(Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy) Luchte, James - Nietzsche, Friedrich-Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Before Sunrise-Bloomsbury Academic - Continuum (2008)

Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy

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The Philosophy of Exaggeration, Alexander Garcia Dttmann
The Irony of Heidegger, Andrew Haas
Whos Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari? Gregg Lambert
Nietzsches Thus Spoke
Zarathustra
Before Sunrise
Edited by James Luchte

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James Luchte and Contributors 2008
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Contents
Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xii
List of Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
James Luchte
Part I: Of Method
Chapter 1: The Symphonic Structure of Thus Spoke Zarathustra :

A Preliminary Outline 9
Graham Parkes
Chapter 2: Thus Spoke Zarathustra as Nietzsches Autobiography 29

Thomas Brobjer
Chapter 3: Zarathustra in Nietzsches Typology 47

Yunus Tuncel
Chapter 4: The Three Metamorphoses and Philosophy 63

Peter Yates
Part II: Of Existence
Chapter 5: Zarathustra, the Moment, and Eternal Recurrence

of the Same: Nietzsches Ontology of Time 75
Friedrich Ulfers and Mark Daniel Cohen
Chapter 6: The Gateway-Augenblick 91

Paul S. Loeb
Chapter 7: Thus Spoke Zarathustra : The Hammer and the

Greatest Weight 109
Alan Wenham
viii Contents
Part III: Of Life
Chapter 8: Zarathustra on Freedom 129

Gudrun von Tevenar
Chapter 9: Nietzsche On the Regenerative Character

of Dispositions 141
Arno Behler
Chapter 10: In Search of the Wellsprings of the Future and of

New Origins 151
Uschi Nussbaumer-Benz
Chapter 11: Justice and Gift-Giving in Thus Spoke Zarathustra 165

Vanessa Lemm
Notes 183
Bibliography and Further Reading 207
Index 211
Contributors
Arno Bhler, Mag. Dr, is a University Lecturer in the Department of

Philosophy at the University of Vienna and filmmaker (GRENZ-film). He
has been a visiting scholar at the University of Bangalore, the University of
Heidelberg, New York University, and Princeton University (Schroedinger
fellow). He is the director of the FWF-Research project The Materiality and
Temporality of Performative Speech-Acts: Philosophy on Stage.
Thomas Brobjer is an Associate Professor at the Department of Intellec-
tual History at Uppsala University, Sweden. He has written the book
Nietzsches Ethics of Character (1995), and many articles on Nietzsche. He
has, together with Gregory Moore, edited the book, Nietzsche and Science
(2004). His most recent books are Nietzsches Philosophical Context: An
Intellectual Biography (University of Illinois Press: Urbana and Chicago)
and Nietzsche and the English: British and American Influences on Nietzsche
(Prometheus Press).
Mark Daniel Cohen is the Assistant Dean of the Media and Communica-
tions Division of the European Graduate School, editor, and principal
writer for the e-journal Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, published by The
Nietzsche Circle. He has recently completed two books, The Art of Kenneth
Snelson and The Judenporzellan of Izhar Patkin, and has contributed chapters
to Chawky Frenn: Art for Lifes Sake, Abstraction in the Elements, The Archeology of
the Soul, and the second edition of Dictionary of the Avant Gardes. He is
currently working on several volumes: The Prosthetic Soul, a book concerning
the Florentine art of the Italian Renaissance, and two philosophical works,
The Power of the Right and Treatise on Poetic Reason.
Vanessa Lemm is a Professor and Researcher at the School for Political
Science and at the Institute for Humanities at the University Diego
Portales, Santiago de Chile. She has published on Nietzsche and, in
particular, on the relation between Nietzsche and contemporary political
theory. She is currently completing a book entitled, Nietzsches Animal
Philosophy, forthcoming with Fordham University Press.
Paul S. Loeb is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Puget Sound.
He is the author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Readers Guide (Continuum)
x Notes on Contributors
and a co-editor/co-translator of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the associated

unpublished notebook material (Stanford University Press). He is currently
completing a book for Cambridge entitled, The Death of Nietzsches
Zarathustra. He is also the Book Review Editor for the Journal of Nietzsche
Studies.
Uschi Nussbaumer-Benz is an independent scholar with special interest in
Nietzsche, philosophy of culture, depth psychology, religion, perspectives
for the future. He is co-Chair (together with Professor Endre Kiss,
Budapest) of Nietzsche and (Post-)Postmodernity, which organizes workshops
within the framework of conferences of the International Society for the
Study of European Ideas (ISSEI) at the universities of Haifa (Israel) 1998,
Bergen (Norway) 2000, Aberystwyth (United Kingdom) 2002, Pamplona
(Spain) 2004, and Malta 2006. He has published numerous essays and
books on Nietzsche.
Graham Parkes, a native of Glasgow, is currently Professor of Philosophy at
the University of Hawaii. He is the editor, (co-)author, and (co-)translator
of ten books, and has published over eighty journal articles and chapters in
multi-author volumes. He is the editor of Nietzsche and Asian Thought
(Chicago 1991), author of Composing the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsches Psychology
(Chicago 1994), and translator of Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Oxford
2005).
Gudrun von Tevenar, after a career as a designer, is a Tutor at University
College London and at Birkbeck where she is also a Research Fellow. She
contributed to and edited Nietzsche and Ethics (Peter Lang AG), as well as to
the second volume of the Nietzsche Woerterbuch (W de Gruyter).
Yunus Tuncel, PhD, is co-founder, with Rainer Hansche, of the Nietzsche
Circle. He has been teaching philosophy at the New School since 1999. He
has recently finished a book on Nietzsche, The Death of God: Nietzsches
Experiment. His areas of research are art, culture, myth, spectacle, and the
fusion of art and philosophy in various cultural formations.
Friedrich Ulfers is the Dean of the Media and Communications Division of
the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland and Associate
Professor of German at New York University. His publications include the
book Das Doppelgngermotiv in der deutschen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts and
numerous articles, the most recent of which are From Skepticism to
Utopia: Musils Idea of Essayism and Times Square: Memories of the
Crossroads of the World vs. the Vision of Main Street, USA.
Alan Wenham is conducting research in Continental philosophy at the
University of Warwick, specializing in Nietzsche and Hegel.
Notes on Contributors xi
Peter Yates was awarded a PhD from the University of Wolverhampton. He

has lectured on Freud and Nietzsche and conducted seminars on
Wittgenstein, philosophy of mind, Sartre, Hegel, and the philosophy of the
human being. He is the director, with Anna Ingham, of The Parkdale Yoga
Centre and is a practitioner and teacher of Yoga.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Rainer Hanshe of the Nietzsche Circle, and Greg Moore
and Duncan Large of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, for their assistance on
this project.
List of Abbreviations
AC The Anti-Christ
BGE Beyond Good and Evil
BT Birth of Tragedy
CW The Case of Wagner
D Daybreak
EH Ecce Homo
GM Genealogy of Morals
GS Gay Science
HC Homers Contest
HH Human All Too Human
PTAG Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
TI Twilight of the Idols
UM Untimely Meditations
WP Will to Power
Z Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Introduction
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before

Sunrise
James Luchte
The world is deep and deeper than the day had ever thought.
From Before Sunrise, Thus Spoke Zarathustra1
A sense of irony attaches itself to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, although not due
to any fault of its own (or, perhaps it is the guilty book par excellence). It is a
work that was written for philosophical purposes, and for a cultured, philo-
sophical audience. Yet, it is written in a style which was, and still is, not
recognized as philosophical and is thus not taken seriously as philosophy
(disregarding for the moment the scattered clusters of researchers in the
Continental tradition). At the same time, however, due to its philosophical
content and the status of its author as a philosopher, Z is regarded by special-
ists in literature as a work of philosophy. The work thus ends up homeless.
The irony is, in this way, due to the ambiguous, or perhaps, undecidable,
status of the work, which simultaneously plays in the fields of literature and
of philosophy. One could, and always does ask, is this accursed status not
Nietzsches own fault, after all, for having transgressed the customary
boundaries of our academic division of labour? It response to such a
question, it can just as simply be argued that it is this very distinction which
itself has given rise to the irony (and the problem of assignment) in the first
place. Indeed, is it not the case that this problem is itself indicative of the
revolutionary significance of Zarathustra, as its homelessness is an intima-
tion that it is outside of the motley city of reason and of its organizational
compartments? The reception of Z, and its ambiguous status, in this light,
can once again serve as an indication of a task yet to be fulfilled, a task for
the philosophers of the future.
For the philosophers of the analytic revolution, Nietzsches greatest
work is a work of poetry, of literature, capable only of conjuring forth a
metaphysical attitude towards life. In the opinion of no lesser figure than
2 Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Carnap,2 Nietzsche, contrary to bad metaphysical musicians such as

Heidegger, should be commended for the honesty of Z. In this latter work,
Carnap detects an attempt at poetic expression, beyond the strict limits of
philosophy, conceived by him as the logical analysis of language. In this chari-
table reading, Carnap is willing to allow a place for poetry and literature
(though not in philosophy), for, although their sentences are in a technical
sense meaningless, their expression disseminates meaning or sense in a
grammatical, poetic, or historical sense. We could perhaps suggest that such
expression is akin to that of the mystical in Wittgensteins Tractatus, an
expression which from within the limits of the world and knowledge, is
silent de facto, silent of meaning. Yet, with this last suggestion, we begin to
sense a difficulty in Carnaps position (and, of the analytic distinction
between philosophy and literature itself) in that Wittgenstein contended
that this silent aspect was not only part of his philosophy, but it was also
the most important part.
Such a contention was yet another event (along with the attempts of
Heidegger, Blanchot, and others), to give back to philosophy its proper
depth (and, to save it from Carnaps ideal language). Indeed, towards the
late 1920s, Wittgenstein began to articulate this silence, first, in his Lecture
on Ethics, and later, in his Blue Book and Brown Book (where he mentions
the eternal recurrence of the same), in which his original framework is
dissolved into systems of propositions, or, in the usage of the later Philo-
sophical Investigations, language games. With such a topological path of
thinking, the Carnapian assertion of the limits of meaning could no longer
hold (if it ever did outside of the prejudices of philosophers).
In the wake of this and other radical challenges to the analytic revolu-
tion (already anticipated by Nietzsche), however, there has been little
reappraisal, outside of the field of the history of philosophy, of the many
philosophers who had been unjustly relegated to meaninglessness, such as
the German Idealists and Romantics, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and
Heidegger. At the same time, we must be aware that we ourselves (conti-
nental philosophers included) are creatures of the analytic revolution,
and as victims and convalescents of its eliminative strategy, we must attempt
to retrieve once again a topos of authentic philosophical questioning.
That which is significant however and which speaks to my allusion to
irony in the opening lines is that the very difficulties which emerged in the
attempt by analytic philosophy to should be: set the limit were already
anticipated by Nietzsche in the development of his work between The Birth
of Tragedy and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. As I have explored at length elsewhere,3
the question, and predicament, for Nietzsche, was how he was to articulate
Essays on Thus Spoke Zarathustra 3
a Dionysian wisdom through a philosophy that must trace its context of

emergence amid the long genealogy of theoretical men, from Plato,
Aristotle through to Leibniz, Kant, and Schopenhauer. The question of the
rebirth of the Dionysian, of forgetting, of creativity, and of the unhistorical is
eventually resolved with the poetic creation of Z. With this work, Nietzsche
subverts the restricted economy of the principle of sufficient reason through
a return to mythos and poiesis, not as a destruction of reason, but rather as its
re-contextualization amidst the broader topos of human existence.
The irony is that Nietzsche has transfigured his writing into that of litera-
ture for philosophical purposes. And, indeed, contrary to Carnap, Nietzsche,
as we can readily see in his own words, regarded Z as the central work, the
poetic topos, of his philosophy. The return to the indigenous topoi of poetry
and music is an affirmation, for Nietzsche, of the contingency of existence,
and it is an honest renunciation of the illusions and simulacrums of unprob-
lematic conceptions of permanence, objectivity, morality, and God. In
this way, the poetic revolution of Z, in its defiance of the idols of religion,
science, philosophy, and the state, intimates more than just a different way
of speaking.
Indeed, the poetic (and musical) return stands as a challenge to those,
like Badiou, who have become pious again, captivated by the resurrected
Platonic idol of infinity. For those others, like Blanchot, Bataille, Irigaray,
and Derrida, who have resisted this captivation, the poetic return is
an evasion of godlike discourses which attempt to seduce us to a new truth,
a new objectivity. Nietzsches poetic expression is an affirmation of becoming,
and its indications and signs open up differing perspectives amid finite
existence, while returning others to the truth of their scandalous origins.
It is in this context that Zarathustras speeches in Parts I and II can be read
as specific articulations of Nietzsches philosophical revolution, of which
the question of style is only one, though important, aspect. Nietzsche,
through his innovations in philosophical language, invites his reader to
think differently, in different ways, and about differing things, questions,
and perspectives which were, until the door was unlocked, hidden from
view. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a challenge to the hegemony of logic and
reason in philosophy, and with his articulation of a topos beyond the
principle of sufficient reason, Nietzsche is inciting us to liberate ourselves
from the epochal trajectory of theoretical man.
Nietzsche once predicted that in the future, once he had found posthu-
mous readers, his children, that a university chair would be established for his
great work. To date, this prediction has not yet been realized, despite the
sustained century long influence of his writings, including his poetry, upon
Continental philosophy and other diverse regions of human knowledge,

culture, and politics. Moreover, despite his pervasive influence upon the
philosopher and non-philosopher alike, and his own zealous regard for Z,
there has been relatively little serious study of his magnum opus. At the same
time, the little work that has been, and is still being, done in the English-
speaking world, though scattered and quarantined from the mainstream
discourse of philosophy, displays the vitality and depth of what Schacht calls
Nietzsches way of doing philosophy,4 one that forces us to call into ques-
tion the very tools of logical reasoning which dominate Western thought.
This volume, Before Sunrise seeks to address the paucity and scattered
character of current research by gathering together efforts to explore Z not
only with regard to its significance for an interpretation of Nietzsches
philosophy per se, but also in light of the deeper questions of the meaning
of philosophy itself and its relation with poetry, life, and existence.
Before Sunrise presents chapters by twelve international Nietzsche scholars in
which Z is explored with respect to its myriad philosophical questions, aspects,
and implications for existence and life. This volume shows the relevance of Z
to questions articulated in contemporary philosophy, from deconstruction,
hermeneutics, and critical theory to phenomenology, existentialism, and
post-structuralism; cosmology and contemporary physics; and finally, ethics,
religion, and politics. The volume interprets Z as a provocation to a technical
philosophy that, as Nietzsche contends, has removed itself from authentic
questioning and, thus, relevance for the new millenium.
The volume is laid out in three parts, Of Method, Of Existence, and Of Life.
Of Method will explore Z with respect to its compositional structure and style
as a philosophical and poetic text, and the implications of its radical innova-
tions to pertinent meta-philosophical questions amid the broader horizons
of philosophy. Of Existence will explore the question of the significance of
the eternal recurrence of the same to an interpretation of cosmic and
human existence. Of Life will explore various aspects of the ethos of
Zarathustra and the myriad questions and implications arising from Z on
the meaning of freedom, convalescence, and the overcoming of nihilism,
the sources of affirmation, and the virtue of gift-giving.
Part I, Of Method begins with The Symphonic Structure of Thus Spoke
Zarathustra: A Preliminary Outline by Graham Parkes, in which he exca-
vates the contention that Z has a symphonic structure and seeks to show
what this contention means in light of musical theory. He contends that we
will be better able to understand this Dionysian text in light of its musical
background.
Essays on Thus Spoke Zarathustra 5
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra as Nietzsches Autobiography, Thomas Brobjer

laments the lack of attention paid to Z as a philosophical text, and suggests
that one way to consider this work as philosophical, is to regard it as
autobiographical. In this way, this work is set forth by Nietzsche as an
example of how philosophy should be practised, as a poetic sublimation of
personal and situated experiences.
In the next chapter, Zarathustra in Nietzsches Typology, Yunus Tuncel
explores the question of type, or typology, in Z and Nietzsches philosophy
as a whole. He outlines three typologies: cultural, characteriological, and
historical. The first concerns forces of culture (artistic, priestly), the second,
traits and tendencies (spirits of gravity and revenge), and the third, epochal
principles as the trajectory of the historical becoming of nihilism and its
overcoming.
In the final chapter of Part I, The Three Metamorphoses and Philosophy,
Peter Yates explores the status of Z as a philosophical work against the back-
ground of the question of poetic expressivity in philosophy. Yates raises the
metaphilosophical questions: What then is philosophy? Who then is a philos-
opher? He traces the maturation of philosophy from technical, or
propositional, to literary, or poetic, expressivity against the background of
the three metamorphoses of the spirit, of the camel, the lion, and the child.
Part II, Of Existence begins with Zarathustra, the Moment, and Eternal
Recurrence of the Same: Nietzsches Ontology of Time, in which Mark
Daniel Cohen and Friedrich Ulfers offer an interpretation of eternal recur-
rence as an overt ontological principle within an ontology of time and
existence. They argue that eternal recurrence is a Dionysian reinterpreta-
tion of nineteenth-century physics in which is disclosed a theory of the
moment as a continuous opening.
In The Gateway-Augenblick, Paul S. Loeb lays out the doctrine of eternal
recurrence as the Dionysian mystery faith to which Plato was opposed. Loeb
juxtaposes the dying Zarathustra to the dying Socrates in a contemplation of
the distinction between eternal recurrence, on the one hand, and reincar-
nation (with its eventual release), on the other.
Alan Wenham, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: The Hammer and the Greatest
Weight, argues that in preparation for the radical innocence and freedom
envisaged in Z, human beings must first awaken themselves from their
blindness to their own enslavement within the nexus of Christian fatalism,
slave mentality, and masochism. Wenham proposes, however, that we inter-
rogate the figure of the bermensch as to its apparent repetition of the
temporality of the slave.
Part III, Of Life, begins with Zarathustra on Freedom, in which Gudrun

von Tevenar argues that only those who have liberated themselves both
from external constraints as well as from such inner constraints as
attachment to past values can be deemed suitable candidates for freedom.
Yet, real freedom also requires having a vision as to future goals [the famous
Freiheit wozu ?], plus the rare ability to find ones own way towards those
goals. Only then is one free and can thus qualify to be one of Zarathustras
true fellow-creators.
In Nietzsche On the Regenerative Character of Dispositions, Arno
Boehler examines Zarathustras convalescence as a pre-condition for the
affirmation of eternal recurrence. He sketches out a difficult struggle which
exposes the transformation of the performative speech of Zarathustra to an
openness which allows his own soul, his own abyss, to speak.
In the next chapter, In Search of the Wellsprings of the Future and of
New Origins, Uschi Nussbaumer-Benz argues that one of the sources for
the Zarathustra legend is the ancient narrative of the Dighanikaya which
speaks of a wise individual who rolls out of himself like a wheel, as a symbol
of his own perfection. She argues that this narrative served as a wellspring
for the philosophy of Nietzsche and may shed some light on his attempt to
set forth a competing grand narrative to those of the monotheistic
religions.
In the final chapter, Justice and Gift-Giving in Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
Vanessa Lemm examines the practise of gift-giving as an alternative to both
utilitarianism and to exploitation and domination. She argues that gift-
giving is distinct from Christian alms or charity which is not giving at all, but
a poisoning which creates dependencies and shores up relations of injus-
tice. Drawing connections between Derrida and Nietzsche, Lemm contends
that gift-giving is an animal virtue and that it is in a competitive friendship
with animals that there will be an enhancement of life.
Part I
Of Method
Chapter 1
The Symphonic Structure of Thus Spoke

Zarathustra: A Preliminary Outline
Graham Parkes1
You will be able to tell from the Finale [of Zarathustra] what the whole symphony
is really saying.2
The power of music
Without music life would be simply an error, exhausting toil, exile. This
well known pronouncement makes a fitting motto for Nietzsches life and
work.3 He grew up in a milieu pervaded by music. As a teenager, he wrote of
his departed father: He would fill his hours of leisure with study and music.
In piano playing he attained a significant level of skill, especially in free
improvisation. Naumburg, where Nietzsche spent his childhood, offered
like many towns in Germany at the time an unusually rich array of musical
possibilities, from oratorios in the cathedral to chamber music in private
homes. The young Nietzsche writes fondly of his best friend, Gustav Krug,
and the musical riches of the Krug family home, where the paterfamilias was
a good friend of Mendelssohns and himself an accomplished amateur
composer and musician. As well as playing music together, Nietzsche and the
younger Krug would spend hours reading and discussing musical scores.
In his early autobiographical essays, Nietzsche describes several encoun-
ters with the sublime in the towns churches and cathedral while listening
to works by Hndel, Mozart, Haydn, and Mendelssohn. Piano lessons from
an early age developed his own talent on that instrument, and after he left
home for boarding school, his correspondence is filled with requests to his
mother to send him musical scores. In an autobiographical fragment
On Music he writes: Music often speaks to us more urgently in tones than
poetry does in words, engaging the most secret folds of the heart. . . . May
this glorious gift from God always be my companion on the pathways of
life. Once when an illness deprived him of piano playing, he wrote to his
mother from boarding school: Everything seems dead to me when I cant

hear any music.4 In another letter from the same period: I look for words
for a melody that I have, and for a melody for words that I have, and these
two things I have dont go together, even though they come from the same
soul. But such is my fate!5 Nevertheless, during his teens and twenties he
wrote prolifically for piano and voice, producing close to a hundred compo-
sitions, most of them short piano pieces and Lieder somewhat in the style of
Schubert and Schumann.6
Nietzsches desire to compose music seriously remained strong, though it
was of necessity dampened in the course of his decade-long friendship with
Richard Wagner, the worlds most famous composer at that time.
Nietzsches joy in composing reasserted itself through his presenting
compositions to Wagners wife, Cosima, and sustained a violent setback
when Cosimas former husband, the conductor Hans von Blow to whom
he had given one of his stormier scores, famously called it a rape and viola-
tion of Euterpe [the muse of music]. Ouch. More charitable was Heinrich
Kselitz, one of Nietzsches longest standing and most faithful friends, and
a composer (under the artistic name Peter Gast) of fairly undistinguished
operas. Nietzsche and Kselitz discussed music constantly during their years
of correspondence, and whenever they met in person they would play music
together if there was a piano available. After eventually giving up composing,
Nietzsche continued to play the piano when the opportunity arose, and he
remained a frequent concert- and opera-goer throughout his career. As far
as social intercourse was concerned: In the whole history of philosophy it
would be impossible to find another philosopher who frequented musi-
cians [composers, conductors, pianist, musicologists, music publishers] to
such an extent.7
Nietzsches aesthetic attitude towards existence is exemplified in his idea
that we are tasked as human beings to make our lives into works of art, and
in some cases works of music. Writing about the way certain rare moments in
life speak to our hearts, he talks of the symphony of actual life. In deni-
grating idealist thinkers who reject that this world revealed to the senses in
favour of the cold realm of ideas, he claims: A genuine philosopher [in
those days] could no longer hear life, insofar as life is music, and so he denied
the music of life. For Nietzsche, insofar as all life is will to power, which
manifests itself through the drives (Triebe) or affects that operate mostly
beneath the level of consciousness, music can reveal those operations:
Only now is the human being coming to realize that music is a sign-
language of the affects: and we shall later learn to recognize clearly the
The Symphonic Structure of Zarathustra 11
drive-system of a musician from his music. . . . There are many more

languages than one thinks . . . What does not speak to us! but those who
hear are becoming ever fewer.8
Even after having admitted to himself that the proper medium for his
work was the language of words rather than tones, Nietzsche still hoped to
attain some kind of fusion between the two. In 1887 he wrote to Kselitz:
Beyond a doubt, in the very depths of my being I would like to have been able
to compose the music that you yourself compose and my own music
(books included) was only done faute de mieux.9 And when he writes two
years later that one becomes more of a philosopher the more one becomes
a musician, he is clearly referring to himself as one whose musicianship
had infused his philosophizing.10 When Nietzsche wrote in a letter to the
conductor Hermann Levi, Perhaps there has never been a philosopher
who was so fundamentally a musician as I am, the only possible exception
that comes to mind is Rousseau.11 What is certain, however, is that
Nietzsches writings have inspired the composition of more music than
have those of any other philosopher which is some measure of the success
of his efforts to infuse his philosophy with music. By 1975, over 170
composers had created some 370 musical settings of 90 texts by Nietzsche,
among them 87 pieces that are settings of excerpts from Zarathustra or are
explicitly inspired by the text as a whole.12
The whole of Zarathustra might perhaps be reckoned as music,
Nietzsche writes in retrospect about his favourite book, certainly a rebirth
in the art of hearing was a precondition of it. The first mention of the idea
that inspired this work, the eternal recurrence of the same, occurs in a
notebook entry marked Beginning of August 1881 in Sils-Maria.13 It is
significant that in the letter to Kselitz which announces this inspiration he
also writes: I have been forced to give up reading scores and playing the
piano once and for all.14 Shortly thereafter, a notebook entry mentions a
projected work with the title Midday and Eternity and a first sentence that
begins: Zarathustra, born near Lake Urmi, in his thirtieth year left his
home . . . The work will consist of four parts, and the sketch begins: First
Book in the style of the first movement of [Beethovens] Ninth Symphony.15
Nietzsche recounts in EC that the first part of Zarathustra came to
him and above all Zarathustra himself, as a type . . . overwhelmed me
shortly after he had moved to Rapallo, a small town on the Ligurian coast
east of Genoa.16 In a letter to Kselitz from Rapallo, Nietzsche discusses
the problem, raised by Wagner but still unsolved, of how a whole act of
an opera could achieve a symphonic unity as an organism.17 A crucial
point is that the flow of affects, the whole structure of the act has to have
something of the schema of the movement of a symphony: certain respon-
sions and so forth. Three weeks later, another letter to Kselitz announces
the completion of a small book . . . my best. . . . It is to be called: Thus Spoke
Zarathustra. With this book I have entered into a new Ring. The allusion
to Wagners Ring of the Nibelungen, not to mention the challenge to the
worlds longest, if not greatest, opera, is not as far-fetched as it sounds.18
When on the same day he writes to his best friend, Franz Overbeck, to tell
him about the new book, he adds: I am now engaged for a couple more
days with the Nagelprobe revisions, a work requiring refined hearing, for
which one cannot be sufficiently alone (324). The mix of metaphors is
significant: Nagelprobe alludes to the Latin ad unguem, which refers to the
sculptors practice of running a fingernail across a surface to test its
smoothness and yet Nietzsche is testing the perfection of his language
by listening to it.19
Two months later, when he asks his Kselitz, Under which rubric does
this Zarathustra really belong? he reverts to the symphonic in answering his
own question: I almost believe that it comes under symphonies. What is
certain is that with this I have crossed over into another world. Finally, after
finishing the third part he refers to it several times as the finale of my
symphony. And at the same time he writes to Kselitz: Music is by far the
best thing; now I want more than ever to be a musician.20
Why does Nietzsche insist on calling this work a symphony? Given that the
protagonist not only speaks but also sings at crucial junctures in the book,
then why not an opera a new Ring in a different medium? Or, given the
predominance of Zarathustras voice over all the others, why not an oratorio
with a dominating soloist, or even a concerto with Zarathustras voice as the
solo instrument? Yet no lesser authority than Gustav Mahler confirms
Nietzsches claim about his favourite work: His Zarathustra was born
completely from the spirit of music, and is even symphonically
constructed.21 Given that Mahler understood the structure of the classical
symphony as well as any human being that ever lived, this comment demands
to be taken seriously.
The word symphony (or sinfonia) was first used in the musical sense to
refer to an instrumental prelude for, or interlude in, an opera or oratorio.22
The classical symphony grew out of several different musical forms and
especially from the French overture (as perfected by Lully) and the Italian
sinfonia (with Scarlatti as exemplary). When these forms became indepen-
dent works, they usually consisted of three movements, in a pattern of
fast slow fast. The pre-classical symphony, as developed by numerous
composers in Paris, northern Italy, Mannheim, and Vienna, favoured this

three-movement structure until the 1760s. After 1770, four movements
became standard, with the insertion of a minuet between the second, slow
movement and a final, dance-like movement in rondo form. Half of Haydns
early symphonies (Nos. 130), for example, are in three movements, while
almost all of those he wrote after the mid-1760s have four.
The world of Zarathustra scholarship divides into those who think the
work properly ends at the conclusion of Part III (which Nietzsche certainly
thought was the end at the time he finished it) and those who think it
includes fourth part, which he wrote around a year later but chose not to
publish. If one is of the three-part persuasion, the books structure would
reflect the pre-classical symphony in three movements: a first movement
in sonata-allegro form; a second, slow movement (andante or adagio) usually
consisting of a theme and variations; and a third movement either in the
tempo of a minuet (sometimes minuet or scherzo and trio) or else in a
faster dance-like tempo (allegro or presto). For those who include the fourth
part, the form would be that of the later classical symphony in four move-
ments, where the third would be a minuet and trio in ternary form, and the
final movement dance-like in rondo. But since Nietzsche writes of the
finale of [his] symphony in four different letters after completing
Part III, it makes sense to compare the structure of the first three
parts of Zarathustra with that of the early classical symphony in three
movements.
As a young boy, Nietzsche used to play piano transcriptions of Haydn
symphonies for four hands, some of which would have been in three move-
ments.23 For his thirteenth birthday, he requested a score of Mozarts
Symphony No. 4 with fugue, which is one of 20 among Mozarts 41 sympho-
nies that have three movements. Seven years later, he heard that symphony
in concert, and also Mozarts Symphony No. 31 (Paris) which, like No. 38
(Prague), is an epitome of the three-movement form.24 It is probable that
Nietzsche had one or more of these works in mind when he pronounced
the symphony of Zarathustra completed after the third movement.
First movement
The first movement of this symphony is in sonata-allegro form which often

has an introduction leading into the first part, the exposition, after which a
transition leads to the development, which is followed by a closing section
leading to a recapitulation. The introduction to the first movement tends to
set a serious tone and establish a grand scale that sets the tone for later
stages of the work. This is certainly the function of Zarathustras Prologue,
which introduces the major places and themes to follow: the solitude of
Zarathustras mountain-top cave, the death of God, his descent and return
to human beings, the problem of the audience, the last human, and his
teaching concerning the Overhuman.25 The first of Zarathustras speeches,
On the Three Transformations (1.1), is like a second, much shorter intro-
duction, insofar as it depicts a general process, invoking through vivid
imagery three transformations of the spirit to be exemplified in the three
sections (exposition, development, recapitulation) of the First Part. Taking
chapters 1.8 (On the Tree on the Mountainside) and 1.15 (On the Thou-
sand Goals and One) as transitions, the exposition, development, and
recapitulation would each consist of six chapters (27, 914, 1621), with
the last chapter (16.22) understood as a coda.
The exposition in a symphonys first movement presents two or more
themes, or groups of themes, which are often repeated after a shift in key.
The exposition chapters (27) correspond to the camel stage of the spirit
insofar as they discuss traditional teachings concerning human existence.
The first theme, virtue, is sounded by the wise man who occupies a profes-
sorial chair for that subject, advocating the practice of virtue as a means to
sound sleep. Zarathustra wryly comments on the splendidly soporific effects
of these rote prescriptions. The next two speeches, On Believers in a World
Behind and On the Despisers of the Body, introduce the second theme
or group of themes: the way suffering and weariness of will prompt people
to invent Gods and worlds behind, and to denigrate the earth and the
living body as the loci of suffering.
The next two speeches, On Enjoying and Suffering the Passions (1.5)
and On the Pale Criminal (1.6) resume the theme of the virtues, but in a
different key, insofar as the audience of brothers for the speech
On Believers in a World Behind has now shrunk to a singular brother to
whom a more intimate form of address is appropriate, and the despisers of
the body have been replaced by the narrower class of judges and sacrifi-
cers. Zarathustra now revisions the virtues as transformations of the
passions, of drives originating from the body though the Triebe (drives)
are not mentioned by name until the eighth speech.
The last two speeches of the exposition, On Reading and Writing and
On the Tree on the Mountainside, intimate Zarathustras responsion to
the second theme, whereby spiritual transcendence to a divine realm
beyond this world is replaced by an ecstatic flight within this world
occasioned by the dancing of a God (Dionysus) through the human body.
On the Tree on the Mountainside introduces a closing theme with a

cadential function by showing the reaction of a young man who has been
powerfully drawn to Zarathustras teaching: namely hatred and envy of
Zarathustra as one who can fly, incited by what Zarathustra will call the
spirit of heaviness. For the first time we hear a dialogue between teacher
and student, and we are shown a milder aspect of Zarathustra as he explains
to the young man that he is still ensnared by conflicting drives that have not
yet been mastered. The conclusion to his speech effects a transition to the
next section insofar as he exhorts the young man to emulate the noble man
and avoid succumbing to the despair that enveloped noble types who lost
hope: Hold sacred your highest hope!
The next six chapters (914) make up the development section, in
which Zarathustra elaborates the themes of the exposition in a more
combative set of speeches addressed mostly to an audience he refers to as
my brothers, attacking in the spirit of the lion such adversaries as priests
and politicians. On the Preachers of Death opens forcefully, with a direct
attack on the priests of the old religions:
There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom
rejection of life must be preached.
Full is the earth of the superfluous; corrupted is life by the all too many.
Let one use eternal life to lure them away from this life!
The speech revisits the theme of suffering as a reason for rejecting life, and
now shows furious labour and distraction and the desire for what is fast,
and new, and strange as symptoms of the drive to escape from suffering.
Zarathustra ends the speech with the wish, whether one calls it death or
eternal life, that the preachers of death would just pass on to it quickly
taking their disciples with them.
In the next speech, On War and Warrior Peoples (1.10) Zarathustra
incites his brothers in warfare to become warriors of understanding and
to wage spiritual and intellectual warfare war for your own thoughts
against the traditionally entrenched teachings. He sets a good example by
attacking the institutions of the state and its public sphere in his next two
speeches, showing how their suppression of vital originality promotes death
and destruction rather than life and creativity. In the following two speeches,
which are softer in tone, Zarathustra revalues the virtue of chastity and the
institution of friendship by revealing the repressed vice that often lurks
behind chastity and the need for enmity in friendship.
Zarathustras next speech, On the Thousand Goals and One (1.15),

constitutes a transition to the recapitulation, in which the previous themes
are revisited in the spirit of the spontaneity of the child and in the light of
the overcoming of the human by way of the Overhuman. On the Thousand
Goals and One is a crucial speech that brings together the first movements
two theme areas by inquiring into the origins of the virtues and moral evalu-
ations such as good and evil and finding them to come not from some
God or heavenly realm but from interpretations of peoples in the form of
will to power (first mention in the book).
The recapitulation returns to themes laid out in the exposition and also
alludes to their elaborations in the development section. Whereas two
chapters in the exposition and two in the development mention the
Overhuman, four chapters do so in the recapitulation. There is for the most
part a close correspondence with the six chapters of the exposition.
On Love of Ones Neighbour (1.16) is a responsion to the wise mans
maxim, Peace with God and ones neighbour (1.2), which exposes love of
the neighbour as false selflessness and bad love of oneself and commends
instead love of the friend and thereby the Overhuman. On the Way of the
Creator (1.17) replaces the suffering creator God of chapter 1.3
(On Believers in a World Behind) with a suffering human creator, who
corresponds on the level of the solitary individual to the creator peoples
discussed in On the Thousand Goals and One. Now, the creating, willing,
valuing I of the third chapter is replaced by a multiplicity consisting of
yourself and your Seven Devils. The next speech, On Old and Young
Little Women (1.18) counters the despisers of the body (1.4) who are no
bridges to the Overhuman with a woman in whose love the light of a star
shines, and whose hope is to give birth to the Overhuman.
The next two chapters correspond to the next two of the exposition in
reverse order. On the Bite of the Adder (1.19) revisits the theme of justice
first announced in On the Pale Criminal (1.6), except that the criminal
who was earlier the victim of a petty and vengeful justice, is replaced by
the solitary Zarathustra, for whom a little revenge is more humane than
no revenge at all, and who demands a justice that is love with seeing eyes
and that wittily gives to each his Zarathustras own. On Children and
Marriage (1.20) reprises the discussion of the virtues in On Enjoying and
Suffering the Passions (1.5): whereas the singular brother in the earlier
chapter was liable to become a battle and battlefield of virtues driven by
envy and mistrust and calumny, Zarathustras later question for you
alone, my brother is whether he is ready for marriage through having
become commander of the senses, master of your virtues. To have ones
animal passions turn into virtues is a first step, after which the human as
virtuous is to be overcome (1.5); but now marriage can help raise sexual
love above the level of two animals finding each other out to a
sympathizing with suffering and disguised Gods and thereby an arrow and
yearning for the Overhuman (1.20). Lastly, the speech On Free Death
(1.21), with its exhortations to welcome death at the right time as a
festival and thereby love the earth more, harks back to the courage that
wants to laugh, that can kill with laughter the Spirit of Heaviness, through
whom all things fall and all mortal creatures are brought down and back
into the earth (1.7).
The final speech, On the Bestowing Virtue (1.22), is a kind of coda,
set outside the town, in which Zarathustra takes leave of his disciples
(first mention of them as disciples) but not before speaking to them
of the highest virtue. He recapitulates several main themes from
Part I: the body as something that goes through history incorporating
error as well as reason; the will (to power) as the origin of virtue; the
exhortation to his brothers to stay true to the earth. Then he finishes by
encouraging his disciples to question his teachings and reject him as a
teacher: Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves. The climax of the
speech amplifies and exalts the ineffectual image from his first speech to
the people in the marketplace, The human is a rope fastened between
beast and Overhuman, by confidently proclaiming the advent of the
Great Midday:
when the human stands in the middle of its path between beast and
Overhuman and celebrates its way to evening as its highest hope; for it is
the way to a new morning.
Second movement
The second movement of the early classical symphony is a slow movement,

usually consisting of a main theme which recurs in alternation with variations
in two or more episodes which develop and transform the theme rhythmi-
cally, melodically, and harmonically. The slow movement often begins with
an introduction, and ends with a coda that is distinct from the main theme.
Taking wisdom as the primary theme, the structure of Part II would look like
this: introduction (chapter 1), main theme (2), first episode (37), main
theme developed (812), second episode (1319), final statement of main
theme (20), coda (2122). The motto that stands at the head of
Part II of Zarathustra is a repetition of a sentence-and-a-half from the last

page of the previous part:
. . . and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.
Verily, with different eyes, my brothers, shall I then seek my lost ones; with
a different love shall I then love you.
Nietzsche comments in a letter to Kselitz: From this motto there

emerge it is almost unseemly to say this to a musician different harmo-
nies and modulations from those in the first part. The main thing was to
swing oneself up to the second level in order from there to reach the third.26
The upswing happens through Zarathustras departure from his disciples
for the solitude of his mountaintop cave, followed by a sojourn in a site far
from the marketplace and town of Part I: the Isles of the Blest. According
to Hesiod, these islands are inhabited by departed heroes who live
untouched by sorrow in the isles of the blest along the shore of deep swirling
Ocean, and for whom the grain-giving earth bears honey-sweet fruit flour-
ishing thrice a year, far from the deathless gods.27 A suitably serene setting,
then, for the slow exposition of the theme of wisdom. Whereas all the
chapters in Part I bear titles beginning with On . . . as befitting their status
as speeches, Part II begins with The Child and the Mirror and Upon the
Isles of the Blest, alluding to a mythic story and a mythical place or state of
mind, respectively.
The beginning of The Child and the Mirror (2.1) echoes the beginning
of the Prologue, with Zarathustra spending months and years in his moun-
taintop solitude until one morning he is awakened by a frightening dream,
in which a child shows him his reflection in a mirror. This alludes to the
story about the infant Dionysus (Zagreus) whom the envious Titans distract
by giving him a mirror to play with, so that they can kill, dismember, and
devour him. Concluding that his friends have denied him and that he
should therefore return to them, Zarathustra resolves to go back down by
way of an Orphic-Dionysiac dissolution into forces of nature: he becomes a
mountain torrent plunging into the valleys and a hailstorm with lightning-
laughter pealing into the depths. There is a lot of Dionysiac Rausch here for
the beginning of a slow movement conveyed in the German by a steady
stream of sibilants (a surge of initial s and sh sounds over a page-and-
a-half) but it eventually resolves into the calmer image of Zarathustras
Wild Wisdom in the form of a lioness wanting to put her young to bed on
the soft greensward of his friends hearts. Zarathustras Wild Wisdom will be
contrasted with the various traditional wisdoms it will replace.
Nietzsche later quotes the slow opening of the speech Upon the Isles of
the Blest (2.2):
The figs are falling from the trees, they are good and sweet; and as they
fall, their red skins burst. A north wind am I to all ripe figs.
And thus, like figs, these teachings fall to you, my friends: now drink their
juice and their sweet flesh! Autumn is all around and clear sky and
afternoon.
In EH, he writes of these lines: From an infinite fullness of light and depth
of happiness there falls drop after drop, word after word a tender slow-
ness is the tempo of these speeches.28 A tender slowness indeed, in which
Zarathustras wisdom presents itself as an understanding that God is a
thought, a supposition, while the Overhuman is a possibility that can actu-
ally be created by humans, though only through hard work and pain and
suffering, joyful begetting and the pangs of giving birth. He also catches a
glimpse of the wisdom that regards creating as the great redemption from
suffering and willing as the ultimate liberator and joy-bringer.
The next five speeches (2.37) constitute the first episode by intro-
ducing variations on the theme of wisdom, drawn from the Judeo-Christian
and modern democratic perspectives. Zarathustra understands these
perspectives because he himself has inhabited them earlier in his life, but
he now finds them wanting. In On Those Who Pity, he proposes that his
friends favour great love [which] overcomes forgiveness and pitying; in
On the Priests he confesses his being related to those brethren, and gently
ridicules their susceptibility to those whom the people call redeemers.
In On the Virtuous, he apologizes to them for depriving them of the ideals
of their immaturity reward, retribution, punishment, righteous
revenge while promising that the next wave from the sea of ideas will
shower them with new colorful seashells with which to play. Turning to
what Nietzsche sees as the extension of Christianity (as Platonism for the
people) into the modern period in the form of egalitarian democracy,
On the Rabble laments the way the rabbles pretensions towards ruling
and creating have co-opted politics and culture. On the Tarantulas exposes
the preachers of equality as vengeful spiders compensating for their own
impotence by poisoning the efforts of those more gifted than they. Near the
beginning of his expos, Zarathustra sounds a note of hope that anticipates
the return to the main theme, when he says, fortissimo: That humanity might
be redeemed from revenge : that is for me the bridge to the highest hope and a
rainbow after lasting storms (2.7).
With On the Famous Wise Men and the next four chapters (2.812),
Zarathustra returns to the theme of his Wild Wisdom. Here for the first
time he directly addresses his predecessors in the philosophical tradition as
You famous wise men. His speech is direct to the point of bluntness, insofar
as he accuses them (Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling?) of pandering
to the people and the peoples rulers while merely feigning a will to truth.
Having made of wisdom a poorhouse and hospital for wretched poets and
being now not driven by any strong wind or will, they are incapable of
following Zarathustras Wild Wisdom which goes across the sea like a sail,
rounded and swollen and trembling from the violence of the wind [and] of
the spirit (2.8).
At the beginning of the next three chapters The Night-Song, The
Dance-Song, The Grave-Song Zarathustra suddenly bursts into a new
mode of discourse: singing rather than speaking. Slow movements are
usually lyrical, and this section is as lyrical as philosophy can become. In EH,
Nietzsche calls the Night-Song the language of the dithyramb, the song
sung at ancient Greek festivals in honour of Dionysus.29 He writes of it as
the immortal lament that, through an abundance of light and power,
through ones sunlike nature, one is condemned not to love and then he
quotes the Night-Song (all 74 lines of it) in its entirety. Thus suffers a God,
a Dionysus, is his comment. The response to such a dithyramb of sunlike-
isolation in light would be Ariadne and we hear it near the symphonys
end, in On the Great Yearning (3.14).
Zarathustra characterizes the Dance-Song (2.10) as a mocking-song on
the Spirit of Heaviness, my supreme and most powerful Devil, and he sings
it for the God Cupid, or Eros, and some young maidens as they dance
together on a green meadow. There is no actual mention of the Spirit of
Heaviness in the song, though we do hear two new voices those of Life
and Zarathustras Wisdom personified as feminine figures as Zarathustra
tries to decide between them, and concludes that, while he is fond of
Wisdom, it is ultimately Life that he loves. (He is the opposite of the tradi-
tional Platonic philosopher, who loves wisdom so much as to demean life.)
His song mocks the Spirit of Heaviness presumably because Zarathustra
loves Life as changeable and wild and in all things a woman, and not a
virtuous one even though he is going to have to leave her in the end.
So, as he asks his friends when the song is over: Is it not folly to go on
living?
In The Grave-Song, (2.11) his wise mockery of the Spirit of Heaviness
(representative of Platonic-Christian wisdom) continues as he leaves the
Isles of the Blest and sails to the Isle of the Graves, where he will sing to the
visions and apparitions of [his] youth who are buried there. In singing this
song, Zarathustra becomes aware of his will as something invulnerable,
unburiable, within, something that can continue to break through all
graves! Appropriately directed, the will can resurrect what is unredeemed
from his youth, thereby making a mockery of the Spirit of Heaviness that
brings everything down to an earthy grave.
This reprise of the theme of wisdom culminates in the chapter On Self-
Overcoming (2.12), where Zarathustra addresses his most select audience,
you who are wisest, and intimates to them what Life has taught him (what
is the profoundest philosophical teaching in the book): that all life is will to
power, and that Life herself claims to be in her own words, fortissimo
that which must always overcome itself As perpetual self-overcoming, life
takes form in the wise as a constant process of reinterpretation which anni-
hilates old and creates new values.
The second episode (2.1318) examines various pretensions to wisdom:
about beauty and the sublime on the part of thinkers like Kant (On Those
Who Are Sublime), about culture and education by men of the present
(On the Land of Culture), about abstract knowledge of the world which is
untainted by passion (On Immaculate Perception), about the world in
general by scholars (On the Scholars) and poets (On the Poets), and
about the future on the part of political revolutionaries (On Great Events).
With quiet irony, Zarathustra shows, Socrates-like, all these pretensions to
be empty.
Then suddenly, without warning: . . . and I saw a great mournfulness
come over humankind. Another speech by one other than Zarathustra,
The Soothsayer (2.19). Zarathustra is transformed by hearing the darkly
nihilistic tidings: All is empty, all is the same, all has been! For three
days he took neither drink nor food, had no rest, and lost his speech,
fell into a deep sleep, and when he awoke he recounted a terrifying
dream that echoes, in a minor key, as it were, themes from The
Grave-Song. As a night- and grave-watchman in the lonely mountain-
castle of death, he is guarding glass coffins [containing] life that had
been overcome when a wind breaks open the castle gates and casts before
him a black coffin which bursts open and spews forth a thousand peals
of laughter from a thousand masks of children, angels, owls, fools, and
child-sized butterflies. His favourite disciple offers an optimistic inter-
pretation to the effect that Zarathustra is himself the wind and the coffin,
and will overcome by means of laughter all nihilistic death-weariness. But
Zarathustra refuses this interpretation, knowing that nihilism is not so
easily overcome.
The next chapter, On Redemption (2.20), shows the culmination of

Zarathustras wisdom in Part II, which affirms his premonition at the begin-
ning of the movement (2.2) of creating as the great redemption from
suffering and willing as the ultimate liberator and joy-bringer. Now he can
proclaim to his disciples: To redeem that which has passed away and to
re-create all It was into a That is how I wanted it! that alone should I
call redemption! The bridge to the highest hope, that humanity might be
redeemed from revenge (2.7), might be crossed now that Zarathustra real-
izes revenges profoundest form: the wills ill-will toward time and its
It was. The question remains keeping this section in a minor key
whether Zarathustra has recovered from the tarantulas bite, which
threatened to make his soul whirl with revenge (2.7). After all, he confessed
in The Night-Song to devising revenge himself (2.10). But his wisdom
asserts itself in the last sentences of his last speech in this chapter, which
contain the last mention in the book of will to power and bring that idea
together with the thought of eternal recurrence: Something higher than
any reconciliation the will that is will to power must will yet how shall this
happen? Who has taught it to will and want back as well?30 No one as yet
though Zarathustra will, as soon as his own will can unlearn the spirit of
revenge.
The last two chapters of Part II, On Human Prudence and The Stillest
Hour (2.2122), constitute a kind of coda to the slow movement. Having
given direct voice to his wisdom in the speech On Redemption,
Zarathustra now lowers the volume and intensity to talk about three
instances of a more modest attribute: his human prudence. And in the
final chapter the mood becomes quieter still as he prepares to leave his
friends again and return to his solitude, telling them of another dream, in
which he is addressed by his Stillest Hour who speaks to him 11 times but
always without voice. She urges him to say what he has learned from Life
and Wisdom and command great things, but to do so piano (or pianissimo)
rather than forte, on the grounds that: It is the stillest words that bring on
the storm. Thoughts that come on doves feet direct the world. But he
claims not to be ready, and after a bout of weeping he takes leave of his
friends once again.
Third movement
The third and last movement of the early classical symphony assumes a
variety of forms sonata-allegro, minuet (and trio), or scherzo and trio, or
rondo though the tempo is always fast (allegro to presto) and usually
dance-like. While it is possible to regard Part III of Zarathustra as having

a minuet/scherzo and trio structure (with chapters 911 as the trio), it
is more illuminating to see it as having the form of a rondo (A-B-A-C-A)
with chapters 14, 911, 1316 sounding the main theme (A) of eternal
recurrence, and chapters 58 and 12 supplying contrasting episodes
(B and C).
The Wanderer (3.1) shows Zarathustra speaking to his heart (as
Odysseus often does) while climbing the ridge of mountains on the Isles of
the Blest, standing on top contemplating the other sea on the far side, and
descending to the foot of the cliffs on the farther shore. When his Hour says
to him, Summit and abyss they are now joined in one! this anticipates
the finale with its conjunction of opposites that comes from thinking the
thought of eternal recurrence: the farthest to the nearest and fire to spirit
and joy to pain and the wickedest to the kindest (3.16 4).
The scene for the next three chapters (3.24) is on board a ship that
takes Zarathustra over the open sea back to the mainland. In On the Vision
and Riddle he recounts to the seafarers on board (whoever has embarked
with cunning sails upon terrifying seas) his first vision of eternal recur-
rence, in which the thought is intimated through a series of questions: Are
not all things knotted together so tightly that this moment draws after it all
things that are to come? Must we not eternally come back again? Who is
the shepherd into whose throat the snake thus crawled [and] all that is
heaviest and blackest will crawl? (3.2). The answer will come at the begin-
ning of the main themes final iteration in The Convalescent (3.13 2).
In the next speech, On Blissfulness Against Ones Will, Zarathustra speaks
to his jubilant conscience and rebuffs the blissful hour that has
approached him, since he knows that he has yet to find the lions voice
strong enough to summon up the thought of eternal recurrence.
In Before Sunrise (3.4), still out on the open sea, he addresses the open
Heaven above him shortly before dawn. Nietzsche later characterizes this
speech too as a dithyramb: Let one hear how Zarathustra talks to himself
before the sunrise: such emerald happiness, such divine tenderness was never
given voice before me.31 The speech touches on the profoundest matters,
insofar as Zarathustra evinces the supremely affirmative attitude towards
the world which comes from the thought of recurrence:
But this is my blessing: to stand over each and every thing as its own
Heaven, as its round roof, its azure bell and eternal security . . .
For all things are baptized at the fount of eternity and beyond good
and evil.
The speech ends with an affirmation of still deeper wisdom:
The world is deep and deeper than ever the day has thought.
The next four chapters (58) find Zarathustra back on terra firma, eager
to discover whether humanity has become greater or smaller during his
absence, and addressing an unspecified audience about what he finds.
In On the Virtue That Makes Smaller, he derides the peoples doctrine of
happiness and virtue, which has diminished human stature. As Zarathustra
the Godless, he brings his speech to a climax by fulminating like an Old
Testament prophet against the pathetic weariness of the people: Oh blessd
hour of lightning! Oh mystery before midday! Raging fires will I yet make
of them one day and heralds with tongues of flame.
The quietly lyrical interlude that follows, Upon the Mount of Olives
(3.6), was originally called The Winter Song and still ends with the refrain
Thus sang Zarathustra. The song recounts how he has learned to survive
in public by concealing his sun and unshakeable solar will beneath a veil
of wintry silence. Zarathustra addresses the last part to You snow-bearded
silent winter Heaven, echoing his ecstatic apostrophe to the light-abyss of
Heaven before sunrise and thanking the winter Heaven for teaching the
long and luminous silence.
On Passing By brings our speaker to the great city, where the foaming
fool known as Zarathustras ape delivers a harangue on the slaughter-
houses and soup-kitchens of the spirit (3.7). Zarathustras response
deprecates the revenge evidenced by the fools harangue, culminates in
another Old Testament fulmination: Woe unto this great city! And would
that I might already see the pillar of fire in which it will be consumed! But
it ends with a sudden drop in volume, with Zarathustras wise advice: Where
one can no longer love, there one should pass by! . This sets the tone for
the last speech in the episode, On Apostates, in which he chides with
gentle humour his former disciples who have become pious again.
He tells of how the Gods laughed themselves to death when one of them
claimed, There is one God! Thou shalt have no other God before me!
In response all the Gods laughed, shouting: Is just this not Godliness, that
there are Gods, but no God?
With The Return Home (3.9), Zarathustra comes back to the solitude of
his cave and to another feminine figure, Solitude so he is not alone and
he remains there until the end of Part III. This move also marks a return to
the theme of eternal recurrence (though it is not mentioned by name),
since in his solitude Zarathustra is able to speak, and hear himself speak,
a different language one that often speaks itself. As he says to his Solitude:
Here the words and word-shrines of all Being spring open for me: all Being
wants to become word here, all Becoming wants to learn from me here how
to talk. Practice in listening for and speaking such words is necessary for
his being able to summon and give voice to the thought of eternal
recurrence.
The speech On the Three Evils (apparently addressed to his Solitude)
begins with a dream in which Zarathustra weighs the things of the world
anew, and revalues traits that have traditionally been denigrated: sensuality,
the lust to rule, and selfishness. In the light of eternal recurrence, which
affirms the innocence of becoming, these apparent vices can be seen to be
virtues. Once more the culmination is biblical in tone (though now New
Testament): But for all these [world-weary cowards and cross-spiders] the
day is now at hand, the transformation, the sword of judgment, the Great
Midday: then shall much be revealed!
In the next speech, On the Spirit of Heaviness (3.11), Zarathustra
takes on his arch-enemy whose task is to impede the self-love and self-
knowledge that are necessary for affirming eternal recurrence. Since
much that is in the human being is like an oyster: namely, disgusting and
slippery and hard to grasp, the self-knowledge that is the prerequisite for
self-love is difficult to attain not least because the Spirit of Heaviness
wants to impose a fixed, traditional standard upon all. But he has discov-
ered himself who can say: This is my good and evil; with that he has struck
dumb the mole and dwarf who says: Good for all, evil for all. In the
light of eternal recurrence, one realizes that (ones) evil is necessary for
and necessarily connected with (ones) good, so that to affirm one is to
affirm the other. Yet, what is to be cultivated is affirmation on the basis of
taste, to avoid the slack quietism of all-contentment, which is inclined to
chew and digest everything truly the way of swine! Cultivation of taste
requires a questioning and trying out of many ways, which leads to the
statement of judicious pluralism with which this speech and section
conclude:
This is just my way: where is yours? Thus I answered those who asked
of me the way. For the way does not exist!
The next chapter, On Old and New Tablets (3.12) is by far the longest
in the book, though its division into 30 short sections lends it a tempo suit-
able for an episode in the fast final movement of a symphony. While the
first five sections seem continuous with the preceding three chapters,
insofar as Zarathustra is recounting himself to himself in solitude, the

tone changes with the sixth, which begins O my brothers, and ushers in a
long series of speeches in which Zarathustra addresses an imaginary
audience of his brothers in preparation for going down to humanity once
again.32 Some two dozen previous themes return here, some appearing on
old tablets that are to be broken, others on new tablets that are to be brought
down to humanity, even the occasional new tablet that already deserves to
be shattered. Remember that such tablets are the voices of will to power
(1.15). Towards the end of the episode, Zarathustras voice reaches its
highest pitch when he inveighs against the good and the righteous who
crucify [the creator] who writes new values on new tablets (3.12 26). The
good and the righteous thus pose the greatest danger for all human future,
so Zarathustra shouts fortissimo: Shatter, shatter for me the good and the righ-
teous! O my brothers, have you understood these words too? ( 27). Surely
the hardest tablet for his imagined disciples to swallow. But with the last
speech, which Zarathustra addresses to his Will, comes a diminuendo
although the wild richness of the poetic imagery here reaches an intensity
as high as anything in the book.
The last four climactic chapters (1316) return to the theme of eternal
recurrence, as we see Zarathustra finally confront and incorporate the
thought. The confrontation nearly kills him, and it takes seven days for the
supine convalescent to recover just enough time for a Buddha to attain
Enlightenment or a God to create a world (3.13 2). His eagle and serpent
speak for the first time in the book, addressing seven speeches to
Zarathustra in which they encourage him to sing instead of speak, and to
fashion a new lyre for his new songs. He replies to the first six, but by the
time they finish the seventh he lay still with his eyes closed . . . conversing
with his soul. That conversation is recounted in the next chapter, On the
Great Yearning (3.14).
The last three highly lyrical chapters show us a Zarathustra who has
successfully confronted and incorporated the thought of eternal recur-
rence. They also echo, in sequence, the previous three most lyrical chapters
in the book, the Night-Song, Dance-Song, and Grave-Song from
Part II, which anticipated the transformation of Zarathustras will as a
force that will break through all graves and resurrect what is unre-
deemed from [his] youth (2.11). The original title of On the Great
Yearning (3.14) was Ariadne, which signals that the great releaser that
Zarathustra tells his soul (Ariadne) to anticipate is Dionysus. After he
reminds his soul of all he has given her, she replies to the Night-Songs
lament over the wretchedness of all who bestow by asking him: Should
the giver not be thankful that the taker has taken? Is bestowing not a need?
Is taking not being merciful? In The Night-Song, he had called his
soul the song of a lover, and now at the end of The Great Yearning he
exhorts her to sing. She obliges with The Other Dance-Song (3.15) in
which Zarathustra, wearing the mask of Dionysus, asserts his mastery over
the Maenad Life.
The tempo of this song, with its rhyming couplets in irregularly syncopated
rhythms, calls attention to its briskness at the end, when Zarathustra sings:
You shall dance and also scream to my whip-cracks brisk tempo! I did not
forget the whip, did I? No! The song also has overtones of the duets
between Don Jos and Carmen in Bizets opera (perhaps the best opera
there is), which Nietzsche heard many times in the two years before he wrote
this chapter.33 Life then confesses her love for Zarathustra and her jealousy
of his Wisdom yet is candid in admitting that, if his Wisdom were to leave
him, she would too. After all, so she claims, Zarathustra is not true enough to
her, entertaining thoughts of leaving her, of dying, whenever he hears the
ancient heavy heavy booming-bell strike the 12 strokes of midnight.
Each of the first 11 strokes precedes a line of the most famous poem
Nietzsche wrote, O Mensch! Gieb Acht! which Gustav Mahler set to
profoundly haunting music in his Third Symphony. But after the twelfth
stroke is silence, the silence of the grave which precedes the joyful and
triumphant final song, The Seven Seals (or: The Yea- and Amen-Song),
which hymns the resurrection and mystic marriage of Zarathustra/Dionysus
and Life/Ariadne in a finale that recalls numerous themes from throughout
the work. Since this is now Zarathustras ultimate victory over the Spirit of
Heaviness, the last words are spoken by the bird-wisdom of the one who
has finally learned to fly: Are all words not made for those who are heavy?
Do all words not lie for one who is light! Sing! speak no more! And then,
sung for the seventh time, the refrain:
Oh how should I not lust after eternity and after the nuptial ring of all
rings the ring of recurrence?
Never yet have I found the woman from whom I wanted children, except
for this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!
For I love you, O Eternity!
This love is not of the eternal life promised by the New Testament for the
world to come,34 but is rather love for this radically ephemeral life that
eternally recreates itself at every moment.
Coda
Therefore, what do we learn from trying to read and hear Zarathustra as

music, and to discern its symphonic structure? When Nietzsche tells us that
a condition for understanding the wisdom in the book is that One has
above all to hear properly the tone, this halcyon tone, that issues from
[Zarathustras] mouth, he is suggesting that the meaning of the text is
conveyed not only by the syntax and semantics of the language but also by
its music. In the book that he wrote to elucidate the meaning of Zarathustra,
Nietzsche emphasizes the importance of listening with the third ear if one
is to appreciate the art in every good sentence:
A misunderstanding of its tempo, for example and the sentence itself is

misunderstood! Let there be no doubt about the rhythmically decisive
syllables . . . let us lend a subtle and patient ear to every staccato, every
rubato, let us divine the meaning in the sequence of vowels and diph-
thongs and how delicately and richly they can take on colour and change
colour as they follow each other.35
This passage suggests we are unlikely to divine Nietzsches meaning unless

we read Zarathustra aloud, paying close attention with the reading ear to
how the sentences sound over time in the imagination. Taking our cue from
Nietzsches claim, I have always written my writings with my whole body
and life, we can try reading with more of our bodies than usual.36 We can
enlist the musculature in the process of reading by letting the pitch and
tempo of the imagery faintly innervate a play of the muscles, in a variation
of the ideokinesis practised by dancers. At the beginning of the book,
Zarathustra is said to walk like a dancer, and at the end we hear, as if from
a new book of Revelation, his Alpha and Omega: that all that is heavy
become light, all body become dancer, all spirit become bird.37
The better ones sense of Zarathustras symphonic structure, the more, quite
simply, one can appreciate the work. Some aspects of the books structure
remain indistinct: why, for instance, is this particular chapter right here,
following that chapter and preceding the one after? To the extent that one
can imagine the kind of symphony Nietzsche had in mind when he was writing
Zarathustra, one can more fully experience, somatically as well as imagina-
tively, the myriad interrelations and correspondences that inform the book.
Considerations of space restrict the amount of resolution possible in this
chapter, which is just a preliminary outline but one that calls for other
eyes and ears to make out, and other voices and hands to fill in, the worlds
of detail in Nietzsches masterpiece.
Chapter 2
Thus Spoke Zarathustra as Nietzsches

