution is even relevant.)


Two other things are quite striking about these formulations. The first, as the autobiographical inflection of such passages makes clear, is that we have to see Zarathustra as embodying this struggle, and thus must note that this possibility - the heart of everything, the possibility of selfovercoming-seemstherebyalsotiedsomehowto his problemsofrhetoric, language, of audience, friends, his own loneliness, and occasional bitterness and pity. Some condition of success in self-overcoming is linked to achieving the right relation to others (and so, by implication, is inconsistent with a hermit-like, isolated life). The second emerges quickly from the first. We have to note that Zarathustra, as the embodiment of this struggle, whatever this relation to others turns out to be, is completely uninterested in gaining power over others , subjecting as much or as many as possible to his control or command. ('I lack the lion's voice for all commanding'(p. ).) Self -commanding(and,dialectically, self-obeying) are the great problems. (In fact he keeps insisting that the last thing he wants is the ability to command them. His chief problem is that whenever he hears them re-formulate what he thinks he has said or dreamt, he is either disappointed, or perhaps anxious that he does not understand his own 'doctrine'; they may be right, he may be wrong, and no intellectual conscience could sustain a commitment that was suspected of being delusory.) Even when he appears to discuss serving or mastering others, he treats it as in the service of self-mastery and so again possible self-overcoming. ('[A]nd even in the will of the serving I found the will to be master' (p. ).) There are of course other passages in Nietzsche which seem to encourage a violent upheaval, all so that the strong can rule over the weak and so forth. I have only space to say that if we use TSZ xxvii Introduction


These are less formulations of a position than fragmentary and largely programmatic aspects of Zarathustra's self-diagnosis and the cure he at least aspires to. Many philosophical questions arise inevitably. What would be amiss, lost, wrong in a life not fully or not at all 'led' by a subject? How could this aspiration towards something believed to be higher or more worthy than what one is or has now be directed ,ifall the old language of external or objective forms of normative authority is now impossible? On what grounds can one say that a desire to cultivate a different sort of self, to overcome oneself, is really in the service of a 'higher' self? Higher in what sense? What could be said to be responsible for (relied on for) securing this obedience, for helping to ward off skepticism when it arises? Under what conditions can such commitments and projects be said to lose their grip on a subject, fail, or die? In general Zarathustra does not fully accept the burden of these questions as ones he must assume. For one thing he clearly does not believe that the inspiration for such an attempt at self-direction and something like 'becoming better at becoming who one is' can be provided by an argument or a revelation or a command. One would already have had to measure oneself and one's worth against 'arguments' or 'revelation' or 'authoritative commands' for such different calls to be effective and it is to that prior, deepest level of commitment that Zarathustra, however indirectly and figuratively, is directing his rhetoric. And given the great indeterminateness of his approach, he is clearly much more interested in the qualitative characteristics of such commitments than with their content. The quality he is most interested in turns out to be extremely complex: on the one hand, 'whole-heartedness' and an absorbed or passionate 'identification' with one's higher ideal; on the other hand, a paradoxical capacity to 'let go' of such commitments and pursue other ideals when the originals (somehow) cease to serve self-overcoming and self-transcendence, when they lead to complacency and contentment. However, to come to by far the most complicated issue introduced by Zarathustra's speeches, he clearly also thinks that such qualitative considerations - the chief topic of the book, the qualitative dimensions


as a model for reading Nietzsche, and attend to issues like voice, persona, irony, and context, we will see a Nietzsche very different from the traditional one. For more on the political issues in Nietzsche, see my 'Deceit, Desire, and Democracy: Nietzsche on Modern Eros,' International Studies in Philosophy , : (March, ), pp. - . That is, better at becoming who one truly is, beyond or over one's present state. xxviii Introduction


of a self-relation that will in the present circumstances make possible a yearning for a self-overcoming and escape from mere contentment - will also rule out various contents .Itisclear that he, and in this case Nietzsche as well, thinks that one cannot whole-heartedly and 'self-overcomingly' be a 'last human being' or any of its many manifestations (a petty tyrant, a pale atheist, a 'reactive' type, a modern ascetic). Such types embody forms of a 'negative' self-relation that are 'reactive' and self-denying in a way that makes true self-overcoming and self-affirmation impossible and so will not allow that form of identification with one's deeds that Zarathustra suggests should be like the way a 'mother' sees herself in her 'child.' ('I wish your self were in the deed like the mother is in the child; let that be your word on virtue' (p. ).) Yet it is also clear that one cannot simply will 'to have contempt for oneself as Zarathustra recommends.' The right relation between shame and yearning is as delicate and elusive as are Zarathustra's strange speeches and dreams and visions. And, as we have been seeing, he also clearly thinks (or he experiences in his own adventures) that only some kinds of relations to others are consistent with the possibility of such genuine self-direction. Merely commanding others, discipleship, indifference, or isolation are all ruled out. Since we also do not ever get from Nietzsche a discursive account of what distinguishes a genuine form of self-direction and self-overcoming from an illusory or self-deceived one (whatever such a distinction amounts to, it is not of the kind that could be helped, would be better realized, by such a theory), elements of how he understands that distinction emerge only indirectly and, together with a clearer understanding of self-overcoming and the social relations it requires, would all have to be reconstructed from a wide variety of contexts and passages. Moreover, to make everything even more complicated, Nietzsche also clearly believes that such a whole-hearted aspiration to self-overcoming is also consistent with a certain level of irony , some distance from one's ideals, the adoption of personae and masks, and even a kind of esotericism when addressing different audiences.


But while Zarathustra does not treat these issues as discursive problems, as if they were problems about skepticism or justification, he does suffer from them, suffer from the burden that the thought of such contingency imposes on any possibly worthy life. He becomes ill, apparently ill with xxix


the human condition as such, even disgusted by it, and a great deal of the latter four speeches of Part and the majority of Part involve his possible recovery from such an illness, his 'convalescing.' There is in effect a kind of mini-narrative from the speech called 'The Soothsayer' in Part until the speech 'On Unwilling Bliss' in Part that is at the center of the work's drama, and the re-orientation effected there is played out throughout the rest of Part , especially in 'The Convalescent.' Dramatically, at the end of Part Zarathustra again resolves to return home, and in Part he is underway back there, and finally reaches his cave and his animals.


'The Soothsayer' begins with remarks about the famous doctrine mostly attributed to Nietzsche, but here expressed by a soothsayer and quoted by Zarathustra. (In Ecce Homo , the idea is called the 'basic idea' and 'fundamental thought' of the work.) This notion, that 'Everything is empty, everything is the same, everything was!' is promptly interpreted in a melancholic way, such that 'We have become too weary to die; now we continue to wake and we live on - in burial chambers' (p. ). It is this prophecy that 'went straight to his [Zarathustra's] heart and transformed him.' He does not eat or drink for three days, does not speak, and doesnotsleep. In typically figurative language he explains the source of his despair in a way that suggests a kind of self-critique. He had clearly earlier placed his hopes for mankind in a dramatic historical, epochal moment, the bridge from man to the overman, and he now realizes that it was a mistake to consider this a historical goal or broad civilizational ideal, that such a teleology is a fantasy, that rather 'all recurs eternally,' that the last human being cannot be overcome in some revolutionary moment. In the language of his strange dream he finds that he does not, after all, have the 'keys' to open the relevant historical gate (he thought he did, thought he need not only keep watch over, but could open up, what had gone dead), that it is a matter of chance or a sudden wind whether or not a historical change will occur within individuals, and if it does, it might be nothing but the release of what had been dead. His disciples promptly interpret the dream in exactly the opposite way, as if Zarathustra himself were 'the [liberating] wind.' Zarathustra merely shakes his head in disappointment and continues his wandering home. EH, , pp. and . xxx


