Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None

Zarathustra juxtaposes a life of solitude with a life in the marketplace by saying, “Where solitude ends, there begins the marketplace; and where the marketplace begins, there begins too the noise of the great actors and buzzing of poisonous flies” (36). Much like how people find value in art because it entails a performer or a creator, so the world revolves around the inventors of new values. In the marketplace, truth becomes absolute. In no other environment is one pressured to decide definitively their belief. Zarathustra says, “For all deep wells experience is slow; they must wait long before they know what fell into their depth. Away from the marketplace and fame, all greatness takes place; away from the marketplace and fame the inventors of new values have lived all along” (37). The marketplace is full of jesters and actors who demand worship and judge the virtues of others. They are the flies who demand blood because they are unworthy of those who think deeply. 

Zarathustra advises one to approach one’s senses with innocence. He asks, “Do I advise you Chastity?” (39). In some, chastity is a virtue, and in others a vice. Yet, for most, chastity serves as a great vice wherein pity is disguised as lust. Zarathustra says of the lustful ones, “Your eyes are too cruel for me and they gaze with lust in search of sufferers. Has your lust simply disguised itself, and now calls itself pity?”(39). Zarathustra warns his listeners that it is better to die at the hands of a murderer than a lustful woman. He leaves them with a parable, saying that not a few who wanted to rid themselves of their devil fled to swine. Of the chaste person Zarathustra says, “Indeed, there are chaste people through and through; they are milder of heart, they laugh more gladly and more richly than you. They laugh at Chastity too and ask: ‘what is Chastity?’” (40). Those who do not struggle with chastity do not even contemplate it as a virtue themselves, and Zarathustra advises the lustful person to adopt the same mindset. 

To long for a friend, Zarathustra preaches, is to betray oneself, for our faith in others betrays the areas where we would have faith in ourselves. Usually, one covers envy in love. Other times, people make an enemy of another to hide their vulnerability. Zarathustra preaches, “‘At least be my enemy!’—Thus speaks true respect that does not dare ask for friendship” (40). One should honor the enemy in one’s friend, for it exposes one’s shortcomings. Only men are capable of friendship, Zarathustra argues, because women know only love. He states, “In the love of a woman are injustice and blindness toward everything that she does not love. And even in the knowing love of a woman there is everywhere still assault and lightning and night next to light. Woman is not yet capable of friendship: women are still cats, and birds. Or, at best, cows” (41). Zarathustra says to men that they must give more to their enemies than their friends, for an enemy will challenge them to be better. 

Zarathustra traveled to many lands and saw many people. He saw the largest marketplace, the marketplace of good and evil. He recalls, “Never did one neighbor understand the other: always his soul was amazed at his neighbor’s delusion and malice” (42). Every people has a “tablet of the good” which hangs over and judges them. Zarathustra tells the men to understand this tablet as a tablet of their overcomings. What is most difficult is considered the most praiseworthy; what stems from the highest need and liberates is the most holy; and what allows one to triumph over one’s neighbor is the highest of all meanings. Zarathustra concludes that humans have given themselves all of the good and the evil that exists in the world. He says, “Humans first placed values into things, in order to preserve themselves—they first created meaning for things, a human meaning! That is why they call themselves ‘human,’ that is: the esteemer” (43). Zarathustra begins contemplating what it means to “esteem.” He argues that to esteem is to create and that, without esteem, there would be no value to existence. Further, to have a change in values means to have a change in the creators of those values. Therefore, values essentially are little more than social constructs. 

Humanity has strived to make a virtue of loving one’s neighbor, but one only flees to one’s neighbor to escape confronting oneself. He says, “The You is older than the I; the You is pronounced sacred, but not yet the I: and so humans crowd around their neighbors” (44). Only when our neighbors think well of us do we then think well of ourselves, and this mindset is poisonous. Zarathustra states that he wishes all humanity was unable to stand their neighbors because then they could create meaningful friendships instead. The friend and not the neighbor is our festival of the earth and our anticipation for the overman. In the friend, Zarathustra argues, we love the overman as our cause. Friends come to represent an overcoming of self insofar as cultivating a friendship requires confronting oneself. 

Zarathustra discusses how to leave the herd and enter a life of isolation. He says, “The voice of the herd will still resonate in you too. And when you will say ‘I no longer am of one conscious with you,’ then it will be a lament and a pain” (46). It is no easy task to leave the herd, for to leave the herd is to confront oneself. Zarathustra then asks what one is free from when one leaves the herd and embraces isolation. He concedes that one day, the loneliness of isolation will become too much, and one’s pride and courage will cringe upon the realization that one is alone. As a lonely one, one must be aware of injustice and filth, the good and the just, and of what is deemed holy. Yet there exists still a worse enemy: ourselves. Zarathustra proclaims, “You must want to burn yourself up in your own flame: how could you become new if you did not first become ashes! Lonely one, you go the way of the creator: you will create yourself a god out of your seven devils!” (47). Zarathustra states that he who creates over and beyond himself eventually perishes. 

