—from Latitudes (1924)
CARL JUNG
Zarathustra is in a way a document of our time, and it surely has much to do with our own psychological condition. I quite understand that it may have very bad effect, I myself often felt when I was plowing through the text that it had disagreeable effects upon me. There are passages which I intensely dislike and they really are irritating. But when you plow through your own psychology you also come across certain irritating places. So when I am irritated in those places in Zarathustra I say, well, here is a sore spot or an open wound. I take note of it, and then I know where the trouble is. I would advise you to take it in the same way, and then I think we can get safely through. You see, when we can stand Zarathustra we can stand a part of our modern world, particularly our European world: we feel it here very immediately.
—from Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939 (1988)
CRANE BRITON
Zarathustra ... would be lost without his “saith” and “thou” and “yet,” helpless without his exclamation points. In English translation he sounds very pseudo-biblical, like the King James version gone wrong.... Indeed, Thus Spoke Zarathustra has become, for a certain type of half-educated intellectual throughout the world, a kind of Enchiridion.... Yet the long white robes, prophetic beard, and phosphorescent glances of Zarathustra ... have unquestionably helped Nietzsche to his present prestige in ... Germany.... Zarathustra sounds as far-off as any Hebrew prophet, and much more unreal. All the better for Nazi use. The vagueness, the dithyrambic energy, the mantic arts, the tortured rhetoric of Nietzsche—Zarathustra seems able to move men in a way no concrete proposals at the level of mere laws or arrangements ever can move them.
—from Nietzsche (1941)
ALBERT CAMUS
Nietzsche’s philosophy, undoubtedly, revolves around the problem of rebellion. More precisely, it begins by being a rebellion. With him, rebellion begins at “God is dead,” which is assumed as an established fact; then rebellion hinges on everything that aims at falsely replacing the vanished deity and reflects dishonour on a world which undoubtedly has no direction but which remains the only proving-ground of the gods.
—translated by Anthony Bower, from The Rebel (1951)
BRAND BLANSHARD
I must confess that often, when I have tried to read the most popularly effective of German philosophical writers, Nietzsche, I have felt like throwing the book across the room. He is a boiling pot of enthusiasms and animosities, which he pours out volubly, skillfully, and eloquently. If he were content to label these outpourings “Prejudices,” as Mr. Mencken so truly and candidly labels his own, one could accept them in the spirit in which they were offered.... But he obviously takes them as philosophy instead of what they largely are, pseudo-Isaian prophesyings, incoherent and unreasoned Sibylline oracles.
—from On Philosophical Style (1954)
KARL JASPERS
Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-85) is basically a series of addresses by Zarathustra to crowds, companions, the “higher men,” his animals, and himself, within a frame of situations and actions of this fictitious figure. What Nietzsche regarded as his magnum opus resists all traditional means of classification: it is to be taken as poetry as well as prophecy and philosophy, and still it cannot be viewed as precisely any one of these.
—translated by Charles F. Wallraff and Frederick J. Schmitz, from Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity (1965)
MARTIN HEIDEGGER
We must learn how to learn from the teacher, even if it were only to raise questions that go beyond him. Only then shall we one day discover who Zarathustra is-or we will never discover it.
-translated by Bernd Magnus, from Review of Metaphysics (March 1967)
WALTER KAUFMANN
After all has been said, Zaratbustra still cries out to be blue-penciled; and if it were more compact, it would be more lucid too. Even so, there are few works to match its wealth of ideas, the abundance of profound suggestions, the epigrams, the wit. What distinguishes Zarathustra is the profusion of “Sapphires in the mud.” But what the book loses artistically and philosophically by never having been critically edited by its author, it gains as a uniquely personal record.
-from the editor’s preface to Thus Spoke Zarathustra in The Portable Nietzsche (1968)
HAROLD ALDERMAN
Thus Spoke Zaratbustra is a work of fiction; that is to say it contains no facts or empirical arguments and no metaphysical axioms from which Nietzsche purports to deduce eternal verities. Philosophers, however, have been bothered by the fictional character of Thus Spoke Zarathustra to the point of saying that it is not a work of philosophy; such philosophers apparently do not realize that all philosophy is fiction. For Nietzsche, however, this fact was one of the clearest things about the nature of philosophy; it was so clear that he decide to emphasize the fictive character of philosophy by constructing his major work as a conversation among a number of fictional characters.
—from Nietzsche’s Gift (1977)
HANS-GEORG GADAMER
The style of this text is not for everyone’s taste, at any rate not for my taste or the taste of my generation.
—translated by Zygmunt Adamczewski, from The Great Year of Zaratbustra (1881-1981), edited by David Goicoechea (1983)
JACQUES DERRIDA
The future of the Nietzsche text is not closed. But if, within the still-open contours of an era, the only politics calling itself—proclaiming itself-Nietzschean will have been a Nazi one, then this is necessarily significant and must be questioned in all of its consequences.
—translated by Peggy Kamuf, from The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation (1985)
J. HILLIS MILLER
The basic idea of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the thought of the eternal return, with its associated presupposition of the idea of the death of God.... Why is it appropriate for this thought to be expressed in the form of a fictional narrative in which Nietzsche projects himself into an imaginary protagonist, namely Zarathustra, and then doubles that protagonist with a narrator or witness who reports what Zarathustra said and did, as the gospel-makers reported the doings and sayings of Jesus?