The details of Zarathustra's re-evaluation of what is required now of himandhisaddresseesinorder,ineffect, to 'take up the reins' of a life and live it better, to embody a commitment to constant self-transcendence, instead of merely suffering existence, involve scores of images and parables. Zarathustra will not now see himself as removing the deformity from 'cripples.' That is useless, he implies; they must do that for themselves. Or Zarathustra must learn to be silent often, to teach by not teaching, and this occasions the clearest expressions, even at this late date, of the ambiguities in Zarathustra's role and self-understanding: Is he a promiser? Or a fulfiller? A conqueror? Or an inheritor? An autumn? Or a plow? A physician? Or a convalescent? Is he a poet? Or a truthful man? A liberator? Or a tamer? A good man? Or an evil man? I walk among human beings as among fragments of the future; the future that I see. (p. ) Yetagain, the question of who Zarathustra is, what he stands for, what his purpose is, remains a puzzling question for Zarathustra himself . Zarathustra, in other words, cannot understand what it means to be a 'spokesman' for Zarathustra. We are obviously very far from being able to see him as a spokesman for Nietzsche. This is all also said to effect a kind of 'reconciliation' with circular, repetitive time. He will encourage a liberation in which what we took to be what merely happened to us in the past can be assumed as the burden of one's own doing, that one will heroically take on what merely 'was' as one's own and so transform it into 'thus I willed it.' (This might be likened to a Greek tragic hero who takes on more of a burden of what was done than can be strictly attributed to his deed, someone like Oedipus or Ajax. )Hedoes not need the 'lion's voice' of commanding: 'The stillest words are those that bring the storm. Thoughts that come on the feet of doves steer the world' (p. ).


Throughout Part , Zarathustra speaks mostly to himself; he learns that his greatest danger is 'love,' 'the danger of the loneliest one, love of everything if only it lives !' (p. ). He must struggle with a 'spirit of gravity,' his own reflective doubt that he will be 'dragged down' See Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley: University of California Press, ). xxxi by the 'abysmal thought' of the Eternal Return. It is in this struggle that he realizes that the way in which the meaning of the absence of historical revolution or redemption is lived out or embodied in a life is not something that can be easily read off from the mere doctrine itself. There is no clear, unavoidable inference either to despair, indifference, or affirmation. The dwarf, the spirit of gravity, does that (reads despair as the implication) and 'makes it too easy on himself' (p. ). And Zarathustra again tries to 'dream' his way out of his sadness by dreaming himself as a young shepherd 'choking' on his own 'circular' doctrine, the Eternal Return, but one who succeeds in 'biting off the head of the snake' that had crawled into his throat, and so emerged 'a transformed, illuminated, laughing' being (p. ). Just how exactly the despair-inducing features of there being no temporal redemption and a ceaseless return of even the last men are transformed into an affirmative vision, and just how this is captured by 'biting the head off the snake' is not clear. When that very question comes up much more explicitly in 'The Convalescent' (Zarathustra fasts again for seven days and when he resumes speaking he mentions again the 'nausea' that the thought of the Eternal Return occasioned), the attempt by his animals to attribute the Eternal Return to Zarathustra as a 'teaching' is met first by his complaint that they are turning him and his struggle into a 'hurdy-gurdy song' and when they go on and interpret the doctrine as a kind of immortality teaching (that Zarathustra will return), Zarathustra ignores them, communes only with his soul. Also, given that aspects of Zarathustra's own despair return after this, the image of recovery might be as much wishful thinking, or at least the expression of a mere faint hope as it is a settled event.


This dialogue with his disciples also shows that one of the things that recurs repeatedly for Zarathustra are his own words; that he cannot prevent the 'literalization' of his parabolic speech. His disciples are not dense or merely mistaken; they are simply trying to understand what Zarathustra means. When repeated as a teaching or a doctrine, Zarathustra's parabolic speech becomes parodic, comic. But he has no option other than saying nothing (and he has found that he cannot live in such isolation) or preaching more directly, in which case his disciples would be xxxii Introduction (even more than they already are) following him, not themselves. The parodic return of his own words is thus the heart of his tragedy. After this expression of his putative, perhaps short-lived new selfunderstanding, he believes he can say such things as 'I gave it [chance] back to all things, I redeemed them from their servitude under purpose' (p. ). Having done so, a 'homecoming' back with his animals is now possible, he thinks, and he expresses the relation to others, here his animals, that he would have wanted 'down there,' but failed to achieve: 'We do not implore one another, we do not deplore one another, we walk openly with one another through open doors' (p. ). Thus, as we drift towards the end of the Part , which Nietzsche at one time clearly conceived as the end of the book, Zarathustra's despair at any change in the collective or individual lives of human beings seems at its darkest. However, as is so typical of the wandering eros of Zarathustra, within a few speeches he announces yet again 'I want to return to mankind once more' (p. ).


He does not, however, and at the beginning of the Part , Zarathustra is still alone, and he is old now. He re-encounters the soothsayer but one cannot see in their confrontation that anything decisive is settled. And, although Zarathustra begins to talk with and assemble a wide variety of what are called 'higher human beings' (kings, an old magician, the pope, the voluntary beggar, the shadow, the conscientious of spirit, the sad soothsayer, and the ass), his own 'teaching' about overcoming and the higher seems here yet again parodied rather than celebrated. As noted, Part reads more like a comic, concluding satyr play to a tragic trilogy than a real conclusion. It is especially self-parodic when all these so-called higher types end up worshipping a jackass, presumably because the ass can at least make a sound that articulates what all have been seeking, a mode of affirmation and commitment. The ass can say Hee-yaw, that is, ja, or Yes! So we end with the same problem. Zarathustra must report, 'But I still lack the proper human beings.' However, when a 'cloud of love' descends around him, and he hears a lion's roar (a 'sign' that takes us back to On this point I am grateful to conversations with David Wellbery. Compare, ' it is only in love , only when shaded by the illusions produced by love, that is to say in the unconditional faith in right and perfection, that man is creative.' Friedrich Nietzsche, 'On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,' in Untimely Meditations ,trans. R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Daniel Breazeale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), , p. . xxxiii Introduction


the three metamorphoses of the first speech), he also believes that 'My children are near, my children,' and yet again he leaves his cave, 'glowing and strong, like a morning sun that emerges from dark mountains' (p. ). But by this point we are experiencing as readers our own eternal return, the cycle of hope and despair, descent and return, sociality and isolation, love and contempt, parable and parody, lower and higher, earth and heaven, snake and eagle, that we have been reading about throughout. The 'ending' in other words is meant to suggest a cyclical temporality, as if to pose for us the question Zarathustra continually has to ask himself. The question is oriented from the now familiar assumptions: no redemptive or revolutionary moment in human time, no re-assurance about or reliance on the naturally right or good; no revelations from God; and the eventual return of everything we have tried to overcome. Given such assumptions, the question is whether the self-overcoming Zarathustra encourages, the desire for some greater or better form of self-direction, assuming the full burden of leading a life, is practically possible, from the lived viewpoint of the agent.


