Thus Spoke Zarathustra

One of the greats. Read this book and you'll feel as if you've achieved something, even become something more than what you were when you first began reading it. Epic, great, wonderful, all the superlatives do nothing for Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Admittedly, it starts off slow and dense. But the more you dig into this work. The more time and effort you put in. You will realize going further and further that this is a work, a force rather, to be experienced. Nietzsche is not right on all counts, though. I loved this book and think it awesome in every great sense of the word. Too pessimistic and gloomy at some turns and far too hopeful (even naive) about people at others lends the book a contradictory air here and there that still serves show more to sharpen the overall message about Zarathustra and the apparent coming of the Overman (I still kind of like Ubermensch...). Just do yourself a massive favor and read this book. It's one of the few works I can say is artistically and maybe even literally life changing. show less

Friedrich Unchained

He was a very kind man. He loved people. He worked as an executioner.
Three times a week he chopped off heads of kings and madmen, nobles and common folk.
Every swing of his axe lit a warm smile on his face, brought a spark of joy into his heart.
He was happy not for himself, not for a perfectly executed job.
His joy was for the sake of those he forever cured from suffering.
The axe in his hands was a magic wand granting a gift of heaven.
It only took one proper swing...

He lifted heavy load off the shoulders of tormented people,
He released the tired souls breaking up the ugly cells that contained them.
Finding freedom each soul floated up, uncertain at first,
And then with an increasing confidence soared towards that show more obvious goal hidden from view by the sun.

There came a day when he realized how deeply deluded he was!
Shedding bitter tears, forgetting the joyful flight of the soul of a monarch decapitated just now,
He was looking at the people in the crowd,
People burning in the slow fires of hell and not knowing an easy way out,
People too numerous to pass through the narrow door that he had a power to open for them.

With an incredible dedication and a patience of an angel
He went on to perform his duty stepping off his trusted scaffold.
And in front of everyone he would swing open the doors of heaven,
And from each pair of shoulders he would lift a heavy burden,
And every inch of mournfully black soil he would paint a festive color of red. show less

I wasn't sure what I was expecting but it wasn't that. I couldn't stop thinking that he was writing this while picking up silk underwear for Cosima Wagner on Richard Wagner's orders. People simp for this dude? So much stolen from Schopenhauer which he in turn has stolen from Mainlander. Also Calvinism? I feel like that's the real problem here. I feel terrible for him, like. To be that miserable and that filled with self loathing and not even have anything pretty to look at in return. It's kind of a weird sad bad Blake, a weird sad bad Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer hated this book so props to him for that. If I was 12 and read this I'd probably turn into a school shooter too.

"I am a railing beside the stream: he who can grasp me, let him grasp me! I am not, however, your crutch. Thus spoke Zarathustra." (pg. 67)

This is my first real encounter with Nietzsche (after a slight collection of his aphorisms a few years ago), and a strange but compelling one. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a peculiar mix of philosophy and narrative and poetry, and the reader tries to grasp it like wild horses. You don't know which hat to put on: Your rational one to deal with the philosophy? Your literary one to deal with the narrative? Or do you just open up and see what concepts rest with your poetic soul?

Regardless of which approach you take as you try to navigate this mercurial book, you soon find that Nietzsche's ideas are worth show more contending with. He's unfairly maligned nowadays; in part for his eccentric and animated writing, which stands in contrast to the more sober conventions of philosophy, and in part for his perceived baggage. His concepts of nihilism, the Ubermensch and the 'will to power' were all corrupted by the Nazis, a fact which is particularly unfortunate when you consider that Nietzsche personally opposed the sort of anti-Semitism and militarism that they used to leech onto his ideas.

