The Death of Nietzsche's Zarathustra

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Author: Paul S. Loeb

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T h e D e at h o f N i e t z s c h e ’ s Z a r at h u s t r a

In this study of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Paul S. Loeb proposes a new account of the relation between the book’s literary and philosophical aspects and argues that the book’s narrative is designed to embody and exhibit the truth of eternal recurrence. Loeb shows how Nietzsche constructed a unified and complete plot in which the protagonist dies, experiences a deathbed revelation of his endlessly repeating life, and then returns to his identical life so as to recollect this revelation and gain a power over time that advances him beyond the human. Through close textual analysis and careful attention to Nietzsche’s use of Platonic, Biblical, and Wagnerian themes, Loeb explains how this novel design is the key to solving the many riddles of Thus Spoke Zarathustra – including its controversial fourth part, its obscure concept of the Übermensch, and its relation to Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals. Pau l S. L oe b is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Puget Sound. He is the co-translator and co-editor (with David F. Tinsley) of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in volumes 7, 14, and 15 of The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).

T h e D e at h o f Nietzsche’s Z a r at h u s t r a Pau l S . L oe b

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521519236 © Paul S. Loeb 2010 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2010 ISBN-13

978-0-511-77024-1

eBook (NetLibrary)

ISBN-13

978-0-521-51923-6

Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

for Ketty, du weisst es auch—

… es hilft nichts, ich muss meinem Sohne Zarathustra erst zu seinem schönen Tode verhelfen, er lässt mir sonst keine Ruhe. (KSB 6, p. 557)

Contents

Preface Texts and citations

page ix xi

Introduction

1

1 The eternal recurrence of the same

11

Simmel’s critique Awareness Evidence Significance Coherence Conclusion

11 14 16 21 29 31

2 Demon or god?

32

3 The dwarf and the gateway

45

4 The great noon

85

Deathbed revelation Daimonic prophecy Dionysian doctrine Diagnostic test Conclusion

33 35 38 41 44

The gateway to Hades The dwarf ’s interpretation Zarathustra’s cross-examination The inescapable cycle Crossing the gateway No time until rebirth The ancient memory Midnight swan song Conclusion

46 50 54 61 63 66 69 74 82

Two conclusions Tragic end and analeptic satyr play Zarathustra’s hour

86 91 98

vii

viii

Contents Noon crucifixion Seventh-day convalescence Last temptation Third-day resurrection Conclusion

101 105 109 114 117

5 The laughing lions

119

6 The shepherd and the serpent

148

7 Circulus vitiosus deus

173

Revaluation of values Dawn reunion Morning consecration Call to arms Final farewell and last will Zarathustra’s great destiny Conclusion The eternally recurring human The future human Zarathustra the dragon-slayer The decapitation The heavy hammer No longer shepherd Conclusion

Impotence and revenge Backward-willing Self-redemption The third transformation The child spirit No longer human Zarathustra’s dying gift Conclusion

122 124 128 130 133 138 145

151 153 157 160 163 167 170

175 179 185 190 194 198 200 204

8 Post-Zarathustra

207

Bibliography Index

243 255

Nietzsche and Zarathustra Reversing the bad conscience Atheism and the death of God Countering the ascetic ideal Conclusion

208 214 226 234 240

Preface

This study was conceived and written as a unified book. Over the course of many drafts and revisions, I have presented and published different parts of this book so as to receive feedback from my colleagues and introduce its ideas into the field. I am especially grateful to the organizers of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, the North American Nietzsche Society, and Nietzsche in New York, for their presentation opportunities and invitations, and I am indebted to the audiences at my talks for their helpful questions, comments, and suggestions. I would also like to express my gratitude to the University of Puget Sound for supporting my related conference travel and sabbatical research. The following published essays are excerpted and modified versions of different parts of the draft version of this book, and I would like to thank the editors and publishers below for their permission to reproduce the shared material: 1998. “The Moment of Tragic Death in Nietzsche’s Dionysian Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence: An Exegesis of Aphorism 341 in The Gay Science,” International Studies in Philosophy 30: 131–143. 2000. “The Conclusion of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra,” International Studies in Philosophy 32: 137–152. 2001. “Time, Power, and Superhumanity,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 21: 27–47. 2002. “The Dwarf, the Dragon, and the Ring of Eternal Recurrence: A Wagnerian Key to the Riddle of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra,” Nietzsche-Studien 31: 91–113. 2004. “Zarathustra’s Laughing Lions,” in Acampora, Christa Davis and Acampora, Ralph R. (eds.) 2004. A Nietzschean Bestiary: Becoming Animal Beyond Docile and Brutal. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 122–140. ix

x

Preface

2005. “Finding the Übermensch in Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 30: 71–102. 2006. “Identity and Eternal Recurrence,” in Ansell-Pearson, Keith (ed.) 2006. A Companion to Nietzsche. New York: Blackwell, pp. 171–188. 2007. “The Thought-Drama of Eternal Recurrence,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 33: 79–95. 2008. “The Gateway-Augenblick,” in Luchte, James (ed.) 2008. Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before Sunrise. London: Continuum Publishing, pp. 91–108. 2008. “Suicide, Meaning, and Redemption,” in Dries, Manuel (ed.) 2008. Nietzsche on Time and History. New York: Walter de Gruyter Press, pp. 163–190. I am grateful to many friends and colleagues for their comments, advice, support, and encouragement during the writing of this book. I would especially like to thank Christa Davis Acampora, Keith AnsellPearson, Rebecca Bamford, William Barry, William Beardsley, Daniel Blue, Thomas Brobjer, Douglas Cannon, Jonathan Cohen, Daniel Conway, Manuel Dries, James Evans, Robert Gooding-Williams, Robert Guay, Rainer Hanshe, Lawrence Hatab, Mark Jenkins, Duncan Large, David Lupher, William Melanson, Mark Migotti, Alexander Nehamas, M. Gregory Oakes, Robert Pippin, Alan Schrift, Gary Shapiro, Herman Siemens, Robin Small, Henry Staten, Lawrence Stern, David Tinsley, P. Taylor Webb, and M. Zissou. I would also like to thank Hilary Gaskin, Aline Guillermet, Marjory Bissett and Robert Wilkinson for their helpful editorial advice and support.

Texts and citations

For Nietzsche’s works, I cite the Kritische Studienausgabe, including the Sämtliche Werke (shown as KSA) and the Sämtliche Briefe (shown as KSB), edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1980). I also cite some unpublished notes not included in the Studienausgabe, but collected in the Kritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke (shown as KGW), edited by Wolfgang Müller-Lauter and Karl Pestalozzi (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967–). References to Nietzsche’s unpublished writings appear with the KSA or KGW volume number, followed by the fragment number. References to Nietzsche’s letters appear with the volume number of KSB, followed by the page number. I have included references to Nietzsche’s writings in the body of the text using the standard English title abbreviations listed below. My references to Thus Spoke Zarathustra list the part number in Roman numerals, followed by a period and the chapter number in Arabic numerals (not included in Nietzsche’s manuscripts), followed by a colon and the section number in Arabic if necessary. For example, “III.13:2” refers to the second section of the “Convalescent” chapter in Part III. My references to Part III of Ecce Homo, in which Nietzsche reviews his books chapter by chapter, list the abbreviated title of each book and the section number within that chapter. For example, EH BT:3 refers to the chapter on The Birth of Tragedy, section 3. For the other parts of Ecce Homo and the rest of Nietzsche’s published works, I have used Roman numerals to denote the larger subdivisions within the work, Arabic numerals to denote the section number, and “P” to denote Nietzsche’s prefaces. In my translations of Nietzsche’s text, I have consulted the translations listed below. A The Antichrist (Der Antichrist) Translated by Walter Kaufmann, in Kaufmann, Walter (ed.) 1954. The Portable Nietzsche. New York: Viking. Also translated by R.J. Hollingdale, in Nietzsche, Friedrich 1968. The Antichrist. New York: Penguin Books. xi

xii BGE

Texts and citations

Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits von Gut und Böse) Translated by Walter Kaufmann, in Kaufmann, Walter (ed.) 1968. Basic Writings of Nietzsche. New York: Random House. Also translated by R.J. Hollingdale, in Nietzsche, Friedrich 1973. Beyond Good and Evil. New York: Penguin Books. BT The Birth of Tragedy (Die Geburt der Tragödie) Translated by Walter Kaufmann, in Kaufmann 1968. CW The Case of Wagner (Der Fall Wagner) Translated by Walter Kaufmann, in Kaufmann 1968. D Daybreak (Morgenröte) Translated by R.J. Hollingdale, in Nietzsche, Friedrich 1982. Daybreak. Cambridge University Press. DD Dithyrambs of Dionysus (Dionysos-Dithyramben) Translated by R.J. Hollingdale, in Nietzsche, Friedrich 1984. Dithyrambs of Dionysus. London: Anvil Press Poetry. DW The Dionysiac World View (Die dionysische Weltanschauung) Translated by Ronald Speirs, in Geuss, Raymond (ed.) 1999. Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Cambridge University Press. EH Ecce Homo Translated by Walter Kaufmann, in Kaufmann 1968. Also translated by R.J. Hollingdale, in Nietzsche, Friedrich 1979. Ecce Homo. New York: Penguin Books. GM On the Genealogy of Morals (Zur Genealogie der Moral) Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale, in Kaufmann 1968. GS The Gay Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft) Translated by Walter Kaufmann, in Nietzsche, Friedrich 1974. The Gay Science. New York: Random House. HAH Human, All Too Human (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches) Translated by R.J. Hollingdale, in Nietzsche, Friedrich 1986. Human, All Too Human. Cambridge University Press. NCW Nietzsche contra Wagner Translated by Walter Kaufmann, in Kaufmann 1954. TI Twilight of the Idols (Götzen-Dämmerung) Translated by Walter Kaufmann, in Kaufmann 1954. Also translated by R.J. Hollingdale, in Nietzsche, Friedrich 1968. Twilight of the Idols. New York: Penguin Books.

Texts and citations UM Z

xiii

Untimely Meditations (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen) Translated by R.J. Hollingdale, in Nietzsche, Friedrich 1991. Untimely Meditations. Cambridge University Press. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Also Sprach Zarathustra) Translated by Walter Kaufmann, in Kaufmann 1954. Also translated by R.J. Hollingdale, in Nietzsche, Friedrich 1961. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. New York: Penguin Books. I have also consulted the more recent translations by Graham Parkes, in Friedrich Nietzsche 2005. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Oxford University Press; and by Adrian Del Caro, in Friedrich Nietzsche 2006, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Cambridge University Press.

I ntroduction

The clue to the riddles

In this study I aim to make significant new progress in solving the riddles of Thus Spoke Zarathustra by offering a new understanding of Nietzsche’s well-known clue that the thought of eternal recurrence is its fundamental conception (Grundconception) or fundamental thought (Grundgedanke) (EH Z:1).1 Traditionally, commentators have understood this clue to mean that they should look in the text of Zarathustra for some kind of explication and defense of the thought of eternal recurrence. Or, more recently, and in a more literary vein, they have interpreted the narrative of Zarathustra as a kind of Bildungsroman in which Zarathustra learns how to awaken, confront, teach, and affirm his thought of eternal recurrence.2 But these scholars have been frustrated in their doctrinal approach because those places in Zarathustra where eternal recurrence is explicitly broached are few and isolated, leaving open the question as to how this thought is supposed to be the Grundgedanke of Nietzsche’s artistic work as a whole.3 Also, these scholars have complained, the protagonist Zarathustra himself never seems to fully express, explain, prove, endorse, teach, or definitively affirm the thought of eternal In Zarathustra and elsewhere, Nietzsche employs two German terms to refer to his thought, “Wiederkehr” and “Wiederkunft” – translated by Kaufmann and others as “return” and “recurrence” respectively. Outside of Zarathustra, Nietzsche also uses a third term, “Wiederholung,” to refer to his doctrine – translated by Kaufmann and others as “repetition.” Nietzsche seems to employ all of these terms interchangeably (for example, in Z III.13:2 and EH BT:3), but some scholars have found an important conceptual difference between them (Stambaugh 1972, p. 30ff.; 2004) or have wondered if they should find such a difference (Ansell-Pearson 2005, pp. 19–20, n. 1). I do not believe that Nietzsche used these different terms to convey any principled philosophical distinctions, and throughout this study I have followed the majority of scholars in using the single English term, “recurrence,” to refer to Nietzsche’s doctrine. 2 Lampert 1986, pp. 259–260; Higgins 1987, pp. 98–104, 131–158, 191–201; Gadamer 1988; Schacht 1991, p. 231ff.; Gooding-Williams 2001, p. 183ff. 3 I develop this point with respect to Gooding-Williams’ interpretation in Loeb 2007. More generally, Nehamas comments that “the single most serious problem Zarathustra presents [is that it] resists a unified reading, concealing its general structure and strategy, its overall point” (2000, p. 166). 1

1

2

The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra

recurrence. When Zarathustra does refer to this thought, he (or his soul) does so while dreaming or intoxicated or convalescent (or while recollecting such moments), and then usually in song. Otherwise, Nietzsche puts different, and seemingly incompatible, versions of the thought into the mouths of strange and apparently unqualified characters like the dwarf in the “Vision and the Riddle” chapter, or Zarathustra’s animals in the “Convalescent” chapter, or the higher men in the “Awakening” chapter. As a result, commentators have reached a variety of ingenious but ultimately unsatisfactory conclusions: that we should look instead in Nietzsche’s unpublished notes (Heidegger 1982); or that Nietzsche intended eternal recurrence only as a useful fiction, mythic image, hypothetical thought-experiment, as-if story, or practical postulate (Clark 1990, p. 245ff.; Schacht 1991, p. 232ff.; Gooding-Williams 2001, p. 213); or that he conceived of eternal recurrence as an incommunicable esoteric or mystical insight (Salaquarda 1989; Stambaugh 1994); or that he had no single, univocal doctrine in mind (Winchester 1994, pp. 9–33; GoodingWilliams 2001, p. 183ff.); or that he designed eternal recurrence as an exoteric noble lie that would conceal his true esoteric views (Levine 1995, p. 122ff.; Rosen 1995, pp. x–xvi, 10–17; Waite 1996, p. 315ff.); or even that he intended us to notice that eternal recurrence is a flawed, incoherent or self-consuming thought (Berkowitz 1995, pp. 207–210; Magnus 1999). In this study I propose an alternative, and especially literary, understanding of Nietzsche’s clue. Rather than focusing on Zarathustra’s doctrinal aspects, I emphasize its narrative aspects and I argue that Nietzsche constructed these aspects so that they would embody and enact his thought of eternal recurrence. Since this is a thought about time, and since Zarathustra narrates the life of the fictional character Zarathustra, the book’s relevant narrative aspects must therefore concern the chronology of events in Zarathustra’s life. More specifically, in the same Ecce Homo retrospective where he explains Zarathustra’s fundamental conception, Nietzsche writes that eternal recurrence is Zarathustra’s teaching of the unconditioned and endlessly repeated circular course of all things (EH BT:3). But Zarathustra’s life is itself one of these things, and so the narrative of his life must somehow display the unconditioned and endlessly repeated circular course of Zarathustra’s life. Applying the thought of eternal recurrence as he first published it in Gay Science 341, and as I defend it from critics in Chapter 1, Nietzsche’s book should therefore imagine Zarathustra reliving a life he has already lived before. This new understanding of Nietzsche’s clue helps to explain his famous, but enigmatic, concluding signature in Twilight of the Idols: “I, the last


3

disciple of the philosopher Dionysus – I, the teacher of eternal recurrence.”4 Part of what Nietzsche means by this, as the rest of the passage shows, is that he learned Zarathustra’s thought of eternal recurrence from the Dionysian mystery-cults of the ancient Greeks.5 Indeed, in an unpublished note written shortly before he completed Part III of Zarathustra, Nietzsche states explicitly: “I have discovered the Greeks: they believed in eternal recurrence! That is the mystery-faith!” (KSA 10:8[15]). But these mystery-cults were not concerned to explain, defend, or prove their doctrine. Instead, they practiced a ritualistic enactment of key episodes in the mythical narrative of the god Dionysus (Seaford 1994, p. 234ff.; Seaford 2006). In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche had emphasized the enacted event of Dionysus’ dismemberment and reintegration, which he interpreted as displaying a Schopenhauerian metaphysics of individuation (BT 10). Now, however, he emphasizes the related event of Dionysus’ death and rebirth into his identical life, and he interprets this enacted event as displaying a metaphysics of eternal recurrence: “Dionysus cut into pieces is a promise regarding life: it [life] will be eternally reborn and return home again from destruction” (KSA 13:14[89]). As Nietzsche relates when he re-introduces the god Dionysus after a fourteen-year hiatus, he had learned much more about the philosophy of Dionysus since he offered him his first-born book as a sacrifice, and chief among these new secrets is Dionysus’ identity as the circulus vitiosus deus (BGE 295, 56).6 When we consider Zarathustra’s pervasive allusions to the myth of Dionysus (Lampert 1986; Del Caro 1988; Gooding-Williams 2001), as well as Nietzsche’s identification of Zarathustra with Dionysus (EH Z:6–8, DD), it seems very likely that the Greek mystery-cult performance of Dionysus’ eternally recurring life actually served as the model for Nietzsche’s invention and enactment of Zarathustra’s eternally recurring life.7 Whereas The Birth of Tragedy See also EH P:2 and EH BT:3. Nietzsche’s 1888 notes include plans for a book linking Dionysus and the philosophy of eternal recurrence (KSA 13:19[8], 13:22[14]). 5 In his later Ecce Homo, Nietzsche explicitly refers to eternal recurrence as Zarathustra’s teaching. There is no contradiction with his Twilight of the Idols description of himself as the teacher of eternal recurrence, because this follows his claim to be the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, and he identifies his imagined future philosopher Zarathustra with Dionysus. I discuss Nietzsche’s distinction between himself and Zarathustra in Chapter 8. 6 Del Caro (1988, pp. 69, 82–83; 1998, pp. 79, 82) discusses Nietzsche’s later interpretation of Dionysus as a personification or symbol of eternal recurrence. But he does not go far enough in spelling out Nietzsche’s interest in the performative aspect of the mystery-cult rituals or Nietzsche’s emphasis on Dionysus’ eternal rebirth into his identical life. 7 Del Caro (1988, p. 66) gives some good reasons why we should take Dithyrambs of Dionysus seriously and rightly observes that the common theme of this work is death and passing. See also Crawford 1995, pp. 227–258. 4

4


explains how the Greeks composed tragic poems that revealed their secret Dionysian doctrines, Zarathustra is Nietzsche’s own such tragic poem in which he reveals the secret of eternal recurrence. My performative approach to Zarathustra is especially supported by Nietzsche’s own description of his masterpiece as a kind of drama or play or opera akin to Wagner’s operas. In Ecce Homo (II.4), Nietzsche suggests that no one would have noticed if he had published his Zarathustra under the name “Richard Wagner.” In particular, as Roger Hollinrake first emphasized, Nietzsche conceived of Zarathustra as a four-part Gesamtkunstwerk analogous to Wagner’s tetralogy Ring of the Nibelung.8 This is why Nietzsche writes: “The fourth of the Untimely Meditations is entitled ‘Richard Wagner in Bayreuth’… Read Nietzsche-Zarathustra and the festival of the future, the great noon. Nothing but world-historical accents; the genuine psychology of the genuine dithyrambic poet, the poet of Zarathustra” (Hollinrake 1982, p. 20). But Wagner himself famously writes as follows concerning his intentions in this total artwork: Alberich and his ring could not harm the gods if the latter were not already ripe for disaster. So where is the nub of the catastrophe? Look at the first scene between Wotan and Fricka, which eventually leads to the scene in Act II of Die Walküre. The rigid bond that unites them both, arising from love’s involuntary mistake of perpetuating itself beyond the inescapable laws of change, of maintaining mutual dependence, this resistance to the eternal renewal and change of the objective world lands both of them in the mutual torment of lovelessness. The course of the drama thus shows the necessity of accepting and giving way to changeability, the diversity, the multiplicity, the eternal newness of reality and of life. (To August Röckel, 1854; Osborne 1993, pp. 184–185)

Although Nietzsche would not admit it in his later harsh critiques, he was of course quite sympathetic to Wagner’s philosophical insistence on the reality and inescapability of change. His character Zarathustra devotes many speeches to this theme, consistently attacks all the various ways in which humans idealize and long for permanence, and says that the best images and parables should eulogize transience and flux (Z II.2). Yet according to Wagner this is precisely the whole aim and unifying theme of his Ring cycle. Eternal change, we might say, is the Grundconception Nietzsche’s design of Zarathustra includes poetry, drama, song, and dance – all key components of the total work of art that Wagner found fused together in ancient Greek tragedy and hoped to reassemble in his new and revolutionary artwork of the future (TI IX:11). Nietzsche’s invention also includes instructions for musical accompaniment, such as a dance-oriented rhythmic whip, castanets, a lyre, a heavy booming bell, and a harp; as well as an operatic cacophony of cries of distress, gurgling, ass-braying (Shapiro 1991, p. 72ff.); and even a shaping of the German language into a kind of sonorous music (Parkes 2005, pp. xxviii–xxxi). See also Deleuze 1994, p. 9.