In keeping with the unsystematic form of the clear models for TSZ biblical wisdom literature, the French moral psychologists of the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries (Montaigne, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld), Emerson, Goethe - it is of course appropriate that we be 'taught' nothing about this by Zarathustra, 'taught' if at all only by his ultimate silence about this new possibility and so its challenge to us, to make it 'our own.' No lessons can be drawn from it, no summary credo articulated, no justification for a position formulated, any more than any 'gift of love' like this, any image of a life worth living under these conditions, can be interrogated in this way. The work seems to function as the same kind of 'test' for the reader as the soothsayer's doctrine for Zarathustra. Either the temper and credibility of Zarathustra's constant return to the ultimately unredeemable human world will strike the chord Nietzsche hoped still existed, or it will not; either there are such 'children' as Zarathustra sees in his final vision, or they will seem like the illusions that so many of Zarathustra's hopes have proven to be from the beginning. Or to adopt the language of Zarathustra, and in this case at least, Nietzsche himself, perhaps such children do have the status of mere dreams, but they thereby also might satisfy what Nietzsche once described as the conditions of xxxiv


contemporary self-overcoming: the ability to 'dream' without first having to 'sleep.' Robert B. Pippin GS, . A re-orientation of some sort that would permit the entertaining of some aspiration or ideal, some inspiring picture that would not (given our intellectual conscience) have to be treated as a distortion or fantasy or merely utopian (that we would not have to 'sleep,' shut off our conscience) in order to dream in this way, is at the heart of the Kafka fable cited in n. above. From what has become the ordinary viewpoint, parables are a waste of time (What is Nietzsche's proposal? His plan? How does he want us to live?), and the right understanding would be to live out the parable; but, paradoxically, not ' as a parable,' as if a self-conscious idealization. That would be 'correct,' from the viewpoint of reality, but a destruction of the parable's function; one would have 'lost.' xxxv


, 1 = Born in Rocken, a small village in the Prussian province of Saxony, on October.. , 1 = Birth of his sister Elisabeth.. , 1 = Birth of his brother Joseph.. , 1 = His father, a Lutheran minister, dies at age thirty-six of 'softening of the brain.'. , 1 = Brother dies; family moves to Naumburg to live with father's mother and her sisters.. , 1 = Begins studies at Pforta, Germany's most famous school for education in the classics.. , 1 = Graduates from Pforta with a thesis in Latin on the Greek poet Theognis; enters the university of Bonn as a theology student. Transfers from Bonn, following the classical philologist Friedrich Ritschl to Leipzig where he registers as a philology student;. , 1 = reads Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation. Reads Friedrich Lange's History of Materialism. Meets Richard Wagner.. , 1 = . , 1 = On Ritschl's recommendation is appointed professor of classical. , 1 = doctorate (which is then conferred without a dissertation); begins frequent visits to the Wagner residence at Tribschen.. , 1 = Serves as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian war; contracts a serious illness and so serves only two months. Writes 'The Dionysiac World View.' The Birth of Tragedy ; its dedicatory. , 1 = Publishes his first book, preface to Richard Wagner claims for art the role of 'the highest xxxvi


, 1 = task and truly metaphysical activity of his life'; devastating reviews follow. Publishes 'David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer,' the first of his Untimely Meditations ; begins taking books on natural science out of the Basle library, whereas he had previously confined himself largely to books on philological matters. Writes 'On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense.'. , 1 = Publishes two more Meditations , 'The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life' and 'Schopenhauer as Educator.'. , 1 = Publishes the fourth Meditation , 'Richard Wagner in Bayreuth,' which already bears subtle signs of his movement away from Wagner.. , 1 = Publishes Human, All Too Human (dedicated to the memory of Voltaire); it praises science over art as the high culture and thus marks a decisive turn away from Wagner.. , 1 = Terrible health problems force him to resign his chair at Basle (with a small pension); publishes 'Assorted Opinions and Maxims,' the first part of vol. of Human, All Too Human ; begins living alone in Swiss and Italian boarding-houses.. , 1 = Publishes 'The Wanderer and His Shadow,' which becomes the second part of vol. of Human, All Too Human. Publishes Daybreak .. , 1 = Publishes Idylls of Messina (eight poems) in a monthly magazine; publishes The Gay Science (first edition); friendship with Paul R'ee and Lou Andreas-Salom'e ends badly, leaving Nietzsche devastated.. , 1 = Publishes the first two parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra; learns of Wagner's death just after mailing Part to the publisher. of Thus Spoke Zarathustra .. , 1 = Publishes Part. , 1 = Publishes Part of Zarathustra for private circulation only.. , 1 = Publishes Beyond Good and Evil ; writes prefaces for new releases of: The Birth of Tragedy, Human, All Too Human , vols. and , and Daybreak.. , 1 = Publishes expanded edition of The Gay Science with a new preface, a fifth book, and an appendix of poems; publishes Hymn to Life ,amusical work for chorus and orchestra; publishes On the Genealogy of Morality. xxxvii


, Chronology = Publishes The Case of Wagner , composes a collection of poems, Dionysian Dithyrambs , and four short books: Twilight of Idols , The Antichrist , Ecce Homo , and Nietzsche contra Wagner . Collapses physically and mentally in Turin on . , Chronology = January; writes a few lucid notes but never recovers sanity; is briefly institutionalized; spends remainder of his life as an invalid, living with his mother and then his sister, who also gains control of his literary estate.. , Chronology = Dies in Weimar on August. xxxviii


Thus Spoke Zarathustra has attracted the most attention of all of Nietzsche's works, it is therefore his most popular in terms of printings and sales, and his most critically acclaimed. Attempts to do justice to the richness and strangeness of this work by providing detailed commentary on each chapter began early, in the nineteenth century, with Gustav Naumann's Zarathustra-Commentar ( vols., Leipzig: H. Haessel, - ). Naumann's commentary addresses each chapter of Zarathustra in a reliable and nuanced manner, making it useful even today (at least to readers of German). Naumann was also highly critical of the machinations of Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche, as she enlisted sympathetic editors to manufacture her own image of Nietzsche and her own edition of his works. Historically Naumann's commentary is valuable because it is part of the phenomenal reception of Nietzsche's ideas at the turn of the century, and because it is early enough to be untainted by the negative fall-out of the two world wars and their lingering damage to Nietzsche's reputation. The next comprehensive attempt to explain Zarathustra began in the s and took the form of a six-year seminar given by C. G. Jung at the university of Zurich. For decades the unpublished notes of this seminar circulated in photocopy among the Nietzsche underground at various universities until finally they were edited and published by James L. Jarrett as Nietzsche's 'Zarathustra': Notes of the Seminar Given in - by C. G. Jung ( vols., Princeton University Press, ). This commentary by chapter is unparalleled in revealing the complex creative process behind Zarathustra , and though preachy at times, it subjects both Nietzsche and his creation to an anthropological approach that only Jung could present. Jarrett's editing is quite skillful, xxxix while the seminar format of the 'notes' makes this commentary uniquely discursive.


