What is thus spoke zarathustra about

However, at its best, Zarathustra is unquestionably a masterpiece. Nietzsche's subtitle—"A Book for None and All"— might help us to understand the peculiar style in which it was written.

Nietzsche was an incredibly lonely man, and believed, quite rightly, that none of his contemporaries understood him intellectually. He knew perfectly well that his works would be misunderstood, and his writings are replete with harsh condemnations of "the rabble.

On the other hand, his subject matter concerns the fate and destiny of the human race, and in that sense it is surely a book for all. The fact that Nietzsche felt his work to be of supreme significance coupled with the fact that he had no sense of an audience might explain the crazed audacity of his writing.

The best model for his purposes would be hagiography or religious scripture. The only difference is that he needed to lace his writing with laughter and irony that would mystify solemn thinkers. We can approach Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole, and Zarathustra in particular, by grasping the principle of the will to power as the fundamental drive of all things. Everything must obey something, and if one can't obey oneself, one must obey someone else. True freedom is only granted to those who can command themselves.

The will to power does not apply only to beings, but also to ideas: religion, morality, truth, and other concepts are all subject to the same struggle for power that dominates life.

Because all things are characterized by a constant struggling, striving, and overcoming, nothing can remain fixed in place for too long. Like the Analects of Confucius and other ancient texts, Also sprach Zarathustra is meant to be worked through and puzzled over. Each reader comes away with a highly subjective interpretation of what the book means, making a summary difficult. Nietzsche himself would follow Zarathustra with several more books that attempted to explain it. Perhaps its main idea is that humans should embrace life, nature, the body and material existence, with all its pleasures and pains, rather than seek for a spiritual world beyond or afterlife.

Its optimistic but challenging message is that life, even with all its suffering, is fundamentally worth living for its own sake, and that we should live accordingly. Though the initial idea for Also sprach Zarathustra may have originated a few years before, Strauss began serious work on it in February , composing the bulk of it in the summer while staying in the Austro-Italian Dolomites.

Nietzsche himself was still alive, although he had long since gone insane likely as a result of tertiary syphilis. The horn is answered by a hymn-like melody that is brilliantly orchestrated for divisi strings. This struggle between faith and nature crescendos as upward-thrusting motifs rumble from the depths of the orchestra, leading to the next section: Von den Freuden und Leidenschaften Of Joys and Passions.

An intense, passionate melody appears in the violins over a turbulent orchestral accompaniment. Apparently it was already arcane and replete with wordplay and personal references in its original form. There were a few moments when I encountered new, interesting words and consulted the dictionary, only to discover it was not an actual word. I'm sure the translators were doing the best they could. Also granted, this was published in , and I came along a good years later.

You can only blame a book so much for being a product of its time, though. I don't see much of value here for a modern audience. The main message of the book is to prepare the way for the superman.

The idea is that mankind is only a transitional form, building toward a higher, better race. All efforts should be made to hasten his arrival and to stop mollycoddling weak, needy degenerates. What will this superman accomplish? What makes him so super? Why is his coming so important that all the ugly and inferior denizens of Earth must needs be eradicated?

These questions are never raised, let alone answered. Zarathustra aka Zoroaster, the ancient founder of Zoroastrianism was chosen as the protagonist for a cloud of reasons: his name sounds cool, he's Persian Nietzsche considered them early individualists , and he was all about truth.

Nietzsche has him walk up and down mountains to talk to the people he meets and shout he is always shouting or exclaiming - there are many exclamation marks his philosophy. Along the way he encounters various real and allegorical animals all of whom represent someone important in Nietzsche's life or some group of people as well as a small cast of other humans.

At times he disappears for a while. Other times he gets really worked up. Eventually Zarathustra gathers some "higher men" in his cave and talks to them there. That's the extent of this skeletal plot, and it's even more boring and threadbare than that sounds. The structure reminded me a lot of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet , until I looked them up and saw that Gibran was a huge fan of Nietzsche's.

