Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Friedrich Nietzsche

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ those years – the latter text, along with the earlier Human, All‐Too‐Human (1878) and the subsequent The Gay Science (1882) – present bold new investigations into human history, culture, society, political life, and religion.

      These works reveal traces of progressive Enlightenment thought. They explore humanity from a non‐religious, humanistic point of view. Nietzsche probed into the cultural rituals and behaviors of humankind and presented rational, naturalistic accounts for many of our practices and cultural institutions. In this period, Nietzsche employed the symbol of the free thinker to characterize his philosophizing.

DARWINIAN NATURALISM

      Nietzsche started writing these works in the late 1870s. By that point, Charles Darwin's findings were already disseminated – The Origin of Species was published in 1859 – and had achieved widespread scientific acceptance in Germany.

      It is clear from reading his texts of this period that naturalistic investigations into human history and development had influenced his thinking. Darwin's Descent of Man (1870), where Darwin applied his theory of evolution to man's moral development, gave Nietzsche additional context. He could now draw from a wider range of studies promoting Darwinian theories in relation to humankind.

But Nietzsche was beginning to introduce original perspectives that deviated from the theories of Darwin and others. Above all, he speculated on the specific question of morality and offered alternative hypotheses concerning its origins and dissemination. Instead of treating morality as a historical given, he had become interested in how belief in morality had arisen and how it had displaced other non‐moral perspectives. He speculated about what belief in morality could reveal about the individual who espoused it. This eventually led him to establish a dual history for morality: a master morality versus a slave morality.

      Whereas the master morality adhered to values promoting health, vitality, and affirmation of life, slave morality looked with suspicion at examples of human thriving and excellence. It was an important distinction, which he explored further in his most influential post‐Zarathustra work, the Genealogy of Morality (1887). Nietzsche's fundamental insight was that morality did not derive from a transcendent source, but was simply the product of a worldly power struggle.

      Nietzsche's critical view of morality led him to suspect a literary tradition that had unquestioningly accepted the moral point of view as the only one. He also started to distrust the scientific rhetoric that was being applied to man and his place in nature. He believed it to be a rhetoric colored by an implicit moralism.

      At this point, Nietzsche had reached a critical juncture: either to continue to write within a tradition he had intellectually undermined and which he felt to be spiritually bankrupt, or nihilistic – or to break free from the spiritual and linguistic stranglehold of the moral tradition.

It is here where the idea for Zarathustra came to him – or rather, as he later stated, it overtook him.⁵

THE BIRTH OF ZARATHUSTRA

The main inspiration for Zarathustra was the thought of the “eternal return” – the idea that universe is cyclical and that everything that happens is destined to endlessly recur. Nietzsche claimed to have thrown the idea onto paper in Silvaplana, Switzerland, in August 1881 – “6,000 feet beyond people and time.”⁶

      Another inspiration was more earthbound: a young Russian woman named Lou Salomé, to whom he had been introduced in Rome in April 1882.

      Nietzsche was intrigued by Salomé and began to court her. He aspired to win the intelligent young woman over to his philosophy, but Salomé proved to be too independent. The breakdown of their passionate friendship, by late 1882, precipitated a crisis in his family. His scheming sister Elisabeth had become jealous of Salomé and plotted against them.

Nietzsche was thrown into emotional turmoil. The affair had dashed his last hope for an intimate partnership. But it triggered an intense outpouring of his creative energies. Zarathustra was born in a series of short, inspired bursts each lasting ten days, according to Nietzsche.⁷ The known facts concerning its composition bear out his claim.

PUBLICATION

Zarathustra is comprised of four parts and a prologue. Zarathustra I was published in August 1883 in a print run of 1,000 copies.⁸ The book, and its subsequent parts, sold even more poorly than his previous works. He designated it a poetic work, and it departed in style and content from his earlier writings.

      Before Zarathustra I was even published, Nietzsche was working on a second part. In the summer of 1883, during a three‐month stay in Sils, Nietzsche completed Zarathustra II within two weeks, in July 1883. He sent the manuscript to his publisher and received page proofs in September 1883. It too was printed in a run of 1,000 copies.

      He was now busy at work on Zarathustra III. He completed the manuscript no later than January 1884, and it appeared in April, once again in a run of 1,000 copies. The design and format of all three volumes were the same – in blue card covers with red ink. The title page listed the book's title and publisher within a lined marginal border. The only distinction between volumes was the inclusion of a number to indicate the respective parts.

      In February 1885, Nietzsche announced to a friend that he had completed a fourth (and final) part. Unlike the other three, he self‐published the final part. It was printed in a limited run of just forty‐five copies, and he distributed nine of them to select friends in April 1885. It is unclear what happened to the remaining stock.

      All four parts of Zarathustra are today printed together as a single volume, and there is a unity that underlies them. But it is important to keep in mind that the fourth part came as a later addition not intended for the public, while the first three published parts represented a finished whole.

THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA – OUTLINE

Zarathustra opens with a prologue in ten sections that sets the stage for its narrative. It introduces the protagonist – a man who has lived ten years alone in the mountains and now wants to descend to impart his wisdom to the people (Prologue 1).

      Arriving as a prophet in a town, Zarathustra presents the ideal of the Übermensch to a crowd on a marketplace (Prologue 3). This higher being will transcend our present conception of man and will become the new meaning of the earth. He will be as superior to our current man as man now is in relation to the ape. (In English, Übermensch is variously translated as “Superman,” “Overman, “Uberman,” “Superhuman,” or “Overhuman.”)

      Zarathustra then contrasts his vision of the Übermensch with the reality of the “last” man (Prologue 5). This last man shuns risk and seeks only comfort and conformity. He is like a flea that has overrun the earth with his mediocrity. Despite Zarathustra's disgust with the vision of the last man, the people in the town end by mocking his ideal and clamoring for the last man instead.

      Nietzsche then inserts a dramatic interlude with a tightrope walker. He is there to offer the raucous crowd some entertainment (Prologue 6). While crossing over to the other side, the tightrope walker is pushed off by a scheming jester and falls to his death. The crowd is indifferent, but Zarathustra is moved by СКАЧАТЬ