Nevertheless, this is dangerous thought, and when reading it you can easily see where and how the Nazis appropriated and corrupted it. But, with an open and honest read, you can also just as easily see how superior and distinct Nietzsche's real ideas were. Not only in some telling specifics ("the state is the coldest of all cold monsters" (pg. 75)), but in the general warp and weft of the text. He acknowledges the danger in the philosophy as essentially the danger in man: "Now it is with men as with this tree. The more it wants to rise into the heights and the light, the more determinedly do its roots strive earthwards, downwards, into the darkness, into the depths – into evil" (pg. 69). His famous diagnosis of the death of God is expanded upon in this book, and his remedy is the eventual rise of an Ubermensch, a hyper-individualistic 'overman' or 'superman', who will break the ossified order of societal values and create his own. If this seems too romantic or bombastic to a cynical modern reader, it must be qualified that Nietzsche sees it as a torrid struggle of ego-death and rebirth ("man is a bridge and not a goal" (pg. 215)) rather than a glorious charge.

Regardless of whether you come to agree with them, Nietzsche's ideas here are spectacular and stimulating. Sometimes you don't necessarily want to wrangle these wild horses, but just watch them buck majestically. But even more than its ideas, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is provocative in its writing. The book is a forceful jeremiad, aping the tones of the Bible to produce a genuinely entertaining display of thought. In contrast to the sober conventional philosophy I mentioned above, Nietzsche is surprisingly readable. Lines such as "we have made weary fire itself. All our wells have dried up, even the sea has receded" (pg. 156) carry power on a poetic level, even if the reader's philosophical thoughts may stray.

It does get a bit overblown at times, and the ending didn't convince me of Nietzsche's goal. I lost the thread of argument, and Zarathustra's final revelatory change seemed abrupt. But by that point, it didn't matter; I was enjoying Nietzsche's singular blend of philosophised storytelling too much. It's a novel approach to getting one's ideas across, and it's a shame we don't seem to have a place for writing like this anymore.

Nietzsche's 'death of God' diagnosis of the modern world was on the nose, but in doing so he also diagnosed his own eclipse. "Everything speaks, everything is unheard. One may ring in one's wisdom with bells – the shopkeeper in the market-place will out-ring it with pennies... Nothing falls any longer into deep wells" (pp203-4). We're not approaching a Nietzschean overman anymore (if indeed we ever were). Instead, writers this bold have been driven to extinction. There are higher mountains buried under ocean than Everest or any other to be found on land. But when Nietzsche writes that Zarathustra is sitting upon "high masts of knowledge", "a little light, to be sure, but yet a great comfort to castaway sailors and the shipwrecked" (pg. 213), there may be some consolation to be drawn. The petty sea will swallow many, but perhaps some readers will continue to land on these shores. show less