Morerecent commentaries devoted exclusively to Zarathustra and limited to a single volume are extremely useful as well. Laurence Lampert's Nietzsche's Teaching: An Interpretation of 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' (Yale University Press, ), establishes the need for a new teaching, the nature of the teaching, and the foundational role it plays in the history of philosophy. Lampert's Nietzsche and Modern Times: A Study of Bacon, Descartes, and Nietzsche (Yale University Press, ), much broader in scope, goes further in the direction of specifying the ecological, earth-affirming properties of Nietzsche's teaching via Zarathustra. Kathleen Higgin's Nietzsche's 'Zarathustra' (Temple University Press, ), which she prefers to designate not as commentary but 'analysis' instead, treats Zarathustra in the context of the teachers Socrates and Christ. She strives to rehabilitate the reputation of Zarathustra as a whole, and particularly Part . Stanley Rosen, in The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche's 'Zarathustra' (Cambridge University Press, ), comments on most of the chapters while bringing all of Nietzsche's writings to bear on this difficult and, for him, sometimes disturbing book. Rosen is mindful of the contradiction inherent in Nietzsche's attempt to speak simultaneously to the few (esoterically) and to everyone (exoterically). Robert Gooding-Williams, in Zarathustra's Dionysian Modernism (Stanford University Press, ), has delivered the latest of the Zarathustra -commentaries, and perhaps the most powerful in terms of maintaining hermeneutic continuity. The concept of a 'Dionysian modernism' is effective in unifying the study and highlighting Zarathustra's mission as a revival of the earth's passions. Joachim Kohler's Zarathustra's Secret: The Interior Life of Friedrich Nietzsche (Yale University Press, ,translation of Zarathustras Geheimnis , ), purports to be a biography exposing the gamut of Nietzsche's philosophizing as secret code for the glorification of homosexuality. Kohler reduces all of Nietzsche's motivations and teachings to his alleged homoeroticism, sometimes with breathtaking obtuseness, and he uses it to undermine Nietzsche's philosophical validity.


Articles that address significant aspects of Zarathustra include Gary Shapiro, 'The Rhetoric of Nietzsche's Zarathustra ,' in Philosophical Style: An Anthology about the Writing and Reading of Philosophy , ed. Berel Lang (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, ), pp. - ;Robert B. Pippin, 'Irony and Affirmation in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra ,' in xl Further reading Nietzsche's New Seas: Explorations in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics , ed. Michael Allen Gillespie and Tracy B. Strong (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, ), pp. - ; Daniel W. Conway, 'Solving the Problem of Socrates: Nietzsche's Zarathustra as Political Irony,' Political Theory : ( ), pp. - ; Keith Ansell-Pearson, 'Who is the Ubermensch ? Time, Truth, and Woman in Nietzsche,' Journal of the History of Ideas : ( ), pp. - ;Graham Parkes, 'Staying Loyal to the Earth: Nietzsche as an Ecological Thinker' in Nietzsche's Futures , ed. John Lippit (St. Martin's Press, ), pp. - .


There are also several books that deal substantially with Zarathustra while not attempting to provide running commentary on chapter and verse. The first of these is Karl Lowith's Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same (University of California Press, ; translation of Nietzsches Philosophie der ewigen Wiederkehr des Gleichen , ), still the most thorough and compelling philosophical treatment to date of the unifying doctrine of Zarathustra . Philip Grundlehner's The Poetry of Friedrich Nietzsche (Oxford University Press, ), sheds light not only on the dithyrambs interspersed throughout Part , but on Nietzsche's entire lyrical poetic output, of which Zarathustra is in many ways symptomatic. The debate concerning poetry vs. philosophy is given careful treatment in Grundlehner's study. Rudolf Kreis's Nietzsche, Wagner and die Juden (Konigshausen und Neumann, ) is underutilized in the English-speaking world. Kreis's great service lies not in his thesis that Nietzsche opposed Wagner by writing Zarathustra as an 'antiParsifal ,' but in his more broadly juxtaposing the earth-affirming ethos of the ancient Jews with the earth-denying ethos of modern Christian anti-Semitism. Kreis's book traces the fortunes of the earth as ecosystem, casting the encounter between Nietzsche and Wagner as a defining moment. John Richardson's Nietzsche's System (Oxford University Press, )represents a highly readable and refined analysis of both the superhuman and the will to power. Richardson makes strides toward an ecumenical Nietzsche when he consistently renders German Mensch as 'human being,' but he fails to follow through by rendering Ubermensch as superhuman. For the purpose of providing an elegant and readable translation 'overman' may well be the preferred expression, but for purposes of scholarship, the English-speaking world should have advanced far enough beyond Shaw's and Marvel's comic book 'superman' to speak in terms of the superhuman. Gregory Moore's Nietzsche, Biology and xli


Metaphor (Cambridge University Press, ), though disappointing in its failure to recognize the Dionysian as a source of Nietzsche's biologically inclined rhetoric, is nonetheless the best study to date on how Nietzsche responded to the scientific literature of his day in constructing his own views on evolution and degeneration. Adrian Del Caro's Grounding the Nietzsche Rhetoric of Earth (Walter de Gruyter, ) unpacks Zarathustra's proclamation that 'the superhuman is the meaning of the earth,' and delivers a multifaceted treatment of the ecological Nietzsche. xlii


The text used for this translation is printed in the now standard edition of Nietzsche's works edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: de Gruyter, - ). Their edition and their Kritische Studienausgabe in fifteen volumes (Berlin: de Gruyter, )have been used in the preparation of the footnotes to this edition. The spacing and versification of the original are preserved in this edition. xliii Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for All and None First Part


When Zarathustra was thirty years old he left his home and the lake of his home and went into the mountains. Here he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude and for ten years he did not tire of it. But at last his heart transformed, - one morning he arose with the dawn, stepped before the sun and spoke thus to it: 'You great star! What would your happiness be if you had not those for whom you shine? For ten years you have come up here to my cave: you would have tired of your light and of this route without me, my eagle and my snake. But we awaited you every morning, took your overflow from you and blessed you for it. Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee that has gathered too much honey. I need hands that reach out. I want to bestow and distribute until the wise among human beings have once again enjoyed their folly, and the poor once again their wealth. For this I must descend into the depths, as you do evenings when you go behind the sea and bring light even to the underworld, you super-rich star! Like you, I must go down as the human beings say, to whom I want to descend. So bless me now, you quiet eye that can look upon even an all too great happiness without envy! Bless the cup that wants to flow over, such that water flows golden from it and everywhere carries the reflection of your bliss! Behold! This cup wants to become empty again, and Zarathustra wants to become human again.'


German uses untergehen , literally 'to go under' for the expression the sun 'goes down.' Nietzsche throughout Zarathustra uses wordplay to signify that Zarathustra's 'going under' is a 'going over' or transition, ubergehen , from human to superhuman, from man to overman. After Zarathustra draws his first analogy between himself and the sun, I use 'going under' for untergehen and its noun form Untergang .Insetting or going down the sun marks a transition. Zarathustra meanwhile has been higher than human in both figurative and literal terms, and so his 'going under' has the effect of him transitioning to human again. However, on the ecumenical level, when human beings transition or go under, and when they 'overcome' the human, they should achieve the superhuman (overman). Thus Spoke Zarathustra Zarathustra climbed down alone from the mountains and encountered no one. But when he came to the woods suddenly an old man stood before him, who had left his saintly hut in search of roots in the woods. And thus spoke the old man to Zarathustra: 'This wanderer is no stranger to me: many years ago he passed by here. Zarathustra he was called; but he is transformed. Back then you carried your ashes to the mountain: would you now carry your fire into the valley? Do you not fear the arsonist's punishment? Yes, I recognize Zarathustra. His eyes are pure, and no disgust is visible around his mouth. Does he not stride like a dancer? Zarathustra is transformed, Zarathustra has become a child, an awakened one is Zarathustra. What do you want now among the sleepers? Youlived in your solitude as if in the sea, and the sea carried you. Alas, you want to climb ashore? Alas, you want to drag your own body again?' Zarathustra answered: 'I love mankind.' 'Why,' asked the saint, 'did I go into the woods and the wilderness in the first place? Was it not because I loved mankind all too much? Now I love God: human beings I do not love. Human beings are too imperfect a thing for me. Love for human beings would kill me.'


