International Studies in Philosophy XXII / 2

A MORAL IDEAL FOR EVERYONE AND NO ONEl

DANIEL W. CONWAY

Every artist. . . arrives at the pinnacle ofgreatness only when he comes to see himself and his art beneath
him - when he knows how to laugh at himself. (GM III 3)'

Dissatisfied with the extant reviews of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche oc-
casionally composed his own. In Twilight of the Idols, for example, he described
Zarathustra as "the most profound book [humankind) possesses" (TI 9:51). In
Ecce Homo he added that Zarathustra is "the greatest present that has ever been
made to [humankind) so far" (EH P 4). Yet in addition to praising Zarathustra
as an unrivalled masterpiece of European letters, Nietzsche's "reviews" also
celebrate the unprecedented problems of interpretation that Zarathustra presents
for its readers. Nietzsche apparently derived a perverse sense of satisfaction from
the untimeliness of his creation:
When Dr. Heinrich von Stein once complained very honestly that he didn't understand
a word of my Zarathustra, I told him that this was perfectly in order: having understood
six sentences from it-that is, to have really experienced them-would raise one to a higher
level of experience than "modern" man could attain .... My triumph is precisely the op-
posite of Schopenhauer's: I say "non legor, non legar." (EH GB 1)

For the most part, Nietzsche's triumph has endured: although a popular
favorite of students, eccentrics and the otherwise alienated, Zarathustra remains
an enigmatic, forbidding work. Professional scholars generally fail to make sense
of the book as a whole,' and several commentators have recently suggested that
the book's dramatic and philosophical discontinuities contribute to its greatness. 4
Rather than account for the duplicity within Nietzsche's own "reviews" of
Zarathustra, most scholars thus align themselves with one evaluation or the other:
either Nietzsche deliberately exaggerates the importance of Zarathustra or he is
simply deluded about its contribution to the enhancement of the species. 5 After
all, how can Nietzsche seriously applaud the world-historical impact of a book
that, by his own admission, no one else (yet) appreciates?
Nietzsche supplies us with a clue to his dual appreciation of Zarathustra in
the subtitle he provides: "A Book for Everyone and No One." Most readers
dismiss this subtitle as irreducibly gnomic, or conclude, reductively, that of
everyone who reads Zarathustra, none understands it. 6 But perhaps we should
take Nietzsche's subtitle quite seriously, by reading Zarathustra as simulaneously,
and thus ironically, a book "for everyone and no one." Only by writing Zarathustra
18 DANIEL W. CONWAY

for everyon,e and no one is Nietzsche able to target his desired audience: those
free spirits who will use and discard Zarathustra while creating themselves anew'?
Because Nietzsche is generally received as primarily a critic of morality,
my concern with his positive moral teaching may seem perverse. s But morality
involves much more than the universal prescriptions and metaphysical fictions
that Nietzsche so famously debunks. Although much of traditional morality con-
tributes to our sense of deficiency rather than to our sense of well-being, Nietzsche
refuses to conclude that morality as a project is exhausted, or that we are
powerless to improve our prospects for flourishing. "How ought one to live?"
is Nietzsche's guiding question, as it was for Socrates. Nietzsche's critical goal
is not to de:stroy morality, but to re-orient moral discourse to a consideration
of humankind as responsible for its own development and destiny.
The complexity of Nietzsche's moral philosophy lies not so much in its con-
tent as in its form, i.e. in the way in which it is presented. 9 Nietzsche's positive
moral ideal is relatively simple and straightforward. As an alternative to the self-
destrucive asceticism of the Christian-Platonic moral tradition, Nietzsche cham-
pions the sellf-sufficiency, or innocence, of the human condition. Now that God
is finally dead, humankind need no longer deem itself deficient in the eyes of
a superior alJthority, and is now free to serve as the guarantor of its own value.
Not unlike a vituperative epigone of Kant, Nietzsche rails against the herd-like
heteronomy of modernity and dares (some of) his readers to refuse the imperatives
of religion 2,nd tradition: "We, however, want to become those we are . .. human
beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create
themselves" (GS 335).10 Notwithstanding Nietzsche's aversion to most things
Kantian, his ideal of self-creation bears a strong "family resemblance" to Kantian
autonomy, and I will treat it as a member of that family.11
Zarathustra initially attempts to impart this ideal of self-creation via his vi-
sion of the Ubermensch, an exemplar of human self-sufficiency and autonomy.
But Zarathustra's presentation of his teaching, to which he devotes his inaugural
address, exhausts only a portion of the Prologue to the book itself. Throughout
the remainder of Parts I-III, Zarathustra labors in vain to tailor his pedagogy
to his auditors, who are mysteriously unable to distinguish his revolutionary new
teaching from the standard redemptive doctrines of the Western moral tradi-
tion. Zarathustra's chronic pedagogical difficulties dramatize the bankruptcy of
traditional modes of moral pedagogy and establish the need to develop a form
of moral di~icourse adequate to both his teaching and his historical situation.
As a consequence, virtually the entirety of Zaratbustra is devoted to the central
character's attempt to determine the best means of conveying his untimely
teaching.
Nietzsche views moral philosophy as a demonstrative enterprise whose im-
pact is essentially aesthetic:
 FOR EVERYONE AND NO ONE 19