8


5

or Grundgedanke of Wagner’s most important and elaborate artwork. Suppose, however, that we interpreted this relation as commentators typically interpret the relation between eternal recurrence and Nietzsche’s own Gesamtkunstwerk. Thus, it might be asked, why does the Ring’s principal protagonist Wotan never explicitly explain or prove the philosophical principle of eternal change? Why is this principle only explicitly broached and discussed at a few isolated places in the artwork? Are not those characters in the Ring who wholeheartedly endorse this principle, such as the god of fire Loge (Rheingold, Scene 4), unreliable mouthpieces? And since this is a wholly fictional work, how can we possibly suppose that Wagner actually believed in the truth of his Grundgedanke? Perhaps Wagner never intended eternal change as a literally true cosmological doctrine, but rather only as a useful fiction, a mythic image, a hypothetical thought-experiment, an as-if story, or a practical postulate? I think we can agree that these seemingly trenchant questions actually miss the point of Wagner’s artwork. Although Wotan, the principal protagonist of the Ring, delivers some crucial operatic speeches in which he can be said to learn, understand, confront, teach, and finally affirm the philosophical principle of eternal change, it would be highly misleading and aesthetically limiting to describe this artwork as Wagner’s Bildungsroman or “thought-drama” with respect to the doctrine of eternal change. Instead, as Wagner explains above, the narrative course of the drama shows, manifests, and exemplifies this doctrine. This means that the fictional protagonists of this artwork do not relate to some abstract concept of change, but rather to the reality of change that is embodied in the structure of the narrative itself. So, for example, as Wagner writes above, Wotan and Fricka attempt to perpetuate their love beyond the inescapable laws of change, but their love changes and ends nevertheless. Wotan and Fricka do not confront the thought that their love will change; rather, they experience this reality and are swept up in the consequences of their visceral emotional responses to this fact. Or, to consider a more general and far-reaching example, Wagner suggests a little earlier in the same letter cited above, that the gods in the Ring – and indeed, all the gods – are ultimately driven by their fear of death: We must learn to die, in fact to die in the most absolute sense of the word. Fear of death is the source of all lovelessness, and it arises only where love itself has already faded. How did it come about that mankind so lost touch with this bringer of the highest happiness to everything living that in the end everything they did, everything they undertook and established, was done solely out of fear of the end? My poem shows how. It shows nature in its undistorted truth.

6


Again, although Wagner’s analysis here is expressed in conceptual terms, his total artwork incorporates a narrative in which its fictional protagonists share an overwhelming emotional response to the reality of death. At the very start of the Ring (Rheingold, Scene 2) the gods are immortal, but they are confronted for the first time with the prospect of old age and death (due to the loss of the golden apples which only the kidnapped Freia knows how to grow). The course of the narrative then follows their various fear-induced attempts to combat death: holding onto love, constructing a new and impregnable Valhalla-castle, robbing the gold ring from the dwarf Alberich in order to keep their eternal youth, attempting to breed a new Wälsung race, and attempting to uphold law, contract, tradition, and custom (as engraved on Wotan’s spear). All these attempts fail, however, and in the end Wotan (with the crucial aid of his daughter, Brünnhilde) must lead the gods into accepting and even initiating their own demise. As the Ring ends, then, we see the supposedly eternal and impregnable new home of the gods consumed by Loge’s ever-changing fire and swept away by the ever-changing flow of the waters of the Nibelung. As Wagner says, his poem shows nature in its undistorted truth. In this study, then, I propose that Nietzsche similarly intended to communicate the truth of his own view of nature by means of a narrative that extends throughout his entire published book, and not just in those places where Zarathustra or other characters speak or sing of this view.9 Just as the lives and actions of the protagonists in Wagner’s Ring are meant to dramatize his insight into the reality of eternal change, so too the life and actions of Zarathustra are meant to dramatize what Nietzsche thinks is the deeper reality of eternal repetition. Thus, the fictional protagonist of Nietzsche’s artwork does not relate to some abstract concept of eternal recurrence, but rather to the reality of eternal recurrence that is embodied in the structure of the narrative itself. And although this protagonist does deliver some crucial speeches and songs in which he can be said to awaken, confront, teach, and affirm the thought of eternal recurrence, it is the narrative course of the book’s drama that actually shows, manifests, and enacts this thought. I argue in this study that this performative understanding of Nietzsche’s clue helps to resolve the many interpretive difficulties that have long preoccupied students of this book.10 Foremost among these By contrast, Richard Schacht dismisses in a single sentence the “story line” of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (1991, p. 240), but analyses at book length the philosophical principles communicated by the story line of Wagner’s Ring (Kitcher and Schacht, 2004). 10 Gooding-Williams (2001, p. 183ff.) also describes as “performative” his interpretation of the Grundconception of eternal recurrence. But his sense of this term is restricted to the 9


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is the question of the completeness and structure of Nietzsche’s book. So in Chapters 2 and 3, and drawing on Nietzsche’s allusions to Plato’s Phaedo, I begin with the idea that the exact repetition of Zarathustra’s life requires Nietzsche’s narrative structure to emphasize above all else the event of Zarathustra’s death and return to his identical life. This idea would seem to be contradicted by the fact that the narrative portrays Zarathustra as glowing and strong at the very end of Part IV and therefore seems to postpone indefinitely the death that is anticipated from the very start of the book. In Chapters 4 and 5, however, and drawing on his allusions to Aeschylus’ tetralogies and the New Testament narrative, I argue that Nietzsche designed Part IV as a satyr play that narrates dramatic and philosophical developments which chronologically precede the ending of the tragic trilogy in Parts I–III. The story of Zarathustra therefore concludes twice: chronologically with the climactic conclusion of Part III, and structurally with the analeptic satyr play of Part IV. This means that the Faustian tolling of the twelfth bell of midnight at the end of Part III is actually the conclusion of the complete Zarathustra tragedy. But midnight is Nietzsche’s symbol for the moment of death, and I argue accordingly that this conclusion is in fact a depiction of the moment of Zarathustra’s death. Since Zarathustra ceases to exist entirely, and is thus unable to perceive any passing time, his perspective must show him an immediate return into his identical life. I suggest that this is why Nietzsche depicts, as Zarathustra’s last word at the end of Part III, his joyful and affirmative response to the secret revelation that he is eternally wedded to life. Indeed, I show, Nietzsche constructs this revelation so that it fulfills an earlier prophetic vision in which Zarathustra saw himself crossing the gateway of the moment of death and returning to the scene of his most distant childhood. Another obvious and central difficulty in understanding Nietzsche’s book has to do with Zarathustra’s many uninterpreted dreams, visions, riddles, secrets, allegories, and symbols. So in Chapter 3, I argue that the endless repetition of life requires Nietzsche’s narrative to display the fact that Zarathustra is living a life he has already lived before. Given this idea, it is surprising that Nietzsche does very little to depict Zarathustra’s memory of his previous life. According to critics of Nietzsche’s doctrine, this is because Zarathustra’s eternally recurring life would not in fact be identical if “ thought-drama” wherein Zarathustra performs three different formulations of the thought of eternal recurrence. I criticize all three formulations in Loeb 2007. Other recent performative approaches to Zarathustra (Zittel 2000; Westerdale 2006) are not likewise motivated by the idea that Nietzsche dramatizes the cosmological thought of eternal recurrence.

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it included any memory of its previous iteration. But my response to these critics in Chapter 1 shows that Nietzsche’s thought excludes the possibility of Zarathustra having ever lived an initial or original life that could omit such a memory. In addition, I argue, scholars have failed to recognize the significance of Nietzsche’s narrative emphasis on Zarathustra’s prophetic ability. Not only does Zarathustra frequently refer to himself as a prophet, but Nietzsche designs his narrative structure so that Zarathustra’s prophetic visions are always fulfilled. I propose that this design is intended to enact his idea that the circular course of Zarathustra’s repeated life enables him to remember a past that is also his future. Hence, the proper exegesis of many of Zarathustra’s visions, dreams, and symbols requires noticing his performance of mnemonic or precognitive abilities that are entailed by the narrative’s embedded thought of eternal recurrence. In particular, the reason Zarathustra is able to have a prophetic vision of his death and return is that he has died and returned before and thus is able to remember and foresee the moment when he will die and return again. Further, I argue, a close examination of Nietzsche’s narrative reveals that Zarathustra’s “most abysmal thought” is related to his childhood memory of having died and returned. This memory lies buried in his subconscious mind, and causes him psychological distress that is expressed in the form of frightening symbolic dreams, visions, and voices. At the redemptive “great noon” moment, however, Zarathustra becomes strong enough to command awake – that is, to bring up to the surface of his rational awareness – his memory of the truth of eternal recurrence. Perhaps the most widely debated difficulty of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is its concept of the superhuman (der Übermensch) and the relation of this concept to the book’s other central concepts of will to power and eternal recurrence.11 This is because Zarathustra seems to give very little content to his teaching of the superhuman, and even seems to treat it as provisional in relation Throughout this study, I have departed from Kaufmann and Hollingdale in translating Nietzsche’s gender-neutral word, “Mensch,” into the English word, “human.” I have only used the word, “man,” when translating Nietzsche’s gender-specific word, “Mann” (as used for example in Z I.18), or sometimes when writing of the higher humans in Part IV (who are all men). Furthermore, in translating Nietzsche’s related gender-neutral noun, “Übermensch,” I have followed Hollingdale rather than Kaufmann (and, more recently, Parkes and Del Caro) in choosing the Latinate prefix “super” rather than the Anglo-Saxon prefix “over.” The former prefix is quite naturally and standardly used to translate Nietzsche’s very closely related adjective, “übermenschlich,” and I think this grammatical relation is more important to capture than the associations with other “über-” terminology standardly translated with the “over-” prefix (such as “Überfluss,” or “überwinden”). In addition, the coined noun “overhuman” is not used in the English language at all outside of Nietzsche scholarship, whereas the noun “superhuman” does have wide usage today. But I have departed from Hollingdale in not capitalizing the noun and instead allowing the context to show whether the noun or adjective is intended. Some scholars and translators (see

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to his later teaching of eternal recurrence. In addition, the progressive and futuristic ideal of the superhuman seems to presuppose a linear time and a negation of the past that are at odds with his supremely affirmative teaching of circular time. In response, I argue in Chapters 6 and 7 that a careful reading of the narrative event of Zarathustra’s self-redemption reveals his discovery and actual performance of an ability to will backward in time.12 For once Zarathustra learns that he is able to recollect his life’s future, he realizes that he is also able to recollect any reminders or commands that he gives himself in the future. And if he can do this, then he can also impress reminders or commands in his memory that help determine his past life to be what it unchangeably is. This means that he no longer feels impotent with respect to the past, but is rather able to say that he is, and shall be, willing this past. Zarathustra is thus the stylist of his own life because his perfected self can backward-will unity, necessity, and meaning into those aspects of his life that otherwise might be fragmentary, accidental, and pointless. On my performative reading, Nietzsche depicts the newly redeemed Zarathustra as sending mnemonic communications (such as “It is time!” or a cry for help) back to those key stages in his life in which he needed special assistance in progressing toward his destiny – for example, when he was overwhelmed by prophetic nihilism, or when he was ensnared in his love for his children. Since his prevision shows that this ability renders him no longer human (nicht mehr Mensch), we can infer that Nietzsche conceives of the superhuman as the kind of species whose discovery and affirmation of eternal recurrence grants it this new kind of power over time. Nietzsche thus illustrates what he means by going beyond the human whenever he depicts a manifestation of Zarathustra’s backward-willing. And his concept of the superhuman is not incompatible with eternal recurrence because it presupposes a circular time in which there is no way to affirm the future without also affirming the past. Diethe 2006, pp. x–xi) have proposed leaving Nietzsche’s German term, “Übermensch,” untranslated, since it has become familiar to English speakers. But I do not agree that it is so familiar, and besides, this choice simply obscures Nietzsche’s intended associations with all of the terms that are translated into English, or it requires leaving still more terms untranslated (as Diethe selectively does with Unmensch). Some scholars have argued that the English terms, “superman,” or “superhuman,” should be avoided because they have unsavory ethical or political connotations, but then so does the German term. See also Del Caro 2006, p. xli. 12 Although a couple of scholars have argued that Zarathustra makes a non-metaphorical discovery of backward-willing (see Berkowitz 1995, pp. 179, 193, 198–199; and Gooding-Williams 2001, p. 205ff.), they think that Zarathustra discovers the denial of time and thus the changeability of the past (views that the narrative ascribes instead to Zarathustra’s dwarf archenemy); they argue that Nietzsche’s narrative goes on deliberately to undermine Zarathustra’s discovery; and they do not apply this discovery to the narrative itself.

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Finally, there is an important set of interpretive difficulties concerning Nietzsche’s depiction of Zarathustra’s horrified realization that the small human, the human who hates and accuses life, must eternally recur. According to the traditional analysis, eternal recurrence is a doctrine of unconditional and total affirmation, and so this doctrine teaches Zarathustra how to affirm all of life, even the small human that so nauseates him. But this analysis ignores Nietzsche’s other characterization of eternal recurrence as a selective doctrine. It also fails to explain how affirming the small human and his eternal recurrence could be compatible with Zarathustra’s goal of overcoming the small human, that is, of creating the superhuman. In Chapters 6 and 7, then, and drawing on Nietzsche’s allusions to Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, I offer an exegesis that helps to reconcile the Yes-saying and No-saying aspects of Nietzsche’s thought of eternal recurrence. In particular, I argue that Zarathustra only overcomes his nausea when he discovers that his “hammer” thought of life’s eternal recurrence will lead the small human to want to abridge his hated life as much as possible. Of course, Zarathustra can do nothing to end the eternal recurrence of the small human’s past existence. But by bringing the selective thought of eternal recurrence into the world, he is able indirectly to end the small human’s present existence and thereby foreclose a future that would have eternally recurred. In this way, the climax of Nietzsche’s book depicts the precise moment when Zarathustra acts to compel humankind to follow the tragic law of life and initiate its own self-overcoming. Just as the greatest sacrifices life for the sake of power, so too humankind must sacrifice itself for the sake of the superhuman. Indeed, I argue, Nietzsche concludes his book by showing how Zarathustra follows his own command and enacts his own tragic voluntary death. Having offered this set of solutions to the riddles of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I turn in my last chapter, Chapter 8, to discuss the relation of this singular work to the later series of books Nietzsche wrote in his own voice. Here I focus specifically on the book that is most studied and admired today, On the Genealogy of Morals, and I argue that my reading of Zarathustra helps us to understand three of its key, but obscure, aspects. These are: Nietzsche’s call for reversing the bad conscience at the end of the second essay, his recommendation for countering the ascetic ideal at the end of the third essay, and his discussion of atheism in both these essays. At the same time, I argue that a careful reading of Nietzsche’s allusions to Zarathustra in this later work help to confirm the interpretation I have set out in this study.