Zarathustra replied. 'Why did I speak of love? I bring mankind a gift.' 'Give them nothing,' said the saint. 'Rather take something off them and help them to carry it - that will do them the most good, if only it does you good! And if you want to give to them, then give nothing more than alms, and make them beg for that too!' 'No,' answered Zarathustra. 'I do not give alms. For that I am not poor enough.' The saint laughed at Zarathustra and spoke thus: 'Then see to it that they accept your treasures! They are mistrustful of hermits and do not believe that we come to give gifts. 'Ich liebe die Menschen' means literally 'I love human beings.' Earlier translators ignored the ecological framework in which Nietzsche wrote Zarathustra by using expressions like 'man.' The prologue establishes a prevailing semantic field, a framework in which human beings, animals, nature and earth interact or should interact as never before.


To them our footsteps sound too lonely in the lanes. And if at night lying in their beds they hear a man walking outside, long before the sun rises, they probably ask themselves: where is the thief going? Do not go to mankind and stay in the woods! Go even to the animals instead! Why do you not want to be like me - a bear among bears, a bird among birds?' 'And what does the saint do in the woods?' asked Zarathustra. The saint answered: 'I make songs and sing them, and when I make songs I laugh, weep and growl: thus I praise God. With singing, weeping, laughing and growling I praise the god who is my god. But tell me, what do you bring us as a gift?' When Zarathustra had heard these words he took his leave of the saint andspoke: 'What would I have to give you! But let me leave quickly before I take something from you!' - And so they parted, the oldster and the man, laughing like two boys laugh. But when Zarathustra was alone he spoke thus to his heart: 'Could it be possible! This old saint in his woods has not yet heard the news that God is dead !' - When Zarathustra came into the nearest town lying on the edge of the forest, he found many people gathered in the market place, for it had been promised that a tightrope walker would perform. And Zarathustra spoke thus to the people: ' I teach you the overman . Human being is something that must be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All creatures so far created something beyond themselves; and you want to be the ebb of this great flood and would even rather go back to animals than overcome humans?


'Ich lehre euch den Ubermenschen.' Just as Mensch means human, human being, Ubermensch means superhuman, which I render throughout as overman, though I use human being, mankind, people, and humanity to avoid the gendered and outmoded use of 'man.' Two things are achieved by using this combination. First, using 'human being' and other species-indicating expressions makes it clear that Nietzsche is concerned ecumenically with humans as a species, not merely with males. Secondly, expanding beyond the use of 'man' puts humans in an ecological context; for Zarathustra to claim that 'the overman shall be the meaning of the earth' is to argue for a new relationship between humans and nature, between humans and the earth. Overman is preferred to superhuman for two basic reasons; first, it preserves the word play Nietzsche intends with his constant references to going under and going over, and secondly, the comic book associations called to mind by 'superman' and super-heroes generally tend to reflect negatively, and frivolously, on the term superhuman. Thus Spoke Zarathustra What is the ape to a human? A laughing stock or a painful embarrassment. And that is precisely what the human shall be to the overman: a laughing stock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to human, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now a human is still more ape than any ape. But whoever is wisest among you is also just a conflict and a cross between plant and ghost. But do I implore you to become ghosts or plants? Theovermanisthemeaningoftheearth.Letyourwillsay:theoverman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth and do not believe those who speak to you of extraterrestrial hopes! They are mixers of poisons whether they know it or not. They are despisers of life, dying off and self-poisoned, of whom the earth is weary: so let them fade away! Once the sacrilege against God was the greatest sacrilege, but God died, and then all these desecrators died. Now to desecrate the earth is the most terrible thing, and to esteem the bowels of the unfathomable higher than the meaning of the earth!


Once the soul gazed contemptuously at the body, and then such contempt was the highest thing: it wanted the body gaunt, ghastly, starved. Thus it intended to escape the body and the earth. Oh this soul was gaunt, ghastly and starved, and cruelty was the lust of this soul! But you, too, my brothers, tell me: what does your body proclaim about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and filth and a pitiful contentment? Truly, mankind is a polluted stream. One has to be a sea to take in a polluted stream without becoming unclean. Behold, I teach you the overman: he is this sea, in him your great contempt can go under. What is the greatest thing that you can experience? It is the hour of your great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness turns to nausea and likewise your reason and your virtue. The hour in which you say: 'What matters my happiness? It is poverty and filth, and a pitiful contentment. But my happiness ought to justify existence itself!' NowZarathustra looked at the people and he was amazed. Then he spoke thus: 'Mankind is a rope fastened between animal and overman - a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking back, a dangerous shuddering and standing still. What is great about human beings is that they are a bridge and not a purpose: what is lovable about human beings is that they are a crossing over and a going under . I love those who do not know how to live unless by going under, for they are the ones who cross over. I love the great despisers, because they are the great venerators and arrows of longing for the other shore.


I love those who do not first seek behind the stars for a reason to go under and be a sacrifice, who instead sacrifice themselves for the earth, so that the earth may one day become the overman's. I love the one who lives in order to know, and who wants to know so that one day the overman may live. And so he wants his going under. I love the one who works and invents in order to build a house for the overman and to prepare earth, animals and plants for him: for thus he wants his going under. Ilove the one who loves his virtue: for virtue is the will to going under and an arrow of longing. Ilove the one who does not hold back a single drop of spirit for himself, but wants instead to be entirely the spirit of his virtue: thus he strides as spirit over the bridge. I love the one who makes of his virtue his desire and his doom: thus for the sake of his virtue he wants to live on and to live no more. Ilove the one who does not want to have too many virtues. One virtue is more virtue than two, because it is more of a hook on which his doom may hang. I love the one whose soul squanders itself, who wants no thanks and gives none back: for he always gives and does not want to preserve himself. Ilovethe one who is ashamed when the dice fall to his fortune and who then asks: am I a cheater? - For he wants to perish. Ilove the one who casts golden words before his deeds and always does even more than he promises: for he wants his going under. I love the one who justifies people of the future and redeems those of the past: for he wants to perish of those in the present. I love the one who chastises his god, because he loves his god: for he must perish of the wrath of his god. I love the one whose soul is deep even when wounded, and who can perish of a small experience: thus he goes gladly over the bridge. Ilove the one whose soul is overfull, so that he forgets himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his going under.


SeeLuke : . This is the first of approximately directallusionstotheBible,inwhichNietzsche typically applies Christ's words to Zarathustra's task, or inverts Christ's words in order to achieve a life- and earth-affirming effect. Whenever possible, these passages will be translated using the phrasing of the Bible. For drafts and alternative versions of the various chapters, biblical references, and other references see vol. of the Kritische Studienausgabe , which provides commentary to vols. - and treats TSZ on pp. - .


I love the one who is free of spirit and heart: thus his head is only the entrails of his heart, but his heart drives him to his going under. I love all those who are like heavy drops falling individually from the dark cloud that hangs over humanity: they herald the coming of the lightning, and as heralds they perish. Behold, I am a herald of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightning is called overman. -' When Zarathustra had spoken these words he looked again at the people and fell silent. 'There they stand,' he said to his heart, 'they laugh, they do not understand me, I am not the mouth for these ears. Must one first smash their ears so that they learn to hear with their eyes? Must one rattle like kettle drums and penitence preachers? Or do they believe only a stutterer? They have something of which they are proud. And what do they call that which makes them proud? Education they call it, it distinguishes them from goatherds. For that reason they hate to hear the word 'contempt' applied to them. So I shall address their pride instead. Thus I shall speak to them of the most contemptible person: but he is the last human being .' And thus spoke Zarathustra to the people: 'It is time that mankind set themselves a goal. It is time that mankind plant the seed of their highest hope. Their soil is still rich enough for this. But one day this soil will be poor and tame, and no tall tree will be able to grow from it anymore. Beware! The time approaches when human beings no longer launch the arrow of their longing beyond the human, and the string of their bow will have forgotten how to whir! I say to you: one must still have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star. I say to you: you still have chaos in you. Beware! The time approaches when human beings will no longer give birth to a dancing star. Beware! The time of the most contemptible human is coming, the one who can no longer have contempt for himself. Behold! I show you the last human being .