What is it, fundamentally, that allows us to recognize who has turned out well? That a well-
turned-out person pleases our senses, that he is carved from wood that is hard, delicate and
at the same time smells good. (EH Wise 2)12
Nietzsche's aim in Zaratbustra is to acquaint us with an individual who similarly
pleases our senses. He therefore fashions an aesthetic setting in which Zarathustra
(eventually) "turns out well." First, however, Nietzsche must educate and refine
the sensibilities of his readers, so that they might appreciate the type of "wood"
from which Zarathustra is carved. While describing the difficulties involved in
reading Zaratbustra, Nietzsche cautions his potential readers:
Ultimately, nobody can get more out of things, including books, than he already knows.
For what one lacks access to from experience one will have no ear. Now let us imagine an
extreme case: a book speaks of nothing but events that lie altogether beyond the possibility
of any frequent or even rare experience .... In that case, simply nothing will be heard, but
there will be the acoustic illusion that where nothing is heard, nothing is there. (EH GB I)

Owing to their susceptibility to this "acoustic illusion," Nietzsche's prospec-

tive readers would profit very little from simply meeting an autonomous
Zarathustra, for they would be aesthetically unprepared to appreciate his achieve-
ment. A chronicle of Zarathustra's gradual development is therefore crucial to
Nietzsche's education of our senses, for his presentation of the "transfigured"
Zarathustra of Part IV presupposes the cumulative art of Parts I-III. Our aesthetic
appreciation of Zaratbustra thus depends just as crucially on our knowledge of
Zarathustra's initial Untergange as on that of his eventual "success." In order to
educate (or create) sympathetic readers, Nietzsche consequently presents
Zarathustra's successive incarnations as an unwitting ally of the Socratic moral
tradition (Parts I-II), as a wanderer in search of virtue and as a convalescent
(Part III), and finally as the embodiment of Nietzsche's ideal of self-creation
(Part IV).
The success of Nietzsche's artistic project thus depends in the end upon
Zarathustra's exemplification of Nietzsche's ideal, which in turn depends on
Nietzsche's success in creating a consensual readership for Zaratbustra. ll The struc-
ture of the text thus reflects Zarathustra's need "to become what he is," i.e. to
accede to the station reserved for him as the executor of Nietzsche's moral pro-
gram. Of course, this agenda is unknown to Zarathustra, whose stubbornness
and recidivism contribute to our appreciation of the way he "turns out."
The untimeliness of Zaratbustra thus (partially) derives from the paradox-
ical task that Nietzsche envisions for it. Nietzsche promotes an ideal of self-created
autonomy, and presents Zarathustra's life as an exemplification ofthis ideal. But
how could Nietzsche ever hope to verify the success of his teaching? Because
Nietzsche hopes to disabuse his readers of their slavish reliance on external
authorities, his readers must eventually "outgrow" Zaratbustra and renounce
Nietzsche's heteronomous influence along with all others. Zaratbustra must
therefore render itself obsolete in the process of promoting autonomy, to the
extent that Nietzsche's readers altogether abjure their reliance on it-and on
20 DANIEL W. CONWAY