Autobiography
Thomas Brobjer
Thus Spoke Zarathustra is probably Nietzsches most read work, but it is rarely
dealt with in scholarly and philosophical discussions of Nietzsches thinking.
This is largely due to its unsuitable style Nietzsche himself refers to the
book both as poetry and as a symphony and many modern commentators
are highly disturbed by its prophetic and metaphorical nature. Nonethe-
less, this lack of serious discussions of Z is problematic. Not only did
Nietzsche see it as his most important work but it also contains all the major
motifs of his later thinking.
In this chapter, I wish to address and summarize our knowledge of some
of the preconditions necessary for an adequate understanding and philo-
sophical discussion of this work. For this purpose, one needs to ask and
answer questions like why Nietzsche praised Z so excessively. What made
him make such exorbitant claims that it is the book of books and that it will
divide mankind into two parts, and why did he spend almost the whole of
his autobiography Ecce Homo quoting and praising the work to an embar-
rassing extent? Why did Nietzsche regard Z as being superior and standing
alone and apart among his works? What does Z contain which is not in
Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, Twilight of the Idols, and
the like?
The answer cannot merely be a stylistic one, that it contains more poetry.
Nor can it be the philosophical content, for there has been no convincing
claims that Z contains philosophical material which is not to be found in his
other late works. Related to these question is the question who is
Nietzsches Zarathustra? This question, most famously posed by Heidegger,
has received many answers; a Persian founder of religions, Heraclitus, a
prophet, a poet, Empedocles, man or mankind, the future of man or
mankind, and the like. Nietzsche himself answered the question as a sort of
reverse Zoroaster.1 There is some truth in all these suggestions, but none of
them is sufficient. There exists a much better and more accurate answer,
seen by some, but surprisingly often forgotten or ignored. Nietzsches

Zarathustra is Nietzsche! Or better, Nietzsches Zarathustra is the subli-
mated Nietzsche! The answer may at first appear almost trivial and
platitudinous. Of course, Nietzsche is behind Zarathustra. Just like Goethe
is behind Faust, Thomas Mann behind Adrian Leverkhn, and Robert
Musil behind Ulrich. However, I want to show that Nietzsches Z is autobio-
graphical to a much greater extent than these other works and than has
been realized, and that this has consequences. Furthermore, where most
novelists and poets base their figures on some kind of model, or on phan-
tasy, Nietzsche consciously constructed Zarathustra out of himself, out of his
experiences, and his thinking. This claim says something important about
how Nietzsche worked, how he thought one should work, and it has conse-
quences for how one should read the book. I believe that there is no need
to question the almost total agreement between Nietzsches and
Zarathustras teachings unlike in the case of GoetheFaust, Mann
Leverkhn, MusilUlich. To mention just one example, in EH Nietzsche
writes: On one occasion Zarathustra strictly defines his task it is also
mine.2 No convincing important difference between Nietzsches and
Zarathustras teachings has been proposed.3 The main teachings of Z are in
very brief summary the death of God and the bermensch in book one, the
will to power in book two, the idea of eternal recurrence in book three, and
the danger of pity in book four.
I will also show and discuss that in spite of the fact that Nietzsche was very
satisfied with Z, he nonetheless strove and had specific plans to go beyond
this work and this symbol.
I will attempt to show the extent to which Z is based on Nietzsches own
life and his view of Bildung and self-development: first by summarizing many
of Nietzsches own statements about Z and thereafter by showing some of
the many parallels between Nietzsches and Zarathustras lives. I will then
briefly mention some of Nietzsches fairly extensive relevant reading at the
time of writing the book and which are likely to have influenced it. I will in
that section thus relate Z back to Nietzsches reading, and to his life and
biography. Thereafter, I will discuss the place of Z among his other works
and then finally draw some conclusions.
The extent to which Z is based on Nietzsches life can be seen in a number

of different ways. We see it in his own claims about the book, in the many
Zarathustra as Nietzsches Autobiography 31
parallels which exist between his life and the stories in the book (even if
most of them are hidden), and we see it in the manner in which Nietzsche
worked, that is, by continually using his own experiences for his thinking
and writing. Consistent with this, we can also note that Nietzsche wrote a
very large number of autobiographies, the first (a long and impressive one)
already at the age of 14,4 thereafter about six or seven further ones before
he finally wrote EH. It is not wholly inappropriate to see Z as a symbolic
autobiography, one that requires explication and interpretation to fully
disclose how intimately it relates to his life. This seems also to be Nietzsches
view. Not only does he state that it is his most personal book5 but he also
frequently claims that to understand it one needs to have gone through the
experiences it is based on: And to feel with it, for that several generations
are necessary, who first catch up with the inner experiences upon which it
is founded.6
Furthermore, this tendency to use himself and his experiences can be
seen in that he in his published writings often includes little hidden mini-
autobiographies. To take just one such example which seems to have
escaped most readers notice, 272 of Human, All Too Human, called
Annual rings of individual culture, where he not only describes in some
detail his own intellectual development but also generalizes it so that it is no
longer obvious to what a great extent it is his own development he describes;
with his religious upbringing, Emersonian pantheism, Schopenhauerian
and Kantian metaphysics, thereafter an aesthetical metaphysics inspired by
Lange, and the break with metaphysics and idealism to positivism which
occurred in 1875/76, at the age of thirty/thirty-one:
Men at present begin by entering the realm of culture as children

affected religiously, and these sensations are at their liveliest in
perhaps their tenth year, then pass over into feebler forms
(pantheism) while at the same time drawing closer to science; they
put God, immortality and the like quite behind them but fall prey to
the charms of a metaphysical philosophy. At last they find this, too,
unbelievable; art, on the other hand, seems to promise them more
and more, so that for a time metaphysics continues just to survive
transformed into art or as a mood of artistic transfiguration. But the
scientific sense grows more and more imperious and leads the man
away to natural science and history and especially to the most
rigorous methods of acquiring knowledge, while art is accorded an
ever gentler and more modest significance. All this nowadays usually
takes place within a mans first thirty years.7
An interest in biographical and autobiographical texts and material,

including journals and letters, is also prominent in Nietzsches reading,
and such books are common in his library. It is an important part of
Nietzsches psychological approach to philosophy and of his manner of
working.
Nietzsches intensive personal relationship to the work Z, much more so
than was ever the case with any of his other works, is visible in many notes
and letters at the time of its conception. The work is not just a way for
Nietzsche to state his philosophy but also the expression of profoundly
personal experiences as well as the overcoming of these often negative
experiences. Nietzsche, for example, writes about it: sometime everyone
shakes his heart out,8 in the details there is unbelievably much which is
personally experienced and suffered in it, which is only comprehensible to
me,9 and everything which I have thought, suffered and hoped is in it, and
in a manner such that my life will appear justified.10 He also refers to Z as a
sort of bloodletting which helped him recover his health after the Lou-,
Re- and family affair of 1882/83.11 Along the same lines, he writes in a
letter to his sister on 29 August 1883 (after having finished the second book
and working on the proofs of it): . . . and behind almost every word there
is a personal experience, a self-overcoming. In 1887, he writes to Overbeck
and says that his whole Z is grown out of a lack of friends, sympathy,
and love.12 In the poem at the end of Beyond Good and Evil (1886) he states
that Zarathustra was born out of himself after he had been too long in
solitude:
This song is done desires sweet cry died on the lips: a sorcerer did it,
the timely friend, the midday friend no! ask not who he is at midday
it happened, at midday one became two . . . friend Zarathustra.13
Nietzsche also frequently refers to Zarathustra as his son,14 and to himself as

Zarathustras father (and sometimes mother),15 and occasionally he refers
to Zarathustra when he is actually referring to himself or wants to explain
himself.16 He claims that only those who have lived through similar experi-
ences can understand Z,
When Doctor Heinrich von Stein once honestly complained that he

understood not one word of my Zarathustra, I told him that was quite
in order: to have understood, that is to say experienced, six sentences of
that book would raise one to a higher level of mortals than modern
man could attain to.17
While discussing the third and fourth Unzeitgemsse Betrachtungen about

Schopenhauer and Wagner in EH, he admits that these texts are really
much more about himself than about them:
It was in this way that Plato employed Socrates, as a semiotic for

Plato. Now, when I look back from a distance at the circumstances of
which these essays are a witness, I would not wish to deny that funda-
mentally they only speak of me. . . . admitting that what is being spoken
of is fundamentally not Schopenhauer as Educator but his opposite,
Nietzsche as Educator.18
This is certainly still truer for Z. He also explicitly admits that it is highly
personal and it is created out of his reality:
The great poet creates only out of his own reality to the point at which
he is afterwards unable to endure his own work. . . . When I have taken
a glance at my Zarathustra I walk up and down my room for half an
hour unable to master an unendurable spasm of sobbing.19
There can be no doubt that Nietzsche felt that Z closely reflected not
just his philosophy but also his life and his development and self-
overcomings.
This is also how it was received by his friends and family. Erwin Rohde, for
example, wrote back: The wise Persian is you,20 and his sister Elisabeth
referred to Zarathustra as identical with Nietzsche already before the book
was written.21
II
On first impression, there are few similarities between Nietzsche and

Zarathustra, except that Z is situated in a metaphorical landscape with few
connections to nineteenth-century Europe. However, on a closer look, and
underneath the surface, there are ample parallels between Nietzsches life
and development and those ascribed to Zarathustra.
Like Nietzsche, Zarathustra longs for company, praises friendship,
although having difficulty finding it, hesitates to teach eternal recurrence,
and has as his most terrible threat, pity.22 Both have been scholars but have
moved beyond that stage. Both are poets, although critical of mere poets.
Both have spent too much time in solitude and long to be human again.
They both live a life of chastity, but know the power of sexuality. Both had
little experience of women but know the power of this cat-like being. They
both are apolitical and avoid mass society and the flies at the marketplace.
Both are destroyers of morality, but lived very moral lives. Both love
walking, especially among mountains. Both have an ambivalent view of
followers and disciples, but nonetheless strove intensively to acquire
them. Both have believed beyond the world, in a God, but realized that this
was only a symptom of human suffering, and both proclaimed the death of
God. Both prefer water to alcohol, and both live satisfied in modest poverty.
Let us finish this listing, which could be made much longer, by two of the
most specific similarities but which require a little interpretation both
have been followers of Schopenhauer, the prophet, and been liberated by
life-affirmation from his pessimism,23 and been influenced and awed by
Wagner, the sorcerer.24
Let us examine a few sections from Z, and discuss the parallels between
Nietzsches and Zarathustras lives.
1. Nietzsches first relevant reference to Zarathustra occurs in August
1881, and is as follows:
Zarathustra, born at the lake Urmi, left his home when he was thirty
years old, and went to the province of Aria and wrote there, during ten
years of solitude in the mountains, the Zend-Avesta.25
This is slightly rewritten in the Prologue of Z (and thus also in Die frhliche
Wissenschaft, 342):
When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of
his home and went into the mountains. Here he had the enjoyment of
his spirit and his solitude and did not weary of it for ten years.
Nietzsche found the figure of Zarathustra in his reading of the cultural

historian and anthropologist Friedrich von Hellwalds Culturgeschichte in
ihrer natrlichen Entstehung bis zur Gegenwart (Augsburg, 1874, 2nd. edn
1875), 839 pages, in the summer of 1881.26 Nietzsches first reference to
Zarathustra in 1881, quoted above, is an excerpt from this work.
Zarathustra . . . was born in the town of Urmi, by the lake of the same
name . . . At the age of thirty, he left his home, went eastwards to the
province of Aria and spent there in the mountains ten years in solitude
and occupied himself with composing the Zend-Avesta.27
There has been extensive discussions not only about why Nietzsche selected
Zarathustra as his spokesman but also about such details as to why he chose
thirty years old and a ten year period of solitude. Attempts have been
made to link them to Nietzsches own life. However, in this case this is not
correct. Nietzsche found and picked up the figure of Zarathustra from
Hellwald and borrowed some traits from this work.
On the following three pages after having introduced Zarathustra,
Hellwald refers to a number of other aspects of Zarathustras teaching,
which Nietzsche made use of: We thus for the first time encounter among
the ancient Iranians the delusion of a moral world-order, an idea to which
only higher developed peoples reach, and which influence on the develop-
ment of culture has been of incalculable value.28 Compare Nietzsches
explanation to why he chose Zarathustra as his spokesman in EH:
I have not been asked, as I should have been asked, what the name
Zarathustra means in precisely my mouth, in the mouth of the first
immoralist: for what constitutes the tremendous uniqueness of that
Persian in history is precisely the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the
first to see in the struggle between good and evil the actual wheel in
the working of things: the translation of morality into the realm of
metaphysics, as force, cause, end-in-itself, as his work. . . . Zarathustra
created the most fateful of errors, morality: consequently he must also
be the first to recognize it. . . . the whole of history is indeed the experi-
mental refutation of the proposition of a so-called moral world-order -:
what is more important is that Zarathustra is more truthful than any
other thinker. His teaching, and his alone, upholds truthfulness as the
supreme virtue.29
In Hellwalds account of Zarathustra there are several further aspects that

Nietzsche picked up and used in Z, such as that Zarathustra addresses the sun,
the praise of truth and honesty, and that life is struggle (will to power).30
It is not unlikely that Hellwalds book, which Nietzsche seems to have
read three times, with its strong emphasis on struggle, sympathy for aristoc-
racy (in different forms), and its critique of religion, also more generally
influenced many other aspects of Z, but that appears not to have been well
examined. For example, especially the first book of Z (and in particular the
concept of bermensch) appears rather Darwinian-inspired to many readers.
Nietzsche later, in EH, repudiates this, but it is not wholly improbable that
he was more influenced by Hellwalds Darwinism than he was aware of.31
Some specific aspects of Z is thus less autobiographical than has generally

been believed.
2. The perhaps most memorable and most discussed and quoted passage
in the first book of Z is the first one after the prologue, Of the Three
Metamorphoses, in which Zarathustra speaks about the three stages of
the development of the spirit or the soul; camel, lion, and child.32 This
whole passage is in fact modelled on Nietzsches view of his own develop-
ment, which he already held at this time and later discusses in several late
prefaces and in EH.33 It is thus reasonable to closely associate the metamor-
phoses of the spirit with Nietzsches view of his own development.
3. An important background for the whole of Z is that Nietzsche had
been deserted by his beloved Lou Salom and his friend Paul Re in
October or November 1882 and at this time also had a severely strained
relationship with his mother and sister over Lou, whom they regarded as
immoral. His writing of the first book of Z, in January 1883, was part of his
self-treatment of this personal catastrophe.34 We have some indications
that the most well known and infamous part of Z, the whip-scene in the
section Of Old and Young Women in the first book of Z, where
Nietzsche lets an old woman give Zarathustra a little truth: Are you
visiting women? Do not forget the whip! has its origin in connection with
this episode.
The first time we encounter a whip, a man, and a woman together in
connection with Nietzsche is before he wrote Z, when Lou Salom, Paul
Re, and Nietzsche took the famous photograph of the three of them
where, on Nietzsches suggestion, Re and he were placed as draught
animals before Lou, standing in a small cart with a makeshift whip in her
hand. This surely reflects Nietzsches and their playfulness but also again
playfully that men can be made into fools (animals) by women (and love).
In Z, Nietzsche now reverses the scene, and lets the whip be directed at Lou.
At least Resa von Schirnhofer claims that Nietzsche told her shortly after Z
had been published, that the scene should not be understood
as generally applicable, but as referring to a single particular (but not
named) person that is clearly, Lou Salom.35 It is probably this sort
of sublimated revenge feelings, also directed at his own family, that
Nietzsche referred to when he in his letter to Overbeck, 25 December 1882
states:
This last bit of life was the hardest that I so far have chewed through, and
it is still possible that I will choke of it. . . . If I do not find the alchemist
trick also of making gold also out of this shit then I will be lost. I here
have the very best opportunity to prove that to me all experience are
valuable, all days holy and all men divine!!!!!
This last sentence, a quotation from Emerson, will return in the next
example.
Another stimulus to the whole idea and for the advice of the old woman
is given by Elisabeth Frster-Nietzsches account of the origin of the whip-
scene in her two-volume biography of Nietzsche.36 She there describes
how she in early 1882 read Ivan Turgenevs short story First Love to
Nietzsche, which is about a young man who falls in love with an attractive,
capricious, and spoilt woman, Zinaida, some years older than he, who in
turn, however, falls in love with his father. In one scene, the father hits
her (once) with a horse-whip, but she continues to love him. Elisabeth
claims that Nietzsche reacted negatively to this scene and objected to the
fathers behaviour, but that she defended it and argued that some women
need to have the threat of a symbolic whip to prevent them from misbe-
having. One or two years later she read in Nietzsches presence Z for the
first time, and, with dismay, called out to him: Oh, Fritz, I am the old
woman, to which Nietzsche laughingly answered that he would not tell
anyone.37
4. In The Funeral Song Zarathustra discusses all the visions and conso-
lations of my youth and vaguely mentions a large number of events from
Nietzsches life and childhood.38 The text is based around some words by
Emerson, which Nietzsche frequently quoted and made into the motto of
Die frhliche Wissenschaft : To the poet and sage, all things are friendly and
hallowed, all experience profitable, all days holy, all men divine. He, among
others, mentions Lou Salom and his high expectations on her,39 his family
(my kindred and neighbours) who turned into abscesses and trials, that
Re lured away my favourite singer, his sleepless nights, the mental
anguish, and several other events.
Many other episodes could in a similar manner be referred back to
Nietzsches life.40 In the section The Prophet, Nietzsche describes his first
response to Schopenhauer, and his emancipation from his teaching. The
description of the dream where Zarathustra cries Alpa! Alpa! Who is
bearing his ashes to the mountain? is taken from one of Nietzsches own
dreams, which he had told Reinhart von Seylitz about in the summer of
1877.41 The episode of the howling dog in Of the Vision and the Riddle
goes back to memories of hearing a dog bark when Nietzsche, only five
years old, found his father collapsed. Several of the episodes of the first four
sections of the third book are apparently based on his experiences during
the remarkable sea journey from Genoa to Messina on Sicily, from 29 March
to 1 April 1882, when he was taken as the sole passenger on a sailing
ship.42
III
Z differs from all of Nietzsches other works in that there are no explicit
references to other authors or books in it. This makes it appear much more
isolated and entirely created out of Nietzsches own thinking than was
really the case. One of the tasks of a commentator on Nietzsche is to expose
or uncover aspects and influences not visible on the surface level of the
text. In this section, I will briefly mention some of the many hidden literary
influences on the work.
Nietzsche claims in EH that he wrote, at least the first three parts of Z in
about ten intensive and inspired days each (the first and second parts were
written in JanuaryJuly 1883, the third part in January 1884, and the fourth
and final part during JanuaryMarch 1885, and published in May and
September 1883, April 1884, and April 1885 respectively). This claim may
in some ways be true but it also gives the wrong impression. He had found
the fundamental idea of the work already in August 1881 when he discov-
ered the idea of eternal recurrence,43 and at least by 1882 he knew that he
was going to write a work like Z.44 His notes from 1882 onwards contains
extensive drafts to such a work, and some of his extensive reading at the
time shows that he was searching for ideas and impulses for such a work.45
The work is also much more closely argued than one would assume if it
were written in just a few inspired days. Nietzsche had prepared the first
book for over a year, but the pieces fell together in ten intensive creative
days. He will later claim that Jenseits von Gut und Bse and Zur Genealogie der
Moral are sorts of commentaries to Z, and written in preparation for this
work. In several ways this is correct, including in that they are based on the
same notes and reading as lay behind Z.
There probably exist a large number of stylistic influences which stimu-
lated Nietzsche to write the work in the prophetic-metaphorical-poetic
manner he did. Most relevant are, apart from Hellwald, Nietzsches
continual parody of the Bible (Old and New Testament) which is well
known and visible throughout the book. However, there also exist other
important probable stimuli, such as Siegfried Lipiners Der entfesselte
Prometheus: Eine Dichtung in 5 Gesngen (Leipzig, 1876), and Carl Spittelers
Prometheus und Epimetheus [1881] (he published his poetry under the
pseudonym Carl Felix Tandem), but their influence have not been firmly
established and no consensus exists.46 Other major suggested and probable
influences on the book are Emerson, Hlderlin, Goethe, Wagner, and
Schopenhauer.
Many other lesser influences exist, or influences for specific themes or
sections, for example: Oldenberg, Kerner, Hartmann, Lecky, Pascal (from
whom he probably took the figure and story of the tightrope walker),
Spinoza, Burckhards Der Cicerone, Roux, Mantegazza, Byron, Baumann,
Vogt, Galton, Taine, Turgenevs First Love, and Prosper Mrimes Carmen.47
I have attempted to make some of this material known by listing and briefly
discussing all of Nietzsches known reading until shortly before he wrote Z
in a previous publication.48
IV
I will in this section deal with a different, but related, question to that of the
rest of the chapter: What is the place of Z among Nietzsches corpus? Was
it, in his own view, his best and most important book? The answer to this
question seems to be that it undoubtedly was. Nietzsches own praise of the
work seems to make it inevitable that he regarded it as his foremost:
He calls it a non plus ultra and claims that it is the most important work that
exists and states that it is the most profound book that humankind
possesses.49 Furthermore, following Nietzsches own view of his develop-
ment (as also reflected in the three metamorphoses) we can see that it
represented Nietzsches coming to himself and his synthesis; after the too
romantic and idealistic first phase and the too positivistic second phase. His
praise of Z in his last book, EH, which he largely wrote between October
and November 1888 but continued to revise until his mental collapse in
early January 1889, was extreme, and he throughout the book quotes from
and refers to Z. In letters he states that the purpose of EH is to get people
to discover and better understand Z emphasizing the importance he
placed on this work.
That he regarded the works written after Z as less important is patent. We
know that he regarded the next two books, Jenseits von Gut und Bse and Zur
Genealogie der Moral, as commentaries to Z, and as preparatory for under-
standing it.50 This was also true for the fifth book of Die frhliche Wissenschaft,
added in 1887.51 That he regarded these books as preparatory for Z, can, for
example, be seen in what was meant to be the last section of Zur Genealogie
der Moral, after having described his desire for the man of the future who
will restore its goal to the earth and his hope to man; this Antichrist and
antinihilist; the victor over God and nothingness he must come one day:
But what am I saying? Enough! Enough! At this point it behooves me

only to be silent; or I shall usurp that to which only one younger, heavier
with future, and stronger than I has a right that to which only
Zarathustra has a right, Zarathustra the godless . . . 52
The mostly short later books, Der Fall Wagner, Gtzen-Dmmerung, Nietzsche
contra Wagner, and Dionysos-Dithyramben he viewed as minor works, confir-
ming the view that Z was without doubt his magnum opus.
Nevertheless, this story does not give the full truth. Nietzsche already
from early on, from 1882 to 84, wanted to go beyond Z, in the sense of
writing something more conventionally argued about his new philosophy
and eternal recurrence, and in the sense of going one step further. This
is the major project Nietzsche worked on the last four or five years of his
life, entitled Midday and Eternity, The Eternal Recurrence, The Will
to Power, and finally Revaluation of All Values. It is this project that he
repeatedly refers to as his Hauptwerk, his main work or magnum opus.53
This project was never completed, but this intention and this project
gave direction to his work and thought during the last years of his life.
Thus, even the figure and the book Zarathustra was meant to be
preparatory.
In early 1884, after he had finished Z in three parts (he had no definite
plans to continue it until late 1884), he clearly had plans to write a greater
work in which he planned to elaborate on his idea of eternal recurrence,54
and on his critique of morality he certainly wrote down a large number of
titles for such a work in 1884 and 1885. It is at this time that his intention to
write a Hauptwerk becomes explicit as can be seen in four letters where
Nietzsche speaks of Z as merely an entrance hall to his philosophy, and
that he was working on the main building. In a letter to Meysenbug, end of
March 1884, he writes that he has finished his Z and calls that work an
entrance hall to my philosophy built for me, to give me courage, and he
hints at that he is working on the main building by claiming that he was
working on the book of my life [das Werk meines Lebens].
In three further letters he refers to Z as merely the Vorhalle to his philos-
ophy, and to his strong sense of purpose and mission.55 It seems clear that
he had in mind a more philosophical (and less metaphorical) work than Z,
but which, in all likelihood, would elaborate on the same fundamental
ideas.
If I get to Sils Maria in the summer, I mean to set about revising my

metaphysical and epistemological views. I must now proceed step by
step through a series of disciplines, for I have decided to spend the next
five years on an elaboration of my philosophy, the entrance hall of
which I have built with my Zarathustra.56
A month later, he repeats the intention to work on a Hauptwerk, then

referred to as Haupt-Bau, that is main building.
Now, after that I for me have built this entrance hall to my philosophy,
I will have to start again and not grow tired until the main building also
stands finished before me.57
In fact, this was not only an intention, for during much of 1884 Nietzsche
actually planned and worked on this Hauptwerk or main building of his
philosophy.58 At this early stage, it seems most frequently to have been called
Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence as title or subtitle as was still the case in
1888, as we will see below. In early autumn, Nietzsche seems to confirm that
he had fulfilled his plans:
I have practically finished the main task which I set myself for this
summer; the next six years will be for working out a scheme which I
have sketched for my philosophy. It has gone well and looks
hopeful.59
During 1885, Nietzsche continued to plan and prepare for producing a

Hauptwerk. From the autumn of 1886 after having finished Jenseits von
Gut und Bse Nietzsche began to refer to the projected major work explicitly
as his magnum opus, his Hauptwerk, and he now has a better grasp of what it
ought to contain after having drafted titles and contents in his notebooks for
several years. He began to call it Der Wille zur Macht in August or September
1885 which it would continue to be called for the next three years, and which
he felt certain enough about to have published on the back cover of Jenseits
von Gut und Bse as a work in preparation, and to his sister he writes:60
For the coming 4 years the working out of a four-volume magnum opus
[Hauptwerks] has been announced; already the title is enough to raise
fears: The Will to Power. Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values. For its
sake I have need of everything, good health, solitude, good spirits,
perhaps a wife.61
Nietzsche continued to work on this project during the following two years;
sometimes feeling that things were going well, at other times being more
dejected and frustrated:
Ah, everything in my life is so uncertain and shaky, and always this

horrible ill health of mine! On the other hand, there is the hundred-
weight of this need pressing upon me to create a coherent structure of
thought during the next few years and for this I need five or six precon-
ditions, all of which seem to be missing now or to be unattainable.62
During the autumn of 1888, shortly before his collapse, he mostly felt that
he was moving forward well, as can be seen in several letters, with claims
such as: My life is now coming to a terrific confrontation, which has been
long in preparation: that which I will do in the next two years is such that it
will overthrow our whole present order.63
For what was Z to be preparatory? For what was it an entrance hall?
The most reasonable answer is for the project Revaluation of All Values
and the philosophy of Dionysos. In the context of this present book on
Z, my somewhat provocative claim is that there existed for Nietzsche a
still higher state, figure, and book than Zarathustra. This latter was to be
overcome and transcended, just as Nietzsche had planned to have him
killed in the continuation of the book.64 Zarathustra, after all, is just a
prophet, Dionysos a god! That is, a still higher manifestation of
Nietzsche himself. In 1888, although Nietzsche praises Z excessively,
Zarathustra only represents how far he has come philosophically during
18831887/88 in his published books, while Dionysos represents where
he is going (and to some of his notes during these years). This is also
reflected in that the collection of poems he gave out early in 1889, which
was long intended to be entitled Songs of Zarathustra, but was now
renamed to Dionysos-Dithyramben. This new emphasis on Dionysos as
symbol for his philosophy is visible in Gtzen-Dmmerung where he
writes:
A spirit thus emancipated stands in the midst of the universe with a

joyful and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only what is separated
and individual may be rejected, that in the totality everything is
redeemed and affirmed he no longer denies . . . But such a faith is
the highest of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name
Dionysos.65
In the section following one after this one, which was originally going to be
the last section and sentence of the book, he writes:
I have given mankind the profoundest book it possesses, my Zarathustra:

I shall shortly give it the most independent.66
Meaning the planned Umwerthung aller Werthe, especially its fourth book,
entitled Dionysos.
Nietzsche thereafter adds a chapter to Gtzen-Dmmerung, What I Owe
to the Ancients, in which he discusses both Dionysos and the eternal
recurrence. It ends with the words: I, the last disciple of the philosopher
Dionysos I, the teacher of the eternal recurrence. . . . In several letters, he
also speaks of this work as highly preparatory for what was to come.67
Ecce homo seems to show how highly he regarded Z, but this is at least in
part a mirage. In the conclusion of it he states: I have not just now said a
word that I could not have said five years ago through the mouth of
Zarathustra,68 thus implying that he still held fast to the same philosophical
position now as then. It is correct that he valued Z extremely highly, but he
felt that he was now moving into a new stage and the main purpose of EH
was to be preparatory for what was to come, by informing the readers who
he was and by bringing attention to his philosophical position before his
coming revaluation of all values. This is visible, for example, in a letter to
his publisher Naumann, 6 November 1888, where Nietzsche refers to EH as
a in the highest degree preparatory text to his Hauptwerk to which it
constitutes a sort of long preface. Ecce homo also contains continual refer-
ences to his future Hauptwerk. In the first sentence of the preface he
states that he is publishing the book because he will shortly approach
mankind with the heaviest demand, that is, with the revaluation of all
values. In the second section of the preface, he repeats that he is a disciple
of the philosopher Dionysos. Both Jenseits von Gut und Bse and Zur Geneal-
ogie der Moral are now described as being preparatory for the coming
revaluation.69 Furthermore, at end of the review of Der Fall Wagner, he again
explicitly refers to his coming Hauptwerk: And so, about two years before
the shattering thunder of the Revaluation which will set the earth into
convulsions, I sent the Wagner Case into the world. In it he reviews all of
his books, except Der Antichrist which he regarded as part of the coming
revaluation. Ecce homo also ends with the words: Dionysos against the Cruci-
fied . . . In one of his very last letters, to Cosima Wagner, 3 January 1889, he
states: This time, however, I will come as the conquering Dionysos, who will
make the earth into a celebration, and he accordingly also signs many of
his last letters with the name Dionysos.
However, as stated above, only the first volume, Der Antichrist, of this
planned magnum opus was finished. There are a number of drafts of the
contents of the following two planned volumes, but very few drafts for the
fourth book, called in several notes: Dionysos: Philosophy of Eternal
Recurrence.70 Also sprach Zarathustra represents the highest Nietzsche
publicly achieved in his own view, but we should be aware that he for several
years planned and aimed higher and beyond that, for a position that he
signified by the name Dionysos.
As we have seen in this chapter, Z illustrates that Nietzsche worked out of

himself, that he sublimated and used his own experiences. And this is also
how he claimed one should work:
The lack of personality always takes its revenge: A weakened, thin, extin-
guished personality that denies itself is no longer fit for anything
good least of all for philosophy. Selflessness has no value either in
heaven or on earth. All great problems demand great love, and of that
only strong, round, secure spirits who have a firm grip on themselves
are capable. It makes the most telling difference whether a thinker has
a personal relationship to his problems and finds in them his destiny,
his distress, and his greatest happiness, or an impersonal one, meaning
that he can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with
antennae of cold, curious thought. In the latter case nothing will come
of it; that much one can promise in advance.71
It is this that makes Nietzsche into an existential thinker, although he

questions or denies such, for this tradition, important concepts as free will
and responsibility. The fact that Nietzsche used his own experiences
creatively much more than most thinkers and writers should thus not
surprise us. He always emphasizes, as it seems correctly, how close his life
and experiences are related to his thinking and vice versa.
You know these things as thoughts, but you have not experienced your
thoughts, they are only the after-effect of those of others: like when
your room vibrates when a wagon travels by. I, however, sit in the wagon,
and often I am the wagon itself.72
For Nietzsche, character and personality is more fundamental and

important than pure philosophy or any particular intellectual position.73
It follows from this that he also emphasizes the development of character
and personality. He, for example, often argues, in many similes, that man
is a material, an ugly stone that needs a sculptor74 and that one thing is
needful. To give style to ones character .75 In a section, which
reminds one of Oscar Wilde, Nietzsche claims that one should employ
ones genius to oneself, not to ones works.76 Closely associated to this is
Nietzsches claim that: a virtue has to be our invention, our most personal
defence and necessity.77 For Nietzsche, development of character is
fundamental
I should add, one must want to have more than one has in order to
become more. For this is the doctrine preached by life itself to all that
has life: the morality of development. To have and to want to have more,
in one word, growth, that is life itself.78
Nietzsche claims that to understand Z, it is necessary to know all of his

books, in their chronological order, and he especially emphasizes the
importance of the more autobiographical prefaces: they give true enlight-
enment about me, and the very best preparation for [understanding] my
bold son Zarathustra.79 Later on, when he has written his autobiography,
EH, he says the same about it.80 Clearly, at least Nietzsche himself saw
knowledge of his life and his experiences (or having experienced similar
things oneself but that he held to be unlikely) as a precondition for
understanding Z.
Knowing Nietzsches intention to go beyond Z to a philosophy of Dionysos,
one would look forward to studies of the fragments and hints of this to give
us a better view of what this next step could have looked like.
What we should see when reading Z is less the prophet and more the
Bildungsroman, the exemplum, the description of how one can live a worth-
while (philosophical) life. Nietzsche also explicitly says that Z is an examplum
[Vorbild].81 He also states, in concord with existential thinking, that
everyone can get something out of the book: All human beings, who have
any kind of a heroic impulse to move towards their own goal, will find great
strength in my Zarathustra.82 What we should see when reading Z is how
one can give the ordinary aspects of life a wider and philosophical impor-
tance, how one can become what one is. For Nietzsche, the book represented
sublimation and self-overcoming, set in a concentrated philosophical
context, but expressed in the language of metaphors.
A primarily literary analysis of Z thus misses the point,83 and philosophical

analyses and discussions risk running into quagmire. For philosophical
purposes, his later texts such as Jenseits von Gut und Bse, Zur Genealogie der
Moral, and Gtzen-Dmmerung are more suitable and accessible. What
characterizes Z, what separates it from his other works and is the reason
he praises it so highly is its existential content both personally for
Nietzsche and also in a more general manner, more or less available to all
readers.
Chapter 3
Zarathustra in Nietzsches Typology

Yunus Tuncel
In this chapter, I present a reading of Zarathustra as a type within the

context of Nietzsches typology which permeates through his works from
the first to the last; I claim that there is a line of thought in Nietzsches
philosophy, despite the many turning points in it, which pertains to types
and which I call typology.1 This typology culminates in Thus Spoke
Zarathustra which is considered a work of typology, for the purpose of this
presentation, without disregarding the other ways in which it has been
interpreted. Moreover, typology as a philosophical area of research has not
received sufficient attention in Nietzsche interpretations although there
are many commentaries on the Overman and Zarathustra.
Before presenting Zarathustra as a type, I will briefly discuss the questions
of type and typology in Nietzsche, bring up other types from his works, and
suggest possible ways of reading his typology.
Typology is not only a study of types2 which embody certain human traits
and tendencies, but it is also a philosophical framework which shows how
such studies can be done, that is, the method of doing it. The two are inter-
woven in Nietzsches thought. One difficulty with the interpretation of
Nietzsches typology lies in bringing the fragments and the hints together
into a sensible whole. Nietzsche himself did not write a work of typology nor
call any of his works a work of typology, unlike The Genealogy, for instance,
where the method of genealogy is presented and used. Another difficulty in
dealing with typology alone is the two other philosophies in Nietzsche,
which are complementary to it and which are often presented as such:
namely, genealogy which studies forces and their originary constellations in
specific contexts, and symptomatology which reveals the symptoms of an
age, a culture, or an individual. Type, force, and symptom are the units, or
concepts, of each of these philosophies which, in a larger project, must be
dealt with individually and together to discover yet another layer in

Nietzsches thought.3 But here we will focus on typology.
It is the latter sense of typology, that is, typology as a method, which sepa-
rates Nietzsches typology from other typologies such as psychological
typology or character typifications as can be found in the writings of the
French moralists or in the nineteenth-century novel. Moreover, philosoph-
ical typology dwells in a philosophy which pursues philosophical questions;
hence, the types that surface there do so within the context of the most
persistent project of the philosopher. For instance, the Overman appears
within the context of Nietzsches philosophy of transvaluation of highest
values and his critique of morality.
II
A type is not a person, or better said, there is no one-to-one association

between a type and a person. Many types can reside in an individual in
different intensities although some types or one type may be predominant
among all the others. The relationship between a type and an individual
can be described as of appropriation. In what ways, in what typological
configuration, does one appropriate a type? And what type is being appro-
priated? These are some of the questions to be pondered.
In Nietzsches works, there is a thread of thought regarding type which
is das Typus in the German text from The Birth of Tragedy (sec. 15) to Ecce
Homo (Why I am a Destiny, sec. 4). The word comes from the Greek tupos
which means, on the one hand, form in the sense of archetype, model, or
origin and, on the other, copy, mark, or stamp it is in this latter sense that
Democritus uses the word in its verb form tupousthai in his theory of sight.
Tupos is another Greek word for form which is thought in its opposite
as atupos and which does not have the ontological status given to the
concept of idea by Plato. In Nietzsches philosophy, however, it takes on
new meanings and is mostly used for typification of human character.
There are instances when Nietzsche uses the word type to mean arche-
type (Ur-typus, which appears rarely in his writings). This is the case, for
instance, when he discusses the pre-platonic thinkers, calling them pure
types4 in the sense of archetypes (this is the word the translator uses) and
calling the post-Socratic thinkers mixed types.5 What lies in this thought is
puzzling. Does it mean that only one type was strong in each of the pre-
Socratics, whereas the post-Socratics embodied various types in equal
measure (e.g., the logician, the ethicist, and the physicist all together)? This
would be a poor reading if we did not also add that the archetype that was
Zarathustra in Nietzsches Typology 49
strong in each of the pre-Socratic philosophers was not arbitrary, but all the
archetypes unconsciously formed a complementary circle, a diversity of
types which were necessary for the life of their culture and which somehow
belonged together. Nietzsches early works on the pre-platonic thinkers and
their age show what type was prominent in the philosopher studied and
how different types unconsciously entered into a division of philosophical
works (from the solitary cosmologist typified by Heraclitus to the reformer-
legislator typified by Empedocles).
In addition to the question of archetype, it is necessary at the outset to
bring up briefly two issues pertinent to a study of types in Nietzsche: value
and power.
Type and value

Under what conditions of valuation does a type exist? What makes a type
possible from the standpoint of interpretation and value-schemes? In short,
how is a type created? For instance, the spirit of revenge typifies revengeful-
ness, a natural, primordial feeling. How does this type become a highest,
collective type, that is, tied to the highest values? What aspects of human
existence does it tap into and dwell in?
Nietzsches typology floats within the larger context of his philosophy of
values. The question what is a type is, therefore, bound with the question
what is value. Since these questions apply to both the individual and the
collective, we can pose further questions: What types are valued by the indi-
vidual? What types gain collective worth? Or with what types are the highest
values of a culture created? Nietzsches struggle with and interest in such
figures as Socrates, Jesus, and Luther is not accidental; this interest is
focused on the types which they embodied and with which they shaped
their epochs. Nietzsche is interested in revealing the typological make up of
the value-creator.
Type and power

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra,6 life teaches Zarathustra that power is affect,
commanding and obeying, hierarchy and growth. Life itself is overcoming,
a perpetual flow, and procreative, but this is one secret, coming into being
and its overcoming: life creates and opposes what it creates. All are subordi-
nate to life and its cycles. This secret, the unity of life and death, individuation
and its dissolution, is hidden in the single thought of the eternal recur-
rence of the same. According to Nietzsche, everything is transient, even the
highest values, but this fact of transience is no objection to life and its
preciousness; on the contrary, it adds one more charm to it. The way we
realize it and live up to it fully in this human life is by knowing that we are
beings with power, by knowing the power of our value-making, and by
knowing our power and our place in the cosmological hierarchy of power
relations.
To understand types in terms of power is to know, for a culture, what types
to empower and what types to emaciate, in an epochal context, to enhance
life. This point will be explored further below by way of a hierarchy of
types in Z.
III
There are, at least, two overlapping paths which can be traversed in

Nietzsches typology: to inquire into types which typify forces of culture,
that is, cultural typology, and to investigate types which typify character
traits and tendencies, that is, character typology. The former deals with
such types as the artistic type or the priestly type and the latter with such
types as the spirit of gravity or the spirit of revenge. A third path of inquiry,
historical typology, which is equally applicable to the other two typologies,
will also be discussed here within the context of Nietzsches notion of
history.
Cultural typology
One of the philosophical problems Nietzsche presents in his early works is
what are the forces which constitute culture? This problem is presented
within the context of ancient Greek culture, but with an eye to the prob-
lems of his own age. The question is posed again in BT in relation to tragedy,
the tragic worldview, and the Socratic epochal turn. Both in this work and
in the other writings of this period, especially in The Philosophers Book,
Nietzsche thinks through the problem of forces of culture, such as art,
science, mythology, philosophy, cosmology, and religion, and what kinds of
constellations these forces make, what impacts they have on each other.
This project is pursued in different ways throughout Nietzsches works.
Cultural types are what embody the forces of culture in their epochal
contexts. There are in Nietzsches typology, at least, the following types:
artistic, philosophical, cosmological-religious, scientific, linguistic, psycho-
logical, and somatological, but below I will only explore three cultural types:
the type of the theoretical man, the priestly type, and the artistic type of
decadence.
The type of the theoretical man, which Nietzsche associates with Socrates,
symbolizes the scientific spirit of that epoch and its overestimation of knowl-
edge and rationality. With this type, Nietzsche exposes the fundamental
traits in this mode of existence:
. . . it is enough to recognize in him [in Socrates] a type of existence

unheard of before him: the type of the theoretical man whose significance
and aim it is our next task to try to understand. Like the artist, the theo-
retical man finds an infinite delight in whatever exists, and this satisfaction
protects him against the practical ethics of pessimism with its Lynceus
eyes that shine only in the dark. Whenever the truth is uncovered, the
artist will always cling with rapt gaze to what still remains covering even
after such uncovering; but the theoretical man enjoys and finds satisfac-
tion in the discarded covering and finds the highest object of his pleasure
in the process of an ever happy uncovering that succeeds through his
own efforts.7
In contrast to the artist who looks forward to the process of uncovering

while, at the same time, respecting the covering, the theoretical man
remains with what he has uncovered and has a claim to uncover everything
and hence to possess truth (to possess the goddess in her nudity). In the
same section, Nietzsche, borrowing from Lessing, makes a distinction
between possession of truth and search after truth. What characterizes this
type is the unshakable faith that thought, using the thread of causality, can
penetrate the deepest abysses of being, and that thought is capable not only
of knowing being but also even of correcting it.8 Nietzsche calls this faith in
thought (abstract thinking is implied here) and knowledge theoretical
optimism. In short, overestimation of and blind faith in knowledge are
what typify the type of the theoretical man.
Nietzsches reflections on religion and its types such as the type of the
saint or the sage go as far back as to the aphorisms of HH. Thereafter he
dissects what can be called the religious type into its various traits and
observes their typifications: the ascetic type, the priestly type, and the like.
In this typological dissection, he reveals what is problematic and deeply
buried in each of these types, in what ways these types persist in his epoch,
and also the common ground which binds these types somehow together.
By explaining the type of the saint in terms of religious neurosis, in
an aphorism in BGE, Nietzsche wonders how such a type becomes
appealing, even to philosophers: . . . no other type has yet been surrounded
by such a lavish growth of nonsense and superstition, no other type
seems to have interested men, even philosophers, more. And, associating

Schopenhauers philosophy with this type, he asks further: How is the
denial of the will possible? How is the saint possible? This really seems to
have been the question over which Schopenhauer became a philosopher
and began.9 In this text, Nietzsche does not so much dive into the makeup
of this type as to ask why it appeals to all types and ages. One of the hints
he gives regarding the appeal of the saint is the air of the miraculous that
goes with it namely, the immediate succession of opposites, of states of the
soul that are judged morally in opposite ways. It seemed palpable that a
bad man was suddenly transformed into a saint, a good man.10 A deeper
analysis of this type is presented in the third essay of The Genealogy where
Nietzsche focuses on the makeup of the ascetic ideal and its type. The denial
of the body, sensuality and sexuality, repression of instincts, internalization
of the animal man, and making these acts of denial values are what charac-
terize the type of the ascetic priest; its typological co-phenomenon is the
type of the tamed man which Nietzsche sees prevailing in the nineteenth-
century European culture.
The artistic type of decadence, often exemplified by Wagner, appears in
Nietzsches late works. What interests him the most about Wagner in this
period, long after the end of their friendship, are the problematic traits of
the modern age and its artistic experiences as embodied in this type of
artist. To Nietzsche, Wagner sums up modernity. There is no way out, one
must first become a Wagnerian.11 But what are the problematic traits in this
type? The list is long, but the following appear frequently: neurosis in art,
asceticism (compromise to the ascetic ideal), flattery of nihilism and
morality, acting (for drawing crowds and pleasing ones ego), romanticism,
and pessimism.
In The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche enumerates the common traits of the
decadent artist as follows:
. . . the decline of the power to organize; the misuse of traditional means

without the capacity to furnish any justification, any for-the-sake-of; the
counterfeiting in the imitation of big forms for which nobody today is
strong, proud, self-assured, healthy enough; excessive liveliness in the
smallest parts; excitement at any price; cunning as the expression of
impoverished life; more and more nerves in place of flesh . . . 12
Some of the issues which come up in Nietzsche regarding the type of the
decadent artist lie in the realm of deeper values, issues some of which
may not be apparent on the surface: the antithesis between chastity and
sensuality (the millennia-old opposition between the angel and the beast);
one-sidedness when it comes to ones own activity and seeking philosoph-
ical justification for it, artistic vanity, to be caught up in the problems of the
age as one seeks spectators indiscriminately who will glorify the artist and
thereby sustain his vanity.13 These traits and problems are pervasive in the
modern age, and for Nietzsche to understand the type of decadent artist
and to understand the problems of the modern age reciprocally imply each
other.
These three types (from Greek, medieval, and modern epochs) somehow
belong together: they typify trends that are problematic and collective in
modern culture and which Nietzsche saw and critiqued. Simply put together,
these trends are: overestimation of knowledge and rationality to the detri-
ment of other forces of culture; undervaluation of this-worldly existence
and denial of the body, sensuality and sexuality; and the artistic decadence
unique to the modern age. These types fit together in the economy of the
culture of the modern age.
Character typology
There are trends in culture which have become so because certain traits
within the character of a human being gain currency and shape the collec-
tive character. Now when these individual traits are problematic, the
collective trends also become problematic, even more so, since the problem
has multiplied itself onto the collective field. The study of such character
traits and trends and the types that typify them can be called character
typology. This study is by no means confined to the problematic aspects of
human existence. Below I will survey a few examples for character typology
from Nietzsches works in an attempt to understand how he approaches the
problem.
One of the first distinct character types that appears in Nietzsches works
is the cultural philistine.14 The cultural philistine is the type who prescribes
that the incongruity between two things must not exist; namely between the
complacent belief that one is in possession of a genuine culture and the fact
of cultural deficiency. Exposing some of the deficiencies of the culture of
his times in his first explicit critique of the modern age, Nietzsche makes a
distinction between the already-known type of philistine and the type of
cultural philistine:
The word philistine, as is well known, belongs to the student vocabulary,

and signifies, in its wider, popular sense, the antithesis of a son of the
muses, of the artist, of the man of genuine culture. The cultural

philistine, however the study of whom [in the original: the study of
whose type], and the hearing of whose confessions when he makes them,
has now become a disagreeable duty distinguishes himself from the
general idea of the species philistine through a superstition: he fancies
that he is himself a son of the muses and man of culture; an incompre-
hensible delusion which reveals that he does not even know what a
philistine, and the antithesis of a philistine, is: so we shall not be surprised
to find that usually he solemnly denies he is a philistine.15
Cultural philistinism is a form of vanity, a not knowing oneself. One

thinks that one is great whereas one is decadent. Nietzsche feels
the urgency to understand this type and to bring it to the surface and
elaborate on it within the context of modern culture, which has become
encyclopedic, a culture of accumulation of knowledge and information
about many things but with no creativity commensurate to it, a culture of
finders and not seekers. People live off the glory of the greatness of the
past, instead of striving for greatness. The cultural philistine is doubly
problematic, according to Nietzsche. It is problematic in itself as explained
above and is problematic because this type exerts power in culture, that
is, it has become a collectively accepted type. Therefore, he asks two
related questions: How is it possible that a type such as the cultural
philistine could have come into existence and, once extant, could acquire
the authority of supreme arbiter over all the problems of German
culture. . . .16 These are the two important questions a typologist would
ask in general: how is a type possible and what value and power does that
type has in culture?
The free spirit, on the other hand, designates a type who can explore,
experiment, destroy, and recreate without the hindrances of institutional
attachments, ideological bonds, or unconditional faith in custom and tradi-
tion. This freedom, though unhindered, is associated with an underlying
cosmology which is already implied in the word spirit. Its experience
culminates in both greatness and liberation:
One may conjecture that a spirit in whom the type free spirit will one
day become ripe and sweet to the point of perfection has had its decisive
experience in a great liberation and that previously it was all the more a
fettered spirit and seemed to be chained forever to its pillar and
corner.17
To experience the great liberation, it is necessary to push freedom and

spirituality to their height. This is one of the teachings of Nietzsches
aesthetic cosmology: freedom and justice are bound with one another,
creativity and modesty enrich one another, joy and suffering circularly
complement each other. Here this teaching is typified in the type of the
free spirit. The closest type to the free spirit in Nietzsches typology is the
wanderer who has his shadow, the background of his existence, in a parallel
way that the free spirit has his spirit.
Unique in Nietzsches character typology are the types he brings to
daylight that had hitherto remained unknown or unconsciously active; the
way he does this excavation; and the questions he poses pertinent to a typo-
logical investigation.
I have heuristically separated two typologies in Nietzsches thought that
are closely affiliated. I have not, however, tried to establish a link between
the two although this link is inevitable, since the cultural type and the
character type collapse into one in the notion of the Gesamtmensch, the
total human being, and lose their boundaries. In other words, there is a way
in which a force of culture is coupled with a trait of character within the
worldview of an individual.
Historical typology: retrospective and prospective types
It is necessary to introduce the notion of history into typology, because

types are neither eternal nor universal but rather appear in historical-
epochal contexts. In other words, every epoch brings forth certain types,
and a hierarchy thereof, which have value and meaning for it. Moreover, it
lives and is shaped by these types which are the embodiment of its highest
values. In the preceding, various types were presented together without an
explicit reference to their epochal contexts.
To understand epochal shifts in terms of types, one needs to know the
retrospective and prospective types of that epoch, that is, the types that
are receding and the types that are proceeding. One may further inquire
into the makeup and hierarchy of these types to have a glimpse into the
inner constitution of the epoch. Below, Nietzsches typology is illustrated
with a sketch. Such a simplification, no doubt, may raise questions, but
my intention is to show how these different types are placed vis--vis the
signpost God is dead. Not all types are listed, and the ones listed here
are only from Z. Moreover, the separation of types into two categories
does not stem from a subjectivistic or a dualistic approach. Types from

the two lists can coexist in certain contexts, yielding hybrid types, which,
in fact, are numerous in the age of nihilism. There are, for instance,
trends which cultivate the body but not the wisdom of Zarathustra nor the
searching of the wanderer nor any free spirituality. Here the higher man
must also be mentioned, a transitional type who has questioned the old
world-order to some extent and taken small steps toward the new epoch,
but who can easily relapse into the old habits (TSZ, Part IV, The Ass
Festival).
Types of MGE GOD IS DEAD Types of BGE18

