Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Biography:

Many people have the impression that Nietzche has something to do with the rise of Nazi fascism and that his concept of the "Superman" has something to do with the Nazi ideal of a perfect Aryan race. These impressions are completely false. The reason people have these beliefs is because of Nietzche's sister, Elizabeth, who was married to an influential anti-Semite named Bernhard Forster. Forster committed suicide in 1899; Nietzche died in 1900. Elizabeth jealously controlled Nietzche's writings, publishing them in such a way that Nietzche would appear more like Forster. She published notes that Nietzche had discarded, and she published forgeries, and she published only parts of works. By the 1920s she was a Nazi sympathizer, and she continued to control Nietzche's image to make it seem like his philosophy supported Nazism. This, of course, boosted sales of his "books" in Nazi Germany, enriching her.

Legions of scholars were mislead by Elizabeth's diabolical maneuverings, but by the 1940s the full text of everything Nietzche wrote became available, and Nietzche's attempts to unmask the motives that underlie traditional Western religion, morality, and philosophy deeply affected the subsequent generations of theologians, philosophers, psychologists, poets, novelists, and playwrights.

In truth, Nietzche powerfully denounced things like nationalism, anti-Semitism and the exact sort of power politics that led to the rise of Nazism.

Nietzche's engagement with philosophy and ideas went deep - his life was about these ideas more than anything else. His grandfather and father were Lutheran ministers, and Nietzche had been a pious young boy. But in his teens he lost his faith, and, as R. J. Hollingdale puts it in his introduction to the Penguin Classic edition of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No One (Penguin Classics), he set out to

...break down all the concepts and qualities in which mankind takes pride and pleasure into a few simple qualities in which no one takes pride or pleasure, and to see in the latter the origin of the former; likewise to undermine morality by exposing its non-moral basis and rationality by exposing its irrational basis; likewise to abolish the "higher" world, the metaphysical, by accounting for all its supposed manifestations in terms of the human, phenomenal, and even animal world; in brief the controlling tendency of his his thought is nihilist.

Nietzche was largely unknown in his own day. He was a professor at Basle University for over a decade, and his books received the polite attention accorded to a professor. It was not until the mid-twentieth century that the full force of his genius entered the Western mind.

Published: 1885

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No One (Penguin Classics)is Nietzsche's masterpiece - extravagantly odd, the book needs to be read in full to really experience its intense intellectual energy. "Zarathustra" is another name for Zoroaster, the Iranian who created Zoroastrianism in the sixth century BCE. Zoroastrianism originated the idea that the cosmos was a battleground between Good and Evil. That idea, along with many of his others, became core concepts in Judaism and, in turn, Christianity.

Zarathustra addresses us directly in Nietzsche's book, but not as a holy prophet - in fact, one of the first things he tells us is that God is dead. He delivers a series of sermons to the people of a town called The Pied Cow, vehemently condemning religion and any sort of morality or world view that depends on an afterlife to make sense. He wants everyone to affirm life here and now, and to live life to the fullest. He then goes on to develop two key concepts which were to become Nietzsche's main contributions to twentieth century thought.

The first is the idea of the Superman. God is dead - mankind killed him, in fact - and so now there is no authority left in the cosmos except man himself. And what ought man do with this awesome opportunity to replace God with himself? He ought to rise to the occasion, he ought to find God's source of power and use it. Is there danger that he will misuse it? Of course there is.

However, this is counter-acted by Nietzsche's second major concept, the "will to power". The will to power is each person's innate desire to fully become what he or she truly is. Doing so is enormously difficult -- but the chance that some will succeed gives meaning to the lives and endeavors of everyone. In his introduction, R. J. Hollingdale explains:

[T]o master oneself is the hardest of all tasks, that which requires the greatest amount of power: he who can do it has experienced the greatest increase in power, and if...happiness...is the feeling that power increases, that a resistance is overcome, then the Superman will be the happiest man and, as such, the meaning and justification of existence.

Nietzsche's achievement with these ideas was to create a way for there to be happiness, meaning, ethics, and truth even within a world view that does not have any "beliefs".

Introduction:

Nietzche loves to provoke his reader by condemning things that seem, on the surface, to be the sorts of things that ought to be esteemed. He then points out how those things are really fetters on the human soul:

Passage:

Behold, I teach you the Superman.The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman shall be the meaning of the earth!
I entreat you, my brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of superterrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.
They are despisers of life, atrophying and self-poisoned men, of whom the earth is weary: so let them be gone!
Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy, but God died, and thereupon these blasphemers died too. To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful offense, and to esteem the bowels of the Inscrutable more highly than the meaning of the earth.
Once the soul looked contemptuously upon the body: and then this contempt was the supreme good ? the soul wanted the body lean, monstrous, famished. So the soul thought to escape from the body and from the earth.
Oh, this soul was itself lean, monstrous, and famished: and cruelty was the delight of this soul!
But tell me, my brothers: What does your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and dirt and a miserable ease?
In truth, man is a polluted river. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted river and not be defiled.
Behold, I teach you the Superman: he is this sea, in him your great contempt can go under.
What is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness grows loathsome to you, and your reason and your virtue also.
The hour when you say: 'What good is my happiness? It is poverty and dirt and a miserable ease. But my happiness should justify existence itself!'
The hour when you say: 'What good is my reason? Does it long for knowledge as the lion for its food? It is poverty and dirt and a miserable ease!'
The hour when you say: 'What good is my virtue? It has not yet driven me mad! How tired I am of my good and my evil! It is all poverty and dirt and a miserable ease!'
The hour when you say: ' What good is my justice? I do not see that I am fire and hot coals. But the just man is fire and hot coals!'
The hour when you say: ' What good is my pity? Is not pity the cross upon which he who loves man is nailed? But my pity is no crucifixion!'
Have you ever spoken thus? Have you ever cried thus? Ah, that I had heard you crying thus!
It is not your sin, but your moderation that cries to heaven, your very meanness in sinning cries to heaven!
Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the madness, with which you should be cleansed?
Behold, I teach you the Superman: he is this lightning, he is this madness!

End Note:

A call for radical freedom! This is why this book has been so influential - it calls absolutely everything into question, it cries out for a perfect freedom, and yet it also offers a way for complete freedom to be an expression of love rather than an invitation to chaos. A world of Supermen and Superwomen would be a utopia!