him. Hence in order to promote the autonomy of Nietzsche's readers, Zaratbustra

must actually become a book "for no one."
Yet readers might discard Zaratbustra for any number of reasons, the
celebrated inscrutability of the book perhaps foremost among them. Hence we
cannot readily distinguish between those readers who have snatched Nietzsche's
wreath for themselves and those who have abandoned Zaratbustra in pursuit of
a more faciile recipe for redemption. We would search in vain for exemplars
of an identifiably Nietzschean way of life, for Zarathustra (ultimately) teaches
no such thing (309): "This is my way; where is yours?" So long as Zaratbustra
comprises a. book "for no one," we can never be certain of the success of
Nietzsche's teaching. Yet because the reception and readership of Zaratbustra
lie ultimately beyond Nietzsche's authorial control, Zaratbustra remains, for bet-
ter or worse, a book "for everyone." Despite Nietzsche's insistent pleas for a
select, educ2Lted readership of "posthumous men" and "philosophers of the future,"
Zaratbustra is read and misread by all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons.
Those readc!rs who cling to Zaratbustra as a vade merom have either embraced
the book as an external authority for their own lives or have not progressed
sufficiently to appreciate its teaching. Hence so long as Zaratbustra remains a
book "for everyone," we have prima facie evidence of the failure of Nietzsche's
promotion of autonomy.
On two occasions following the publication of Zaratbustra, Nietzsche alludes
to the self-referential, self-consuming nature of the book. First, in his 1886 Preface
to the Second Edition of Tbe Gay Science, Nietzsche revises his original descrip-
tion of Zaratbustra: " 'Incipit tragoedia' we read at the end of this awesomely aweless
book. Beware! Something downright wicked and malicious is announced here:
incipit parodia. no doubt" (GS P). That Zaratbustra is a parody is well known.
That Zaratbustra also comprises a self-parody is perhaps less familiar to Nietzsche's
readers. For the most part, Zarathustra faithfully reproduces the content of
Nietzsche's teaching, yet he unwittingly employs a form of discourse that effec-
tively parodies his teaching. As the author and narrator of Zaratbustra, Nietzsche
doubly inscribes self-parody into the text: he (wirtingly) parodies himself by in-
ducing ZanLthustra (unwittingly) to parody himself. Nietzsche's complex self-
parody thus engenders the irony of Zaratbustra: throughout Parts I-II, Zarathustra
does not realize that his parody of traditional moral philosophy ultimately ap-
plies self-referentially to his own teaching as well.
Irony is often construed as a purely subversive device whereby an individual
deliberately says what he does not mean. 14 Yet this account of irony strikes me
as deflationary, at least in Nietzsche's case. By exploiting a linguistic ambiguity,
Nietzsche botb does and does not mean what he says.15 This expanded account of
irony accommodates the complex self-parody of Zaratbustra. in which Nietzsche
strategically undermines his own authority. Nietzsche hopes to parlay the subver-
sive power of irony into a constructive contribution to the autonomy of his
readers. 16
 FOR EVERYONE AND NO ONE 21

In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche again endorses-albeit somewhat ellip-

tically - an ironic reading of the Prologue. Here he describes the historical con-
text of Zarathustra's emergence: "Noon; moment of the briefest shadow; end
of the longest error; high point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA" (Tl4).
The phrase "INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA," which thematically links this passage
to the one cited above from The Gay Scimce, is undecidably ambiguous. The "begin-
ning" is either that of Zarathustra the central character or of Zarathustra the book.
In either case, the passage remains mysterious, for both Zarathustra and
Zarathustra begin not at noon but at dawn. 17 As an account of Zarathustra's percep-
tion of his historical situation, this asynchronous description of his beginning
reinforces the irony of the text. Zarathustra thinks he goes under at "noon,"
a time of day emblematic of historical discontinuity, pregnant with possibility,
when in fact he goes under at "dawn," a time of day when the preconditions
of change have yet to be established. IS In misreading the "time of day,"
Zarathustra misunderstands the historical significance of his teaching and of his
Untergang. The distance that separates "noon" from "dawn" corresponds to the
preparatory education required of Zarathustra's auditors (and Nietzsche's readers)
before they can appreciate his untimely teaching.
The alleged historical discontinuity that occasions Zarathustra's enthusiasm
for going under is marked by the death of God. Zarathustra's centerpiece
teaching, the Ubermmsch, is apparently predicated on this insight into the death
of God, for he often speaks as if the Ubermmsch will somehow inhabit the cultural
space formerly occupied by God. But the narrator's reports indicate that the
actual historical context of Zarathustra's inceptum is the experience of nihilism,
which, contrary to the claim of many commentators, is not (necessarily)
emblematic for Nietzsche of historical discontinuity. Although Zarathustra's
auditors know that God is dead, they remain powerless to inform their lives
with this knowledge. Their knowledge of God's death leads them not to aban-
don their God-inspired commitment to the deficiency of human nature, but to
abandon all hope of ever redeeming this deficiency. Zarathustra therefore goes
under not at "noon," when humankind might finally emerge from the receding
shadow of the dead God, but at "midnight," when the shadow of nihilism
threatens to eclipse the last vestiges of human value. Hence the "longest error"
persists despite the fact that Zarathustra's auditors recognize it as such. He
therefore speaks not tC' the "high point of humanity," but to the last man, who
has relinquished all hope of ever flourishing as a complete human being.
Zarathustra's asynchronous perception of the "time of day" engenders his
pedagogical difficulties. Like a mirror image of Don Quixote, Zarathustra speaks
to an age that has not yet come. The ensuing duplicity is captured by the ir-
reducible ambiguity of Zarathustra's Untergang, which is the governing trope of
the Prologue. As Zarathustra explains to the sun upon embarking on his journey,
"Like you, I must go under [untergehm)-go down, as is said by man, to whom
I want to descend [ich hinab wilW (121). As the contrast of untergehm and binabgehm
22 DANIEL W. CONWAY