'What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?' thus asks the last human being, blinking. Then the earth has become small, and on it hops the last human being, who makes everything small. His kind is ineradicable, like the flea beetle; the last human being lives longest. 'We invented happiness' - say the last human beings, blinking. They abandoned the regions where it was hard to live: for one needs warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs up against him: for one needs warmth. Becoming ill and being mistrustful are considered sinful by them: one proceeds with caution. A fool who still stumbles over stones or humans! A bit of poison once in a while; that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end, for a pleasant death. One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one sees to it that the entertainment is not a strain. One no longer becomes poor and rich: both are too burdensome. Who wants to rule anymore? Who wants to obey anymore? Both are too burdensome. Noshepherd and one herd! Each wants the same, each is the same, and whoever feels differently goes voluntarily into the insane asylum. 'Formerly the whole world was insane' - the finest ones say, blinking. One is clever and knows everything that has happened, and so there is no end to their mockery. People still quarrel but they reconcile quickly otherwise it is bad for the stomach. One has one's little pleasure for the day and one's little pleasure for the night: but one honors health. 'We invented happiness' say the last human beings, and they blink.' And here ended the first speech of Zarathustra, which is also called 'The Prologue,' for at this point he was interrupted by the yelling and merrimentofthecrowd.'Giveusthislasthumanbeing,ohZarathustra'thus they cried - 'make us into these last human beings! Then we will make you a gift of the overman!' And all the people jubilated and clicked their tongues. But Zarathustra grew sad and said to his heart: 'They do not understand me. I am not the mouth for these ears.


Too long apparently I lived in the mountains, too much I listened to brooks and trees: now I speak to them as to goatherds.


Mysoul is calm and bright as the morning mountains. But they believe I am cold, that I jeer, that I deal in terrible jests. And now they look at me and laugh, and in laughing they hate me too. There is ice in their laughter.' Then, however, something happened that struck every mouth silent and forced all eyes to stare. For in the meantime the tightrope walker had begun his work; he had emerged from a little door and was walking across the rope stretched between two towers, such that it hung suspended over the market place and the people. Just as he was at the midpoint of his way, the little door opened once again and a colorful fellow resembling a jester leaped forth and hurried after the first man with quick steps. 'Forward, sloth, smuggler, pale face! Or I'll tickle you with my heel! What business have you here between the towers? You belong in the tower, you should be locked away in the tower, for you block the way for one who is better than you!' And with each word he came closer and closer to him. But when he was only one step behind him, the terrifying thing occurred that struck every mouth silent and forced all eyes to stare: - he let out a yell like a devil and leaped over the man who was in his way. This man, seeing his rival triumph in this manner, lost his head and the rope. He threw away his pole and plunged into the depths even faster than his pole, like a whirlwind of arms and legs. The market place and the people resembled the sea when a storm charges in: everyone fled apart and into one another, and especially in the spot where the body had to impact. But Zarathustra stood still and the body landed right beside him, badly beaten and broken, but not yet dead. After a while the shattered man regained consciousness and saw Zarathustra kneeling beside him. 'What are you doing here?' he said finally. 'I've known for a long time that the devil would trip me up. Now he is going to drag me off to hell: are you going to stop him?' 'By my honor, friend!' answered Zarathustra. 'All that you are talking about does not exist. There is no devil and no hell. Your soul will be dead even sooner than your body - fear no more!'


The man looked up mistrustfully. 'If you speak the truth,' he said, 'then I lose nothing when I lose my life. I am not much more than an animal that has been taught to dance by blows and little treats.'


'Not at all,' said Zarathustra. 'You made your vocation out of danger, and there is nothing contemptible about that. Now you perish of your vocation, and for that I will bury you with my own hands.' When Zarathustra said this the dying man answered no more, but he moved his hand as if seeking Zarathustra's hand in gratitude. - Meanwhileeveningcameandthemarketplacehidindarkness.Thepeople scattered, for even curiosity and terror grow weary. But Zarathustra sat beside the dead man on the ground and was lost in thought, such that he lost track of time. Night came at last and a cold wind blew over the lonely one. Then Zarathustra stood up and said to his heart: 'Indeed, a nice catch of fish Zarathustra has today! No human being did he catch, but a corpse instead. Uncanny is human existence and still without meaning: a jester can spell its doom. I want to teach humans the meaning of their being, which is the overman, the lightning from the dark cloud 'human being.' But I am still far away from them, and I do not make sense to their senses. For mankind I am still a midpoint between a fool and a corpse. The night is dark, the ways of Zarathustra are dark. Come, my cold and stiff companion! I shall carry you where I will bury you with my own hands.' When Zarathustra had said this to his heart, he hoisted the corpse onto his back and started on his way. And he had not yet gone a hundred paces when someone sneaked up on him and whispered in his ear - and behold! The one who spoke was the jester from the tower. 'Go away from this town, oh Zarathustra,' he said. 'Too many here hate you. The good and the just hate you and they call you their enemy and despiser; the believers of the true faith hate you and they call you the danger of the multitude. It was your good fortune that they laughed at you: and really, you spoke like a jester. It was your good fortune that you took up with the dead dog; when you lowered yourself like that, you rescued yourself for today. But go away from this town - or tomorrow I shall leap over you, a living man


over a dead one.' And when he had said this, the man disappeared, but Zarathustra continued his walk through dark lanes. At the town gate he met the gravediggers. They shone their torches in his face, recognized Zarathustra and sorely ridiculed him. 'Zarathustra is lugging away the dead dog: how nice that he's become a gravedigger! For our hands are too pure for this roast. Would Zarathustra steal this morsel from the devil? So be it then! And good luck with your meal! If only the devil were not a better thief than Zarathustra! - he'll steal them both, he'll devour them both!' And they laughed and huddled together. Zarathustra did not say a word and went on his way. By the time he had walked for two hours past woods and swamps, he had heard too much of the hungry howling of wolves and he grew hungry himself. And so he stopped at a lonely house in which a light was burning. 'Hunger falls upon me like a robber,' said Zarathustra. 'In woods and swamps my hunger falls upon me and in the deep night. Myhunger has odd moods. Often it comes to me only after a meal, and today it did not come the whole day: just where was it?' And so Zarathustra pounded on the door to the house. An old man appeared, bearing a light, and he asked: 'Who comes to me and to my bad sleep?' 'A living man and a dead one,' replied Zarathustra. 'Give me food and drink, I forgot it during the day. Whoever feeds the hungry quickens his own soul - thus speaks wisdom.' The old man went away but returned promptly and offered Zarathustra bread and wine. 'This is a bad region for those who hunger,' he said. 'That is why I live here. Beast and human being come to me, the hermit. But bid your companion eat and drink, he is wearier than you.' Zarathustra replied: 'My companion is dead, I would have a hard time persuading him.' 'That does not concern me,' snapped the old man. 'Whoever knocks at my house must also take what I offer him. Eat and take care!' -


