Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None

When Friedrich Nietzsche published THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA in 1883, his readers did not know exactly what to make of it. It seemed to be a hybrid of philosophy and literature, both of which were presented in a further hybrid of prose fiction, biblical parody, and even poetry. It did not sell well--at least at first, but before too many years had passed his readers acknowledged it as his masterpiece. Its influence on future writers and intellectuals--like Shaw, Mencken, Dreiser, London, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Derrida and others--has been unmistakable. Its basic plot--if one may call it that--relates to a man called Zarathustra who has spent the last ten years in seclusion meditating atop a mountain. He descends so that he may impart his accumulated wisdom to the world of ordinary folk. It is the content and mode of his interactions with his listeners that form the structure of the book. In the book's four sections, Nietzsche through Zarathustra discusses, relates, and enlarges upon such diverse topics as the death of God, the Will to Power, the Ubermensch ("Superman" or Overman), the revaluation of values, and the doctrine of eternal recurrence. In Nietzsche's mind, these topics are not so divergent at all. At various points they merge, overlap, and interweave into a tapestry that forms the basis of Nietzsche's essential world view that for far too long the human species has been running downhill since the classical Greeks and Romans. Humanity as he saw it then was badly in the need to regenerate itself into a higher order of being--the Ubermensch. THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA is the working out of this transition between homo sapiens and homo superior. When Zarathustra descends from the mountain top to begin Part I, he declares that God is dead. But he does not mean that he is expressing some new form of atheism. Rather, he suggests that whatever God may have been in the past or what kind of support He may have once provided, man now must not rely on any hope of divine intervention. Thus, the only salvation that man can expect must be from within himself. Man himself is presented as a species in progress. The future man which Zarathustra calls the Overman is one that must purposefully be bred into existence. The Overman is the hope of present day man: "I teach you the overman," Zarathustra exclaims. "Man is something that shall be overcome." In Part II, Nietzsche elaborates on the will to power. This "will" is a direct result of man's realization that with the death of God and the resulting requirement that man must look only within himself for support that man must exercise his will over himself. There is an unfortunate current belief that Nietzsche meant "will" only in the context of dominion over others, but for him, the ability of the Overman to control his own base passions was the key distinction between the exalted self of the future Ubermensch and the lowly rabble that he despised. The third part introduces a full explanation of eternal recurrence. Nietzsche believed that this universe was one marked by an inbuilt lack of order, structure, and design, thus positing that man himself is neither good nor evil. In fact man is doomed or fated to relive each moment of existence in a cycle with no beginning or ending. And what keeps getting repeated is everything--matters of the highest import, of the lowest and all else in between. It then becomes incumbent for all human beings to act as if they are worthy to relive each moment of repeated life. It follows that this entire theory implies that humanity thereby affirms the worth of its collective existence. The fourth and final part emphasizes Nietzsche's belief in the wholeness of his entire philosophy. One cannot accept this part or that part and reject some other part. For man even to hope to make the transition from his current lowly state of bovine existence to the higher realm of the Overman, he must prove worthy by acknowledging that the death of God is a brutal necessity to spur him on to bravery, independence, and unyielding will. The very end of the book is a stark reminder that in the symbol of the donkey god man no longer needs the falsely comforting illusion that he needs an omnipotent deity to control his destiny. The Nietzsche of popular culture may believe in the need for a dominant and superior mind as charged, but the Nietzsche as a proto-Nazi is simply unwarranted.

To start off with, the Walter Kaufmann translation is by now well known to be probably the authoritative edition of Zarathustra (although the excerpts I've read from the Del Caro Cambridge Texts edition seems to be perhaps a more beautiful style). One of the reasons I originally picked up this edition was because the only translations available over the web were the droning and pedantic Thomas Common versions which are not only dull but muddled. Walter Kaufmann's translation gives a degree of clarity that far surpasses the Common translation, cannot speak to all the differences (however large or small) between it and the Del Caro version.The book isn't particularly long, but Nietzsche fills it with metaphors and parables in addition to simple narrative and merriment. This is one of the challenges of the book: you're forced to figure out what is meaningful from what isn't and on top of that what each metaphor means. Nietzsche has never been in the habit of going into intricate detail or clarifying what he's saying to the same degree as some other thinkers, and although the book is a stylistic masterpiece (with narrative deliberately done in a biblical style and herein lies one of the advantages over the Common translation, namely that Common translated everything to mimic the King James version with an overabundance of "thees" "thous" and "ests") the philosophy is at times difficult to comprehend. Again, it's not difficult in the sense that the Critique of Pure Reason is difficult, or at least not nearly to the same degree, it is difficult because it is at times cryptic.Additionally, I've seen a lot of reviews suggesting reading Nietzsche just for the pithy phrases or the beauty of the work. And while the work is indeed a very beautiful piece in places and is often quotable (and even considering Nietzsche was very big into each individual making his own meaning, creating his own path or values), I'd caution you against that approach. Although the book has a strong "make your own way" line of thought, that doesn't preclude understanding the ways of others.I will admit that this is a contender for one of the more difficult books I've ever read (up there with Kant, though Nietzsche's previous and subsequent books are by far easier to understand). I've noticed that numerous readers recommend reading the book a second time. I'd say that might be useful, but it would take someone with either a lot of free time on their hands or someone with a very great degree of insight to grasp the meaning of each part of this work. What I found useful was having read other works by Nietzsche first. Before reading Zarathustra (which I read for the first time when I was 15 at the urging of a friend who was taking political science and philosophy in college) I had already read On the Genealogy of Morality and Human, All Too Human. My recommendation is to read at least one of Nietzsche's other books, preferably a couple. I'd suggest making Beyond Good and Evil one of your choices. By doing this, you will have already been introduced to Nietzschean philosophy and will be able to more readily grasp the symbolism used.Even if you don't choose that approach, you should get the main lines of thought, specifically the eternal recurrence of the same, the overman, and the glorification of struggle, in the work. Either way, this book is a landmark work in the history of philosophy and deserves to be read.