indicates, Zarathustra idiosyncratically articulates his desire to descend by means

of a word that generally connotes demise, failure, or destruction.
Here Nietzsche overlays Zarathustra's ostensibly simple declaration with
his own irony, thus generating a critical distance between Zarathustra and himself
as narrator. 19 For example, when the narrator reports Zarathustra's announce-
ment that his Untergang has begun, the narrator both does and does not confirm
Zarathustra's announcement. Although the narrator echoes Zarathustra's appraisal
of his situation, he also points to the limitations of this appraisal: Zarathustra's
descent has commenced, but so has his "demise."20 By implicating himself in
the parody of Zarathustra, Nietzsche ensures that the critical distance between
them does not threaten their complicity in the promotion of autonomy.
Nietzsche is not the first philosopher to chart the descent of the teacher
of virtue, and Zarathustra's Untergang serves to parody the katabasis of the Socratic
philosopher, who descends only under external compulsion. 21 In contrast to the
Socratic katabasis, Zarathustra's descent is motivated not by a recognition of the
deficiencies of his auditors, but by his need for the mediation of others: "Behold,
I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee that has gathered too much honey: I need
hands outstretched to receive it" (122). Zarathustra therefore concludes his open-
ing soliloquy by announcing his unconditional desire to return to humankind:
"Behold, th~; cup wants to become empty again, and Zarathustra wants to become
human again" (122).
Despite the anti-Socratic rhetoric of Zarathustra's opening solioquy, which
he delivers in the safery of solitude, the tension within his enterprise becomes
manifest in his initial exchange. When asked by the forest-dwelling saint why
he voluntarily renounces his solitude, Zarathustra answers, "I love humankind"
(123). Yet when pressed on this issue by the saint, who emphasizes the unworthi-
ness of humankind, Zarathustra abruptly reverses himself: "Did I speak oflove?
I bring men a gift" (123). But if Zarathustra's gift for mankind is not an expres-
sion of his love, then he must not genuinely desire to go under. By revising
his position, Zarathustra implicitly agrees with the saint that "man is too im-
perfect a thing" (123) to inspire his love. Zarathustra's account of his Untergang
thus echoes the justification for the Socratic katabasis: he goes under to redeem
those who are unworthy of his love. Falling prey to traditional Socratic pre-
judices, Zarathustra construes his auditors' ignorance of their own sufficiency
as a deficiency warranting redemptive measures. Nietzsche's irony thus extends
the scope of Zarathustra's parody to include not only Socrates, but Zarathustra
himself.22
This tension compromises Zarathustra's inaugural address to the crowd,
which he apparently intends "for everyone." Despite a pithy and succinct presen-
tation of his teaching, Zarathustra is not only misunderstood, but also ridiculed.
He conseqUlently spends the remainder of the Prologue modifying the presenta-
tion of his teaching in order to accommodate his inexplicably obtuse auditors.
In the Prologue alone, he adopts the various poses of preacher, pedagogue,
 FOR EVERYONE AND NO ONE 23

parabolist, sympathizer, advocate, herald, flatterer, critic, eulogist, undertaker

and mendicant before finally setting on the role of companion (135). Yet
throughout the protean gyrations of the Prologue, he never entertains the
possibility that someone other than his auditors might be responsible for the
pedagogical impasse.
Zarathustra's unwitting complicity in the Socratic katabasis leads him to
misunderstand his relationship with his auditors. Although openly contemptuous
of his auditors' weakness for prophets of redemption, Zarathustra is in fact deeply
and unwittingly dependent on his auditors for their recognition of him as the
herald of the Ubermensch. Although Zarathustra ostensibly promotes the autonomy
of his auditors, he in fact depends on them to depend on his formative influence,
and thus not to progress toward autonomy. In order to maintain his privileged
status as a teacher of autonomy, Zarathustra must ensure for himself a captive
audience of "cripples" and "fragments" who look to him for moral edification.
Parts I-II of the text thus reprise the general logic of Hegel's lord/bondsman
dialectic. Because he initially adopts the posture of the Socratic teacher of vir-
tue, Zarathustra grows dependent on his auditors for their recognition of him
as their teacher (i.e. their superior), but is in no position to accept their recogni-
tion as meaningful. His pedagogical posture therefore guarantees the continued
heteronomy of his auditors and compromises his presumed privilege as an in-
dependent teacher of autonomy.
At the close of Part II, Nietzsche's irony appears to be purely subversive:
Zarathustra has failed as a teacher of autonomy, and even he now realizes that
to go under is to "perish," as the ambiguity of untergeben suggests. Nietzsche's
complex self-parody thus deconstructs his own authority as well, insofar as he
depends upon Zarathustra to promulgate his teaching. Hence at the close of
Part II, Zarathustra clearly comprises a book "for no one."
Much as Plato immortalizes Socrates, however, Nietzsche "resurrects"
Zarathustra in order that he might complete his original project. Unlike Socrates,
who perishes "again" in the Phaedo, Zarathustra is granted a stay of execution,
whereby he lives to impart Nietzsche's teaching. Following his "convalescence"
in Part III of the text, Zarathustra appears in Part IV curiously detached from
his former concerns. Deviating from the otherwise similar opening scene of the
Prologue, the first chapter of Part IV depicts a Zarathustra who refuses to go
under. One might conclude that Part IV also deviates from the Prologue in that
here Zarathustra has actually abandoned his teaching, for he seems content in
the opening scene of Part IV to spend his time fishing. 23
But as Zarathustra confides from his mountain solitude, his apparent indif-
ference to his teaching is a "mere cunning" (351) designed to appease his anx-
ious animal companions. He now likens himself to a fisher of men,24 insofar
as he now views his audience:
24 DANIEL W. CONWAY