Higher man Zarathustra
Last man Overman
The saint Noble soul
The sage who teaches virtue Free spirit
The virtuous Wanderer
The good and the just Warrior
The rabble Friend
Despiser of the body Enemy
Priest Convalescent
The famous wise man Higher man
Scholar
The retired (the old man/the old pope)
The spirit of gravity and the spirit of revenge
The question of hierarchy is important, because the retrospective types,

though receding, are always there and will be there. Even the weak and the
herd will return eternally, one of the hardest teachings of Zarathustra. Now
if we apply Nietzsches notion of the historical, as laid out in the second
untimely meditation19 to typology, this question will be somewhat eluci-
dated. The three modes of history, as applied to typology, pertain to (a)
preservation of all types (the antiquarian history); (b) creation of great (or
highest) types (monumental history); and (c) destruction of problematic
types (critical history). If we now read Z as a typological work, all the types
there belong to the antiquarian mode, the prospective types to the monu-
mental mode, and the retrospective types to the critical mode. The idea of
the eternal return is already prefigured in this notion of the historical: all
types return, however in different constellations and in different degrees of
empowerment.
IV
Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the work of typology par excellence among

Nietzsches works. Although Zarathustra is the protagonist of the drama,
there are many other types whom he encounters in his journey. It is
necessary to study all these types in themselves and in relation to one
another to understand Zarathustras world, but it is beyond the scope of
this chapter to do so. In what follows, I will briefly present the makeup of
the type of Zarathustra within the context of Nietzsches typological
concerns.
Zarathustra himself is a type: . . . It was on these two walks that the whole
of Zarathustra I occurred to me, and especially Zarathustra himself as a type
[again Typus in the original]: rather, he overtook me.20 Then he goes on to
explain, with a lengthy quotation from GS (Book V, 382), how this type can
be understood. Here Nietzsche gives away the physiological presupposition
of the type of Zarathustra, which he calls the great health. In this apho-
rism, written after Zarathustra, Nietzsche sums up the typological makeup of
Zarathustra: new ideals; new goals; the expanse of the soul and the wide
spectrum of experience (his journey); continual self-creation (his going
under); desire to explore the undiscovered and to confront . . . a world so
overrich in what is beautiful, strange, questionable, terrible, and divine21
(this expression recapitulates Zarathustras aesthetic cosmology); discon-
tent with present-day man (his nausea over man); playfulness out of
overflowing power and abundance (his gift-giving virtue); and the ideal of
a human, superhuman [bermenschlich] well-being and benevolence22
(the Overman, the new meaning of the world, taught by Zarathustra). The
aphorism ends with the signs of the new epoch: the destiny of the soul
changes, the hand moves forward, the tragedy begins,23 what, in Zarathustra,
are symbolized by the high noon.
Zarathustra is a type who is impregnated with an insight, cultivates this
insight in solitude and with a pathos of distance, and who, therefore, lives the
chaos and the conflict between the old and the new, and is in the process of
creation of new values. As Heidegger points out in this context of value-
creation, Zarathustra is also a speaker, an advocate (Frsprecher), who . . .
advocates and is the spokesman. But fr also means for the benefit, or in
behalf, of and in justification of. An advocate is ultimately the man who
interprets and explains that of and for which he speaks.24 This type must
traverse the path of overcoming the morality of good and evil, both within
himself and as an example. In addition, there are traits that Nietzsche
borrows from the historical figure Zarathustra; namely, honesty,

truthfulness, and the fact that he is a founder of religion. Most of these we
learn from the Prologue and what he writes about the work and Zarathustra
in EH.
What is important to note is not only what all these types are and what
they stand for but also what kind of hierarchical power relations they are in.
How does Zarathustra as the highest type, the supreme type of all beings,25
relate to the other types? How does he speak to them, for instance? Does
Zarathustra speak from an empowered position of wisdom and enlighten-
ment? If he cares for others, how does he care? Needless to say, Zarathustra
has different voices and speaks differently with different types (compare,
e.g., the way Zarathustra addresses his disciples, on the one hand, and the
dwarf or the despisers of the body, on the other). His way of addressing
reflects the distance of concentric circles around him. The different voices,
the distance that he creates, and the many ways of relating to different
types, imbued with a variety of human emotions, imply the hierarchical
relationship that he is in with his world. Gadamer observes, referring to
Zarathustra: He speaks to someone, and that means he speaks differently
to different listeners . . . We must flesh out the auditor and always ask
ourselves, Why one would speak in just such a manner to this particular
audience?26 Furthermore, certain types are not given voice, but we can
infer their position in the constellation of types from their silence. One
such type is the Overman.
Before elaborating further on the question of hierarchy of types in
Nietzsche, it is necessary to pause and ask the question as to what it is that
makes Zarathustra the highest type. Simply stated, it is the height of his self-
knowledge (his Apollinian wisdom), which is attained in his solitude, with
his self-mastery and insightfulness, and the depth of his ecstasy (his
Dionysian wisdom). Now the latter may not be as apparent as the former,
but it is as important as the former and is hinted at with Zarathustras dance,
song, and music referring to Zarathustra, Nietzsche himself says my
concept of the Dionysian here became a supreme deed . . .27 To the extent
that Zarathustra knows himself, he carries that much of the cosmos
within himself. That is to say, to the extent that he cultivates himself as an
enlightened solitary individual, he can, though indirectly, hold all together
in their conflict and chiasma.28 He is like a sun which sheds light on all,
distant but yet near, since without it there is no life (unlike the pure type of
the ascetic saint, Zarathustra carries, within him, all the problematic types,
but he has overcome them or placed them at the bottom of the hierarchy
of his types; this is one of the meanings of his going under).
Now back to the question of hierarchy. Regarding the rank and file of
types, Nietzsche says: . . . he does not conceal the fact that his [Zarathustras]
type of man, a relatively superhuman [more overmanly] type, is super-
human [overmanly] precisely in its relation to the good that the good and
the just would call his overman devil .29 It is relatively overmanly, because
there is hierarchy of types. This hierarchy exists both within the individual
and among individuals. From the standpoint of a Nietzschean typology, it is
just as important for an individual to place types and their appropriations
in a rank from the lowest to the highest as it is for a culture to place its types
in a hierarchy so that what is individually and collectively valued as the
highest is the type of the Overman. To be able to do this, it is necessary to
study Nietzsches typology from diverse perspectives and also its relation to
other aspects of his thought.30
The concepts of higher or highest pertain to Nietzsches notion of strife
and the idea of ones perpetual re-creation of ones self and, at the same
time, to making these values in culture. It is necessary to cultivate great
types within the context of their hierarchy and to place them on the pedestal
of great values. As works of culture, they will serve it to strive higher, and the
destiny of a civilization depends on the higher types and their works through
which the former is held together and uplifted. Hence, Nietzsches concern
for the breeding of the higher types:
The problem thus I pose is not what shall succeed mankind in the
sequence of living beings (man is an end), but what type [Typus] of man
shall be bred, shall be willed, for being higher in value, worthier of life,
more certain of a future . . .
In another sense, success in individual cases is constantly encountered in

the most widely different places and cultures: here we really do find a higher
type [Typus], which is, in relation to mankind as a whole, a kind of Overman.
Such fortunate accidents of great success have always been possible and will
perhaps always be possible. And even whole families, tribes, or peoples may
occasionally represent such a bulls-eye.31
Nietzsches concern and hope for the future of humanity, which finds its
expression here as the breeding of higher types (the issue of breeding can
also be read in The Will to Power, Book IV: Discipline and Breeding), was
misinterpreted (or poorly interpreted), around the turn of the twentieth
century, as a form of social Darwinism that propounds the survival of, and,
mastery by, the strongest and the fittest human beings in their social settings.
This is, in fact, the ideology of the bourgeois world-order, not an aspect of
Nietzsches worldview. Indeed, there is a hierarchy of types based on power

relations in Nietzsches philosophy which places, on top of the hierarchy,
those higher types such as Zarathustra and the Overman and great values
such as ecstasy, self-knowledge, and self-mastery (not to mention, a balance
between all these values); all of these types and values are to be regarded
not as fixed conventions, virtues or concepts, but as metaphors, open to be
appropriated creatively, constantly recreated, and imbued into the living
reality of life.
Moreover, what does it mean that Zarathustra as a type is the teacher of
the Overman which is yet another type? How do the two types differ? Each
type typifies something unique to itself. The Overman is the type that
embodies the new meaning of this world, the new great values that are ever-
becoming, that are ever newly appropriated by oncoming generations,
whereas man as a type of the old world-order for which God is the highest
value is a bridge to the Overman. The Overman also symbolizes ones
journey for seeking oneself in which there are other stops on the way such
as man, the last man, and the higher man. The use of the word Mensch for
all of these types is no coincidence; there is a circularity involved or a process
implied in the unity of these types.
However, what kind of type is Zarathustra in relation to the Overman? He is
a teacher, but this word can be taken lightly, since everyone today is a teacher.
It is better to say that he is a teacher of teachers. But even this may not be
sufficient. He is the one who has seen the light and now sheds his light on the
world. If the Overman is the torch, Zarathustra is the passage of the torch.
What does teaching mean? It is not simply the passing of knowledge for prac-
tical skills the way most people experience education in our age. Teaching
stands for re-creation of culture in new generations. Teaching, culture, and
rebirth of culture hence stand in close contact with one another.
Zarathustras teaching is no teaching or is a different kind of teaching.
He lays bare what is greatest and what is smallest in human existence with
parables and dreams from his life. And he expects his disciples to re-create
their own paths on the way to seek themselves while learning, only by
example, from Zarathustras journey.
So far Zarathustra has been interpreted from the perspective of character

typology; that is, this type was observed in terms of character traits which it
symbolizes. But what does the type of Zarathustra mean in terms of cultural
typology and historical typology?
In the type of Zarathustra, various forces of culture and their types come
together and are sustained in their difference from one another. As the
teacher of the eternal recurrence, he is the cosmological type; as he debates
with the after-worldly, the spirit of gravity and the spirit of revenge, he is the
type which symbolizes new forms of spirituality; in his polemics with the
sages and the philosophers of the past, such as the good and the just, the
teachers of virtue, and in his teachings of a different kind of wisdom, we see
the philosophical type; the artistic type is present in his dance and singing,
in his light-footedness, in his wandering, and in the teachings of becoming;
even the scientific type is sustained within Zarathustra insofar as he is a
searcher and an experimenter; the psychological type looks into the human
soul, its deep recesses, and explores the unconscious; the physiological
type places a new value on the body, the senses, passions, instincts, and
sexuality.
This multiplicity of types, which Zarathustra symbolically stands for, is
hinted at in the aphorism cited above: . . . whoever wants to know from the
adventures of his own most authentic experience how a discoverer and
conqueror of the ideal feels, and also an artist, a saint, a legislator, a sage, a
scholar, a pious man, a soothsayer . . . .32
That Zarathustra prefigures the artist-philosopher type of Nietzsches late
period is an understatement: first, there is a multiplicity of forces of culture
and their types which are necessary for a culture (art and philosophy are
only two of these forces); second, what is at stake is the value-creator(s) in
this multiplicity; third, Zarathustra symbolically stands for the value-
creator in these various realms of culture.
As to the historical analysis of Zarathustra, he stands at an epochal
threshold. Its signpost is God is dead, and the coming of the new epoch is
symbolized by high noon. It is at high noon that the unconscious of an
epoch is re-created, that is, a new shadow for a transformed culture. From
the perspective of historical typology, Zarathustra and the types he embodies
and teaches, that is, the types that he upholds, symbolize the rise of a new
epoch with its new set of values, new mode of valuation, and its own histor-
ical unconsciousness. These prospective types are consistent with one
another; that is to say, they are the signs of a new puzzle, which complement
one another. These are now the types to be implanted in the soul to allow
the old, problematical types that are within us to gradually become weak
and pale.
VI
If Zarathustra, the type created by Nietzsche, were to take a living form and
speak today, what would he say to those who have ears for him? Would he
show up to speak to them or remain in his cave? Despite the many efforts to
appropriate the type of Zarathustra since he was born more than a century
ago, the challenge still remains to give life to it, that is, to make his wisdom,
his art, and his sensibility of lightness, a part of the living reality of contem-
porary culture based on its specific needs.
Chapter 4
The Three Metamorphoses and Philosophy

Peter Yates
The ripeness of man: that says that one has regained the seriousness one had as a
child at play.
Beyond Good and Evil, 941
Introduction
In his somewhat crude appraisal in The History of Western Philosophy (1946),

Bertrand Russell characterizes Nietzsche as a merely literary philosopher
who has made no technical contribution to the discipline. The distinction
which Russell sets up between technical philosophy and literary philos-
ophy has had many incarnations, from Platos ancient quarrel between
poetry and philosophy, through Aristotles misgivings about Heraclitus, to
Wittgensteins early, paradoxical relegation of the propositions of ethics
and aesthetics to the category of nonsense.2
In this chapter, I suggest that Nietzsche was alert to this distinction, which
he himself sought to clarify in the context of his polemics against a dead,
technical philosophy. This is thrown into sharp relief by both the substan-
tive content and the form of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and deliberately so.
Zarathustra invites contestation as to its status as a philosophical work,
thereby raising the further question, What is philosophy anyway? however,
one might be disposed to judge the issue.
Zarathustra not only presses the latter question but also implies an answer.
If Z is philosophy, then philosophy should be concerned with evaluation,
rather than puzzle-solving, with cultural legislation rather than attempting
vainly to find true propositions about knowledge, existence, and the rules
of enquiry, with opening up a vista rather than seeking a closure, with a
poetic method rather than a propositional one. Crucially, it is a problem
that needs to be addressed in terms of what it is to be a philosopher.
All of this, I suggest, finds highly condensed expression in On the Three
Metamorphoses. Particularly, the parable shows the transition that a
philosopher might undergo as she recognizes the limits of technical philos-

ophy (here called propositionalist philosophy), and moves to a more creative,
playful mode of enquiry (ludic philosophy), which is capable of evaluating
possible modes of life and legislating accordingly. Further, the transition
mirrors Nietzsches hopes for the development of Western philosophical
culture and his own intervention in it.
Nietzsches philosophy: an overview
Clearly then, The Three Metamorphoses needs to be understood in the

context of Nietzsches overall philosophical project. What the latter is, is of
course open to interpretation, but by his own reckoning, Nietzsche is a
philosopher who has set himself the great task3 of performing a revaluation of
values, both existing values and value itself. His aim, and this for him is the
truly philosophical task, is to legislate so as to create the conditions for a
cultural revolution which will in time replace the allegedly life-negating,
Christian-Platonic, other-worldly values of Western culture with alternative
ones which will allow at least some people to affirm life fully.
The great task, Nietzsche tells us, has to be undertaken in a particular
way: I know of no other way of dealing with great tasks than that of play: this
is, as a sign of greatness, an essential precondition.4 We should bear this
pregnant statement in mind when we come to consider the meaning of the
child, the final outcome of the three metamorphoses.
Despite this emphasis on play, Nietzsche believes that none of this can
happen without struggle which is why his entire oeuvre from the earliest to the
latest works is suffused with martial metaphors. The culture-war involves,
among other things, evaluating all kinds of cultural forms, including philos-
ophy, both canonical and contemporary. Indeed, philosophy receives
especially close attention, and this is because Nietzsche regards it as the grow-
ing-point of culture and its most gifted exponents as successful legislators.5
Evaluation, of course, has to take place against some kind of standard and
for Nietzsche, given his great task, the evaluative standard is necessarily a
binary pair whose elements are life-affirmation and life-negation. This means
that philosophies, which for Nietzsche can only pretend to be dispassionate
on the matter, are sounded out for their implicit or explicit attitude to life.
Do they denigrate life or celebrate it? To what extent are they life-negating
and life-affirming? What exactly this means, however, can only be stated
succinctly at great risk of oversimplification: life-negation and life-affirmation
are constantly being developed as a dual evaluative standard throughout the
Nietzschean oeuvre, and often in conjunction with other complex and shifting
The Three Metamorphoses and Philosophy 65
concepts like the eternal return, the over-man, the Dionysian, and the will to
power. The Nietzschean notions of life-negation and life-affirmation are
nowhere defined; rather the reader is given a variety of perspectives on them
so that a highly nuanced picture is gradually built up.
Nevertheless, it is fair to say that a life-negating attitude is fearful of anything
that has the potential to bring suffering, particularly change and embodi-
ment.6 The fear of change allegedly motivates both the Platonic positing of a
more perfect, static world beyond the moving world we live in, and the
(conventional) Christian emphasis on the supreme value of the afterlife. The
fear of embodiment allegedly motivates the Platonic mistrust of the senses
and the negative evaluation of sexuality and sensuality often found in Chris-
tianity. In all of these cases, life as we experience it is contrasted with some
better realm of being, and is thus denigrated or devalued. Nietzsche describes
several manifestations of this general trend: nihilism, the ascetic ideal, the will
to truth, otherworldliness, metaphysics, the urge to systematize.
A life-affirming attitude, by contrast, is one of celebration of embodiment
and those who hold it are stimulated rather than frightened by change.
There is no hankering after a better world than the one we live in, whether
post mortem or empyrean. Suffering is not feared but understood as a neces-
sary part of life to the extent that ones fate is loved, even if it were to repeat
itself endlessly as is suggested by the doctrine of the eternal return.7 At the
same time, and somewhat paradoxically, the abundance of energy that is
the concomitant of life-affirmation expresses itself as creativity, even to the
extent that one might attempt a great task. Love of fate is not fatalism, the
refusal to improve particulars of life.
Against this standard, almost the whole of Western philosophy is found
wanting (though it is not treated with very great attention to its detail and
variety). Its influence must therefore, in the light of the great task, be over-
come. This project entails a number of strategies. Indeed, the very
characterization of Western philosophy as enmeshed with life-negation is one
such strategy as well as being the initiating moment of the whole project.
Nietzsche also attempts to undermine philosophical doctrines and methods of
enquiry by parodying them, by attempting to get them to self-destruct by criti-
cising them according to their own lights, by carrying the application of their
procedures to extreme lengths, and by casting suspicion on them by ques-
tioning their presuppositions and origins. This is Nietzsches active nihilism.8
Nietzsche is not just destructive, however. He suggests some direction
that might be taken as an alternative to that which he seeks to destroy.
He offers perspectivism as a new method of enquiry into all manner of
phenomena.9 He offers evaluation against the life-affirmation/life-negation
standard as a means of wrestling with the perennial philosophical question:

How should we live? He suggests that enquiry into the origins of cultural
phenomena (genealogy) will lead to liberating self-knowledge. Indeed,
many of his destructive methods also have a creative application. But
crucially, he alerts us to the essential openness of the situation that obtains
once the destructive project is complete.10 Hence, he bequeaths us no fixed
doctrines in the sense of purportedly true propositions or sets of purport-
edly true propositions about the world, or the nature of enquiry, or the
nature of truth (the notions of the will to power and the eternal return
notwithstanding). Instead, he offers methods appropriate to the great task
in hand and for the time when the great task is completed.
Looked at like this, the Nietzschean oeuvre is an enquiry into enquiry
itself. This is because the questions of how we are to live and be give rise to
the further question of how we are to enquire into them: what mode of
enquiry is appropriate to these questions of modes of life and being? This
very questioning generates a taxonomy of modes of enquiry with which
Nietzsche presents us. The great task is one of engaging in the culture-war
which is ultimately over what modes of enquiry will be culturally dominant
in the future and which is against the allegedly malign mode of enquiry,
inherited from the tradition, that Nietzsche took to be dominant in his own
time. This latter mode of enquiry, I suggest, equates with Russells technical
philosophy. It actually condenses into itself many varied philosophies. All,
however, can be regarded as belonging to a propositionalist mode of enquiry,
since their project is the establishment of true propositions about one,
some, or all of the following: being/existence, self/subject, truth/knowl-
edge, and enquiry itself and the rules that might govern it.11 Against it,
Nietzsche places ludic, open modes of enquiry which do not primarily issue
in propositions but in shifting perspectives, descriptions, evaluations, and
pictures of existence/being, self, truth/knowledge, and enquiry. With all
this in mind, let us turn to On the Three Metamorphoses.
Recovering innocence in On the Three Metamorphoses
On the Three Metamorphoses is one of Zarathustras speeches delivered

to an audience whom he addresses as my brothers. According to
Zarathustras account, the spirit that would be transformed must in fact
undergo three transformations. First it becomes a camel, second a lion, and
finally a child. Nietzsche has already told us through the words of a saint
who has seen Zarathustra descending from his mountain hermitage that
Zarathustra has become a child.12 On this basis, I think it reasonable to
take it that Zarathustra is recounting his own experience of transformation,
gained in solitary retreat in the mountains. His audience, his brothers, are
his contemporaries who have remained in the lowlands. If we take it that
Zarathustra is Nietzsches alter-ego, we can then see in The Three Meta-
morphoses a highly condensed account of Nietzsches development,
including the recognition of the ludic nature of the methods appropriate
to his great task and what is involved in the abandonment of the venerable
project of propositionalist philosophy.
At the outset, Nietzsche tells us that the strong, reverent spirit needs a
difficult test for its strength.13 This need for a difficult test is a corollary of
the spirits reverence which draws it onto a journey which will transform it,
almost despite itself. I want to suggest that this indicates the way in which
propositionalist philosophy is drawn into a nihilism of which it itself contains
the seed, and the reverence which incites the spirit to embark on its journey
is reminiscent of the conscience which drives propositionalist philosophy
towards nihilism.
This latter needs some explaining, though only broad-brush strokes are
possible here. As already indicated, propositionalist philosophy pursues the
project of establishing true propositions about existence/being, knowl-
edge/truth, rules of inference, and the subject/self, emphasizing one or
other of these sub-projects at various times. These subprojects are in fact
attempts to make good lacunae in propositionalist philosophy itself since its
project presupposes the binaries being/non-being, truth/falsehood, trans-
gression/obedience with respect to the rules of inference, and subject/
object. Being is presupposed because being or the instances of being are
what propositions are true or false about. Obviously, without some notions
of truth and falsehood, there is no propositionalist project at all. Rules of
inference regulate the procedure of propositional philosophy which aspires
to consist in chains of propositions, each being justified by its predecessor
in the chain. (Propositionalist philosophy values and relies on argument.)
All of this requires a special comportment on the part of the subject, a
disinterestedness which places the results of valid inference from true
premises over what the subject would like to discover or believe. This subject
is conceived over and against the object about which it enquires and hopes
to be Enlightened.
The role of the conscience which drives propositionalist philosophy,
mentioned above, should now be clearer: without the propositionalist
conscience, adherence to the laws of inference and the mandatory disinter-
estedness on the part of the subject could scarcely be enforced. Further, it
is characterized by a related predilection for proofs.14 Together, these lead
into a quest for true propositions about everything. Crucially, if proposition-
alist philosophy is to succeed in its task of establishing true propositions,
the propositions on which it itself depends ought, in conscience, to be true.

But an infinite regress opens up at this point since propositional statements
are justified by other propositional statements and there is nothing in this
which indicates at what point, or even if at all, this process of justification
should stop.15 This is clearly unsatisfactory for the project of being able to
establish true propositions since there appears to be no ultimate justifica-
tion for the procedure by which they are to be discovered and/or the
presuppositions which underpin it. Yet propositionalist philosophy must
have secure foundations to be true to its own ambitions and self-appointed
duties. This leads to a search for statements which can act as the starting
point for chains of argument which justify all other possible statements
without themselves needing any justification. There are various ideas as to
what the foundational statements might be, and why they might be founda-
tional, and why they litter the tradition. But none of them can entirely
satisfy the propositionalist conscience and the propositionalist philosopher
is drawn deeper into a labyrinth of difficult questions: these, together with
the traditions many responses to them, are the initial burdens of the
spirit which would be transformed. The onerous choice between an infi-
nite regress and an arbitrary foundational statement arises out of
propositionalist philosophy itself and clearly is self-undermining. This is the
nihilism which is implicit within propositionalist philosophy: it entails That
the highest values devaluate themselves.16
The spirit, then, becomes a camel. The camel is a beast of burden and
needs great strength to carry his burdens. Let us now return to the text and
see if the burdens that the camel bears do indeed relate to the difficulties
generated by the propositionalist conscience.
Nietzsche does not tell us immediately what the burdens are but instead
asks us a number of rhetorical questions before telling us that these ques-
tions do indeed indicate the camel-spirits burdens.
The first burden is . . . humbling oneself to wound ones haughtiness
and Letting ones folly shine to mock ones wisdom.17 This refers to the
initial madness of questioning the self-evident and the taken-for-granted
demanded by the reverence of the camel-spirit. The reverence requires that
ones faith be tested thoroughly, even though in the process our ordinary,
usually reliable reason, our wisdom is challenged. Looked at like this, it
seems to be identical with the propositionalist conscience which tests both
our common sense use of the proposition and what the propositionalist
philosophers have made of it.
The second burden is . . . parting from our cause when it triumphs and
. . . climbing high mountains to tempt the tempter.18 This again suggests
the hardship of being led by the propositionalist conscience against

propositionalist philosophy itself. For the propositionalist conscience
demands that propositionalism itself be tested even when it seems to be
inviolable (when it triumphs), and when that seeming inviolability is held
dear. With biblical resonances, the devil of remorseless questioning is
invoked and the solidity of propositionalisms grounding questioned.
The third burden is . . . feeding on the acorns and grass of knowledge
and, for the sake of truth, suffering hunger in ones soul.19 This implies that
there is little knowledge that is really impervious to the questioning
demanded by the propositionalist conscience but much quasi-knowledge on
which we can feed to the point of satiation and slumber, if only we are
prepared to adopt convention and renounce radical questioning. The camel-
spirit embraces this asceticism for the sake of truth and in this respect is like
the modern free spirit encountered in Genealogy of Morals, III. His reverence
is reverence for truth and his conscience demands that truth be sought,
whatever the cost in terms of living without the comforts of certainty.
The fourth burden is . . . being sick and sending home the comforters
and making friends with the deaf, who never hear what you want.20 Here
the austerity of hovering in a limbo of uncertainty, while the seemingly
unquestionable is questioned, is fully embraced. As a result, all palliatives
are refused, including finding those companions who might comfortingly
hear and agree with what one says. The propositionalist conscience domi-
nates the philosophers psyche at this point.
The fifth burden is . . . stepping into filthy waters when they are the
waters of truth, and not repulsing cold frogs and hot toads.21 The asceti-
cism of being driven by the propositionalist conscience causes the
camel-spirit to encounter much that is filthy, that is distasteful and certainly
disillusioning. However, he goes where the enquiry leads, for this is what
conscience demands of him, and looks at the grotesqueries of extreme
dispassion (cold frogs) and fanaticism (hot toads), both of which spring
from the will to truth, unflinchingly in the eye.
The last burden is . . . loving those who despise us and offering a hand
to the ghost that would frighten us.22 This very cryptic utterance possibly
refers to the hostility that the camel-project is likely to arouse from those for
whom propositionalism must not risk possible compromise; and it offers a
strategy to deal with this hostility. In a parody of the Christian message,
Nietzsche counsels those who have embarked on the camel phase of the
three metamorphoses to waste no energy on returning their detractors
hostility but to repay it with love. If there is indeed a recasting of aspects of
the Christian message here, the ghost that would frighten us possibly
refers to the Holy Ghost.23 So what does it mean to offer it a hand? Is a

handshake offered which is meant to seal a truce? If so, and it seems likely,
then Nietzsche is again counselling that engaging too vehemently in a fight
on this terrain will simply distract the camel-spirit from its immediate task.
Better to accept Christianity and other species of nihilism as being the given
from which one must begin ones journey of transformation.
To sum up the camel phase of the three metamorphoses: here we see
Nietzsche taking on the hardships that arise when the propositionalist
conscience is given full rein. This is an engagement with the Western philo-
sophical and theological tradition, an immersion in the waters of truth,
which is undertaken with a profound resolve to encounter it with clear eyes,
and not to be swayed by the need for metaphysical comfort or the wish that
things were other than they are. At this point, we cannot say that he yet
wishes to overcome the tradition. He only wishes to maintain his seeming
independence of thought whatever the cost, a stance which remains para-
sitic on the tradition, arising as it does from a rigorous application of its
conscience. The camel-spirit then speeds into the desert, the natural
home of its ascetic saintliness.24
In the desert, however, the camel metamorphoses into the lion who
would conquer his freedom and master his desert.25 Though the camel has
borne the tradition as a burden, and uncovered and then endured its
internal tensions, it is incapable of behaving destructively towards it and the
propositionalist conscience, which after all is definitive of its being. For this,
the lion phase of the three metamorphoses is needed.
The lions self-mastery is only gained by casting off the tutelage of his last
master and his last god.26 In other words, there is no self-mastery without
casting off external authority and its inner voice, without overcoming the
tradition that has brought one this far. The venerable voices of tradition
must now be treated with active suspicion. The nihilism implicit within
propositionalism is intensified. The spirits final combat is then with the
great dragon called Thou shalt.27
Instead of thou shalt, the lion wants I will.28 Instead of venerable rules,
instead of the compulsion implicit in values, thousands of years old (which
are inscribed on the dragons scales), the lion strives against these for
freedom, the ability to will independently.29 The lion wants an active will to
power rather than the reactive will to power of the camel. The lion must
purge himself therefore of the propositionalist conscience which fetters his
will. He cannot create new values yet, but he can claim the freedom neces-
sary for this task: The creation of freedom for oneself and a sacred No
even to duty for that, my brothers, the lion is needed.30 Thus, the lion can
do what the camel cannot do. The camel is too reverent and captured by
thou shalt for the task of finding illusion and caprice even in the most
sacred, for behaving like a beast of prey against the most entrenched and
respected concepts of metaphysical truth, being, and subject and against
the taken-for-granted necessity of rules for proper thought.31 No to duty is
no to the propositionalist conscience: it is Nietzsches active nihilism
against the rather different nihilism of life-negation.
In the final metamorphosis, the lion becomes the child who can do what
the lion has prepared for but cannot himself do:
The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-

propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yes. For the game of creation,
my brothers, a sacred Yes is needed: the spirit now wills his own will, and
he who has been lost to the world now conquers his own world.32
The child, then, has moved beyond the pure destructivity of the lion. The
No of the lion has given way to the Yes of the child: in other words, the
ground has been cleared of the constraints of the tradition by the active
nihilism of the beast of prey and creativity is now possible. The great task,
which is a task of legislating beyond the constraints of all tradition can only
be undertaken as creative play and by the innocent and forgetful child. This
is what Nietzsche means by the child conquering his own world.
Nevertheless, why is the child innocence and forgetting, a new begin-
ning, and a first movement? These images of freshness and newness
indicate that nihilism is only overcome by the most radical break from its
legacy. Otherwise, nothing is really created and the products of ones will
remain only reworkings of the tradition or, as is the case with the lion,
destructive engagements with it which are parasitic upon it. Only when
there is a sacred Yes does one really will ones own will: this is necessary for
the game of creation. This in turn means that only when one affirms life is real
creative originality possible and real legislation possible. How so?
The crucial association here is that which Nietzsche makes between
forgetting and innocence. Innocence, the suggestion is, is a freedom from
the influence of the past. Now, as Nietzsche has convincingly suggested, the
mainstream philosophical tradition has largely been shaped by a hidden
need for consolation in the face of lifes propensity to cause us to suffer.
This reaction to suffering depends on the action of the past in the present,
for seeing suffering as a problem depends on some sort of memory, on
some sort of loss of innocence. This means that the thinker, insofar as he
remains consciously or unconsciously motivated by his life-negating orien-
tation, cannot be really original. The child, by contrast, is free of life-negation

because she is new, fresh, and innocent and thus the past has yet no power to
induce the fearful wish to escape life. So far, then, we can equate creativity with
innocence and innocence with the absence of life-negation.
However, the child-spirit of the Metamorphoses is not a past-less being. She
has been a camel and a lion. She is revisiting innocence and this is clearly a
different state of affairs from a newborn innocence. So how can innocence be
regained? How can it coexist with a past? Here I want to suggest that it is only
possible to revisit this innocence if one is life-affirmative (over and above the
mere absence of life-negation), because only if there is affirmation does ones past
become powerless, and the recollection of lifes power to inflict suffering cease to
shape ones thought and render one incapable of creative originality.
Nietzsche actually underscores this point when he calls the child a self-
propelled wheel.33 The self-propelled wheel can only refer to the eternal
return. Thus by associating the child with the supreme test of life-affirmation,
Nietzsche is implying that the ludic is the life-affirmative mode of enquiry.
Conclusion
Let us summarize On The Three Metamorphoses. In the first phase, the

camel, the spirit finds that in conscience there is something to overcome but
is unable to overcome it. She remains captured by the propositionalist tradi-
tion, perhaps weighed down by it, but begins to become aware of its
self-destructive potential, its implicit nihilism. In the second phase, the lion,
the desire to overcome his tutelage grows and to this end will is developed
but this will cannot yet create because it has to complete a prior task of
destruction, turning the propositionalist conscience on itself in the process.
In the final phase, the child, the spirit is able to take advantage of the lions
destructive clearing activity and to create and legislate. She is able to do so
because she fully affirms life.
Nietzsches formulation for future philosophical activity, despite its highly
nuanced character, remains only a pregnant suggestion at how we might
proceed rather than a strictly delineated programme. And indeed, given
the essential openness of the situation, it must so remain. But this much can
be said: it is to be the imaginative, creative, life-affirmative play of a child.
As for the philosopher of the future: she will have discovered that the coming
to fruition of the nihilism that has haunted the Western tradition for more
than two millennia, and which she has recapitulated vividly within her own
soul, is after all no cause for despair. On the contrary, it is a liberation into
the creative abundance and cognitive acuity of play.
Part II
Of Existence
Chapter 5
Zarathustra, the Moment, and Eternal

Recurrence of the Same: Nietzsches
Ontology of Time
Friedrich Ulfers and Mark Daniel Cohen
Nietzsches overt references to and estimations of science in the body of his

published and unpublished works constitute a system of reflecting and
interlocking echoes, a playing back and forth of confronting and opposing
implications that seem to argue his essential position on the matter to a
point of nullified stasis. In the views of many commentators, Nietzsches
position on pure science is fundamentally inconsistent, sufficiently at odds
with itself that they find it fair to say he has no position at all. On the one
hand, Nietzsche periodically attacks science as the mechanistic interpreta-
tion of the world, as postulating substance the hard materiality that
consists in entities that are discrete and that persist without intrinsic change
through time, that persist unless acted upon from without as the founda-
tion of the world, as the essence of the real. On the other hand, Nietzsche,
in the famous passage from The Will to Power, heralds the principle of eternal
recurrence of the same as the most scientific of all possible hypotheses,1 as
if the commendation were without implicit qualification.
It is the position of this chapter that Nietzsche committed himself to the
development of a coherent theory of ontology, one which finds much of its
inspiration in the mid-nineteenth century ideas of natural science and in
Naturphilosophie. In the ongoing development of heat theory and particu-
larly the emerging proposition of heat as a form of energy, Nietzsche
observed a shift in the orientation of natural science from an essentially
mechanistic vision of the universe to a conception that espoused a radical
Becoming over the primacy of Being that was inherent in the atomism of
mechanistic science. That transition to a new model was found in the
debates over tenable propositions for the science of thermodynamics and
energetics, as well as various conceptions in Naturphilosophie that contribute
to the idea, as labelled by one theorist, of a Perpetuum Mobile2. Further, the
very transition Nietzsche found in science away from a mechanistic atomism

to an energeticist model of Becoming provides the operational paradigm
for the full argument of eternal recurrence, an argument that Nietzsche
never completely committed to paper but that may be reconstructed from
the total range of statements he did make and which arrives at a proposi-
tion of neither recurrence nor eternity, one that finally eliminates the
ontology of normative time.
On the basis of numerous entries in the Nachla, it can be said that
Nietzsche as an ontologist makes a clear commitment to the primacy of
Becoming over Being. His view of the generally and historically assumed
primacy of Being is that it is a falsification of the reality of Becoming, a
primordial belief, in his own words, that the world is One and at rest, and
that it is a falsification for the purpose of survival a form of pragmatic
thinking that we as a species must commit but that does not correspond in
literal terms to the reality of the world.3 It follows that any science or philos-
ophy oriented on the truth of Being must be a continuation of the falsification.
Yet, he found that, in much of contemporary scientific theorizing regarding
heat as a form of energy, reality reveals itself as a dynamical process, leaving
the philosophical and scientific approaches to the world in terms of Being
of permanence, of numerically and temporally identical things, such as the
atoms of Newtonian physics a useful fiction. For Nietzsche, the conception
of the world in terms of Becoming is the hypothesis from which philosophy
must start if it is to be compatible with the paradigmatic shift in science from
an atomistic-mechanistic perspective to a dynamistic-processual one.4
Heat theory eventually settled out into the science of thermodynamics,
and the first two laws of thermodynamics constituted, for a thinker like
Nietzsche and certainly not for him alone, a potential logical, ontological
contradiction. The first law asserted the conservation of energy that the
total amount of energy can never be altered, that energy can never be
created or destroyed. The second law, the law of entropy, if viewed as appli-
cable to the universe as a whole, implied the final anti-energeticist triumph
of Being in demanding a completion of history in the teleology of the heat
death of the universe a fate of ultimate and permanent stasis and the end
to all change, all Becoming.
Nietzsches necessary recourse and solution was to accept the first law of
the conservation of energy and deny the applicability of the second law of
entropy to the universe as a whole by adopting an a-teleological position.
The universe must have no end, in his view, for to reach an end is to achieve
the finality of Being. He saw a universe that plays its game in infinitum,5
Nietzsches Ontology of Time 77
a posture that overtly denies the ending in unstructuredness, in nothing-

ness, in the thermodynamic heat death of everything.
It is with his rejection of the second law and his upholding of the first law
of thermodynamics that Nietzsche aligns himself with the science of dyna-
mism-energetics of the mid-nineteenth century and with a range of views of
Naturphilosophie that can be grouped under the rubric of Perpetuum Mobile
and that take the universe as without any rest either at a beginning or an
end. For Nietzsche, the world may be thought of as a certain definite quan-
tity of force and as a certain definite number of centers of force6 with no
possibility of a final dissipation. The finite and a-teleological aspect of the
world as energy manifests itself as a cyclicality in which the disorganized or
degraded energy formations become the material for reprocessing or recy-
cling, making the universe what he saw as a monster of energy7 that sustains
itself as a Perpetuum Mobile that lives on itself: its excrements are its food.8
The element of cyclicality contributes the foundation for Nietzsches notion
of eternal recurrence, for eternal recurrence was what Nietzsche would
make of the Perpetuum Mobile as he altered the concept to suit and support
his own distinctive ontological philosophy.
The contributions of the Perpetuum Mobile to Nietzsches ontology are
derived from a number of scientists and philosophers. The key figure in
science whom, as Alwin Mittasch has pointed out,9 Nietzsche read exten-
sively and who directly asserted the indestructibility of energy was Robert
Mayer, one of the principal contributors to the development of the theory
of heat as a form of energy.10 Mayer, in an essay from 1862, speaks of the
discovery of the law of the indestructibility of force.11 In an essay from 1870,
Mayer uses Hermann von Helmholtzs phrase, the law of the conservation
of force.12 And in 1845, Mayer gives a clear account of the essence of the
conservation of energy: In all physical and chemical processes the given
force remains a constant quantity.13
A variety of writers developed the idea of energy as flowing in cyclical or
circular patterns, a concept that serves as a foundation for the core asser-
tion of Nietzsches initial conception of eternal recurrence, as presented in
the passage included in WP. The scientist Georg Wilhelm Muncke viewed
the first law of thermodynamics in terms of circular processing and repro-
cessing. Muncke uses the phrase perpetuum mobile physicum in the context of
the world as a circular course of things . . . which ever endures and uninter-
ruptedly renews itself. . . .14 In a similar vein, Karl Wilhelm Gottlieb Kastner
refers to curvilinear motions that proceeding from a point, return to it,
and thus endlessly renew themselves . . .15 Jakob Friedrich Fries writes of
the natural disposition toward a certain circular course [Kreislauf] of the

same recurring phenomena.16
Central to Nietzsches ontological worldview is the principle of a motive
force that unceasingly generates and regenerates energy formations, main-
taining a perpetual dynamism. Beginning with his Birth of Tragedy and
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks and extending all the way to his late
notes, Nietzsche sees an inner will17 which he claims is what is missing
from mechanistic science in terms of a Heraclitean strife of opposites that
brings about the creation-destruction of the universe ad infinitum. It is this
motive force as oppositional strife to which Nietzsche gives the name will
to power, defining it as pathos,18 that is, a suffering from the contradic-
tion or Ineinander19 (entanglement) of opposite forces, which relieves itself
via an autogenerative overflow and re-flow, an eternal world creation-
destruction.
Here again, Nietzsche found support in the science of energetics as well in
the Naturphilosophie that embraced the new scientific paradigms. The scientist
Johann Heinrich Ferdinand Autenrieth speaks of polarities that are never in
complete equilibrium as a continuing source of all motion . . . This source
most likely . . . explains the continuation of the motion of all the stars, the
sun and our earth. . . . Autenrieth identifies this source as the vital force,
calling its perpetual internal change a not further explicable basis [Grund]
that sustains such continual disturbance between the essentially interrelated
antitheses and does not allow them to come to equilibrium. He refers to this
far from equilibrium situation by the term Indifferenzpunkt out of which
comes creation via destruction/de-differentiation.20
Ultimately, it is the Naturphilosophie of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von
Schelling that had the most extensive influence over Nietzsches thought,
and particularly his will to power as pathos. Like Nietzsche, Schelling posits
the autogenerative source of the world in terms of the dynamic indiffer-
ence or dynamic unity of opposing yet interlaced originary forces
[Urkrfte], such as attractive and repulsive forces. For Schelling, as for Nietz-
sche, there is no force in nature that is not counteracted by an opposing
force; the two constitute a paired polarity and are in a continuous conflict.
Again, as with Nietzsche, this continuous conflict is ontologically more basic
than the manifest universe, with the latter reduced to a generation based
on the strife of the Urkrfte.21 Schelling asserts the primacy of the polarities
by conjoining the dynamic unity of opposing Urkrfte that he calls the
common soul of nature22 and the principle of life with a repeated rekin-
dling that continually sustains the conflict of opposites.23 Schelling refers
to this principle as a system of mutual determination of receptivity and
activity, comprised within one concept. . . .24 He, too, argues that an
unending cyclicality arises out of the opposing forces, with one acting
centrifugally, the other counteracting centripetally.25
A final contribution to Nietzsches thinking and, as will be seen, particu-
larly to eternal recurrence comes from Friedrich Zllner, a physicist whom
Nietzsche read carefully and remarked upon. Zllner was one of the first
physicists to employ Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemanns non-Euclidean
geometry to space, rendering space finite but unbounded. Zllner wrote
detailed discussions of non-Euclidean geometry in relation to time, space,
and force. He argued that the total amount of force in the universe is finite
and that finite force and infinite time are compatible with non-Euclidean
geometry. Most important to Nietzsche was Zllners idea that time and
space curve back into themselves, extending the cyclical pattern of energy
flow that Nietzsche found in Naturphilosophie to the very structure of the
universe.26
These observations suggest that there was a concept developing in
Naturphilosophie as it was influenced by the science of heat as energy in the
mid-nineteenth century, one which we have termed Perpetuum Mobile
employing Munckes language and which was composed of the following
propositions: the conservation of force as a constant quantity, the cyclical
flow of energy, the continuing presence of energy established in paired and
opposing polarities that remain perpetually in a condition of dynamical
disequilibrium, the rejection of the principle of entropy in application to
the universe as a single closed system, and the arrangement of cosmic space
in accordance with a non-Euclidean geometry. It is possible that the
Perpetuum Mobile provided Nietzsche through his reading of, at minimum,
several of these philosophers as well as contemporaneous scientists with a
serious scientific foundation for his vision of an energeticist universe, and
thus the primacy of Becoming over Being. However, although the constit-
uent parts of the Perpetuum Mobile gave him the elements for the first version
of eternal recurrence, as presented in WP, it left Nietzsche with the problem
of a pointless eternity with the meaninglessness that comes when there is
simply no end to things. What he needed to accomplish was a scientifically
founded disproving of normative time he required an elimination of the
meaningless eternity he identified with what he called Turkish Fatalism.27
This is precisely what he accomplished with the concept of eternal recur-
rence, evident when one follows through the logic of the argument and
finds the concept transformed from an engine of endless energy to some-
thing that breaks the very fatalism of time that breaks an intrinsically
cyclical Becoming away from normative, linear time.
There has been a general difficulty in reading the argument for eternal
recurrence, due in part to the fact that, as is well recognized by now, the
idea is presented in essentially two forms. In the last sections of WP, it is
developed as an intended scientific principle that is supposed to follow logi-
cally and inevitably from our observations of the universe as science reveals
it to us, or did in Nietzsches time, and particularly from the law of the
conservation of energy. The argument, as it is presented in section 1066 of
WP, is familiar and readily summarized: The number of centers of force is
finite, therefore the available combinations of such centers are finite, and
in infinite time, it must follow that the variety of combinations and sequences
of combinations of centers of force will be exhausted, and the overall
sequence of sequences will have to begin again. Such repetition, which
touches everything that happens, including every event in every life, has
already occurred an infinite number of times and will recur endlessly into
an infinite future.
The other form of the thought makes no direct mention in its passages of
the great cosmological repeating of all events. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra and
in section 341 of The Gay Science, eternal recurrence appears as a proposi-
tion to be imagined the dream, or myth, of a life that is eternally repeated,
without hope or possibility of redaction or reprieve. It is a conception meant
as a test of resolve, a concept to be seen as, by the title of its section in GS,
the greatest weight, threatening the implication of the darkest Nihilism
the strongest sense of meaninglessness to things, of the absence of any
purpose or end goal, of pointless interminable continuance and carrying
as well a moral lesson, open to endless interpretation, regarding the answer
to such despair.
The two modes of the thought have often been played off against each
other, the moral lesson employed to explain away the scientific concept, for
by many commentators on Nietzsche, eternal recurrence of the same has
been estimated to make little sense as a potential principle of science.
When specific counterarguments have been wielded against eternal
recurrence as a cosmological theory, they have arrived in two species. The
first is the rejection of the conclusion that a finite number of combinations
of centers of force necessarily follows from the proposition that there is a
finite number of centers of force. This complaint carries some weight, but
it is the second species that is the more virulent. It asserts that the scientific
argument leads to an absurd result, and most specifically, that the idea of
the eternal recurrence of the same constitutes an internal contradiction. If
precisely the same event, the same sequence of events, even the same life,
occurs even a second time, identical in every detail, then it is by definition
not identical, for it comes later in time it has been displaced in the time
sequence and is thus different by dint of position. If it were truly the
same which is what, it appears, Nietzsches argument requires then the
event, or each individual event in a sequence, would recur at the same time
or times as the previous occurrence or occurrences, and thus there would
not be a recurrence. The very phrase eternal recurrence of the same
asserts that there is no recurrence since everything is always the same at
the same time, so to speak, as it asserts that there is a recurrence. What is
worse, since Nietzsche claims that the past is also an eternity leading up to
now and that an infinite amount of time, and an infinite number of recur-
rences of all events, has already passed the eternal recurrence of the same
argues that not only has all we experience already happened an infinite
number of times but it is also happening for the first time, or still happening
for the first time.
In short, the difficulty is that Nietzsches argument demonstrates that the
infinite repetition of everything is both a logical inevitability and a logical
impossibility that it is a paradox intrinsic to events.
Many commentators on Nietzsche take this internal contradiction as a
mark of the implausibility and thus the failure of the argument for eternal
recurrence as a scientific principle.28 But the inference from logical failure
to rhetorical failure is not so easily drawn, for in Nietzsches ontological
philosophy, the world is not logically constituted. It is an explicit position of
the philosopher that the categories of reason do not apply to the world and
thus are not arbiters of truth. Yet, the rigorous application of the proce-
dures of Aristotelian logic are consistently among the guiding principles of
Nietzsches practice, and when he engages in deductive reasoning he is a
precise practitioner.
The implications of applying rigorously executed logic as a surgical probe
for the delving of an illogical world is yet to be fully explored, but for the
moment, a portion of the incisive potential of the procedure can be seen in
one of Nietzsches occasional methodologies the following through of a
line of argument until it reaches a logical contradiction and thereby
uncovers a flaw in our normative vision of the world. It is a method of argu-
mentation that Nietzsche describes in section 634 of WP, in which he defines
his conception of the atom: I call it a quantum of will to power: it expresses
the characteristic that cannot be thought out of the mechanistic order
without thinking away this order itself.29 The method can be considered
comparable as a logical procedure to the process of factoring out when
working a differential equation in calculus, a procedure by which factors of
the equation are arranged to be paired and negating identical
expressions with one positive and the matching one negative so that
together they come to zero and can be dropped from the equation, thereby
simplifying it. Nietzsches method amounts to locating elements of the
argument that negate their own meanings and eliminating them in favour
of factors that become implied by the ways in which the previous factors
reached negation.
The claim here is that the scientific argument for eternal recurrence as
presented in WP is the foundation of a larger argument that would disprove
the claim of infinite and exact recurrences, on the basis of their evident
absurdity, and assert an alternate ontological conception, one that
Nietzsche was able to present in no other fashion, by no other disquisition.
That larger argument is adumbrated in the story of Z. Yet having been
presented by Nietzsche more explicitly nowhere else presumably, he
would have done so in a projected book, some of the notes for which are
included WP it is difficult to extract. Nevertheless, if one takes into account
all Nietzschean texts referring to eternal recurrence, as well as many of his
ontological observations distributed in the Nachla, one can see the track of
the argument. It can be traced for the notes constitute a chain of islands,
individual summits of thought, that mark the presence of a submerged
mountain range, many of whose peaks never broke the surface of the
written page. One can see that eternal recurrence constitutes one of the
moments Nietzsche promised at the beginning of his public career in BT,
the moment at which science reaches its limits and, from that periphery,
men gaze into what defies illumination, and when they see to their horror
how logic coils up at these boundaries and finally bites its own tail suddenly
the new form of insight breaks through, tragic insight. . . .30 Eternal recur-
rence is a tragic insight not merely a Nihilistic contemplation, but a
breaking of ontological norms a Dionysian insight, which defies rational
illumination but which may arrive at the periphery of logic.
The plot of Z indicates a shift occurring in the heart of the argument, a
transformation of implication that follows Zarathustras initial realization
of endlessly repeating, numerically infinite world histories the transfor-
mation of implication into a recognition that is never fully detailed in the
text of the book. In the middle of the text, at the end of Book 2, Zarathustra
comes upon The Stillest Hour, during which the clock of his life drew a
breath31 and Zarathustra is compelled to withdraw into solitude by the
force of his pain.32 At the start of Book 3, in the section titled The
Wanderer, Zarathustra returns, having realized, as he says, now I must face
my hardest path.33 Immediately following, in the section On the Vision
and the Riddle, he meets the dwarf at the gateway between the past and the
future and realizes the conception of eternal recurrence as an endless