C h a pt e r 1

The eternal recurrence of the same

To paraphrase Kant, it remains a scandal to Nietzsche scholarship that we are obliged to assume the centrality of his doctrine of eternal recurrence but we are not able to give a satisfactory reply to anyone who may claim to refute this doctrine. Because Nietzsche has proven so insightful in so many areas of inquiry, we want to believe him when he tells us that eternal recurrence was his most important discovery ever. But in truth, ever since Georg Simmel’s summary dismissal in 1907, even Nietzsche’s admirers have conceded that his emphasis on the complete qualitative identity of eternal recurrence renders his idea insupportable, insignificant, and incoherent. Thus, if we are to solve the riddles of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, we need to begin by refuting Simmel’s influential dismissal of its motivating idea. This is what I propose to do in this chapter, before turning to Zarathustra proper. In this chapter, I argue that Simmel’s critique rests upon a premise that assumes the denial of Nietzsche’s doctrine. Without this premise, we are free to see that Nietzsche did indeed believe in the truth of cosmological eternal recurrence and considered this belief supportable, significant, and coherent. This reading of Nietzsche’s doctrine will in turn allow us to revisit his clue for understanding Zarathustra. Because commentators have followed Simmel in dismissing this doctrine, they have not been in a position to understand the engine that drives the narrative of Nietzsche’s prose poem. S imm e l’s critiqu e At the most general level, Georg Simmel’s doubt concerns Nietzsche’s conviction that he had discovered a fundamental truth about the nature of the cosmos that would change his life and the history of humankind. In his last work, Ecce Homo, Nietzsche describes eternal recurrence as 11

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a cosmological theory comparable to those proposed by the ancient Greeks:1 The doctrine of ‘eternal recurrence,’ that is to say, of the unconditional and endlessly repeated circular course of all things – this doctrine of Zarathustra could possibly already have been taught by Heraclitus. At least the Stoa, which inherited almost all its fundamental ideas from Heraclitus, shows traces of it. (EH BT: 3)2

Upon making his discovery in August 1881, Nietzsche wrote about the impact on his own life: “What do we do with the rest of our lives – we who have spent the greatest part of them in the most essential ignorance? We teach the doctrine – it is the strongest means of incorporating it into ourselves. Our kind of bliss, as teacher of the greatest doctrine” (KSA 9:11[141]). And a little later, in a remark that anticipated the skepticism of his later commentators, Nietzsche wrote about the impact his discovery would have on humankind: Let us guard against teaching such a doctrine as an upstart religion! It must sink in slowly; entire generations must cultivate it and become fruitful on it – in order that it may become a great tree overshadowing all humanity still to come. What are the two millennia during which Christianity has survived! For the mightiest thought many millennia are needed – long, long must it remain small and powerless! (KSA 9:11[158])

Here now is Simmel’s influential early verdict regarding these assorted claims: “The deep emotion and devotion with which Nietzsche speaks of his doctrine can be explained, it seems to me, only in terms of a certain imprecision in its logical conceptualization” (1986, pp. 170–178; 1920, pp. 246–259).3 In the first place, he argues, suppose that a phenomenon appears which is absolutely identical with me in all of its traits and experiences. It follows that this qualitatively identical recurrence of me cannot recognize or acknowledge itself as such. For “if there were something qualitatively According to Nietzsche, the retrospective Ecce Homo – in which he aims to explain himself for posterity – is the place where light is first shed upon his Zarathustra (letter to Paul Deussen, November 26, 1888; KSB 8, p. 492). And indeed much of Ecce Homo is taken up with explaining, promoting, and quoting Zarathustra. 2 See Long 1985 for a discussion of the Stoic theory of everlasting recurrence. Because Nietzsche here ascribes the doctrine of eternal recurrence to his fictional character Zarathustra, some scholars have argued that he himself did not want to endorse it (Clark 1990, p. 256). In Chapter 8, however, I argue that this ascription constitutes his ultimate endorsement. Also, as we have seen, in his concluding signature to Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche declares himself “the teacher of eternal recurrence” and suggests that he learned this teaching from the philosopher Dionysus whom he identifies with Zarathustra (TI X:5, EH Z:6–8, DD). 3 Emended translation of Simmel’s text in favor of greater literalness here and throughout this chapter. 1


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real in the second instance whereby it pointed back to the earlier instance and thereby acknowledged itself to be the later instance, then it would not be the exact repetition of the first, but rather would be differentiated from it just by the virtue of that acknowledgement.” Thus, there can never be any human awareness of recurrence that could count as evidence in support of the objective truth of Nietzsche’s doctrine, and we are forced to rely instead on his weak and unscientific proofs.4 Second, Simmel writes: “If an experience is repeated within my existence, this repetition as such can be of the most enormous importance for me; but only because I am reminded by it of the first instance.” But, as we have just seen, our supposition that the repetition of my experience is qualitatively identical entails that I cannot be reminded of the first instance of this experience. Besides, as most later commentators have agreed, the exact repetition of my experience means that all my choices and actions are predetermined. So eternal recurrence cannot be of any importance to those who recur, and Nietzsche’s thought is psychologically and ethically insignificant.5 Finally, Simmel suggests, even if we were to grant the possibility of recurrence-awareness, the importance of repetition “requires rather that an ego persists.” But “in reality it is in no way I that recurs, but only a phenomenon appears which absolutely agrees with me in all of its traits and experiences.” So Nietzsche needs to postulate the numerical identity of eternal recurrence. And indeed, as several commentators have since elaborated, if the repetitions of my experience are to be qualitatively identical in every respect, then they must also be temporally identical. But since time was our only means of differentiating these repetitions (as “first” and “second,” or “earlier” and “later”), this means that they are in fact numerically identical. So what were supposed to be infinitely many recurrences or repetitions turn out to be only a single occurrence. Nietzsche’s doctrine thus proves to be conceptually incoherent. Anticipating Heidegger, Simmel concludes his evaluation with a psychological diagnosis: “And we also find here a hidden and profound reason, which is not otherwise easily detected, why Nietzsche felt that recurrence was an absolutely essential and central element in all of his thinking.” Although Simmel is best known today for his counterexample to Nietzsche’s unpublished proof of eternal recurrence, this was actually only a footnote to his critique of Nietzsche’s presentation in Gay Science 341. 5 Simmel suggests that Nietzsche’s thought can nevertheless have significance as a regulative idea, but see Clark 1990 pp. 247–254 and Rogers 2001 pp. 77–78 for good criticisms of this kind of qualification. 4

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Having abandoned the idea of any final and absolute goal of being, Nietzsche found it “comforting and beneficial” that “endless becoming achieves form and secure boundaries” through the eternal recurrence of the same: “The infinite drifting that results from the restlessness of his nature and his negation of a cosmic goal are placed within the limits of the circumference of the ‘ring.’” Awa r e n e ss My refutation of Simmel’s critique begins with Nietzsche’s presentation of eternal recurrence in Gay Science 341. Because this presentation is so compact, and because Nietzsche himself drew attention to it as the first and carefully planned public appearance of his doctrine (EH Z:1), Simmel and other scholars have concentrated on it as the place where they find the flaws in Nietzsche’s doctrine. As they observe, the demon’s message insists on a complete qualitative identity among my innumerable recurring lives: This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small and great in your life must return to you, and all in the same succession and sequence – and even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of being is turned over again and again – and you with it, speck of dust!

As my review above indicates, the key premise in Simmel’s classic analysis is that the complete qualitative identity of eternal recurrence logically precludes any awareness or recognition of that recurrence. From the impossibility of such recognition, it does seem to follow that Nietzsche’s doctrine is insupportable, insignificant, and incoherent. But is Simmel’s premise obviously true? A survey of the literature from the last forty years shows a wide range of influential scholars who think it is.6 Even those who have successfully criticized Simmel’s famous refutation of Nietzsche’s proofs accept this premise.7 See Danto 1965, pp. 204–205, 2005, pp. 186–187; Soll 1973, pp. 335, 339–341; Magnus 1978, pp. 156–157; Nehamas 1985, p. 152; Higgins 1987, pp. 163–164, 2000, p. 128; Wood 1988, pp. 37, 46; Heller 1988, p. 183; Shapiro 1989, p. 84; White 1990, pp. 64–68; Clark 1990, pp. 266–270; Tanner 1994, p. 54; Ridley 1997, p. 20; Small 2002, p. 12; Hatab 2005, pp. 64, 115–116, 130, 133; Solomon 2006, pp. 14, 202; and Hill 2007, pp. 92–94. 7 See especially Moles 1990, pp. 285, 295, 412–413 and Abel 1998, pp. 217–246. See also Sterling 1977, p. 273; Reeves 1986, p. 55; Rogers 2001, p. 80. In fact, as far as I know, there has been only one challenge of this premise in the literature, by Kain (1983, pp. 376–377). However, Kain’s argument has not received much attention, perhaps because he includes it only as a brief aside.

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Against Simmel, however, I may be said to possess an awareness of my eternally recurring lives as soon as I hear the demon’s message. Moreover, this awareness introduces no qualitative difference as long as the very same awareness recurs in each and every one of my recurring lives at the very same moment. And, indeed, if we look more closely at the demon’s message, we see that it is recursive in the sense that he explicitly insists on his own return, and thus on his same insistence within that return, and so on innumerable times more. Nietzsche’s long dash thus indicates an inference from the demon’s claim of complete qualitative identity among my recurring lives to his claim that his own message, and presumably my reaction to it (whether pain or joy), must return in each and every recurring life at exactly the same moment.8 Since the aphorism later instructs me to count the demon’s message as a kind of thought that overpowers me, the demon is implying that his message must itself be included among all the thoughts that he says must return to me in the same succession and sequence. Nietzsche makes this recursive point fully explicit when he writes in an 1881 preparatory note: “Everything comes again: Sirius and the spider and your thoughts in this hour and this thought of yours that everything comes again” (KSA 9:11[206]). It would seem, then, that Nietzsche’s Gay Science presentation of his doctrine is designed to emphasize precisely, and especially, the awareness of recurrence that students of this aphorism argue is logically prohibited. In addition, Nietzsche’s presentation seems designed to call our attention to the demon’s deduction of the recurrence of this very same awareness – thereby avoiding the charge that this awareness would introduce some qualitative difference. The demon says that his identical self must deliver his identical message in the life I must live once more. In Simmel’s terms, the first instance of the demon refers to the second instance of the demon and thereby acknowledges itself to be first while still remaining qualitatively identical with the second. Since there is no logical contradiction whatsoever in this scenario, why have so many careful students of Nietzsche’s aphorism thought it obvious that there is? The most charitable answer to this question is that Simmel, and those scholars who have followed his lead, are inadvertently assuming that the interlocutor in Gay Science 341 is living some “initial” or “original” life that he has never lived before and that hence could not include any recognition of having been already lived. This assumption is expressed, for example, In Chapter 3, I discuss Nietzsche’s same long dash and emphasized inference in Zarathustra’s proof of eternal recurrence (Z III.2:2).

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in Kathleen Higgins’ recent summary of the consensus: “[T]he recurrence would not be a repetition of the original with the addition of a recognition that it is a recurrence. This recognition, or any memory of a previous iteration, would be ruled out as deviations from the original life” (2000, p. 128, my italics). Moreover, this assumption would seem to be supported by the demon’s tense-asymmetrical claim that I will have to live again the identical life I am now living and have lived so far. The demon does not say that I must have already lived this identical life once before and innumerable times before. So it might seem that my recurring lives will not be qualitatively identical to this present life precisely because they will include within them an additional recognition of having been lived before. Nevertheless, Nietzsche is quite clear elsewhere (most importantly, as will see, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra) that eternal recurrence extends backward as well as forward: there is no initial or original life that I have not already lived, and there is no final or concluding life that I will not live again. Applying this point to the Gay Science aphorism, it is simply not plausible that Nietzsche meant the demon to inform me of the innumerable qualitatively identical lives to come after this very first non-recurring life that I am now living. The demon’s message implicitly instructs me to extrapolate backward so that I recognize this message as an exact repetition of the message that was delivered in a previous identical life, and so on. Indeed, Nietzsche’s unpublished first draft of the demon’s message does include the broader claim that the moment of this message “was already there once and many times” (So diesen Augenblick: er war schon einmal da und viele Male und wird ebenso wiederkehren) (KSA 9:11[148]). But this means that the demon’s message does provide me with a non-differentiating awareness that I have already lived the life I am now living. Evide nc e Having set aside Simmel’s premise by showing that Nietzsche emphasized the exact repetition of any recurrence-awareness, I turn now to the objection that this recognition cannot count as evidence of the reality of recurrence precisely because it is exactly repeated. Thus Arthur Danto argues, for example, that any evidence of the reality of eternal recurrence would have to differentiate what is identical. But exactly repeated recurrenceawareness cannot provide any differentiation at all: There can hardly be anything like evidence for the doctrine in any simple sense of ‘evidence.’ We could not, for example, find in the world as it is now any


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traces of another and exactly resemblant world or world state. If they do exactly r esemble each other, there would be no traces or scars left by one upon the other to differentiate them: any traces in the one would have identical counterparts in the other … When two things are so exactly alike that they cannot in principle be told apart, nothing is to count as evidence that there are two things to be told apart. If they could be told apart, they would differ just at the point of differentiation, and this is ruled out by the hypothesis. (Danto 1965, p. 204; 2005, p. 186; see also Magnus 1978, pp. 66–67)9

Notice, however, Danto’s imprecise use of the concepts of identity and ifference. Certainly, as we have seen, the demon’s message cannot in any d way help me qualitatively distinguish among my recurring lives. But this does not mean, as Danto further suggests, that the message cannot help me numerically differentiate among them. In fact, the language Nietzsche uses to describe his doctrine – Wiederkehrung, Wiederkunft, Wiederholung – clearly implies numerical difference. Also, as we have seen, Nietzsche’s presentation in Gay Science 341 emphasizes the numerical distinctness of my qualitatively identical recurring lives. Both the demon and the narrator say to me that I will have to live my qualitatively identical life “once more and innumerable times more” (noch einmal und noch unzählige Male).10 To be precise, then, any evidence of the reality of eternal recurrence would have to numerically differentiate what is qualitatively indiscernible.11 But there is no contradiction in thinking there can be such evidence (Black 1952; van Fraassen 1970, pp. 64–65), and in fact the immanent awareness See also Čapek 1960, p. 295, 1967, p. 63; Small 2001, p. 128. To this argument, Moles rightly replies, “Why is the recurrence of evidence for recurrence an objection to that evidence?” but then backs away and says that it does seem impossible to find confirming evidence (1990, p. 328). 10 In a preparatory note from 1884, Nietzsche has Zarathustra conclude his explicit teaching of eternal recurrence as follows: “‘Und wenn du einstmals wiedergeboren wirst, so wird es nicht zu einem neuen Leben oder besseren Leben oder ähnlichen Leben sein, sondern zu einem gleichen und selbigen Leben, wie du es jetzt beschließest, im Kleinsten und im Größten.’ / Diese Lehre ist noch nicht auf Erden gelehrt worden: nämlich auf der diesmaligen Erde und im diesmaligen großen Jahre” (KSA 11:25[7]). Here we can see very clearly the distinction in Nietzsche’s doctrine between qualitative identity (gleichen und selbigen) and numerical difference (diesmaligen). 11 By contrast, both Abel and Moles agree with Simmel that the qualitative indiscernibility of recurring lives entails their numerical indiscernibility. This agreement leads each of them to formulate implausible responses to Simmel’s critique: Abel (1998, pp. 217–246) argues that numerical indiscernibility does not entail numerical identity; while Moles (1990, pp. 310–314) argues that the numerical identity of eternally recurring lives is unproblematic and intended by Nietzsche. Moles’ argument leads him (1990, pp. 285–288, 406 n. 13) to charge Nietzsche with inconsistency whenever he uses language that implies numerical distinctness (e.g. the term “Wiederholung”). But this charge would have to include Nietzsche’s most important and published presentations of eternal recurrence: Gay Science 341, Zarathustra’s proof (III.2:2), and Zarathustra’s climactic roundelay entitled “Once More” (Noch ein Mal) (III.15, IV.19:12). 9

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conveyed by the demon’s message would seem to be an ideal candidate for this role.12 Leaving behind this logical objection, we still need to address the scholarly consensus that Nietzsche’s aphorism shows no interest in any epistemic questions regarding his doctrine. The chief reasons for this consensus are as follows: the aphorism is introduced as a hypothetical thought-experiment; it does not include any proof or demonstration; it seems to emphasize the interlocutor’s epistemically uncritical state; and it describes the demon’s message as an overpowering thought rather than as a well-founded true belief. What really matters in this aphorism, commentators agree, are the psychological effects of the merely hypothetical thought of recurrence and the non-epistemic role of this thought as a kind of test or ideal of life affirmation (Soll 1973, pp. 322–326; Magnus 1978, pp. 111–154).13 But there are problems with each of the reasons behind this consensus. In the first place, when Nietzsche writes, “What if some day or night a demon were to steal into your most solitary solitude and say to you: ‘This life …’,” skeptical scholars usually import Nietzsche’s initial phrase, “What if” (Wie, wenn), into the demon’s message itself and interpret it as a conditional phrase. As Bernd Magnus writes: “Recall that the demon presents us with a hypothetical state-of-affairs. ‘What if ’ … recurrence were true” (1978, pp. 40, pp. 74–75; see also Parkes 2005, pp. xxiii–xxiv; Westerdale 2006, p. 64). This phrase, they then argue, is Nietzsche’s device for suspending the question whether eternal recurrence is true or whether we have good evidence for its truth (Nehamas 1985, p. 151; Clark 1990, pp. 248, 254; Allison 2001, pp. 123–124). In fact, however, the demon’s message is flatly categorical and concludes with the broader cosmological assertion that is supposed to entail my eternally recurring life: “The eternal hourglass of being is turned over Despite this textual evidence, Abel argues that according to Nietzsche the recognition or verification of life’s eternal recurrence would require a transcendental observational standpoint (1998, pp. 230, 430). 13 In support of this claim, commentators often cite a note Nietzsche wrote shortly after discovering his thought of eternal recurrence: “Let us examine how the thought that something repeats itself has up to now had an effect (the year, e.g. or periodic illnesses, waking and sleeping etc). Even if the circular repetition is only a probability or possibility, even the thought of a possibility can move and transform us, not just perceptions or definite expectations! What an effect the possibility of eternal damnation has had!” (KSA 9: 11[203]). Commenting only on the second sentence in this note, Ivan Soll writes that according to Nietzsche “even if we allow false or poorly founded beliefs to count, one need not believe eternal recurrence to be true in order for the idea to affect us profoundly” (1973, pp. 324–325). But the first sentence in this note shows that Nietzsche is actually not considering his doctrine of the eternal recurrence, but rather how similar theories of circular repetition, while only probable or possible, have had a tremendous effect in the past. 12


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again and again – and you with it, speck of dust!”14 Properly read, then, Nietzsche’s “What if” is an interrogative phrase that anticipates the string of interrogative sentences that follow the demon’s assertion.15 These sentences do not in any way hypothesize the demon’s assertion, but rather only the interlocutor’s response to this assertion: Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘you are a god and never have I heard anything more divine!’ If this thought gained power over you, it would transform and perhaps crush you, as you are; the question in each and every thing, ‘do you want this once more and innumerable times more?’ would lie on your actions as the greatest heavy weight! Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to long for nothing more fervently than for this last eternal confirmation and seal? (GS 341)

It is certainly true that this set of concluding questions focuses our attention upon the possible psychological consequences of accepting the demon’s message. But why should we suppose that this acceptance and these consequences are unrelated to the evidentiary power of the demon’s message? One reason, scholars claim, is that only a rational proof or demonstration of the eternal recurrence cosmology could bring about the kind of reactions described in Gay Science 341. As Maudemarie Clark writes: “If Nietzsche is concerned to produce such effects, he must convince us to accept the cosmology. If we are rational, we will ask what reason exists for accepting this cosmology” (1990, p. 251; see also Soll 1973, p. 326). Yet even though Nietzsche had worked out such proofs in his unpublished notebooks, he did not include any of them in his first published presentation of his doctrine. It must be the case, Clark concludes, that Nietzsche is not interested in our warranted acceptance of his doctrine or in showing how such warranted acceptance would lead to its transformational effects. In support of this conclusion, she notes especially the aphorism’s emphasis on the interlocutor’s loneliest of lonelinesses, “a situation of vulnerability to The cosmological aspect of this assertion is reinforced in Zarathustra III.13:2, where Nietzsche links the same image of the revolving hourglass (Sanduhr) to the concept of a great year of becoming (ein grosses Jahr des Werdens) – a concept that alludes back to the traditional cosmological concept of the great, perfect, or Platonic year, and thus ultimately back to Plato’s Timaeus concept of a complete year, or complete number of time, in which all the heavenly bodies return together to the starting point of their revolution (Plato 2009). In UM II:2, Nietzsche traces this same concept back even earlier to the Pythagoreans and to their teaching of the eternal recurrence of the same. 15 In Chapter 2, I trace the initial questioning phrase of this aphorism back to the narrative in the preceding aphorism, GS 340. 14