as an abysmal. rich sea-a sea full of colorful fish and crabs. which even gods might covet.
that for their sakes they would wish to become fishermen and net throwers: so rich is the
world in Glueer things, great and small. Especially the human world. the human sea: that
is where I now cast my golden fishing rod and say: Open up. you human aybss! (351)

In the Prologue, we recall, Zarathustra was preoccupied with becoming empty,

with giving to humankind; in Part IV, however, he also longs to receive from
his auditors, to draw them up to himself. Rather than continue to compromise
his auditors' prospects for autonomy, Zarathustra no longer predicates his teaching
on a privileged authority. In order not to "perish," Zarathustra now refuses to
go under: "Thus men may now come up to me; for I am still waiting for the
sign that the time has come for my descent. I still do not myself go under, as
I must under the eyes of men" (351).
But ifZarathustra refuses to go under, then in what sense does he promote
the autonomy of others at all? Zarathustra acknowledges that his fishing expedi-
tion is foolish, yet he defends it nonetheless, as an improvement upon his former
"solemnity":
Has a man ever caught fish on high mountains? And even though what I want and do up
here be folIy [Thorheit). it is still better than if I became solemn down there from waiting ...
[like) an impatient one who shouts down into the valleys. "Listen or I shall whip you with
the scourg'" of God!" (351)

As he now realizes, his teaching was flawed from the outset: although he claimed
in the Prologue to present humankind with an unconditional gift, his pedagogical
approach required that someone listen to him. Owing to this ostensibly innocuous
condition on his discourse, he grew dependent on his auditors for their recogni-
tion of him as their teacher. His unconditional gift for humankind, which he
had originally likened to a surfeit of honey (122), thus degenerated into a "honey
sacrifice [Honig-Opfer]." His auditors could progress toward autonomy only at
the expense of his own sense of authority. In Part IV, Zarathustra consequently
renounces his original understanding of his teaching. One cannot consistently
maintain, as he did, that one's gift is both unconditional and sacrificial.
In contrast to the "honey sacrifice" that culminated in his "demise,"
Zarathustra now recommends a new metaphor for his teaching: "Why sacrifice?
I squander ['~erscbwende] what is given me, I - a squanderer with a thousand hands;
how could I call that sacrificing?" (350) Like the bee, Zarathustra too squanders
his "honey." He now imposes no conditions on his promotion of autonomy- he
does not even require that anyone listen to him:
That is why I wait here, cunning and mocking on high mountains. neither impatient nor
patient .... For my destiny ... does not hurry and press me, and it leaves me time for jests
and sarcasms, so that I could climb this mountain today to catch fish. (351)

As a metaphor for Zarathustra's teaching, "squandering" accommodates the

indetermina,cies of Nietzsche's moral philosophy. When Zarathustra's auditors
failed to embrace his teaching, he "solemnly" abandoned his foolish enterprise
 FOR EVERYONE AND NO ONE 25