—from International Studies in Philosophy XVII:2 (1985)
ALAN WHITE
The labyrinthine nature of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is apparent to all who have struggled with it; this book “for everyone and no one” contains a wealth of details, presented in an order that often seems simply chaotic.
—from Within Nietzsche’s Labyrinth (1990)
DAVID ALLISON
If the very title of the work—Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No One—suggests a profound enigma, the specific themes Nietzsche engages are at least recognizable from the start: the dynamics of the human will, the death of God, the critique of traditional Christian morality, the will to power, the eternal return, and the overman (the higher form of humanity, envisaged by Nietzsche, which has not yet been attained). Nevertheless, despite the breadth and recognizability of these often-discussed topics, there remains a deeply personal, largely hidden stratum to Zarathustra, wherein Nietzsche reflectively engages his own most personal, philosophical, and emotional concerns. Foremost among these personally perplexing issues were the questions about his own capacity to effectively communicate his idea, the stress brought on by his continually failing personal health, and the disastrous state of his personal relations during this period.
—from Reading the New Nietzsche (2001)
THOMAS K. SEUNG
The epic of self-relation is Nietzsche’s daunting invention. Nobody has ever attempted such an inventive task before or after his Zarathustra. Especially unique is the nature of Nietzsche’s epic hero. He is so unique that he does not fit the traditional mold of an epic hero. Sometimes he even behaves like an anti-hero. But he does not really fit this model, either, because he has the power to wrestle with his cosmic self Hence it is
hard to classify the Nietzschean hero by using standard labels.... Nietzsche has constructed his epic of the soul by naturalizing the Christian God. Zarathustra’s epic journey is sustained by the visible power of God, Mother Nature, and it is a secular offshoot of the long venerable tradition of Christian sacred epics. In this secular form ... Nietzsche’s psychological epic reads more like the Zen fable of ox-herding on enlightenment and redemption than the Christian psychological epics.
—from Nietzsche’s Epic of the Soul: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (2005)
Questions
1. Is Zarathustra a blowhard who postures, struts, and puffs up his chest in an attempt to prove to his audience and himself that he is not a blowhard? Does Nietzsche side with Zarathustra or does he make fun of him?
2. H. L. Mencken describes Nietzsche’s thought as “a thorough-going empiricism,” the work of an “utter and unquestioning materialist.” What does Mencken mean? Do you agree with him?
3. Suppose as an experiment in thought (not in action) you were to throw out the distinctions between good and evil-throw out the very concepts of good and evil-and renounce all that religion, philosophy, and tradition have to say about them. Would the result be a crippling anxiety or a sense of liberation? Would it follow from this experiment that you should contemplate acts that most people have almost always considered evil?
4. Does Nietzsche include material in Thus Spoke Zarathustra that undercuts Zarathustra as a speaker, that makes him ambiguous? Would you characterize Zarathustra’s overall message as a doctrine or a life-affirming fiction?
FOR FURTHER READING
Other Works by Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil. 1886. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1966.
The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner. 1872; 1888. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.
Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices ofMorality. 1881. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
The Gay Science. 1882. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1974.
Human, All Too Human. 1878-1880. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo. 1887, 1908. Translated, respectively, by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, and by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.
The Portable Nietzsche. Edited by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Viking Press, 1954. Includes another translation of Zarathustra.
Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited and translated by Christopher Middleton. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.
Twilight of the Idols, Or How to Philosophize with a Hammer. 1889. Together with The Antichrist. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.
Untimely Meditations. 1873-1876. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
The Will to Power. 1901. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Random House, 1967.
Works About Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Gooding-Williams, Robert. Zarathustra’s Dionysian Modernism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.
Higgins, Kathleen M. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1987.
Jung, C. G. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939. Edited by James L. Jarrett. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Lampert, Laurence. Nietzsche’s Teaching: An Interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.
Rosen, Stanley. The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Seung, Thomas K. Nietzsche’s Epic of the Soul: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005.
Works About Nietzsche
Allison, David B., ed. The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation. New York: Dell, 1977.
———. Reading the New Nietzsche. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.
Chamberlain, Lesley. Nietzsche in Turin: An Intimate Biography. New York: Picador USA, 1998.
Clark, Maudemarie. “Nietzsche’s Misogyny.” International Studies in Philosophy 26:3 (fall 1994), pp. 3-12.
———.Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Danto, Arthur C. Nietzsche as Philosopher. New York: Macmillan, 1965.
Diethe, Carol. Nietzsche’s Sister and the Will to Power: A Biography of Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
Gilman, Sander L., ed. Conversations with Nietzsche: A Life in the Words of His Contemporaries. Translated by David J. Parent. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Hayman, Ronald. Nietzsche: A Critical Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Higgins. Kathleen M. Comic Relief: Nietzsche’s Gay Science. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Third edition, revised and enlarged. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968.
Krell, David Farrell, and Donald L. Bates. The Good European: Nietzsche’s Work Sites in Word and Image. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Magnus, Bernd. Nietzsche’s Existential Imperative. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.
Magnus, Bernd, and Kathleen M. Higgins, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Nehamas, Alexander. Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.
Parkes, Graham. Composing the Soul: Reaches ofNietzsche’s Psychology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Schacht, Richard. Nietzsche. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983.
———, ed. Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Solomon, Robert C. Living with Nietzsche: What the Great “Immoralist” Has to Teach Us. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
———, ed. Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980.
Solomon, Robert C., and Kathleen M. Higgins, eds. Reading Nietzsche. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Wicks, Robert. Nietzsche. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2002.
Young, Julian. Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Art. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
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