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suggestions one would otherwise dismiss, a situation in which one’s critical powers are at a minimum” (1990, p. 251). Although ingenious, this account relies upon an understanding of evidence that is not Nietzsche’s. At the start of Beyond Good and Evil and in a direct allusion back to the demon of Gay Science 341, Nietzsche indicates that, unlike other philosophers who pretend to have discovered their insights through pure reason, he courageously and honestly shows us the inspiring spirits or demons (inspirirende Genien oder Dämonen) that actually led him to his discoveries. He does not defend his doctrines – not even his most abstruse metaphysical claims – with proofs that he sought after the fact of his discoveries and that were themselves produced at the behest of his inspiring demons (BGE 5–6). This point is supported by Nietzsche’s reference in Gay Science 341 to Socrates’ daimonic inner voice and to his claim that this voice expressed Socrates’ instinctive wisdom (GS 340, BT 13). To be sure, Clark’s translation of “loneliness” for Einsamkeit is certainly suggestive of vulnerability and diminution of critical power. But the more usual translation of “solitude” better captures Nietzsche’s typical praise of Einsamkeit as the supreme condition for maximizing one’s critical powers – that is, for isolating oneself from the common opinion in order to discover and bring to the surface one’s own deepest instinctive wisdom (D 440; Z III.9; BGE 44, 231, 284; EH I:8).16 So it is open to Nietzsche, in his public introduction of eternal recurrence, to completely omit his rationalistic proofs while still presenting what he regards as the most critically powerful grounds for believing in the truth of his doctrine. Finally, it is true, as some commentators point out, that the narrator of Nietzsche’s aphorism describes the demon as conveying an overpowering thought rather than as providing evidence for believing in the truth of this thought (Soll 1973, pp. 324–325). And certainly my mere contemplation of this thought, or even the psychological force of this thought, cannot count as evidence for this thought. But this observation overlooks two crucial aspects of Nietzsche’s presentation. In the first place, his poetic devices indicate that I am also being overpowered by a sensory experience: some sunny day perhaps, I find myself suddenly plunged into an intensely solitary moment in which I literally see moonlight streaming between the trees and a spider crawling nearby; I literally feel a demon creeping next to me; and I literally hear the demon whispering to me in the most personal terms about even the smallest and most intimate details in my life. In keeping with his remark that mystics of every rank are more honest 16

See also Salaquarda 1989 pp. 323–325; Oger 1997, p. 10.


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in showing their inspiring spirits and demons (BGE 5–6), Nietzsche’s religious imagery in this aphorism suggests that he is concerned honestly to communicate the quasi-mystical sensory experience that he says inspired his thought of eternal recurrence: “The concept of revelation, in the sense that something suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, something that shakes and overturns one to the depths, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who gives; a thought flashes up like lightning, with necessity, unfalteringly formed – I never had any choice” (EH Z:3).17 In the second place, as we have seen, scholars since Simmel claim that the logic of eternal recurrence prevents the demon’s message from counting as a possible memory or reminder that I have lived this same life before. Although I have argued against this claim, I want to call attention now to their background assumption that such a mnemonic awareness would indeed count as evidence for the truth of eternal recurrence. For Nietzsche’s presentation of the demon’s message also includes a performative aspect that is directly tied to the message’s focus on time. Besides conveying to me the abstract thought of eternal recurrence, the demon prophesizes to me that I will have to relive my identical life. In experiencing the demon’s message, then, I may be said to have a precognition or prevision of a future that includes and extends beyond the moment of my death. This prevision is extremely concrete, since this future consists of everything small and great in the life I have already lived. Moreover, since the demon implicitly instructs me to extrapolate backward, it also reminds me that I have already lived this identical life. So I also may be said to have an extremely concrete memory or recollection of a past that includes and extends beyond the moment of my first conscious awareness.18 S igni f ic a nc e On this reading of Nietzsche’s aphorism, we do not need to find – as recent commentators have struggled to find – some means of divorcing Nietzsche’s ideal of life affirmation from questions about the truth or evidence of See Salaquarda 1989, pp. 326, 331–332, and Shapiro 2001, pp. 21–22, for Nietzsche’s allusions to St. Paul’s references to a near mystical moment (or Augenblick, in Luther’s translation) of awakening and transformative revelation. In Chapters 2 and 6, I discuss his further allusions to such moments in Goethe’s Faust and Wagner’s Siegfried. 18 In Chapter 3, I argue that Nietzsche has Plato’s theory of recollection in mind here; and in Chapter 8, I explain how Nietzsche’s theory of memory in GM II sheds further light on his quasi-Platonic idea that we can recall our eternally recurring lives. 17

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eternal recurrence (Clark 1990, pp. 247–254).19 Suppose I am like Socrates in the preceding aphorism, and I have suffered from life impoverishment (GS 340, GS 370). In that case, the demon’s recursive message will give me good reason to anticipate with dread the heavy crushing weight of innumerable more such livings of my identical suffering life, and to recall with horror the heavy crushing weight of my innumerable previous livings of this identical suffering life. Indeed, the demon’s inference lets me know that the very pain I am feeling when hearing this message – the pain that leads me to throw myself down, gnash my teeth, and curse the demon who speaks to me thus – will overwhelm me again innumerable times more and has already overwhelmed me innumerable times before. On the other hand, suppose I am like Zarathustra in the next aphorism, and I have enjoyed a life overflowing with energy (GS 342, 370). In that case, the demon’s recursive message will give me good reason to embrace Nietzsche’s ideal of life affirmation: that is, to anticipate with craving innumerable more such livings of my identical joyful life and to recall with gratitude my innumerable previous livings of this identical joyful life. Again, the demon’s inference lets me know that the very bliss I feel when hearing this message – the bliss that leads me to bless the demon as a god and the demon’s message as divine – will overwhelm me again innumerable times more and has already overwhelmed me innumerable times before. Either way, Nietzsche’s title for his aphorism – “The Greatest Heavy Weight” – emphasizes his belief that the thought of my life’s eternal recurrence could, and indeed should, have a life-changing impact: “If this thought gained power over you, it would transform and perhaps crush you, as you are; the question in each and every thing, ‘do you want this once more and innumerable times more?’ would lie on your actions as the greatest heavy weight!” This belief is best captured in a famous 1881 note in which Nietzsche ridicules secularization as a contemporary political madness that has as its goal the well-being of the fleeting individual. By contrast, he writes: My doctrine says: the task is to live in such a way that you must wish to live again – you will anyway! To whom striving gives the highest feeling, let him strive; to whom rest gives the highest feeling, let him rest; to whom placement, following, obedience give the highest feeling, let him obey. May he only become aware of what gives him the highest feeling and spare no means! Eternity is at stake! (KSA 9:11[163]) 19

See Hill 2007, pp. 89–92, for a further critique of what he calls the “counterfactual” interpretation of eternal recurrence.


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Given our refutation of Simmel’s argument against the possibility of recurrence-awareness, there would seem to be no contradiction in Nietzsche’s supposition that his thought could have this kind of tremendous personal significance and transformational power. Unfortunately, the point on which this refutation depends – that the qualitative identity of eternal recurrence extends backward as well as forward – would itself seem to nullify this significance and power. For, as Karl Löwith first observed in 1935, this backward extension would seem to entail that all my choices and actions are fated (see Löwith 1997, p. 87). Applying this point to Nietzsche’s aphorism, Aaron Ridley comments: And if the demon is coming to me now, he has presumably also been to me at precisely the same point of my life innumerable times before – and what difference has that made? If I passed the test I passed, if I failed I failed, and I’ll go on doing whichever I did infinitely many more times, without it changing a thing. The thought of eternal recurrence, then, should be a matter of the deepest indifference. Why care? (Ridley 1997, p. 20)

Indeed, Bernd Magnus argues, the backward extension of eternal recurrence obviously defeats the imperative force of Nietzsche’s exhortation that I live in such a way that I must wish to live again: “Then how I now live must be how I lived an infinite number of previous occasions. But I can only live in such a way that I must wish to live again if, in previous recurrences, I lived in such a way that I must wish to live again” (1979, p. 364). Worse, he suggests, this recurrence fatalism would seem to undermine even my choice of how to react to Nietzsche’s thought and thus the significance of this reaction as a test or diagnosis of my life affirmation (1978, p. 141; 1979, pp. 363–368; 1999, p. 101). It seems to me, however, that this widely accepted charge of recurrence fatalism still relies upon the same kind of reasoning that motivates Simmel’s influential premise. It is argued that the demon’s message cannot change the life I am living now without negating its qualitative identity with the life I have already lived. But this is to assume that I have lived some initial or original life in which I did not hear the same demon’s message, or in which that same message did not change my life in just the same way. In fact, the qualitative identity among my recurring lives is preserved as long as the identical message-inspired change or difference takes place in all of my recurring lives. So there is no contradiction in Nietzsche supposing that the revelation of my life’s eternal recurrence could lead me to overturn my life now so as to spare no means in searching out and doing whatever gives me the highest feeling. “Fated” change – or change that must agree exactly with innumerable corresponding changes in the past – is still change.

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Granting, then, that Nietzsche’s doctrine does indeed allow personal transformation and change, it might still be wondered whether the backward extension of eternal recurrence does not render any such change meaningless. This is because, as Joe Krueger writes, “our decisions would not truly be our own; our choices and actions will have been determined for us since the infinite past and into the infinite future” (1978, p. 442). Or, as Magnus asks, “given recurrence fatalism, what sense can be made of ‘my’ voluntary behavior?” (1979, p. 366). However, these very abstract formulations obscure the more precise sense in which it is of course always me that has made the choice in the innumerable previous recurrences of my life. Magnus himself admits this when he imagines a respondent saying “that whatever causes me to behave as I do, it could only be ‘me.’ That is, if this moment repeats a past recurrence, ‘necessarily,’ then ‘my’ present choices are a repetition of ‘my’ past choices. The choices are no less ‘mine’ for having been past, it might be argued” (1979, p. 367). Although Magnus does not accept it, I think this is indeed the right response. Given this more precise formulation, the fatalism objection envisages a spurious sense of freedom according to which I can make a choice that is not my choice. Although we are accustomed to think that my choice cannot be truly determining unless I am making it for the first and only time, this conviction assumes again the original nonrepeated life that Nietzsche’s doctrine denies. Still, against this defense of Nietzsche’s thought from the charge of fatalism, Simmel and his followers would most likely point now to the different tenses in the demon’s message: “This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it. …” (Dieses Leben, wie du es jetzt lebst und gelebt hast, wirst du noch einmal und noch unzählige Male leben müssen; und es wird nichts Neues daran sein …). It might seem, that is, that my recurring lives are not qualitatively identical in every respect since they take place at different times (Čapek 1960, p. 295; Magnus 1978, pp. 67–68, 104–110).20 But this means that the enormous temporal gap between successive iterations of my life makes it impossible for me to experience any of the psychological reactions described in Nietzsche’s aphorism. When an experience is repeated within my existence, Simmel writes, we can understand how a synthesis is possible of this repetition and how the repetition is therefore of importance to me. But when it is the whole of existence that returns, no synthesis is possible of successive repetitions: no one can See also Kain 1983, p. 376; Sterling 1977, pp. 290–291.

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watch, reflect on, and unite the many returns in his consciousness. Or, as Clark puts it more recently: So I live and die, and eons later someone is born whose life has exactly the same characteristics as mine, including temporal/spatial relation to everything else in its cycle. No connection exists between the two lives, nothing carries over from my death to the birth of my double in the later cycle. A clear conception of this lack of connection should reduce a person’s concern for her double in the next cycle to the level of concern one would have for any human being. (Clark 1990, p. 267)21

Indeed, Simmel writes, Nietzsche’s idea is comparable to that of absolutely identical worlds existing in infinite space but with absolutely no knowledge of each other: “And it is obvious that these absolutely identical persons existing alongside one another would relate in exactly the same way as those living after one another that are spoken of by the eternal recurrence of the same.” If Simmel’s spatial analogy is right, then the fatalism objection does not involve a spurious sense of freedom after all. For my choices and actions would no longer seem to belong to my present self, and the question arises whether I can now decide to live differently than my unconnected double(s) decided to live eons earlier (or, by analogy, on some other world in infinite space). This question is especially important in light of Nietzsche’s claim that my belief in the eternal future repetition of my present choices should place a special psychological weight on these present choices. For this weight would seem to disappear altogether once I recognize that my present choices have themselves already been chosen eternally in the past (Magnus 1979, p. 367; Magnus, Stewart, and Mileur 1993, p. 27). As Soll rightly comments, this “undermining of the significance of the concepts of choice and action is particularly problematic for a theory one of whose purposes is to increase our sense of the significance of the choices we make” (1973, pp. 332–333). However, I think that a closer look at the demon’s message shows this follow-up objection to be unfounded as well. For the demon explicitly says 21

See also Hill 2007, p. 92. Lucretius raises a similar objection to the Stoic doctrine of eternal recurrence that Nietzsche says shows traces of Zarathustra’s doctrine (EH BT:3): “Or even if the matter that composes us should be reassembled by time after our death and brought back to its present state – if the light of life were given to us anew – even that contingency would still be no concern of ours once the chain of our identity has been snapped. We who are now are not concerned with ourselves in any previous existence: the suffering of those selves do not touch us … our mind cannot recall this to remembrance. For between then and now is interposed a break in life, and all the atomic motions have been wandering far astray from sentience.” (Lucretius 1951, Book 3, pp. 848–862).

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that the very moment (Augenblick) in which he is speaking must return to me. So it is a consequence of the demon’s thought that time itself recurs – “the eternal hourglass of being is turned over again and again” – and that the temporal moments of events recur along with those events. This means that the demon denies the existence of any absolute or universal time independent of, and outside, the recurrences wherein they can be successively ordered and differentiated.22 Still, this denial does not prohibit the demon from continuing to use tense language (any more than the denial of absolute space prohibits our use of terms like “up” and “down” or “east” and “west”). Instead, the demon implies, my next living of my temporally identical life is “future” only in a relative and perspectival sense – that is, relative to, and from the perspective of, the moment in which I am hearing his message. But since this moment must itself return, my next living of my life may also correctly be described as “present” and “past” relative to, and from the perspective of, this moment. Unless one holds a conception of absolute and universal time that entails absolute and universal distinctions among past, present, and future (Magnus 1978, pp. 107–108; Gooding-Williams 2001, p. 218), there is no contradiction in this idea of recurring moments that are at once past, present, and future. Time, therefore, cannot be said to introduce any qualitative difference among recurrences, and eternal recurrence is not to be imagined as an infinite number of cosmic cycles (or spirals) succeeding each other in some absolute linear time. Instead, Nietzsche encourages us to imagine just a single finite (though unbounded) circular course (Kreislauf ) in which is represented, not just the recurrence of all things, but also of all those moments of time that cannot exist independently of those things.23 Since for Nietzsche time just is a series of those moments, it follows that time itself is destroyed, recreated, and repeated along with everything else. Thus, when I am recreated so as to relive my identical life, the time at which I am recreated and live my life is always exactly the same.24 Contrary to Clark, then, there are no eons of elapsed time for me to traverse in order to make a connection with my recreated self in some temporally subsequent or later cycle of cosmic history. But what about the See Moles 1989, p. 30; 1990, pp. 233–234, 285–286, 295, 310ff.; Abel 1998, pp. 236ff., 420ff. Moles and Abel both argue further that this denial of absolute universal time is entailed by Nietzsche’s principles of natural philosophy and is consistent with current relativistic physics. See also Stambaugh 1972, pp. 31–34, 104–106. In Chapter 3, I show how Zarathustra’s dialectical proof of eternal recurrence (III.2:1) presupposes this same denial of absolute and universal time. 23 Van Fraassen (1970, p. 65) claims that Nietzsche did not conceive of just this possibility. 24 For this reason, and contrary to Hill (2007, pp. 92, 95), we do not have to interpret Nietzsche as Platonistically proposing merely a recurrence of my type-identity. 22


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still vast amount of time that elapses after my death and before the moment of my recreation within the single finite circular course of the cosmos? Surely this vast elapsed time is still impossible for me to traverse in order to make a connection with my recreated self? I think Nietzsche has two related answers to this question. In the first place, because time itself recurs, the moment of my recreation or rebirth must also take place before the moment of my death and indeed only a very short time before. So in fact there is always only the very small elapsed time of my own life-span separating my dying self and my recreated self. Second, a corollary of Nietzsche’s denial of universal time is his claim that any observation of time’s passing depends upon some particular perspective or frame of reference. Hence, although the perspective of other living beings will show time passing both before and after the span of my existence, my own perspective cannot show any such elapsed time. Nietzsche explains why in a note he wrote shortly after formulating his doctrine: You think you will have a long rest until rebirth – but do not deceive yourselves! Between the last moment of consciousness [dem letzten Augenblick des Bewusstseins] and the first appearance of new life there lies ‘no time’ – it passes by as quickly as a flash of lightning, even if living creatures were to measure it in terms of billions of years, or could not even begin to measure it. Timelessness and succession accommodate themselves to one another as soon as the intellect is gone. (KSA 9:11[318])25

Applying this important point to Gay Science 341, the demon’s insistence on the recurrence of time itself lets me know that the moment in which I begin to relive my life is only as far away as the last moment of the life I am now living.26 Of course, the perspective of others will show my life ending completely and finally at the moment of my death. But since there is no universal time, their perspective is no more correct than mine.27 And from my perspective there can never be any end or any sort of break in my life: my dying consciousness is immediately succeeded by my returned awakening consciousness. So whatever (presumably substantial) See Shapiro 2001, p. 21, for a passage from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians that is very similar in content and wording (in Luther’s translation). In Nietzsche’s 1884 preparatory note for Zarathustra’s animals’ account of his hypothetical death-bed speech (III.13:2), Zarathustra himself speaks of eternal recurrence as entailing rebirth (KSA 11:25[7]). 26 This is in opposition to Sterling’s objection that “the sheer remoteness of the future recurrence of one’s present life diminishes, at least to some degree, the impact which believing in eternal recurrence would have” (1977, p. 275). 27 Thus, contrary to Hill 2007, p. 92, Nietzsche’s point in this note is not merely that it is “as if ” no time elapses or that it may not “seem” as if any time elapses. 25