Thereupon Zarathustra walked again for two hours, trusting the path and the light of the stars, for he was a practiced night-walker and loved to look in the face of all sleepers. But as dawn greyed Zarathustra found himself in a deep wood and no more path was visible to him. Then he laid the dead man into a hollow tree - for he wanted to protect him from the wolves - and he laid himself down head first at the tree, upon the earth Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the moss. And soon he fell asleep, weary in body but with a calm soul. Long Zarathustra slept, and not only the dawn passed over his face but the morning as well. At last, however, he opened his eyes: amazed Zarathustra looked into the woods and the silence, amazed he looked into himself. Then he stood up quickly, like a seafarer who all at once sees land, and he rejoiced, for he saw a new truth. And thus he spoke to his heart: 'It dawned on me: I need companions, and living ones - not dead companions and corpses that I carry with me wherever I want. Instead I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves - wherever I want. It dawned on me: let Zarathustra speak not to the people, but instead to companions! Zarathustra should not become the shepherd and dog of a herd! To lure many away from the herd - for that I came. The people and herd shall be angry with me: Zarathustra wants to be called a robber by shepherds. Shepherds I say, but they call themselves the good and the just. Shepherds I say: but they call themselves the faithful of the true faith. Look at the good and the just! Whom do they hate most? The one who breaks their tablets of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker - but he is the creative one. Look at the faithful of all faiths! Whom do they hate most? The one who breaks their tablets of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker - but he is the creative one. Companions the creative one seeks and not corpses, nor herds and believers. Fellow creators the creative one seeks, who will write new values on new tablets.


Companions the creative one seeks, and fellow harvesters; for to him everything stands ready for harvest. But he lacks the hundred scythes, and so he plucks out spikes and is angry. Companions the creative one seeks, and those who know how to whet their scythes. They shall be called annihilators and despisers of good and evil. But they are the harvesters and the celebrators.


And if some day my wisdom abandons me - oh it loves to fly away! may my pride then fly away with my folly!' - Thus began Zarathustra's going under.


Threemetamorphosesofthe spirit I name for you: how the spirit becomes a camel, and the camel a lion, and finally the lion a child. To the spirit there is much that is heavy; to the strong, carrying spirit imbued with reverence. Its strength demands what is heavy and heaviest. What is heavy? thus asks the carrying spirit. It kneels down like a camel and wants to be well loaded. What is heaviest, you heroes? thus asks the carrying spirit, so that I might take it upon myself and rejoice in my strength. Is it not this: lowering oneself in order to hurt one's pride? Letting one's foolishness glow in order to mock one's wisdom? Oris it this: abandoning our cause when it celebrates victory? Climbing high mountains in order to tempt the tempter? Or is it this: feeding on the acorns and grass of knowledge and for the sake of truth suffering hunger in one's soul? Or is it this: being ill and sending the comforters home and making friends with the deaf who never hear what you want? Or is it this: wading into dirty water when it is the water of truth, and not shrinking away from cold frogs and hot toads? Or is it this: loving those who despise us, and extending a hand to the ghost when it wants to frighten us? All of these heaviest things the carrying spirit takes upon itself, like a loaded camel that hurries into the desert, thus it hurries into its desert. But in the loneliest desert the second metamorphosis occurs. Here the spirit becomes lion, it wants to hunt down its freedom and be master in its own desert. Here it seeks its last master, and wants to fight him and its last god. For victory it wants to battle the great dragon. Thus spoke Zarathustra. And then he sojourned in the town which is called The Motley Cow.


Awise man was praised to Zarathustra who could speak well of sleep and of virtue. For this he was much honored and rewarded, and all the youths Thus Spoke Zarathustra sat at his feet. Zarathustra went to him and sat at his feet with all the youths. And thus spoke the wise man: 'Have honor and bashfulness for sleep! That is the first thing! And avoid all who sleep badly and remain awake nights! Even the thief is bashful toward sleep; he constantly steals through the night, silently. But the watchman of the night is shameless, and shamelessly he carries his horn. Sleeping is no mean art, it is necessary to remain awake the entire day for it. Ten times a day you must overcome yourself, that makes for a good weariness and is poppy for the soul. Ten times you must reconcile yourself again with yourself, for overcoming causes bitterness and the unreconciled sleep badly. Ten truths you must find by day, or else you will still be seeking truth by night and your soul will have remained hungry. Ten times you must laugh by day and be cheerful, or else your stomach will bother you at night, this father of gloom. Few know it but one must have all the virtues in order to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery? Shall I covet my neighbor's maid? All that would be incompatible with good sleep. And even when one has all the virtues, one must understand one more thing: how to send the virtues to sleep at the right time. So that they do not quarrel with each other, the good little women! And quarrel over you, wretch! At peace with God and neighbor, thus good sleep demands. And at peace too with the neighbor's devil! Otherwise he will be at your house at night. Honor the authorities and practice obedience, even toward the crooked authorities! Thus good sleep demands. What can I do about it that the powers like to walk on crooked legs? He shall always be the best shepherd in my view who leads his sheep to the greenest pasture; this is compatible with good sleep. I do not want many honors, nor great treasures - that inflames the spleen. But sleep is bad without a good name and a little treasure. A little company is more welcome to me than evil company, but they must go and come at the right time, for this is compatible with good sleep.


Once Zarathustra too cast his delusion beyond humans, like all hinterworldly. At that time the world seemed to me the work of a suffering and tortured god. Then the world seemed a dream to me and the fiction of a god; colorful smoke before the eyes of a divine dissatisfied being. Good and evil and joy and suffering and I and you - colorful smoke it seemed to me before creative eyes. The creator wanted to look away from himself and so he created the world. It is drunken joy to the suffering one to look away from one's suffering andtoloseoneself. Drunken joy and losing-oneself the world once seemed to me. This world, the eternally imperfect, the mirror image and imperfect image of an eternal contradiction-adrunken joy to its imperfect creator: thus the world once seemed to me. So I too once cast my delusion beyond humans, like all hinterworldly. Beyond humans in truth? Oh my brothers, this god that I created was of human make and madness, like all gods! Human he was, and only a poor flake of human and ego. From my own ash and ember it came to me, this ghost, and truly! It did not come to me from beyond! What happened, my brothers? I overcame myself, my suffering self, I carried my own ashes to the mountain, I invented a brighter flame for myself and behold! The ghost shrank from me! Nowitwouldbesufferingandtorturefortheconvalescedonetobelieve in such ghosts. Now it would be suffering and humiliation. Thus I speak to the hinterworldly. It was suffering and incapacity that created all hinterworlds, and that brief madness of happiness that only the most suffering person experiences. 'Von den Hinterweltlern,' literally: on those who are of, or believe in, a world beyond, a hidden or a back-world, a secret world, bears similar connotations to English hinterland, i.e. regions that are remote, far away from the cities. Hintermann is a man behind the scenes, a secret advisor; Hintergedanken are secret thoughts or ulterior motives. Hintern as a noun is the same as English 'behind,' with behind meaning a person's backside.