Go figure. There are long, long passages devoid of content. Screed and mumbo jumbo, really. A few examples: Life is a well of delight; but where the rabble also drink, there all fountains are poisoned. To everything cleanly am I well disposed; but I hate to see the grinning mouths and the thirst of the unclean.

Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings, who think themselves good because they have crippled paws! The stupidity of the good is unfathomably wise. O my soul, I have given thee new names and gay-coloured playthings, I have called thee "Fate" and "the Circuit of circuits" and "the Navel-string of time" and "the Azure bell.

Do those last two even mean anything? I don't know. I tried reading them four times and then just had to move on. There's a lot of that. Oh, and I mentioned misogyny! As yet woman is not capable of friendship: women are still cats, and birds.

Or at the best, cows. Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman hath one solution - it is pregnancy. The happiness of man is, "I will. Man's soul, however, is deep, its current gusheth in subterranean caverns: woman surmiseth its force, but comprehendeth it not. These aren't just selective quotes out of context - this is pervasive. Nietzsche even has a character exclaim, "Strange!

Zarathustra knoweth little about woman, and yet he is right about them! There are mixed messages, and you never know when Zarathustra is supposed to be taken seriously. Nietzsche seems to have no concept of what makes some people great and others not, and is oblivious to the roles of circumstance and environment. Somehow, to him, some people are just inherently lesser, and his disgust is apparent. As though he were such a model human being himself: Nietzsche was frequently sick, out of work, unable to write, and suffering from dementia.

He has a weird, limited understanding of evolution, and borrows from religion frequently. Nietzsche proclaims God dead and the church corrupt, but also makes a display of his religious inculcation in his language and poetry.

Spake Zarathustra: "Man doth not live by bread alone", "do this in remembrance of me", and the psalmic punctuation "Selah". I had avoided Nietzsche for years, largely because I'd encountered him as the target of Christian apologist arguments along with Freud , and I didn't want him to be part of my own atheism. After this, I still don't. Fans of his assure me that I'd do better to read one of his less obscurantist works, such as The Antichrist.

Maybe I will. The best that can be gleaned here is encouragement to soar above and be the best person you can be, but I hope you don't do that at the expense of others. I can see why this book so often appeals to young men. There are indeed some deep insights and beautiful phrasings to be had here, but they are virtually lost in a sea of boring and spiteful blather.

View all 4 comments. Incredibly interesting ideas. For sure you will be thinking about what is said here for a long, long time. Nietzsche himself claims it is "the deepest book ever written". Zarathustra was the first moralist and now fictionally the first anti-moralist. This is intended as an irony, Nietzsche mimics the style of the Bible and indeed has ideas which fundamentally oppose Christian and Jewish morality and tradition. Many criticisms of Christianity can be found in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in particular Christian values of good and evil and its belief in an afterlife.

Nietzsche sees the complacency of Christian values as fetters to the achievement of overman as well as on the human spirit. According to Nietzsche, the will to power is the fundamental component of human nature. Everything we do is an expression of the will to power. The will to power is a psychological analysis of all human action and is accentuated by self-overcoming and self-enhancement please note emphasis on self.

Contrasted with living for procreation, pleasure, or happiness, the will to power is the summary of all man's struggle against his surrounding environment as well as his reason for living in it.

Faced with the knowledge that he would repeat every action that he has taken the eternal recurrence , a normal man would be moved to depression. An overman however would be elated as he has no regrets and loves life. To many it sounds like evolutionary theory.

And like Darwinism his philosophy was interpreted by many into a form of Social Darwinism and extermination of races. It is still up for debate whether he really was a Social Darwinist. A vulnerability of Nietzsche's style is that his nuances and shades of meaning are very easily lost — and all too easily gained — in translation. There is an ambiguity and paradoxical nature, which has helped its eventual enthusiastic reception by the reading public, but has frustrated academic attempts at analysis as Nietzsche may have intended.

Thus Spake Zarathrustra was however clearly intended to be taken as an alternative to repressive moral codes and an aversion to "nihilism" in all of its varied forms. Two things that can and should also be taken positively. There are certainly moral issues to take up against the man though as he intended. Most controversially and to the point that matters most for many, would he have condoned the mass extermination of Jews taken upon by Nazis?