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concern I might now have for my dying self is precisely the same concern I should have for myself as I begin to relive my life. Given Nietzsche’s conception of time, then, there are substantial psychological relations among my numerically distinct selves. In addition, as the performative aspect of the demon’s message suggests, there are interesting epistemic relations among these selves. Since my life is for me a ceaselessly forward-flowing ring in which the endpoint eternally turns back to become the starting point, I may remember events that still lie ahead in my current living of that life. In particular, I may suddenly remember – in some solitary moment that could come at any day or night – the key future moment in which I will die and, as the demon whispers, immediately begin reliving my life. This is why, I would argue, Nietzsche has the demon allude back to the last moment (letzte Augenblick) of Socrates’ life in the immediately preceding aphorism, and why he includes death-related imagery of midnight-moonlight, spidercobwebs, and tomb-dust.28 Thus, the source of my precognitive certainty is my mnemonic certainty: it is precisely because I suddenly and overwhelmingly recall having died and recurred innumerable times that I am able to foresee that I will do so innumerable times more.29 Indeed, since my life is eternally recurring, I am able to impress into my memory messages that will be buried in my younger self’s subconscious and that will manifest themselves in the form of precognitive dreams, visions, omens, and voices. The voice I hear is thus my own future voice reminding me of my eternally recurring life. Accordingly, as the narrator suggests, my response to that voice is evidence of how well disposed I am towards myself: cursing the “demon” who speaks thus shows my self-hatred; blessing the “god” who speaks thus shows my self-love.30 Let us return now to the fatalism objection. In the first place, Nietzsche’s claim of the temporal identity of my recurring selves means that my choices and actions can always correctly be described as belonging to my present self. So the question simply does not arise as to whether my present self I discuss Nietzsche’s relevant allusions to Plato’s Socrates in Chapters 2 and 3. Several commentators (Soll 1973, p. 340; Reeves 1986, p. 55; Moles 1990, p. 295) cite the following 1881 Nachlass fragment as evidence that Nietzsche ruled out any memory links among recurring lives: “inorganic matter (Materie), even if it was mostly organic, has learned nothing, is always without past! Were it otherwise, there could never be a repetition – for there would always arise from matter (Stoff ) something with new qualities, with new pasts” (KSA 9:12[15]). But Nietzsche does not mention eternal recurrence here or say that memory would serve to qualitatively differentiate recurring lives. 30 See Small 1983, pp. 102–104, for Nietzsche’s allusions to the Greek daimon as a person’s “other self,” as in e.g., Heraclitus’ remark that a man’s character is his daimon. 28

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can decide differently than my self in some earlier eon. Secondly, Simmel’s spatial analogy fails because, although my temporally identical selves are indeed numerically distinct, Nietzsche’s denial of absolute and universal time allows him to posit substantial connections among them. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, in suggesting that the choices I make in the life I am now living are predetermined by my identical choices in all the innumerable lives I have already lived, the fatalism objection assumes precisely the conception of linear absolute time that Nietzsche rejects. On this conception, that is, there is an absolute distinction between the past and the present such that the past always precedes and determines the present. Since this past is gone forever and outside of my reach when I am making my present choices, there is no reason for me to feel any special weight on these present choices as determining the eternally repeating future. By contrast, I have argued, Nietzsche’s doctrine proposes a circular relational time according to which my past can also correctly be described as my future and therefore as following and being determined by my present. On this view of time, the past is never gone forever and outside my reach when I am making my present choices. So whereas the fatalism objection imagines that the weight of my present choices can concern only their eternal future repetition, Nietzsche actually means that this weight also concerns their eternal past repetition. When the aphorism’s narrator exclaims that the question in each and every thing, “do you want this once more and innumerable times more?,” would lie on my actions as the greatest heavy weight, he means that my actions now determine both the forward and backward extension of my eternally recurring life. And when Nietzsche himself exclaims, “Eternity is at stake!,” he means that my decisions now determine all at once the entire circular course of my eternally recurring life. C oh e r e nc e To this last reply, we can imagine two final objections. On the one hand, supposing that Nietzsche’s doctrine actually entails the temporal identity of recurrences, we might wonder why it does not likewise entail their numerical identity and hence its own incoherence. As Milič Čapek observes in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “either the successive identical cycles are distinguished by their positions in time – which means that we surreptitiously introduce an irreversible time as their container – or we insist on the numerical identity of the cycles. But we then have only one cosmic cycle, and it clearly becomes meaningless to speak of a ‘succession

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of cycles’ or of their ‘repetition’” (1967, p. 63).31 Or, as Magnus notes: “If time is not the basis for distinguishing between events and recurrences, the evidence seems overwhelming that we are giving a single event two or more names. On this view, there is no cosmic recurrence of the same at all, only a systematically misleading expression wantonly misapplied” (1978, p. 109).32 On the other hand, Simmel insists, no matter how much qualitative identity might obtain between my recurring selves, including even their temporal identity, these cannot be numerically identical selves. But this means that they cannot be of any significance to each other: “I think that Nietzsche has been tempted by an imprecise formulation of the I-concept to see a resurrection of the I where there is only a recapitulation of the same phenomenon. Therefore, he grants significance to the successive egos, none of which is the first ego and each of which is merely qualitatively of the same type as the others” (Simmel 1986, p. 174). Thus, either the temporal identity of recurrences entails their numerical identity, in which case the doctrine is conceptually incoherent; or it does not, in which case the doctrine is psychologically insignificant. Although these two final objections attack Nietzsche’s doctrine from opposite standpoints, they both presuppose the impossibility of any recurrenceawareness. But I have argued that such awareness is indeed possible, and that it would serve to numerically differentiate temporally identical recurrences as well as to establish some kind of substantial concern and communication among numerically distinct recurring selves. Should we follow Simmel in demoting this concern and communication by comparison to the kind we usually posit among the temporally distinct stages of my numerically identical self? Perhaps, but only if we assume what philosophers since Locke have questioned – namely, the numerical identity of the self over time.33 If we do not assume this, and Nietzsche certainly does not (BGE 16, GM I:13), then we should rather promote recurrence-concern and recurrence-communication as obtaining among selves that are at least temporally identical. If, for example, we follow Derek Parfit (1975, pp. 218–220) and use the word “I” to imply the greatest degree of psychological connectedness, which in turn depends upon temporal proximity, then there is more reason to use this word with respect to my eternally recurring self-iterations than with respect to H. Bois first raised this objection in 1913 (cited in van Fraassen 1970, p. 63). See also Čapek 1960, p. 295; Magnus 1978, pp. 66–68, 98–110; Clark 1990, p. 267; Higgins 2000, p. 128; Small 2001, pp. 21, 34–35. 33 See also Sterling 1977, pp. 290–291. 31

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my temporally successive self-stages. Indeed, given the account of mnemonic relations suggested by Nietzsche’s aphorism, according to which my “future” self-stages can actually communicate with, and care for, my “past” self-stages, we might want to conclude that eternal recurrence allows for a much richer and thicker concept of personal identity than the usual one which emphasizes only the unidirectional relations from my past self-stages to my future self-stages. C onc l usion In this first chapter, I have aimed to counter a dismissal of Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence that is over a century old now and still dominant. I have looked carefully at Nietzsche’s first presentation of the doctrine in Gay Science 341, since this is his best-known and briefest discussion where critics since Simmel have concentrated their attacks, and I have argued that their chief objections all presuppose the denial of Nietzsche’s doctrine. I turn now to exploring the links between Nietzsche’s extensively discussed single-paragraph aphorism and his much less analyzed subsequent 400-page book. Although I have offered detailed textual evidence to support my reading of Gay Science 341, it will rightly be objected that this aphorism is too short and compressed to support the wide-ranging conclusions I have drawn about Nietzsche’s views on time, death, and memory. But the truth, I think, is that Nietzsche did have these views in mind when he composed Gay Science 341 (as his unpublished contemporaneous notes show), and that he did not really expect anyone to be able to comprehend this aphorism without the benefit of reading and understanding his next book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Ironically, then, it is actually Nietzsche’s most widely studied aphorism that should be regarded as inaccessible until we reach a proper understanding of his complex and elaborate magnum opus.

C h a pt e r 2

Demon or god?

It is natural to start reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra at the beginning, in which we are offered a brief review of Zarathustra’s background and then a full report of Zarathustra’s invocation to the sun as he prepares to descend from his mountain (P:1). As Nietzsche himself reminds us, however, the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra did not appear for the first time in that work. Instead, he writes, we can see the diamond beauty of the first words of Zarathustra flashing at the conclusion of his previous book, The Gay Science – in its last aphorism entitled “Incipit tragoedia” (EH GS, Z:1). In addition, Nietzsche tells us, the fundamental thought of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the thought of eternal recurrence, did not appear for the first time in that work. Instead, it appeared in the penultimate section of The Gay Science – in the aphorism entitled “The Greatest Heavy Weight” (EH Z:1). Together, then, the aphorisms in sections 341 and 342 of The Gay Science contain Nietzsche’s introduction of the first words and fundamental thought of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. These aphorisms are in turn preceded by Nietzsche’s aphorism on “The dying Socrates” in section 340. As several commentators have noted, there is ample evidence that Nietzsche intended his readers to notice the various structural and thematic links among these three sections.1 In this chapter, then, I begin my exegesis of Thus Spoke Zarathustra with a close reading of Nietzsche’s concluding trilogy of aphorisms in The Gay Science. Such a reading, I show, substantially alters and enriches our understanding of the beginning of Nietzsche’s book and hence of the book itself. Instead of focusing at the start on Nietzsche’s comparison of Zarathustra with Jesus, we are led to think about his comparison of Zarathustra with Socrates. Not, however, the Socrates who descends into the city at the start of Plato’s Republic, but the Socrates who lies dying at the end of Plato’s See Nietzsche 1974, pp. 13–15, 272 n. 70; Small 1983; Lampert 1986, pp. 167–169; Salaquarda 1989, pp. 321–323.

1

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Phaedo.2 In addition, although the thought of eternal recurrence does not make an explicit appearance until Part III of Zarathustra, I argue that this thought informs the very start of Nietzsche’s book as the site of a psychological confrontation between the dying Socrates and the Zarathustra who is just beginning to go under. De at h be d r e v e l ation We can begin by noting that the titles of sections 340 and 342, “The dying Socrates” and “Incipit tragoedia,” are clearly meant to recall Nietzsche’s first work, The Birth of Tragedy. The latter title alludes to the title of this work itself, while the former alludes to Nietzsche’s emphasis there on the image of the dying Socrates (BT 13, 15). Since that work blames Socrates for the death of tragedy, his death in 340 points the way to the rebirth of tragedy through the beginning of Zarathustra’s death in 342. Mediating the two events, then, are Nietzsche’s questions in 341 concerning a possible revelation of life’s eternal recurrence. Since these questions are preceded by Nietzsche’s discussion of Socrates’ “last word” (letzte Wort) in 340, and followed by an account of Zarathustra’s words as he begins to perish in 342, we may infer that in 341 Nietzsche is also concerned with the theme of death and dying words. This inference is supported by Nietzsche’s preoccupation throughout The Gay Science with the proximity of death, as illustrated by the Preface recollection of his own solitary near-death experience and the following section titles: “Last words” (36), “Thought of death” (278), “Knowing how to end” (281), “On the last hour” (315). The various time indexicals Nietzsche inserts into his first published presentation of eternal recurrence also support the suggestion that section 341 is about death and dying words. The most precise of these is the demon’s announcement in 341 of the return of “even this moment” (ebenso dieser Augenblick) when he is speaking to the reader – a clear reference back to 340 and Socrates’ “last moment of life” (letzten Augenblicke des Lebens). Although Augenblick is a very common German word, Nietzsche’s specialized use of it in Zarathustra’s “On the Vision and the Riddle” chapter, and his allusion there back to this aphorism, suggests that its repetition in these aphorisms is not casual.3 There are other important temporal clues in As commentators have noted (see, e.g., Conway 1988), Nietzsche’s media res introduction of Zarathustra alludes to Plato’s famous allegorical image, in Book VII of the Republic, of the philosopher-king descending back to aid humanity after he has communed with the sun-like Form of the Good. 3 See Salaquarda 1989 and Shapiro 1989, 2001, for a further discussion of Nietzsche’s specialized use of this term. My interpretive proposal here (and in the next chapter) is supported by 2

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section 341. First, the moment of the demon’s revelation is specified at the start as coming some day or night, an odd vagueness that may well refer to the idea that death can come at any time. Second, although eternal recurrence should involve the interlocutor’s entire life, the demon announces the return of the interlocutor’s life only as he now lives it and has lived it, but not as he will live it after the moment of the revelation – thus suggesting more precisely that the revelation is supposed to arrive at the end of the interlocutor’s completed life.4 Third, the demon’s announcement does not explicitly mention Nietzsche’s tense-symmetrical claim that the interlocutor has lived this same life before, but states only that he will live this same life again – presumably after his death.5 Fourth, the demon’s final proclamation that the reader is turned over and over again along with the eternal hourglass of being suggests the reader’s continual death and rebirth. And, finally, Nietzsche alludes back to his mention in 340 of Socrates’ last moment of life, last word, and last judgment when he concludes 341 by describing the demon’s revelation as a last (letzte) confirmation and seal.6 Besides these temporal references, Nietzsche adds poetic images that he associates with the moment of death elsewhere in The Gay Science and throughout Zarathustra. The most important of these is of course his image of the reader’s “most solitary solitude” (einsamste Einsamkeit) – as in his observation in Gay Science 359 that philosophers, upon having the feeling of near-end which animals have before death, “go off by themselves, become still, choose solitude, hide in caves, become wise.”7 But there are Shapiro’s suggestion (2001, pp. 21–22) that Nietzsche’s use of the term “Augenblick” can be traced back to Luther’s translation of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (15:51–52): “Behold, I tell you a secret: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be transformed; and suddenly, in the blink of an eye (Augenblick), at the time of the last trumpet. For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be transformed.” 4 Similarly, in BGE 56, Nietzsche writes that the most world-affirming human wants to have what was and is repeated into all eternity. Such a human, he adds, shouts insatiably da capo to the whole play and spectacle – thereby implying that these have just come to an end. See also KSA 10:5[1]. Nietzsche also alludes here to Schopenhauer’s remark that “at the end of his life, no man, if he be sincere and at the same time in possession of his faculties, will ever wish to go through it again” (1969, p. 324). 5 See by contrast Zarathustra’s “On the Vision and the Riddle” chapter, where Zarathustra asks the dwarf, in language that recalls the precise details of GS 341: “And this slow spider, which crawls in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and I and you in the gateway, whispering together, whispering of eternal things – must not all of us have been there before?” 6 An allusion that is lost, however, in Walter Kaufmann’s translation of the latter description as an “ultimate” confirmation and seal. Nietzsche’s mentions of a “last judgment” and “last seal” allude to the symbol of seven seals in the Bible’s Book of Revelation, and to the themes there of the final judgment and the raising of the dead. 7 See also KSA 7:19[131]. Although Walter Kaufmann usually translates Einsamkeit as “solitude” (e.g. in GS 342), in GS 341 he translates it as “loneliness.”

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also Nietzsche’s suggestions, anticipated in 340, of a deathly stillness, silence, and secrecy – as when he writes of a demon “stealing” after (nachschlichen) the interlocutor to make its announcement.8 These images are reinforced by Nietzsche’s otherwise peculiar mentions of a spider, moonlight, and dust – all linked elsewhere for Nietzsche to death imagery of sleep, dreaming, midnight, ashes, cobwebs, ghosts, shadows, Hades, coffins, and tombs (Z II.19, IV.19). The image of moonlight in particular, disassociated from the temporal setting of the announcement during some day or night, is best interpreted as Nietzsche’s symbol for the midnight moment of death. Indeed, in his next book Zarathustra, Nietzsche associates the intoxicating light of the full moon with the midnight hour, and writes of “the drunken happiness of dying at midnight (trunkenem Mitternachts-Sterbeglücke)” (IV.19:5–6). Together, then, Nietzsche’s various clues suggest that the moment of the demon’s revelation is supposed to be the last moment in the interlocutor’s life – that is, the most solitary, silent, and secret moment of his death.9 Da imonic proph e cy In Gay Science 341, therefore, Nietzsche aims to compare two kinds of possible responses to a deathbed revelation of life’s eternal recurrence – Socrates’ and Zarathustra’s. Zarathustra’s response, I argue later, constitutes the climax to Nietzsche’s next book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. But Socrates’ response Nietzsche finds, of course, by thinking about the conclusion to Plato’s Phaedo.10 According to Nietzsche’s exegesis in 340, Socrates’ “last word” – “Oh Crito, I owe Asclepius a rooster” – referred to the Athenian custom of sick people making a sacrifice to the god of healing, in hope of a cure. It was thus a veiled expression of Socrates’ last judgment and inmost feeling that life was an illness which he hoped death would cure. Socrates, See GS 59–60, 87, 278. See also Z II.22, III.2, IV.19. Section 3 of the last chapter is particularly interesting for its depiction, parallel to that in GS 341, of the voice of old deep midnight stealing into still, nocturnal souls in order to secretly and terribly say into their ears, “The world is deep!” 9 Daniel Blue has also called my attention to the following supporting passage from Eduard von Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious (which Nietzsche read carefully): “Let us imagine Death to draw nigh this man and say, ‘Thy life-period is run out, and at this hour thou art on the brink of annihilation; but it depends on thy present voluntary decision, once again, precisely in the same way, to go through thy now closed life with complete oblivion of all that has passed. Now choose!’” (1884, pp. 4–5). 10 Dannhauser (1974, pp. 98–100) points out that Nietzsche’s Basel lecture notes on the Phaedo show his doubts about the historical accuracy of the dialogue and his belief that Plato is concerned there to make a mythical example of Socrates. It might be argued therefore that in GS 340 and 341 Nietzsche aims to extract an aspect of the historical Socrates from a probable core of fact in the Phaedo, namely Socrates’ public last words. 8

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he writes, had concealed his pessimism from everyone all his life under a cheerful disposition – until something loosened his tongue at the moment of death and caused him to take his revenge in this way for the suffering which life had inflicted on him. In his later set of aphorisms on the problem of Socrates in Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche makes this interpretation more explicit when he writes at the start of Socrates’ dying reference to Asclepius, the divine physician, as a “healer” or “savior” (Heilande) from the long illness that is life. But what this really meant, he concludes (following Xenophon), is that Socrates perhaps wisely recognized at the end that it was he who had been ill for a long time, that he had wanted to die, and indeed had courageously given himself the cup of poison by forcing Athens to give it to him. Socrates’ last word, Nietzsche speculates, was therefore a coded insight that death alone might be a physician for Socrates’ own illness.11 On the reading I am offering, then, Nietzsche’s thought-experiment in 341, and his initial hypothetical phrase “What if” (Wie, wenn), concern his rethinking of the Phaedo’s famous ending and his continued speculation regarding Socrates’ dying words in 340: “What if, in the last moment of your life, a demon said to you, as it may have said to Socrates, that you would eternally have to relive your identical life? Would you not curse the demon who spoke to you thus, as perhaps Socrates did?” In support of this exegesis, there are first of all Nietzsche’s linked religious images in 340 and 341. The most important of these is of course Nietzsche’s mysterious use of the term “demon” (Dämon) in 340. Although traditionally interpreted as Nietzsche’s literary device for signifying the terrifying aspect of his doctrine, Nietzsche’s allusions to The Birth of Tragedy point more precisely to his use there of the term “demon” (Dämon) for the dying Socrates’ daimonion (Dämonion).12 This reading captures Nietzsche’s emphasis in 341 See also Ahern 1995, pp. 80–82. For a review of the controversy surrounding Nietzsche’s speculation, as well as of Nietzsche’s revision of Socrates’ expression of collective debt, see Most 1993. Nehamas defends Nietzsche’s influential interpretation of the Phaedo’s conclusion (1998, pp. 157– 162) and offers a thorough rebuttal of Most’s critique of this interpretation (1998, pp. 246–248). 12 See also TI II:4. Nietzsche refers more generally to the Greek concept of daimon in GS 14 and 84. Small (1983, pp. 102–104), Salaquarda (1989, pp. 325–326), and, following my 1998 essay, Higgins (2000, 129–131) also find an allusion to Socrates’ daimon in GS 341. As Small notes, Nietzsche protested the Christian transformation of the Greek daimon into the Devil (Teufel) (D 76). This protest is nowhere more evident than in Daybreak 77, which vividly anticipates GS 341, and which imagines a deathbed scene in which the dying cry out: “Oh eternity! Oh that I had no soul! Oh that I had never been born! I am damned, damned, lost for ever … There he is! Yes, there he is! Come, good Devil! Come!” Indeed, the suggestion in GS 341 that the Socratic interlocutor might “gnash his teeth” (mit den Zähnen knirschen) in response to the demon’s revelation alludes to the New Testament’s account of the damned as gnashing their teeth on 11

Demon or god?