at the midpoint of the text. Nietzsche thus informed Parts I-II with a subversive
irony: Zarathustra's Untergang culminated in his "demise." But in Part IV,
Zarathustra now embraces the folly endemic to his enterprise: he is foolish to
fish on high mountains. As a self-conscious fool, however, Zarathustra enjoys
the unprecendented luxury of squandering his teaching. Since "no one" takes
seriously the teaching of a fool, Zarathustra is free to promote to "everyone"
his ideal of autonomy and self-sufficiency. In order to accomodate Zarathustra's
self-conscious folly in Part IV, Nietzsche transforms the subversive irony of the
text into a constructive irony. Having deconstructed his own authority, he is
free now to promote the autonomy of others without simultaneously exerting
on them an additional heteronomous influence. Hence Nietzsche too is a
squanderer, for he too presents his teaching "for everyone."H
Yet even as a squanderer, Zarathustra must command some form of authority,
lest his squandering fail to identify him as its author or "source." Why, after
all, should anyone come up to him in search of moral edification? Here
Zarathustra reveals that he tempts his prospective auditors with some extra-
ordinary "bait": "My happiness I cast out far and wide ... to see if many human
fish might not learn to wriggle and wiggle from my happiness, until biting at
my sharp, hidden hooks, they must come up to my height" (351, emphasis
added). Rather than claim for himself the authority of a privileged pedagogical
standpoint, Zarathustra now submits his own happiness as a concrete exemplifica-
tion of the ideal he promotes; he thus completes Nietzsche's project of moral
education. 26 As we have seen, the "success" of Nietzsche's project depends both
on his ability to educate his readers' sensibilities in preparation for Zarathustra,
and on Zarathustra's ability to impart to the reader a pathos for the ideal that
Nietzsche envisions.
As a "silent" exemplar of self-creation, Zarathustra claims for himself "only"
the authority of his own limited perspective; as he reminds the "higher men"
who seize his "bait," "I am a law only for my own [das Meinen), I am no law
for all" (397). Yet by "retreating" to the role of exemplar, Zarathustra does not
forfeit entirely his authority as a teacher, for his life now constitutes a kind of
teaching that others can absorb through imitation and emulation. But
Zarathustra's authority as a teacher now lies beyond his control and Nietzsche's
own as well. Zarathustra's pedagogical authority is no longer secured internally,
by appeal to a privileged standpoint, but externally, by the consensus of the "queer
human fish" who voluntarily seek to cultivate his virtues as their ownY
Hence in Part IV of Zarathustra form entirely subsumes content: Nietzsche's
promotion of autonomy comprises his aesthetic representation of that ideal in
concreto, as bodied forth by Zarathustra. Nietzsche consequently resigns his re-
maining narrative authority,28 bequeathing to us Zarathustra, an admittedly fic-
titious character whose authority as a teacher extends no further than we volun-
tarily and autonomously allow. By means of his constructive irony, Nietzsche
thus "forces" his readers to rely on the authority of their own consensus. If he
26 DANIEL W. CONWAY

has adequately educated his readers' sensibilities, and if Zarathustra strikes these
readers as a "well turned-out" exemplar of self-creation, then Nietzsche's own
limited authority becomes irrelevant. Nietzsche thus reconstructs Zarathustra on
the authority of his readers, as they progress toward autonomy. By squandering
himself (and Zarathustra), Nietzsche ensures that this book "for everyone," which
lies irretrievably beyond his authorial control, may also be a book "for no one,"
as occasional readers use and discard it in their own progress toward self-creation.
As Nietzsche remarks in Twilight of the Idols,
Posthumous men-I, for example-are understood worse than timely ones, but heard bet·
ter. More precisely: we are never understood-hence our authority. (TI 1:15)

1 I would like to thank Professor Karen Shabetai for kindly inviting me to address the Pacific
Coast Philological Association, to whom I presented an earlier version of this essay in 1987.

2 With the exception of occasional minor emendations, I rely throughout this essay on Walter
Kaufmann's translations of Nietzsche's works for Viking Press and Random House. Numbers refer
to sections rather than to pages, and the following key explains the abbreviations for my cita·
tions. AC: 7:be Antichrist(ian}; BGE: Beyond Good and Evil; EH: Ecce Homo; GS: The Gay
Science; GM: Toward a Genealogy of Morals; TI: Twilight oftbe Idols. When referring to Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, I parenthetically cite the page numbers from Kaufmann's translation in The Portable Nietzsche,
New York, Viking, 1977.

3 Walter Kaufmann explains that Nietzsche's own lack of discipline and coherence com-
promises the potential unity of the text: "We might wish that we had ... spared us some of the
melodrama in Zarathustra . ... Often painfully adolescent emotions distract our attention from ideas
that we cannOI: dismiss as immature at all. ... After all has been said, Zarathustra still cries out to
be blue-penciled." The Portable Nietzsche. p. 344. Atthur Danto similarly maintains that the text "may
be entered at any point" (p. 20), for it is unified only to the extent that it "acquires a certain exter-
nal structure by having each segment pose as a homiletic uttered by Zarathustta." Nietzsche as Philosopher,
New York, MacMillan, 1965, p. 19. See also Eugen Fink, Nietzscbes Philosophie, Stuttgart, W. Kohlham-
mer, 1960, s. 64; and R. J. Hollingdale's translation of Zarathustra, Middlesex, Penguin, 1969, p. 35.
A recent and notable exception is Laurence Lampert's Nietzsches Teaching, New Haven, Yale UP, 1986.