Zarathustra is asked why he acts timidly at night. He responds by saying that he is keeping a treasure safe. The treasure is like an unruly child and, if he does not conceal it, it will cry out. Zarathustra then recounts how he received such a treasure. While out walking this past evening, he met an old woman. Zarathustra engaged in conversation with her. He compared woman with man, saying, “And a woman must obey and find a depth for her surface. Surface is a woman’s disposition, a flexible, stormy skin over shallow water. But a man’s disposition is deep, his stream roars in underground caves; woman intuits his strength but does not comprehend it” (49). Zarathustra says that a man should fear a woman who is in love and who hates because she is likely to act out of those emotions. Further, man is for woman only a means to conceive a child. To thank Zarathustra for his wisdom, the old woman shares her treasure. She says that one when goes to women one should not forget the whip (50). 

Zarathustra falls asleep under a fig tree. An adder bites him on the neck, waking him. Zarathustra tells the snake that he has not yet accepted his thanks for waking him. The adder, surprised that Zarathustra is thanking him, relates that his bites are poisonous, and Zarathustra will soon die. Zarathustra responds, “But take back your poison! You are not rich enough to give it to me” (50). The snake obeys Zarathustra and begins to lick the wound. Zarathustra explains why he is thankful for the adder’s bite, saying, “If you should have any enemy, then do not requite him evil with good, for that would shame him. Instead prove that he has done you some good” (50). Zarathustra reiterates the importance of one’s enemy and how an enemy is not synonymous with evil. 

Zarathustra asks a man who desires children, “You are young and wish for a child and marriage for yourself. But I ask you: are you a person who has a right to wish for a child?” (51). He reminds the man that, before he can build beyond himself, he must first build himself. Zarathustra differentiates between his definition of marriage and the common definition of marriage. For Zarathustra, marriage is the joining of two wills that come together to create something greater than them. Contrastingly, the common idea of marriage is a dressed-up lie and a series of brief follies (52). Zarathustra says of love, “It is a torch that should light you to higher ways. Over and beyond yourselves, you must someday love! Thus learn first to love!” (53). Love causes a longing for the overman. 

Zarathustra meditates on the doctrine “Die at the right time.” He argues that mankind has been thinking about death incorrectly. One must learn how to die. In learning how to die, the subject can will death simply because it is what they want. Zarathustra then asks, when will one want death? As people mature in different ways, so too do they come to approach death differently. For example, those who appoint an heir to their fortune do not unnecessarily extend their lives. Zarathustra begins referencing Jesus directly, stating that he died too early and that if he had lived into old age he would have renounced his teachings. Zarathustra says, “In your dying your spirit and your virtue should still glow, like a sunset around the earth; or else your dying has failed you. Thus I myself want to die, so that you my friends love the earth more for my sake; and I want to become earth again, so that I may have peace in the one who bore me” (55). Zarathustra confesses that he is lingering on earth longer than he should and asks his listeners for their forgiveness. 

Section I

Zarathustra decides it is time for him to leave The Motley Cow and return to a life of solitude. When he departs, his disciples present him with a staff on “whose golden knob a snake encircled the sun” (56). The gold on the staff prompts Zarathustra to ponder how gold came to have value. He says, “Because it is uncommon and useless and gleaming and mild in its luster; it bestows itself always. Only as the image of the highest virtue did gold come to have the highest value” (56). The same logic, he argues, applies to the highest virtue which is also uncommon and useless. He says, “Sickness speaks out of such craving and invisible degeneration; the thieving greed of this selfishness speaks of a diseased body. Tell me, my brothers: what do we regard as bad and worst? Is it not degeneration?—And we always diagnose degeneration where the bestowing soul is absent” (56). Zarathustra tells the men to listen to their soul when it begins to speak in parables. In deciphering these parables, they will uncover the origin of their virtue. The new virtue, Zarathustra argues, is power. He portrays it as the golden sun, which has a snake symbolizing knowledge wrapped around it.

Section II

Zarathustra looks at his disciples with love. He speaks again but his voice is transformed. He tells them to remain faithful to the earth with the power of their virtue. He says, “Like me, guide the virtue that has flown away back to the earth—yes, back to the body and life: so that it may give the earth its meaning a human meaning!” (57). He reminds them that much of human life and the earth is still undiscovered, blaming partly humanity’s ignorance and its inability to regulate its virtues. He tells them to pursue a new hope.

Section III

Zarathustra grows silent. He then speaks again and once more his voice is transformed. He says that he must travel alone now. Zarathustra says when he returns he will see them with different eyes and love them with different love (59). He foreshadows his return and the ultimate return of the overman saying, “And one day again you shall become my friends and children of a single hope; then I shall be with you a third time, to celebrate the great noon with you. And that is the great noon, where human beings stand at the midpoint of their course between animal and overman and celebrate their way to evening as their highest hope: for it is the wat to a new morning” (59). Zarathustra concludes by reminding his followers that “Dead are all gods: now we want the overman to live” (59).