More discourses follow, which continue to develop the themes of the death of God and the rise of the Übermensch, and also introduce the concept of the will to power. There are hints, however, that Zarathustra is holding something back. A series of dreams and visions prompt him to reveal this secret teaching, but he cannot bring himself to do so. He withdraws from his disciples once more, in order to perfect himself.
Third part
While journeying home, Zarathustra is waylaid by the spirit of gravity, a dwarf-like creature which clings to his back and whispers taunts into his ear. Zarathustra at first becomes despondent, but then takes courage; he challenges the spirit to hear the “abysmal thought” which he has so far refrained from speaking. This is the doctrine of eternal recurrence. Time, says Zarathustra, is infinite, stretching both forward and backward into eternity. This means that everything that happens now must have happened before, and that every moment must continue to repeat itself eternally.
As he speaks, Zarathustra hears a dog howl in terror, and then he sees a new vision – a shepherd choking on a black serpent which has crept into his throat. At Zarathustra’s urging, the shepherd bites the serpent’s head off and spits it out. In that moment, the shepherd is transformed into a laughing, radiant being, something greater than human.
Zarathustra continues his journey, delivering more discourses inspired by his observations. Arriving at his mountain cave, he remains there for some time, reflecting on his mission. He is disgusted at humanity’s pettiness, and despairs at the thought of the eternal recurrence of such an insignificant race. Eventually, however, he discovers his own longing for eternity, and sings a song in celebration of eternal return.
Fourth part
Zarathustra begins to grow old as he remains secluded in his cave. One day, he is visited by a soothsayer, who says that he has come to tempt Zarathustra to his final sin – compassion (mitleiden, which can also be translated as “pity”). A loud cry of distress is heard, and the soothsayer tells Zarathustra that “the higher man” is calling to him. Zarathustra is alarmed, and rushes to the aid of the higher man.
Searching through his domain for the person who uttered the cry for help, Zarathustra encounters a series of characters representative of various aspects of humanity. He engages each of them in conversation, and ends by inviting each one to await his return in his cave. After a day’s search, however, he is unable to find the higher man. Returning home, he hears the cry of distress once more, now coming from inside his own cave. He realises that all the people he has spoken to that day are collectively the higher man. Welcoming them to his home, he nevertheless tells them that they are not the men he has been waiting for; they are only the precursors of the Übermensch.
Zarathustra hosts a supper for his guests, which is enlivened by songs and arguments, and ends in the facetious worship of a donkey. The higher men thank Zarathustra for relieving them of their distress and teaching them to be content with life.
The following morning, outside his cave, Zarathustra encounters a lion and a flock of doves, which he interprets as a sign that those whom he calls his children are near. As the higher men emerge from the cave, the lion roars at them, causing them to cry out and flee. Their cry reminds Zarathustra of the soothsayer’s prediction that he would be tempted into feeling compassion for the higher man. He declares that this is over, and that from this time forward he will think of nothing but his work.
Themes
Scholars have argued that “the worst possible way to understand Zarathustra is as a teacher of doctrines”. Nonetheless Thus Spoke Zarathustra “has contributed most to the public perception of Nietzsche as philosopher – namely, as the teacher of the ‘doctrines’ of the will to power, the overman and the eternal return”.
Nietzsche’s thinking was significantly influenced by the thinking of Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer emphasised will, and particularly will to live. Nietzsche emphasised Wille zur Macht, or will to power.
Nietzsche was not a systematic philosopher and left much of what he wrote open to interpretation. Receptive fascists are said to have misinterpreted the will to power, having overlooked Nietzsche’s distinction between Kraft ‘force, strength’ and Macht ‘power, might’.
Scholars have often had recourse to Nietzsche’s notebooks, where will to power is described in ways such as “willing-to-become-stronger [Stärker-werden-wollen], willing growth”.
Übermensch
It is allegedly “well-known that as a term, Nietzsche’s Übermensch derives from Lucian of Samosata’s hyperanthropos”. This hyperanthropos, or “overman,” appears in Lucian’s Menippean satire Κατάπλους ἢ Τύραννος, usually translated Downward Journey or The Tyrant. This hyperanthropos is “imagined to be superior to others of ‘lesser’ station in this-worldly life and the same tyrant after his (comically unwilling) transport into the underworld”. Nietzsche celebrated Goethe as an actualisation of the Übermensch.