4 Gary Shapiro claims that "Zarathustra is a rhetorical Spie/. It plays with serious affairs of
the understanding but does not aim at persuasion. It speaks without authority .... " "The Rhetoric
of Nietzsche's Zarathustra," Philosophical Style, ed. B. Lang, Chicago, Nelson-Hall, 1980, p. 355. Alan
Megill like wist· contends that "Nietzsche's project ... never proceeds beyond this initial intuitional
stage ... the category of literature seems to be the only one within which Zaratbustra fits at all .... "
Prophets of Extremity, Berkeley, U of California P, 1985, p. 62.

5 Nietz:;che asks (EH Wagner 4), "As for my Zarathustra: who among my friends saw more
in it than an impermissible but fortunately utterly inconsequential presumption?"

6 For example, Tracy Strong submits that "[Zarathustra's] doctrine is presented in 'a book
for all,' the true meaning of which is not available ('a book for none')." Friedrich Nietzsche and the
Politics of Tran~liguration, Berkeley, U of California P, 1974, p. 267. Lampert suggests (p. 4) that
the subtitle describes the progression of Zarathustra's audiences.
 FOR EVERYONE AND NO ONE 27

7 Nietzsche's correspondence suggests that larathustra was a carefully designed work. In his
letter to Overbeck of 10 Feb. 83, Nietzsche insists that larathustra comprises "a poetical work, and
not a collection of aphorisms." Nietzsche, Briefwechsel: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (referred to hereafter
as NBW) IIII, Colli and Montinari, eds., Berlin, deGruyter, 1981, s. 326. In a letter to Koselitz
in August of 1883, Nietzsche indicates that although he does "not yet have an objective impression
of the entire whole," it is nevertheless possible "to give a fairly accurate estimation of the whole
architectonic", "there is to come approximately as much as before-roughly 200 pages" (NBW II II ,
s. 442-43). Parts I and II of laratbustra, which Nietzsche had already completed, would be followed
by two additional parts. Nietzsche's most explicit reference to the unity and coherence of laratbustra
is found in a letter of 9 November 1983 to Overbeck, where he explains that "the various Parts
derive their necessity primarily from a sense of the whole" (NBW III I, s. 4 )5).

8 According to Alexander Nehamas, for example, Nietzsche "aims to attack not simply these
particular terms [i.e. good and evil] but, more important, moral valuation and the moral point of
view in general." Nietzsche, Life as Literature, Cambridge, Harvard UP, 1985, p. 107. Nehamas pro-
poses (p. 225) that "Nietzsche ... does not advocate and does not even foresee a radical change
in the lives of most people. The last thing he is is a social reformer or revolutionary."

9 An early reviewer, Karl Spitteler, "treated ... larathustra ... as an advanced exercise in
style and expressed the wish that later on I might provide some content as well .... As the petty
spite of accident would have it, every sentence in [Spitteler's] piece was, with a consistency I ad-
mired, some truth stood on its head" (EH GB I).

10 In promoting self-creation, Nietzsche translates Kant's injunction to unite subject and ruler
in a kingdom of ends into a more lyrical call for the integration of creator and creature within a
single soul, "In man creature and creator are united, in man there is material, fragment, excess, dirt,
nonsense, chaos; but in man there is also creator, form-giver, hammer-hardness, spectator-divinity,
and seventh day" (BGE 22)).

11 Of course, Nietzsche's account of self-creation deviates sharply from Kant's account of

autonomy. First of all, Nietzsche neither envisions nor promotes self-creation as a universal nor-
mative ideal. As the thrall of herd morality indicates, few individuals would deem such an ideal
desirable; as the order of rank decrees, fewer still possess the right to aspire to it (cf. GS 382). Second,
Nietzsche contends that" 'autonomous' and 'moral' are mutually exclusive" (GM II 2). Kant grounds
his ideal of autonomy in our nature as rational, free, and potentially dignified beings. But according
to Nietzsche, Kant has in fact rigged his account of autonomy in order to ensure that autonomy
dovetails in practice with conventional morality. For Nietzsche, the pursuit of autonomy necessari-
ly requires one to move "beyond good and evil."

12 Nietzsche later explains that "To communicate a state, an inward tension of pathos, by
means of signs ... that is the meaning of every style" (EH GB 4).

13 Nietzsche cautions us (GM III 4) against "a confusion to which an artist himself is only
too prone, as if he himself were what he is able to represent, conceive, and express. The fact is
that if he were it, he would not represent, conceive and express it, a Homer would not have created
an Achilles nor a Goethe a Faust if Homer had been an Achilles or Goethe a Faust."