Not passe at all, his ideas are alive and well today, but his immoral approach should be considered extremely problematic. If an important challenge to repressive moral codes it should also be firmly acknowledged as too absolutist and all-encompassing of a challenge to all morals.

And some you may or may not find helpful such as atheism. View all 3 comments. Dec 07, Ram Alsrougi rated it really liked it. Great, almost practical application, that it's almost possible to apply it even in today's society. Nietzsche's courage, creativity, and passion in this work make him enchant. However, while reading; I had to repeat many chapters twice because of his kind of strange and blunt language!.

Jun 22, P. All "It was" is a fragment, a riddle, a fearful chance - until the creating Will says thereto: "But thus would I have it. The story of Zarathustra, the seeker of his personal truth makes this work more alluring and i All "It was" is a fragment, a riddle, a fearful chance - until the creating Will says thereto: "But thus would I have it. The story of Zarathustra, the seeker of his personal truth makes this work more alluring and in the end more fleshed out and convincing to me than the previous two, sheer collections of aphorisms and thoughts.

Here again, I catch myself further entrenching that personal prejudice about philosophy, namely that novels or stories at large offer the most lively, the most unconstrained, easy-flowing and at the same time the most fleshed-out way, in short the best way, to convey an actual modicum of your philosophical notions to the reader, as he follows the subjectivity in motion of the characters, from inception to the embodiment of the values they themselves assert as the story progresses.

I have had actual, keen pleasure following Zarathustra's travels, the conversations and trials, and found myself sympathizing for the characters and the spirit inhabitating them, even smiling at some of their witticisms, their wilfulness and waywardness!

In particular during the feast at Zarathustra's cave, which I've had no difficulty imagining as a scene in Alice in Wonderland or the climax of a manga series or something along these lines :D Curious, isn't it! And I'm not even that much of a manga reader! There is something so exuberant, vibrant, cheerful and fateful at the same time in these last scenes that I have came as far as to feel among their very company, in the flesh, and I've had a fantastic time with the King on the Left and the King on the Right, Zarathustra's Shadow, the Soothsayer, the Voluntary Beggar, the Magician, the Ass, the Leech scholar, the Ugliest Man and the Old Pope 'out of service' I've even found an illustration of this memorable scene; A bunch of quotes: 'I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star.

Three times No! There are still Blessed isles! Silence then, you sighing sorrow-sack! For the great despisers are the great reverers. In that you have despaired, there is much to honor. For you have not learned to submit yourselves, you have not learned petty policy. For to-day have the petty people become master: they all preach submission and humility and policy and diligence and consideration and the long et cetera of petty virtues.

It is the hour of your greatest contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becomes loathsome to you, and so also your reason and virtue. So first, learn to love. And for that you have to drink the bitter cup of your love. Ready must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how couldst thou become new if thou have not first become ashes! I had strong doubts something akin to this didn't exist already to be frank, ha ha! Music: La Femme d'Argent - Air Zarathustra, the character through which Nietzsche vicariously spews forth his world-view, is a pompous, narcissistic, ego maniac that is so obsessed with how right he is, he can't see just how terribly wrong he ends up being.

Nietzsche constantly contradicts himself, uses poor logic and reasoning, and pushes for a social order that benefits only the elite. I'm appalled of Nietzsche's idea that the great men of the world should walk all over the little, regular people to achieve their greatness. He says that the existence of the general population is justified only by the fact that there may come out of them a greater race Hitler was a big fan of this view as well. He says that morality and ethics are not real, but merely tools to manipulate masses and hold back the elite.

This guy must have been insane! Turns out he was, being committed to a mental institution only years after finishing this work. I believe George Bernard Shaw put it best, when he said the following about this book: "Nietzsche is worse than shocking, he is simply awful Nietzsche is the champion of privilege, of power, and of inequality.

