Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Nietzsche on Art by Ridley Aaron;

Author:Ridley, Aaron;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Humanities
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2006-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

4

PHILOSOPHY AS ART: THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA

Perhaps the whole of Zarathustra may be reckoned as music; certainly a rebirth of the art of hearing was among its preconditions … This work stands altogether apart. Leaving aside the poets: perhaps nothing has ever been done from an equal excess of strength.

(Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’)

Introduction

Having completed the first four books of The Gay Science, Nietzsche embarked on what, in many ways, is the most ambitious of all his works, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.1 The first two books of it were published in 1883, the third in 1884 and the final book in 1885. In one sense, Zarathustra can be read as an odd sort of novel. It tells the story of a prophet, Zarathustra,2 who descends from his mountain top, announces that God is dead, and proceeds to promulgate a number of doctrines, to the general indifference of his audience. He does succeed in attracting a small band of disciples, however, and discourses at them before dismissing them (twice). In his second period of solitude, he is at first depressed; but then, in the climax to the whole work (the latter part of Book III), he rouses himself to a state of supreme intellectual exaltation, and gives boundless thanks for himself, life and the world. Book IV (something of an after-thought on Nietzsche’s part), which sees Zarathustra again engaged with other people (the so-called ‘higher men’), ends with another paean to existence.3

It is an odd sort of novel. The plot, as just indicated, is pretty thin; and in manner, it most closely resembles an over-heated parody of parts of the Old Testament: in its portentousness and tiringly hieratic style it can be something of a chore to read, and hard to like. Certainly it is the least readable of any of Nietzsche’s mature works; and Nietzsche’s unwavering conviction that it is a work of high art seems likely to remain a minority view. But for all its oddness and (frankly) awfulness, Zarathustra retains a certain fascination, and it contains themes that are among Nietzsche’s best-known. So, for example, Zarathustra, having announced the death of God, proclaims a new sort of human being – a naturalised successor to God – whom he calls the ‘Übermensch’ (a term – sometimes translated as the ‘overman’, sometimes as the ‘superman’ – that is probably best left in the original German). ‘The Übermensch is the meaning of the earth’, Zarathustra asserts. ‘Let your will say: the Übermensch shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes!’ (Z, Prologue, 3). We are not, in the event, told a great deal about the Übermensch,4 except that his distinguishing feature is that he can joyfully affirm the thought of ‘eternal recurrence’ – another theme that enjoys a good deal of prominence in this work. It is in Zarathustra, too, that we first encounter any sort of extended treatment of ‘will

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