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on the auditory and prophetic aspects of the demon’s announcement, and recalls as well his discussion in The Birth of Tragedy of the dying Socrates’ claim that the prophetic voice of the god Apollo speaks to him (BT 13–14).13 Nietzsche’s allusion to this discussion points in turn to Socrates’ tribute to the god Asclepius in 340, a tribute which anticipates the reader’s potential praise in 341 of the demon as a “god” and of what it says as “divine.” In 340, however, Nietzsche comments that Socrates’ last words are “blasphemous,” thus anticipating his mention in 341 of the reader’s potential “cursing” of the demon. Secondly, there are many clues of a unified dramatic narrative in 340 and 341. Thus, when in 340 Nietzsche lists possible causes of Socrates loosening his dying tongue to condemn life – death, poison, piety, malice – we may infer that he intends us to add to this list the possibility of the demon’s revelation described in the following section. This inference is supported, first, by Nietzsche’s parallel focus on the Augenblick in which Socrates loosens his tongue in 340, and in which the demon makes his announcement in 341; second, by his parallel focus on the verbal response of Socrates in 340, and of the interlocutor in 341; and, finally, by Nietzsche’s parallel emphasis on the sharp shift in psychological states occasioned in Socrates in 340, and in the interlocutor in 341. The final, and most central, evidence of Nietzsche’s continued speculation is the demon’s revelation itself, that the moment of death does not end one’s life, but rather begins again one’s living of that identical life. For according to Nietzsche’s exegesis in 340, Socrates’ dying words expressed his hope that death would end the illness that was life. Hence Nietzsche’s conjecture in 341 that only his daimonion’s deathbed shattering of that hope could have caused Socrates to loosen his tongue and take his revenge by revealing that life-long but hitherto concealed hope. In this way, Nietzsche’s deduction in 340 that Socrates “suffered from life” sets up his concluding question in 341 as to how “good to life” someone must become in order to crave nothing more than the demon’s revelation at the end of one’s life. Moreover, Nietzsche’s supposition in 340 that the dying Socrates “took revenge upon” life sets up his suggestion in 341 that the interlocutor might “gnash his teeth” in response to the revelation that he must relive his life – an image that Nietzsche associates in Zarathustra with the judgment day (Matthew 13: 47–50). This very specific allusion points in turn to Nietzsche’s claim, which I discuss in Chapter 6, that eternal recurrence will act as a principle of selection and judgment. 13 See also GS 84, 152, 316 for Nietzsche’s interest in prophecy, especially among the Greeks.

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human being’s desire to take revenge for his impotence with respect to the past (II.20).14 Dionysi a n d o ctrin e Turning to Plato’s Phaedo for an understanding of Nietzsche’s dramatic device, we find that such a deathbed prophecy would have indeed shattered Socrates’ hope, instilled by his daimonion and expressed throughout the entire dialogue, of escaping a cycle of eternal rebirth. Although Plato describes Socrates’ daimonion as a merely prohibitive sign, Nietzsche may be read as alluding to Socrates’ claim in the Apology that his daimonion did not hold him back from any word or deed that led him to being sentenced to death – thereby giving him a prophetic certainty regarding the goodness of his impending death.15 In addition, Socrates begins his proof of the soul’s immortality by outlining the “ancient doctrine” according to which “[the souls of human beings] do exist in that world [of Hades], entering it from this one, and that they re-enter this world and are born again from the dead” (70c).16 Socrates’ fear of imprisonment in this wheel of reincarnation is thus one source of Nietzsche’s speculation regarding the potentially crushing weightiness of the demon’s announcement – a speculation that inspires his title to 341, “The Greatest Heavy Weight.” For according to Socrates it is the corporeal condition of a soul that prevents it from being released: And one must suppose, my friend, that this [corporeal] element is ponderous, that it is heavy and earthy and is seen; and thus encumbered, such a soul is weighed down, and dragged back into the region of the seen, through fear of the invisible and of Hades. (81c)

Finally, supporting Nietzsche’s interpretation of his last words, Socrates associates embodied life with disease and concludes that the soul of the philosophic man must instead believe that “when it has died, it will enter that which is akin and of like nature to itself, and be rid of human ills” (84b).17 In the chapter from Zarathustra entitled “On Redemption,” “it was” is the name Zarathustra gives to the will’s gnashing of teeth and to the stone which the will cannot move. Nietzsche’s allusion there back to GS 341 suggests further that it is the stone’s heavy weight which renders it immoveable and, when innumerably accumulated through eternal recurrence, perhaps crushing. In GS 341, therefore, the “heavy weight” (Schwergewicht) stems from the realization that at the moment of death one’s entire life, all one’s actions, are past and hence unchangeable; while the “greatest” heavy weight (das grösste Schwergewicht) stems from the realization that they are eternally recurring and hence unchangeable for all eternity. I discuss this point further in Chapter 7. 15 See Reeve 1989, pp. 68–70, 180–183. 16 Here and throughout this study I use the Stephanus pagination when citing Plato’s works. 17 See Nehamas 1998, pp. 161–162, 246–248. 14

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In thus deriving the demon’s prophecy in Gay Science 341 from the a ncient doctrine of reincarnation in Plato’s Phaedo, Nietzsche points to the Dionysian source of his own doctrine of eternal recurrence. For Plato first introduces this same ancient doctrine in Meno (81a–e), and there he refers to the Bacchic mysteries of Persephone, queen of the underworld and mother of Dionysus.18 Also, when Socrates explicitly introduces his ancient doctrine in the Phaedo, he says he has already recalled it, thus alluding back to his earlier reference to the Orphic mystery cult doctrine of the body as a kind of prison (62b).19 And just before introducing this doctrine, Socrates dismisses the “many who bear the wand,” that is, those Bacchanals or worshippers of the god Dionysus who merely perform the ritual. The ancient doctrine, Socrates implies, is best understood by the “few who are devotees” of Dionysus (69c–d), that is, by those like himself who hope to arrive in Hades purified, initiated, and released from the wheel of reincarnation through their correct practice of philosophy.20 Plato’s clear suggestion is that Socrates’ theory of reincarnation is a proper transposition of the riddles or mysteries built into the initiation rites of the Dionysian mystery cults. Nietzsche, however, rejects Plato’s portrayal of Socrates as a true Dionysian. Indeed, in The Birth of Tragedy he had already called Socrates the most magnificent expression of the Greek anti-Dionysian tendency (BT 14). Instead, Nietzsche claims the right to call himself the very first Dionysian philosopher (with the possible exception of Heraclitus) (EH BT). In particular, as we have seen, since he aims correctly to transpose the Dionysian mysteries into a philosophical doctrine of eternal recurrence, Nietzsche claims the right to sign himself: “I, the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus – I, the teacher of eternal recurrence” (TI X:5). This is why, in a note written shortly before he completed the third part of Zarathustra, Nietzsche declares: “I have discovered the Greeks: they believed in eternal recurrence! That is the mystery-faith! … Plato thought that the dead in Hades would be released from the body through his correct philosophy” (KSA 10:8[15]).21 Nietzsche’s implication here is that Plato revised and corrupted the Dionysian mystery-faith so as to allow the possibility of See Kingsley 1995, pp. 164, 267–272; and Seaford 2006, pp. 117–118. For the influence of the Dionysian cult on the Orphic cult, as mediated by the Pythagorean tradition, and as transmitted by Plato, see Kingsley 1995, p. 259ff.; and Kerslake 2000, pp. 148–155. 20 For more discussion of this important passage, see Kingsley 1995, p. 263; and Seaford 2006, p. 114. See also Anderson 1993, pp. 14–15, for Plato’s further depictions of Socrates as a creature of Dionysus. 21 For an interesting discussion of Nietzsche’s claim, see Lukacher 1998, pp. 1–49. 18

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release from the cycle of eternal rebirth.22 Even more radically, Nietzsche implies that Plato revised and corrupted the Dionysian doctrine so as to incorporate change into the cycle of eternal rebirth and in that way ground his claim of a possible escape from the cycle.23 Nietzsche’s philological support for this further charge would seem to be the close association between the Pythagorean and Orphic traditions,24 the extensive allusions to Pythagoreanism throughout Plato’s Phaedo, and the Pythagorean teaching (related by Nietzsche himself in UM II:2) of the eternal recurrence of the qualitatively identical.25 Nietzsche’s critique of Plato’s appropriation of the Dionysian doctrine thus leads him to imagine Socrates’ daimonion prophesying to him at the instant of his death, and to his horror, that he will not be released at all and indeed that he is to be eternally reborn into his identical life.26 Nietzsche’s conceit is further grounded upon Socrates’ general observation in the Phaedo that “when each one has died, the spirit [daimon] allotted to each in life proceeds to bring that individual to a certain place, where those gathered must submit to judgment, and then journey to Hades with the guide appointed to conduct those in this world to the next” (107d–e). And, just as in his first book Nietzsche had interpreted Socrates’ daimonion as expressing his Dionysian instinctive wisdom (BT 13), so too in 340–341 Nietzsche speculates that Socrates’ daimon voices his repressed Dionysian knowledge. Although commentators usually interpret the 341 pairing of demon and god as alluding to the Judeo-Christian dichotomy As Kerslake notes, the ancient Orphic doctrine always emphasizes the return to earth and embodiment: “[T]he very nature of the cycle in which the soul wanders, despite being limited in duration, conceptually does not allow for an exit … The cycle seems to sweep everything up into it, and precludes a place of rest” (2000, p. 150). 23 In the next chapter, I argue that Zarathustra aims to refute the Socratic dwarf ’s suggestion that there might be some release or escape possible from this cycle of rebirth, or even some possibility of change or improvement within this cycle of rebirth. 24 See KSA 7:23[34] for Nietzsche’s reference to the “Pythagorean–Orphic” doctrine; and also Kingsley 1995, p. 259ff.; Kerslake 2000, p. 145ff. 25 This Pythagorean teaching is reported in a passage quoted by Simplicius, where Aristotle’s pupil, Eudemus of Rhodes, writes: “But if we are to believe the Pythagoreans and hold that things the same in number recur – that you will be sitting here and I shall talk to you, holding this stick, and so on for everything else – then it is plausible that the same time too recurs” (Barnes 1987, p. 88). In Zarathustra (III.13:2) Nietzsche reintroduces his GS 341 image of the revolving hourglass and associates it with the Platonic concept of a cosmic great year (Timaeus 39c–d) – a concept which in UM II:2 he traced back to the Pythagorean teaching of eternal recurrence. 26 Here Nietzsche alludes to the traditional description of Dionysus as the god of death (Seaford 2006, pp. 76–86) and to Euripides’ description of Dionysus as “a god of prophecy”: “His worshippers, / like madmen, are endowed with mantic powers. / For when the god enters the body of a man / he fills him with the breath of prophecy” (Bacchae, pp. 298–301). For Nietzsche, I argue, both descriptions derive from Dionysus’ mystery-cult role as a personification of eternal recurrence. 22

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of devil and God, Nietzsche’s direct allusions to Plato’s Phaedo point also to the unified concept of a daimon or divine intermediary who whispers the philosophical secret personified by Dionysus, the vicious circle made god (BGE 56, 295).27 Di agno stic t e st Together, then, 340 and 341 may be regarded as conveying to us Nietzsche’s speculation regarding Socrates’ public dying response to his daemon’s private prophecy of his life’s eternal recurrence. But Nietzsche does not mention Socrates explicitly in 341, and concentrates instead on diagnosing what he regards as the two paradigmatic responses to the demon’s announcement.28 Although scholars (see e.g., Nehamas 1985, pp. 151–156) usually read the questioner in 341 as envisaging a choice for each individual between the two kinds of responses, he should be read instead as describing the responses of two entirely distinct and mutually exclusive types – the Socratic type and the Zarathustran type. This reading is supported by the alternating structure of the second half of the aphorism, together with Nietzsche’s use of the exclusive disjunction “or” (oder) to introduce the two affirmative responses to the demon’s announcement. It is supported as well by Nietzsche’s important contrast, explicitly articulated later in Book V of The Gay Science, between two types of sufferers: those who suffer from life’s overfullness, and those who suffer from life’s impoverishment. Although he does not explicitly mention Socrates, his account of the latter type is obviously linked to his conclusion in 340 that Socrates suffered from life. For this type, he writes, needs a god who would truly be a god for the sick, a “healer” or “savior”; a calming and confidence-inspiring logic; and even revenge upon life itself (GS 370; also NCW 5). And in the contemporaneously written, and thematically continuous, new Preface to The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche explicitly contrasts the ancient Greek suffering from overfullness with the later suffering from decline and fatigue that led to Socratism and was perhaps the source of Socrates’ secretive irony (BT P:1; also EH BT). In 341, therefore, Nietzsche may be read as arguing that the reason Socrates secretly threw himself down, gnashed his teeth, and cursed the Plato develops the concept of the daimon as a divine messenger or interpreter in Symposium 202d–e. See also the Pythagorean Empedocles’ self-description of himself as both god and daimon (Barnes 1987, pp. 192–193; KSA 7:8[31]). 28 Unlike Magnus’ influential diagnostic reading (1983, p. 644ff.), my interpretation here does not seek to minimize Nietzsche’s interest in the truth of eternal recurrence. 27

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deathbed revelation of his life’s eternal recurrence is that he suffered from life’s impoverishment. This point is reinforced by Nietzsche’s reference in 340 to Socrates’ life-long “innermost feeling” (innerstes Gefühl) that was revealed only at the moment of his death. Further, Nietzsche speculates in 340, Socrates moved from cheerfulness to despair because he previously believed and hoped that death would lead to some kind of change or improvement in his life, even if this meant only its complete end. This conjecture is supported by Socrates’ remark in the Apology that he would prefer a night of sound sleep without dreams to all the other days and nights of his life (40c–d; see also Z I.2). For those who suffer from life’s impoverishment, Nietzsche implies, there is no worst possible afterlife than the eternal reliving of the life they have just completed. This leaves us, then, with the second type of response, the response that is given by the Zarathustra-type who is introduced in 342 and developed in Nietzsche’s next work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. That Nietzsche intends us to think of this type as suffering from life’s overfullness is indicated, first, by his question at the end of 341 regarding the extent of the reader’s good disposition toward himself and life. But it is especially indicated by his emphasis in 342 and the start of Zarathustra on the weariness and sickness (Überdrüssigkeit) Zarathustra experiences as a result of his sun-like overflow, his star-like over-richness, his over-accumulation of honey-like wisdom, and his golden rapturous all-too-great happiness. This is why Zarathustra speaks, at the dawn-start of his tragic death, of his need and desire to go under, to set like the sun.29 Zarathustra hopes to cure himself of his affliction by emptying himself of his overflow like a cup, by giving away and distributing his wisdom among men, by shining for them. Accordingly, when Nietzsche asks the interlocutor in 341 whether he has once experienced “a tremendous moment” (einen ungeheuren Augenblick) when he would have rejoiced at the demon’s revelation, we may suppose that he is asking whether there was ever a moment in the interlocutor’s life when he could have died happy at the thought of his life’s eternal recurrence.30 This reading of Nietzsche’s question is supported by his allusion to Goethe’s poetic claim that Faust’s last moment of life is at the same time the highest moment in his life. Thus, during his pact with the devil, Faust makes the following wager: See Nietzsche’s allusion here to Hölderlin’s tragedy The Death of Empedocles (Parkes 2005, p. 289). 30 As in Zarathustra’s “The Sleepwalker’s Song,” (IV.19) where the ugliest man, after his tremendous day with Zarathustra, declares that he wants to say to death: “Was that – life? Well then! Once more!” 29

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If to the moment [Augenblick] I should say: Abide! You are so fair! Then you may put me in fetters Then I wish to perish [zu Grunde gehn]! Then may the deathbell toll, Then you are free of your service, The clock may stop, the hand may fall, As time comes to an end for me! (1699–1706)31

And this wager is honored, as Faust confirms in his dying words, at a moment during which the clock indeed stands still and is silent like midnight – a moment which the frustrated Mephistopheles calls Faust’s “last, wretched, empty moment” (letzten, schlechten, leeren Augenblick): To the moment [Augenblicke] I may say: Abide, you are so fair! The traces of my earthly days No aeons can impair. – In the anticipation of such high happiness I now enjoy the highest moment [den höchsten Augenblick]. (11581–11586)32