repetition of world cycles, and then confronts the nauseating vision of the
shepherd with the snake in his mouth, the serpent whose head the shep-
herd bites off, after which he rises up laughing. Later, in The Convalescent,
Zarathustra returns to the concept of the eternal recurrence, as well as the
vision of the serpent which he now claims had crawled into his throat.
He returns, as well, to the nausea, which he attributes to the thought that
The small man recurs eternally.34 But his disgust is referred to in the past
tense, and when his animals detail eternal recurrence as an infinity of world
cycles, he accuses them of being cruel and making a hurdy-gurdy song35
of it.
Something in the concept has changed for Zarathustra. Later still, in
The Other Dancing Song, life charges Zarathustra with wanting to leave
her soon. He whispers something in her ear, to which she responds, Nobody
knows that.36 Nothing more is revealed of what he whispered, and if the
thought he shares with life were one that had already been enunciated in
the text, there would be no reason for the narrator to omit it. Clearly, some-
thing further has occurred to Zarathustra. It is equally clear that
Zarathustras disgust has left him by the close of the book, when he leaves
his cave glowing and strong as a morning sun that comes out of dark moun-
tains.37 The reason for that change of import is the heart of the significance
of Z, but it is a reason that the character never openly reveals.
We are left to infer the secret that Zarathustra whispers. We must recon-
struct the argument that Nietzsche never deposited into a finished text,
discover the submerged chine of unexpressed intent, working through the
logic of what he did write to interpret, and break through the rational
contradiction that many commentators have observed. To do so, one must
proceed by recognized procedure. When confronting this contradiction,
we have to seek what inevitably must exist: a hidden, unexamined, and
faulty assumption, the assumption that is unwittingly accepted and that lies
in opposition to the bulk of the premises of the argument.
The unexamined assumption in the argument for eternal recurrence as
it is presented in WP or more precisely, as that argument is generally
read is that time runs infinitely in a straight line. This is a proposition that
Nietzsche never specifically asserts. It is merely the normative conception of
time, and it is always perilous to assume when one has not been told
explicitly one way or the other that Nietzsche is adopting the normative
conception of anything. To be fair, in the argument Nietzsche does specifi-
cally claim that time is infinite, but this is a claim that is made in notes
unpublished and unrevised at the time of his death and that is overtly
revised in the text of Z and thus may be taken as provisional in its exact
phrasing. In Z, we are told in On the Vision and the Riddle that time
itself is a circle,38 and, in The Convalescent, that Bent is the path of
eternity.39
The difference is a geometric one and is foundational to the proper
reading of eternal recurrence. It marks the reason for the profound
emphasis Nietzsche gave to the thought. The deepest and most far-reaching
revolutions of thought are always those that involve an alteration in the very
geometry of thinking, for thinking does have a geometry, a set of rules for
the space in which it occurs and according to which one thought follows
upon another. Aristotelian logic occurs in a space of Euclidean geometry
thoughts that imply each other follow one upon the next without evident
inflection. They constitute a straight line of logic the further one follows
out the line, the farther one falls from the starting point of the argument.
But such an uninflected intellectual, imaginative space is not the only
possibility.
And it is not the one Nietzsche asserts in the Z text, where time itself is
claimed to be a circle. A different set of inferences follows from there,
different from the inferences that come of assuming that time is straight
whereas events, or configurations of centers of force, repeat in a vast circle.
If time is straight, then events must necessarily slip their time slots in
instance after instance of their occurrence, producing the time displace-
ment, the occurrence at a later point on the time line that makes a logical
contradiction, and an absurdity of the claim that they are the same. They
cannot be the same if one occurrence of an event is later than the one that
preceded it. It is as if the circle of events were a wheel rolling down the
road of infinite time, and each spot on that wheel hits the ground in each
instance at another spot from that of the last instance, a spot further down
that road.
But no such displacement occurs if time itself is also a circle. Like a tire
and a rim, the circle of events and the circle of time are locked together
each event is permanently, and in a sense perpetually, localized in its
moment. Think also of time as a strip of film, of definite length, in which
the two ends have been spliced together. Time is then not infinite but finite
and unbounded. It is limited in its extension, there is a total amount of it,
but it has no edge one never can reach the end of it. It is simply that any
moment one might postulate as the end of time would be followed by the
moment that then would constitute the beginning of time. But in this
geometric conception, the terms end and beginning are arbitrary and
meaningless there is no more an end or beginning of circular time than
there is an end point and beginning point of a circle: the line of the circle
simply is continuous, and of definite and measurable extension. So too, the
terms past and future are arbitrary and, finally, meaningless. What consti-
tutes the past and future depends upon where or when on the circle of
time one is standing, and, theoretically, the past would eventually follow
the future, and the future ultimately precede the past, for as Zarathustra
tells us, And are not all things knotted together so firmly that this moment
draws after it all that is to come? Therefore itself too?40 But the word
theoretically is inexact, because, by necessary implication and by
Nietzsches own argument, no recurrence ever occurs, not even theoreti-
cally, no more than any one point on a circle is ever repeated on the same
circle, no more than any frame appears twice in the same film.
Which is also to say that time possesses a Riemannian geometry, or more
exactly, the extension, that is, time has a positive curvature, as it is conceived
by Riemannian geometry, meaning that time curves back upon itself. We, as
occurrences of time ourselves, our lives occupying sections of the loop of
time, are incapable of noticing the curvature. We experience time simply as
proceeding, or ourselves as proceeding through time. Only by having an
overview of time could one notice that it is finite, although it never comes
to an end. But, for Nietzsche who subscribed to a position of thorough
perspectivism there is no overview, there is no outside, no other world
from which to observe this one. This is the only world, all reality is only what
appears to the observer from the observers viewpoint, and this curved time
is the only time.
Which is why there is no recurrence. It is not merely that recurrence is
inherently unobservable, but that it does not in fact occur. Every event
comes once only Nietzsche himself asserts there is no second time41 no
event initiated time or will close time, and whether an event is a part of the
past or of the future is purely a matter of viewpoint. Time, too, is a matter
of perspective, a matter of judgmental terminology within a frame of posi-
tive curvature.
Nietzsches use of Riemannian geometry the same geometry that applies
to space in Einsteins General Theory of Relativity is not simple conjec-
ture or interpretive imposition. Not only does Nietzsche assert specifically
that time is a circle but also that space is spherical and that The shape of
space must be the cause of eternal movement,42 which makes his space
Einsteinian. It is hardly a matter of unfounded conjecture to consider that
Nietzsche may well have understood the mathematical implications of these
assertions, particularly if such an interpretation makes eternal recurrence a
fully reasonable idea, eliminating the internal contradiction so many have
found in it. Both Capek and particularly Moles have noticed the usefulness
of this approach, and as noted above, Nietzsche was aware of the pertinence
of Riemannian geometry to cosmology from his reading of Friedrich
Zllner. The positive curvature of time is an evident mark of Zllners
impression.
Hence, we have in eternal recurrence a structure of time that is not
eternal and in which nothing recurs. What we do have, other than the logi-
cally inevitable conclusion Nietzsche discovered bereft of its logical
contradiction, is a finite time that will never come to a conclusion or reach
a goal that offers an external justification of the world. And we have some-
thing more.
Neither Capek nor Moles sees anything more in the thought of eternal
recurrence than a circular, finite, and unbounded time an interpretation
that Capek strangely criticizes for leading to stasis. But if one follows through
the same logic that led to the recognition of the positive curvature of time,
one finds that there are further implications.
Under Nietzsches perspectivism, the concept of overall time, of time
per se, is meaningful as a logical extrapolation from the observable facts of
experience, it is meaningful conceptually, but it is meaningless as an expe-
riential reality. There is no perspective, no point of view, from which the
conceptual totality of time whether finite or infinite can be experienced,
not even over the course of the conceptual totality of time. The totality of
the worlds time is thus, in Nietzsches ontology, not a fact. It is merely a
result of logical analysis. From the point of view of any event, any centre of
force, or even the constituencies of any combination of forces, from the
point of view of any interacting system of centers of force, even if splayed
over time meaning any apparent object throughout its existence, or a
human life, our own existence there can only be as much time as the
object, life, centre of force, or system experiences. Within a perspectival
structure, there is no outside to any system, and thus no time can pertain to,
can exist for, the system other than the time that is experienced from the
perspective of the system. Within a perspectival system, time is functionally
an attribute of the system, and it follows that when the system does not
exist, its attributes cannot exist time cannot in fact, and as a fact, tran-
spire. Hence, every moment of the termination of any discrete and persisting
system is followed, from the viewpoint of the system, by the moment of its
beginning. More personally, the moment of death for every human being
is followed by the moment of birth and not for the second time, but for
the first time, for there is no second time. Every life is itself a circular
time span.
This is a necessary implication of Nietzsches argument, and, with regard

to human life, an implication that he does, at one point, specifically
announce. In the Nachla, he wrote:
Between the last moment of consciousness and the first appearance of

new life lies no time it passes by like a stroke of lightning, even if living
creatures measure it in terms of billions of years or could not measure it
at all. Timelessness and succession are compatible as soon as the intellect
is gone.43
What results is a system of worlds within worlds, each discrete system that
persists through time persisting through its own finite but unbounded time.
And the overall, finite but unbounded time of the world as a whole, within
which one would want to locate all these thereby subsystems of time, does
not exist except as an intellectual abstraction, unless one would wish to
grant consciousness to the world as a whole, which Nietzsche specifically
does not do. This is a conception of the world order to which Nietzsche
does point when he has Zarathustra say, in The Convalescent, immediately
before condemning the animals for misunderstanding eternal recurrence:
To every soul there belongs another world; for every soul, every other soul
is an afterworld. . . . For me how should there be any outside myself?
There is no outside.44
However, the thought does not stop there. From the point of view of strict
perspectivism when applied to time and it is clear Nietzsche believes it
does apply each moment of time is also a system unto itself and possesses
its own perspective, certainly as much as a centre of force can be said to
possess a unique perspective the perceived Now constitutes a perspec-
tival system. However, if a moment of time is a perspective point and only
that amount of time it addresses as fact is truly time from its perspective,
then each moment of time exists only during itself, within itself as a circular,
cyclical structure of time. The moment is its own time span. In simple
language, this inference positions the moment Now outside of continuous
durational time and makes the Now moment the only time that is real,
that is a fact. This conception can readily be viewed as the significance of
the section On the Vision and the Riddle in Z, in which Zarathustra meets
the dwarf at the gateway between the past and future. The dwarf tells him
that the gateway is named Moment and claims that the lane of the infinite
past and the lane of the infinite future contradict each other. It is evident
from this text that the past and the future, in contradicting each other, do
not make a continuous line they do not combine coherently. The Moment
stands at their intersection, and therefore apart from both, for at the point
they meet, they do not join together. In short, the passing moment does not
pass; it is not in time.
The point is even clearer when the passage from Zarathustra is matched
to section 1066 of WP, to a portion of it that has been generally overlooked
in the specifications it applies to the infinity of the past. Nietzsche writes:
Nothing can prevent me from reckoning backward from this moment

and saying I shall never reach the end; just as I can reckon forward from
the same moment into the infinite. Only if I made the mistake I shall
guard against it of equating this correct concept of a regressus in infinitum
with an utterly unrealizable concept of a finite progressus up to this present,
only if I suppose that the direction (forward or backward)
is logically a matter of indifference, would I take the head this
moment for the tail.45
The movement from the moment Now back through an infinity of the
past is legitimate. However, it is not the same as the incorrect translation,
the unrealizable concept of the progression of time forward through the
past to the Now moment. The direction is not a matter of indifference,
and the movement forward through the past is judged not credible. It is not
the fact of the matter. If one attends carefully to the text, this is precisely
what the dwarf presented as a vision to Zarathustra. The implication is the
explanation of why the lanes of the past and future contradict each other:
they lead in opposite directions; the past does not flow into the future. They
image incompatible abstractions of time. And they flow out from and away
from the present, from Now. The past, as something that happened prior
to now and that incrementally led to it, is a fiction.
This removal of the Moment from the linear flow of time coordinates
precisely with Nietzsches observation in the Nachla concerning the impor-
tance of the infinitely small moment,46 as well as the remark in Z: The
center is everywhere. Bent is the path of eternity.47 Every moment is the
center of time a conception distinctly close, again, to Einsteins cosmology.
Every Moment is the point away from which the past and future stream.
It is an entirety of time, for itself, and unto itself, cut away from the flow of
time as the head of the snake was bitten off by the shepherd in Zarathustras
vision, or by Zarathustra himself.
And so in a very real sense, every Moment is the same Moment, for the
Moment is all the time there actually is. The Moment is all of time, in more
than a metaphoric, poetic sense, for the apotheosis of the Moment breaks
all sequence. The fact that each Moment provides itself with its only possible
time frame along with the absence of any overall, universal time frame
due to the impossibility of its having any experiential perspective destroys
any possible site for a sequence. There is nowhere and no time within
which a sequence of moments may occur. Each Moment, and each center
of force in the Moment of its occurrence, must relate to and interact with
all others outside of any continuous temporal flow, by principles of interac-
tion that are not themselves temporal. It is as if they are superimposed not
spatially but by dint of the impossibility of any possible displacement in
time from each other, for there is no overall field of time within which they
can be distributed. That the center may be everywhere renders all centers
the same center.
This gives the Moment a sense of great depth, a quality of capaciousness,
a sense of possessing hidden recesses, and begins to explain Zarathustras
numerous observations toward the end of the book that eternity is deep
not long but deep as well as his feeling of the clock of his life drawing a
breath, as if stopping for a moment, as the thought of the eternal recur-
rence begins to dawn on him and his sense in the section At Noon that
the sun had stood straight over his head throughout his dream of the world
becoming perfect, and his question Did time perhaps fly away?48 and his
questions at the very end of the book, Where is time gone? Have I not sunk
into deep wells?49 and his observation that there is no time on earth for
such things,50 referring to the arrival of Zarathustras sign, of his answer
finally arrived. And, as a self-contained, discrete system that, simultaneously,
passes out of itself and leads into itself, although it transpires once only, the
Moment out of durational time becomes the perfected image of Nietzsches
idea of Becoming.
The Moment is the culmination of eternal recurrence, and as its own
entirety of time that passes simultaneously out of itself and back into itself,
it is Becoming divorced from normative temporality. As its own entirety of
time, the Moment cannot pass away from its perspective, which is its only
reality, there is no further time into which it can dissipate. Thus, the
Moment is the image of Becoming that has been permanentized. Here is
the meaning of Nietzsches remark: That everything recurs is the closest
approximation of a world of becoming to a world of being.51 In a sense, the
Moment, and with it all of time, is going nowhere. It passes, yet it does not
pass away. And as a simultaneous passing away and recommencement that
never really passes away and never really recommences, the Moment is the
perfected image of Nietzsches simultaneity of destruction and creation, of
his internal contradiction in all things of his criticism of substance, which
makes the Moment, and eternal recurrence, the culmination of Nietzsches

ontology.
Yet, from the human perspective, time will continue to pass, history will
appear a perceptible fact, and the logic of our situation will continue to
suggest a monumental recurrence of the cosmological chronology. But that
is the human perspective. It is an Apollinian vision, for the initial, Nihilistic
version of eternal recurrence was always a matter of the Apollinian view-
point it clearly adopts the principium individuationis and acknowledges the
slipping gradient of temporal extension. But, when one thinks through the
vision to acquire the riddle it harbours, one begins to come upon a tragic
insight, a Dionysian vision, a seemingly illogical but inescapable
inference an inference that ultimately proves to be thoroughly consistent
with an advanced mathematical logic hidden within. The Dionysian
insight shines through the Apollinian image and the Apollinian
argument what Nietzsche promised at the start of his career.
Becoming that is divorced from normative temporality Becoming that
culminates and passes away simultaneously with its commencement
Becoming that is the entirety of its own time span regardless of the brevity
of its extent. The Moment as the final implication and the inevitable
outcome of eternal recurrence resolves for Nietzsche into another rendering
of his attack on substance, of his recognition of the illusoriness of self-
sameness. Eternal recurrence delivers him again to his core point, but with
a difference. Nietzsches direct attack on substance his claim that any unit
is also what it is not is arrived at by a priori argument: He argues by fiat,
propounds the truth of what he approves, and states the impossibility of
what he dislikes. However, his argument for eternal recurrence resulting in
the Moment that both is and is not, that arises as it passes away, is
deduced it is rooted in scientific observation and scientific principles and is
achieved through a rigorous deduction that reaches an inevitable implica-
tion. It lays its foundation outside of Nietzsches intentions and beyond the
craning and stretch of his preferences. It argues a reason for its
acceptance.
Extending its roots into scientific principles of his time and devising itself
into a conception consistent with his ontology, eternal recurrence as well
provides Nietzsche with the fulfilment of the promise of the Perpetuum
Mobile it dispels the nightmare of universal entropy and, thereby, achieves
an eradication of the primacy of Being. It grants an ontology of energy that
does not degrade and, in so doing, incubates an incandescent Dionysian
vision that burns in opposition to the apparent, Apollinian, mechanistic,
atomistic reality of substance.
Chapter 6
The Gateway-Augenblick
Paul S. Loeb
In the crucial vision-riddle of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra begins his

courageous attack upon his mortal enemy by drawing his attention to a two-
faced gateway standing precisely where they have just stopped. This gateway,
he points out, is inscribed above with the name Augenblick, and is the
meeting place for two long ways or lanes on either side lanes which extend
an eternity and which no one has yet travelled all the way. Although the
gateway-perspective shows the lanes contradicting and abutting each other,
Zarathustra wonders about the perspective of someone travelling further
and always further along either one of the lanes. This speculation leads him
to challenge his opponent to answer whether he believes that the lanes
eternally contradict each other. Zarathustras implication is that they would
not, but that his opponent does not know this because he is not strong
enough to bear its consequences.
As most students of this vision-riddle have noted, Nietzsches poetic image
of the gateway-Augenblick offers a spatial visualization of the concept of time.
Thus, the gateway itself may be read as a symbol for the present moment
that seems to pass in the blink of an eye, while the eternal lanes that meet
at this gateway may be read as symbols for the past and the future that no
one has yet travelled all the way.1 Zarathustras initial description thus shows
how the perspective of the present moment displays past and future as two
eternal straight lanes extending indefinitely in both directions.2 But
Zarathustras question implies that he knows what his opponent cannot
bear to know namely, that this short-sighted perspective prevents us from
seeing that the seemingly distinct lanes of past and future eventually curve
around and join together to form a single circular lane that is tremendously
extended yet still finite (though unbounded).
The gateway to Hades
What students of Zarathustras vision-riddle have not yet noticed, however,

is that Nietzsches explicit allusions back to Gay Science (340342) instruct
us further to interpret the symbol of the gateway-Augenblick as the presently

experienced moment of death. The most important of these allusions is
the term Augenblick itself. In recounting his vision of the most solitary,
Zarathustra emphasizes the eternal recurrence even of the gateway-
Augenblick in which he is whispering of eternal things while a slow spider
crawls by in the moonlight. Similarly, during the most solitary solitude
described in GS (341), the demon emphasizes the eternal recurrence even
of the spider-and-moonlight Augenblick in which he is whispering of eternal
recurrence.3 But the latter reference is linked to GS (340), The Dying
Socrates, which depicts Socrates last Augenblick of life the same Augen-
blick in which something loosens Socrates tongue so that he says his
blasphemous last word: Oh Crito, life is an illness!4 Nietzsches implica-
tion, I have argued5, is that this something was Socrates daimonion,
prophesying to him at the moment of his death that he will have to eter-
nally relive the very life he has just finished.6 So we are led to conclude as
well that the gateway-Augenblick in Zarathustras vision-riddle should be
more precisely interpreted as a symbol for the last moment of life in which
there is revealed a vision of lifes eternal recurrence.7
This interpretation is supported by the traditional poetic claim that the
transition from life to death takes place in an instant as when, at the
conclusion of the book, Zarathustras animals imagine him saying to himself
as he dies: Now I die and fade, and in an instant (Nu) I am a nothing.8 In
addition, Nietzsches poetic image of a gateway (Thorweg) alludes to the
ancient Greek image of the gate to the underworld of Hades. This allusion
is anticipated, in GS 342, and at the very start of Zarathustra, by Nietzsches
image of Zarathustra beginning his descent (Untergang) into the under-
world (Unterwelt).9 It is anticipated as well by Nietzsches suggestion that
Zarathustras greatest event will take place at the gate to the underworld
(das Thor der Unterwelt).10 And, in the context of the vision-riddle itself,
which foresees this greatest event, this allusion is set up by Nietzsches
description of Zarathustras midnight-departure from the Blessed Isles
(Elysium), and in Zarathustras gateway-invocation of a Heracles- or
Odysseus-like courage that slays even death itself. Finally, in the concluding
chapters of Part III, where Zarathustras prevision is fulfilled, Zarathustras
overripe soul is described as longing for the golden death-bark (Todes-
Nachen) that will come across the dark waters and deliver him to the vintager
who waits with the vine-knife an allusion to the ancient image of Charon
ferrying passengers across the rivers of the underworld.11
Also supporting this interpretation of the gateway-Augenblick symbol is
Nietzsches use in the vision-riddle of the poetic death-imagery he had
The Gateway-Augenblick 93
already introduced in the GS aphorisms: intense solitude, silence, stillness,

secrecy, whispering, a slow creeping spider, and moonlight. In Zarathustra,
Nietzsche intensifies this atmosphere by introducing the vision-riddle with
further death-imagery of gloominess, corpse-coloured twilight, and wicked
dreams. In the penultimate Part IV chapter entitled, The Sleepwalkers
Song, which alludes back to the vision-riddle, Nietzsche recalls this same
death-imagery, along with that of falling dew, chill, howling wind, cobwebs,
worms, and graves. Here Zarathustra speaks explicitly of being dead and of
the drunken happiness of dying at midnight (trunkenem Mitternachts-
Sterbeglcke). Nietzsche intensifies this atmosphere as well by drawing
connections between Zarathustras gateway-vision and his previous death-
centred visions. These visions include Zarathustras dream-riddle of his
midnight-entombment on the most solitary mountain of death12, and the
dream-vision in which he is terrorized by the voice of his future stillest
hour.13 Finally, in his vision-riddle Zarathustra sees himself climbing a
mountain path that ends at the gateway-Augenblick, and as doing so while
carrying upon his back the heavy weight of his archenemy. Together with
the convalescent Zarathustras recollection of his own experience of being
crucified14, these images allude to the Gospels depiction of Christ carrying
his own heavy cross up to the top of Mount Golgotha where he is to be put
to death.
Besides making sense of all the surrounding poetic imagery and mythical
allusions, interpreting the gateway-Augenblick as the threshold of death
helps to explain why Zarathustra and his opponent see a gateway at just the
place where they halt. Indeed, Zarathustra brings himself and the dwarf to
a halt immediately after he has invoked courage as that which slays even
death with the triumphant shout: Was that life? Well then! Once more!
More importantly, this interpretation helps to explain why the perspective
of the two-faced gateway-Augenblick shows the lane behind and the lane
ahead contradicting and abutting each other. Although some commenta-
tors have argued that this means time appears to run in opposite directions
away from the present moment, this reading does not actually explain
Zarathustras description of a converging contradiction.15 And since
Zarathustras earlier speech on time explicitly states that time does not run
backwards,16 he cannot mean that time converges on the present moment
from opposite directions.17
If, however, we follow Nietzsches pointed allusions back to the concluding
GS aphorisms, Zarathustras suggestion of contradicting lanes directs us to
Socrates claim in the Phaedo that life and death are contradictory oppo-
sites.18 This is a claim that Nietzsche explicitly disputes in GS 109, an
aphorism also alluding to eternal recurrence. Since Nietzsche stages a

dialectical confrontation between Zarathustra and his archenemy regarding
this apparent contradiction, we may conclude further that Nietzsche intends
to undermine Platos employment of this claim in Socrates dialectical
proofs that he will eventually be released from the cycle of rebirth.19 This
conclusion is supported by Platos own pervasive allusions to the ancient
myth of Hades, and by Platos own poetic image of the moment of death as
a gateway that initiates a labyrinthine cyclical journey through the under-
world of Hades and back to life.20
The dwarfs interpretation
Let us turn now to some of the details of this dialectical confrontation.

When Zarathustra implies that his opponent cannot know his most abysmal
thought because he could not bear its heavy weight, Nietzsche points us back
to his implicit claim in GS 340341 that Socrates did not know and would
not have been able to bear the heavy weight of the thought of his lifes
eternal recurrence. Nietzsches claim, I have argued,21 is supported by
Socrates denigration of life throughout the Phaedo, by his fear of imprison-
ment in a wheel of reincarnation, by his hope-inspired good cheer in the
face of death22, and by his preference for a definitive death (91b). Also,
Nietzsches description of Zarathustras archenemy as the spirit of heavi-
ness (der Geist der Schwere)23 alludes to Socrates conception of the earth and
life as the realm of the heavy and burdensome into which the soul is dragged
down by its encumbering corporeal condition.24 At the same time,
Zarathustras description of his archenemy as a dwarf (Zwerg) points us
forward to the convalescent Zarathustras identification of his most abysmal
thought as the eternal recurrence even of the smallest.25 Although Zarathustra
is perfectly able to bear the weight of thinking his own lifes eternal recur-
rence, he is intolerably burdened by the heavy weight of thinking the dwarfs
eternal recurrence. Nevertheless, he knows that the dwarf himself, the
Socratic type, would be crushed by the heavy weight of his own lifes eternal
recurrence, and so he courageously awakens this thought to hand his arch-
enemy a complete and final defeat. 26
First, however, Zarathustra gives the Socratic figure an opportunity to
guess his most abysmal thought, thereby revealing that he does not in fact
know it. And in response to Zarathustras question whether the lanes eter-
nally contradict each other, his archrival murmurs contemptuously: All
that is straight lies. All truth is bent, time itself is a circle. This response,
and Zarathustras angry reaction to it, has puzzled many commentators

because it would seem to agree with Zarathustras own implied
interpretation of a single circular lane. In his retrospective Ecce Homo,
Nietzsche summarizes Zarathustras teaching as the doctrine of the uncon-
ditional and endlessly repeated circular course (Kreislauf) of all things.27
And indeed, Zarathustra calls himself the advocate (Frsprecher) of the
circle,28 and in the published books conclusion proclaims his lust for the
wedding ring of rings, the ring of eternal recurrence.29 In addition,
Zarathustras animals, speaking for the first time, say that, for those who
think as they do, the wheel (Rad) of being rolls eternally, the ring of being
remains eternally true to itself, and the path of eternity is bent (krumm).30
However, if we keep in mind Nietzsches background allusion to Platos
Phaedo, and thus his specific concern with the question whether life and death
eternally contradict each other, we can see that the dwarfs response is the
kind of response Phaedos Socrates would have given. For the latter says that
we are trapped in an endless cycle of rebirth: he argues that there is a
perpetual reciprocity in coming to be, between one set of things and another,
revolving in a circle, as it were, and he rejects the notion that coming-to-be
is a linear process from one thing into its opposite only, without any bending
back in the other direction or reversal.31 Still, Socrates thinks that his puri-
fying practice of philosophy has ensured his release from this cycle. Accordingly,
Nietzsches depiction of the dwarfs response to Zarathustras challenging
question, and next of Zarathustras cross-examination of this response, may
be read as his poetic attempt to elicit, and then refute, the Platonic reasons
for thinking escape is possible from lifes eternal recurrence.
This reading of the dwarfs response is strongly supported by Nietzsches
direct allusion back to Zarathustras first speech on time.32 For in this
speech, Zarathustra says, in words that precisely anticipate the dwarfs
response: God is a thought that makes all that is straight bent and all that
stands turn. How? Should time be gone, and all that is transitory be only
lie?33 Zarathustras point here, in the context of the rest of his speech, is
that God is conceived as existing outside of time and space and therefore as
permanent and unmoving.34 By comparison, then, our ordinary sensory
experiences of impermanence and motion, indeed of time and space itself,
are all illusions and lies.35 Thus, when the dwarf accepts Zarathustras impli-
cation that time itself is a circle, we are supposed to notice that he does so
contemptuously (verchtlich). This is because the dwarf, like Phaedos
Socrates, believes that there is a truly straight realm of timeless absolute
reality by comparison with which the lanes apparent straightness is actually
bent and time itself is a circle.36 And this means that the dwarf, like Phaedos
life-denying Socrates, and like the suffering figures diagnosed in The

Hinterworldly, believes that he will eventually be able to escape from the
illusory circle of time and into the realm of timeless absolute reality.37
On this reading of the dwarfs response, we can see why Zarathustra
angrily warns him, the spirit of heaviness (der Geist der Schwere), not to make
things too light (leicht) for himself. What Zarathustra means by this is that
his opponent has seemingly accepted the implications of the gateway-vision,
while all along contemptuously dismissing the entire vision as a mere
illusion. Although the dwarf mouths the words, time itself is a circle, he
does not actually believe that these words describe true reality. In this way,
the dwarf shows that he does not in fact know Zarathustras most abysmal
thought, and that he has instead interpreted Zarathustras vision-riddle so
that he does not have to bear the heavy weight of thinking his eternal return
to the earth and his body.38 Thus, Zarathustras next task is to refute the
dwarfs interpretation by using his own Socratic reasoning against him.
Although subtle, this is an absolutely essential point that is missed by most
scholars who write about the exchange between Zarathustra and his dwarf-
archenemy.39 It is true that Zarathustra angrily rejects the dwarfs response.
But the allusions built into the dwarfs response, and the dwarfs contemp-
tuous attitude, show that Zarathustra does not reject the dwarfs response
because the dwarf believes that time is a circle, but rather because he does
not truly believe time is a circle. And this means, then, that Zarathustra
himself does believe that time is a circle, and that the rest of his proof aims
to prove precisely this. Let us turn to the rest of this proof now, a proof that
must begin by attacking the dwarfs assumption of a Gods-eye vantage
point, above the gateway and the lanes, from which he can contemptuously
dismiss time itself.
Zarathustras cross-examination
As most commentators since Heidegger have noted, Zarathustra begins his

refutation of the dwarfs response by commanding his archenemy to return
to the temporal perspective of the gateway-Augenblick.40 However, according
to these commentators, Zarathustra has already identified the dwarfs extra-
temporal perspective, or rather absence of any particular perspective, with
the dwarfs claim that time is a circle. For this reason, they go on to argue
next that the dwarfs return back to the gateway-perspective is meant to
show him that time is not a circle and that the present moment really is the
site of an eternal contradiction between the lanes of past and future.
On this commonly accepted reading, Zarathustra forces the dwarf to see

that he is not entitled to assume any Gods-eye position from which the
whole of time can be viewed and regarded as a circle. Instead, the dwarf is
forced to live authentically and humanly within the radically temporal
confines of the present moment wherein past and future always collide.
Zarathustras teaching of eternal recurrence is thus interpreted as an exis-
tential doctrine about the importance and difficulty of living fully within
the agonistic present moment.
The evidence I have cited above, however, shows that Zarathustra identi-
fies the Socratic dwarfs attempted Gods-eye point of view, or rather supposed
absence of any particular point of view, with the dwarfs determination to
avoid acknowledging the reality of circular time. Accordingly, the reason
Zarathustra commands the dwarf to return to the perspective of the gateway-
Augenblick is so that he will assume a perspectival standpoint which will force
him to acknowledge that time is a circle.41 According to Nietzsche, that is, a
perspectival approach to time is needed to see that time is really circular.
Certainly, the short perspective of the present moment does not show this.
Instead, as Zarathustras further questions imply, this limited perspective
shows two separate lanes of past and future as straight, linear, and extending
eternally onward in opposite directions. But this is precisely why Zarathustra
first commands the dwarf to abandon the short perspective of the present
moment, and to imagine instead the much longer and thus superior perspec-
tive of someone following either lane ever further and further.42 And this is
also why, after dismissing the dwarfs reply, he again commands the dwarf to
abandon the limited perspective of the present moment, and to imagine
instead the much longer perspective of someone travelling all the way down
the lane in back of the gateway. The result, he implies, is that the dwarf will
be forced to see that he would have to return to his starting point from the
lane ahead because the two lanes are actually one single lane that curves in
the distance to form a vast but finite (though unbounded) closed circle.
Here we may invoke an analogy commonly used today, but known also to
Nietzsche, that derives from Bernhard Riemanns pioneering 1854 idea of
a non-Euclidean geometry that maps on to the earths surface.43 Our local
perspective at any point on a great circle of the earths spherical surface
say the equator shows us only a relatively small, straight, and linear segment
of that great circle.44 So if we look out from this perspective to the East and
West, we will see two separate straight lanes that seem to extend forever in
these seemingly opposite directions. But if we travel further and ever further
in either direction around the equator we are forced to see in a completely
immanent fashion that does not depend on any Gods-eye detachment
that the two lanes are actually curved and meet together back at our starting
point in such a way that what previously seemed to be opposite directions
are really not such at all. If, for example, we leave from the West and travel
further and ever further to the West on a great circle, we will return to our
starting point from the East.45
On the commonly accepted reading, according to which Zarathustra
urges the dwarf to remain within the gateway-Augenblick, there is really no
way to explain why Zarathustra keeps pointing the dwarf away from the
gateway to the furthest extremes of the lanes extending on either side. But
on the reading I have offered, the reason is clear. Having commanded the
dwarf to give up his self-contradictory assumption of a Gods-eye that is no
perspective at all, Zarathustra now aims to show the dwarf that the limited
perspective of the present moment necessarily obscures the reality of
circular time. Commentators typically assume that Nietzsche could not have
this aim in mind, because only a Gods-eye, transcendent, and extra-
temporal position could possibly show the whole of time.46 But this is
precisely the dwarfs claim that Zarathustra aims to refute. In fact, this is
precisely the claim that according to Nietzsche immediately implies the
illusory character of circular time as compared to the timeless reality involved
in the Gods-eye non-perspectival position that comprehends it. For
Nietzsche, then, it is crucial to show that a fully perspectival, temporally
situated, and immanent human standpoint can, and will, show times circu-
larity.47 And the key to doing this is to notice, once we abandon the Gods-eye
position, that a perspective as such is no longer false, that some perspectives
are better than others, and indeed that objectivity is still possible if by this
we mean the collection of as many and as varied and as appropriate perspec-
tives as possible.48 With respect to time, Nietzsche suggests, the local
perspective of the present moment is inadequate and creates the illusion of
temporal open linearity. But if we assume a much longer and global perspec-
tive, if we collect and compare all the perspectives gathered in our extensive
temporal travels, we will then reach a much more objective and complete
appraisal of the nature of time. Eternal recurrence, on this reading, is a
doctrine about closed circular time, and about the implications of this kind
of time for human life and meaning.
Dialectical victory
Zarathustras dialectical contest with his Socratic archenemy concludes by

proving to him what Nietzsche attributed to the daimonion of the dying
Socrates in GS 340341: that his death will not afford him any escape from
the life that he has just finished living, but will instead return him to living
it once again exactly as before. As commentators have noted, Zarathustras
argument for this conclusion corresponds closely to some of the deductive
proofs Nietzsche considered in his unpublished notebooks of 1881 and
1888.49 These are proofs that resemble those offered by the Stoics, and that
depend upon the assumptions of an infinite time and a calculable number
of possible force-combinations.50 Since these proofs have been found
wanting since the earliest days of Nietzsche interpretation,51 commentators
have tended to dismiss Nietzsches depiction of Zarathustras dialectical
victory. Alternatively, some have argued that Nietzsches contempt for
dialectical reasoning leads him deliberately to present grounds for this
victory that are weak but nevertheless sufficient to defeat Zarathustras
dwarfish Socratic opponent.52
If we suppose, however, that Zarathustras archenemy is Platos Socrates,
then we must assume that Nietzsche intended Zarathustras argument to
have world-historic validity and significance. This point cannot be deflected
by noting Nietzsches usual depreciation of Socratic reasoning. For the
context of the struggle between Zarathustra and his archenemy is
Zarathustras courageous decision to awaken the thought of eternal recur-
rence that is, to bring it up from the dark depths of his unconscious to the
daylight surface of conscious rational knowledge.53 Since this decision is
meant to defeat Socrates hope for release from the eternal cycle of rebirth,
Zarathustras argument should consist in an appropriate refutation of
Socrates dialectical grounds for this hope.
On my interpretation, Zarathustras argument does attempt such a refuta-
tion. For, speaking from the perspective of his impending death, Socrates
argues that life and death are contradictory opposites and that there must
therefore be a cyclical relation between the living and the dead. Since the
living come from the dead, there must be a timeless place outside this cycle
of eternal rebirth where the disembodied souls of the dead exist before
coming to life again. This is why Socrates hopes that his purified soul will be
permanently released into this timeless place at the moment of his death.54
Against this proof, however, Nietzsche begins by noting Socrates short-
sighted perspective on the beginning and end of life. If Socrates had taken
a longer perspective and asked instead about the temporal beginning and
end of the world itself, he would have deduced that time is a circle and that
life and death do not really contradict each other. Indeed, leaving aside his
suffering-based fantasy of a timeless alternative reality, Socrates would have
deduced that all things are knotted together in such a way that the world
eternally recycles itself and all living things within it.55 But this means that
the living do indeed cease to exist when they die, and that there is no need,
and in fact no room, to posit a place outside the cycle where the disem-
bodied souls of the dead exist before coming to life again. This is why
Zarathustras hypothetical deathbed speech begins as follows: Now I die
and fade and in an instant I am a nothing. Souls are as mortal as bodies. But
the knot of causes in which I am entangled recurs, it will create me again!56
At this point, Socrates would have been forced to realize that there was no
place to escape from his eternally recurring life and that he had lost his
dialectical grounds for hoping otherwise.
Having exposed his archenemys ignorance of the thought of eternal
recurrence, and having undermined as well his archenemys dialectical
attempt to avoid this thought, Zarathustra can claim to be vindicated in his
expectation that his archenemy did not know this thought because he could
not bear it. However, this claim raises the question as to how Zarathustra
himself knows his most abysmal thought. This question actually has two
parts, since Zarathustra first communicates his thought while recounting a
vision in which he foresees himself coming to know this thought. First, how
does Zarathustra come to know the truth of eternal recurrence within his
prevision? Second, how does Zarathustra come to have this prevision?57
Prophetic victory
Nietzsches reply to the first question has its source, I believe, in Platos
suggestion throughout the Phaedo that the time before death is a special
time that can grant prophetic powers to the one who is about to die. Plato
emphasizes this suggestion during an interlude in which Socrates disciples
raise objections to the dialectical grounds he has just finished summarizing.
Noting his failure to convince with proofs, Socrates now compares himself
to Apollos swans:58
they are prophetic birds with foreknowledge of the blessings of Hades,

and therefore sing and rejoice more greatly on that day than ever before.
Now I hold that I myself am a fellow-servant of the swans, consecrated to
the same god, that I possess prophetic power from my master no less than
theirs, and that I am departing this life with as good cheer as they do.59
Indeed, Socrates suggests that the true source of his cheerful hope for
release is not the dialectical investigation that takes up most of the Phaedo,
but rather the prophetic power given to him on the day of his death by his
master-god Apollo. This suggestion is extended by Socrates allusion to his
famous Apollonian prophetic daimonion, together with his claim that at the
moment of death the daimon allotted to him in life will guide him on his way
to Hades.60 Further, Socrates account of himself as singing with joy over the
prospect of joining his master is anticipated at the start of the dialogue
when he admits that he has been composing a hymn to Apollo. This, he
says, is something he has never done before but was prompted to do in an
effort to obey the message of a recurring Apollonian dream (60d61b).61
In GS 340341, however, Nietzsche had already challenged this aspect of
Platos representation of the dying Socrates. He speculated instead that
Socrates heard his daimonion prophesying to him at the last moment that
there would be no release after all, and that indeed he would have to relive
exactly the same life he had just completed. Since Socrates says that this
divine voice is the true source of his convictions, Nietzsche speculated that
only this sort of final prophesy could have shattered the hope for release that
had enabled Socrates to live and face death with such good cheer. Socrates
last word, he conjectured, reflected his dying impulse to throw himself
down, gnash his teeth, and curse the daimon who spoke to him thus.
Let us return, then, to Zarathustras vision-riddle, and to the point where
he has just defeated his archenemy with his concluding dialectical ques-
tions. Although we are led to understand that his opponent had to answer
these concluding questions in the affirmative, it is significant that
Zarathustra unlike the demon in GS 341 does not actually announce the
truth of eternal recurrence. Instead, Zarathustra recounts how he spoke
ever more quietly because he feared his own thoughts and background-
thoughts. Then, suddenly, he heard a dog howling nearby and he wondered
if he had ever heard a dog howl like that. His thoughts ran back to when he
was a child, in the most distant childhood, when he had heard a dog howl
like that and had seen him too.62 After seeing and repeatedly pitying this
howling dog, Zarathustra wonders where the dwarf, the gateway, the spider,
and all the whispering had gone.
In thus turning our attention from Zarathustras concluding dialectical
questions toward the shift in his vision, Nietzsche suggests that the
confirming answer to these questions, and thus the true source of
Zarathustras knowledge of eternal recurrence, can be found in a proper
interpretation of this shift in vision. The key to this interpretation lies in
Nietzsches suggestion that Zarathustra has just crossed the gateway-
Augenblick. Thus, having just indicated that he and his opponent were
whispering together inside the gateway (im Thorwege), Zarathustra asks the
dwarf his final question: and [must we not] come again and run in that
(jener) other lane, outward, ahead of us, in this (dieser) long horrible lane
must we not eternally come again? 63 Nietzsches precise phrasing here
lets us know that Zarathustras last question was asked just as he was step-
ping from inside the gateway and onto the lane extending out ahead of the
gateway. This gateway is inscribed Augenblick and Zarathustras step across it
thus causes a sudden (pltzlich) shift in his vision that leaves him wondering
where the gateway had gone.
On the traditional interpretation of the gateway-Augenblick as a symbol for
the generic moment, it is difficult to see why Nietzsche should thus high-
light Zarathustras step across the gateway. Indeed, as we have already seen,
interpreters usually follow Heideggers suggestion that the vision-riddle of
the gateway-Augenblick is designed to teach us how to remain within the
eternal moment. But if we suppose, as I have argued, that the gateway-
Augenblick is a symbol for the presently experienced moment of death, then
Nietzsches emphasis may be read as a poetic device for suggesting
Zarathustras dying prophetic vision. This interpretation is supported by
Nietzsches allusion to the ancient Greek image of the Cerberus-hound
guarding the gateway to Hades, together with his related allusion to Homers
tale of a courageous Odysseus who must descend into Hades to find out
how to return home.64 It is supported as well by Zarathustras new vision,
which is saturated with death-imagery: during the stillest midnight, when
even dogs believe in thieves and ghosts, a terrified dog bristles, trembles,
and howls as the full moon, deathly silent, stands still like an intruder upon
the roof of what is presumably the dogs house. In addition, Zarathustra
mentions the horrible (schaurige) nature of the lane into which he has just
crossed, the fear he feels while making this crossing, and his sensation of
having just awakened from a dream. This last sensation, which persists from
the start of Zarathustras vision-riddle, is traditionally associated with the
image of coming to life after having died, and alludes to Socrates own such
association in the Phaedo.65
On the exegesis, I have offered so far, however, there would seem to be a
conceptual difficulty in this Platonic suggestion that the dying Zarathustra
is in a position to prophetically observe his own process of coming to life
again. For Zarathustras dialectical questions were aimed at refuting
Socrates contention that the souls of the dead have some kind of existence
in the time between dying and coming to life again. Indeed, in his hypo-
thetical deathbed speech, Zarathustra declares that souls are as mortal as
bodies and that in the instant of death he will become a nothing (ein Nichts).
And although he declares next that the knot of causes in which he is
entangled will recur and create him again, this recurrence and his
Re-creation cannot take place until an immense period of time has passed in
which he has no existence at all. So how could Zarathustras dying conscious-
ness possibly extend across this immense period of time to observe his own
Re-creation? Such a longer perspective is what Zarathustra asks the dwarf to
consider if he is to notice that the two lanes do not contradict each other at
the gateway, but we may wonder whether this perspective is possible after all.
I think Nietzsche anticipated this important question in a note he wrote
shortly after discovering the thought of eternal recurrence a note that
prefigures his later symbol of the gateway-Augenblick:
You think you will have a long rest until rebirth but do not deceive your-
self! Between the last moment of consciousness [dem letzten Augenblick des
Bewusstseins] and the first appearance of new life [dem ersten Schein des neuen
Lebens] there lies no time it passes by as quickly as a flash of lightning,
even if living creatures were to measure it in terms of billions of years, or
could not even begin to measure it. Timelessness and succession accom-
modate themselves to one another as soon as the intellect is gone.66
According to this argument, then, because Zarathustras consciousness is

absent in the immense stretches of time during which he does not exist, he
has no means of perceiving any of this passing time. But the knot of causes
in which Zarathustra is entangled guarantees that his life must return in
exactly the same succession and sequence. As far as he is concerned, there-
fore, his dying consciousness is immediately succeeded by his returned
awakening consciousness and no time at all passes in the course of this transi-
tion. Although an immense period of time precedes and follows Zarathustras
lifetime, his consciousness is a closed circle of its own in which the endpoint
must return back to the starting point from which it set out. Although others
will perceive a complete end to his awareness, Zarathustra himself can never
experience such an end or even a break in his awareness. Because there is no
absolute or universal time that is, no time that exists independently of the
perspective or framework from which it is measured both of these perspec-
tives are correct, and there is no fact to the matter that favours either one.
This argument helps to explain why Zarathustra describes his shift in vision
as sudden, and indeed why he initially observes that the gateway is named
Augenblick. It also helps to explain Zarathustras observation, immediately
after crossing the gateway-Augenblick, that he finds his thoughts running back
to the time when he was a child, in the most distant childhood (in fernster
Kindheit). Nietzsches implication here is that Zarathustra experiences a
sudden shift from the sights and sounds of his dying consciousness to the
sights and sounds of his awakening consciousness in his very early child-
hood.67 Finally, this argument helps to explain why Zarathustra experiences
his shift in vision as taking place in the stillest midnight (im stillest
Mitternacht). For Zarathustra poetically conceives the individual human life,
and even the life of the human species, as progressing through the various
sun-centred hours of a 24-hour day: daybreak (childhood consciousness),
morning (youth), afternoon (adulthood), twilight-evening (middle age),
and night time (old age). On this conception, the twelfth bell of midnight
simultaneously designates the end of the day (death) and its re-beginning
(coming to life again). Just as the hand of a clock crosses a single unique
moment that is at once the last and the first moment, so too Zarathustra
experiences a single unique moment in which he is at once dying and awak-
ening. Indeed, if we count the number of separate paragraphs in Zarathustras
dialectical proof that he will come again, we find that his step across the
midnight-gateway enacts the twelfth and concluding step of this proof.
Reading the above unpublished note as a kind of addendum to the
demons announcement in GS 341, as well as to Zarathustras whispered
questions at the gateway, we are in a position then to sum up Nietzsches
grounds for declaring Zarathustras prophetic victory over Platos Socrates. It
would appear at first that Socrates has an advantage in claiming foreknowl-
edge of the afterlife, since he believes that when the person has died, his
soul exists, and that it possesses some power and wisdom.68 But this advan-
tage quickly evaporates when questions arise, as they do right away among
Socrates interlocutors, as to how his disembodied soul could possibly
survive, much less possess any wisdom. Paradoxically, it is Nietzsches belief
in his souls mortality that allows him to avoid just these questions and to
claim an immediate connection between his dying consciousness and his
reawakened consciousness. Certainly, this claim would founder if Nietzsche
accepted Platos assumption of an absolute later time in which a person is
reborn after he dies. But since Nietzsche holds that time is circular and
perspectival, he is led to depict a final gateway-moment of consciousness
that grants Zarathustra foreknowledge of his lifes eternal recurrence.
Mnemonic victory
I turn finally to the second part of my question concerning Zarathustras

knowledge of the truth of eternal recurrence namely, how does Zarathustra
come to have a prevision of himself acquiring this knowledge? Since I have
argued that Zarathustra foresees himself acquiring a deathbed foreknowl-

edge of his lifes eternal recurrence, this is to ask how Zarathustra is able to
foresee his own moment of death. If Zarathustras prevision shows that
knowledge of eternal recurrence is learned at the moment of death, how is
Zarathustra able to learn this knowledge while still alive?
Questions like these also face Platos Socrates when he concludes early in
the Phaedo: [I]ts then, apparently, that the thing we desire and whose
lovers we claim to be, wisdom, will be ours when we have died, as the argu-
ment indicates, though not while we live.69 In reply, Socrates goes on to
propose his theory that learning is recollection (anamnesis). According to
this theory, what we are reminded of concerning absolute reality we must
have learned at some former time when our souls existed somewhere apart
from our bodies and outside the cycle of eternal rebirth.70 Hence, Socrates
argues, by living as close to death as possible, he is able to recollect the
wisdom about the afterlife that his soul had gained while he was dead but
had forgotten upon being reborn and reincarnated. Since this wisdom
concerns the very same afterlife to which he will return after he dies,
Socrates may thus claim to be able to recollect foreknowledge of Hades that
will be confirmed at his moment of death. He is then able to teach this
wisdom to others by eliciting in them similar recollections.
From Nietzsches standpoint, of course, this theory is best understood as
part of Socrates overarching attempt to find grounds for his hope that he
will be released from the cycle of eternal rebirth. It is worth noting, however,
that Nietzsche does not directly challenge Socrates mnemonic grounds in
his GS aphorisms, and does not imagine Socrates to be confronted with any
contradictory revelation concerning his prenatal existence. Instead,
Nietzsche imagines Socrates daimon announcing to him only that every-
thing in his life will have to come again to him in the same sequence and
succession and even this spider and this moonlight between the trees,
and even this Augenblick and I myself.71
In Zarathustra, however, Nietzsche aims also to depict Socrates mnemonic
defeat. For now he supplements the daimonic announcement above with
Zarathustras whispered interrogation of his archenemys recollection: And
this slow spider, crawling in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and
I and you in the gateway, whispering together, whispering of eternal
things must we not all have already been? Immediately after, and as if in
reply to this very question, Zarathustra attempts to recall if he had ever
before heard the howling dog he is now hearing. His thoughts run back,
and he realizes that he does recall hearing this when he was a child, in his
most distant childhood. After fully recalling the details of this experience,
Zarathustra next recalls and wonders about the present whereabouts of the
dwarf, the gateway, the spider, and all the whispering.
Let us suppose now, as I have argued, that Zarathustra had just seen
himself crossing the gateway-Augenblick and experiencing a transition from
his dying consciousness to his first childhood consciousness. So far, I have
noted that this experience grants Zarathustra a dying foreknowledge of
coming back to life. Nietzsches emphasis above, then, leads us to notice
that this same experience also grants Zarathustra a most distant childhood
memory of having died and come back to life. Since Zarathustra was not
dying when he saw the vision he is recounting to the sailors, his vision must
have consisted in a recollection of this most distant childhood memory.
However, Zarathustras consciousness is a closed circle in which the endpoint
must return to the starting point from which it set out. Therefore, this child-
hood memory must also be of his future and Zarathustras recollection of
this childhood memory may also be regarded as a prevision (Vorhersehen)
of his death and recurrence.72
Following Platos lead, then, Nietzsche theorizes that Zarathustras
knowledge of the afterlife is forgotten or repressed as soon as he comes to
life again.73 Also like Plato, Nietzsche hypothesizes that Zarathustra is obliged
to interpret the latent memories that surface during his involuntary dreams
states.74 Finally, Nietzsche follows Platos lead in supposing that Zarathustras
knowledge of the afterlife has its ultimate source in his recollected experi-
ence of death. This supposition is most vividly expressed by the Once More
roundelay [Rundgesang] in which Zarathustras soul, to the accompaniment
of the 12 bells of midnight, warns humanity to pay heed to the speech of
deep midnight. In this speech, deep midnight recalls awakening out of a
deep dream in which the world was revealed as deeper than the day had
thought.75 But Zarathustra had just awoken his most abysmal thought so that
it would speak to him, and midnight is the hour of Zarathustras eternally
recurring death. Nietzsche thus leads us to understand that Zarathustras
most abysmal thought, the thought that arises out of his infinitely deep
subconscious well, is his deathbed revelation of the worlds infinite depth a
revelation that had so far been kept concealed from his daylight conscious
rational thought. Although others do not of course possess Zarathustras
particular memory of this revelation, they can be taught to recall their own
such ancient memory. This is why, after they have become drunk with sweet
wine, Zarathustra introduces his roundelay to the higher men as follows:76
You higher men, midnight approaches: then I will say something in your
ears, as that old bell says it in mine,
as secretly, as fearfully, as cordially, as that midnight-bell says it to

me . . .
Still! Still! Then many a thing is heard that by day may not become loud;
but now in the cool air, when even all the clamor of your hearts has
become still,
now it speaks, now it is heard, now it steals into nocturnal over-awake
souls: ah! ah! how it sighs! how in dreams it laughs!
do you not hear, how secretly, fearfully, cordially, it speaks to you, the
ancient deep deep midnight?77
Where Nietzsche departs from Plato, however, and what allows him to
declare Zarathustras mnemonic victory, is his claim that Zarathustra can
recollect wisdom about the afterlife without ever having existed outside his
body. This means, again, that there is no need, and indeed no room, for
Zarathustras archenemy to postulate a place where his disembodied soul
can exist outside the cycle of eternal rebirth. This difference helps to
explain Nietzsches speculation in the GS aphorisms that Socrates was
surprised and dismayed to hear his daimonion announce to him at the last
moment that he would have to relive even that last moment itself. Supposing
Socrates was able to recollect his wisdom about the afterlife, he should have
recalled hearing this announcement before and should not have been
surprised to hear it again. Since Socrates dismay shows that he is not strong
enough to bear this deathbed revelation, Nietzsche infers that the source of
his surprise was his life-long denial and suppression of the memory of this
deathbed revelation. Indeed, Nietzsche implies, Socrates fear of this buried
knowledge was such that his reason had been forced to invent a fantasy
memory in which his soul had escaped eternal recurrence and been trans-
ported from its body and from the earth into a happier existence.78 Hence,
Nietzsche suggests, the shattering effect of this final daimonic revelation
upon Socrates psyche: besides refuting his dialectical grounds of hope for
release, and besides reversing his previous prophetic certainty of release,
this revelation destroyed all of the defences he had built up against his
subconscious knowledge that no release was ever possible.
For Nietzsche, then, the truth expressed in Zarathustras vision-riddle is
that we are caught in a cycle of eternal recurrence back into our identical
life, but that we do not exist and are therefore not aware in the immense
stretches of time between our death and recurrence. This means that we
can never have any experience of definitive death, but only of an eternal
reawakening into our first moment of awareness. From this it follows,

however, that each of us has already died and recurred innumerable times,
and that this buried knowledge of our lifes eternal recurrence may be
recollected in our dreams or called up from our subconscious depths in the
course of arduous philosophical struggles.
Nietzsches doctrine of recurrence thus has several parallels with Platos
doctrine of reincarnation in the Phaedo.79 Like Plato, Nietzsche argues for
personal immortality, thinks that we may recollect our souls knowledge of
our past lives, and emphasizes the significance of dreams and courageous
philosophical encounters with the fact of our deaths. But unlike Plato,
Nietzsche rejects the idea of a disembodied soul, thinks that all our past
lives are identical, and believes that we are unable to dream or recollect
anything outside of our corporeal experience. Nietzsche is thus led to agree
with Plato that the moment of death is a singular transitional moment in
which we are able to obtain a kind of certainty about death and the afterlife.
This is why he invents his own seductive counter-myth of a dying
Zarathustra, and this is why he designs the dramatic setting of a gateway-
Augenblick in which he re-enacts the death of Socrates and stages a
world-historic agon between the dying Socrates and the dying Zarathustra.
Chapter 7
Thus Spoke Zarathustra : The Hammer and the