Never was there a deafer, blinder, socially and politically inepter academician The tale meanders all over the place as Zarathustra ejaculates ridiculous philosophy for page after page, his followers fawning after him with nary a singular thought of their own.

Both they and Zarathustra are in awe of Zarathustra's own wisdom and insight, and Nietzsche never lets a page go by without reminding us of his grandiose status. If anybody in the story tries to contradict Zarathustra, he merely laughs at how stupid the person is and ridicules them. This book is, in a nutshell, just a guy trying to make himself look all powerful, knowing, and important while making everyone else look bad. I give this book an epic FAIL! Sep 24, Chris Shank rated it it was amazing.

This is one of my top 3 favorite books of all time. It seems heavy reading at first, but it grows progressively easier once you get used to his language and ideas. His message is a bit different, enjoining his listeners to turn away from a traditional notion of God a This is one of my top 3 favorite books of all time.

His message is a bit different, enjoining his listeners to turn away from a traditional notion of God and values written in stone; but his call to a pure heart and pure mind, and his appeal to return to an innate sense of right and wrong with an emphasis on caring for others and striving to live according to the highest ideal for humanity moves essentially in the same vein. When I first picked up this book I knew next to nothing about Nietzsche or this specific work except, although I had heard it referred to by one of my profs in a negative light.

His works were cited as the voice of opposition. And so began my journey with the abomination that is called Nietzsche. Everybody knows about Nietzsche, very few know him. So many wiki-dabblers, so little reading of his actual work. Nietzsche would spit in the face of his executioner, and give a final word of hope and courage to those of us who are next. He would dig you out to freedom, and once in the free air, help you escape the searchlights of Mother church and state, furious with its escaped worshipers.

He has no promise of a map to buried treasure once outside prison walls, but he has the confidence that we can figure the rest out on our own. Nietzsche is, in general, a tonic against conformity. He speaks up for the individual, and he is loud, even brash.

Living is sacrificed to mere existence. And Lord knows we all know people that, if the fate of the human race were left in their hands, we would be done for. Contrary to these despisers of the body is the Ubermensch, the beyond-man-and-woman, the despiser of conventional living. Nietzsche passion was truly religious in essence. His precepts are much more negative than positive in that they are a foghorn away from the shoals, not as much a beacon guiding ships to harbor.

But being a negative voice in no wise implies that he is a pessimist. He believed in some mystical permanence of human existence, and embraced what feels like an Eastern idea of recurrence and reincarnation. So, as I have now developed a profound appreciation for some of his writings, does this mean I have become a blind fanatic of Nietzsche? Course not. Fellow-creators the creator seeks, those who grave new values on new tables.

Take heed lest a statue crush you! Now do I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when ye have all denied me, will I return unto you. I choose to focus on what I appreciate from his works, but that does not vindicate him in all ways in my mind. View all 10 comments. Please note : Read in from an on-line edition for personal research and edification. Reactions to it are my own.

Annotated Synopsis : Described by Nietzsche himself as "the deepest ever written", the book is a dense and esoteric treatise on philosophy and morality, featuring as protagonist a fictionalized Zarathustra. A central irony of the text is that Nietzsche mimics the style of the Bible in order to present ideas which fundamentally oppose Christian and Jewish morality and tradition. The o Please note : Read in from an on-line edition for personal research and edification.

The original text contains a great deal of word-play. My Thoughts : Nietzsche espouses a desire to create Supermen, who will be superior to modern humans. He vilifies pity, charity, and sympathy as being weak, and glorifies the warrior and those who would be cruel to create strength in themselves and others "cruel to be kind" I suppose you could say. His character Zarathustra speaks in a stilted, medieval way which, I suppose, is supposed to call to mind biblical passages.

While I accept the importance of this work as philosophy and classic literature, I have to mark it as 2 stars because I felt this was, to a great extent, the philosophy espoused by Nazi Germany - at any rate, I could see where this formed part of the backbone of their society as developed and enforced by Hitler and his party.

