Walking the Tightrope

Julian Young’s analysis of Thus Spoke Zarathustra provides several useful insights on what Nietzsche intended with his metaphorical work. Much of the book’s teaching is based on Nietzsche’s prior thinking about being a free spirit within common society. The town in which the tightrope walker has his encounter with the jester, for example, is called The Motley Cow. “The Motley Cow ('motley' is the word Plato's Republic uses to describe and condemn the democratic state) is just Western modernity. 'Motley' signifies the semi-'barbarism' we have repeatedly seen ascribed to modernity by Nietzsche's cultural criticism. 'Cow', obviously, signifies that the town is inhabited by 'the herd'. That modernity is herd-like might seem inconsistent with motleyness, but I think that what Nietzsche has in mind is the capacity of politicians and the press to whip up mass hysteria...” ( page 368 ) “...the failure to produce creative free spiri...

Lest we think that Nietzsche was so caught up with Becoming in the Now that he left himself ungrounded, Rudiger Safranski , as usual, offers an insightful but less considered influence during this period.   Nietzsche teaches "be truthful to the earth".   By this he means that metaphysics has its basis in tangible biology. “The metaphorical style of presentation in Zarathustra only hints at its biological contents.   In his notebooks from the period of Zarathustra , Nietzsche was more forthright.   He wrote that the 'goal' was the ‘evolution of the entire body and not just the brain’.   Overt references to the specifics of the physical evolution of man would have been ill-suited to the pathos of Zarathustra's speeches.   Ought Zarathustra to have said something about, for instance, the quantity of hair, musculature, arm length, or head size of the Übermensch ?   This would have been unintentionally comical.   In matters concerning the physical ap...

Even though, in my opinion, the Ubermensch and self-overcoming take center stage in Zarathustra , R. J. Hollingdale stresses the underlying importance of will to power and eternal recurrence throughout the work. “Between The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche arrived at the hypothesis that all actions are motivated by the desire for power. Employing Schopenhauer's terminology he called this principle the 'will to power', and by means of it he now tried to give a picture of a possible reality deprived of all metaphysical support. “The will to power is introduced in the chapter called 'Of the Thousand and One Goals' : hitherto there have been many peoples, consequently many 'goals' - i.e. moralities; the reason each people has had its own morality is that morality is will to power - not only power over others but more essentially power over oneself.” ( Hollingdale , page 158) This is echoed by Walter Kaufmann : “Nietzsche first speaks of t...

Note: As the heading of this post implies, this is the inspiration for the title of this blog. I had the tightrope walker of Zarathustra in mind when this attempt at philosophic biography began in 2008. For me, this singular metaphor represents, as much as any other possiblity, the essence of Nietzsche’s life and philosophy. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is different from most of Nietzsche’s previous philosophic works. For one thing it is presented in chapters, not in aphorisms. For another, like his series of lectures entitled On the Future of Our Educational Institutions back in 1872, it is a kind of parable, a story with fictitious characters used to metaphorically express his philosophy. It is not a detailed style of philosophic inquiry, as much of his earlier work. Nevertheless, various rational concepts are advocated, and contemporary European culture is critiqued and found irrelevant due to the “god is dead!” proclamation. It is noteworthy that Zarathustra himself is first mentioned ...

Fritz continued his nomadic lifestyle while completing Thus Spoke Zarathustra . In February 1883 he moved to Genoa where he stayed until May when he moved to Rome. This was followed by stays at Bellagio, Italy then at Sils-Maria in June. There he wrote Zarathustra Part II before going to Naumburg in September followed by Basel then back to Genoa by October. He wrote Part III in Genoa in January 1884. It was published in March. From April to June, Fritz lived in Nice for the first time. After a six-month circular 1884 journey that took him to Sils-Maria, Zurich, and Menton, France , Fritz returned to Nice at the beginning of 1885. He wrote Part IV at that time. The writing of Zarathustra obsessively consumed his life and, with each successive part, Nietzsche thought he had a completed the whole work. But, he kept adding new material from numerous journal entries he kept beginning in 1883, at one time considering a total work of half a dozen sections, but he ended with four. Part III...