Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Friedrich Nietzsche
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are near and that the “noontide” will rise. He leaves the cave, “glowing and strong, like a morning sun.”
RECEPTION AND INTERPRETATION
The history of Zarathustra is in many ways the history of its reception. There have been numerous efforts to interpret this complex text, and it is only fitting it has eluded a definitive interpretation. This aura of mystery challenges each generation, and each individual reader, to find their own meaning in the work.
THE ÜBERMENSCH
Two strands of interpretation stand out. On one side, there has been a preoccupation with the notion of the Übermensch. Since Zarathustra declares this vision to be the new meaning of the earth and announces it in prophetic terms in the prologue, readers have expected that the entire text is meant to conceptualize and promote a future human ideal.
If one also considers that the work appeared during the dissemination of Darwin's findings and Zarathustra even seems to refer to a model of human evolution, it is understandable that many early commentators assumed Nietzsche had proposed an evolutionary ideal for humankind.
But Zarathustra is a literary work. It works with all the conventions and subtleties of narrative, and that requires us to be cautious and never to take at face value what it seems to promote. Even though Zarathustra proclaims the future of the Übermensch early in the prologue, he already distances himself by the end of it and suggests it will be a promise for only a select few.
Later in the text, the Übermensch almost disappears completely from view. The narrative then centers on the protagonist's personal crises and sets the stage for his impending encounter with the eternal return (Parts Two and Three). Significantly, the supposed visionary ideal rarely appears in the rest of Nietzsche's writings. This is surprising if one believes it to be a central premise of his philosophy.
Instead, one should see Nietzsche playing with the expectations of an audience already formed by Darwinian ideas. The initial readers were inclined, then, to see in the concept of an Übermensch a future‐projected higher human type according to the popular theory of evolution. But Zarathustra's mounting anxiety as the narrative progresses is not due to his concern that he is failing to win over followers to his ideal – but because he has begun to doubt the basis for his original prophetic mission.
ZARATHUSTRA'S NEW PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM?
Closely related to the first interpretation is one that believes that its three central metaphors – the Übermensch, the will to power, and the eternal return – were intended to be the pillars of a future philosophical system. In the popular imagination Nietzsche is most identified with those concepts, and it is no small part due to the influence and prophetic tenor of this work.
While Nietzsche considered Zarathustra to be his greatest achievement, his high estimation of it does not need to imply that he saw it to be the foundation for a future philosophical system – or philosophy at all. There is also no indication that he meant for its three most famous concepts to be extracted from it and to become the dominant constituents of his philosophy. Instead, he inserted the concepts into a suggestive narrative whole, and through the text he both plays with and subverts the metaphors that it seems to promote. Most of all, the concepts are intimately connected to the narrative strategies and objectives of this specific literary text.
As noted, Nietzsche stated that he had chosen his prophetic protagonist for a reason. As the first person to introduce morality to the world, Zarathustra would need to be the first to uncover the error. As the narration progresses, Zarathustra becomes aware that the higher moral ideal of the Übermensch he proposed is based on residual disgust with the way the human being is. His vision is a projection of a being that can transcend and overcome the pettiness of the current human type.
But Zarathustra harbors a spirit of gravity that weighs him down and undermines his confidence. He must confront the pain and anguish related to traumas in his past. No longer a self‐assured mighty prophet, Zarathustra is now a specific individual filled with all‐too‐human resentment.
By finding the courage to call forth his thought of the eternal return, Zarathustra must recognize that his specific life, and all the pain associated with it, cannot be redeemed through the hope of a higher ideal. Rather, his life is the one and only life that he must affirm.
He now also sees that all so‐called great men have not had the courage to embrace their lives but have sought out ideals. These were flights from the reality of life. The thought of the eternal return confronts him with the specter that life will not progress to higher, to better, but will eternally return just the way it has, with all its heartache, bitterness, and secret regret – but also with its transitory, sublime moments. Only with this recognition and its affirmation can one overcome the basis for morality and the spirit of resentment that underlies it.
ZARATHUSTRA’S ULTIMATE MESSAGE
Thus, paradoxically, Thus Spoke Zarathustra does lay out a promise for a future ideal – even as it challenges the bases for all ideals. It is an ideal of a humankind that will (through and with him) recognize the error of morality and embrace the ever‐present moment as the greatest gift. Humans must learn to vanquish temptations for a beyond and for future‐oriented distractions, and learn to master and convert even personal adversity into acceptance and affirmation of life.
This is a tall order for us fallible human beings, requiring perpetual self‐overcoming of our greatest fears, doubts, insecurities, and weaknesses. But because we have only one life to live, it is a noble goal worthy of our efforts.
NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION
The translation used for this edition is Thomas Common's of 1909. It was the second English translation after Alexander Tille's in 1896.
Common's version of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is slightly biblical in style, as he believed Nietzsche's own text had this feel. We have kept it largely intact, although some archaic words and phrases have been modernized.
This edition also excises an introduction by Elisabeth Förster‐Nietzsche, the philosopher's younger sister, hagiographer, and executor. She took advantage of his name to promote herself, and was a Nazi supporter and anti‐Semite from whom Friedrich grew apart.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Born in Röcken, Prussia in 1844. Nietzsche's father, who died when he was five, was a Lutheran minister, as was his grandfather.
Attended a boarding school in Pforta, then studied classical philology at the Universities of Bonn and Leipzig.
Discovered the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer in 1865.
Met the composer Richard Wagner in Leipzig 1868.
At 24 was made a professor at the University of Basle in classical philology.
Following time as a medical orderly in the Franco‐Prussian War, wrote The Birth of Tragedy.
Ill‐health forced him to resign his professorship. Living on a modest pension, he moved about Europe, writing from rented accommodation.
Wrote and published Human, All Too Human, Daybreak, and the Gay Science in 1878–1882.
Meets and breaks with Lou Andreas‐Salomé in 1882.
Wrote and published Thus Spoke Zarathustra in four parts (1880–1884).
Following Zarathustra, completed Beyond Good and Evil, The Genealogy of Morals,