Greatest Weight
Alan Wenham
To the extent that, historically, what is called philosophy has employed and
valorized reason and critique, it has often been taken as the natural enemy
of religion and authority. For Nietzsche, however, this has always been
essentially a superficial opposition, one that is symptomatic of the Wests
inability to actually see itself. For, if Nietzsches thought is about preparing
the way for a radical innocence, we must recognize that it does so by first
trying to fully overcome a fundamental naivety; and this means its becoming
able to begin to fully see itself: its hidden Gods, its secret masters. For we
have forgotten today that the pure nature of a horizon is precisely to never
be seen, and that its becoming visible, its stepping into the foreground, is
always already the prophecy of its own destruction. Thus, as soon as God
becomes a Man, and begins to walk among us, he has already been cruci-
fied, already disfigured by the shadow of pluralism. Yet, part of the
contradiction of Christ is that, at the same time, He is not dead, He has
risen again, and will always continue to rise so long as philosophy remains
a slave. This paradox indicates nothing other than that killing God today
remains thoroughly Christian, and, more importantly, that this is really only
indicative of a broader and deeper, more malicious historical movement:
Nihilism the self-destructive structure inherent within Western culture
itself (its popular masochistic emblem: God on the cross). From this
perspective, we begin to see how the full scope of what is called Christianity
was charged and amplified from the very beginning to include much of
that which supposedly opposes it as part of its necessary structure. Not only
does secular philosophy remain thoroughly religious today if by that we
mean Christian as a form of popular Platonism but hitherto its supposedly
critical nature can now be seen merely as a nave expression of the genetic
masochism inherent within the fundamental structures of Western culture
as such.
This is the stage upon which Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra in its
own eyes arrives. It is against this background that it can be seen as a
radical attempt at overcoming the homogeneous horizon of Christian slave
thinking that, for Nietzsche, still secretly dominates the Occident. Yet, at
the same time, what is vital and what must be made immediately clear about
Z, in terms of the well known status of its yes-saying, is its irony and
tragedy the fact that, with its second and third parts, the book contains its
own crisis. For we can see that Zarathustras most abysmal thought, which
leads to the thought of the eternal return of the same, initiates a profound
change in Zarathustra at the end of the second part of the book, and actu-
ally stands, in a certain way, against the bermensch; its weight falls against
the noon-tide, against the desire for a new epoch. For with the stillest hour
now, the greatest weight, it is grasped that there can be no fundamentally
redemptive historical movement, that not only can history no longer be
seen as a moral drama, in the Judeo-Christian manner, but that it simply has
no final goal or resolution. In this way, any move towards the overcoming
of this epoch itself is at risk of only being a further expression of it.
In Zarathustras anguish about himself being the shepherd in his dream, or
a guardian of tombs, we can see quite clearly a concern about being a
secret last-man: still a slave once more. In this light, the work contains
within itself an increasing self-consciousness of its orientation against a
tradition which is already orientated against itself.1
This aim of this chapter is to explore the grounds of Nietzsches consid-
erations concerning master and slave morality so as to underline what is at
stake for his thought with respect to the greatest weight. Doing so brings
with it an articulation of what we will call the essential drama that unifies
and centres his thinking.2 That this becomes itself problematic in Z, as we
will try to show, will indicate not only one of the most profound ironies of
this work, in terms of its form, but also perhaps the greatest challenge to
Nietzsches thought, on its own terms.
It is perhaps interesting to note here the fact that Wagner dies in close
proximity to the completion of the first book of Zarathustra (1883), and
that in so far as this old master quite literally, in some sense at least, if you
glance at the formalities of their correspondence long overcome by
Nietzsche, now perishes, perhaps we cannot help but ask the question: what
is it to escape ones master and then to have him die? This is not to suggest
that this chapter is interested, in the slightest, of making a biographical
reduction out of the crises of Z no doubt, of course, an ironic reduction,
in the same way that pathological reductions of Nietzsches thought are
always somewhat of an amusement rather, we find here only a further
The Hammer and the Greatest Weight 111
expression of the problem that engenders what is sometimes simplistically

regarded as Nietzsches most affirmative work.
This is not to suggest, however, that Z is not a positive work far from it,
as we have already indicated, it is a key part of Nietzsches crystallizing
attempts to overcome the paralysis induced by the myopia of a debilitating
slave culture and address what it is that we are truly capable of what is truly
possible for us. However, at the same time, the work does have its own
shadow, an understanding of which, I will try to show, is absolutely essential
for moving towards a strong understanding of this work. This chapter will
not, therefore, be in the spirit of Nietzschean thinking itself, as I am only
attempting to underline a problem, and perhaps to indicate how this crisis
can be dealt with in terms of the eternal recurrence.
Articulating the meaning of master/slave morality first presents itself, it
often seems, as an exhaustively privative task. Perhaps, we could start, for
example, by simply saying that, if it is true that Animism, anthropologically
speaking as a form of natural law and, sometimes seemingly bizarre
and capricious, legislation seems archaic and strange to us today, for
Nietzsche, the death of God has highlighted further and as yet unseen
anachronisms that remain for us in the West. Nietzsches philosophical
anthropology finds its initial place exactly here, and a key part of what this
involves, we could argue, is the claim that the essential worldview of the
West has been overcome, by something akin, in terms of mentality, to that
of the lower orders of a caste system, such as the Hindu caste mentality
we find in India with the Untouchables, the Dalits, Chandalas, and the
like. From this perspective, we could say, with Nietzsche, that the suppos-
edly self-evident nature of pessimism, the evils of the world in short,
Schopenhauer, this horrific world of suffering and pain, the whole cruel
nightmare that sits quietly beneath all cosmetic Western optimism,
originates from here. At least here we can see that what often seems like
Nietzsches maniacal and hubristic optimism is, for him, only a trick of the
light: the shadowy and pessimistic nexus of Western culture makes it appear
so because our world-view is so deeply entrenched in a dark and reactive
slave negativity.
Yet, we have not done nearly enough here until we begin to realize that
this trick of the light, ontologically speaking, goes all the way down this
is what makes Nietzsche a philosophical thinker. The West is not just in the
grip of a self-destructive mentality or psychology that promotes impo-
tency and weakness. Rather, Nietzsche moralizes ontology because morality,
understood in a specific sense, is for him something we might call tran-
scendental, if by that we mean that it is only from within a horizon of a
structure of values that anything can be conceived of, or spoken about,

have any meaning, or even be experienced. We will not use this term here
for reasons that will become clear later, yet, we can still say that for
Nietzsche it is the values of fundamental morality that imbibe and delineate
a fundamental exegesis; they are formative of a particular culture at its very
root. This means its language, codes and practices, its historical narratives
and institutions basically the very structures of intelligibility that underpin
Western culture as such are engendered by a condition of value.
When Nietzsche speaks of, and indeed calls for, a revaluation of all values,
it must be made sense of primarily on this level. The weight of slave morality
for Nietzsche falls right here in so far as it is a lived pessimism, an existential
subjugation, we might say. For we live out our lives within the horizon of
own cultural exegesis, these structures always form the fabric of the
question and the answer; questions about Nature, for example, always
receive their results within such a horizon. It is their format or medium,
we might say (though of course these terms are problematic), in terms of
the before and the after. Yet, separating out culture, our cultural
seeming, how things seem from within a particular cultural exegesis,
from how they really are, is always a vestibule to dualism one that
Nietzsche explicitly rejects. Of course, we cannot simply escape the horizon
of what we have been calling here culture, there is no true Nature under-
lying and uniting heterogeneous cultures, no universal framework uniting
and supporting the flesh of different cultural perspectives that can be
called a real world for Nietzsche the opposition of Nature and Nurture
is a false, and indeed, thoroughly metaphysical opposition.
We can begin to see, in this light, that Nietzsches thought here, and
specifically the typology of master and slave morality, can be seen as proto-
typical and formatively penultimate in some senses, though not of course
unequivocally, to certain structuralistic conceptions of human subjectivity.
We could say, for example, that the dynamic of master and slave morality
has hitherto engendered all historical masters and slaves in so far as these
have been self-conscious subjects, that is, in so far as they have, to a limited
extent, understood themselves as persons, politically subjugated or not.3
And, of course this also means that there is no true humanity to find
beyond or underneath fundamental values. Overcoming slave morality
does not, for Nietzsche, mean escaping the constricts of an alienating
culture and allowing humanity to somehow flower or bloom in its repressed
essence: there is no essence.
Yet, in view of all this, perhaps one of the most prescient and immediate
questions here, though of course there are many, concerns the very possi-
bility of such a counter-intuitive and circular sounding knowledge

concerning fundamental moralities, as Nietzsche understood them. For,
immediately we ask: how is it possible to make such determinations
concerning fundamental moralities, and their dynamic (i.e., master/slave),
except from out of themselves? Such claims are always on the surface auto-
apodictic, in the same way as questions about language always meet an inner
limit, in so far as they are one with what they question (that they are driven
by what they question, in a sense). For, if we reify values as fundamental
determinants, in the manner Nietzsche appears to do, the question always
arises as to how it is possible at all to make such determinations without
falling into a profoundly circular form of reasoning in terms of something
being pinned down and conceived, spoken about basically, from out of its
own ground? To put it another way, how can such horizons be brought into
the foreground at all, while remaining, at the same time, horizons?
The key to this question lies in conceiving it as an expression of a funda-
mental problem that has always haunted Western philosophy as such: quite
simply, where to begin? For if we simply dismiss the very possibility of
Nietzsches determinations concerning fundamental values as psycholo-
gistic and circular, and the dynamic therein between master and slave
morality, we should always do so in light of the realization that the negativity
of this circle, so dismissed, casts its shadow far beyond Nietzsches thinking.
Hegel, for example, already sees this when he takes as his own disjunct the
possibility of epistemology. For Hegel, to conceive of knowledge as an
instrument, or medium, is always to dislodge what one is saying. For, in
effect, that which conditions, the transcendental subject, for example, must
itself be unconditionally known and, of course, we have already discounted
this beforehand. Indeed, for all their immediate differences, what both
Nietzsche and Hegel share, and know, as modern philosophers, is that
there is no presuppositionless starting point.
Seeking to radicalize then, perhaps recklessly, this starting point, or
anti-starting point, one might venture to say that all philosophy hitherto has
always been forced to account for something which it must necessarily
operate within. There are, of course, on a certain level, basic pre-
suppositions, first principles, axiomatic structures and the like, which in a
sense cannot be proved or doubted without necessarily presupposing and
employing them. Moreover, this statement itself is a further quagmire in so
far as the very possibility of giving them any character at all, that is, to call
them a priori concepts for example, seems questionable. Yet from this
perspective now, it seems that, in a way, philosophy is no better than Myth!
For both give an account of things in a manner that must instrumentally
presuppose, to some degree, what they seek to explain. With creation myths,
for example, if the beginning of the universe is accounted for in anthropo-
morphic terms, in terms of a great battle, or a nonchalant all-powerful
being, this seems absurd to us today because it seems to overtly presuppose
that which it is supposedly explaining. Yet, in a more sophisticated way, does
philosophy in so far as it tries to retreat, or dig down, to the ultimate
ground or limit as such not always rely on language and meaning which is
itself contingent upon that about which it attempts to think critically?
Socrates too, in the end, must give us signs and images, metaphors and
allegories (in the very dialogues themselves, which are of course also signs):
circles within circles.
This is exactly what is at stake when Nietzsche makes claims that language
may be essentially metaphorical, as in his early essay Truth and Lying in the
Extra-Moral Sense. For, if we say that experience presupposes certain basic
and fundamental concepts, for example, but then we find, from an etymo-
logical perspective, that such words can be traced to a higher order
understanding, or even higher order mundane experiences, and this
seems to strongly suggest to us that our understanding of these terms may
be founded here, then we are faced with the problem that our most funda-
mental concepts are understood in a way that actually presupposes them.
For, if we say that a concept such as unity may be understood in meta-
phorical terms, which is to say in terms of an everyday experience, then we
are immediately left with the problem that such concepts are understood in
terms of metaphors which supposedly presuppose them.
It is always with such things in mind that we should hear and read the first
aphorism of the introduction to On the Genealogy of Morals, where Nietzsche
writes:
We remain unknown to ourselves, we seekers after knowledge, even to

ourselves: and with good reason. We have never sought after ourselves
so how should we one day find ourselves?4
We are unknown to ourselves because the West, for Nietzsche, has never
been able to really ask itself the question about itself, or rather, it would
never accept its own answer as such, that is, as its own (within its own limits).
It will not look for itself because it first wants to stabilize itself, to seize the
immutable, to establish its own ultimate and sublime ground, that master,
the undoubtable, the presuppositionless. In effect, it is the God of the
philosophers who we have always implicitly asked, who are we? never
ourselves. This is the epitome of slave morality: the subjugating act that
wants to trap and fix itself within a horizon that it will not admit that it
creates. Thus, we have never really sought ourselves at all and this is because,
in effect, we have never been able to see ourselves, we have always tried to
view ourselves from within a supra-historical framework, essentially fixed
and immovable, a guaranteed and groundless ground: the ultimate ground.
Proceeding then, from our anti-starting point, and wishing to take the
inscription above the cave of the oracle of Delphi seriously and begin to try
to know ourselves one must say to oneself: I will cut off the branch I am
sitting on in order not to make it God!, quietly whisper,
I will not confine myself to the depths, attempting, and yet always failing,
to speak at the lowest level, dryly and formally as possible, always squeezing
my belly as close as I can to the ground; rather, instead, I will go higher!
After all, is this not what philosophy has always done, has always, in the
end, had to do?
In Nietzsches time, and still in our own, science already makes such move-
ments. With the concept of innate, for example, especially when thought
in terms of cognition or thinking, the problem of meeting an inner limit
with material reductions is not conceived as objectionable, if it is conceived
of at all. If, for example, an account of the development of mankinds
thinking is reduced to theories concerning tool-use and the possession of
opposable thumbs, such reductions always encounter a certain circularity,
in so far as they essentially limit the possibility of their own task: their
own roots are reduced to their fruit, the very possibility of the theories
they produce is undermined, or at least limited, by the content of the
theories themselves so it goes with all pragmatic views of cognition and
consciousness.
It is precisely here that we can begin to answer our question concerning
the possibility of accounting for fundamental values, of knowing ourselves.
For, in the face of the death of God, and with desire to radicalize this move-
ment to know thyself (to go beyond ourselves), an account of fundamental
values is given in this way, that is, in the manner of a climbing higher.
Thus, we could say that the historical typology of master/slave morality is
similar to the reduction made by science, in so far it is driven by this desire
to go higher, to reverse the foundational direction, the digging down, in
its usual manner, of traditional philosophy. However, and this is absolutely
key, Nietzsches typology of master/slave morality is not a scientific reduc-
tion, for the scientist always implicitly posits a stable and an immutable
reality already established and settled, unquestioned and, of course,
thoroughly metaphysical which grounds his or her claims concerning

human development. Nietzsche, on the contrary, does not posit a
metaphysic, but rather, deals directly with a symptomatology of metaphysics
itself, as a creative act.
For science, the framework that grounds an explanation of how we think
of the world is simply universally how it is. Any culture that would arise
whose thinking, and thus its experience, differed from the framework
would be merely a world of illusion, a veil of seeming drawn over how it
really is. Yet, in view of the death of God, the existential fact of this illusory
culture, this world of seeming now, is its weight, its concrete nature; an
alien experience, of course, would still involve being5 it would be as it is.
The reality that sits under all, what we might call for our purposes here,
culturally engendered experience would and does require, itself, a mirac-
ulous cultural correspondence, for science. Yet, for Nietzsche, this is always
nothing but an expression of value and of an antecedent form of life; to
privilege one way of seeing the world over another, one way in which things
are over another, in lieu of the fact that both have being, is founded in pref-
erence, which is to say, in an act founded in prejudice, an act that elevates
what is most useful, most valuable.
Yet, suppose one persists with the following question: what is this form of
life that acts? What is this symptomatology actually of or to be more
specific, if one asks: with Nietzsches concept of resentment, for example, if
this is something that engenders fundamental values and thus the Western
exegesis, and there is nothing absolute beyond this, then how are we to
even understand resentment as a concept without relying on an implicit
understanding of that which resents, that which grounds resentment,
when it is a part of this very exegesis? Are we not implicitly relying on a
ground to resentment, in the same way as the scientist, in the sense of how
we would normally account for that which resents (i.e., a subject, an
organism, an extended body, and the fundamental concepts that go along
with this)?
To pose this question is to arrive precisely at what Nietzsches thought
wants to face in view of the death of God and it can be answered here in two
interrelated ways.
First, as we have said, there is no starting point; resentment can only be
understood, in a certain way, from out of itself, or better, from out of the
structures which it, through the values of slave morality, engenders.
Nietzsches account of fundamental values be it in terms of resentment,
or the herd instinct, and so on in the end simply must operate within
these very values, or within a milieu, a framework, that they engender but
through this Nietzsche wants to show how these values arose, to turn them
on themselves, to make them see themselves, make them self-conscious, in
effect. If the subject, or that which resents, is necessarily itself part of an
interpretation engendered by slave morality and its conditions (resent-
ment, bad conscience etc.), the typology of master and slave morality
becomes an expression of the problem of where to begin. For precisely
because that which resents can be picked out and known, and because the
potential for such an interpretation always remains equivocal, something
like resentment becomes one way of interpreting interpretation, or rather,
one of knowing that the hermeneutic which remains a horizon against
which things such as that which resents can be made intelligible.
Second, with the specific question concerning resentment, it is important
to emphasize that this is not, of course, the primary reduction in
Nietzsches thinking. Rather, what is first at stake is Nietzsches reduction to
fundamental values as such in terms of the determinative role he gives
them. For here, Nietzsche already reduces a ground to a prejudice, which
must itself be explained somehow, and thus already threatens to under-
mine itself in a certain way. While the Will to Power is key in this regard as,
in a certain way, a metaphysical expression of this reduction it is
important to see that even this cannot ultimately escape, in terms of its
intelligibility, the horizon it gives an account of, and thus, it is not an exclu-
sive expression of the primary Nietzschean reduction.6 Indeed, with this
primary reduction of a ground to a prejudice in Nietzsches thinking, we
are faced with an extremely important disjunct. For, not only does it seem
that to deny such a reduction sets itself on a slippery slope towards such
problematic concepts, or non-concepts, as disinterest a non-prejudicial
perspective, immaculate perception, and so on but more importantly, it
seems that something like language, strictly speaking, by the very same logic
that denies the reduction of a ground, would now have to be something
that we can never actually come to know (except from out of itself), some-
thing necessarily without a history, ineffable, sublime, a God a Master. Of
course, not only is this absurd but it also ignores the fact that, strictly
speaking, as we have tried to show, we have always been on high seas, that
such movements are in fact unavoidable one only needs to think, perhaps,
about what is going on when someone actually begins to teach formal logic,
for example, or, as we have already suggested, when someone tries to know
knowledge.
Nietzsches reductions are ungodly in a radical sense, they attack the
metaphysical movement that sublimes certain fundaments, that wants to
turn them into an ultimate ground. The slave desire for Ontological
stratification, to have Ontological priorities, in other words, the

foundationalist prejudice in Western philosophy, has always orientated
itself towards the irreducible, that which is simple, an isolated truth upon
which to build. Yet, for Nietzsche, as he writes in the second aphorism of
the introduction to On the Genealogy of Morals:
We have no right to any isolated acts whatsoever: to make isolated errors

and to discover isolated truths are equally forbidden to us.7
This amounts to saying that nothing is meaningful in-itself, fundamentally

speaking. There are no isolated truths for Nietzsche, and thus a thinking
that tries to find such things will never be able to escape the higher level,
or context, that must always be presupposed in order to know them, in
order for them to be meaningful. At bottom, Nietzsche wants to make the
West able to begin to see itself, to begin knowing itself from within itself,
and this means a movement that shows, for example, the historical, natural-
istic, and psychological contingencies that create that which these normally
presuppose: the supposedly fixed and immutable structures that frame all
contingency and this is done not just because He is dead and because we
wish to clear away all the transcendentalisms that his corpse has left behind,
that still infect our thinking today, but also because we come to see that this
has never been something essentially alien to philosophy.
All this points to the fact that there are no absolute elements in
Nietzsches thought; the Will to Power is an expression of an irreducible
pluralism. Knowing ourselves, coming to know those fundamental values
that engender our very coming to know, our very awareness of things, is
legitimized by a thinking that sees the ubiquitous presence of circularity in
foundational thinking, that sees that the parts and the whole are on the
same level, in so far as neither is, ultimately speaking, reducible to the other,
which means in a sense that is to say, at bottom, neither of them can be
God, neither of them can be a master. To do this, to fully show this, to level
these out, one must now make the kind of reductions Nietzsche wants to
make this is what it means to smash idols. The very possibility of showing
the kind of prejudices that engender what is taken to be most fundamental
and immovable can be brought into play, as a way to knock them down.
Yet, it is very important to emphasize here that to speak of a symptom-
ology of metaphysics, for example, to reduce a metaphysical exegesis to
something which presupposes it to go beneath the ground through
the fruit of that ground is not something that ultimately renders
that which resents, to take the example above, as something not really
true, or merely an interpretation. For, to come to know things from

within themselves is not, at the same time, to posit an unattainable abso-
lute. The absolute is not even a zero here, that is, it is not an absence still
charged with a meaning. In this way, when resentment, for example, sees
that which resents through and on account of itself, it is not at the cost of
that which resents in-itself this was never there in the first place. In terms
of Nietzsches reductions this translates into the fact, as we have already
implied, that the being of that which resents resentfully interpreted,
resentfully encountered is concrete, it is as it is: one does not make out of
it an illusion, an appearance, simply because it is no longer a master.
Concrete as these things may be, they are not however exhaustive of
being, or of the possibilities of being. What is absolutely vital to Nietzsches
thinking is the fact that a perspective can change, and more importantly
that a trans-perspectival state is, to some extent at least, possible.8 Indeed,
to have something that we call Objective is predicated on this, this is its
condition: one form of being, one perspective, is raised above all others.
Nietzsches thinking seizes upon this possibility in the same way as realism
does, yet, in his thought, trans-perspectival being is not warped by a privi-
leging, in the first instance, of one perspective over others (in the sense that
one is more real).
A vital consequence of all this, we might say, is that, for Nietzsche, not
only is there now nowhere to begin in philosophy that beneath the
ground is simply more ground but there is also now, strictly speaking, no
way to begin, and therefore fundamental values can be explained in a
number of different ways (or perhaps better, even fundamental values, as
a primary reduction is itself only one way of coming to know ourselves, of
which the Will to Power is another). For, in seeking to know anything for
Nietzsche, as with the Sophists, we cannot say that it, this thing we want to
know, has an essence that is unequivocal. A resentfully encountered
entity an entity encountered through a structure of intelligibility histori-
cally engendered by resentful slave values though concrete, is thus not
exhausted in its being by that resentful perspective.
That which grounds Nietzsches typology of master/slave morality then,
is an attempt to come to know fundamental values and that this becomes
possible because of what we might call a radical levelling impetus in
Nietzsches thinking. The ground that has been raised up and taken as a
master is now usurped by its fruit: the beehives of knowledge and the
honey they contain are set on the same level. This allows not only for
fundamental values to be shown in their grounding role as regards the
basic foundations of Western intelligibility but it also allows for multiple
approaches to be adopted, none of which is raised above others. This

anti-foundationalism amounts, at bottom, to Nietzsches radicalization of
Nihilism in a purposeful way. For one cannot simply stand outside a horizon
to oppose it rather in a similar manner to Levi-Strauss concept of bricolage
perhaps, one must take hold of what is at hand, the pre-established mate-
rials and tools available and subvert these for ones own purposes. This
amounts to one of the most positive aspects of Nietzsches thinking, in so far
as it always essentially tries to look into the heart of what is most terrible, most
vertiginous the levelling out of all forms of knowledge in the face of the
death of God and to find ways of affirming these, to seize upon, in effect, a
certain freedom, the opening up of a profound possibilities we now face.
All this does not mean however that Nietzsches thinking operates on a
completely flat surface. Rather, with these reductions, with this radical level-
ling, a rank and order is still preserved in Nietzsches thinking, not in the
manner of positing a new fundamental ground or reality, but rather
through embracing an aim and purpose: by philosophising with a Hammer;
and this means, to be able to appropriate the diversity of perspectives and
interpretations.
This is what makes Nietzsches thinking still actually possible what allows
him to go on to actually privilege something like resentment (though not
absolutely). For, by reducing the absolute ground to such things, it loses its
power over us: we show how by its very own validity its status is thereby
usurped. For, to make something available to knowledge as tangible and
contingent is to begin to give control over that thing, to dominate it; and at
bottom, all this amounts to the fact that today we can no longer say that the
human being simply encounters meaningful entities on the ground of a
fixed set of values set by God. Rather, values now presuppose evaluations,
and these are mortal creations. The decision to go higher, and to do this
in a number of different ways, to seek out many different ways of thinking
about the formative existential factors of human life, in order that they may
be overcome, is done so through the realization that such knowledge is not
essentially beyond us, it does not deal with things that are essentially out of
view, or out of our own grasp. The true freedom and creative power of the
human being comes when he realizes that he is an existential being, that in
relating to himself, in becoming self-conscious, he finds in himself an exis-
tential power, in so far as he can get hold of, in the most concrete of ways,
his own conditions, and change himself. This seems palpable, for example,
when one becomes conscious of the formative nature of language. To some
extent human beings can and do change language, yet it is language in
which they necessarily always must explicitly think, and which exerts a
fundamentally determinative limit on them speaks them, as the

structuralists have said. The same is true of culture generally, for while at
the same time it is culture, and the values that engender it, that provide the
antecedent structures that make subjectivity possible, that provide it with
the framework without which it could not be what it is, in terms of its being,
its ways to be, it is also the case that cultural change can be the work of
human beings. This can never be done on an absolute basis, of course, but
only from out of itself, but this is no different, at bottom, from the ordinary
way that we often retrospectively come to ourselves, never from any possible
absolute perspective, yet nevertheless from here we are always forced to,
and do, look forward and to act to change ourselves.
Perhaps now we have begun to get into view the grounding and unifying
element of Nietzsches thinking. The various perspectives he employs are
guided and unified by the Hammer; his thought is essentially grounded in
a purpose, in a drama, the desire to look forward and act, to seek out new
axial ways of thinking, hidden points of control, points of existential change.
And it is precisely here that, not only can we begin to see how deep the
shadow of the greatest weight really strikes at Nietzsches own thought but
also the irony of the way in which Nietzsche proposes to deal with it. For the
most dramatic expression of his thinking Z calls into question this very
kind of thinking as such, which to say, it is here that the essential instrumen-
tality which guides and unifies Nietzsches thinking faces its most radical
crisis. Moreover, such an irony is entirely in line with what we have been
saying. For Nietzsche cannot step outside his own engagement to assess
such a question, he can get no immaculate perception of the matter, thus
the most abysmal thought is essentially a dramatic thought, the most
dramatic thought. Dramatic, because of what it points to in terms of a lived
life Nietzsches own life perhaps; one thinks of the scenes in Z that mirror
the young Nietzsches encounter with his ailing father, for example9 but
also dramatic in a further sense, in terms of a fear of putting down the
Hammer, and of what the Hammer has come to mean. For, what is always
key in Nietzsches thinking, more so than other thinkers, is always what is
not said. We might say that Nietzsches thinking articulates an extreme self-
awareness through what is, and what must always remain, unspoken.
Nietzsche can never say: look, the way I am speaking to you now is simply
the most honest way I can, formal language is, above all, a lie, it thinks it can
speak without prejudice, it thinks it is disinterested, objective . . . He
can never say this because this would be to employ an implicit formality, it
would be dishonest and hypocritical to add such a caveat, to try to ground
his style in some formal disclaimer. And, we can see this same silence oper-
ating through out Z in terms of what is at stake with Zarathustras most

abysmal thought, his greatest weight. For what is most important with the
eternal recurrence image, and the crisis that precipitates it, is that at the
same time as posing an existential threat to the bermensch, the most
abysmal thought, as we have said, poses an existential threat to Nietzsches
thinking as such: it is the Hammer itself that faces its greatest weight, which
is to say that this crisis poses a formal challenge to his thinking. For how can
Nietzsche now justify that which underpinned the radically heterogeneous
character of his thinking, that allowed it to begin and allowed it to seize
various ways to begin, if this at the same time actually implies a dissolution
of this drama which would underpin it?
This dissolution, as I have already tried to indicate above, is intimately
bound up with the figure of Zarathustra in Nietzsche book. Zarathustras
crisis is that he has come to realize that that which legitimizes and makes
possible the creation of the bermensch, which is to say the death of God,
the death of all transcendental authority, is predicated on something which
threatens to contaminate this very creative act itself. For the radical contin-
gency and extreme anti-teleology of history, which legitimates the
self-creation of meaning, of the bermensch (as the meaning of the
earth), at the same time harbours a hidden consequence that throws into
question the very idea that there can be a destination, an end point that
man can actually be made meaningful as a bridge. In our terms we could
say that this essentially involves the realization that Zarathustras teaching
of the bermensch is complicit in what we could call a slave hermeneutic
of time, in so far as Zarathustras teaching still operates within a specific
structure that still posits a redemptive historical movement, a redeeming
final goal that will justify mankind thus there is a threat that the
bermensch itself as a creative act is itself a meaningless gesture.
It is notable in this regard that The Prophet, the book wherein
Zarathustra has the terrible dream that precipitates his crisis, is followed
immediately by On Redemption. It is not difficult to read this section as an
expression of Zarathustras new awareness of this slave hermeneutic of time
and how it infects his own doctrine. Yet, that Zarathustra does not relate
this specifically to the bermensch in this section is down to the fact that
the weight of what is uncovered goes beyond any particular doctrines or
teachings one might have. For time as such is not immune, in Nietzsches
thinking, to what we have been saying above. To posit one way in which
time is, when we are feeling disengaged, theoretical, or reflective, for
example, as its objective reality, is to give preference to one way in which
it is over others. Moreover, we cannot even say that what is privileged here,
objective time in the example above, which is to say the dominant

occidental view of time, is actually the most common experience of time,
in terms of everyday Western life as it is lived. Indeed, at the bottom, we can
have no disinterested experience of time, for Nietzsche, or better, time is
not a disinterested horizon; and thus what is at stake here is, for him, human
beings operating within a culture increasingly engendered by dominant
slave values, come to a specific experience of time, which is increasingly
vengeful and self-destructive.
On the surface On Redemption can look like a psychologistic reduction
of time, one that would ultimately presuppose time to offer an explanation
of an essential vengeful slave psychology that is formative of a certain
subjective experience of it. Yet, as we have been trying to show throughout
this chapter, Nietzsches reduction of time is an attempt to know thyself, an
attempt to inaugurate the becoming self-conscious of a particular hermeneutic
of time, through itself, so as not to sublime that hermeneutic as an ultimate
ground. The slave hermeneutic of time has no author, no ultimate presup-
posed ground that sits underneath it; that which resents, as an in-itself,
does not produce this slave hermeneutic, but rather, it, itself, only appears
within it. Yet, since the possibilities of being remain open, which is to say,
things retain the possibility of being different, a thinker like Nietzsche can
operate within the hope of overcoming it.
Nevertheless, in this overcoming, it is too easy to fall back into the same
current it opposes: Zarathustra comes to see that his own doctrine is just
one further consequence of this slave hermeneutic of time. For, the
bermensch is still an expression of a slave hermeneutic that engenders an
essentially moral experience of time, one that still wants to make mankind
a bridge, something instrumental, something to be justified by something
else. It makes time an essentially moral phenomenon, and this is driven by
a slave resentment of the past, the it was, which, because it cannot strike
against this master, is sublimated against the now. It is made blameworthy
and is thus now in need of redemption. In this way, the bermensch, no
matter how radically different it is as an ideal, still retains a masochistic
potential: it is still used to strike at the present, to take vengeance on it.
Moreover, for all its difference as an ideal, the bermensch is still also at
risk now of becoming merely one more variant of an essentially nihilistic
desire to give a fixed and final super-meaning to Western life, in much the
same way as Christian eschatology does.
The weight of the eternal recurrence image finds its place here. For, in its
negative form, which is to say as an abysmal thought, it actually radicalizes
the slave hermeneutic of time in so far as it compresses and expresses its
ultimate nihilistic consequence.10 For now this moment is infinite, it cannot

be used to justify anything the small man recurs eternally, he is not to be
done away with, to be justified by some future time, there can be no ulti-
mate and qualifying panacea. As for the spirit of Gravity, this now means
life is utterly meaningless suffering, and that life can only be justified if it
has an instrumentality. It is the wisdom of Silenus that is now king. Zara-
thustras challenge here, is thus to find a way to affirm the eternal recurrence
of each moment in a manner that does not look outside itself, in a way that
does not resent the past, the it was, does not sublimate its desire for
vengeance against the now, making it blameworthy, devaluing it in favour
of another time which will redeem it.
Yet, perhaps now we can finally indicate what we have been driving at all
along, what is important in all this is that the resonance and scope of this
problem is not confined to merely an idiosyncrasy that resides in
Nietzsches thought alone, in so far as it speaks of free spirits or an
bermensch. Rather, for him, the articulation of the most abysmal
thought and the eternal recurrence is the becoming self-conscious of a
fundamental prejudice within the tradition of Western thought itself: For,
why do we wish to know ourselves? Why do we do philosophy? Why do we
think at all? Is there not an implicit aim, an implicit purpose? Has Western
thought not really been, in the end, quietly founded on its own secret
drama? (If, perhaps, at times an exceedingly dull one.) Not only the
bermensch but also normative thinking as such, as the West knows it, as
well as its motivating and grounding place in relation to all knowledge
seeking, is thrown into question by what is confronted with the greatest
weight. The essential drama of Nietzsches thinking, which is grounded in
the desire for a new epoch, in so far as it wishes to justify mankind, is still
complicit in a slave hermeneutic of time: the Hammer is complicit in a
slave desire for vengeance against time and in a desire to inflict cruelty on
itself. This is what is most terrifying, and indeed, Nietzsches thinking is
the first of the tradition to become radically self-conscious, to such a level
that it challenges itself existentially, it faces up to the ultimate nihilism, the
ultimate self-destruction. The realization that, ultimately, the more one
tries to emancipate oneself from a tradition, one finds, at a certain level,
that the driving and orientating motives that fuel such attempts begin to
become questionable, begin to become implicated in what they seek to
overcome. We might thus say that, with the death of God, what is at stake
is not only the fact that there is nowhere to begin in philosophy, not only
is there also no way to begin, but now the very unifying reason to begin, in
Nietzsches thinking, comes into question.11 A key aspect of the eternal
recurrence in this regard is its status as a powerful expression of this

realization, an image that forces us to see exactly what is at stake in the
denial of any transcendental being something Nietzsche spent his whole
intellectual life trying to uncover and show to us.
II
The only thing that remains is perhaps to try to take some sort of account
of what we have said:
Modern philosophy faces three main crises in terms of where to start:
1. That there is no where to begin;

2. That there is no way to begin; and
3. That there is no reason to begin.
Nietzsches thinking overcomes the first two crises through its instrumen-
tality, through the Hammer as well an awareness of the empowering
consequences of death of God. The reason to begin in thinking, however, is
more problematic, and threatens to dissolve the Hammer. This crisis is dealt
with by Nietzsche in Z.
In the light of this, one way of viewing the story of Z, Zarathustras
journey, his wandering, his problem with trying to express his message,
and with the message itself, is as a form of self-knowledge, an attempt to
examine the third crisis listed above.
Coming to an understanding of ones own motives and their historical
complicity in what they seek to overcome does not necessarily put an end to
a thinking that wants to radically critique Western culture. Yet it is at the
same time one that transforms any subsequent attempts to do so. Thus
and to restate we do not mean to imply with our talk of the crisis of Z that
it is a negative work. Indeed, if it is the case that a nascent question often
arises as to where to place the negative and destructive elements of Nietz-
sches thinking generally, given that he is such an optimist; one that
simplistically asks why, given its inherent self-destructive character, is it
necessary for Nietzsche to aggressively strike at the value-foundations of the
West at all? The answer to the first part of this question simultaneously
wipes away another common objection: the simple point that if the slaves
(and their fundamental values) have overcome their masters, how could
this be anything other than through a strength and how this is appropriate
for a thinker who seems to estimate power and strength, as Nietzsche
appears to do, to thus criticize this? Hopefully, we have shown that the
problem, of course, is not that the slaves are victorious, it is how. To win
through losing, to rein as a slave: it is the eyes of weakness that bother
Nietzsche. And herein lies the self-destructive character we see embodied
in the emblem of Christ: the messiah who returns and is victorious through
his own crucifixion, the God who sacrifices himself to himself, the bad
conscience that pays itself off with suffering, through guilt, for the pleasure
of doing so the underground man. It is this victory, and what it bases itself
on, that is fated for Nietzsche, one he wishes not only to expose but also to
accelerate in its own destruction. Thus overcoming the naivety of the West
means hyper-christianity, it means the one God that became man, the
horizon that stepped into the foreground, and the destructive essence
therein, must be seized instrumentally, rather than simply, and of course
naively, opposed. Yet in pursuing this Nietzsche takes it to its upper most
limit, in so far as he finds in the eternal recurrence a problem, and a level
of awareness, that makes the air hard to breath, that challenges not only
the bermensch but also the very binding element of this thinking as such.
Though we must remain silent about how exactly these problems are
dealt with (we have already tried to say too much), what is vital here, and
what we have tried to show, is that a strong reading of Z must begin by
understanding its central crisis, specifically expressed in its formal reso-
nance: the Hammer and its greatest weight.
Part III
Of Life
Chapter 8
Zarathustra on Freedom
Gudrun von Tevenar
[1]
In this chapter, I will stay exclusively within the text of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
and will venture to other Nietzsche texts only for clarification and elucida-
tion. This will most readily safeguard, I believe, the uniqueness of
Zarathustras message on freedom. In part, this uniqueness lies in its distinc-
tive delivery within the elevated and somewhat exaggerated tone of
Zarathustrian rhetoric. In addition, the message is also subject to a distinc-
tive Nietzschean device, namely, dispersing the substance of any message
throughout a text, thus demanding active engagement by the reader in its
assembly. But more importantly, Zarathustras message on freedom is
unique because it proclaims, or so I will argue, two distinctive kinds of
freedom. While Nietzsche does not, in fact, consistently name them one
way or the other, their distinctness will reveal itself by the answers given to
two clarifying questions. The first kind of freedom answers the question:
free from what? (frei wovon?), while the second answers the question: free
for what? (frei wozu?). This is how Zarathustra puts it:
Free you call yourself ? Your ruling thought (herrschender Gedanke) I want
to hear and not that you have escaped a yoke.
Are you indeed one of those allowed to escape from a yoke? There are
some who threw away their last value when they threw away their
servitude.
Free from what? What does that matter to Zarathustra? But brightly should
your eye proclaim to me:
Free for what?1
The mention of a yoke naturally implies a burden one is made to

carry willingly or unwillingly so that the lifting of it does amount to
a kind of freedom, generally called liberation. And liberation being

free or freed from burdens is indeed a sound answer to the question
free from what? Yet note how the thought of lifting a burden could actu-
ally compromise ones very worth and usefulness unsettles the value of
liberation and makes it somewhat ambiguous. This ambiguity is
re-enforced by Zarathustras dismissive attitude to the very question free
from what? It is as nothing to him, of no interest! What is, however, of
interest to Zarathustra are the answers given with bright, that is, I take it,
with enthusiastic eyes to the question free for what? In the following
sections I will try to demonstrate that only those who have successfully
answered the first, the free from what? question, that is those already liber-
ated, are eligible candidates to proceed to a position where the free for
what? question can be asked of them. Liberation on its own, then, is infe-
rior because preliminary kind of freedom, merely preparatory to freedom
properly so called which must have a satisfactory answer to the free for
what? question. According to numerous hints dispersed throughout Z,
freedom properly so called is a high and rare achievement, aiming far
beyond and above what mere liberation could ever offer. This freedom
requires great courage, goal-orientated creativity, as well as a distinctive
affirmation of oneself, of ones being just as one is, together with an
affirmation of the kind of life that is both peculiarly and necessarily ones
own. Hence, persons free in this sense will exhibit in their very lives their
answer to the question free for what?
[2]
If liberation is merely a preparation for freedom proper, two questions must

now be asked: (a) how does one liberate oneself? and/or (b) can one be
liberated by someone else? As is well known, liberation from, say, political
oppression is not one of Nietzsches pre-occupations; his perennial concern
is with a different kind of oppression altogether, namely, the oppression of
untested and unquestioned values imbibed with culture and religion
and the burdensome constraints and hindrances these can put on us. Yet
once our eyes are opened to the potentially pernicious influence of these
values something Zarathustra is passionate about one of the ways we can
liberate ourselves from these values is through contempt (Verachtung).
Already early in his mission, Zarathustra calls for the hour of great contempt.
One should, he urges, have contempt for ones happiness, ones reason,
virtue, justice, and ones Mitleid,2 because, so he claims, these tend to lead
Zarathustra on Freedom 131
to many negative results, including a degrading and pitiful kind of comfort

(erbrmliches Behagen). Without doubt, the kind of freedom one wins when
contemptuously denying oppressive values is correctly called liberation and
celebrated as such, unless, of course, one is too anxious about the risks and
challenges inseparable from liberation or unable to resist the many tempta-
tions for ease and comfort. Unsurprisingly, Zarathustra has a name for
those who are no longer able to feel contempt: he calls them the most
contemptible, the last men.3
Yet, contempt is not the only way to liberation, there is also conquest, the
conquest of a lion! Remember the lion as the second of the three metamor-
phoses tracing the development necessary for freedom and growth.
Following upon the camel the paradigm of the obediently meek and
un-liberated animal of burden the lion, by contrast, is ready to do battle
and conquer freedom by fighting the dragon glittering with the values of
thousand years. Fighting, the lion replaces the dragons stern and fixed you
ought with the roar of his victorious I will.4
However, can one be liberated by someone else, via salvation perhaps?
Zarathustra does not think very highly of saviours and doubts their claims
to liberate. This is not surprising considering that the kinds of liberation so
far discussed are based on Zarathustras demands for personal effort, for
active, determined engagement with on ones own values within ones own
context. Or, as Nietzsche puts it in the fourth of the Untimely Meditations,5
freedom will not drop miraculously into ones lap, it has to be ones own
achievement. It follows that, as salvation implies precisely an intervention
from outside by way of a gracious gift, it cannot, therefore, provide a cred-
ible alternative to liberation via conquest and contempt. Indeed, it could
even be counter-productive. Zarathustra declares:
And from those still greater than all saviours have ever been, must you,
my brothers, be saved, if you want to find the way to freedom!6
[3]
However, there is still more to liberation than simply the fight against
oppressive values, which, though internalized, are nonetheless external to
the extent that they are generally widely accepted within ones society and
culture. And according to Zarathustra, freeing oneself from the bonds of
traditional values is just part of the process, the other is the coming to terms
with ones own inner instincts and drives. And so, when talking to a youth
yearning for freedom, Zarathustra warns:
Free you are not yet, you are still searching for freedom. You have become
overtired and worn out through this search.
You desire the free heights, your soul thirsts for stars. But your bad drives,
too, thirst for freedom.
Your wild dogs too want freedom; they bark with joy in their cellar when
your spirit intents to open all prisons.
You are still a prisoner to me, one plotting his freedom: alas, to such a
prisoner the soul becomes clever but also deceitful and bad.
The liberated spirit must still purify itself. Much prison and prison dust is
still about him: his eye has to become pure.7
Zarathustra here describes the other part of the liberation battle, where
one has to fight, constrain, rule, and purify the wild dogs of ones inner and
often wayward and disruptive drives, usually precariously chained up in
ones cellar. When the prison-doors of values and mores are thrown open,
then the wild dogs of ones drives too, sensing the general loosening of
constraints, clamour for freedom. They too are eager to escape the restric-
tive you ought and replace it with the liberating I will. Here Nietzsche touches
upon the difficult issue of liberty and licence and their potentially dangerous
confusion, something that already occupied him, for instance, when writing
Human All Too Human.8 In Z he gives this advice:
Once you had wild dogs in your cellar: but in the end they changed into
birds and lovely singers. . . . And nothing evil grows henceforth out
of you, except it be the evil that grows out of the fight amongst your
virtues.
My brother, if you are fortunate then you have just one virtue and no
more; that way you will cross the bridge more easily.
It is excellent to have many virtues, but also a difficult task; and some have
gone into the desert and killed themselves because they were weary of
being the battle and battlefield of virtues.
My brother, are war and battle evil? Necessary is this evil, necessary is the
envy and suspicion and betrayal among your virtues.9
Initially, it might be surprising that virtues are treated on the same level
as the wild dogs of drives. Yet when we remember from [2] above that
so-called virtues too have to be questioned and treated with contempt, then
this is no longer strange. And, it gives us a clue, furthermore, as to how the
battle of drive-liberation is to be conducted. It is to be conducted by vigi-
lance, envy, and suspicion as well as through contest and competition. But,
unlike the traditional attitudes Nietzsche is arguing against, where powerful
mores often forced repression or annihilation upon ones drives, this is not
the case here. Zarathustra claims that one does not win the battle with ones
drives by repressing or annihilating them but only when they are ordered
and ranked, that is mastered. So, drives and instincts are to be mastered
and ruled by being placed in an orderly hierarchy. And when ruled well, the
hierarchical structure imposed on them greatly contributes to the freedom
and well-being of their ruler. Nietzsche writes in his notebook from 1888:
The mastery over the passions, not their weakening or annihilation! The
greater the masterly force of our will the more freedom can be given to
the passions. The great man is great to the extent of freedom given to his
drives: because he is strong enough to turn wild animals into domestic
ones.10
Yet, a hierarchical structure promotes not only order but also joy; the joy
issuing from a freely imposed and freely accepted discipline. When wild
dogs become fully tamed and domesticated, they naturally also become
obedient to ones wishes and then are a joy to be with. Nietzsche expresses
an analogous thought in a beautiful section of Dawn.11 There he says that
one masters ones drives as gardeners do their gardens, when they skilfully
select, prune, blend and rearrange their raw material according to their
own tastes and plans, and that this will bring great joy. In the same passage,
Nietzsche also suggests an alternative: instead of order, he says, gardeners
can just decide to let their plants remain in their natural state and compete
for status among themselves, and that such wildness will bring joy too but
also problems. This last suggestion of letting contest and competition
decide the outcome of status is particularly interesting. Competition does
allow the strongest, fasted, best, and so on of participating peers to battle it
out as to who is first, who is the winner. Of course, winners in competitions
are never sole survivors, it is not that kind of struggle, but they are first
among if not always their equals than at least of those of similar or
comparative prowess. In this way competition, too, avoids annihilation and
repression, while at the same time utilizing the drive to dominance or
victory to impose an order of rank and merit. Yet, note a striking difference
between this kind of competition and gardeners allowing their plants to be
subject to natures raw struggle for space and nourishment. Both are,
indeed, non-interfering, both will produce winners and losers, but the
former contest is rule-governed and aims to promote a specific quality or
goal, in other words, imposes a standard of selection, while the latters
natural exuberance is akin to anarchy. There is ample evidence that
Nietzsche valued both possibilities. In Z, for instance, as well as in On the
Genealogy of Morals, the emphasis is more on mastery and hierarchical rule,
while the famous statement in Ecce Homo12, among others, celebrates the
natural emergence of dominant drives and urges non-interference and
non-selection.
From the above we can see that the free from what? question can be
adequately answered by reference to ones liberation from oppressive values
and wayward drives.
[4]
Before we can discuss the next, the free for what? question, we must pause
and look at the liberated person. There can be little doubt that persons
undergoing liberation in the way discussed above must be, by any descrip-
tion, in a deeply unstable position, one very injurious to ones sense of
identity. With most of the values previously adhered-to now questioned or
undermined, and with ones drives and instincts rearranging themselves
according to still-to-be-explored, still-to-be-secured rules, one must, in a
way, feel uncertain as to who one is and uncertain also as to where to go. Yet,
according to Zarathustra, this is precisely how it ought to be, since the
wrenching away from ones ease and security is a constitutive part of
Zarathustras much-repeated exhortation that man is something to be over-
come. No doubt, overcoming oneself is a fearful challenge, reaching deep
into ones sense of identity, making it problematic as to who one is or wants
to be. Stronger even than in liberation, overcoming oneself is a require-
ment of cutting oneself totally free from everything stable and familiar and
thus seems to imply a leaving behind of oneself so complete as to amount
nearly to self-destruction. The nearly is crucial! Consider here the simile
of burning to ashes and arising again as in the myth of Phoenix, this arche-
typal image of death and rebirth, of loss and triumphal re-emergence, of
destruction and new creation. Ashes are, indeed, mentioned a few times in
Z, and one may wonder whether Nietzsche was here contemplating solely
the Phoenix myth or whether he was also inspired by Goethes famous
poem Selige Sehnsucht (Blissful Longing),13 where Goethe speaks of the deep
and profound yearning to have oneself consumed by fire a yearning one
can speak of only to the wise as, invariably, it is mocked by the many. This is
very close to Zarathustras advice to would-be creators:
You must want to burn in your own flame: how can you want to become
new unless you become ashes first!14
If, as Zarathustra indicates, liberation for creation is indeed in some way

similar to being reduced to ashes, and if the longing to be thus reduced can
only be understood by the wise, then this could help us to make more sense
of Zarathustras remark in the quotation of [1] above, that some will loose
their very worth and usefulness when liberated from a yoke perhaps this
is so because some may just burn, simply burn, and turn into useless because
barren ashes since nothing follows upon their burning? So only some,
maybe only the wise, can profit from liberation. Why? The reduction to
ashes, the liberation from all ones previous values and drives, the over-
coming of oneself, is utterly pointless, and may even be dangerous, unless
taken as a springboard for a new beginning. There are, indeed, numerous
references in Z to the connection between destruction and creation, such
as, for instance:
Change of values that is change of creators. Whosoever is a creator,

must always destroy.15
And whosoever has to be a creator in good and evil, in truth, he must be
a destroyer first and crush values.16
This confirms our conclusion: destruction is a necessary precondition for

any new creation, a necessary purification for any rebirth. In short: Without
ashes, no Phoenix!
Let us turn now to the free for what? question.
[5]
Ashes are first mentioned right at the start of Zarathustras mission: the very
first person he meets on his descent is an old hermit who instantly recog-
nizes him as the one who, years ago, carried his ashes up the mountain.
And now the hermit exclaims: Zarathustra has changed, Zarathustra has
become as a child.17 Has the triumphant Phoenix come to Zarathustra in
the innocent persona of a child? While this is, of course, an apt simile for a
new beginning, we must note that, in Z, the child is also the last of the three
metamorphoses, following upon the lion. And of the lion and the child
Zarathustra has this to say:
To create new values that even the lion is unable to do: but to create for
oneself the freedom to new creating that the lion had power to do. To
create for oneself freedom and a sacred No even to duty: for that, my
brothers, the lion is needed. . . .
Truly, a preying is it to him and the task of an animal of prey. . . .
But speak, my brothers, what is the child able to do that a lion is unable
to do? What, must the preying lion become a child?
Innocence is the child and a forgetting, a new beginning, a play, a self-
rolling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yes-saying.
Indeed, the play of creating, my brothers, requires a sacred Yes-saying: the
spirit now wills his own will, having lost a world he wins his own world.18
The lion fights for freedom and robs the dragon of his values, and with
reference to these achievements, he can successfully answer the free from
what? question. Yet Zarathustra goes on to state that the lion, nonetheless,
has not reached the sort of freedom suitable to create new values, to start a
new beginning. And this highly astute observation of the lions limitation or
deficiency marks, I suggest, the very point that separates mere liberation
from what we have called above freedom proper. It has become obvious
now has it not? that the capacity to create new values, to make a new
beginning, is the component and characteristic enabling one to give a satis-
factory answer to the free for what? question. We can conclude, then, that
liberation is a necessary but not sufficient condition towards answering that
question, since a satisfactory answer must necessarily contain the purposes
and contents of a new making (neues Schaffen). In other words, to answer
the free for what? question one must, on emerging from the break with ones
past values, have the kind of freedom and creativity which aims well beyond
and above the present, the liberated state towards the making of new values
befitting a new beginning, a new dawn.
Now, if the lion is unable to achieve this task but the child is, what,
then, are the endowments the child has that the lion lacks? The child has,
according to Zarathustra, innocence, forgetting, and playfulness, and
the child is, furthermore, a new beginning, a self-rolling wheel, a first
movement, a holy yes-saying. With these playful, innocent, and self-creating

endowments, the child is now able to will his own will; indeed, having lost a
world, the child now wins for itself his own world. So here, we have, in
outline, the conditions necessary for the new kind of freedom, freedom
proper. These conditions do indeed build upon, but then, nonetheless,
leave behind those required for mere liberation, just as the child follows
upon the conquests of the lion.
We have now reached a position where we can confidently state that the
hiatus between the two freedoms of free from what? and free for what? is char-
acterized by the fact that liberation with its near loss of identity, its reduction
to ashes, and, as in the last quote, its loss of a world, is utterly futile unless
the destruction is made fertile again by the capacity and will to create
something new. Without the freedom of this creative will, the ashes of
destruction remain just that ashes: plain waste, the sterile evidence of a
lost world.
As we have seen, Zarathustra believes that a new world with its new values
will not come about through the gentle workings of slow, gradual, or evolu-
tionary change, but only through the combined activity of two, usually
conflicting, forces: violence and gentleness. We have (1) the destructive
break with the past the task of liberation, necessary to render the ground
virginal again, innocent again, and thus receptive for (2) the creative play
of the child the activity of freedom. Note that the often-disconcerting
partnership of violence and gentleness is found throughout Z. Consider
here, for example, Zarathustras frequent cry for war and destruction next
to his deep yearning to pour out the riches of his love; his frequent threats
to come down with fire, lightning, and tearing winds to prepare for this
love; the tenderness and trembling anticipation to go under next to the
near madness of his rapture when believing the moment ripe for his great
giving. Zarathustra, then, has no aversion to whipping, screaming, fighting,
burning so long as it helps the acceptance of this love. Said differently: for
Zarathustra the lion has to roar so that the child can play.
[6]
It is in the nature of the topic of freedom that it is extremely difficult to be

specific as to content and practice. However, from what has been ascer-
tained so far, it is clear that the kind of demands Zarathustra asks of freedom
are not fulfilled by reference to the lifting of a yoke, whether this is libera-
tion from obsolete and oppressive values or the fact that one has imposed
order on ones instincts and drives. As we have seen, these are precondi-
tions for freedom only. And, while Zarathustra is dismissive about the fact
that someone has escaped a yoke, he is eager to know about ones ruling
thought (herrschender Gedanke). What is a ruling thought? It is best to answer
this question by looking at the kind of person likely to have a ruling thought,
as this will also, most plausibly, be the kind of person Zarathustra is looking
out for. Consider here how, after the abortive attempt to teach a multitude
in a marketplace the message of the bermensch, and after admitting to
himself that he has looked for the wrong person in the wrong place,
Zarathustra makes the following resolution:
An insight came to me: Zarathustra should not speak to people but to

companions. Zarathustra should not become the shepherd and dog of a
herd.
A creator seeks companions, not corpses, nor herds and believers. Fellow
creators seeks the creator, those who inscribe new values on new tablets.19
It is obvious that the companions and fellow creators Zarathustra seeks are
persons free in the sense discussed above, those that can answer the free for
what? question and are able to create new values. That leaves the herd and
believers. It is obvious, again, that herds are to be dismissed; being
shepherd to a herd is, to Zarathustra, like a priest administering to a congre-
gation. But why are believers dismissed? After all, one could read the whole
of Zarathustra with a convinced sense that here speaks someone looking for
proselytes, looking to convert people to his new ideas and values, in short,
looking for believers. Without doubt, there is much in Zarathustra that
endorses such a reading. Nonetheless, I would suggest, that such a reading
is inadequate because it neglects the role of freedom. Zarathustra says the
following to his believers:
You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what matters Zarathustra! You are
my believers: but what matter all believers!
You had not began searching for yourself: and you found me. All believers
do thus, that is why all belief amounts to so little.
Now I call upon you to lose me and find yourselves; . . .20
Therefore, believers start believing in others before they have even begun
searching for themselves. And, without searching, there can be no finding;
and without finding, how can there be liberation? In other words, believers
just swap one unexamined set of beliefs for another. That is why they matter
so little. They are just followers and in this respect ready material to become
members of a herd; a new herd, no doubt, but a herd nonetheless. One
could object here that, all the same, there is no reason why believers should
not have a ruling thought, and, furthermore, if they have one that it would
be, most likely, a good ruling thought because cloned from their teachers.
But this is precisely the point: it would not be their ruling thought since it
has not arisen out of the ashes of their own liberation.
Zarathustra is looking for companions who are free in the relevant sense.
This being so, it becomes clear why he cannot specify what their ruling
thoughts should be. While Zarathustra can indeed prescribe that his
companions and fellow creators are liberated that is, have searched,
found, and destroyed themselves and also prescribe that they have
ruling thoughts, yet the content of these thoughts he cannot prescribe
without negating his whole doctrine of freedom.
Finally, there remains the problem of the compatibility, or otherwise,
between the creativity of a free persons ruling idea and the cluster of attri-
butes associated with the creativity of the child, which is described by
Zarathustra as predominately innocent play. The way ruling thoughts tend
to exercise their rule does not, on the face of it, seem to have much in
common with the play of a child. Ruling thoughts are, almost by definition,
dominant, sometimes even obsessive; they have content and know what
they aim for. But a childs play, among many other things, is an innocent
openness, ready for whatever might come. This is, indeed, a difficulty. Yet
the difficulty can be diffused, if not wholly solved, if one subscribes to the
thought, suggested at the beginning of this chapter, that free persons will
exhibit in their very lives their answer to the free for what? question. And,
naturally, it would be odd if there were just one possible way to lead a free
life. In addition, we have to consider that the child is a metaphor, usually
a metaphor for a new beginning. Yet, note that in Z, it is also a metaphor for
the culmination of a process, since it is the last epiphany of the three meta-
morphoses. In other words, the child is both a new beginning and a
crowning achievement.
[7]
I have argued that the freedom Zarathustra advocates is not something one
has but something one is. This freedom is not a trophy one can hold aloft
and point to as ones price for much struggle; on the contrary, it is embedded
into the narrative of ones lived life. Let us now look within the confines of
Z for a person free in this sense. Obviously, Zarathustra is such a person: he
carried his ashes up the mountain and descended having turned into a
child. Besides, he certainly has some ruling thoughts! His followers and
believers we have already dismissed since they were not able even to liberate
themselves. This leaves the higher men of part IV. But they are not
successful candidates either. Consider what it is that they carry up the moun-
tain during their pilgrimage to Zarathustras cave. It is not their ashes but
their anxieties and miseries. Consequently, they look to Zarathustra for
advice, for comfort and security, and for solution of their problems. Indeed,
the explanation as to why they searched for Zarathustra in the first place is
the fact that they already believed in him and now simply seek to solidify
him so as to venerate and follow him. In other words, the higher men do
not sincerely aspire for liberation, rather, they hope for salvation!
Not surprisingly, Zarathustra rejects them outright as potential fellow crea-
tors: how could they possibly reach the required freedom when the
challenging, liberating roar of the lion is already too much for them?
Therefore, it is only Zarathustra who is truly free! A solitary figure, in line
with his much-admired solitary tree on the mountains side, defying the
elements. Yet, surely, this cannot be the final outcome. Zarathustra himself
was full of hope that there were others hence the urgency of his mission
and the delight in his last descent.
Chapter 9
Nietzsche On the Regenerative Character

of Dispositions
Arno Behler
On the life of the muse
In an aphorism that begins with the title The Convalescent, Zarathustra