Nietzsche includes some brief writings on eternal recurrence in his earlier book The Gay Science. Zarathustra also appears in that book. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the eternal recurrence is, according to Nietzsche, the “fundamental idea of the work”.
Interpretations of the eternal recurrence have mostly revolved around cosmological and attitudinal and normative principles.
As a cosmological principle, it has been supposed to mean that time is circular, that all things recur eternally. A weak attempt at proof has been noted in Nietzsche’s notebooks, and it is not clear to what extent, if at all, Nietzsche believed in the truth of it. Critics have mostly dealt with the cosmological principle as a puzzle of why Nietzsche might have touted the idea.
As an attitudinal principle it has often been dealt with as a thought experiment, to see how one would react, or as a sort of ultimate expression of life-affirmation, as if one should desire eternal recurrence.
As a normative principle, it has been thought of as a measure or standard, akin to a “moral rule”.
Criticism of religion
Nietzsche studied extensively and was very familiar with Schopenhauer and Christianity and Buddhism, each of which he considered nihilistic and “enemies to a healthy culture”. Thus Spoke Zarathustra can be understood as a “polemic” against these influences.
Though Nietzsche “probably learned Sanskrit while at Leipzig from 1865 to 1868”, and “was probably one of the best read and most solidly grounded in Buddhism for his time among Europeans”, Nietzsche was writing when Eastern thought was only beginning to be acknowledged in the West, and Eastern thought was easily misconstrued. Nietzsche’s interpretations of Buddhism were coloured by his study of Schopenhauer, and it is “clear that Nietzsche, as well as Schopenhauer, entertained inaccurate views of Buddhism”.
An egregious example has been the idea of śūnyatā as “nothingness” rather than “emptiness”. “Perhaps the most serious misreading we find in Nietzsche’s account of Buddhism was his inability to recognize that the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness was an initiatory stage leading to a reawakening”. Nietzsche dismissed Schopenhauer and Christianity and Buddhism as pessimistic and nihilistic, but, according to Benjamin A. Elman, “when understood on its own terms, Buddhism cannot be dismissed as pessimistic or nihilistic”. Moreover, answers which Nietzsche assembled to the questions he was asking, not only generally but also in Zarathustra, put him “very close to some basic doctrines found in Buddhism”. An example is when Zarathustra says that “the soul is only a word for something about the body”.
Nihilism
One of the most vexed points in discussions of Nietzsche has been whether or not he was a nihilist. Though arguments have been made for either side, what is clear is that Nietzsche was at least interested in nihilism.
As far as nihilism touched other people, at least, metaphysical understandings of the world were progressively undermined until people could contend that “God is dead”. Without God, humanity was greatly devalued. Without metaphysical or supernatural lenses, humans could be seen as animals with primitive drives which were or could be sublimated. According to Hollingdale, this led to Nietzsche’s ideas about the will to power. Likewise, “Sublimated will to power was now the Ariadne’s thread tracing the way out of the labyrinth of nihilism”.
Style
The nature of the text is musical and operatic. While working on it Nietzsche wrote “of his aim ‘to become Wagner’s heir'”. Nietzsche thought of it as akin to a symphony or opera. “No lesser a symphonist than Gustav Mahler corroborates: ‘His Zarathustra was born completely from the spirit of music, and is even “symphonically constructed”‘”. Nietzsche
later draws special attention to “the tempo of Zarathustra’s speeches” and their “delicate slowness” – “from an infinite fullness of light and depth of happiness drop falls after drop, word after word” – as well as the necessity of “hearing properly the tone that issues from his mouth, this halcyon tone”.
The length of paragraphs and the punctuation and the repetitions all enhance the musicality.
The title is Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Much of the book is what Zarathustra said. What Zarathustra says
is throughout so highly parabolic, metaphorical, and aphoristic. Rather than state various claims about virtues and the present age and religion and aspirations, Zarathustra speaks about stars, animals, trees, tarantulas, dreams, and so forth. Explanations and claims are almost always analogical and figurative.
Nietzsche would often appropriate masks and models to develop himself and his thoughts and ideas, and to find voices and names through which to communicate. While writing Zarathustra, Nietzsche was particularly influenced by “the language of Luther and the poetic form of the Bible”. But Zarathustra also frequently alludes to or appropriates from Hölderlin’s Hyperion and Goethe’s Faust and Emerson’s Essays, among other things. It