14 John Searle's example of irony is typical, "Suppose you have just broken a priceless K'ang
Hsi vase and I say ironically, 'That was a brilliant thing to do.' " John R. Searle, "Metaphor," in
Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor, ed. M. Johnson, Minneapolis, U of Minnesota P, 1981, p. 281.
Paul deMan suggests that Nietzsche employs a similarly subversive conception of irony: "The wisdom
28 DANIEL W. CONWAY

of the text is self-destructive (art is true but truth kills itself), but this self-destruction is infinitely
displaced in a series of successive rhetorical reversals which, by the endless repetition of the same
figure, keep it suspended between truth and the death of this truth." Allegories oj Reading, New Haven,
Yale UP, 1979, p. 115.

15 Here I follow the suggestion of Gregory Vlastos, whose distinction between "simple" and
"complex" irony serves as the basis both for my distinction between simple and complex self-parody
and for the related distinction between "subversive" and "constructive" irony. "Socrates' Disavowal
of Knowledgt"" The Philosophical Quarterly 35 .138, p. 31. Gary Shapiro similarly maintains that "the
genuine ironist's sayings are both true and false, not simply the false disguises of a true reality."
"Festival, Carnival and Parody in Zarathustra IV," in The Great Year oJZarathustra (1881-1981), ed.
D. Goicoechea, Lanham, UP uf America, 1983, p. 51.

16 Nietzsche argues in Human, All Too Human I 372 that "Irony is in place only as a pedagogic
tool ... its objective is humiliation, making ashamed, but of that salutary sort which awakens good
resolutions and inspires respect and gratitude." Human, All Too Human. trans. R. J. Hollingdale,
Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1986, p. 146. In Ecce Homo. Nietzsche professes his "love of irony,
even world-historical irony." (EH Wagner 4)

17 Noon arrives in Zaratbustra only after Zarathustra has begun his Untergang, though neither
Zarathustra nor the narrator acknowledges the midpoint of Zarathustra's first day.

18 TI 4 associates dawn not with Zarathustra, but with the reign of positivism: the abolition
of the true world has yet to be acomplished.

19 Many commentators recognize no critical distance between Nietzsche and Zarathustra.

For example, Werner Dannhauser maintains that "The simplest answer to the question ["Who is
Nietzsche's Zarathustra?"[ is that Zarathustra is Nietzsche himself." Nietzsche's View oJSocrates, Ithaca,
Cornell UP, 1974, p. 241. See also Kaufmann, Nietzsche, Princeton, Princeton UP, 1974, pp. 198-204;
andJ. P. Stern, A Study oJNietzsche, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1979, ch. 9. Here again, Lampert
provides an instructive contrast, p. 14.

20 The narrator on two separate occasions in the Prologue announces Also Began Zarathustras
Untergang (122, 13 7), thus reinforcing the duplicity of the Prologue.

21 I explore the anti-Platonic imagery of Zarathustra's Prologue in an essay of related in-

terest, "Solving the Problem of Socrates: Nietzsche's Zarathustra as Political Irony," Political Theory
16,2, May 1988, pp. 257·280.

22 Cf. "Solving the Problem of Socrates: Nietzsche's Zaratbustra as Political Irony," p. 265.

23 In order to complete my reading of Zarathustra as contributing to Nietzsche's promotion

of autonomy, I here begin to draw upon the interpretation of Part IV that I originally presented
in "Solving the Problem of Socrates: Nietzsche's Zarathustra as Political Irony."

24 Whereas Zarathustra quite obviously parodies the Passion of Christ, Nietzsche elsewhere
expresses (what appears to be) admiration for Christ's public practices: "in truth, there was only
one Christian, and he died on the cross" (AC 39).
 FOR EVERYONE AND NO ONE 29

25 In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche claims that "nobody understand[s[ the art that has been squandered
[in Zaratbustra]: nobody ever was in a position to squander more new, unheard of artistic devices
that had actually been created only for this purpose" (EH GB 4).

26 Alexander Nehamas also emphasizes (pp. 230- 34) the role of exemplification in Nietzsche's
philosophy, though not with respect to Zaratbustra specifically, nor in the context of moral philosophy.

27 Megill (p. 63) claims-too strongly, I think-that "the Zarathustrian mind demands that
we accept its view of the universe; it does not attempt to argue for such an acceptance ... it stands
as an absolute to itself, natively self-confident, delighting in its free play. which it seeks, without
further justification. to impose upon the world."

28 "Now it may have been so or otherwise ... in short, as the proverb of Zarathustra says,
'What does it matter?'" (430) Cf. Shapiro, 1983, p. 61.