replied to his animals:
O you buffoons and barrel organs, be silent! . . . How well you know what
comfort I invented for myself in seven days! That I must sing again, this
comfort and convalescence I invented for myself. Must you immediately
turn this too into a hurdy-gurdy song?1
Zarathustra knows, what his headstrong soul needs. In long experience

with himself, he has learned that it is the muses that can free him from his
concerns. Everywhere his soul had been touched by the muses, it had begun
to stir again. The emotional malaise that had lamed him was all of a sudden
gone and the strings of his disposition began to make music once again.
The great disgust with life that had overcome him and morosely taught
him: All is the same, nothing is worth while, knowledge chokes.2 During
such hours of the muses, all this had miraculously flown away. From these
experiences, Zarathustra believed to understand what his soul needed to
heal. He did not want to merely drag himself onwards as he had done until
now, simply to survive. He was weary of his own weariness, he longed for a
new, a different life: new wineskins for a new wine.
Today, at the dawn of his convalescence, Zarathustra was finally prepared
to bring the ill-temperedness of his soul to a sudden ending, and to rid
himself of the monster of nihilism that had inadvertently3 overcome him.
It is I or you!,4 he cried out against his own gravity. Zarathustra had thus
made the first step towards his own recovery; today he agreed to his own
demise.
The muses as cheerful sources to sur-vive a life
What Zarathustra obviously longed for, during the dawn of his recovery, was
a life which no law could guarantee, no ordinance could prescribe but only
the nearness to the muses would be able to offer him. It was their touches,
their songs, their dances, speeches, and images that he was yearning for. Not
pale, like a shadow of life,5 this was not how he wanted to live further on, as
if he were already dead.6 He had had enough of this false life once and
forever.
Left to his own devices, he was not capable of healing himself. For his
convalescence he would rather have to pursue a new politics of leisure; a
politics of the muses, one that would bring him in contact with just those
new courtesans from which Hesiod had reported in his Theogony, that
they were the deliverers of pure joy. Since Zarathustra himself hoped to
become a deliverer of a new and joyful form of life, of a muse-like sur-vival
(ber-Leben), through the act of his own convalescence.
The author of the text Thus Spoke Zarathustra, who was a philologist of
ancient languages by profession, of course was very familiar with the Greek
meaning of the word metaphor. Meta-pherro means in Greek I deliver or
I bring something. Understood as metaphors of joy, the muses in ancient
Greece are therefore not just symbols of joy, but literally the deliverers of joy.
There, where they appear, where a soul is really touched7 by the muse, there
they do not just represent the idea of a joyful, jovial, exalted existence in an
abstract way, but rather they function directly as the messenger of an ecstati-
cally overwhelming emotional state. The joy that shines from their own
gracefulness and harmony, is contagious extends to those souls which
have been caressed by them.
One who thus has truly been touched by works, inspired from the muses,
therefore will not only be motivated to think of the eidetic essence of joy,
without, during the act of imaging it, also being affected by that which the
soul is imagining: joy. Rather, one that is touched by the muses is emotion-
ally infected and transitively tuned to the joyful harmony expressed in works
inspired from the muses.
Taken as metaphors of joy the muses are at work only where those who have
been touched by them have been affectively stricken, e-motionally moved,
and dispositionally infected in such a way that the tonality of the work is medi-
ally transferred onto the recipients.
If such a transmission truly takes place from the muses onto the works of
the fine arts and onto artistically talented recipients, then each famously
notorious kiss of the muses becomes an event in which the substance of joy
On the Regenerative Character of Dispositions 143
is transmitted in a passionate manner from one body to another and

therefore becomes a true presence (Greek: ousa) of joy.
On new songs and new lyres
Hence it is not surprising that even Zarathustras animals support and

strengthen him in his effort to recover through an appeal to the muses.
Perhaps because of their animal-like acquaintance with life they understand
the healing power of sweet songs. Perhaps also because after their year-long
acquaintance with him they are aware of his susceptibility for the muses.
Sing and overflow, O Zarathustra; cure your soul with new songs that you
may bear your great destiny, which has never yet been any mans destiny.
For your animals know well, O Zarathustra, who you are and must become:
behold, you are the teacher of the eternal recurrence that is your destiny!8
To do justice to the life of others that was medially transferred to him in the act
of his birth by others, and therefore, became his fate for his own way of life,
Zarathustra first and foremost needs new songs! After all, the old canon,
which he can take recourse in his own life, is no longer appropriate to really
touch his soul. The old songs/stories have become too museal to reach him
any longer. Do not speak on! his animals answered him again, rather
even, O convalescent, fashion yourself a lyre first, a new lyre! For behold,
Zarathustra, new lyres are needed for your new songs.9
Zarathustras recovery obviously was not just about repairing the function-
ality of the already-existing strings and chambers of his disposition to cure
his chronic malaise. It was not just about repairing old strings and rotten
instruments, but about the regeneration of his entire sensual sensorium. The
entire repertoire of his senses, to which he can momentarily refer, thus the
whole way in which his feelings of being touched, inspired, and moved by
the world, are perceived, pre-reflexively understood through passive synthesis
and finally, pre-ontologically interpreted in a sensitive way, all this is at stake
in the process of his recovery.
But even the automatic way of referring to the sensitive chambers of his
soul in the course of their actual usage, even this habitualized automatism
of his senses has to be broken down, interrupted, and tested for its implicit-
ness in the process of his recovery. This unreflective way of speaking,
thinking, and feeling will no longer be sufficient for Zarathustra. The feel-
ings which are still created by a mechanical recourse onto the existing
chambers of his disposition have to be reconsidered anew, they have to be
checked for the temper of their constitution,10 sensitively reviewed and if

necessary synthetically expanded, emotionally transformed, supplemented,
completed, and therefore constitutively reworked. For this reason, a
regenerative act is not just a recursive act in which one can simply refer,
retentionally, to already existing chambers of ones disposition, to use them
for the umpteenth time. For, if this happened, then this would just be a
mechanical performance of feeling, nothing more than the production of
a clich of emotion, by which we habitually react to sensory impulses with this
or that affective pattern. The contemporaneousness of the current situation
would then not be taken into consideration; it would not be felt and
experienced.
For Zarathustras complete recovery, in which the strings of his soul are
brought back to life and song, he does not just need new songs but also a
new lyre, providing his soul with new chambers, sensitive organs, and exqui-
site sensors, which will allow him to feel in new and different ways.
On the other hand in the process of his convalescence, he will have to get
his soul out of the habit of reaching to readily available capabilities of
thinking, feeling, behaving, and interpreting, to prevent the current act of
emotional processes from rashly becoming a repetition of purely habitual
behaviour. Not just this or that organ, to which Zarathustra currently has
recourse, but the way he uses his entire sensitive sensorium therefore is at
stake during the course of Zarathustras convalescence.
If he wants to do justice to his fate and present a polyphonic expression
of his teachings on the eternal recurrence of the same, then he needs a
new and sensitive lyre first which will allow him to transmit the nuances
and the abyss of his teachings to those who have an ear for such unheard
of truths. At the same time, the unheard aspects11 of his teachings must be
protected so that they will not be silenced by the barrel organ of restless
spirits, who would rashly interpret his teachings, and therefore, transform
them into an old stereotypical story and melody. [S]truggling on the one
hand against Habitus, on the other against Mnemosyne; . . . refusing the
overly simple cycles, the one followed by a habitual present (customary
cycle) as much as the one described by a pure past (memorial or
immemorial cycle).12
Interrupting the habitual habitus of his soul, so that the execution of
emotional acts, during their execution, is examined, perhaps ennobled and
renewed, that is the recipe which not only Gilles Deleuze but also
Zarathustra recommended to regenerate their emotional existence. During
the new instrumentation of his soul, Zarathustra was thus not only concerned
with the composition of new songs and the creation of a new lyre, but also
he was also forced to immunize himself against all those who are used to
translate every new song immediately into the same old recurring melody.
On well known melodies and new songs
Therefore it comes as no surprise that Zarathustras animals too speak of

his teaching in a tone of voice which gives it the ring of a well known melody:
There will be a great year of becoming, they say. They describe an ogre of a
great year, which, just like a sand clock, always has to be turned upside down
again, so that it may run down and run out again and all the years are alike
in what is greatest as in what is smallest. In this year, Fate catches up with
every creature and after a long cosmic minute it will be re-awoken to life
and the external circumstances will be repeated, so that it has to live the
same life again that it has already led many times, and will live again in the
future.
This is how Zarathustras animals spoke to him on that morning and
pretended to have spoken of him and his most abysmal thoughts. O you
buffoons and barrel organs! Zarathustra replied and smiled again.
How well you know what had to be fulfilled in seven days, and how that
monster crawled down my throat and suffocated me. But I bit off its head
and spewed it out. And you, have you already made a hurdy-gurdy song of
this? But now I lie here, still weary of this biting and spewing, still sick
from my own redemption. And you watched all this? 13
While Zarathustra freed himself with a resolute bite from the historic
burden of his own it was a beast, about whom he said, that it was the
great weariness regarding humans that strangled him and made him
weary his animals merely watched this dramatic display. Almost as if they
did not have any historic burden which strangled them. Almost as if the
notion of the eternal recurrence of the same in their own animalistic
existence did not burden or bother them at all.
Almost as if they, his animals, could tolerate this idea, without being
ashamed of the eternal return of their own animalistic existence. Nothing
in his teachings seemed to be painful for them. On the contrary, they make
us believe as if some of his teachings correspond to their own animalistic
nature, which does not seem to know any resentful misgivings about their
own lives.
For the majority of human beings, however, Zarathustras teachings
appear to be hard to digest. This is the sore spot, which marks the deciding
difference between the animalistic and the human interpretation of his

teachings. For while animals have a right to interpret the eternal return of
the same as a cosmic event in which their own life is fatefully entangled and
fatally embedded, for human destinies it is proper to interpret the same
event as the chance of a concrete challenge each human being has to face, give
its own signature to, and hence practically has to accomplish as long as it
is alive.
Zarathustras phrase the eternal recurrence of the same, is, at least for
humans, therefore never just a fatal truth, but rather a type of guiding prin-
ciple (Leitsatz), which humans should not simply believe and treat like a
given fact, but should cope with as something that has to be practically recip-
rocated, considered bad or good, cursed or agreed upon, wanted or refused.
Only after a person has already chosen to make Zarathustras concept of
the eternal recurrence of the same the maxim (Leitsatz) of his or her own
life, then such a person is forced to internalize it as the governing principle
guiding his or her soul. The sensitive application of the teaching of the
eternal recurrence of the same to the individual existence, as an act of
maximization and intensification of ones liveliness, is, as an act of the re-
creation of the pre-existing dispositions of a living creature, apparently not
just an act with a pure descriptive character. Rather it is a performative-syn-
thetic act in which the contemporary dispositions of a soul are not just cited,
but expanded, supplemented, re-created, and creatively regenerated during
the performance of such an act.
Also the dispositions that Zarathustra has recourse to during the internal-
ization of the concept of the eternal recurrence of the same whether it
is his ability to feel, to think, to behave, or to desire all these abilities
cannot be merely used, cited, and applied in their existing form, rather,
during the process of the internalization of his teaching, they must be
exceeded, reworked, and if necessary synthetically expanded and constitu-
tionally reconstituted. In a speech, which is given the title On Redemption,
Zarathustra can say about the act of redemption: To redeem those who
lived in the past and to recreate all it was into a thus I willed it that
alone should I call redemption.14
On redemption
To repeat that what has been transmitted to us as a life what we ourselves

hence did not bring forth and yet are forced to be to repeat this in such
a way that we come to the point to affirm it: thus I will it; thus shall I
will it15 that alone would mean redemption for Zarathustra. Since the
burdensome character of the past, which is thereby repeated, would completely

disappear and melt away in such a moment of amor fati.
Once we do understand that Zarathustra, from the very beginning of his
own recovery, started to cut and refine the genealogically transferred histor-
ical burden of his life in such a way that his first nature became ennobled,
purified, and made into a jewel by his life, then it is clear, that Zarathustras
notion of amor fati has nothing to do with a passive form of love. Since the
reception of the life that has been transmitted to him, Zarathustras fulfil-
ment of his own amor fati, represents a synthetic act a priori, which Zarathustra
has to perform and execute himself existentially in the course of his own
genealogical becoming and act of a lifelong regeneration. Thus every living
act, structurally, represents a synthetic act a priori, because the execution of
a lively behaviour necessarily brings with it a moment of instability in the
structures cited in such an act: the possibility of an event, which leads to the
restructuring of those structures which were involved in the act at its
beginning.16
Every act of recovery of a living being is the attempt to give oneself
a posteriori a past which one would like to have descended from, in contrast
to the past from which one really stems. It is an act of transformation from a
first nature into a second one.
The genealogy of a living being, in which it is affected17 with the life that
it was genealogically given by others by birth, hence is neither an act of a
simple representation of the past nor a sheer birth ex nihilo, but rather it is
an act of a certain differential repetition of a past, in which that, what was,
in the act of its repetition elicits differences, through which something is
created which until now has never been there.
In reference to Deleuzes Difference and Repetition, Agamben rightly
reminded us that the lively interaction with the transferred heritage of a
certain history is not just about remembering the past, to prevent it from
being forgotten. Rather the potentiality of an act of remembrance lies in an
act of remembering, which, during the process of recollection, is a posthu-
mous returning of a future to a past and thereby given unfulfilled possibility
back to a past, with which it is linked during the act of remembering and
therefore belatedly re-membered.18 As Agamden writes, A creative, artistic
mode of re-membering, restores possibility to a past, making what happened
incomplete and completing what never was. Remembrance is neither what
happened nor what did not happen but, rather, their potentialization, their
becoming possible once again.19
A history in the service of life a topos to which Nietzsche early on
confessed20 will therefore not only be satisfied with having dealt with the
transmission of a historical heritage only in historical-critical perspective.

Rather it will be about a plastic interaction with history, in which our trans-
missions are treated primarily as the material of synthetic-performative
processes. It will not just be about stating that, which was, in performing its
historical replay over and over again, but about the performative interaction
with that, which has been transmitted to us as a fragment, a riddle, a
dreadful accident21 to deal with it in multiple fragmentary ways.22
A life, as an act of regeneration of those handed down forms of life, means
therefore more than simply being generated, more than simply to be alive.
It means to make our lives a form of ueberleben, a form to survive.
To begin with, we normally do not come into contact with our lives in an
exuberant way, but rather live our lives as if we were not alive at all. As the
medium of our ancestors, we simply mime their past over and over again.
We live, as those who taught us how to live.23 We live as barrel organs and
buffoons.24 Even there, where we should let go of the same old fables.
On the temporality of dithering
Zarathustra also hesitated for a while before obeying his own, most abysmal
thoughts. For many years he did not have the courage to make his teaching
the ruling thought of his own existence (Da-sein). O Zarathustra, your
fruit is ripe, but you are not ripe for your fruit. Thus you must return to
your solitude again.25 In his inability to cause his soul to desire his own
eternal return, Zarathustra still resembled the truth-seeker, whom he had
met once and heard once say: All is empty, all is the same, all has been!26
Already at that time, Zarathustra was overwhelmed with an enormous
sadness and exhaustion, and with him all of the crowd who had gathered
around the auger and heard him speak of life. The best grew weary of
their works27 because his speech had something infectious. No one
could affectively deny the illocutionary force of its words. Even the auger
himself was so infected by his own speech that he became weary of his own
life emotionally. He walked about sad and weary; and he became like
those of whom the soothsayer had spoken.28 Although Zarathustra had
learned in the meanwhile that the words of the auger were merely fable-
songs, the self-fulfilling prophecy at the time had become word, and was
still stuck in his throat. Still this prevented him from taking the all-decisive
step, which would have cut the head off his disgust with life and freed him
from his melancholy.
Even if he was not yet capable of completely digesting the bite of poisonous
words that had overcome him at the time, at least Zarathustra wanted to
prevent his own friends and followers from infection by the poisonous
words. Since, in the meanwhile, all of these preachers of madness appeared
to him to be secret necromancers or poison mixers, and spirits of revenge.
In other words, humans who were not capable anymore of detoxifying and
digesting the historic fate that destiny had thrown at their own life by
chance. Too bitter and too difficult appeared this task of metamorphosing
the burden of their past for them. In consequence, they developed a deep
rancor and revulsion against time and its It was, which taught them the
negation of life and the willingness to sacrifice.
I lead you away from these fables when I taught you, The will is a creator.
All it was is a fragment, a riddle, a dreadful accident until the creative
will says to it, But thus I willed it. Until the creative will says to it, But
thus I will it; thus shall I will it.29
Zarathustras nadir
One morning, during the dawning of his soul, not long after his return to the
cave of his solitude, Zarathustra sprang up from his bed and screamed with
a dreadful voice: Up, abysmal thought, out of my depth! I am your cock
and dawn, sleepy worm. Up! Up! My voice shall yet crow you awake!30 Now,
it was time; now he was ready for an all-decisive, final act.
On this morning, being in such a resolute mood, Zarathustra began to
call his soul-like abysses to hear what they had to say about his most profound
thoughts.31 Similar to his tale On the Vision and the Riddle, in which
Zarathustra once saw a young shepherd lying on the ground, who was
doubled over in pain because a black heavy snake had crawled into his
mouth, in the same way it cried out of him on this morning: Bite! Bite its
head off! Bite!32 Not just any day had begun on this morning, but rather
that day, over which was written the title The Convalescent.
A date, which would mark the singular nadir in the life of Zarathustra.
Then, if Zarathustra wanted to recover by virtue of his own thoughts, then
this morning would have to come to him on which he should be prepared
to not just teach others his own teachings, but when he should be prepared
to perform them on and by himself, by biting the bullet, to free himself
from the burden of his own legacy.
And look there. Today the day has come on which he has been chal-
lenging his own abyss to declare him something of his most abysmal
thoughts. The final act in the drama of his convalescence should be sealed
on this morning and thus become a real event.
The abyss speaks
You are stirring, stretching, wheezing? Up! Up! You shall not wheeze but
speak to me. . . . I summon you, my most abysmal thought!33 During the
dawn of his convalescence, Zarathustra dares his own anima to speak of his
most abysmal thoughts. All of the life that was in him that should today
speak to him. His most abysmal thoughts should today testify to his soul.
From them he finally wanted to know, what they themselves have to say about
his teachings. This morning it had finally come to the point where they had
to show their true colours and testify to what touches them in the deepest
depth. It is no longer Zarathustra who speaks to his soul in the dawn of his
convalescence. Rather it is his soul, which speaks to him today. Hail to me!
You are coming, I hear you. My abyss speaks, I have turned my ultimate
depth inside out into the light. Hail to me! Come here! Give me your
hand!34
For the first time his teachings are reciprocated from the depths of his own
soul. For the first time she echoes him. No longer does his soul fear his own
abysmal thoughts. On the contrary, today even her abysses speak of his
abysmal thoughts to him. Have his teachings in the meanwhile reached the
deepest strings of his soul?
Have they in the meantime reached these depths? Been desirously
received by the deepest chambers of his anima?35
Shaken by the event, that his soul had reciprocated his own teachings,
Zarathustra first remained lying, pale, and stricken. Seven days he needed
to digest that which he experienced during the final act of his convales-
cence. At last, after seven days, Zarathustra raised himself on his resting
place, took a rose apple into his hand, smelled it, and found its fragrance
lovely.36
Chapter 10
In Search of the Wellsprings of the Future

and of New Origins
Uschi Nussbaumer-Benz
Whoever has gained wisdom concerning ancient origins will eventually look for
wellsprings of the future and for new origins. . . . The earthquake namely buries
many wells and causes much languishing: it also brings to light inner powers and
secrets. The earthquake reveals new wellsprings. In earthquakes that strike ancient
peoples, new wellsprings break open.
(Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part III, On old and new
tablets, nr. 25.)1
Introduction
Let me first mention only a few of those earthquakes that strike ancient
peoples today: in Europe, the peoples of former Yugoslavia are afflicted, in
the Middle East, Palestinians, and Israeli that is peoples of Islamic,
Christian as well as orthodox Christian, and of Jewish faiths; in the Far East,
peoples in the Philippines, in Sri Lanka, and Indonesia primarily of
Buddhist, Christian, and Islamic beliefs; not to mention the earthquakes in
other regions of the world such as central Asia or Africa all of which, in
one way or another, pose a challenge to America as well as Europe.
This chapter concentrates on and tries to answer the question what well-
springs did Nietzsche think were buried, and, above all, what new wellsprings
might he have discovered that are of vital interest to the present and might
even wash away Samuel P. Huntingtons view of a Clash of civilizations a
clash in which Europe and America have to either march together or be
beaten separately; even more so, according to Huntington, in the course of
the greater, the real fight between civilization and barbarism. Along with
Nietzsche, I propose to discuss the thesis that notwithstanding the accom-
plishments these world cultures in fact have attained it is precisely the
foundations of these cultures/religions that lie at the core of the conflicts

mentioned above and are indeed part of the problem.
I wish to present with this chapter a stringent chain of circumstantial
evidence leading towards the following finding: Nietzsche had rediscovered
in an ancient text a specific cultural concept in which the three most influ-
ential monotheistic religions/cultures as well as the Buddhist culture/
religion (and not only these four) are rooted, albeit in a more or less
deformed manner. On this newly found basis, Nietzsche thought it was
possible to attempt a general transvaluation of values, away from the
so-called ascetic ideal of the West and East, towards and in favour of the
other, the different ideal and thus to build a new culture.
This source of Nietzsches, supposedly a rich wellspring of the future and
for new origins, is a pre-Buddhist, even a pre-Vedic narrative. It is a narra-
tive that has proven in the course of previous world history an enormous
archetypal efficacy, that is, power however, in its more or less deformed
version. The original ancient narrative had been taken up and advanced by
a crucial Buddhist text, the Ceylonese Dighanikaya, written in the language
Pali (not Sanskrit) whereas its Aryan version has left many deep, bloody
traces of violence in world history, according to its specific conceptions of
spreading peace and justice all over the world by force, through holy wars,
often implicating messianic/redemptive ideas. Nietzsche, on the other
hand, had come across the ancient narrative via his friend Ernst Windisch,
a renowned Orientalist so that we may well assume that it is in fact
Nietzsche who calls: Look here: a wellspring for many who are thirsty, One
heart for many who are yearning, One will for many (who are) tools, Is
there a people gathering around [Nietzsche]? A people, that is: many/
much attempting ones?2
Since this ancient textual source was only in the progress of publication
at that time, however, we do not have the most pleasant opportunity to
recur upon remarks written by Nietzsche on the margins of his source.
Instead, we have to rely on several kinds of texts (as well as on a photo-
graph) and to point out parallels and signs. Of course, plenty of them have
to be presented, and they must be striking: to form a stringent chain of
circumstantial evidence. Eventually, the validity of a theory or of a new
perspective results from its explanatory capacity and strength.
In 1882, everything really seemed to fall into place, and Nietzsche decided
to have a picture taken in the studio of the photographer Jules Bonnet in
In Search of the Wellsprings of the Future 153
Lucerne, Switzerland, in May 1882, shortly before he wrote Thus Spoke

Zarathustra. Nietzsche carefully arranged the scene in every detail. He did
so in a playful mood (in bermtiger Stimmung), as Lou Salom or, to
put it correctly, Lou von Salom3 recorded in her diary.4 Nietzsche had to
urge his reluctant friend Paul Re a bit, a philosopher of Jewish origins who
later in his life became a physician, to cooperate and to pose in the fore-
ground, on the right-hand side of the double harness of a cart, while
Nietzsche placed himself slightly in the background, on the left-hand side
(on the right in the photo). At the left of the picture, within the cart, their
common friend Lou Salom (who not long before had rejected proposals
of marriage from both of them) poses; with a trace of a smile she is swinging
a miniature whip decorated with a lilac bloom. The right wheel of the
wagon in the foreground, beneath Salom, nearly produces the impression
of a fourth person in the picture. A panorama of the Alps with the Jung-
frau forms the background of the photo, which was to attain a regrettable
notoriety to date. (The photo already scandalized Nietzsches family when
Salom later on showed it to them in Bayreuth, in Nietzsches absence.)
Nietzsche at that time still believed having found in Lou Salom a spirit
who would be able to live up to his standards; someone of high intelligence
and education, an autonomous thinker, and a strong-willed personality
who, despite her young age of 21, knew to conduct herself in society in both
a versatile and unconventional manner. Nietzsche, characterizing her as
perspicacious as an eagle and courageous as a lion,5 hoped she would adopt
his philosophy, including his deepest thought, and carry on his work.
However, Nietzsches expectations as well as his friendship with Salom
(and with Re) found their bitter end as early as autumn of the same year
1882: as a result of the confrontation with petit-bourgeois virtue, the noto-
rious Naumburger Tugend, not least personified in Nietzsches sister
Elisabeth. Nietzsche complains about this catastrophe in a letter, writing
that someone like him who has no one with whom he can share the secret
of his life aim, that such a person loses incredibly much if he loses the hope
of having met a like-minded individual looking for a similar solution.6 Obvi-
ously, Nietzsche had not told Lou Salom everything about his philosophy
yet. But the question now is: what does Nietzsche mean by life aim and
solution?
In northern Italy, on a mountain called Monte Sacro close to Orta, prob-
ably a week before the photo was taken, Nietzsche had made up his mind to
make his friend Lou Salom the first person to become familiar with the
whole of his philosophy.7 The short excursion he made with her to the
Monte Sacro, with its panorama of the Alps, must have been an experience
of almost mystic quality for Nietzsche, and at least to some extent for
Salom, too.8 What she noted down in her diary about three weeks later,
however, looks like her summary, her own version, of Nietzsches vision:
We shall realize one day, she writes, that Nietzsche will emerge as a preacher
of a new religion, a religion that will recruit heroes as followers.9
Nietzsches solution? Let me suggest here that the photo presents
Nietzsches vision, his non-ascetic different ideal intended to serve as a
basis for a new culture, in a nutshell. What precisely did Nietzsche have in
mind and want to express not in metaphors, as he time and again does in
his works, but for once through a concrete, tangible picture that could
easily be understood by people all over the world despite their different
languages? Are there any further signs?
In hoc signo vinces (in this sign you will be victorious) is a subtitle in one of
Nietzsches previous books, The Dawn.10 Here Nietzsche asks: When finally
all manners and customs on which the power of the gods, the priests and
rescuers relies . . . then comes well, what is it that will come? In an apod-
ictic manner, Nietzsche continues to ask: whether it is asking too much that
they, the avant-garde, give one another a sign and declare themselves.
It may be noteworthy at this point that Nietzsche states in Ecce homo, chapter
on Human All too Human (nr 6; KSA 6, p. 327), that as early as in this work
of 1876 he has kept in his hand with an enormous inner certainty the task
of his life and its world historic implication.
In hoc signo vinces once meant: in the sign of the cross. And now? Did
Nietzsche give us such a sign in the hope that we declare ourselves: by
arranging the scene for the picture taken in the studio of the photographer
Jules Bonnet in Lucerne? And what might this sign have in common with
the sign he expects from the avant-garde?
II
At the beginning of December 1882, after a visit of Heinrich von Stein a

follower of Richard Wagner and former tutor in Wagners residence in
Sils-Maria, Switzerland, Nietzsche wrote to von Stein, still with a glimpse of
hope to find an ally:
I wish to relieve the world of some of its heartbreaking and cruel char-
acter. But in order to continue here, I would have to reveal to you what
I have not yet conveyed to anybody the task lying in front of me, the task
of my life.11
Among Nietzsches notes of Winter 1882/83 figures a similar passage: it

is a disease of the brain and the nerves to be cruel . . . I wish to relieve the
world of its heartbreaking character.12
What seems to suggest itself: In December 1882, Nietzsche has not yet
revealed to anybody, neither (completely) to Lou Salom nor to Heinrich
von Stein, his pregnancy: the pregnancy of the female elephant
Nietzsche.13 It came to its end in spring 1883, after 18 months respectively
one and a half years, and his son Zarathustra, Part I, first saw the light of
day: This book, with a voice over several millenniums. But here, so
Nietzsche declares, no prophet is speaking, not one of those gruesome
hermaphrodites: illness and will to power, called founders of religions. For
in the present case it is, according to the one (it) talking to Nietzsche/
Zarathustra without voice, the stillest words that bring the storm; since
thoughts that come on doves feet guide the world.14
Doves feet . . . are supposed to bring peace, arent they? Is there a
connection with the paragraph in The Dawn mentioned above? Nietzsche
had shared with Richard Wagner an interest in Buddhism, at first via
Schopenhauer. Wagner had even started to compose a music drama on
Buddha, entitled The Victorious, which he never completed. Moreover
Wagner and Nietzsche took note of contemporary standard books on
Buddhism, namely Carl Friedrich Kppens work, still inspired by
Schopenhauer: Die Religion des Buddha und ihre Entstehung (Berlin 185759);
Eugne Burnoufs (Sanskrit professor in Paris): Introduction lhistoire du
bouddhisme indien (1844); and shortly before Wagners death the third
great contemporary work on Buddhism, Hermann Oldenbergs Buddha:
Sein Leben, sein Werk, seine Gemeinde, published in 1881. Oldenberg was the
first to offer a serious, well-founded presentation of Buddhism based on the
oldest textual sources written in Pali and with a critical historical approach;
strangely enough, in his book, Oldenberg expressly warns against viewing
early Buddhism through the lenses of Schopenhauer.
Among Nietzsches notes of Summer/Winter 1882 we find, standing all
by itself, the word Metteyya, which is in fact the Pali version of the Sanskrit
Maitreya. Metteyya, the next Buddha, has been prophesied by Gautama
the Buddha for the far future, as Nietzsche could have learnt at least from
Oldenbergs book. (In Heinrich Kerns two-volume work: Der Buddhismus
und seine Geschichte in Indien. Eine Darstellung der Lehren und Geschichte der
buddhistischen Kirche[!], in the authorized translation of Hermann Jacobi,
Schulze, Leipzig 1882 and 1884, on the other hand, the name is to be found
(second volume) in its Sanskrit version, which has become far better known
in the Western world.) The Pali version of the name might well serve
as a hallmark for Nietzsches intention and he may have noted it down

deliberately in the form of a solitary block.
Sensitized in this point, one not only recognizes in Z several typical
Buddhist expressions (such as Nachen, grosses Nichts, respectively boat,
great nothingness etc.), but one even finds important signs/evidence that
Nietzsche implicitly even refers to Zen-Buddhism; he does so in a critical
way. (I wish to highlight here that the German expression Stockmeister in
the chapter Von alten und neuen Tafeln/Of old and new tablets has been
translated inadequately to date, probably because the Zen-Buddhist context
has not yet been detected by English and American translators. Stick
masters would be the simplest and best translation of Stockmeister.)
Nietzsche presumably had come to know Zen-Buddhism through Reinhart
von Seydlitz, as an exchange of letters suggests; von Seydlitz also belonged
to the Wagner circle.15
So it is not at all amazing that Nietzsche also had acquired some knowl-
edge about the sacred texts of early Buddhism written down in Ceylon
(Sri Lanka), starting about 80 years before our era, in the language Pali:
As early as in 1870, Nietzsche had taken interest in Ernst Windischs study
tour to England, where his former university colleague, an Orientalist, in
the service of the East Indian Office catalogized Sanskrit manuscripts in
the course of one year, as Nietzsche notes in several letters. In autumn 1871
already, he writes, he will meet Windisch in Leipzig. In the Journal of the Pali
Text Society of the year 1882, Windisch is in fact mentioned as the editor of
one of the canonical Pali(!) text collections, the Iti-vuttaka. According to
the Journal Oldenberg, as well as Kern, was put in charge of the edition of
further texts by the Pali Text Society founded by Rhys Davids in 1881. Rhys
Davids himself translated the Dighanikaya. The Pali Text Society confirmed
upon my request that in the year of Windischs first study tour to England
in 1870, all these manuscripts had in fact already arrived from Birma in
England.
In one of the crucial passages of the Dighanikaya,16 the symbol of the
wheel leaps into view just like the wheel in the photo arranged by
Nietzsche in the Lucerne studio. In this passage, a young woman of noble
birth, the hetaera Ambapali, in a playful mood like Nietzsche when
arranging the scene in the photo studio and precisely as described in Lou
Saloms record drives her wagon up against the wagons, wheel against
wheel, of a group of young men called Licchiavi, who are also of noble
rank.17 Thus challenging them after having earlier than they succeeded in
inviting Gautama the Buddha for a meal, the hetaera Ambapali must be
regarded as being their definitely non-ascetic antagonist within the
framework of the ancient narrative, in a new kind of agonistic game

a game that will presumably conquer the world. (It might be of interest
here that four colours are attributed to Ambapalis antagonists in the
contest jauntily initiated by her: the Licchiavi, through their appearance,
clothing, and jewellery, are grouped into dark, yellow, red, and white
arent we still quite familiar with this simplified classification of the peoples
in our world?)
The question now is how we should conceive those non-ascetic heroes,
the heroes of that new religion, as Salom erroneously put it, or in
Nietzsches own words: of the other, the different or differing ideal he
professes to be still looking for in his second book after Zarathustra, in The
Genealogy of Morals ; of the counterpart to the self-contained system of the
ascetic ideal, this unified whole of will, aim, and interpretation; of the
other, the different single goal.18 However, Nietzsche had stated already
before the composition of Zarathustra, namely in The Gay Science : a different
ideal runs on ahead of us . . .. In the first instance this is a strange formula-
tion, in its original German version, too.19
If we consult the Dighanikaya20 we come across a great wise individual
(mahapurusha, in Pali also Cakkavatti, in Sanskrit: Cakravarti) to whom both
the spiritual and the worldly, that is political, paths stand open, because of
his acquired perfection which might be considered as resulting from a
successful self-overcoming, a constructive integration into the individual
life of those collective, transhuman, or metaphysical forces dealt with in
religions and mystic or spiritual creeds. Thus, in rolling out of himself just
like the wheel that has appeared in the sky as a result and a sign or symbol
of his acquired perfection, this individual who obviously served Nietzsche
as the model for his conception of true individuals that Zarathustra propa-
gates in Z I 21 together with his more than thousand heroic sons, conquers
the world, unlike his counterparts in the Sanskrit tradition, without violence
and only by instituting justice, stability, and general welfare in the coun-
tries: He . . . conquering not by the scourge, not by the sword, but by
righteousness, he doth preside over this earth to its ocean-bounds.22 In the
Dighanikaya, the symbol of the wheel is taken up again in the account of the
young woman called Ambapali, as we have already seen.
The Licchiavi, still representatives of the Eastern version of the ascetic
ideal, acknowledge Ambapalis victory, saying that she has in fact outstripped
them and, with some ambivalence (or shall we call it ressentiment/resent-
ment?), that she has indeed made fools of them whereas Nietzsche and
Re in the photograph with Salom appear as partners in a mutual empow-
erment; a mutual empowerment within the framework of the other, the
non-ascetic ideal with the notions of righteousness, justice, and general

welfare at its core.
Furthermore, this scene in the Dighanikaya represents an agonistic
concept of a different type of aristocracy which consists of true individuals,
that is of individual wheels rolling out of themselves, as personified by
Ambapali. Accordingly, the aristocracy fostered by Nietzsches Zarathustra
consists of a nobility which is the adversary of all that is despotic. Lou Salom
would have been a perfect Ambapali: of aristocratic origins, representing
the different ideal (and thus implicitly also dissociating herself from the
violence of the name von Salom, derived from repression, namely from
the services of her father as a colonel of the Russian army during the Polish
insurrection of 1830/31). It is noteworthy though that, despite the disap-
pointment, anger, pain, and sorrow that Nietzsche tried to write off his
chest in many drafts after their break-up, he struggled through to the
following words in a letter to Salom of 23 November 1882: I beg your
pardon! Dearest Lou, be what you have to be23 a wheel rolling out of
itself.
The scene with Ambapali in the ancient narrative moreover constitutes a
counterpart to any regime of a great leader organised in a basically strict
and unchangeable hierarchic manner, of an bermensch, overman, or
superman, who according to the Aryan tradition proceeds to pacify the
world with the help of his more than thousand heroic sons, by repression
and force of arms.24
Mahayana Buddhists of the famous Kyoto school as well as prominent
Zen-Buddhists including Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, who was and still is very
much honoured in the Western world, fostered fascism in Japan and associ-
ated themselves with the Axis powers in World War II, declaring it a holy
war.25 This expression, as we all know, has a long tradition in Christian,
Islamic, and Jewish history, too.
Even R. Otto Franke in his German translation of the Dighanikaya used
the formulation that the great wise individual (the Cakkavatti) and victo-
rious conqueror owes his world rulership to his heroic sons who have crushed
the enemies (p. 89) instead of simply calling them (as Rhys Davids does):
crushers of enemies presumably in the sense of: originating from the
warrior caste (like the Gautama Buddha himself). And, surprisingly, Franke
already stated in his translation of the Dighanikaya, which was first published
in 1913, that mahapurisa, which should be best translated as bermensch,26
resembled the concept of the Jewish Messiah.
Keeping in mind that Franke, in a footnote, speaks of a striking
likeness of the Buddhist conception of a Buddha and the Jewish one of a
Messiah, I tried to find an explanation (other than Carl Gustav Jungs

synchronicity). It took me a long time, however, just to find an unbiased
and convincing treatise on the subject of the Messianic idea/ideal and its
origin, namely Joseph Klausners 1956 treatise The Messianic Idea in Israel.27
Having read this remarkable book, the amazing likeness, even in details,
struck me, too.
In his book on The Messianic Idea in Israel, Klausner points out that even a
thoroughly ethical personality like Philo of Alexandria could not imagine a
purely spiritual Messiah; he cites Philo and the oracle prophesying a man
coming forth, leading his host to war, subduing great and populous nations.
Let me also mention here that among the documents found in Qumran,
Israel, near the Dead Sea, there is an ancient Hebrew war roll mentioning
a Messiah who is killing.28
However, Klausner expresses the opinion that the idea of a twofold
Messiah inevitably arose from the conception of the twofold character of the
essentially single Messiah (p. 495). With this conclusion, Klausner allows me
to state, for the time being, that the Jewish ideal, the original Jewish idea of
the Messiah, is identical with the pre-Aryan myth as recalled by the Pali
Buddhist Dighanikaya, at least with regard to its contents. I will come back
to this subject later.
On top of that, I discovered in Udo Schaefers book Glaubenswelt Islam.
Eine Einfhrung (second edition, 2002) a footnote referring to his, Schaefers,
comments on obvious parallels of the Mahdi idea to the Jewish Messianic
idea, published in his book Heilsgeschichte und Paradigmenwechsel (Prag 11992,
Hofheim 22002, pp. 65, 70).29
The concept of holy world rulership, or emperorship, related to the
concept of holy war deriving from the Aryan version and tradition30 was
very much alive in Nietzsches time, and it is so to date, mostly below the
surface of our diverse cultures. It had grown deep roots for example in
Alexander the Great, in Vergil, Thomas Campanella, and Dante, in the
Hohenstaufer Frederick I (Barbarossa), Frederick II (called both Messiah
emperor and Antichrist), William II, Hitler and Nazism.31 Part of the right-
wing extremism not only was but still is also strongly influenced by the
vision of the Buddhist program as expressed in the Shambala-Myth of the
Kalachakra-Tantra dealing with the continuous Buddhocratic conquest of
Europe and of our whole planet through the Chakravartin, the prophesied
world ruler (so were, for example, the Japanese Shoko Asahara and his end-
time sect AUM). The present Dalai Lama felt it necessary to dissociate
himself in public (the first time as early as 1975) from the cult of Dorje
Shugden of the Gelugpa tradition (the Yellow Caps) to which he himself
belongs. Dorje Shugden, a guardian spirit or transcendent being, is

intolerant and fosters evil, forceful, criminal means to achieve the Buddhist
aims; the Dalai Lama even compares this with Nazism in Germany. The cult
seems, however, to be supported by the Chinese regime; Gangchen
Rinpoche, a prominent adherent of this cult who lived in Italy, was received
with great honours in China in 1998.
There is even some evidence to suggest that at least one of the protago-
nists in the dramatic and brutal conflict in former Yugoslavia draws upon
such messianic traditions. The everlasting claim to the so-called Serb
Jerusalem for example was underlined by Milosevic, who seems to have
identified himself with the so-called Messiah ben Joseph, the forerunner
who has to kill, has to wage wars birth pangs of the Messiah! before the
definite Messiah, the Prince of Peace, may appear: by having the bones of
Lazar solemnly brought back to Kosovo, into a monastery, on the occasion
of the 600th anniversary of the defeat of the Serbs under Prince Lazar on
the Amsel battlefield (Amselfeld) against the intruding troops of the
Islamic Ottoman empire.
Samuel Huntington certainly is right when he writes that a local or ethnic
war is usually redefined as being a war of religion (since religions have
proved to be the most powerful and stable justification for the fight against
godless, wicked powers), a war of civilizations, and thus tends to entail
severe consequences for a large part of humanity. But Huntington ignores
its hidden archetypal origin. He has not, like Nietzsche, gained wisdom
concerning ancient origins, and therefore, is scarcely able to eventually
look for and discover wellsprings of the future and new origins.
The ancient myth or great narrative, which deployed such an enormous
archetypal power pre-eminently in its Aryan version, remains crucial to the
three prevailing monotheistic cultures also insofar as it endows Nietzsches
saying that God is dead, at least the old God who was to guarantee the exis-
tence of truth as such, with a new and concrete meaning. In the course of
his radical, unconditional, and uncompromising quest for truth, scientific
truth, Nietzsches discovery thus necessarily entails a post-postmodern
permanent oscillation between truth and narrative in his works.
By 1993, Derrida for example, like Levinas before him, had begun to
associate himself with the word messianic (with references to Walter
Benjamin, and also to Karl Marx), with a messianicity that would, however,
fit the hand of deconstruction a transcendence like a prophetic aspira-
tion, a Jewish or perhaps Jewgreek messianic passion (a word that sounds a
bit Nietzschean) or a sighing or longing for something unrepresentable
(lavenir venir).32 For Derrida, too, the notion of justice is vital to the
messianic idea. However, in the book edited by Jacques Derrida and Gianni
Vattimo, the philosopher of a weak (i.e., post-postmodern) kind of thinking,
which bears the title La Religion (original French edition, editions du Seuil,
1996), Religion (English version),33 (Die Religion in the German translation),
both philosophers, in their style of writing, seem to be caught in their doubt
as to the capacities of language and seem to feel totally at home in the
prison of language, absolutely aloof from real life. This might easily be
conceived as a mere intellectual parlour game, whereas people and
peoples today are still looking for another, preferably another grand
metanarrative. . . . A metanarrative is what Nietzsche in fact provides with
respect to what was formerly known as religion as well as with respect to
history; an emancipatory great narrative that perfectly fits the purposes of
deconstruction and postmodernism. For Nietzsche, history and politics
along with it has not come to an end, quite to the contrary.
III
Taking into account that, first, the renowned expert in Indology Heinrich
Zimmer, in accordance with the latest research, dates back to the origins of
the specific ancient myth/great narrative even to pre-Vedic times, namely
to the third or fourth millennium before our common era, and to non-
Aryan transmission and tradition;34 that, second, the Jewish time starts
3761 years before our common era; and that, third, there are numerous
parallels in the basic teachings/texts and key notions I will concentrate in
the following on further, often surprising, notions such as hand, feet,
nose I dare propose the following twofold thesis:
(a) The Jewish time, starting with the creation of the world according to
orthodox tradition, in fact has its historical origin in the creation of that
ancient great narrative, which is not linked to the belief in
one God.
(b) Nietzsche himself has taken into account this possibility/idea.
Anyway, he ridiculed the ambition of revolutionaries to introduce new

calendars; whereas he eventually, in a letter of 26 November 1888, mysteri-
ously whispers to Paul Deussen that he, Nietzsche, has the power to change
time (KSB 8, pp. 491 f. my italicized accentuation).
Obviously we have not digressed with these considerations from the ques-
tion as to the sign posed by Nietzsche in The Dawn, Book I, nr 96 entitled
In hoc signo vinces When finally all manners and customs on which the
power of the gods, the priests and rescuers relies . . . then comes well, what
is it that will come? Will those ten to twenty million people among the
different peoples of Europe who no longer believe in God give one
another a sign and declare themselves? Let me also repeat here Nietzsches
remark in EH, on HH (nr 6; KSA 6, p. 327), that as early as in this work of
1876 he has kept in his hand(!) with an enormous inner certainty the task
of his life and its world historic implication.
According to Nietzsche it occurred in the course of highest self-reflection
that someone (i.e., Nietzsche) redeemed them (the priests) from their
Redeemer-Messiah: not only by virtue of a fearless historical sense but also
by virtue of a detective nose smelling the lie (KSA 6, p. 366) precisely like a
Jewish Messiah who is bound to be able to smell wrongfulness (Klausner,
p. 468)!
In Nietzsches view, everything thought out by Christians and idealists has
neither hand nor foot; we are more radical, Nietzsche asserts in spring
1888.35 Whereas he admits, around the turn of the year 1882/83 (KSA 10,
120; 4[42]), that a certain old and righteous God had had hand and foot,
and a heart as well.
The German Nietzsche CD-ROM lists 455 hits for the notion Hand, and
a few hits in combination with Fuss. Hand stands in the context of
teaching, leading, the state, the genius and so on, of having in grip the
great notions, being capable to reorganize perspectives and lying itself on
millenniums. Well, the right hand stretched out in a snappy way became the
sign of the latest aspirant to the sacred Aryan world rulership supposed to
last a thousand years. Eventually for this aspirant in hoc signo vinces did not
become fully true.
May we assume after all that the left hand, the hand of the heart, the
hand of Buddha which traditionally, time and again, is represented with a
wheel impressed in its palm is the other sign, the sign of the other ideal
to which Nietzsche refers?
It is true, the left hand, too, has a long history, which remained largely in
hiddenness. The left hand figures as the mystic Jewish hand, is at home in
the Kabbalah (the original Jewish but also the Christian one), and is worn
in the Middle East in form of an amulet.
Heidegger spoke of the Hand was it the right one or the left? And in
Paris of the 1930s the sociology of the left hand was flourishing. In its
Collge, Klossowski spoke about Marquis de Sade, Walter Benjamin turned
up sometimes, and Georges Bataille, the theoretician and practician of
transgression, was one of its founders. Batailles intention was to oppose
fascism but Julius Evola, too, the fascist theoretician of spirituality, claimed
the way of the left hand for his perspective of transgression, for
transgressing social rules.36
Sure, small digressing actions are very necessary; they are even of greater
value than tolerant ones, according to Nietzsche in The Dawn,37 whereas
some books later, Zarathustra decided to wait having realized that his teach-
ings were in danger. First must the signs come to him that it is now his
hour namely the laughing lion together with the flock of doves.38
So do we have another sign now, the laughing lion together with the flock
of doves? Or, was the former one (hand) only transformed somehow into:
thoughts that come on doves feet (they guide the world)? Again, the
answer is to be found in the ancient narrative: According to Rhys Davids
translation of the Pali text (p. 137), it is one of the traits or signs of the
perfected great being, of a Buddha (traditionally often associated with a
lion), that on the soles of his feet, wheels appear thousandspoked, with
tyre and hub. Does it really come as a surprise now that in the conception
of the Jewish Messiah, too, there is talk about his footprints, about his feet
that herald peace? (Klausner, pp. 442, 468.)
The wheel which as a sign of perfection of the great wise man enters the
scene and, after having been sprinkled by him, without any direct physical
contact, starts rolling out of itself into all four directions of the world. This
wheel rolling out of itself just like Zarathustras wheels, the true individuals,
may be understood as containing an inner drive propulsion that can be
interpreted and defined according to Nietzsche as a physical power (Kraft),
to which one must adjudicate (zusprechen) an inner world (innere Welt)
which Nietzsche calls will(s) to power Willen zur Macht.39
The turn-around to the better is achieved in the ancient narrative and in
Nietzsches texts (as well as in the Jewish and Greek traditions) by highest
respectively deepest self-reflection.40 Let me add here that there is another
similarity in Greek tradition and in the Dighanikaya: This ancient text tells
us about outstanding men as well as of women about true exemplars,
who have been elevated, even over monks, so-called holy men, reborn as
Gods and transformed into stars.
Conclusion
I assume that, after having pointed out all these parallels and signs, the
findings presented in this chapter seem stringent enough to form a fairly
strong chain of circumstantial evidence that proves the validity of this new
perspective for the interpretation of Z. I further assume that because of its
richness it will, however, not leave the rest of Nietzsches texts totally
unaffected, quite similar to a crime thriller where just one single new
finding may change the comprehension of the whole.
Since there is some evidence for Nietzsche, too, that the ancient great
narrative originating in the third or fourth millenium before our era
was created by Jews (the Jewish era starting 3760 years before the birth of
Christ) and thus can be considered as lying at the heart of so many civiliza-
tions, even if not present in their consciousness but hidden in their collective
memories, I would like to suggest that this other, this different ideal be
conceived as a basis for a New Renaissance. In contrast to the World Ethos
project of the dissident Swiss Catholic Hans Kueng, it very easily integrates
non-religious individuals. It might even answer the question of identity
posed by secular Jews, strengthen the positions of secular Europeans and
the tradition of Enlightenment, as well as those of moderate Muslims who,
for example, interpret the notion of holy war primarily as an inner struggle.
It could help us in trying to come to grips with the great dangers of a New
Renaissance, which would and could (being one with fewer flaws41) be
understood as a New Humanism.
With Z, this book with a voice over several millenniums hinting to the
wellsprings of the future discovered by Nietzsche, he provides us with an
emancipatory, transcultural, (post-)postmodern great narrative challenging
and competing not least by means of a picture its other version still
prevailing to date.
In the Greek contest, the character of an individual is involved, or
according to Nietzsche: the individuals own internal competitive forces
become manifest, and a more profound consciousness and greater sensi-
tivity concerning personal traits (mostly also involving the social or political
community to which the individual belongs) are likely to be fostered. There
is some reason to hope that a more acute sensitivity for corrupted virtues,
for the dangerous character traits of an individual will develop alongside
the New Ideal.
Let me render here a remark that precedes Nietzsches proclamation in
the letter to Heinrich von Stein, a follower of Richard Wagner, mentioned
above (I wish to relieve the world of some of its heartbreaking and cruel
character): I tell you honestly, Nietzsche writes, alluding to von Steins
special liking for cruelty, that I myself have too much of this tragic
complexion in my body for not cursing it often.42 With these words, resulting
from deep self-reflection Nietzsche indicates what finally kept him aloof
from von Stein, whom he had formerly wished to win as an ally.
Chapter 11
Justice and Gift-Giving in Thus Spoke

Zarathustra
Vanessa Lemm
But, how I could I wish to be just from the ground up! How can I give each his
own! To me, this is enough: I give each my own.
Thus Spoke Zarsthustra, On the Adders Bite 1
Introduction
This final chapter analyzes the relation between gift-giving and justice in
Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It argues that the gift-giving virtue stands at the
centre of a new idea of justice which has gift-giving as its source.2 The inti-
mate relationship between gift-giving and justice is contained in the
meaning of the term rechtschaffendes Gastgeschenk used by Nietzsche in The
Welcome scene of Z. It conveys the idea that justice is a gift-giving virtue
and, conversely, that gift-giving is justice. A rechtschaffendes Gastgeschenk is a
gift that creates justice, schafft Recht; it hosts, accommodates, and receives
the other justly.
In accordance with this view, justice as gift-giving presupposes not only
that one has something to give but also that one desires not to keep it.
Justice as gift-giving thus needs to be distinguished from the Christian prac-
tices of charity and alms giving for they are, according to Nietzsche, based
on poverty and a lack of genuine generosity. Charity and alms giving are
practices which poison both the one who gives and the one who receives
insofar as they bind them in a hierarchical relationship of domination
which not only reinforces dependency and injustice but also stirs feelings of
resentment and revenge (AOM 224; BGE 168).3 Gift-giving, by contrast,
promotes freedom and justice: it has a liberating effect on both the one
who gives and the one who receives. This is also why justice as gift-giving is
incompatible with ideas of justice based on punishment and judgment
which presuppose the moral superiority of the one who gives over the one
who receives. Justice as gift-giving moreover needs to be distinguished from
strictly economic ideas of distributive justice, which, in the words of Derrida,

transform the gift into an exchangist, even contractual circulation (Jacques
Derrida, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, p. 138). The latter are based on
economic transactions which do not reflect a desire not to keep, but rather
a desire to make an additional profit.
The intimate relationship between gift-giving and justice indicates, in
my view, that the gift-giving virtue belongs to a conception of morality that
is political. Here, the political should be understood with reference to a
conception of justice that gives priority to ones relationship to the other.
It rejects utilitarian conceptions of justice because they reduce the other
to a permutation of the self. Justice as gift-giving provides an alternative to
those forms of sociability that are based on utilitarian principles, in partic-
ular, on the idea that the good is useful and that it is held in common with
others.4 What distinguishes Nietzsches anti-utilitarian conception of
justice from other critiques of utilitarianism is that it is not concerned with
supplying a contractual basis for justice, one in which the self and the
other stand in a reciprocal relationship and the terms of mutual offerings
of the self vis-a-vis other. Rather, for Nietzsche, justice must be structured
by gift-giving, where the relationship between the self and the other is not
symmetrical and reciprocal. In such an asymmetrical relationship, what
the self gives to the other and the other to the self is an acknowledgement
of the distance and difference between them. Gift-giving promotes justice
precisely because it acknowledges (receives) the others irreducible singu-
larity. It is in this sense that it has a liberating effect on both the self and
the other.
There is another sense in which the virtue of gift-giving is political, namely,
insofar as it revives the Greek conception of political friendship, philia
politik, understood as a bond between equals who stimulate each other to
develop their virtue. Like gift-giving, Greek political friendship preserves
the others freedom through distance while simultaneously challenging the
realization of the others freedom through struggle and competition (agon).
Interestingly, in Z, this agonistic relationship to the other takes the form of
a friendship with the animals. Zarathustra, it is said, attains virtue in compe-
tition with the animals (Z: 22 On Old and New Tablets). The virtue of
courage, for example, is an animal virtue that Zarathustra robs from the
animals:
He envied the wildest, most courageous animals and robbed all their
virtues: only thus did he become human. This courage, finally refined,
spiritualized, spiritual, this human courage with the eagles wings and
Justice and Gift-Giving in Zarathustra 167
serpents wisdom that, it seems to me, is today called Zarathustra!