In The Gay Science, however, we are not told Zarathustra’s “last word,” but must instead find its anticipation in the Zarathustran response formulated in 341.33 This response, Nietzsche writes, would consist in ecstatically calling the demon a god and its revelation the most divine thing ever heard – a last eternal confirmation and seal. In thus blessing the demon, rather than cursing it, such a response anticipates Zarathustra’s blessing of the sun for its overflow in 342, as well as his request that the sun bless him in turn as he begins to empty himself of his own overflow. Again, as with Socrates, we are to infer from this response a sudden and sharp transformation in the respondent’s psychological attitude toward dying. This allusion is indicated as well by Nietzsche’s discussion of “fair moments” (schöne Augenblicke) in GS 339, by his parallel suggestion of a devil’s wager in GS 341, and by his suggestion of Zarathustra’s Faustian wish to perish in GS 342. In addition, Mephistopheles alludes to eternal recurrence immediately following Faust’s death, and Schopenhauer (1969, pp. 283–284) twice refers to Goethe’s life-affirming characters in the midst of his description of eternal recurrence. Finally, Zarathustra’s exegesis of his midnight roundelay “Once More” alludes again to Goethe’s wagering and dying words when he writes: “if ever you said ‘You please me, happiness! Quick! Moment [Augenblick]!’ then you wanted all back” (IV.19:10). I am grateful to David Lupher for helping me see how Nietzsche’s allusion to Faust might be used to support my exegesis. 32 For a discussion of Nietzsche’s concept of peak moments in GS 341, see Small 1983 and Salaquarda 1989. 33 This suggestion is supported by the fact that Nietzsche wrote his first draft of GS 341 at the start of August 1881 (KSA 9:11[143]), and his first draft of GS 342, the introductory passage to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, very shortly after, towards the end of August 1881 (KSA 9:11[195]). 31

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This time, however, we are to notice that his prior belief in some alternative to his life’s eternal recurrence had left the Zarathustran respondent melancholy at the possibility of some change, or even complete end, to his cherished self and life. For those who suffer from the overfullness of life, Nietzsche implies, there is no better afterlife than refilling the same cup they have just emptied until it is overfull again.34 C onc l usion In this chapter, I have offered a new reading of Nietzsche’s introduction of eternal recurrence and Zarathustra in the two concluding aphorisms of the first edition of The Gay Science. Through a close study of the textual ties to the preceding aphorism on the dying Socrates, I have argued that Nietzsche stages the thought of life’s eternal recurrence as the site of a psychological contest between the Socrates who dies at the end of Plato’s Phaedo and his own protagonist Zarathustra who will finish going under in the conclusion of his next book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. More specifically, I have argued, Nietzsche depicts this thought as arriving at the Augenblick of death, thereby suggesting that the winner of the psychological contest is the one whose devotion to life enables him to perish with a joyful affirmation and blessing of the deathbed revelation of life’s eternal recurrence. On Nietzsche’s interpretation of the conclusion of Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates’ “last word” was in fact a curse on this prophetic revelation and a means of taking revenge on the life he had secretly considered an illness. By contrast, Nietzsche suggests, his next book will conclude with Zarathustra’s dying benediction of this revelation and a grateful affirmation of the life to which he had been so well-disposed. So I turn next to examine the conclusion of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Zarathustra’s overflowing cup (überfliessenden Becher) in GS 342 is to be contrasted, then, with Socrates’ cup of poison (Giftbecher) alluded to in GS 340.

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C h a pt e r 3

The dwarf and the gateway

Commenting retrospectively on his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche remarks: “What a shame that I did not dare say as a poet what I had to say then: I might have been able to do it!” (BT P:3).1 Since an essential part of what he had to say then concerned his dismay at Socrates’ triumph over the Dionysian, Nietzsche thus hints that his most important later work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is a renewed, and this time appropriately poetic attempt to overcome Socrates’ resulting influence as “the one turning point and vortex of so-called world-history” (BT 15).2 And since Nietzsche also tells us that eternal recurrence is the fundamental thought of that later work, we are led to conclude further that he now intends this doctrine, as taught by “that Dionysian monster who bears the name Zarathustra” (BT P:7), to be the site of his decisive and world-historic agon with Plato’s Socrates.3 As we have seen, the concluding trilogy of Gay Science aphorisms anticipates the victory of Nietzsche’s dying Zarathustra over Plato’s dying Socrates in the psychological contest as to who is better disposed to life. Whereas the Phaedo’s Socrates would have been psychologically crushed by the deathbed revelation that he would have to eternally relive his life, Nietzsche invents an antipode that will crave nothing more fervently than this last confirmation and seal. By itself, however, this trilogy does not detail the full struggle between Socrates and Zarathustra, and hence does Nietzsche also says that he should have sung and not spoken, alluding to the animals’ advice to the convalescent Zarathustra and the latter’s advice to his own soul (III.13:2). Although Nietzsche criticized most other aspects of his first book, he remained convinced that its understanding of Socrates was a decisive discovery (EH BT:1). For Nietzsche’s renewed use of the image of a world-historical-vortex in Zarathustra, see I.12, II.18. 3 See also Nietzsche’s letter to Overbeck at the beginning of April 1883: “In the end it is possible that with this past winter I have entered upon a new development. Zarathustra is something no human being alive apart from me can produce. Perhaps only now have I discovered my best powers. Even as a ‘philosopher’ I still did not express my most essential thoughts (or ‘delusions’). Oh, I am so taciturn, so furtive! But now I write as a ‘poet’!” (KSB 6, p. 155). In Chapter 8 I discuss Nietzsche’s emphasis on the poetic aspect of Zarathustra. 1

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not show the complete extent and grounds of Zarathustra’s victory. To understand these, Nietzsche suggests, we must study the vision-riddle at the start of Part III of Zarathustra. For in this “vision of the most solitary” (Gesicht des Einsamsten) Zarathustra foresees his final battle with his archenemy – a battle that will take place at the scene of a gateway inscribed Augenblick; that will consist in a dialectical, prophetic and epistemic confrontation over the thought of eternal recurrence; and that will be decided by the combatants’ strength to bear the heavy weight of this thought. T h e g at e wa y t o H a de s In keeping with Nietzsche’s new resolve to overcome Socrates’ influence in a poetic fashion, Zarathustra’s vision-riddle is grounded in a set of visual images and metaphors that must be decoded by the reader who wishes to understand the whole. In particular, Zarathustra recounts how he began his courageous attack on his mortal enemy by drawing his attention to a two-faced gateway standing precisely where they have just stopped. This gateway, he points out, is inscribed above with the name “Augenblick,” and is the meeting-place for two long ways or lanes on either side – lanes which extend an eternity and which no one has yet traveled all the way. Although the gateway-perspective shows the lanes contradicting and abutting each other, Zarathustra wonders about the perspective of someone traveling further and always further along either one of the lanes. This speculation leads him to challenge his opponent to answer whether he believes that the lanes eternally contradict each other. Zarathustra’s implication is that they would not, but that his opponent does not know this because he is not strong enough to bear its consequences. As most students of this vision-riddle have noted, Nietzsche’s poetic image of the gateway-Augenblick offers a spatial visualization of the concept of time. Thus, the gateway itself may be read as symbol for the present moment that seems to pass in the blink of an eye, while the eternal lanes that meet at this gateway may be read as symbols for the past and the future that no one has yet traveled all the way.4 Zarathustra’s initial description thus shows how the perspective of the present moment displays past and future as two eternal straight lanes extending indefinitely in Although the gateway is not called the present moment, and the eternal lanes behind and ahead are not called the past and the future, Zarathustra’s subsequent questions locate the lane behind as the place where everything has already been and the lane ahead as the place where everything must come again. See Small 2001, p. 52. See also KSA 13:14[188]. For an insightful analysis of Nietzsche’s link between the temporal and the visual, see Shapiro 2001.

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both directions.5 But Zarathustra’s question implies that he knows what his opponent cannot bear to know – namely, that this short-sighted perspective prevents us from seeing that the seemingly distinct lanes of past and future eventually curve around and join together to form a single circular lane that is tremendously extended yet still finite (though unbounded). What students of Zarathustra’s vision-riddle have not yet noticed at all, however, is that Nietzsche’s explicit allusions back to Gay Science 340– 342 instruct us to further interpret the symbol of the gateway-Augenblick as the presently experienced moment of death. The most important of these allusions is of course the term “Augenblick” itself. Thus, in recounting his vision of the most solitary, Zarathustra emphasizes to his archenemy the eternal recurrence even of the gateway-Augenblick in which they stand whispering of eternal things while a slow spider crawls by in the moonlight. Similarly, as we have seen, during the most solitary solitude described in Gay Science 341, the demon emphasizes the eternal recurrence even of the spider-and-moonlight Augenblick in which he is whispering of eternal recurrence.6 But the latter reference, I have argued, is linked to the description in Gay Science 340 of Socrates’ last Augenblick of life – the same Augenblick in which something loosens Socrates’ tongue so that he says his blasphemous “last word”: “Oh Crito, life is an illness!”7 Nietzsche’s implication is that this something was Socrates’ daimonion, prophesying to him at the moment of his death that he will have to eternally relive the very life he had just finished.8 So we are led to conclude as well that See Small 1998, p. 84ff., and 2001, pp. 41–58, on Nietzsche’s use of optical and perspectival language in his description of the gateway-Augenblick. Small gives some good reasons for supposing that Nietzsche was influenced in this respect by Gustav Teichmüller (whose book he was studying at the same time as he was composing Part III of Zarathustra). Shapiro 2001 also emphasizes this perspectival language, but is more concerned with Nietzsche’s interest in vision as such. Moles 1990, pp. 233–234, outlines Nietzsche’s general perspectival approach to time and its place among his principles of natural philosophy. 6 Also, repeating his allusion to Faust’s pact with Mephistopheles concerning the midnight Augenblick of his death, and alluding to the whispering demon of Gay Science 341, Nietzsche depicts Zarathustra’s whispering archenemy as the devil (II.10). See also Nietzsche’s earlier association of the devil and the deathbed, in the Daybreak passage that anticipates GS 341 (D 77). 7 Lampert (1986, pp. 160–169) also focuses on the last three aphorisms of the first edition of The Gay Science, and the extension of their themes into the vision-riddle chapter of Zarathustra. Although he correctly associates Zarathustra’s archenemy with Socratic rationalism, I am arguing that Nietzsche’s allusions lead us more precisely to identify this figure with the dying Socrates and to think of the confrontation between Socrates and Zarathustra as taking place over the deathbed revelation of life’s eternal recurrence. 8 Zarathustra himself hears a voiceless daimon speaking to him that he calls his “stillest hour” (II.22). As Lampert notes (1986, p. 335 n. 106), Zarathustra’s stillest hour seems to speak through the eleven strikes of the clock at the midnight hour. This speech recalls the midnight-Augenblick whispering of the demon in GS 341. It also anticipates the eleven parts of Zarathustra’s whispered midnight proof in the gateway-Augenblick (III.2:2), as well as the eleven parts of the speech of the ancient midnight bell at the end of Part III (III.15:3) and toward the end of Part IV (IV.19:3–12). 5

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the gateway-Augenblick in Zarathustra’s vision-riddle should be more precisely interpreted as a symbol for the last moment of life in which there is revealed a vision of life’s eternal recurrence. This interpretation is supported by the traditional poetic claim that the transition from life to death takes place in an instant – as when, at the conclusion of the published book, Zarathustra’s animals imagine him saying to himself as he dies: “Now I die and fade, and in an instant (Nu) I am a nothing” (III.13:2). In addition, Nietzsche’s poetic image of a “gateway” (Thorweg) alludes to the ancient Greek image of the gate to the underworld of Hades.9 This allusion is anticipated, in Gay Science 342, and at the very start of Zarathustra, by Nietzsche’s image of Zarathustra beginning his descent (Untergang) into the underworld (Unterwelt) (P:1). It is anticipated as well by Nietzsche’s suggestion that Zarathustra’s greatest event will take place at the gate to the underworld (das Thor der Unterwelt) (II.18). And in the context of the vision-riddle itself, which foresees this greatest event, this allusion is set up by Nietzsche’s description of Zarathustra’s midnight departure from the Blessed Isles (Elysium), and in Zarathustra’s gateway-invocation of a Heracles- or Odysseus-like courage that slays even death itself. Finally, in the published book’s concluding chapters, where Zarathustra’s prevision is fulfilled, Zarathustra’s over-ripe soul is described as longing for the golden death-bark (Todes-Nachen) that will come across the dark waters and deliver him to the vintager who waits with the vineknife – an allusion to the ancient image of Charon ferrying passengers across the rivers of the underworld (III.12:17, III.14, III.15:1). Also supporting this interpretation of the gateway-Augenblick symbol is Nietzsche’s use in the vision-riddle of the poetic death-imagery he had a lready introduced in the aphorisms in The Gay Science: intense solitude, silence, stillness, secrecy, whispering, a slow creeping spider, and moonlight. In Zarathustra, Nietzsche intensifies this atmosphere by introducing the vision-riddle with further death-imagery of gloominess, corpse-colored twilight, and wicked dreams. In the penultimate Part IV chapter entitled, “The Sleepwalker’s Song,” which alludes back to the vision-riddle, Nietzsche recalls this same death-imagery, along with that of falling dew, chill, howling wind, cobwebs, worms, and graves. Here Zarathustra speaks explicitly of being dead and of “the drunken happiness of dying at midnight” (trunkenem Mitternachts-Sterbeglücke). Nietzsche also Elsewhere, Nietzsche writes of death as a door or portal and of someone being at death’s door, e.g. in HAH I:113, “Furcht vor einem Jenseits zu welchem der Tod die Pforte ist,” and KSA 9:3[149], “Es giebt keine unmittelbare instinktive Furcht vor dem Tode; man flieht vor dem Schmerz, der an der Pforte des Todes steht, vor dem Unbekannten, zu dem der Tod führt und das er selber ist.”

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intensifies this atmosphere by drawing connections between Zarathustra’s gateway-vision and his previous death-centered visions. These visions include Zarathustra’s dream-riddle of his midnight entombment on the most solitary mountain of death (II.19), and the dream-vision in which he is terrorized by the voice of his future stillest hour (II.22). Finally, in his vision-riddle Zarathustra sees himself climbing a mountain path that ends at the gateway-Augenblick, and as doing so carrying upon his back the heavy weight of his archenemy. Together with the convalescent Zarathustra’s recollection of his own experience of being crucified, these images allude to the Gospel’s depiction of Christ carrying his own heavy cross up to the top of Mount Golgotha where he is to be put to death.10 Besides making sense of all the surrounding poetic imagery and mythical allusions, interpreting the gateway-Augenblick as the threshold of death helps to explain why Zarathustra and his opponent see a gateway at just the place where they halt. Indeed, Zarathustra brings himself and the dwarf to a halt immediately after he has invoked courage as that which slays even death with the triumphant shout: “Was that life? Well then! Once more!” More importantly, this interpretation helps to explain why the perspective of the two-faced gateway-Augenblick shows the lane behind and the lane ahead contradicting and abutting each other. Although some commentators have argued that this means time appears to run in opposite directions away from the present moment, this reading does not actually explain Zarathustra’s description of a converging contradiction.11 And since Zarathustra’s earlier speech on time explicitly states that time does not run backwards (II.20), he cannot mean that time converges on the present moment from opposite directions.12 If, however, we follow Nietzsche’s pointed allusions back to the concluding aphorisms of The Gay Science, Zarathustra’s suggestion of contradicting lanes directs us to Socrates’ claim in the Phaedo that life and death In a complicated allusion, Nietzsche suggests here that, while Jesus carried on his back the heavy weight of humanity’s sins, the camel-spirited Zarathustra carries on his back the torture-cross of knowing that humankind’s wickedness – the source of its greatest strength – is so very small (III.13:2). And while Jesus lets himself be crucified upon his cross in order to lift this heavy burden from humankind, the lion-spirited Zarathustra aims to overcome the dwarfish small human by crushing it with the greatest heavy weight of the thought of its own eternal recurrence. I discuss this allusion further in Chapter 6. 11 See Heidegger 1984, pp. 41–42; Lampert 1986, p. 164. 12 Heidegger (1984, p. 56) notices this problem, and suggests in response that Nietzsche intends us to see that the contradiction is not obvious on the surface, but is rather a deeper reality that can only be seen while standing in the gateway-Augenblick. Joan Stambaugh (1972, p. 40) agrees with Heidegger. I argue below, however, that Zarathustra is aiming to prove exactly the reverse: that the contradiction is a superficial illusion stemming from the limited perspective of the gatewayAugenblick. 10

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are contradictory opposites (71c–d, 105d). This is a claim that Nietzsche explicitly disputes in Gay Science 109, an aphorism also alluding to eternal recurrence. Since Nietzsche stages a dialectical confrontation between Zarathustra and his archenemy regarding this apparent contradiction, we may conclude further that Nietzsche intends to undermine Plato’s employment of this claim in Socrates’ dialectical proofs that he will eventually be released from the cycle of rebirth (71c–72e, 105c–107a). This conclusion is supported by Plato’s own pervasive allusions to the ancient myth of Hades, and by Plato’s own poetic image of the moment of death as a gateway that initiates a labyrinthine cyclical journey through the underworld of Hades and back to life (107d–108a). T h e dwa r f’s int e rpr e tation Let us turn now to the details of this dialectical confrontation. When Zarathustra implies that his opponent cannot know his most abysmal thought because he could not bear its heavy weight, Nietzsche points us back to his implicit claim in Gay Science 340–341 that Socrates did not know and would not have been able to bear the heavy weight of the thought of his life’s eternal recurrence. As I have argued, Nietzsche’s claim is supported by Socrates’ denigration of life throughout the Phaedo, by his fear of imprisonment in a wheel of reincarnation, by his hope-inspired good cheer in the face of death (58e–59a, 67e–68b, 84d–85b), and by his preference for a definitive death (91b). Also, Nietzsche’s description of Zarathustra’s archenemy as “the spirit of heaviness” (der Geist der Schwere) (III.2:1) alludes to Socrates’ conception of the earth and life as the realm of the heavy and burdensome into which the soul is dragged down by its encumbering corporeal condition (81c).13 At the same time, Zarathustra’s description of his archenemy as a “dwarf” (Zwerg) points us forward to the convalescent Zarathustra’s identification of his most abysmal thought as the eternal recurrence even of the smallest (III.12:2). Although Zarathustra is perfectly able to bear the weight of thinking his own life’s eternal Further, Nietzsche’s description of Zarathustra’s archenemy as a “dwarf,” as one of the smallest humans, together with his association of the plebeian and the small (III.5), allude to his claim that Socrates was of plebeian descent and, indeed, initiated the slave revolt in morality (see TI II). Nietzsche’s description of the dwarf as “the spirit of heaviness” thus alludes also to his idea that Socrates saddled humanity with the heavy words and values, “good” and “evil” (III.11). Finally, Nietzsche describes the archenemy as a “mole,” just as he later suggests that Socrates is subterranean and tyrannized by his dark unconscious instincts (see TI II); and he describes the archenemy as “crippled” because Socrates’ plebeian descent bars him from any kind of independent spiritual ascent (IV.13:10).