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. Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the body it probed with the fingers of a befooled spirit on the walls of the ultimate. Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the earth then it heard the belly of being speaking to it. And then it wanted to break head first through the ultimate walls, and not only with its head, beyond to 'the other world.' But 'the other world' is well hidden from humans, that dehumaned, inhuman world that is a heavenly nothing. And the belly of being does not speak at all to humans, unless as a human. Indeed, all being is hard to prove and hard to coax to speech. Tell me, my brothers, is not the strangest of all things still proven best? Yes, this ego and the ego's contradiction and confusion still speak most honestly about its being; this creating, willing, valuing ego which is the measure and value of things. Andthis most honest being, this ego - it speaks of love and it still wants the body, even when it poetizes and fantasizes and flutters with broken wings. It learns to speak ever more honestly, this ego. And the more it learns, the more it finds words and honors for the body and the earth. My ego taught me a new pride, I teach it to mankind: no longer bury your head in the sand of heavenly things, but bear it freely instead, an earthly head that creates a meaning for the earth! I teach mankind a new will: to want the path that human beings have traveled blindly, to pronounce it good and no longer sneak to the side of it like the sick and the dying-out. It was the sick and the dying-out who despised the body and the earth and invented the heavenly and its redeeming drops of blood. But even these sweet and shadowy poisons they took from the body and the earth! They wanted to escape their misery and the stars were too distant for them. So they sighed 'Oh if only there were heavenly paths on which to sneak into another being and happiness!' - Then they invented their schemes and bloody little drinks!


Now they fancied themselves detached from this earth, these ingrates. But what did they have to thank for the fits and bliss of their detachment? Their body and this earth. Zarathustra is gentle to the sick. Indeed, he is not angered by their ways of comfort and ingratitude. May they become convalescents and overcomers and create for themselves a higher body! Nor is he angered by the convalescent when he tenderly gazes upon his delusion and sneaks around the grave of his God at midnight. But to me even his tears remain sickness and sick body. Therewerealwaysmanysicklypeopleamongthosewhopoetizeandare addicted to God; with rage they hate the knowing ones and that youngest of virtues which is called honesty. Backwardtheylookalwaystowarddarkertimes,forthen,truly,delusion and faith were another matter. Raving of reason was next to godliness, and doubting was sin. All too well I know these next-to-godliness types: they want people to believe in them, and that doubting is sin. All too well I know also what they themselves believe in most. Indeed, not in hinterworlds and redeeming blood drops, but instead they too believe most in the body, and their own body is to them their thing in itself. But to them it is a sickly thing, and gladly would they jump out of their skin. Hence they listen to the preachers of death and they preach of hinterworlds themselves. Hear my brothers, hear the voice of the healthy body: a more honest and purer voice is this. More honestly and more purely speaks the healthy body, the perfect and perpendicular body, and it speaks of the meaning of the earth. Thus spoke Zarathustra.


To the despisers of the body I want to say my words. I do not think they should relearn and teach differently, instead they should bid their own bodies farewell - and thus fall silent. 'Body am I and soul' - so speaks a child. And why should one not speak like children?


, First Part = But the awakened, the knowing one says: body am I through and. , First Part = through, and nothing besides; and soul is just a word for something on. the body., First Part = The body is a great reason, a multiplicity with one sense, a war and a. , First Part = peace, one herd and one shepherd. Your small reason, what you call 'spirit' is also a tool of your body, my. , First Part = 'I' you say and are proud of this word. But what is greater is that in. not say I, but, First Part = . , First Part = which you do not want to believe - your body and its great reason. It does does I. Whatthe sense feels, what the spirit knows, in itself that will never have. , First Part = an end. But sense and spirit would like to persuade you that they are the. , First Part = end of all things: so vain are they.. , First Part = Work- and plaything are sense and spirit, behind them still lies the self.. , First Part = supposed to think. The self says to the ego: 'Feel pleasure here!' Then it is pleased and. , First Part = it. is supposed to think!, First Part = reflects on how it might feel pleased more often - and for that purpose. , First Part = To the despisers of the body I want to say a word. That they disrespect. destroys. It rules and is also the ruler of the ego., First Part = is based on their respect. What is it that created respect and disrespect. , First Part = Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a powerful com- mander, an unknown wise man - he is called self. He lives in your body,. he is your body., First Part = There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. And. wisdom?, First Part = who knows then to what end your body requires precisely your best. , First Part = Your self laughs at your ego and its proud leaps. 'What are these. leaps and flights of thought to me?' it says to itself. 'A detour to my, First Part = . , First Part = purpose. I am the leading strings of the ego and the prompter of its. concepts.', First Part =


reflects on how it might suffer no more - and just for that purpose it is. The self says to the ego: 'Feel pain here!' And then it suffers and, First Part = . , First Part = and value and will?


The creative self created respect and disrespect for itself, it created pleasure and pain for itself. The creative body created spirit for itself as the hand of its will. Even in your folly and your contempt, you despisers of the body, you serve your self. I say to you: your self itself wants to die and turns away from life. No longer is it capable of that which it wants most: to create beyond itself. This it wants most of all, this is its entire fervor. But now it is too late for that, and so your self wants to go under, you despisers of the body. Your self wants to go under, and for this reason you became despisers of the body! For you no longer are capable of creating beyond yourselves. And that is why you are angry now at life and earth. There is an unknown envy in the looking askance of your contempt. I will not go your way, you despisers of the body! You are not my bridges to the overman! - Thus spoke Zarathustra.


Mybrother, if you have one virtue, and it is your virtue, then you have it in common with no one. To be sure, you want to call her by name and caress her; you want to tug at her ear and have fun with her. And behold! Now you have her name in common with the people and have become the people and the herd with your virtue! You would do better to say: 'Unspeakable and nameless is that which causes my soul agony and sweetness and is even the hunger of my entrails.' Let your virtue be too high for the familiarity of names, and if you must speak of it, then do not be ashamed to stammer about it. Then speak and stammer: 'This is my good, I love this, thus I like it entirely, thus alone do I want the good. I do not want it as a divine law, I do not want is as a human statute and requirement. It shall be no signpost for me to overearths and paradises.


Youdowanttokill,youjudgesandsacrificers,untiltheanimalhasnodded? Behold, the pale criminal has nodded: from his eyes speaks the great contempt. 'Myegois something that shall be overcome: my ego is to me the great contempt for mankind,' so speak these eyes. That he condemned himself was his highest moment: do not allow the sublime one to return to his baseness! There is no redemption for one who suffers so from himself, unless it were the quick death. Your killing, you judges, should be pity and not revenge. And insofar as you kill, see to it that you yourselves justify life! It is not enough that you reconcile yourself with the one you kill. Let your sadness be love for the overman - thus you justify that you still live! 'Enemy' you should say, but not 'villain'; 'sick man' you should say, but not 'scoundrel'; 'fool' you should say, but not 'sinner.' And you, red judge, if you were to speak aloud all the things you have already done in your thoughts, then everyone would cry: 'Away with this filth and poisonous worm!' But thought is one thing, and deed another, and the image of a deed yet another. The wheel of motive does not roll between them. An image made this pale human pale. He was equal to his deed when he committed it, but he could not bear its image once he had done it. From then on he always saw himself as the doer of one deed. I call this madness: the exception reversed itself to the essence. A streak in the dirt stops a hen cold; the stroke he executed stopped his poor reason cold - madness after the deed I call this. Listen, you judges! There is still another madness, and it is before the deed. Oh, you did not crawl deeply enough into this soul! Thus speaks the red judge: 'Why did this criminal kill? He wanted to rob.' But I say to you: his soul wanted blood, not robbery. He thirsted for the bliss of the knife! But his poor reason did not comprehend this madness and it persuaded him.'Whatdoesbloodmatter?'itsaid.'Don'tyouatleastwanttocommit robbery in the process? Take revenge?'


Of all that is written I love only that which one writes with his blood. Write with blood, and you will experience that blood is spirit. It is not easily possible to understand the blood of another: I hate the reading idlers.