(Z On Science)
The intimate connection between an agonistic friendship with the animals

and the attainment of virtue in general, raises the question of whether the
attainment of justice as gift-giving does not also depend on a friendship
with the animals; whether the gift-giving virtue is not also an animal virtue,
that is, a virtue that Zarathustra has robbed from the animals. It might be
significant in this context to note that throughout Z, Nietzsche not only
refers to Zarathustras gifts as honey but also tells us that Zarathustra
receives this honey from his animal friends who have gathered it for him
so that he can offer and spend it.5 If the virtue of gift-giving turns out to
be an animal virtue, then one could argue that justice as gift-giving
provides an alternative to forms of social and political life that are derived
from (moral) practices of domination and the exploitation of animality
(GM II, 13).
In my hypothesis, the lack of justice and generosity that Nietzsche detects
in the Christian practices of charity and alms giving result from denying
animality a productive role in the constitution of sociability. In particular,
these practices ignore the value and significance of what Nietzsche refers to
as the forgetfulness of the animal. Throughout his work, Nietzsche argues
that the forgetfulness of the animal is revelatory of the strength and fullness
of life. It is a force indispensable not only to actions of any kind (HL 1) but
also to acceding to the privilege of making promises (GM II, 13). In
contrast, he associates the inability to forget like an animal with weakness,
passivity and a general poverty of life that manifests itself, in particular, as
the incapacity to overcome resentment and revenge (Z On the Pitying).6
The problem of revenge is of such great importance to Nietzsche because
justice as gift-giving is possible only when the cycle of revenge has been
broken, when feelings of resentment have been overcome.
However, in Z, the forgetfulness of the animal does play a crucial role in
the breaking of the cycle of revenge, and thus, in enhancing the creation of
forms of memory that have a truly redemptive and reconciliatory power;
but, the forgetfulness of the animal is, moreover, at the heart of the virtue
of gift-giving insofar as it exemplifies a desire not to keep (Z: 4 Prologue).
Upon the basis of these two important roles played by the forgetfulness of
the animal in Nietzsches analysis of gift-giving, I contend that the latter
should be understood as an animal rather than a human virtue.
In this context, I would also like to point out some of the affinities I
see between Nietzsche and Derrida concerning gift and giving.7 I am
particularly interested in the relationship both Nietzsche and Derrida see

between gift-giving, on the one hand, and a movement of temporalization
that involves both memory and forgetfulness, on the other. Derrida holds
that there can be no gift without forgetfulness, that forgetting is in the
condition of the gift and the gift in the condition of forgetting (Derrida,
Given Time, p. 16 ff.). Derrida argues that a gift without ambivalence, a gift
that would not be a poisonous present but a good, must happen in such a
way that the forgetting forgets itself. At the same time, however, this forget-
fulness, without being something present, presentable, determinable,
sensible, or meaningful is not nothing either. The question is how it is
possible to want to forget, to want not to keep. I suggest that an analysis of
the virtue of gift-giving in Z might offer an answer to this question.
In Z, Nietzsche uses the metaphor of gold, of the metal and of the colour,
to describe the virtue of gift-giving.8 Gold serves as an image of the highest
virtue because it is, like the virtue of gift-giving, uncommon (ungemein)
and useless (unntzlich) and gleaming (leuchtend) and gentle (mild) in its
splendor (Z: 1 On the Gift-Giving Virtue). In what follows, I will examine
Nietzsches conception of justice as gift-giving using the four main charac-
teristics that gold shares with the virtue of gift-giving as my guiding thread.
I will begin with the gleaming character of the virtue of gift-giving.
I contend that the latter signifies that gift-giving constitutes a relationship
to the other, a relationship that is neither an exchange between objects,
because giving means giving ones self, nor an exchange between subjects,
because gift-giving is an event that exceeds the self. I argue that what
arrives in the event of the gift is the attainment of freedom and justice
generated through forms of social and political life that have their source
in gift-giving. I will then turn to the other three characteristics of the virtue
of gift-giving its uselessness, uncommonness, and gentleness to
determine what distinguishes the ideas of freedom and justice based on
gift-giving from other ideas of freedom and justice.
The gift-giving virtue is like gold: gleaming
The gleaming character of the virtue of gift-giving illustrates the idea that
gift-giving reflects an openness to the other, a reaching out to the other.
The virtue of gift-giving shares this characteristic with the sun which is also
turned towards that which lies outside of itself. Nietzsche describes the way
the self positions itself towards the other both as a going-under (untergehen)
and as a going-over (bergehen).9 These movements are related to each other
insofar as the going-under of the self is at the same time a going-over to the
other (including the other of the self).10 In the prologue to Z, the double
movements of gift-giving, a going-under and a going-over, are captured in
Zarathustra praise to the golden sun which he also names the great star
(Z: 1 Prologue). Zarathustra is grateful to the sun for it has shown him
that to give means to go under (untergehen), and to carry everywhere the
reflection of your light, just as the sun carries everywhere the reflection of
its light (Z: 1 Prologue). Zarathustra expresses his admiration for those
who live like the sun, that is, those who do not know how to live, except by
going under (Untergehenden), for they are those who cross over (Hinberge-
hende) (Z: 4 Prologue). Gift-giving shares this characteristic with virtue in
general because virtue is the will to go under (Z: 4 Prologue), or the
desire to give and spend oneself for the sake of virtue.
Like the movement of sunlight, gift-giving is a movement which overflows
from its source to the other, spreading itself evenly everywhere without
drawing distinctions between people or places. The metaphor of gleaming
light indicates that gift-giving de-centres the self to generate a relationship
with the other that is free from social, political, or moral discrimination.
Gift-giving is a love that knows no distinctions. It is excessive, all-inclusive,
and thus stands in contrast to the Christian love of the One, in which
Nietzsche sees a barbarism; for it is exercised at the expense (auf Kosten) of
all others (BGE 67).11
In the Prologue, Zarathustra confirms that the love of gift-giving has
provoked a change (Verwandlung) in Zarathustra (Z: 1, 2 Prologue). He is
changed by the experience of his own lack of self-sufficiency. In solitude, he
becomes aware of the fact that the human individual is not a self-sufficient,
solitary being, but rather a being that needs others. In other words,
Zarathustra no longer believes that the self-sufficiency of the solitary one
stands higher than friendship (GS 61). Zarathustra also realizes that this
need to relate to others concerns human life more generally: human life
does not constitute an isolated and self-sufficient form of life, but rather
stands in continuity with other forms of (animal) life.12 More significantly,
it is the future of human becoming which depends on affirming the rope
which ties the animal to the human and the human to the overhuman
(Z: 4 Prologue). It seems important to note that Nietzsches insight into
the lack of self-sufficiency in the human life form results from a reflection
on the relationship between humanity and animality, that is, on the role
played by the human beings animality in the formation and transformation
of human life. In contraposition to the Western traditions of humanism
and Enlightenment which assume that freedom and justice are the result of
an emancipation of the human from the animal, Nietzsche holds that they
require a return of and to animality, in particular, to the forgetfulness of the

animal, understood as a force of life indispensable to the self-overcoming of
the human being. In his account, freedom and justice arise from friendship
with the animals, rather than from mastery over them.
When Zarathustra exclaims that he needs hands outstretched to receive
his gift, this need should not be confused with the needs of those who give
alms to pacify their conscience or out of a desire to raise themselves above
others or receive gratefulness in return for their gift. According to
Nietzsche, the latter are examples of practices of giving involving individ-
uals who are in reality too poor to give. Zarathustra affirms that he gives no
alms: [f]or that I am not poor enough (Z: 2 Prologue). By contrast, he
sees his poverty reflected in the fact that he cannot not give: This is my
poverty that my hands never rest from giving (Z The Night Song). The
peculiarity of gift-giving is that it occurs through need - it is necessary and
inevitable (I will return to this aspect of gift-giving below), but at the same
time, this need does not point to a deficiency but arises from an over-full-
ness of life exemplified by the over-fullness of the sun which also gleams
like gold.13
In the Prologue, Zarathustra praises the sun and calls it an over-rich star
(Z: 1 Prologue) indicating that gift-giving occurs only through an abun-
dance, a surplus, and an exuberance (berflu) of the self.14 This over-fullness
is exemplified by Zarathustra himself, the giver of gifts, who compares
himself to a bee that has gathered too much honey and needs hands
outstretched to receive it (Z: 1 Prologue).15 Zarathustra has reached satu-
ration (berdruss); he has accumulated so many riches that these riches
aspire to be distributed and given out. His suffering from saturation reflects
the impatience of the one who wants to give, that is, to destroy the bound-
aries that are too tight to contain his riches. As such, gift-giving constitutes
a movement of pluralizing and diversifying life through exceeding the
limits of ones own being.
Giving the self
The idea of gift-giving as an overflowing (berfliessen) of the self signifies

that justice as gift-giving can neither be understood as an exchange of
objects nor as an exchange between subjects. In the words of Derrida, there
where there is subject and object, the gift would be excluded (Derrida,
Given Time, p. 119) because what flows over to the other resists being
reduced to the status of a subject or an object. Let me address the question
of why gift-giving does not constitute an exchange of objects before I turn
to the question of why it does not constitute an exchange between subjects.

For Nietzsche, gift-giving cannot be understood as an exchange of objects
because to give essentially means to give who one is rather then what one
possesses. The desire to give who one is can be exemplified by Zarathustras
disciples desire to become gifts:
Verily, I found you out, my disciples: you strive, as I do, for the gift-giving
virtue . . . This is your thirst: to become sacrifices and gifts yourself; and
this is why you thirst to pile up all the riches in your soul. (Z: 1 On the
Gift-Giving Virtue)
Gift-giving presupposes a readiness to give oneself, to sacrifice ones life: to

live on and live no longer for the sake of virtue (Z: 4 Prologue; see also in
comparison, TI Skirmishes 38).
Although Nietzsche repeatedly speaks of gift-giving as a sacrificing (Z: 4
Prologue; Z: 1 On the Gift-Giving Virtue), it is important to note that he
also explicitly distinguishes this idea from the Christian view that the morally
good act must be an act of self-sacrifice. In The Honey Sacrifice,
Zarathustra confesses that his discussion of sacrifices is mere cunning
(List): Why sacrifice? I squander what is given to me, I squander it with a
thousand hands; how could I call that sacrificing? (Z The Honey Sacri-
fice). The crucial difference between squandering in the Nietzschean
sense and sacrificing in the Christian sense is that while the former is consti-
tuted by egoism, the latter is constituted by selflessness. Whereas the
squanderer is full of him- or herself and, therefore, rich in gifts, the one
who sacrifices him- or herself is self-less and thus has nothing to give. Against
the idea that what makes an act good is that it is unselfish (Z On the
Virtuous), Nietzsche upholds Zarathustras teaching to let your self be in
your deed as the mother is in her child let that be your word concerning
virtue (Z On the Virtuous).
What is hidden behind the selflessness exemplified by the Christian
practices of charity and love for ones neighbour is an absence of a self, an
impoverished and weak self which cannot stand itself: You flee to your
neighbour from yourself and you want to make a virtue out of it: but I see
through your selflessness (Z On Love of the Neighbour). Nietzsche
detects in the so-called love for ones neighbour an attempt to compensate
for ones own interior emptiness. By contrast, the truly virtuous act is egoistic
in the sense of being full of the self rather than selfless (selbstlos).
Zarathustra praises the selfishness of his disciples, their insatiable striving
for treasures and gems, their forcing all things to and into themselves, as
whole and holy, for he believes this egoism is inseparable from their
insatiable desire in wanting to give (Z: 1 On the Gift-Giving Virtue). What
distinguishes the egoism of the squanderer from the selflessness of the
charitable person is that it results in an excessive overflowing and explo-
sion of the self that displaces and ultimately ends up destroying the self in
view of enriching the other (see also TI Skirmishes 44).16 Zarathustras
disciples appropriate and accumulate riches, but always only in view of what
Bataille called the subordinate function of expenditure (I will return to
this a-economic character of gift-giving below).17
In addition, the riches that are being accumulated are riches of the soul
(Z: 1 The Gift-Giving Virtue) and hence what is given over to the other
should not be confused with a distribution of objects, as in the practices of
charity and alms giving. Instead, for Nietzsche, the riches of the soul, when
given over to the other, generate a bond that has a liberating and elevating
effect on the other, precisely because what is given over are neither material
(money, goods, etc.) nor spiritual (dogmas, idols, maxims, etc.) objects. In Z,
Nietzsche articulates that it is the sight of Zarathustras virtue of gift-giving, of
his example of life and thought, which inspires the higher human beings
(Z The Welcome). Zarathustra uplifts others by showing them how he
uplifts himself. The aim is not to directly impose a message on the other, but
to content oneself with the offering of an image of an admirable way of life,
such that only those who have the eyes to see it will have the hands to receive
it. The figure of the self-healing physician best illustrates the idea that gifts
are liberating only when they teach the other to liberate him- or herself:
Physician, help yourself: thus you help your patient too. Let this be his best
help that he may behold with his own eyes the one who heals himself
(Z: 2 On the Gift-Giving Virtue). This explains why, for Nietzsche, virtue
must be ones own invention, ones own most personal defence and neces-
sity, in any other sense it is merely a danger (A 11) for only those virtues
that are my own invention are carriers of freedom, not something imposed
on me but something brought forth by me. The key is that gift-giving does
not, in contrast to charity and alms giving, generate dependencies or nourish
already existing dependencies, but instead challenges the becoming of
the others own liberation. This is why Nietzsche has Zarathustra exclaim
that: . . . beggars should be abolished entirely! Verily, it is annoying to give to
them and it is annoying not to give to them (Z On the Pitying; see also The
Last Supper). Begging and alms giving conflict with justice as gift-giving
insofar as both are practices that are obstacles to attaining genuine freedom
for both practices poison by binding those who live off alms in such a way
that they will always remain dependent on those who give them.
Giving beyond the self
The idea of the squandering of the self is central in Nietzsches account of

the gift. It not only explains why gift-giving does not constitute an exchange
between objects but also leads us to answer the question of why it does not
constitute an exchange between subjects. Nietzsche compares the over-
flowing of the self in the act of squandering to the natural movement of a
river overflowing its banks. Both movements are involuntary (unfreiwillig):
they illustrate the idea that gift-giving is not an act which can be traced back
to an intentional subject, a conscious decision, or a willful act.18 Gift-giving
occurs inevitably, fatefully, involuntarily. Gift-giving is not under the control
of a mastering individual, but rather occurs in and through, over and above
the self. The giver of gifts gives him- or herself over to the other not because
they are free to give, but because he or she is not free not to give.
Throughout his work, Nietzsche describes the absence of an intention,
consciousness, or reason behind individual action in terms of the forgetful-
ness of the animal (HL 1; GM II, 1). In the Prologue to Z, Nietzsche confirms
that there also exists an intimate connection between the forgetfulness of
the animal, on the one hand, and the virtue of gift-giving on the other:
I love the one whose soul is overfull so that he forgets himself, and all
things are in him: thus all things spell his going under (Z: 4 Prologue).19
The connection between forgetfulness and gift-giving indicates that what
acts, or is active, in gift-giving is the forgetfulness of the animal and, hence,
that gift-giving is an animal rather than a human virtue. The question of
gift-giving then becomes the question of how to recover the forgetfulness of
the animal; how to re-appropriate the forgetfulness of the animal, a force
the human being has lost throughout the process of its civilization and
humanization, but needs to recover to accede to the virtue of gift-giving?
For Nietzsche, the recovery of the forgetfulness of the animal should not
be misunderstood as the voluntary act of bringing back the animal. Instead,
it is conceived of in the terms of a chance encounter where the human
being encounters its animality (and animal forgetfulness) as much as it is
being encountered, recovered, and surprised by it. But, if the possibility of
the gift depends on the return of and to the forgetfulness of the animal,
then gift-giving must also be understood as a chance encounter and, hence,
requires patience, readiness, and attentiveness to grasp the moment of the
gift-event.20 In Z, Nietzsche names this chance encounter of the gift the
great hazar (Z The Honey Sacrifice). In the Honey Sacrifice, Zarathustra
is waiting for the advent of an event, for the moment when he will go under
like the sun. Zarathustras waiting illustrates the idea that the gift is a gift
event, or, in the words of Derrida, that there is no gift without the advent
of an event, no event without the surprise of the gift (Derrida, Given Time,
p. 119).
The event character of the gift is also implicit in Zarathustras departure
from his disciples at the end of book one when he separates from his disci-
ples and returns to solitude. We are told that Zarathustra still has things to
tell and to give to his disciples. This makes Zarathustra wonder about
himself and ask: [w]hy do I not give it? Am I stingy? (Z The Stillest Hour).
The reason for Zarathustras hesitation to enter into a gift-giving relation-
ship with his disciples is not that he is stingy, but that the right moment, a
moment which he earlier described as the great noon, when the human
being stands between the animal and the overhuman (Z: 3 On the Gift-
Giving Virtue), has not yet come. Later, in The Honey Sacrifice, when the
right moment seems to be approaching, Zarathustra follows the suggestion
of his animal friends and climbs up the mountain to offer the honey sacri-
fice. Once he has climbed the mountain, Zarathustra explains that he is
waiting for the sign that the time has come for his descent and going-under.
He describes himself as patient and impatient at the same time, as oversatu-
rated with gifts. He is like the cup that wants to overflow but lacks what will
finally make it flow over (Z: 1 Prologue). Zarathustra knows that every-
thing depends on the great Hazar (Z The Honey Sacrifice). He reassures
himself that [o]ne day it must yet come and may not pass . . . Our great
Hazar: that is our great distant human kingdom (Menschenreich), the
Zarathustra kingdom of a thousand years (Z The Honey Sacrifice).
Zarathustras vision of a human kingdom to come confirms the political
significance that I have been attributing to the virtue of gift-giving which
constitutes the basis of a political association which generates both freedom
and justice. Since the event of gift-giving is contingent, what distinguishes
this political association, along with the freedom and justice it promotes, is
its lack of an absolute foundation. Zarathustras human kingdom, a rule of
freedom and justice should, therefore, not be confused with a goal to be
attained in the future. Rather it has, much like Nietzsches vision of a higher
aristocracy to come, the future as its temporal dimension. Consequently,
the event of the gift, that is, the emergence of a human kingdom based on
gift-giving, must be understood as an open-ended struggle which requires
those who are willing to fight for freedom and justice to come. The fight for
freedom and justice will be confronted with the task of giving a new
meaning to the earth (Z: 2 On the Gift-Giving Virtue), with breaking old
tablets and replacing them with new ones (Z: 2 On the Gift-Giving Virtue).
The challenge, here, is not simply a transvaluation of all values, but, as
Shapiro convincingly argues, a transvaluation of how we evaluate.21 I will

now turn to the other characteristics of gift-giving, its uselessness, uncom-
monness, and gentleness to show what a transvaluation of how we evaluate
might consist of, on the one hand and, on the other, provide further argu-
ments for why attaining a human community based on gift-giving promotes
an idea of freedom and justice worth struggling for.
The gift-giving virtue is like gold: useless
The virtue of gift-giving is useless (unntzlich) because it neither fulfils a

particular function or purpose nor satisfies a particular interest or need.22
Those who practice the virtue of gift-giving, thus, need to be distinguished
from those who practice virtue only in view of a potential profit, in view of
receiving greater benefits in return. They are those who, for example, when
they praise, pretend to be giving back, when in truth they want more gifts
(Z: 1 On Virtue That Makes Small, see also KSA 12 9[79]). The virtue of
gift-giving, by contrast, takes justice beyond economy, beyond the utilitarian
calculus. Nietzsche insists, through the words of Zarathustra, that there is
no reward and paymaster for virtue, [a]nd verily, I do not even teach that
virtue is its own reward (Z On the Virtuous). The virtuous, as Nietzsche
imagines them, know that whatever has a price has little value (Z: 12 On
Old and New Tablets), or, conversely, that the value of a thing sometimes
lies not in what one attains with it, but in what one pays for it what it costs
us (TI Skirmishes 38).
Those who practice the virtue of gift-giving conceive of life as a gift and of
their own life as a response (-ibility) and a giving back:
This is the manner of the noble souls: they do not want to have anything
for nothing; least of all, life. Whoever is of the mobwants to live for
nothing; we others, however, to whom life gave itself, we always think
about what we might best give in return. And verily, that is a noble speech
which says, What life promises us, we ourselves want to keep to life. (Z: 5
On Old and New Tablets)
In this view, giving to life in return for the gift of life exceeds a calculation
of costs and benefits. The virtuous do not give back because they feel guilty
and obliged by a debt, but rather give back for no reason, innocently, as it
were. They do not first seek behind the stars for a reason to go under and
be a sacrifice (Z: 4 Prologue). Reason and the virtue of gift-giving neces-
sarily exclude one another if, by reason, one means calculating in terms of
costs and benefits.23 The virtue of gift-giving manifests itself as a passion, a

gift-giving love (Z: 2 On the Gift-Giving Virtue) which, by definition,
contains a grain of madness: there is always some madness in love (Z: 5
Prologue).
According to utilitarian principles, gift-giving is mad because it suspends
the instinct of self-preservation:
I love him whose soul squanders (verschwendet) itself, who wants no thanks
and returns none (nicht zurckgiebt): for he always gives away (schenkt) and
does not preserve (bewahren) himself. (Z: 4 Prologue)
Gift-giving is a squandering which presupposes a fullness of life, an over-

flowing, wasteful, and dissipating force that gives gratuitously, free from the
expectation of receiving material or spiritual compensation in the future.
For Nietzsche, the madness of suspending an economy of self-conservation
in favour of an economy of expenditure is of crucial importance for the
possibility of entering into a relation with the other which is free, like the
gift, not bound in its purity, not even binding, obligatory or obliging
(Derrida, Given Time, p. 137). Hence, the virtue of gift-giving is a madness
which is not so mad for there is also always some reason in madness (Z: 5
Prologue).24 For Nietzsche, like Derrida, the gift is a madness which defies
the common measure. It is, in the words of Derrida, extraordinary,
unusual, strange, extravagant, absurd, and mad (Derrida, Given
Time, p. 35), or, in the words of Nietzsche, it is like gold uncommon
(Z: 1 On the Gift-Giving Virtue).
The gift-giving virtue is like gold: uncommon
The gift-giving virtue is uncommon (ungemein) insofar as it reflects the indi-

viduals singularity. The virtue of gift-giving shares this feature with virtue in
general for your virtue is yourself and not something foreign (Z On the
Virtuous). Virtue is, in this sense, inherently aristocratic. It distinguishes
each and every individuals genius, the irreducible uniqueness of its gift
and giving. Nietzsche rejects the idea of virtue as an ideal for everyone for
it takes from virtue the charm of rareness, inimitability, exceptionality and
unaverageness its aristocratic magic (WP 317).
For Nietzsche, the singularity of each and every individual cannot be
determined and fixed in comparison to others but always remains inacces-
sible, at a distance or at a certain height. Accordingly, the virtue of gift-giving
is placed at a height: the gift-giving virtue is the highest virtue (Z: 1 On
the Gift-Giving Virtue). Being the highest virtue here means that it cannot
be judged in comparison to other virtues. The gift-giving virtue stands, like
the singular individual, out and alone, over and above all comparison. Just
as virtue permits no one to judge it, because it is always virtue for itself
(WP 317), so does the singular individual permits no one to judge it, because
it is its own standard of value (GS 3). Nietzsche rejects an evaluation that is
based on judgment and comparison because it underrates, almost over-
looks and almost denies the value of the singular individual in itself
(WP 878).
The value of the singular individual should not be compared, for to
compare is to approach, to do away with distance and, thus, to do away with
the value and significance of the singularity of virtue. Nietzsche insists that
the value of higher natures, for example, rests on being different, incom-
municable, in distance of rank (WP 876). Accordingly, the virtue of
gift-giving cannot be named (Z: 2 On the Three Evils) and does not
communicate itself (WP 317); it can only be appreciated in silence and at
a distance. This is, moreover, the reason why the virtue of gift-giving does
not provide a new standard of measure. The virtue of gift-giving cannot be
measured or compared, but also does not measure or compare.
Gift-giving and friendship
In Nietzsche, and interestingly, also in Derrida, the only kind of relation-

ship which appreciates the virtue of gift-giving is that between singular
individuals. It is important to stress that this neither signifies a retreat to the
private sphere nor reduces the problem of justice to a moral or ethical one.
On the contrary, any relationship that engages two singular individuals
designates a philia politk, a political friendship, whose political significance
is derived from the fact that it may be the only kind of relationship that
generates freedom and justice.25
Opposed to the need to enter into language as a realm of common and
rational measures, the friends preferred manner of communication is non-
verbal and silent: Silentium. One should not talk about ones friends:
otherwise one will talk away the feeling of friendship (AOM 252).26 Friend-
ship can only be exercised in a sort of counter-culture of knowing how to
keep silent (Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, p. 52). Silence protects the
irreducible singularity of the friend, it preserves the others essential secret:
it is difficult to live with people because it is difficult to be silent (Z On the
Pitying). Language constitutes a danger not only to friendship speech
ruins, corrupts, degrades, and belittles the greatness Nietzsche attributes to
friendship but also to gift-giving insofar as they are silent and solitary acts:
Oh, the loneliness (Einsamkeit) of all givers (Schenkenden)! Oh, the tacitur-
nity (Schweigsamkeit) of all who shine! (Z The Night Song).
Gift-giving should, therefore, not be confused with an exchange based on
reciprocity and symmetry or comparison and mutual sharing. Instead, the
practice of gift-giving constitutes a bond that has all the features of a rela-
tionship between friends which does not make two singular individuals
common to each other. What friends have in common is what distinguishes
them. What they share is what cannot be shared. Friendship stands for the
love of the other, where love does not lead to the fusion and confusion of
me with you (AOM 241). Friendship is the opposite of concord and
consensus, for it protects the plurality of the friends by affirming that the
respective ways of two singular individuals are irreducibly distinct (AOM
75). Against the Christian notion of love for ones neighbour (Nchsten-
liebe), Nietzsche upholds the love that relates friends, for the latter overcomes
the greedy desire of two people for each other towards a new desire and
greed, a shared higher thirst of an ideal above them, namely, that of friend-
ship (GS 14). Friendship preserves freedom through distance, it is a flight
from the neighbor and love of the farthest (Fernsten-liebe) which functions
as an antidote against the desire for the appropriation and domination
hiding behind the love of ones neighbor (Z On Love of the Neighbor).
Nietzsche warns not to give into proximity and identification, to the
fusion or the permutation of you and me, but, instead, to keep a distance
between the self and the other, for he sees in the proximity of the neigh-
bour a ruse for property and appropriation (GS 14). Such a desire for
ownership hides behind the Platonic idea of justice as a giving to each his
own. Nietzsche replies to Plato with a pun: But how could I think of being
just through and through? How can I give each his own? Let this be suffi-
cient for me: I give each my own (Z On the Adders Bite). To give to each
his or her own requires not only that one knows what constitutes the others
proper but also how to evaluate and judge it presupposing the superiority
of the judge over those he or she judges. In contrast, when we consider
justice as gift-giving, the pathos of giving is a pathos of distance and, hence,
giving each ones own means neither judging the other nor imposing
oneself on the other.
Friends are against each other (gegen), which literally means to be at the
same time the closest (gegen) and the furthest apart (gegen) from each other.
Friendship overcomes difference and distance, but, at the same time,
preserves it. Accordingly, what reveals the friends affinity and relatedness
to each other is not the way they approach each other, but the way they part
from each other as exemplified by Zarathustras departure from his

disciples (Z: 3 On the Gift-Giving Virtue). The parting between friends
signifies that they do not subordinate themselves to any authority, but mutu-
ally offer to each other their freedom. Among friends, the ruling principle
is not that of the reciprocity of charity, but that of the absolute probity of its
members without hidden thoughts and interests.
Between friends, the practice of gift-giving takes on an agonistic char-
acter. It stimulates the others becoming and self-overcoming, challenging
him or her to the becoming of greater virtue.27 Between friends, the virtue
of gift-giving is before all delight in war and victory (TI Skirmishes 38), a
striving for power which presupposes struggle and suffering:
Not contentment (Zufriedenheit), but more power (Macht); not peace at all,
but war; not virtue, but proficiency (Tchtigkeit) (virtue in the Renaissance
style, virt, virtue free of moralic acid). (A 2)
Nietzsche describes the virtue of gift-giving as a power (Macht), a domi-

nant thought (herrschender Gedanke) that is inseparable from a will to
command all things (Z: 1 On the Gift-Giving Virtue; see in comparison Z
On Self-Overcoming). Zarathustra sees this will to power reflected in his
disciples who must approach all values as a robber; who force (zwingt) all
things to and into themselves, but only so that they can flow back out of
their wells (Borne) as the gifts of their love (Z: 1 On the Gift-Giving
Virtue). Nietzsche contrasts their will to power with that of the small men
(Menschen) of virtue who steal because they cannot rob: And when you
receive it is like stealing, you small men of virtue; but even among rogues,
honor says: One should steal only where one cannot rob (Z: 3 On Virtue
That Makes Small). One should not, however, confuse the striving for
power reflected in gift-giving with a striving for domination and power over
others. On the contrary, gift-giving is of such great importance to Nietzsche
precisely because it is gentle and mild in its splendor: it overcomes the
violence and injustice associated with relations of domination towards
greater freedom and justice.
The gift-giving virtue is like gold: gentle
Justice as gift-giving is gentle because it rejects the idea that justice is equal
retribution, for what you do nobody can do to you in return (Z: 4 On Old
and New Tablets), which can be attained through judgment and punish-
ment, for to judge is the same thing as to be unjust (HH 39; see also GM I,
II; TI Errors 7; WS 68; and AOM 33). A passage from The Adders Bite
illustrates this idea:
I do not like your cold justice; and out of the eyes of your judges there
always looks the executioner and his cold steel. Tell me, where is that
justice which is love with open eyes? Would that you might invent for me
the love that bears not only all punishments but also all guilt! Would you
might invent for me the justice that acquits everyone, except him who
judges! (Z The Adders Bite)28
Punishment and judgment degrade and belittle unless a punishment is not

also a right and an honor for the transgressor (Z On the Adders Bite),
that is, something that elevates and distinguishes both the one who punishes
and the one who is punished. Ultimately, however, it is best to refrain from
judgment and punishment altogether because it is nobler to declare
oneself wrong than to insist on being right especially when one is right.
Only one must be rich enough for that (Z On the Adders Bite).
Nietzsche warns against those in whom the impulse to punish is powerful,
and against those who speak of their justice, for they are those who lack
more than honey, who have nothing to give (Z On the Tarantulas).
Nietzsche sees in their quest for justice the pursuit of revenge, for when
they say I am just (gerecht), it always sounds like I am revenged (gercht)!
With their virtue they want to scratch out the eyes of their enemies, and
they exalt (erheben) themselves only to humble others (erniedrigen) (Z On
the Virtuous; see in comparison AOM 33). In contrast, the virtue of gift-
giving is gentle: it takes justice beyond revenge. In Z, Nietzsche directly
connects the ability to overcome revenge with the active force of animal
forgetfulness: [g]reat indebtedness does not make grateful but vengeful;
and if a little charity (Wohltat) is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm
(Z On the Pitying) indicating that what is responsible for the emergence
of forms of social and political organization that overcome violence and
domination is the gentleness of the animal, the gentleness of gift-giving.
The virtue of gift-giving is gentle (mild) in its splendor (Z: 1 On the Gift-
Giving Virtue) because it is practiced with the awareness that it always risks
losing the shame (Z The Night Song) needed to preserve a distancing
relationship on the basis of which there is something to honor in virtue
(WP 317). Gift-giving protects both the one who gives and the one who
receives from being made small by virtue (Z: 13 On Virtue that Makes
Small). Hence, the giver of gifts approaches the other only at a distance
and with reverence (Ehrfurcht) for the others inaccessible distinctiveness
and irreducible singularity. The figure of Zarathustra, the giver of gifts,

exemplifies this idea when he addresses his disciples by saying: I like to give
as a friend to friends. Strangers, however, and the poor may themselves
pluck the fruit from my tree: that will cause them less shame (Z On the
Pitying). For there to be a gift, giving and receiving should not be perceived
either by the giver or by the receiver.29 The image of the tree and the
plucking of its fruits illustrates that the giver of gifts gives without causing
shame, without humiliating and belittling because he or she gives without
being recognized (WP 317; see also, D 464), having recovered the forgetful-
ness of the animal, the gentleness of gift-giving.
Notes
Introduction
1
Translation from Also Sprach Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche: Werke in Zaei
Banden, Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, p. 659.
2
Carnap, Rudolf (1959) The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical
Analysis of Language, Logical Positivism, ed. by A.J. Ayer, Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
3
Luchte, J. (2007) Wreckage of Stars: Nietzsche and the Ecstasy of Poetry,
Hyperion: The Future of Aesthetics, Nietzsche Circle; (2003) Preface, The Peacock
and the Buffalo: The Poetry of Nietzsche, trans. by J. Luchte and E. Leadon, Lampeter:
Fire & Ice Publishing.
4
Schacht, R. (1983) Nietzsche, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
The Symphonic Structure of Thus Spoke Zarathustra:

A Preliminary Outline
1
In early 2005, an undergraduate student from Norway, Brage Brakedal, asked if
he could take a directed reading course with me on Z. When I suggested
exploring the works symphonic structure with the help of Laurence Lamperts
study, Nietzsches Teaching: An Interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he agreed
with alacrity, and ended up with a very plausible articulation. I depart from
Mr Brakedals picture in some details of the first and second parts/movements,
and in regarding the third part as a final movement in rondo form rather than a
third of four in scherzo and trio.
In a discussion of Zarathustra in his Nietzsche Biographie, Curt Paul Janz asks in
a section heading, Is Zarathustra a Symphony? His conclusion is, To a certain
extent, but one must first completely forget about the formal conception of
the symphony in favour of the musical in general. (Curt Paul Janz, Nietzsche
Biographie [Munich 1978], 2: 211, p. 220.) Michael Allen Gillespie is more
sanguine, saying that Nietzsche employs musical forms to coordinate the various
aphorisms within a larger whole in his late works and probably in Zarathustra.
(Nietzsches Musical Politics, in Nietzsches New Seas, ed. by Michael Allen
Gillespie and Tracy B. Strong [1988], Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
p. 119.) I regret that Gillespies insightful essay, which beautifully demonstrates
that Twilight of the Idols is composed in sonata form, came to my attention only
after this contribution of mine was already in galley proofs.
2
Nietzsche, letter to Franz Overbeck, 6 February 1884 (KSB 6: 475).
184 Notes
3
Letter of 15 January 1888 (KSB 8: 232); a shorter version, Without Music Life
Would Be an Error, is in TI, Maxims and Arrows 33. Among studies of this
topic, Georges Liberts Nietzsche and Music is especially to be recommended,
despite the authors occasional testiness with respect to the first of his two
subjects. See also the section The Musicality of Zarathustra in the Introduction
to my translation of Z (Oxford, 2005).
4
Hans Joachim Mette (1994) (ed.) Friedrich Nietzsche Jugendschriften, five vols, 1:
12; 1: 1213; 1: 18; 1: 27, Munich: Beck.
5
Letters of 27 April 1863 (KSB 1: 238) and 6 September 1863 (1: 253).
6
See Curt Paul Janz (1976) (ed.) Der musikalische Nachlass/Friedrich Nietzsche, Basel:
Barenreiter-Verlag.
7
Andr Schaeffner, cited in Libert, Nietzsche and Music, p. 1.
8
Nietzsche, HH I: 586; The Joyful Science, 373; KSA 10: 7[62].
9
Letter to Kselitz, 22 June 1887 (KSB 8: 95).
10
CW, 1.***
11
Letter of 20 October 1887 (KSB 7:***).
12
David S. Thatcher (1975) Musical Settings of Nietzsche-Texts: An Annotated
Bibliography, Nietzsche-Studien, 4: 284323; (1976) 5: 355383.
13
KSA 9: 11[141].
14
Letter of 14 August 1881 (KSB 6: 113).
15
KSA 9: 11[195, 197].
16
EH, Zarathustra, 1.
17
Letter of 10 January 1883 (KSB 6: 316).
18
Letter of 1 February 1883 (KSB 6: 321). In another letter to Kselitz six months
later, Nietzsche writes that it should be easy to recognize that the first part
comprises a ring of feelings that is a presupposition for the ring of feelings that
make up the second part (KSB 6: 442). For an intelligent articulation of the ways
in which Zarathustra is a challenge to The Ring (as well as to Parsifal), see Roger
Hollinrake (1982) Nietzsche, Wagner, and the Philosophy of Pessimism, London: Allen
& Unwin.
19
Letter of 1 February 1883 (KSB 6: 324). In an earlier letter to Lou Salom,
Nietzsche uses the expression ad unguem to refer to his work on revising The
Joyful Science: The final decision on the text requires the most scrupulous
hearing of every word and sentence. Sculptors refer to this last phase of the
work as ad unguem (KSB 6: 213). Horace uses the expression ad unguem, recom-
mending that one condemn that poem which/many days and many erasures
have not pruned and/revised and chastened ten times to the nail (Ars Poetica,
pp. 292294). Some think it refers to the phase of polishing in which the sculptor
perfects the very fingernails of the statue.
20
Letter of 2 April 1883 (KSB 6: 353); 18 January 1884 (KSB 6: 466); 6 February
1884 (KSB 6: 475); 30 March 1884 (KSB 6: 491); 25 February 1884 (KSB 6:
480).
21
As quoted by Bernard Scharlitt (1920) Gesprch mit Mahler, Musikbltter des
Anbruchs II, Verlag, p. 310.
22
Ralph Hill cites the introductory sinfonia to Peris opera Eurydice of 1600,
which may be the first significant instance. Ralph Hill (1949) The Symphony,
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, p. 11.
Notes 185
23
For the Christmas after his twelfth birthday Nietzsche received a folio of 12 four-
handed symphonies of Haydn (Friedrich Nietzsche: Chronik in Bildern und Texten
[Munich and Vienna, 2000], p. 38). Six years later, he notes: During the first
part of the year played 12 Haydn symphonies (Friedrich Nietzsche Jugendschriften,
2: 333).
24
Friedrich Nietzsche: Chronik, pp. 41, 121, 123.
25
Nietzsche, Z, trans. by Graham Parkes (Oxford 2005).
26
Letter of 13 July 1883 (KSB 6: 397).
27
Hesiod and Theognis (1979) Works and Days, line 116, trans. by Dorothea Wender,
New York: Penguin Books, p. 116.
28
EH, Preface, 4.
29
EH, Zarathustra, 7.
30
The term Zurckwollen can also mean willing backwards, but I have included
wanting back to emphasize the allusion to the willing of eternal recurrence.
Compare the recurrence of this verb at the end of section 10 of The Drunken
Song (4.19).
31
EH, Zarathustra, 7.
32
The last 25 sections are addressed explicitly to my brothers, with the exceptions
of 17 (to you who are world-weary) and the last section (to my will). There
is no mention of my brothers in 22 and 23, but they seem to be addressed to
the usual, imagined audience.
33
Nietzsches early evaluation in a letter to Kselitz from December 1881 I am
close to thinking that Carmen is the best opera there is; and as long as we live it
will be on all the repertoires in Europe (KSB 6: 147) made at a time when
Bizets opera was relatively unknown has turned out to be highly prescient.
34
Mark, 10: 30.
35
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1990) BGE, trans. by R.J. Hollingdale, Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, p. 246.
36
KSA 9: 4[285] (1880).
37
Zarathustra, Prologue 2; Revelation 1: 8; Zarathustra, 3: 16 6.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra as Nietzsches Autobiography

1
EH, Why I Am a Destiny, p. 3. Compare also the rather different statement, KSA
11, 25[148], from early 1884, written while reading Renans Vie de Jsus.
2
EH, Zarathustra, p. 8.
3
However, Nietzsche once, in a letter to Overbeck, 7 May 1885, states that Do not
believe that my son Zarathustra speaks my views. He is one of my preparations
and intermissions (compare letter to Elisabeth, 20 May 1885), which was the
expression of Nietzsches hope and desire to go beyond Also sprach Zarathustra,
which he never fully managed to do. I discuss this below, in the penultimate
section, and have done so in more detail in my article, Nietzsches Magnum
Opus, History of European Ideas, 32 : 278294 (2006).
4
Aus meinem Leben, BAW 1, 132 and KGW I.1, 281311.
5
Letter to Brandes, 8 January 1888.
6
Letter to Knortz, 21 June 1888.
186 Notes
7
That this relates to Nietzsches own development is still clearer in an early draft,
KSA 14, 140 f. In this earlier draft Nietzsche writes in the form of we instead of
they, that is, the note then began: We at present begin . . . our . . . [etc.].
8
Letter to Burckhardt, 1 May 1883: irgendwann schttet Jeder einmal sein
Herz aus.
9
Letter to Gast, end of August 1883.
10
Letter to Karl Hillebrand, 24 May 1883.
11
Letter to Gast, 17 April 1883.
12
Letter to Overbeck, 12 February 1887.
13
Hollingdales translation. I agree with Salaquarda (Der Sohn des Elephanten-
Weibes in Entdecken und Verraten: Zu Leben und Werk Friedrich Nietzsches, ed. by
Andreas Schirmer and Rdiger Schmidt [Weimar 1999], and also in Die Grund-
conception des Zarathustra in Klassiker Auslegen: Also sprach Zarathustra, ed. by
Volker Gerhardt [Berlin 2000], pp. 6992 that a merely biographical reading of
Also sprach Zarathustra is of limited value, but such a reading in combination with
other kinds of readings is paramount. Furthermore, the biographical approach
here also gives us insights into how Nietzsche worked.
14
Many notes and in several letters, for example, KSA 11, 26[394], summer
autumn 1884, and 34[204], AprilJune 1885, KSA 12, 6[4] and in letters to
Frster, 16 April 1885, to Overbeck, 7 May and middle of July 1885, to
Widemann 31 July 1885 and to Fritzsch, 29 August 1886.
15
KSA 12, 6[4] and letter to Gast, 6 April 1883. Nietzsche never explicitly refers to
himself as the mother of Zarathustra, but he refers to the work and figure as a
pregnancy, the time when he had the idea of eternal recurrence as its concep-
tion and so on.
16
For example, in a letter to Brandes, 8 January 1888 about his tendency to feel
pity.
17
EH, gute Bcher, 1. Compare also Zur Genealogie der Moral, Preface, 8.
18
EH, Unzeitgemsse, 3. Ibid., GT, 4.
19
Ibid., Klok, p. 4. Compare also KSA 11, 25[87].
20
Rohde to Nietzsche, 22 December 1883.
21
See Nietzsches letter to Overbeck, 9 September 1882. Compare also Nietzsches
letter to Paul Re, 15 September 1882.
22
Even after Nietzsche had intellectually and philosophically rejected pity around
1876, he still speaks of his own too great ability to feel it, with statements such as Pity
is my weakness and Is pity not a feeling out of hell?. (Draft of letter to unknown
recipient, possibly Salome, end of November 1882 and a letter to Salome and Ree
near 20 December 1882, Ist nicht Mitleid ein Gefhl aus der Hlle?)
23
Zarathustra discusses Schopenhauers philosophy in sections Of Self-
Overcoming and Of Immaculate Perception and in The Prophet he describes
his biographical response and liberation from Schopenhauer.
24
Most commentators agree that the magician, the sorcerer [the Zauberer] in book
four is modelled on Wagner.
25
KSA 9, 11[195]. The next note, on the same theme, under the title Zum Entwurf
einer neuen Art zu leben is at the end dated with the words Sils-Maria
26 August 1881, that is only a few weeks after his discovery of the idea of eternal
recurrence.
Notes 187
26
Beitrge zur Quellenforschung mitgeteilt von Paolo DIorio, Nietzsche-Studien,
22: 395397 (1993).
27
Von Hellwald, Friedrich (1876) Culturgeschichte in ihrer natrlichen Entwicklung bis
zur Gegenwart, Augsburg: Lampart & Co., p. 128.
28
Ibid., p. 129.
29
EH, Why I am a Destiny, p. 3.
30
Compare Zarathustras speech to the sun, and his introduction of the will to
power in the section Of Self-overcoming (p. 130 ff.) and Z, Von tausend und
Einem Ziele, p. 131. Nietzsche also restated this slightly differently in EH,
Schicksal, p. 3.
31
Hellwalds book is strongly Darwinian, and it is also, in print, dedicated to the
greatest German Darwinist, E. Haeckel.
32
This section is also dealt with more philosophically by Peter Yates below.
33
In the summer or autumn of the following year Nietzsche again repeated
basically the same developmental view in his notebook, KSA 11, 26[47], summer
autumn 1884. I have used the translation of C.F. Wallraff and F.J. Schmitz here,
given in Jaspers Nietzsche (New York, London: Lanham, 1965), pp. 4446.
34
Though, as stated above, Nietzsche had planned to write a book of this kind
already before he even met Lou in the spring of 1882.
35
Quoted in Gilman, Sander L. (1987) Begegnungen mit Nietzsche2. Aufl., Nachdr.
Bonn. Bouvier. 819 S. Studien zur Germanistik, Anglistik und Komparatistik,
p. 478.
36
Surprisingly, I have not encountered any reference or discussion to her account
of the whip-scene among the many discussions of this passage in Z.
37
See Gilman, Begegnungen mit Nietzsche, 429 f.
38
See also KSA 10, 23[1], end of 1883. The importance of this section from Also
sprach Zarathustra and this note have been discussed by Aldo Venturelli (1998)
in Nietzsche-Studien, 27, pp. 2951 and by R. Perkins (1997) in Nietzsche-Studien,
26, 361 ff.
39
See KGW VI.4, p. 887 which shows that the bird originally symbolized Lou.
40
Unfortunately, the biographical information related to Also sprach Zarathustra
seems not to have been collected together at one place anywhere.
41
See KSA 14, p. 306.
42
See Nietzsches letters to Franziska and his sister, 1 April 1882, and to Overbeck,
8 April 1882, and Peter Gasts comments about the journey, KGB III.7/1,
p. 203.
43
Compare EH, Zarathustra, p. 1, where Nietzsche claims that this idea constitute
the centrepiece of the work.
44
This is visible, among others, in letters to Lou Salom, in the text on the cover of
The Joyful Science where he states that this book ends his free spirit phase and most
clearly in the last two sections of the book, 341 and 342, where he introduces the
central idea of the book and the figure of Zarathustra. The very first notes which
suggest the work are from August 1881, the time when he discovered the eternal
recurrence and the figure of Zarathustra. The title and the expression Also sprach
Zarathustra do not occur until he worked on it in January 1883, but he used the
expression So sprach Zarathustra in KSA 9, 12[225] already in the autumn
1881. Early versions of 68, 106, 291 and 332 of GS contained references to the
188 Notes
name or figure Zarathustra, but these were withdrawn before the final version
because he realized that he wanted to save the figure of Zarathustra until his next
book. Nietzsche introduces the name Zarathustra in 342. That whole section
he essentially restates at the beginning of Z, which shows that he already in 1882
knew he was going to write Also sprach Zarathustra.
45
For example, while reading Emersons Versuche (Essays) (1858), p. 351, Nietzsche
has underlined and made marginal lines along this text, and written Das ist es,
that is, That is it in the margin. Compare KGW VI.4, p. 950.
46
Some of these major influences are so little known, even among the best German
Nietzsche commentators, that, for example, Hellwald, Lipiner, and Spitteler are
not even mentioned in the otherwise highly informative and interesting commen-
tary of over 400 pages, Also sprach Zarathustra, ed. by Volker Gerhardt (Berlin
2000), in the series Klassiker Auslegen. These authors are also not mentioned
in relation to Z in the Nietzsche-Handbuch (2000). For Spittelers possible influ-
ence on Nietzsches Also sprach Zarathustra and the discussions of this question,
see Curt Paul Janz Nietzsche biography, II, pp. 224228. Spittelers Prometheus
und Epimetheus [1881] is in Nietzsches private library, but may have been sent to
him in September 1887, see Widemanns letter to Nietzsche, 13 September 1887,
KGB III.6, p. 78f. Janz also briefly discusses Lipiner as a possible source on p. 229.
See also Werner Stauffachers Carl Spitterler und Friedrich Nietzsche: Ein
Ferngesprch, in Nietzsche und die Schweiz (Zrich 1994), ed. by David Marc
Hoffmann, pp. 133139, and the references therein. Curt Paul Janz, in his
standard biography of Nietzsche suggests as another fundamental stimulus
Shelleys The Revolt of Islam which Nietzsche wished for Christmas 1861, and
which according to Janz contains several interesting parallels to Z, including the
presence of an eagle and snake flying together. However, this book is not in
Nietzsches library, and we have no knowledge that he received it (it seems
unlikely). Even if he had received and read it, the time-span of 20 years here
makes it unreasonable to regard that as a probable influence (at least until other
possible influences can be excluded).
47
Unfortunately, these and other sources to Also sprach Zarathustra seem not to
have been collected together and discussed at one place anywhere.
48
Nietzsches Reading at the Time of Morgenrthe: An Overview and a Discussion
of his Reading of J. Popper. This paper will be published in conference proceed-
ings about Nietzsches Morgenrthe during 2007 or 2008, ed. by Paolo DIorio.
49
Letters to Reinhart von Seylitz, 12 February 1888, to Naumann, 25 November
1888 and to Jean Bourdeau, 17 December 1888. He uses these expressions in
several letters and also several others. Even as early as 1885, he makes similar
claims, for example, in letters to Marie Kckert, middle of February 1885 and to
Fritzsch, 29 August 1886.
50
See the letter accompanying Jenseits von Gut und Bse to Jacob Burckhardt,
22 September 1886.
51
See letter to Fritzsch, 29 April 1887: Meine Absicht dabei war, ihm [i.e., the fifth
book of Die frhliche Wissenschaft] noch mehr den Charakter einer Vorbereitung
fr Also sprach Zarathustra zu geben.
52
Zur Genealogie der Moral, II, 25. This is the whole of the last section of the second
essay of Zur Genealogie der Moral, which originally was meant to end the work (but
Notes 189
Nietzsche later wrote and added the third essay). This was obviously written to
get the reader to also read his Also sprach Zarathustra. See also Nietzsches letter
to Overbeck, 17 September 1887.
53
See the longer discussion in my article, Nietzsches magnum opus, History of
European Ideas 32 (2006), pp. 278294.
54
This is something which Nietzsche all along works on. To mention just one
example, see KSA 10, 24[4].
55
Letter to Overbeck, 8 March 1884, and the two letters quoted in the text.
56
Letter to Overbeck, 7 April 1884.
57
Letter to Meysenbug, early May 1884.
58
See, for example, Nietzsches letters to Overbeck, 18 August 1884 and
14 September 1884, and to Franziska, 29 January 1885.
59
Letter to Gast, 2 September 1884. It is possible that the scheme Nietzsche speaks
of is the one he refers to in several notes from this time, for example, KSA 11,
27[58 + 67 + 79 + 80 + 82].
60
KGW VI.2, p. 257.
61
Letter to Elisabeth and Bernhard Frster, 2 September 1886.
62
Letter to Overbeck, 24 March 1887.
63
Letter to Helen Zimmern, 8 December 1888: Mein Leben kommt jetzt zu einem
lang vorbereiteten ungeheuren Eklat: das, was ich in den nchsten zwei Jahren
thue, ist der Art, unsere ganze bestehende Ordnung . . . ber den Haufen zu
werfen.
64
Nietzsche planned a continuation of Also sprach Zarathustra, a fifth book, in which
Zarathustra dies, until the autumn of 1885. This is reflected in a large number of
notes, among others KSA 11, 35[7375] and 39[3 and 22]. See also KGW VI.4,
pp. 972 ff.
65
Nietzsche, F. (1988): Gtzen-Dmmerung: Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophirt,
Streifzge eines Unzeitgemssen, 49, KSA vol. 6, 55161.
66
Gtzen-Dmmerung, Streifzge, p. 51.
67
Letters to H. Taine, 8 December and to Naumann, 20 December 1888.
68
EH, Verhngniss, 8: Ich habe eben kein Wort gesagt, das ich nicht schon vor
fnf Jahren durch den Mund Zarathustras gesagt htte.
69
This is most obvious for Zur Genealogie der Moral, which is described as three
decisive preliminary studies of a psychologist for a revaluation of all values.
70
See KSA 13, 14[89], 16[32], 19[8], 22[14] and 23[8 and 13].
71
GS, p. 345.
72
KSA 9, 6[448], from the autumn 1880.
73
I have discussed this extensively in my book Brobjer, Thomas (1995) Nietzsches
Ethics of Character: A Study of Nietzsches Ethics and its Place in the History of Moral
Thinking, Uppsala: Uppsala University Press.
74
EH, Zarathustra, p. 8.
75
Die frhliche Wissenschaft, p. 290. See also, for example, Also sprach Zarathustra, III,
Of Involuntary Bliss: must I perfect myself .
76
Morgenrthe, p. 548:
I mean the spectacle of that strength which employs genius not for works but
for itself as a work; that is, for its own constraint, for the purification of its
190 Notes
imagination, for the imposition of order and choice upon the influx of tasks
and impressions.
77
Nietzsche, F. (1988) Der Antichrist: Fluch auf das Christenthum. KSA vol. 6, 165254,
11.
78
KSA 11, 37[11]. Also published as Der Wille zur Macht, p. 125.
79
Letter to Fritzsch, 29 August 1886.
80
Letter to Deussen, 26 November 1888: Darin wird zum ersten Mal Licht ber
meinen Zarathustra gemacht.
81
Letter to mother, 29 January 1885: ein Vorbild abzugeben, nach der Art meines
Zarathustra.
82
Letter to Paul Lanzky, end of April 1884.
83
See Karl Spitteler review (which is generally positive) of all of Nietzsches books,
from Die Geburt der Tragdie to Zur Genealogie der Moral (with the exception of
Jenseits von Gut und Bse), published in the Swiss newspaper Der Bund, 1 January
1888.
Zarathustra in Nietzsches Typology

1
To the extent of my research, the closest German word to typology, Typenlehre
which literally translates as the doctrine or teaching of types and which is trans-
lated as typology by Walter Kaufmann appears only in one text, namely
Aphorism 186 in BGE. There are, however, many other implicit or explicit hints
to the study of types throughout Nietzsches works.
2
Characters in literature can be said to have affinity to types since the former too
represent certain traits of human existence in context. In this sense, to read
Nietzsches typology along with the literature of his age, especially the authors
whom he calls the psychologist of types in EH, would intensify the reading.
Persistence of a philosophical project, however, distinguishes philosophical
typology from other typologies.
3
To illustrate the unity of these three philosophies, let us take the example of the
type of the theoretical man within the context of Nietzsches critique of Socratic
rationality in BT. The force here is the force of rationality as it plays itself out with
the other forces of culture in a specific constellation, and the symptom Nietzsche
portrays here is hypertrophy, that is, the hypertrophy of the logical instinct.
4
KSA 1, p. 810.
5
PTAG, trans. by Marianne Cowan (1962), Washington: Regney Gateway, pp. 2,
4, 9.
6
TSZ, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (1954) in The Portable Nietzsche, New York: Viking
Penguin; P. II, On Self-Overcoming.
7
BT, 15, p. 94.
8
Ibid., pp. 9398. This section not only reveals Nietzsches critique of Occidental
scientific experience since Socrates but also his prospective notion of science,
that is, what scientific experience can be, especially when it is imbued with truth-
fulness and honesty. This and his notes of the same period are the beginning of
Nietzsches philosophy of science which later would include such notions as the
gay science and the will to power as knowledge. That Nietzsche undermines science,
Notes 191
knowledge, abstract thinking or reason is a misreading, for him the task is to

seek context for them in the overall constellation of human existence.
9
BGE, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (1966), New York: Vintage, Aphorism 47,
pp. 6162.
10
Ibid., p. 62.
11
Preface to CW, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (1967), New York: Vintage, p. 156.
12
Ibid., Second Postscript, p. 187.
13
GM, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (1969), New York: Vintage, Third Essay,
pp. 25.
14
UM I: David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer, ed. by Daniel Breazeale and
trans. by R.J. Hollingdale (1997), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2
pp. 713.
15
Ibid., p. 7.
16
Ibid., p. 9.
17
HH, trans. by R.J. Hollingdale (1986), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
Preface, 3, p. 6.
18
MGE stands for morality of good and evil and BGE for beyond good and evil.
There is a hierarchy of types in these lists and a hierarchy between the lists in
which the types beyond good and evil are placed higher than the types of morality
of good and evil.
19
UM II: On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life, ed. by Daniel Breazeale
and trans. by R.J. Hollingdale (1997), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
pp. 13.
20
EH, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (1969), New York: Vintage, Why I Write Such
Good Books, p. 298. Here there is a word play with the words einfallen and
berfallen both of which, due to the root verb fall, imply that both the work and
its main type fell on to Nietzsche (as an insight).
21
GS, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (1974), New York: Vintage, pp. 346347.
22
Ibid.
23
Ibid., p. 347.
24
Who is Nietzsches Zarathustra? in The New Nietzsche, ed. by David B. Allison
(1977), Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, p. 64.
25
KSA 6, p. 344, Art, not Typus, is used here for type.
26
The Drama of Zarathustra in Nietzsches New Seas, ed. by Michael A. Gillespie
and Tracy B. Strong (1988) Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, p. 221.
27
EH, p. 304.
28
How this is so has to do with the fact that Zarathustra is an agonal type, a point
which I have explored in my doctoral dissertation, The Principle of Agon in
Nietzsches Thought (New School for Social Research, 2000):
Nietzsche himself describes his creation in this fashion: Let anyone add up
the spirit and good nature of all great souls: all of them together would not be
capable of producing even one of Zarathustras discourses. The ladder on which
he ascends and descends is tremendous; he has seen further, willed further, been
capable further than any other human being. Greatness of the soul is to have
and feel a spectrum of human feelings and to place them on a scale. Opposition,
contradiction, conflict; these are no objections to life for an agonal soul who
can sustain them in new unities. Further on Zarathustra: In every word, he
192 Notes
contradicts, this most Yes-saying of all spirits; in him all opposites are blended
into a new unity. (EH, pp. 304305)
29
KSA 6, p. 370. I would modify this translation by doing a literal translation of the
text: he does not conceal the fact that his type of man, a relatively more
overmanly type, is overmanly exactly in relation to the good that the good and the
just would call his overman devil. This would bring the bermenschlich and the
bermensch of the original into English.
30
There are two works which can be mentioned here: Jungs lectures on Z and
Laurence Lamperts comprehensive study, Nietzsches Teaching: An Interpretation of
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986).
31
AC (1954) trans. by Walter Kaufmann in The Portable Nietzsche, New York: Viking
Penguin, 34, pp. 570571.
32
GS, Book V, p. 382.
The Three Metamorphoses and Philosophy