When Nietzsche wrote Thus Spake Zarathustra he had finished with trying to topple the idols of nineteenth century civilization: the market, the monarchies, academia and the Church had all received the blows of his literary hammer.Now he turns to describing life after the demolition. Arguing that man is just another animal and has no soul, he thought that the laws of science, mathematics and even logic were not eternally binding rules of the universe but simply repetitions recorded by the senses. Thus, he discovers that the Ubermensch must legislate his owns rules for life; just as Zarathustra originally created a vision of the moral universe, this new Zarathustra legislates a law for himself. This is the supreme meaning of the “will to power”—not so much to exert power over others as to create a universe for yourself.I think a helpful analogy is to think of Nietzsche and Monotheism as two paths: Monotheism believes man has a rational soul that can discover moral, logical and scientific rules that are perennially true. Nietzsche thought that each man must create rules that were binding on himself and his particular experience of the universe. Most of us end up borrowing parts of both and accept inconsistency.Nietzsche’s later biography might be read as a warning against this thought. This is fair, but one should also consider that few men have penetrated the consequences of death of the idols as thoroughly as Nietzsche. It hardly needs a recommendation, but I was fascinated by this man’s effort to create and live in a world of his own making. Must reading for those interested in experiments on the human condition.

Molto buono come libro di lettura. Sia nei fonti, sia nella struttura generale.

自分の勝手な解釈ですが、ニーチェの考え方で凄く共感したのが『ハエたたきになるな』という所ハエはライオンやタカや高貴な動物に群がって血を吸ってやかましく飛び回るけど、ライオンはハエなど相手にしない血が出ても、傷ついてもハエなんて一々叩かないちゃんとプライドがあるから、ライオンは立派なライオンであって、ハエ叩きには成り下がらない今の日本で生きるのに必要なメンタルだなと思いました政治家や皇室を始め、国民から好き勝手に吸い尽くして我がものにしようとする人間は無限に居ますハエの様に、叩こうが潰そうがキリがありません相手にしたってしょうがないんですよね低所得者が、政治家が、など腹が立つ相手は多いし、彼らはテイカー(ただ人からもらうレベルの人)なので叩いて追っ払いたくなりますが、相手にするだけ無駄だなとこの本を読んで気付かされました自分はハエたたきじゃなくて、ライオンを目指そうと誰にも尊敬もされず、寧ろ煙たがられて避けられるハエの様な人生を生きる人間を相手にしない好きなだけ血を吸えばいいさ、と本気で思ってから人生が良くなりました日本のニュースなんて一切気にならなくなりましたね、全く3ヶ月ほど読んでません選挙に行くなど国民の義務は果たしますが、今や誰が首相なのかも知らないです笑無価値でどうでも良い情報なので誰がハエの世界で一番偉くなったか、なんて知るだけ無駄ですからねニーチェは今の世の中でタブーとされる考え方や誰もハッキリ言わないことをドラマチックかつ半ば支離滅裂に思える口調で気持ち良くズバズバと言ってくれるので、とても好きな本です

Upon purchasing this I found that the text between the covers is actually Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. A fine book in its own right but certainly not the one you are paying for.

This translation is so bad it's practically unreadable. Do not buy this edition. Reads like it was passed through Google translate.

This is probably not a book you should start reading Nietzsche with but I'm still going to recommend it as such to all of my friends. I bought this for a good friend of mine who just started at Oxford University in the UK. He recently lost his father and as you can imagine that has been quite difficult. This book seriously helped him put his whole life into perspective (and mine as well). The lessons and messages in this book are so profound that I would consider it a sort of philosophical bible. That is of course the intention of the author; to have this protagonist go through the world with a different twist yet same manner as Jesus. Along the way he learns lessons and makes assertions about people, about reality, about society, about philosophy that simply drill right down to the core of what it means to exist and be alive. This can be a remedy to those who currently find themselves disoriented and finding it hard to find direction or meaning in life. This book is full of hope, full of power, and quite possibly my favorite book of all time.