Thus Spake Zarathustra differs from most of Nietzsche's other works in that it has as much in common with a novel as a philosophical work. This makes it more difficult to interpret than his more traditionally academic works, as he tries to convey his philosophy not only in words, but in narration of actions, moods, and tone, more so than elsewhere. Sometimes the message is too loud, or the writing too exuberant for it to possess the clarity found in his more restrained works. It would be more difficult to attempt a summary of what this book says than to describe what it variously is: bombastic, profound, lyrical, sentimental, ruthless, tender, and hearty in several senses of the word.
Though the book appears to be full of meaning, some show more of Nietzsche's thoughts come across less ambiguously than others. One of these being the exaltation of the strong and despising of the weak; this he justifies on a moral level, which is in itself worth discussing. How can someone be truly good, unless he has the power to do evil and refrains? How can someone be truly virtuous who is weak and lacks the strength for proper wickedness? This mirrors the other aspect of the question of morality: who can be evil who knows not what wickedness is? Can only the wise, who has an intellectual understanding of moral questions be truly virtuous, as they can knowingly choose between good and evil? This elevation of power and knowledge as necessary for virtue is at least partly why he places the superman, or ubermensch, as the goal of humanity – as they alone are capable of true virtue, a state which Nietzsche describes as being beyond good and evil.
There is also the recurring theme of the mountain, which he implies to be where the Ubermensch belongs, at least some of the time. This is surely metaphorical for, amongst other things, surpassing oneself and others, solitude, and elevation. This, I feel, is partly just him justifying post hoc what he feels instinctively; Nietzsche was very athletic in his youth, and undoubtedly an intellect, and he could be accused of praising the qualities that he feels that he himself possesses. Whether this was a conscious undertaking, or something driven from the subconscious, it would be difficult to say, but I think that it is mainly the latter. I don't think Nietzsche was dishonest or vain, I think he is was driven to write in support of what he thought was the truth. Even if the delivery of his message might be objectionable to some, which I cannot doubt, I think his thoughts deserve an open-minded scrutiny. To react emotionally to a question inhibits one from making a fair answer, yet this plays both ways for Nietzsche, much of what he writes is written in a way that makes it palatable and attractive by way of the lifefulness of it.
The final third of the book then goes onto what seems like a partly separate track, and I don't think it was quite obvious what Nietzsche meant by it all. He talks about the "Higher Man" a lot (which is not the same as the Ubermensch or superman), but this idea is then broken down into a multiplicity of things which do not seem higher at all, and it is doubtful at the end whether this can either be reassembled, or if it ever existed in the first place. Night, and then Day, also replace the mountain in importance in the final section. There is also the recurring theme of "God is dead", and while this seems to mean something in some places, it doesn't in others, yet the meaning does seem clear in Nietzsche's Joyful Wisdom. In addition to this there are numerous other Biblical allusions and quotation.
Something I found curious was a parallel between events and moods in the book and stages in Carl Jung's description of individuation, which would probably be worth closer examination. Nietzsche had psychological problems, and went mad, and that his writing has parallels with stages of psychological development is intriguing.
The questions and thoughts mentioned above are all to be found in the book, though more often than not they must be read from between the lines. Sometimes a sentence in itself will contain an hours worth of thought, but much of the philosophy in this book runs below the surface, and must be extracted by the thinking reader.
This book is not a good introduction to the philosophy of Nietzsche as it is more challenging than most of his other works. His Joyful Wisdom has many of the same themes as this and a somewhat similar tone; much of what he says here in a roundabout way he says there clearly. show less

I did not really enjoy this book. I am unsure whether I get the whole of his philosophy but the parts I did get mostly did not appeal to me. This is not because of religious reasons (I am not religious), I am just not convinced that mankind or indeed any single person would be served well by following this philosophy of radical self actualisation and assertiveness. I am glad I did not read this as a teen/young adult because I fear it might have made me a more unpleasant, less compassionate and ultimately unhappier person (or, to be frank, more of an asshole) than I am today.

I did enjoy some of the prose and some of the passages at least made me think, but I'm also glad it's over and I don't think I will be returning to Nietzsche any show more time soon. show less

How do you overcome life's challenges? Maybe by reading Friedrich Nietzsche or Schopenhauer, or even better, both. Thus, Nietzsche is a poet and philosopher who spoke Zarathustra. The chapter "Thousand and One Goals" presents Zarathustra, the book's protagonist and title character, as "the creator" (p. 58). His travels, speeches, and particularly his reflective monologues provide us with discourse on the nature of spirit, language, judgment, consciousness, and knowledge (gnosis). Some of Nietzsche's most important concepts are elaborated in this work, including "eternal recurrence" and the "death of god." Since Nietzsche disagrees with the conventional wisdom that morality originates from God above, the latter signifies a change in the show more foundation of morality. Nietzsche was a precursor, if not one of the founders, of existentialist philosophy because he substituted a morality grounded in the individual's existence for this viewpoint.

This work's literary quality is marked by its mythic poetical style, which also gives it a spiritual reading. Aphoristic elements are also present in Nietzsche's writing. It is a challenging book to read, but for those who want a more literary approach to philosophy, the issues it poses make the effort worthwhile. show less