1
Translation by the editor from (1990) Jenseits Von Gut und Bse, Friedrich
Nietzsche: Werke in Zwei Banden, Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, p. 63.
2
Russell, B. (1946, 1984) A History of Western Philosophy, London: Unwin.
3
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1979) EH, trans. by R.J. Hollingdale, Why I Am So Clever,
10, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
4
Ibid.
5
See, for example, Nietzsche, Friedrich (1990) BGE, trans. by R.J. Hollingdale,
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 211.
6
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1968) WP, trans. by W. Kaufmann, and R.J. Hollingdale,
New York: Vintage Books, 576 and Z, On The Three Evils.
7
EH, Why I Am So Clever, 10.
8
WP, 22, 23, 24.
9
WP, 481, Nietzsche, Friedrich (1996) GM, Douglas Smith, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, III, 12.
10
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1974) GS, trans. by W. Kaufmann, New York: Vintage,
343.
11
The use of the term proposition here is somewhat loose. However, explicating
the distinction between propositional statements and propositions here, let
alone considering the cogency of the very notion of the proposition, would
lead too far afield.
12
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1976) Z in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. by W. Kaufmann,
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, Prologue, 2.
13
Ibid., On the Three Metamorphoses.
14
Popper, K. (1959) The Logic of Scientific Discovery, London & New York: Routledge,
25.
15
BGE, 289.
16
WP, 2.
17
Z, On the Three Metamorphoses, op. cit.
18
Ibid.
Notes 193
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid.
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid.
23
Stanley Rosen (1995, p. 81) suggests this interpretation of ghost in his line-
by-line reading of Zarathustra.
24
Z, On the Three Metamorphoses, op. cit.
25
Ibid.
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid.
28
Ibid.
29
Ibid.
30
Ibid., my italics.
31
Ibid.
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid.
Zarathustra, the Moment, and Eternal Recurrence of the

Same: Nietzsches Ontology of Time
1
Friedrich Nietzsche (1968) WP, ed. by Walter Kaufmann, trans. by Walter Kauf-
mann and R.J. Hollingdale, New York: Vintage Books, p. 55.
2
Muncke, G.W. (18251845) Perpetuum Mobile, in Johann Samuel Traugott
Gehlers Physikalisches Wrterbuch, ed. by W. Brandes et al., Leipzig, pp. 408423.
3
Nietzsche (1986) Human, All Too Human, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, Preface, p. 4.
4
Ibid., Preface, p. 5.
5
Nietzsche, WP, p. 1066.
6
Ibid., p. 1066.
7
Ibid., p. 1067.
8
Ibid., p. 1066.
9
Alwin Mittasch (1950) Friedrich Nietzsches Naturbeflissenheit, in Sitzungsber-
ichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, 195052, Heidelberg, p. 22.
10
Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld (1966) The Evolution of Physics: From Early
Concepts to Relativity and Quanta, New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 48.
11
Robert Julius Mayer, ber das Fieber. Ein iatromechanischer Versuch, 1862,
in Die Mechanik der Wrme in gesammelten Schriften, 3rd edition, ed. by Jacob
J. Weyrauch (Stuttgart 1893), pp. 324336.
12
Mayer, ber die Bedeutung der unvernderlichen Grssen, 1870, in Die
Mechanik der Wrme in gesammelten Schriften, pp. 381393.
13
Mayer (1845) Die organische Bewegung in ihrem Zusammenhange mit dem
Stoffwechsel. Ein Beitrag zur Naturkunde, in Die Mechanik der Wrme in gesam-
melten Schriften, pp. 45128.
14
Muncke, pp. 408423.
15
Karl Wilhelm Gottlieb Kastner (18321833) Grundzge der Physik und Chemie,
2nd edition, Nuremberg, p. 66.
194 Notes
16
Jacob Friedrich Fries (1826) Experimentalphysik, in Lehrbuch der Naturlehre,
Jena, pp. 25126.
17
Nietzsche, WP, 619.
18
Nietzsche (1956) Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. by Karl Schlechta, Munich, vol. 3, p. 778.
19
Nietzsche, KSA 7: 7[196] (7.111).
20
Johann Heinrich Ferdinand Autenrieth (1836) Ansicht ber Natur- und Seelen-
leben. ed. by Hermann Friedrich Autenrieth, Stuttgart and Augsburg, pp. 3637,
295, 383384, 391.
21
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1797) Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur,
Leipzig, p. 111.
22
Schelling (1798) Von der Weltseele; eine Hypothese der hheren Physik zur Erklrung des
allgemeinen Organismus, Hamburg, pp. 567569.
23
Ibid., p. 568.
24
Schelling (1790) Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie, Jena and Leipzig,
p. 90.
25
Schelling, Von der Weltseele, p. 381.
26
Johann Carl Friedrich Zllner (1872) ber die Natur des Cometen. Beitrge zur
Geschichte und Theorie der Erkenntnis, Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann. Nietzsche
commented favourably on this book in several letters, as Gnther Abel and
Alistair Moles, among others, point out. [Abel (1984) Nietzsche: Die Dynamik des
Willens zur Macht und die ewige Wiederkehr, Berlin] There is thus a likelihood that
Nietzsche adopted in eternal recurrence the idea of Riemannian (non-
Euclidean) space and time to which Zllner alludes and which Loeb discusses in
the next essay of this volume.
27
Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches II, Zweite Abtheilung: Der Wanderer und
sein Schatten, p. 61 (translation by the authors).
28
Notable exceptions are Milic Capek (1991) in The New Aspects of Time: Its Conti-
nuity and Novelties (Dortrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
and (1971) Bergson and Modern Physics: A Reinterpretation and Re-evaluation, Boston
Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. VII, ed. by Robert S. Cohen and Marx
W. Wartofsky, Dortrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company; Alistair Moles (1990) in
Nietzsches Philosophy of Nature and Cosmology, New York: Peter Lang; and Babette
E. Babich (1994) in Nietzsches Philosophy of Science: Reflecting Science on the Ground
of Art and Life, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
29
Nietzsche, WP, 634.
30
Nietzsche (1968) BT, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. and ed. by Walter
Kaufmann, New York: The Modern Library, 15.
31
Nietzsche (1977) Z, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. and ed. by Walter Kaufmann,
New York: Penguin Books, The Stillest Hour.
32
Nietzsche, Z, The Stillest Hour.
33
Ibid., The Wanderer.
34
Ibid., Z, The Convalescent.
35
Ibid., The Convalescent.
36
Ibid., The Other Dancing Song.
37
Ibid., The Sign.
38
Ibid., On the Vision and the Riddle.
39
Ibid., The Convalescent.
Notes 195
40
Ibid., On the Vision and the Riddle.
41
Nietzsche, KSA 12: 1[119] (12.38) (translation by the authors).
42
Nietzsche, WP, 1064.
43
44
Nietzsche, Z, The Convalescent.
45
Nietzsche, WP, 1066.
46
47
Nietzsche, Z, The Convalescent.
48
Ibid., At Noon.
49
Ibid., The Drunken Song.
50
Ibid., The Sign.
51
Nietzsche, WP, 617.
The Gateway-Augenblick
1
See Small 2001, p. 52; KSA 13: 14[188]; WP 1066; and Shapiro 2001.
2
See Small 1998 (pp. 84 ff.) and 2001 (pp. 4158) on Nietzsches use of optical
and perspectival language in his description of the gateway-Augenblick and of
the influence of Gustav Teichmller (whose book he was studying at the same
time as he was composing Part III of Zarathustra). See also Shapiro 2001 and
Moles 1989, pp. 233234.
3
Also, repeating his allusion to Fausts pact with Mephistopheles concerning the
midnight Augenblick of his death, and alluding to the whispering demon of GS
p. 341, Nietzsche depicts Zarathustras whispering archenemy as the devil (II.10).
See also Nietzsches D and his earlier association of the devil and the deathbed
that anticipates GS p. 341 (D p. 77).
4
While Lampert (1986, pp. 160169) also focuses on the last three Aphorisms of
the first edition of GS, and the extension of their themes into the Vision-Riddle
chapter of Zarathustra, and correctly associates Zarathustras archenemy with
Socratic rationalism, I am arguing that Nietzsches allusions lead us more
precisely to identify this figure with the dying Socrates.
5
Loeb (1998) The Moment of Tragic Death in Nietzsches Dionysian Doctrine of
Eternal Recurrence: An Exegesis of Aphorism 341 in GS, International Studies in
Philosophy, 30: 3, pp. 131143.
6
Zarathustra hears a voiceless daimon speaking to him whom he calls his stillest
hour (Z. II. 22). As Lampert notes (1986, p. 335, n. 106), Zarathustras stillest
hour seems to speak through the 11 strikes of the clock at the midnight
hour.
7
Compare Shapiro, 2001 (pp. 2122) for a tracing of Augenblick to Luthers
translation of Pauls First Letter to the Corinthians 15: 5152. See also Salaquarda,
pp. 326, 331322, who links Nietzsches transformative Augenblick-vision of
eternal recurrence with Pauls mystical and blinding experience on the road to
Damascus (D p. 68).
8
Zarathustra, III, 13, 2.
9
Ibid., Prologue, 1.
10
Ibid., II.18.
196 Notes
11
Ibid., III.12 17, III.14, III.15 1.
12
Ibid., II.19.
13
Ibid., II.22.
14
Ibid., III.13 2.
15
See Heidegger 1984, pp. 4142; Lampert 1986, p. 164.
16
Zarathustra, II.20.
17
For more on the significance of this contradiction, see Heidegger (1984, p. 56),
Stambaugh (1972, p. 40), and Small (1998, pp. 8082). I contend that each fails
to comprehend that the gateway-Augenblick represents a non-generic present
moment, that is, the present moment of death.
18
Plato (1993) Phaedo, trans. by David Gallop, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
71cd, 105d.
19
Ibid., 71c72e, 105c107a.
20
Ibid., 107d108a. Although Nietzsches emphasis on the sameness of what
eternally recurs seems an obvious departure from the ancient Dionysian doctrine
of cyclical rebirth cited by Plato (70c), he might be assuming that the Pythago-
rean background of Platos dialogue points to their common source, see Barnes,
p. 88.
21
Loeb, 2008.
22
Plato, Phaedo, 58e59a, 67e68b, 84d85b.
23
Zarathustra, III.2 1.
24
Plato, Phaedo, 81c.
25
26
The dwarf had threatened the high-climbing Zarathustra with a similar death
when he whispered to him that he was destined to be crushed by his own philos-
opher-stones heavy weight as he fell back down upon himself.
27
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1979) EH, trans. by R.J. Hollingdale, Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, III: BT 3. Nietzsches term, Kreislauf, alludes both to the dwarfs
mention of time as Kreis and to Zarathustras questions about what can run
(laufen) on the lanes behind and ahead of the gateway-Augenblick.
28
Zarathustra, III.13.
29
Ibid., III.16. For similar ring-images, see II.5; III.12 2; and IV.10, IV.19 11.
30
Ibid., III.13 2. Heidegger (1984, pp. 5455) and others (see White, pp. 8993)
are wrong to equate the dwarfs interpretation of the gateway-vision with the
account of eternal recurrence offered by Zarathustras animals. See also Loeb
(2005), p. 99, n. 55.
31
Plato, Phaedo, 72ab.
32
Zarathustra, II.2.
33
Gooding-Williams (2001, pp. 196197, 215, 217) rightly notes Nietzsches allu-
sion here to Luthers translation of Ecclesiastes 7: 13.
34
According to Zarathustras Blessed Isles speech, to think this, and to think that
all that stands turns, is dizziness (Wirbel), vertigo (Schwindel) and vomiting to
the stomach; he calls this teaching about the one and the perfect and the
unmoved and the sufficient and the intransitory the turning sickness (die
drehende Krankheit). In the vision-riddle, Zarathustra alludes back to this
remark when he invokes the courage needed to defeat his dwarf-archenemy and
calls it the courage that slays vertigo (den Schwindel) over abysses.
Notes 197
35
Although Small notices Nietzsches allusion back to Zarathustras first speech on
time, he argues that by time being gone (die Zeit wre hinweg) Zarathustra
means that the distinctions among past, present and future are all illusory (1998,
pp. 8891).
36
Plato, Phaedo, 78c79a. While strongly supported by Smalls discovery (1998,
pp. 8791; 2001, pp. 43, 5255) that the dwarfs interpretation very closely
resembles that of Nietzsches former Basel colleague, Gustav Teichmller, in
Darwinismus und Philosophie, pp. 39 ff., I argue that Nietzsche rejects only
Teichmllers further Platonist contention of some possible non-perspectival
standpoint.
37
Plato, P, 77b81a, 109b111b, 114bc.
38
Lampert (1986, pp. 164167) is an exception, but he misses Nietzsches allusion
to Zarathustras first speech on time, and hence is led to claim that Zarathustras
most abysmal thought is merely an intensification of the dwarfs correct inter-
pretation. Berkowitz (pp. 196 ff.) also misses Nietzsches allusion and thinks that
the dwarf genuinely believes that time is a circle.
39
See, for example, Heidegger, 1972, pp. 4143; Stambaugh, 1972, pp. 3839;
Moles 1989, p. 30; Small, 1998, pp. 8691, 2001, pp. 21, 5254; White, pp. 8687,
9192; Shapiro 2001, pp. 2930. All these commentators infer Zarathustras
rejection of circular time from his rejection of the dwarfs response.
40
In contrast, see Heidegger (1984, pp. 4344, 5657, 135140, 176, 181183);
Stambaugh 1972, pp. 3941; White 1990, pp. 8687; Ansell-Pearson 1994,
pp. 110112; Small 1998, pp. 9091, 96.
41
Small (1998, p. 91) rightly emphasizes the universalist language (All that is
straight lies, all truth is bent) that shows the dwarfs attempt to avoid the perspec-
tival standpoint of the gateway-Augenblick. See also Nietzsches earlier
unpublished note: Kontur-Phantom. Zu jeder Krmmung den vollendenden
Kreis ziehen (KSA 8 29: [13]).
42
See Small 2001, p. 47, on Nietzsches praise of long perspectives as the best
means of knowledge (e.g., GS p. 78).
43
See Riemann, p. 10 on the analogy of the sphere. See also Hawking,
pp. 139146. For a more detailed treatment of the discussion of the Riemannian
non-Euclidean conception of space, see Moles (1989; 1990, pp. 277283, 291
ff.); Stack (p. 39); Moles, Abel (pp. 397400); and Small (2001, pp. 6567), espe-
cially on the influence of astrophysicist Friedrich Zllners 1872 book, ber die
Natur der Komete on Nietzsche. Also see Stack (pp. 3738) on the influence of
Riemanns non-Euclidean geometry through F.A. Langes History of Materialism,
and on Nietzsches unpublished notes which argue that the conception of
Euclidean space is non-necessary (WP p. 515).
44
In keeping with the implication of his vision-riddle, Zarathustra imagines the
cosmos as a round golden ball or apple (I.21, I.22 1, III.10 1, IV.10).
This image alludes to Wagners symbol of eternal youth in The Ring of the
Nibelung (The Rhinegold, Scene 2) and thus suggests Nietzsches quasi-
Platonic interest in eternal recurrence as a doctrine of immortality (KSA 10:
16[63]).
45
See Teichmllers analogy (pp. 4243) and Smalls commentary on this
Teichmller connection (1998, p. 88; 2001, p. 53).
198 Notes
46
See Fink, pp. 8788, 92, 98100; White, pp. 8687; Moles 1989, p. 30; 1990,
p. 418 n. 63; Small 1998, pp. 8891.
47
In the Schilpp volume, Einstein contends that Gdel has found such a cosmo-
logical solution (a global closed timelike curve) to his GRT field equations
(although it remains to be seen whether it is to be excluded on physical grounds)
p. 688. Also see Yourgrau (1999) and the essays by Paul Horwich and John
Earman in Savitt (1995). For a physics-based examination of other possible
global closed timelike curves, see Gott (2001).
48
GM, III: 12.
49
See KSA 9: 11[202]; KSA 13: 14[188] (=WP 1066). See Lampert 1986,
pp. 165166; Abel, Gnter (1984) Nietzsche: die Dynamik, der Willen zur Macht, und
die ewige Wiederkehr. Berlin, New York: W. de Gruyter, pp. 249253.
50
For the Stoic argument, summarized by Lucretiu, compare Book 3, lines 854858.
In EH, Nietzsche says that his doctrine might have been suggested earlier by the
Stoics (EH, BT: 3).
51
See Moles (1990), pp. 305310; Rogers (pp. 86, 8990); Lampert (1986,
pp. 165166); and Small (1983, pp. 9596) on Nietzsches proofs of the eternal
recurrence and the finite number of force combinations.
52
See Small, 1983, pp. 9599; Lampert, 1986, pp. 166167.
53
Zarathustra, III.13 1. See TI, The Problem of Socrates and How the True
World Became a Fable (KSA 9 11: [148]).
54
Plato, Phaedo, 70a72e, 77bd. I agree with Hackforths analysis (p. 80) of Plato
that the time before birth is the time after death.
55
See Zarathustra, III.13 2. See also KSA 13: 14[188] (=WP 1066). For a contem-
porary hypothesis, see Gott (2001). Also see Deleuzes (1994, pp. 241 ff.), Krell
(1996, pp. 158176) and also Small 2001, pp. 127128.
56
57
I will explore how Zarathustras pre-vision is actually fulfilled in my forthcoming
book, The Death of Nietzsches Zarathustra.
58
In an interesting aside, Socrates confesses that he may even be advancing false
arguments in support of his continued existence (91a91c).
59
Plato, Phaedo, 84c85b. See also Socrates remark in Platos Apology: I have now
reached a point at which people are most given to prophesying that is, when
they are on the point of death (39c).
60
Ibid., 107de. See Apology 31cd, 40ac, 41d. Nietzsche refers to the dying
Socrates prophetic daimonion in BT, pp. 1314.
61
Nietzsche refers to this passage in BT 15. See also Socrates reference to a dream
prophesying to him the day of his death, in Platos Crito, 44ab.
62
Nietzsches precise phrasing, Mein Gedanke lief zurck, alludes to Zarathustras
earlier description of the long lane behind (zurck) upon which every possible
thing has already run.
63
Hollingdales translation omits Nietzsches noteworthy shift here from jener to
dieser.
64
The Odyssey, Books 1011: 539731.
65
Plato, Phaedo, 71c72d.
66
KSA 9:11[318].
67
See Loeb (2002) for my interpretation of the dwarfs fate.
68
Plato, Phaedo, 70b.
Notes 199
69
Ibid., P 66e.
70
Ibid., 72e77a, 91e92e.
71
GS, pp. 340341.
72
In Loeb (2005), I argue that this account coheres as well with Nietzsches account
of memory in the Genealogy and I explain at more length Nietzsches psycho-
analytic depiction of Zarathustras struggle and confrontation with his deeply
buried childhood memory of death and recurrence. In Loeb (2006), I show how
Nietzsche leads us to interpret the demons message in GS 341 as a recollection
of lifes eternal recurrence.
73
Plato, Phaedo, 75de. Nietzsche, however, is led to affirm the claim that Platos
Socrates dismisses as nonsensical, namely, that this knowledge is forgotten at the
very same moment in which it is acquired (P 76d).
74
Ibid., 60e61b. In his earlier D Nietzsche had claimed that in the fantasizing of
dreams a persons memory goes sufficiently far back to rediscover that prehis-
tory and those primal experiences which were forgotten for the sake of evolving
into an adult civilized condition (D, p. 312).
75
76
In citing Zarathustras Sleepwalker Song as expressing views that Nietzsche
takes seriously, I disagree with Rosen (1995, pp. 242244) and Gooding-Williams
(2001, pp. 20, 280, 288290) that this song is a caricature of Zarathustra.
I discuss my ground for this disagreement in Loeb (2007).
77
Zarathustra, IV.19 3.
78
Ibid., I.3.
79
See Nietzsches remark to Overbeck, on 22 October 1883: Dear old friend, in
reading Teichmller I am ever more transfixed with wonder at how little I know
Plato and how much Zarathustra . (KSB 6, p. 449).
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: The Hammer and the Greatest Weight

1
Robert B. Pippin (1988) Irony and Affirmation in Nietzsches Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, Nietzsches New Seas: Explorations in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics,
(eds) Michael Allen Gillespie and Tracy Strong, Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
2
We do not mean here to drama, understood in the Christian sense a pathos, one
to which Nietzsche opposes to Tragedy.
3
Moreover, a self-conscious, or political, master, or ruler, he who dominates, as
Deleuze rightly points out, can just as easily be a slave, in Nietzsches sense, just
as much as a politically enslaved person might be masterful, in terms of the
persons own existence, or concrete lived life.
4
Nietzsche (1988) GM, Preface, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
5
The term being here, in relation to Nietzsche, is obviously not radically divorced
in the Platonic manner from becoming.
6
Indeed, though we will not pursue this, the status of WP in Nietzsches thinking,
in relation to the extreme anti-foundationalism of his thought is a key question
when approaching it. I would suggest its visibility in his published works particu-
larly, testifies to what we are driving at here.
7
GM, Preface, Aphorism 2.
200 Notes
8
Ibid., 12.
9
This is suggested by Hollingdale in the introduction to his 1969 Penguin Classics
translation of Zarathustra and in his Nietzsche: The Man and His Works.
10
Let us think this thought in its most terrifying form: this existence, as it is,
without sense of purpose, but by necessarily returning, without finale into
nothingness the Eternal Recurrence, Nachlass, 6, Smtliche Werke, Kritische
Studienausgabe, (eds) Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Berlin/New York
(19671977) 1988, vols. 713; vol. 12, pp. 211217, fragment VIII 5 [71].
11
Of course here what is discounted is naturalistic justifications concerning
wonder, or philosophy as the highest pleasure.
Zarathustra on Freedom
1
Z, I, On the Way of Creators. All translations from Nietzsches texts in this essay
are mine.
2
TSZ, Prologue, p. 3.
3
Ibid., p. 5.
4
Ibid., I, On the Three Metamorphoses.
5
KSA 1, UB 4, p. 506.
6
TSZ, II, Of Priests.
7
Ibid., I, Of the Tree on the Mountain.
8
HH, I, 542.
9
TSZ, I, Of the Passions of Joy and Pain.
10
KSA 13, p. 485, 16[7].
11
D, p. 560.
12
EH, Why I am so Clever, p. 9.
13
The first verse of Goethes poem Selige Sehnsucht reads: Sag es niemand, nur den
Weisen,/Weil die.
14
Menge gleich verhhnet,/Das Lebendge will ich preisen,/Das nach Flammentod sich
sehnet.
15
TSZ, I, On the Way of Creators.
16
Ibid., I, Of Thousand and One Goals.
17
Ibid., II, On Self-Overcoming.
18
Ibid., Prologue, p. 2.
19
Ibid., I, On the Three Metamorphoses.
20
Ibid., Prologue, p. 9.
21
Ibid., I, On the Virtue of Giving, p. 3.
Nietzsche On the Regenerative Character of Dispositions

1
Nietzsche, F. (1995) Z, trans. by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Random House, p.
220.
2
Ibid., p. 219.
3
Ibid., p. 159.
4
Ibid., p. 157.
Notes 201
5
Nietzsche characterizes the morbid life of his biological father in EH, trans. and
ed. by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Random House, p. 222.
6
On the theme of being present during the modus of a self-prescribed absence,
compare Derrida (1978) As if I Were Dead. Als ob ich tot wre, Vienna: Turia
& Kant.
7
On touching as a metaphysical sensibility, see Jacques Derrida (1978) On
Touching, trans. by Christine Irizarry, ed. by Werner Hamacher, Palo Alto:
Stanford University Press.
8
Nietzsche, Zarathustra, p. 220.
9
Ibid.
10
On the experimental character of life under postmodern conditions see
Avital Ronell (2005) The Test Drive, Urbana and Chicago: University of
Illinois Press.
11
On Nietzsches unheard of ear, which also hears the unheard, see Jacques
Derrida (1978) Otobiographies: The Teaching of Nietzsche and the Politics of
the Proper Name, trans. by Avital Ronell, in The Ear of the Other, ed. by Christie
McDonald, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
12
Deleuze, G. (1994) Difference And Repetition, New York: Columbia University Press,
p. 94.
13
14
Ibid., p. 139.
15
Ibid., p. 141.
16
Compare Nietzsche, F. (1874) The Use and Abuse of History For Life, Kritische
Studienausgabe Band 1, p. 270.
17
The term self-affection appears specious because a living creature does have to
be the life that is transmitted to him, but in a way that it medially experiences the
mimetic reproduction of the other life. This is rather an alter-auto-affection of the
life with oneself.
18
See Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 94. See also Arno Boehler (2005)
Singularitten. Vom zu-reichenden Grund der Zeit, Vienna: Passagen Verlag.
19
Agamben, G. (1999) Potentialities, Stanford: Stanford Univesrity Press, p. 267.
20
Nietzsche (1974) On the Use and Abuse of History, pp. 243334.
21
22
On performative speech-acts, see John L. Austin (1962, 1975) How to Do Things
with Words, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
23
On the medial performance of linguistic dispositives, see Judith Butler (1997)
Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, New York: Routledge.
24
On the mediality of being-in-the-world in the mode of Everyday Being Ones
Self and the They, see Martin Heidegger (1996) Being and Time, trans. by Joan
Stambaugh, State University of New York Press, pp. 118122.
25
26
Ibid., p. 133.
27
Ibid., p. 133.
28
Ibid., p. 134.
29
Ibid., p. 141.
30
Ibid., p. 215.
202 Notes
31
Compare the following passage. Stop, dwarf! I said. It is I or you! But I am the
stronger of us two: you do not know my abysmal thought. That you could not
bear! (Nietzsche, Zarathustra, p. 157).
32
Ibid., p. 159.
33
Ibid., pp. 215216.
34
Ibid., p. 216.
35
On the act of the double affirmation as a form of appropriation of a history that
is related to oneself, see Jacques Derrida (1988) Otobiographies: The Teaching
of Nietzsche and the Politics of the Proper Name, trans. by Avital Ronell, in The
Ear of the Other, ed. by Christie McDonald, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
p. 13.
36
In Search of the Wellsprings of the Future and of New Origins

1
My translation from Friedrich Nietzsche. Smtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe,
ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Mnchen: dtv, 1980 (KSA) vol. 4,
p. 265. All further translations in the present article from KSA into English by
the author (UNB).
2
Nietzsche, Z, Part III, On Old and New Tablets, nr. 25; KSA 4, p. 265.
3
Her father originated from a Huguenot family in southern France, came to
St Petersburg with his parents, became a colonel and was raised to hereditary
nobility by Czar Nikolaus I, on grounds of his services during the Polish insurrec-
tion of 1830/31; later on he was promoted by Czar Alexander II to the rank of a
general.
4
Compare Curt Paul Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie, vol. 2, Mnchen: dtv, 1981,
p. 130.
5
My translation from Friedrich Nietzsche. Smtliche Briefe. Kritische Studienausgabe,
ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Mnchen: dtv, 1986 (KSB), vol. 6,
p. 222; letter to Heinrich Kselitz on 13 July 1882. All further translations in
the present article from KSB into English by the author (UNB).
6
Letter to Malwida von Meysenbug of 1 January 1883; KSB 6, p. 314 f.
7
Citation by Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche, p. 170.
8
Compare Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche, p. 128.
9
Cited according to Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche, p. 149.
10
Nr. 96; KSA 3, p. 87 f.
11
Letter to Heinrich von Stein, Genua, beginning of December 1882; KSB 6,
p. 288.
12
KSA 10, p. 117, Nachgelassene Schriften, November 1882 Februar 1883
4[34].
13
A duration of 18 months for the pregnancy of elephants was reported by Arrian,
Roman historiographer of Alexander the Great respectively of the Indische
Nachrichten, Fortsetzung und Ergnzung der Geschichte der Feldzge
Alexanders; Arrians works were published by the Verlag der Metzlerschen
Buchhandlung, Stuttgart und Wien, 1832.
Notes 203
14
Nietzsche, EH, Preface, nr. 4; KSA 6, p. 259. See also Z, Part II, The Stillest
Hour; KSA 4, p. 189.
15
In his letters to Heinrich von Seydlitz and his wife Irene, Nietzsche refers several
times and quite hopefully to their Japonisme, even to their propaganda fr
Japon; in spring 1886, Nietzsche also mentions the apparent victory of the
Japonisme in Berlin.
16
Compare Dialogues of the Buddha. Translated from the Pali of the Digha Nikaya by
T.[homas] W.[illiam] and C.[aroline] A.[ugusta] F.[oley] Rhys Davids, Part III
(first published in 1921 by the Oxford University Press), London: Luzac &
Company Ltd, 1965. German edition: Franke, R. Otto, compare nr. 17.
17
Compare Dighanikaya. Das Buch der langen Texte des buddhistischen Kanons. In
Auswahl bersetzt von Franke, R. Otto, Gttingen/Leipzig: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht/J.C. Hinrichssche Buchhandlung, 1913, p. 199 f.
18
Nietzsche, GM, III, nr. 23; KSA 5, p. 396.
19
Nietzsche, Die frhliche Wissenschaft, Fnftes Buch, nr. 382; KSA 3, p. 636.
20
Compare Dialogues of the Buddha, Part III. German edition: Dighanikaya, Franke,
R. Otto; compare Nr. 8.
21
Z, Part I, On the Three Metamorphoses; KSA 4, pp. 31, 80.
22
Dialogues of the Buddha, vol. III, p. 139 f.
23
KSB 6, p. 282.
24
KSA 13, pp. 439 f., Nachgelassene Fragmente, Frhjahr 1888 15[45].
25
Compare Brian Victoria, Zen, Nationalismus und Krieg. Eine unheimliche Allianz,
Berlin: Theseus-Verlag, 1999. Book review by Dominique Eigenmann, Die totale
Kollaboration des Zen-Buddhismus, in: Tages-Anzeiger, Zurich, 25 November
2000.
26
Franke adds: Vielleicht eignete sich bermensch am besten als bersetzung,
wenn dieses Wort Goethes nicht durch die modernste Philosophie eine ganz
spezielle Frbung und durch die Manie einer literarischen Mode einen Stich
ins Lcherliche erhalten htte (p. 87, nr. 10).
27
Compare Joseph Klausner (1956) The Messianic Idea in Israel from Its Beginning to
the Completion of the Mishnah. Translated from the third Hebrew edition by W.F.
Stinespring, London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., pp. 483 ff.
28
Ttender Messias; in Tages-Anzeiger, Zurich, 7 May 1999: Funde aus der Wsten-
bibliothek. An exposition of original documents from Qumran by the Dead Sea
in the Stiftsbibliothek St Gallen.
29
The footnote in his book Glaubenswelt Islam occurs in the context of Schaefers
explanations concerning the Mahdi in the orthodox Islam: The Mahdi will resti-
tute the Islam, enforce the Koran in the whole world and subject mankind under
its law. It is noteworthy, though, that, according to Schaefer, the heterodox Shia
comprises the idea of a new book with a new law (Sharia), which will prove to be
a serious trial for Arabs. Here Schaefer refers to Abulaziz A. Sachedina (1981)
Islamic Messianism. The Idea of the Mahdi in Twelver Shism, Albany, NY, pp. 175 ff.,
and Moojan Momen (1985) An Introduction to Shih Islam. The History and Doctrines
of Twelver Shism, Oxford, p. 169.
30
KSA 13, p. 440, Nachgelassene Fragmente, Frhjahr 1888 15[45]. See also Hein-
rich Zimmer, Religion und Philosophie Indiens, Zrich 1961, 1979, p. 130 f.;
204 Notes
according to Zimmer the pre-Aryan Cakkavatti was given traits of a second ideal
corresponding rather to the context/tradition of the horse than the elephant(!).
These characteristics must have been developed by the Aryan semi-nomads
before they moved from Afghanistan across the Khyber Pass to India.
31
SS-circles showed great interest in Tibet, especially with regard to the practice of
power and the dogma of the Gelugpa Lamas. (Hitler and Himmlers admiration
for the rigid power structure of the Catholic Church sprang from similar
motives.)
32
See John D. Caputo (1997) The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida. Religion without
Religion, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Caputo stresses,
however, that he is not trying to get Derrida to go back to Hebrew school or to
start attending synagogue, far from it. That would reinscribe him in the circle of
violence that drives the concrete messianisms, of the positive religions that are
too positive for their own good (p. 337).
33
Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo (1998) (eds) Religion, Cambridge/Oxford:
Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
34
Zimmer, Religion und Philosophie Indiens, p. 130.
35
KSA 13, p. 236; Nachgelassene Fragmente, Frhjahr 1888, 14[37].
36
Steven Wasserstrom (1999) Religion after Religion. Gersholm Scholem, Mircea Eliade,
and Henry Corbin at Eranos, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
37
Nr. 149. KSA 3, p. 141 f.
38
Nietzsche, Z, Part III, Of Old and New Tablets; KSA 4, p. 246.
39
KSA 11, p. 563; Nachgelassene Fragmente, JuniJuli 1885 36[31].
40
Nietzsche, EH, Warum ich ein Schicksal bin, nr. 1; KSA 6, p. 365 f.
41
Compare Nietzsche, HH I, nr. 237; KSA 2, pp. 199 f.
42
Compare KSB 6, p. 288, letter to Heinrich von Stein, Genua, beginning of
December 1882.
Justice and Gift-Giving in Thus Spoke Zarathustra

1
Translation by the editor, from (1990) Also Sprach Zarathustra, Friedrich
Nietzsche: Werke in Zwei Banden, Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag.
2
In the recent reception of Z, the relation between justice and gift-giving has not
been sufficiently taken into account. See Robert Gooding-Williams (2001)
Zarathustras Dionysian Modernism, Stanford: Stanford University Press,
pp. 125126; Laurence Lampert (1986) Nietzsches Teaching, New Haven and
London: Yale University Press), p. 78; Gary Shapiro (1991) Alcyone: Nietzsche, on
Gifts, Noise and Women, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, and Alan
Schrift (1997) The Logic of the Gift, ed. by Alan D. Schrift, New York and London:
Routledge.
3
On the double meaning of gift as gift and poison, see Emile Benveniste (1966)
Problme de Linguistique Gnrale, vol. 1, Paris: Gallimard, pp. 315326.
4
Nietzsches anti-utilitarian conception of gift-giving is comparable to Marcel
Mauss (2000) The Gift (New York and London: W. W. Norton) and Alain Caill
(2001) Notes on the Paradigm of the Gift, in The Gift (Milano: Edizioni
Charta).
Notes 205
5
For more animals and gift-giving, see The Honey Sacrifice, The Cry of Distress,
and The Welcome.
6
For more, see also Alan D. Schrift (1996) Rethinking Exchange: Logics of the
Gift in Cixous and Nietzsche, Philosophy Today, p. 199.
7
On the notion of the gift, see Jacques Derrida (1995) The Gift of Death, Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, and (1992) Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money,
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
8
See in comparison Gary Shapiro (1989) Nietzschean Narratives, Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, pp. 5359, and Shapiro, Alcyone: Nietzsche on Gift, Noise
and Women, pp. 6869.
9
For a discussion of the various meanings of Untergang and bergang in Z, see now
Martha Kendal Woodruff (2007) Untergang und bergang: The Tragic Descent of
Socrates and Zarathustra, The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, no. 34: 6178.
10
For a different reading of the relation between gift-giving and going-under, see
Gooding-Williams, Zarathustras Dionysian Modernism, p. 125.
11
For a discussion of the difference between Christian love and gift-giving love as
reflected in the conversation between Zarathustra and the saint (Z : 2 Prologue),
see Shapiro, Alcyone: Nietzsche on Gift, Noise and Women, p. 22.
12
See, Michel Haar (1995) Du symbolisme animal en gnral, et notamment du
serpent, Alter. Revue de Phnomnologie, no. 3, p. 324.
13
For more on the meaning of Zarathustras descent, see Gooding-Williams,
Zarathustras Dionysian Modernism, p. 62.
14
Bataille bases his notion of general economy defined as an unproductive
expenditure of excess on the unreciprocated expenditure of solar energy, see
Georges Bataille (1991) The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, trans. by
Robert Hurley, vol. 23, New York: Zone Books.
15
Later, in The Honey Sacrifice, the animals describe Zarathustra as one having
overmuch of the good, as someone who is becoming ever yellower and darker.
Zarathustra confirms it is the honey in my veins that makes my blood thicker and
my soul calmer.
16
Lampert does not interpret gift-giving as a giving oneself over to the other that
generates a bond between the self and the other that is both just and liberating,
but only as a means to the progression towards a better future, rather then an
end in itself (Lampert, Nietzsches Teaching, p. 79).
17
Georges Bataille (1985) The Notion of Expenditure, in Visions of Excess, Selected
Writings 19271939, ed. by Allan Stoekl, Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, pp. 116129.
18
For Derridas conception of the gift in relation to this idea in Nietzsche, see
Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money, p. 24. For a contrary view, see Alexander Nehamas
(2000) For Whom the Sun Shines: A Reading of Also Sprach Zarathustra, in Z,
ed. by Volker Gerhardt, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, pp. 165190.
19
In agreement with Nietzsche, Derrida also insists that the gift can take place
only along with the excessive forgetting or the forgetful excess, Derrida, Given
Time: 1. Counterfeit Money, pp. 101102.
20
See in comparison Heideggers notion of the gift in the context of a
reflection on Ereignis as the gift-event of Being, and Shapiros commentary on
Heideggers reading of Nietzsche, On Presents and Presence: The Gift in Thus
206 Notes
Spoke Zarathustra in Shapiro, Alcyone: Nietzsche on Gift, Noise and Women,

pp. 1352.
21
See Schrift, The Logic of the Gift, p. 286.
22
On the anti-utilitarian aspect of gift-giving, see also Lampert, Nietzsches Teaching,
p. 74, and Shapiro, Alcyone: Nietzsche on Gift, Noise and Women, pp. 1819, 3536.
23
See in comparison Derrida who also holds that in giving the reasons for giving,
in saying the reason of the gift, it signs the end of the gift . . . (Ibid., p. 156).
24
See Eric Blondel (1991) Nietzsche, the Body and Culture, Stanford: Stanford
University Press, p. 1.
25
Jacques Derrida (1997) Politics of Friendship, London: Verso.
26
See Z, On the Friend on our lack of knowledge of the other.
27
See HH, p. 44 on the friends practice of gratefulness and revenge, in contrast to
those in whom virtue makes small.
28
On the prohibition to judge as a pre-condition for the attaining of justice, see
also, Pour en finir avec le jugement in Gilles Deleuze (1993) Critique et Clinique,
Paris: Editions de Minuit, pp. 158169.
29
Derrida also argues that a true gift ought not appear as gift: either to the donee
or to the donor in Given Time, pp. 1314, and on excessive forgetting or the
forgetful excess, pp. 101102.
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Index
abyss, abysmal 6, 23, 24, 51, 94, 96, 100, Birth of Tragedy, The 2, 48, 50, 78
106, 110, 121, 122, 124, 1445, Bizet, Georges 27
14850 Blanchot, Maurice 2, 3
affirmation 4, 25, 34, 64, 72, 120, 124, body 14, 16, 17, 28, 65, 94, 96, 99, 100,
147, 178 108
Agamden 147 Boehler, Arno 6, 14150
alms (or, charity) 6, 165, 167, 1702, Bonnet, Jules 152, 154
179 Brobjer, Thomas 4, 2946
Ambapali 1568 Buddha, Buddhist, Buddhism 26, 151,
amor fati 147 152, 15564
analytic revolution 12 Burnouf, Eugne 155
anarchy 134 Byron, Lord 39
animal passions 17
animal virtue 6, 16581 camel 36, 66, 6871, 72, 131
animalistic interpretation of eternal Carnap, Rudolf 1, 2, 3
recurrence 147 Case of Wagner, The 40, 43, 52
animality 16970, 173 cave 14, 18, 24, 62, 83, 140
anti-christ 40 Cerberus 102
Anti-Christ, The 43, 44 character typology 53, 60
antiquarian history 56 Charon 92
Apollo, Apollinian 58, 90, 100, 101 child 16, 18, 36, 66, 71, 72, 1056,
archetype 48, 152, 160 1357, 13940
Ariadne 20, 26 Christ, Christian, Christianity 5, 6, 19,
Aristotle 3, 63, 81, 84 20, 64, 65, 69, 70, 93, 109, 110,
art, artist 10, 28, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 61 123, 126, 151, 158, 162, 165, 167,
artist-philosopher 61 169, 171, 178,
asceticism 51, 52, 58, 65, 69, 152, 154, Cohen, Mark David 5, 7590
1578 contempt 1303
Autenrieth, J. H. F 78 continental philosophy 1, 3
autobiography 4, 5, 9, 29, 31, 32, 36, 45 convalescence 4, 6, 23, 84, 87, 93, 94,
avant-garde 154 14150
cosmology 4, 50, 55, 57, 61, 80, 88, 90,
Badiou, Alain 3 146
Bataille, Georges 3, 162, 172 creativity 3, 15, 16, 22, 33, 54, 55, 60,
Beethoven, Ludwig van 11 64, 65, 66, 70, 71, 72, 89, 116, 120,
Benjamin, Walter 160, 162 122, 130, 1369, 14150, 167
Beyond Good and Evil 29, 32, 38, 39, 41, critical history 56
43, 46, 51, 63 critical theory 4
212 Index
cultural philistine 53, 54 Euterpe 10

cultural revolution 64 Evola, Julius 162
cultural typology 50, 61 Existentialism 4, 45
Cupid 20 exploitation 6, 167
dance 13, 23, 28, 83, 142 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 20

Darwinism 35, 59 forgetting, forgetfulness 3, 71, 136,
Davids, Rhys 156, 158, 163 137, 1678, 170, 173, 1801
Dawn 133, 1545, 161, 163 Frster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth 33, 37, 153
death of god 14, 30, 34, 55, 109, Franke, R. Otto 158
111, 115, 116, 118, 120, 122, free death 17
1246, 160 free spirit 54, 55, 56, 69, 124
deconstruction 4, 160, 161 freedom 4, 5, 6, 54, 55, 70, 71, 120,
deed 58 12940, 1656, 16870, 1723, 174,
Deleuze, Gilles 144, 147 1767, 179
Democritus 48 friends, friendship 15, 18, 33, 1667,
Derrida, Jacques 3, 6, 1601, 1668, 169, 174, 1779, 181
170, 174, 1767 Fries, Jakob Friedrich 77
Deussen, Paul 161
Dighanikaya 6, 15164 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 58
Dionysian Dithyrambs 40, 42 Gay Science, The 37, 39, 80, 91, 92, 93,
Dionysus, Dionysian 2, 3, 4, 5, 14, 18, 99, 105, 157
20, 26, 27, 42, 43, 44, 45, 58, 64, genealogy 3, 47, 147
82, 90 Genealogy of Morals, The 29, 38, 39, 43,
disposition 14150 46, 47, 52, 69, 114, 118, 134, 157
dithyramb 20, 23 gentleness 137, 168, 175, 17981
domination 6, 120, 133, 165, 167, German Idealism 2
17880 gift, gift-giving 4, 6, 57, 165181
drives (Triebe) 10, 14, 15, 1334, 138 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 30, 39,
134
Ecce Homo 29, 31, 33, 35, 43, 48, 58, 95,
134, 154, 162 Hades 92, 94, 100, 101, 102
Einstein, Albert 85, 88 Handel, George Frideric 9
Emerson, Ralf Waldo 31, 36, 37, 39 Hayden, Joseph 9, 13
Empedocles 29, 49 health 41, 52, 57
epochal shift 55 hearing 11, 12, 28, 37, 58, 69, 144
Eros 20 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 20, 113
eternal recurrence of the same 4, 5, Heidegger, Martin 2, 29, 57, 96, 102, 162
6, 11, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30, 33, Heracles 92
38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 49, 56, 61, 64, Heraclitus 29, 49, 63, 78
65, 66, 72, 7590, 91108, 110, hermeneutics 4, 123
111, 1226, 1436, 148 Hesiod 18, 142
eternity 27 hierarchy 5960, 1334, 158, 165, 177
Index 213
higher man 56, 140 Levinas, Emmanuel 160

Hinduism 111 liberation 12940, 1656, 172
historical typology 55, 61 Licchiavi 1567
historical unconsciousness 61 life 20, 21, 27, 28, 31, 36, 45, 49, 64, 66,
Hlderlin, Friedrich 39 83, 87, 99, 116, 120, 121, 14150,
Homer 102 153, 154, 167, 169, 176
Human All Too Human 31, 51, 132, life affirmation 64, 65, 72
154, 162 life negation 64, 65, 71, 72, 96
Huntington, Samuel P. 151, 160 lion 23, 36, 66, 70, 71, 72, 131, 136,
137, 140, 153, 163
ideokinesis 28 Lipiner, Siegfried 38
imagination 28, 72, 142 literary philosophy 63
innocence 5, 66, 71, 72, 109, 136, 137 literature 12
innocence of becoming 25, 71 Loeb, Paul S. 5, 91108
Irigaray, Luce 3 love 32, 36, 147, 169, 176, 179
Islam 151, 158, 159, 164 Ludic philosophy 66, 67, 72
Isle of the Graves 20 Lully, Jean-Baptiste 12
Isles of the Blessed 18, 19, 20, 23, 92 Luther, Martin 49
Jesus 49 Mahler, Gustav 12, 27

Jewish messiah 15864 Mann, Thomas 30
Jews, Jewish, Jewish faith 151, 1589, Marquis de Sade 162
1601, 164 Marx, Karl 160
joy 1423 masochism 5, 109, 123
Judeo-Christian 19, 110 Mayer, Robert 77
justice 6, 16, 55, 130, 1434, 152, Mendelssohn, Felix 9
1578, 160, 16581 meta-philosophy 4, 5, 63
metaphor 12, 38, 45, 114, 139, 142,
Kant, Immanuel 3, 20, 21, 31 154, 1689
Kastner, Karl Wilhelm Gottlieb 77 moment (Augenblick) 5, 23, 75, 87, 88,
Klossowski, Pierre 162 89, 90, 91108, 124, 147, 173
Kppen, Carl Friedrich 155 monotheism 6, 151, 160
Kselitz, Heinrich (Peter Gast) 10, 11, monumental history 56
12, 18 moral world-order 35
Krug, Gustav 9 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 9, 13
Munck, Georg Wilhelm 77
last man 14, 56, 110, 131 Muses 14150
laughter 17, 21, 37 music 3, 4, 928, 141
Leibniz, Gottfried Wihelm 3, 20 musical theory 4, 928
Lemma, Vanessa 6, 16581 Musil, Robert 30
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 51 mystical 2, 162
Levi, Hermann 11 myth, mythology 3, 50, 93, 108, 113,
Levi Strauss 120 114, 134
214 Index
Naturphilosophie 779 post-structuralism 4

Newtonian physics 76 power 9, 49, 50, 54, 56, 58, 60, 72, 120,
Nihilism 4, 5, 21, 52, 56, 65, 67, 70, 71, 157, 179
72, 80, 82, 90, 109, 120, 124, 141 power of sexuality 34
non-Euclidean geometry 7590, 97 Pre-Socratics 48, 49
Nussbaumer-Benz, Uschi 6, 15164 principle of sufficient reason 3
propositionalist philosophy 6471, 72
Odysseus 23, 92, 102
Oldenberg, Hermann 1556 redemption 22, 1223, 124, 145, 146,
ontology of time 5, 7590 152, 162, 167
opera 11, 12 Re, Paul 32, 36, 153
Orpheus 18 reincarnation 5, 924, 95, 99, 1018
otherworldliness 65 remembrance 147
Overbeck, Franz 12, 32, 36 resentment 116, 119, 120, 157, 165,
167
Pantheism 31 restricted economy 3, 166
Parkes, Graham 4, 928 revaluation of all values 40, 42, 43, 48,
performative speech 6, 14150 57, 64, 112, 152, 1745
Perptuum Mobile 7590 revenge 5, 16, 19, 22, 24, 44, 49, 50, 56,
personal experience 32, 36, 44, 45, 61, 124, 149, 165, 167, 180
14150 Riemann, G. F. B. 79, 85, 97
perspective, perspectivism 59, 60, 65, Ring of the Nibelungen 12
66, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 93, 969, Rohde, Erwin 33
11921, 152, 163 Romanticism 2, 52
phenomenology 4 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 11
Philo of Alexandria 159 Russell, Bertrand 63, 66
Philosophers Book, The 50
philosophical revolution 3 Salom, Lou 32, 36, 37, 1537
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Scarlatti, Alessandro 12
Greeks 78 Schacht, Richard 4
phoenix 1345 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm
physics 4, 5 Joseph 20, 78
pity 19, 30, 33, 131, 172, 180 Schopenhauer, Arthur 2, 3, 31, 33, 34,
Plato, Platonism 3, 5, 19, 20, 33, 48, 63, 37, 39, 52, 111, 155
64, 65, 94, 95, 99, 100, 101, 102, Schubert, Franz 10
1048, 109 Schumann, Georg 10
play, playfulness 36, 57, 64, 71, 72, 136, self-overcoming 21, 32, 49, 157, 170
139, 153 self propelled wheel 72, 95, 136,
poetic sublimation 5, 44 15164
poetic return 3 selflessness 16, 44, 1712
poetry, poetic method 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 26, sexuality 17, 52, 53, 61, 65
29, 33, 38, 63, 91, 92, 93, 104 Shapiro, Gary 175
political friendship 166, 177 silence 24, 58, 93, 121, 1778
Index 215
singing 20, 143, 144 value(s) 49, 50, 54, 57, 61, 64, 113, 115,
slave mentality 5, 10926 116, 117, 119, 120, 125, 130, 131,
Socrates 5, 21, 33, 49, 50, 51, 92108 134, 136, 137, 138, 177
solitude 14, 18, 22, 24, 25, 26, 32, 33, Vattimo, Gianni 161
35, 41, 58, 67, 92, 93, 140, 1489, virtue(s) 14, 16, 17, 19, 24, 57, 130,
169, 174, 178 133, 16581
Sophists 119 Von Blow, Hans 10
Spinoza, Baruch 39 Von Hellwald, Friedrich 34, 35
spirit of gravity (or, heaviness) 5, 15, Von Helmholtz, Hermann 77
17, 20, 21, 25, 50, 56, 61, 93, Von Schirnhofer, Resa 36
94108, 124, 141 Von Seydlitz, Reinhart 37, 156
Spitteler, Carl 38 Von Stein, Heinrich 32, 1545, 164
Stoics 99 Von Tevenar, Gudrun 5, 12940
suffering 14, 15, 17, 19, 22, 34, 65, 71,
99, 111, 130, 170, 179 Wagner, Cosima 10, 43
Suzuki 158 Wagner, Richard 10, 11, 12, 33, 34, 39,
symphonic structure 4, 928, 29 43, 52, 110, 1546, 164
symptomatology 47, 109, 116, 118 war 15, 137
Wenham, Alan 5, 10926
technical philosophy 5, 63, 667 Wilde, Oscar 45
theoretical man 3, 50, 51 wild wisdom 18, 20
three metamorphses of the spirit 5, 14, will to power 10, 16, 17, 22, 26, 30, 64,
36, 39, 6372, 14150 81, 117, 118, 119, 155, 163, 179
tragic, tragic insight 82, 90, 164 Will to Power, The 41, 59, 75, 80, 81,
transgression 1623 82, 88
Tuncel, Yunus 5, 4762 Windisch, Ernst 152, 156
Turgenev, Ivan 37, 39 wisdom 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 27,
type, typology 5, 11, 4762, 112, 115, 28, 56, 58, 61, 62, 68, 151
117, 119 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 2, 63
Twilight of the Idols 29, 40, 43, 46 woman, women 16, 20, 34, 36, 41,
163
bermensch (Overman) 5, 14, 16, 17,
19, 30, 35, 47, 48, 57, 58, 59, 60, Yates, Peter 5, 6372
64, 110, 122, 123, 124, 126, 138,
158, 174 Zagreus 18
Ulfer, Friedrich 5, 7590 Zen-Buddhism 156, 158
unhistorical 3 Zend-Avesta 34
Untimely Meditations 33, 56, 131 Zimmer, Heinrich 161
uselessness 168, 175 Zllner, Friedrich 79, 86
Utilitarianism 6, 166, 1756 Zoroaster 29

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Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy

Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy is a major monograph series from

Adornos Concept of Life, Alastair Morgan

Edited by James Luchte

James Luchte and Contributors 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

ISBN-10: HB: 1-8470-6221-0

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India

Chapter 1: The Symphonic Structure of Thus Spoke Zarathustra :

Chapter 2: Thus Spoke Zarathustra as Nietzsches Autobiography 29

Chapter 3: Zarathustra in Nietzsches Typology 47

Chapter 4: The Three Metamorphoses and Philosophy 63

Part II: Of Existence

Chapter 5: Zarathustra, the Moment, and Eternal Recurrence

Chapter 6: The Gateway-Augenblick 91

Chapter 7: Thus Spoke Zarathustra : The Hammer and the

Part III: Of Life

Chapter 8: Zarathustra on Freedom 129

Chapter 9: Nietzsche On the Regenerative Character

Chapter 10: In Search of the Wellsprings of the Future and of

Chapter 11: Justice and Gift-Giving in Thus Spoke Zarathustra 165

Arno Bhler, Mag. Dr, is a University Lecturer in the Department of

and a co-editor/co-translator of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the associated

Peter Yates was awarded a PhD from the University of Wolverhampton. He

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before

Carnap,2 Nietzsche, contrary to bad metaphysical musicians such as

a Dionysian wisdom through a philosophy that must trace its context of

Continental philosophy and other diverse regions of human knowledge,

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra as Nietzsches Autobiography, Thomas Brobjer

Part III, Of Life, begins with Zarathustra on Freedom, in which Gudrun

The Symphonic Structure of Thus Spoke

The power of music

mother from boarding school: Everything seems dead to me when I cant

drive-system of a musician from his music. . . . There are many more

composers in Paris, northern Italy, Mannheim, and Vienna, favoured this

The first movement of this symphony is in sonata-allegro form which often

On the Tree on the Mountainside introduces a closing theme with a

Zarathustras next speech, On the Thousand Goals and One (1.15),

The second movement of the early classical symphony is a slow movement,

Part II of Zarathustra is a repetition of a sentence-and-a-half from the last

Nietzsche comments in a letter to Kselitz: From this motto there

The next chapter, On Redemption (2.20), shows the culmination of

dance-like. While it is possible to regard Part III of Zarathustra as having

The speech ends with an affirmation of still deeper wisdom:

insofar as Zarathustra is recounting himself to himself in solitude, the

Therefore, what do we learn from trying to read and hear Zarathustra as

A misunderstanding of its tempo, for example and the sentence itself is

This passage suggests we are unlikely to divine Nietzsches meaning unless

Thus Spoke Zarathustra as Nietzsches

seen by some, but surprisingly often forgotten or ignored. Nietzsches

The extent to which Z is based on Nietzsches life can be seen in a number

Men at present begin by entering the realm of culture as children

An interest in biographical and autobiographical texts and material,

Nietzsche also frequently refers to Zarathustra as his son,14 and to himself as

When Doctor Heinrich von Stein once honestly complained that he

While discussing the third and fourth Unzeitgemsse Betrachtungen about

It was in this way that Plato employed Socrates, as a semiotic for

On first impression, there are few similarities between Nietzsche and

Nietzsche found the figure of Zarathustra in his reading of the cultural

In Hellwalds account of Zarathustra there are several further aspects that