I did not really enjoy reading it, although I feel it is important to read as many and as varied works as possible in order that I might learn something new all the time. View all 20 comments. Get a life, Nietzsche. This book gave me what I needed: a logical basis for accepting laughter into my life again.

And yet, this book says profound things about laughter. His point, if I understood correctly, is that laughter is the way to be open to seeing yourself; to face who you really are; and to accept yourself without walls and resistance.

And then the shouting and laughter of the Higher Men again came from the cave: it had started again. Already they are learning to laugh at themselves: do I hear aright? But he who wants to become light and a bird must love himself — thus do I teach. No wonder many a pot is shattered! Learn to laugh at yourselves as a man ought to laugh. You Higher Men, oh how much is still possible!

And my soul too is a leaping fountain. It is night: only now do all songs of lovers awaken. And my soul too is the song of a lover. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity — through him all things fall.

Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity! I learned to walk; since then I have let myself run.

I learned to fly; since then I do not need pushing in order to move from a spot. Now am I light, now do I fly; now do I see myself under myself. And that among men you will always be wild and strange: wild and strange even when they love you: for above all they want to be indulged! O happiness before evening! O harbour in mid-sea! O peace in uncertainty!

How I mistrust you all! Truly, I am mistrustful of your insidious beauty! I am like the lover who mistrusts all —too-velvety smiles. As the jealous man thrusts his beloved from him, tender even in his hardness — thus do I thrust this blissful hour from me.

Away with you, blissful hour! With you there came to me an involuntary bliss! I stand here ready for my deepest pain — you came out of season! Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit. Proverbs should be peaks, and those spoken to should be big and tall. The atmosphere rare and pure, danger near and the spirit full of a joyful wickedness: thus are things well matched.

I want to have goblins about me, for I am courageous. The courage which scareth away ghosts, createth for itself goblins — it wanteth to laugh. Aug 03, Mohammad Ali Abedi rated it did not like it. It had to happen. There had to come a moment in my life where I would sit down and start reading, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra". And I am glad I did, because I can now confidently state that this book is garbage. I don't care how uncool and unintelligent this makes me seem, but I have no doubt about it.

Here is what he wrote about It had to happen. Here is what he wrote about his book, "With [Thus Spoke Zarathustra] I have given mankind the greatest present that has ever been made to it so far. This book, with a voice bridging centuries, is not only the highest book there is, the book that is truly characterized by the air of the heights—the whole fact of man lies beneath it at a tremendous distance—it is also the deepest, born out of the innermost wealth of truth, an inexhaustible well to which no pail descends without coming up again filled with gold and goodness.

The fact that many do not listen to him initially and mock him, seems to me what Nietzsche might have thought of his own situation. At this point of his life, his books were not very well received, he had lost his friends, and had no female relationships aside from his sister. Supporters of Nietzsche always try to find excuses for him, but it is obvious to me, that he was an angry young man, and thought of himself as possessing wisdom that others did not appreciate fully. To me, the book can be compared to Khalil Gibran's "The Prophet", a book that is easy to read and full of life and love, no bitterness or immature anger, the way I felt Nietzsche's alter-ego had.

It was only my inability to leave a book unfinished that I completed the book. And I am ready to bet anything that a lot of people who have picked up "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" and it is their shame of not liking it that hides their opinion on it, leaving a trail of good image of the book. But if we force everyone who starts it to finish it and give us their honest opinion, I would bet that in several years, we can just leave the book to obsessed philosophy majors.

Nietzsche's view on women is defended by contemporary students of philosophy, claiming it is misunderstood, but to me, it is just a reflection of a sickly man that has no luck with any women, and the only one in his life, was his sister.

Keep that image of him in your mind, when you read the below, "As I went on my way alone to-day, at the hour when the sun declineth, there met me an old woman, and she spake thus unto my soul: "Much hath Zarathustra spoken also to us women, but never spake he unto us concerning woman.

Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is woman for man? Two different things wanteth the true man: danger and diversion. Therefore wanteth he woman, as the most dangerous plaything. Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly.

Too sweet fruits—these the warrior liketh not.