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recurrence, he is intolerably burdened by the heavy weight of thinking the dwarf’s eternal recurrence.14 Nevertheless, he knows that the dwarf himself, the Socratic type, would be crushed by the heavy weight of his own life’s eternal recurrence, and so he courageously awakens this thought so as to hand his archenemy a complete and final defeat.15 First, however, Zarathustra gives the Socratic figure an opportunity to guess his most abysmal thought, thereby revealing that he does not in fact know it. And in response to Zarathustra’s question whether the lanes eternally contradict each other, his archrival murmurs contemptuously: “All that is straight lies. All truth is bent, time itself is a circle.” This response, and Zarathustra’s angry reaction to it, has puzzled many commentators because it would seem to agree with Zarathustra’s own implied interpretation of a single circular lane. As we have already seen, in his retrospective Ecce Homo Nietzsche summarizes Zarathustra’s teaching as the doctrine of “the unconditional and endlessly repeated circular course [Kreislauf ] of all things” (EH BT:3).16 And indeed, Zarathustra calls himself “the advocate [Fürsprecher] of the circle” (III.13:1), and in the published book’s conclusion proclaims his lust for the wedding “ring of rings,” the “ring” of eternal recurrence (III.16).17 In addition, Zarathustra’s animals, speaking for the first time, say that, for those who think as they do, the “wheel” (Rad) of being rolls eternally, the “ring” of being remains eternally true to itself, and the path of eternity is “bent” (krumm) (III.13:2).18 When they halt, the dwarf squats on top of a stone where the gateway appears. This stone appears to lie at the head of the lane leading behind the gateway, and thus alludes to the heavy stone “it was” which the will cannot roll aside (II.20). The dwarf ’s presence on the stone therefore symbolizes the ineradicable past small human that later torments and crushes Zarathustra (III.13:2). In keeping with his symbol of the gateway to Hades, Nietzsche also alludes here to the heavy immovable stone that seals the door of the sepulchre entombing the corpse of Jesus after his crucifixion and that is rolled away by an angel who is found sitting upon it once Jesus is resurrected (Matthew 27:59, 27:66, 28:2). 15 The dwarf had threatened the high-climbing Zarathustra with a similar death when he whispered to him that he was destined to be crushed by the heavy weight of his own philosopher’s stone as he fell back down upon himself. 16 Nietzsche’s term, “Kreislauf,” alludes both to the dwarf ’s mention of time as Kreis and to Zarathustra’s questions about what can run (laufen) on the lanes behind and ahead of the gateway-Augenblick. 17 For similar ring-images, see II.5, III.12:2; and IV.10, IV.19:11. 18 Heidegger (1984, pp. 52–59), and many scholars who have since followed him (see e.g. White 1990, pp. 92–93), argue that Zarathustra rejects his animals’ experience of eternal recurrence for the following reasons: they use the dwarf ’s word “bent” (krumm); Zarathustra speaks of their words as “illusory bridges between things eternally separate”; he calls them “buffoons” (Schalks-Narren) and “barrel organs” (Drehorgeln) and says that they have made a “lyre-song” (Leier-Lied) out of his bitter experience; he says that their lack of empathy reminds him of human cruelty; and he finally tells them to be quiet and stops listening and speaking to them altogether (III.13:2). Against this reading, however, it should be emphasized that Zarathustra smiles as he speaks to 14

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However, if we keep in mind Nietzsche’s background allusion to Plato’s Phaedo, and thus his specific concern with the question whether life and death eternally contradict each other, we can see that the dwarf’s response is the kind of response Phaedo’s Socrates would have given. For the latter says that we are trapped in an endless cycle of rebirth: he argues that “there is a perpetual reciprocity in coming to be, between one set of things and another, revolving in a circle, as it were,” and he rejects the notion that coming-to-be is “a linear process from one thing into its opposite only, without any bending back in the other direction or reversal” (72a–b). Still, Socrates thinks that his purifying practice of philosophy has ensured his release from this cycle. Accordingly, Nietzsche’s depiction of the dwarf’s response to Zarathustra’s challenging question, and next of Zarathustra’s cross-examination of this response, may be read as his poetic attempt to elicit, and then refute, the Platonic reasons for thinking escape from life’s eternal recurrence is possible. This reading of the dwarf’s response is strongly supported by Nietzsche’s direct allusion back to Zarathustra’s first speech on time (II.2). For in this speech, Zarathustra says, in words that precisely anticipate the dwarf’s response: “God is a thought that makes all that is straight bent and all that stands turn. How? Should time be gone, and all that is transitory only be a lie?”19 Zarathustra’s point here, in the context of the rest of his speech, is that God is conceived as existing outside of time and space and therefore as permanent and unmoving.20 By comparison, then, our ordinary sensory his animals (and is not angry, as he is with the dwarf), and tells them how well they know what had to be fulfilled and what comfort he had invented for his convalescence – namely, to make a new lyre for his new songs. Also, in his preparatory notes, Nietzsche actually has Zarathustra himself teach all of what his animals say they know he teaches (KSA 11:25[7]). Nietzsche’s point, therefore, is not that Zarathustra’s animals do not know what he teaches, but rather that they are unable to understand why this new teaching should have caused him such pain, nausea, and sickness. This point derives from Nietzsche’s claim that non-human animals have no memory and therefore cannot be nauseated or burdened as Zarathustra is (UM II:2; Z IV.8; GM II:1–3). In addition, Zarathustra’s animals genuinely believe that being is a wheel or a ring, and that the path of eternity is bent, whereas (as I argue below) the Platonic dwarf says these things contemptuously and thinks they are merely an illusion by comparison to true timeless reality. For this reason, Heidegger (1984, pp. 54–55) and others (see White 1990, pp. 89–93) are wrong to equate the dwarf ’s interpretation of the gateway-vision with the account of eternal recurrence offered by Zarathustra’s animals. For other correct objections to Heidegger’s dismissal of the animal speeches, see Lampert 1986, pp. 212–223. 19 Gooding-Williams (2001, pp. 196–197, 215, 217) rightly notes Nietzsche’s allusion here to Luther’s translation of Ecclesiastes 7:13: “Consider the work of God, for who can make that straight which he hath made crooked” (“Siehe an die Werke Gottes, denn wer kann das schlecht machen/das er krümmet”). 20 According to Zarathustra’s “Blessed Isles” speech, to think this, and to think that all that stands turns, is dizziness (Wirbel), vertigo (Schwindel), and vomiting to the stomach; he calls “this teaching about the one and the perfect and the unmoved and the sufficient and the intransitory”


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experiences of impermanence and motion, indeed of time and space itself, are all illusions and lies. Thus, when the dwarf accepts Zarathustra’s implication that time itself is a circle, we are supposed to notice that he does so contemptuously (verächtlich). This is because the dwarf, like Phaedo’s Socrates, believes that there is a “truly straight” realm of timeless absolute reality by comparison with which the lanes’ apparent straightness is actually bent and time itself is a circle (78c–79a).21 And this means that the dwarf, like Phaedo’s life-denying Socrates, and like the suffering figures diagnosed in “The Hinterworldly” (I.3), believes that he will eventually be able to escape from the illusory circle of time and into the realm of timeless absolute reality (77b–81a, 109b–111b, 114b–c). On this reading of the dwarf’s response, we can see why Zarathustra angrily warns him, the spirit of heaviness (der Geist der Schwere), not to make things too light (leicht) for himself. What Zarathustra means by this is that his opponent has seemingly accepted the implications of the gateway-vision, while all along contemptuously dismissing the entire vision as a mere illusion. Although the dwarf mouths the words, “time itself is a circle,” he does not actually believe that these words describe true reality. In this way, the dwarf shows that he does not in fact know Zarathustra’s most abysmal thought, and that he has instead interpreted Zarathustra’s vision-riddle so that he does not have to bear the heavy weight of thinking his eternal return to the earth and his body.22 Thus, Zarathustra’s next task the “turning sickness” (die drehende Krankheit). Zarathustra alludes back to this remark when he invokes the courage needed to defeat his dwarf archenemy and calls it the courage that slays vertigo (den Schwindel) over abysses. Nietzsche’s point is that, once we accept the idea of God as absolutely permanent and unmoving, there is no possibility of finding anything in our ordinary experience and reality that is even relatively permanent, unmoving, and anchoring. 21 This reading is strongly supported by Small’s important discovery (1998, pp. 87–91; 2001, pp. 43, 52–55) that the dwarf ’s interpretation very closely resembles the theory of circular time advanced by Nietzsche’s former Basel colleague, Gustav Teichmüller, in Darwinismus und Philosophie, p. 39ff. Teichmüller, from whom Nietzsche claims in 1883 to have learned much about Plato (to Overbeck, October 22; KSB 6, p. 449), concludes his presentation by writing that we need to distinguish between the illusion of circular time presented to the finite human perspectival standpoint – “in which the crooked must appear straight and the straight appear crooked” (wobei das Krumme als grade, das Grade als krumm erscheinen muss) (p. 43) – and the truth of timelessness known to God’s non-perspectival intuition (p. 49). Contrary to Small, however, I am arguing here that Zarathustra’s refutation of the dwarf accepts and employs Teichmüller’s perspectival approach to time and his argument that the limited perspective of the present moment prevents us from seeing time’s circularity. Nietzsche rejects only Teichmüller’s further Platonist contention of some possible non-perspectival standpoint that would make all (circular) time be gone. 22 Lampert (1986, pp. 164–167) is an exception to most commentators in attributing to Zarathustra the most abysmal thought that time is a circle. But he misses Nietzsche’s allusion to Zarathustra’s first speech on time, and hence is led to claim – despite Zarathustra’s angry rejection of the dwarf ’s response, and despite Zarathustra’s claim that his opponent does not know his most abysmal

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is to refute the dwarf’s interpretation by using his own Socratic reasoning against him. Although subtle, this is an essential point that is missed by most scholars who write about the exchange between Zarathustra and his dwarf archenemy.23 It is true that Zarathustra angrily rejects the dwarf’s response. But the allusions built into the dwarf’s response, and the dwarf ’s contemptuous attitude, show that Zarathustra does not reject the dwarf ’s response because the dwarf believes that time is a circle, but rather because he does not truly believe that time is a circle. And this means, then, that Zarathustra himself does believe that time is a circle, and that the rest of his proof aims to prove precisely this. Let us turn to the rest of this proof now, a proof that must begin by attacking the dwarf ’s assumption of a God’s-eye vantage point, above the gateway and the lanes, from which he can contemptuously dismiss time itself.24 Z a r at h ustr a’s cro ss -e x a min ation As most commentators since Heidegger have noted, Zarathustra begins his refutation of the dwarf’s response by commanding his archenemy to return back to the temporal perspective of the gateway-Augenblick.25 However, according to these commentators, Zarathustra has already identified the dwarf’s extra-temporal perspective, or rather absence of any particular perspective, with the dwarf’s claim that time is a circle. For this reason, they go on to argue next that the dwarf’s return back to the gateway-perspective is meant to show him that time is not a circle and that the present moment really is the site of an eternal contradiction between the lanes of past and future. On this commonly accepted reading, Zarathustra forces the dwarf thought – that Zarathustra’s most abysmal thought is merely an intensification of the dwarf ’s correct interpretation. Berkowitz (1995, p. 196ff.) also misses Nietzsche’s allusion and thinks that the dwarf genuinely believes that time is a circle. So he is led to argue that Zarathustra, immediately after denouncing the dwarf ’s response, performs a “stunning about-face” and becomes a “poisoned” spokesman for the dwarf ’s “sham solution.” 23 See for example Heidegger, 1984, pp. 41–43; Stambaugh, 1972, pp. 38–39; Moles 1989, p. 30; White 1990, pp. 86–87, 91–92; Small, 1998, pp. 86–91, 2001, pp. 21, 52–54; Shapiro 2001, pp. 29–30. All these commentators infer Zarathustra’s rejection of circular time from his rejection of the dwarf ’s response. 24 Strictly speaking, Nietzsche is concerned here and elsewhere to emphasize that the Platonic and God’s-eye vantage point is supposed to be the (self-contradictory) concept of a non-perspectival eye that looks in no direction, i.e of no eye at all, no vantage point at all (GM III:12). 25 Heidegger (1984, pp. 43–44, 56–57, 135–140, 176, 181–183) argues that Zarathustra’s new questions are intended to force his archenemy to adopt a stance he cannot bear – namely, within the Augenblick itself, that is, in time and its temporality. See also Stambaugh 1972, pp. 39–41; White 199o, pp. 86–87; Ansell-Pearson 1994, pp. 110–112; Small 1998, pp. 90–91, 96.


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to see that he is not entitled to assume any God’s-eye position from which the whole of time can be viewed and regarded as a circle. Instead, the dwarf is forced to live authentically and humanly within the radically temporal confines of the present moment wherein past and future always collide. Zarathustra’s teaching of eternal recurrence is thus interpreted as an existential doctrine about the importance and difficulty of living fully within the agonistic present moment. The evidence I have cited above, however, shows that Zarathustra identifies the Socratic dwarf’s attempted God’s-eye point of view, or rather supposed absence of any particular point of view, with the dwarf’s determination to avoid acknowledging the reality of circular time. Accordingly, the reason Zarathustra commands the dwarf to return to the perspective of the gateway-Augenblick is so that he will assume a perspectival standpoint which will force him to acknowledge that time is a circle.26 According to Nietzsche, that is, a perspectival approach to time is needed in order to see that time is really circular. Certainly, the short perspective of the present moment does not show this. Instead, as Zarathustra’s further questions imply, this limited perspective shows two separate lanes of past and future as straight, linear, and extending eternally onwards in opposite and open directions. But this is precisely why Zarathustra first commands the dwarf to abandon the short perspective of the present moment, and to imagine instead the much longer and thus superior perspective of someone following either lane ever further and further.27 And this is also why, after dismissing the dwarf’s reply, he again commands the dwarf to abandon the limited perspective of the present moment, and to imagine instead the much longer perspective of someone traveling all the way down the lane behind the gateway. The result, he implies, is that the dwarf will be forced to see that he would have to return to his starting point from the lane ahead because the two lanes are actually one single lane that curves in the distance to form a vast but finite (though unbounded) closed circle. Here we may invoke an analogy commonly used today, but known also to Nietzsche, which derives from Bernhard Riemann’s pioneering idea in 1854 of a non-Euclidean geometry that maps on to the earth’s surface.28 Small (1998, p. 91) rightly emphasizes the universalist language (“All that is straight lies, all truth is bent”) that shows the dwarf ’s attempt to avoid inhabiting the perspectival standpoint of the gateway-Augenblick. See also Nietzsche’s earlier unpublished note: “Kontur-Phantom. Zu jeder Krümmung den vollendenden Kreis ziehen” (KSA 8:29[13]). 27 See Small 2001, p. 47, on Nietzsche’s praise of long perspectives as the best means of knowledge (e.g. GS 78). 28 See Riemann 1996, p. 10: “If we prolong all the geodesics starting in a given surface-element, we should obtain an unbounded surface of constant curvature, i.e. a surface which in a flat 26

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Our local perspective at any point on a great circle of the earth’s spherical surface – say the equator – shows us only a relatively small, straight, and linear segment of that great circle.29 So if we look out from this perspective to the east and west, we will see two separate straight lanes that seem to extend forever in these seemingly opposite directions. But if we travel further and ever further in either direction around the equator we are forced to see – in a completely immanent fashion that does not depend on any God’s-eye detachment – that the two lanes are actually curved and meet together back at our starting point in such a way that what previously seemed to be opposite directions are really not such at all. If, for example, we leave from the west, and travel further and ever further to the west, we will return to our starting point from the east.30 On the commonly accepted reading, according to which Zarathustra urges the dwarf to remain within the gateway-Augenblick, there is really no way to explain why Zarathustra keeps pointing the dwarf away from the gateway to the furthest extremes of the lanes extending on either side. But on the reading I have offered, the reason is clear. Having commanded the dwarf to give up his self-contradictory assumption of a God’s eye that is no manifoldness of three dimensions would take the form of a sphere, and consequently be finite.” For a recent use of this same analogy, see Hawking 1988, pp. 139–146. Moles (1989; 1990, pp. 277–283, 291ff.) argues that Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence is entailed in part by his Riemannian conception of space as positively curved, finite, and unbounded. As Stack comments (1989, p. 39), however, this explanation has to be supplemented with Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity concept of curved space-time; and, I would add, with Gödel’s 1949 proposal of closed time-like curves as a possible solution to Einstein’s field equations. Moles 1989, Abel 1998 (pp. 397–400) and Small 2001 (pp. 65–67) all show that Nietzsche studied Riemann’s nonEuclidean “spherical” space through the astrophysicist Friedrich Zöllner’s 1872 book, Über die Natur der Kometen. This book quotes from Riemann’s ground-breaking essay, and for the first time proposes a cosmology that incorporates Riemann’s new geometry. In a passage that seems to anticipate Zarathustra’s vision-riddle, Zöllner writes: “For in such a [spherical] space a moving body, left to itself, would describe a curved line returning into itself, rather than a straight line” (Small 2001, p. 66). Stack (1989, pp. 37–38) adds that Nietzsche was also aware of Riemann’s non-Euclidean geometry through his close study of F. A. Lange’s History of Materialism, and that Nietzsche’s unpublished notes argue that the conception of Euclidean space is non-necessary. 29 In keeping with the implication of his vision-riddle, Zarathustra imagines the cosmos as a round golden “ball” or “apple” (I.21, I.22:1, III.10:1, IV.10). Also, as Moles (1989, pp. 28–30; 1990, p. 404) observes, Zarathustra’s animals allude to Riemannian positively curved space when they describe the path of eternity as bent (krumm) and depict a sphere that has as its center everywhere (III.13:2). Zarathustra’s image of the golden apple also alludes to Wagner’s symbol of eternal youth in The Ring of the Nibelung (Rheingold, Scene 2) and thus suggests again Nietzsche’s quasiPlatonic interest in eternal recurrence as a doctrine of immortality (KSA 10:16[63]). 30 The use of this analogy to explain Zarathustra’s vision-riddle is supported by Teichmüller’s analogy (1877, pp. 42–43) – known to Nietzsche, and also frequently used today to explain the curved space-time surface of a hyperdimensional cosmos – according to which we may travel further and further along the surface of the round earth in order to see that the smallness of our local field of view deceives us into thinking that this surface is flat.


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perspective at all, Zarathustra now aims to show the dwarf that the limited perspective of the present moment necessarily obscures the reality of circular time. Commentators typically assume that Nietzsche could not have this aim in mind, because only a God’s-eye, transcendent, and extra-temporal position could possibly show the whole of time.31 But this is precisely the dwarf’s claim that Zarathustra aims to refute. In fact, this is precisely the claim that according to Nietzsche immediately implies the illusory character of circular time as compared to the timeless reality involved in the God’s eye non-perspectival position that comprehends it. For Nietzsche, then, it is crucial to show that a fully perspectival, temporally situated, and immanent human standpoint can, and will, show time’s circularity.32 And the key to doing this is to notice, once we abandon the God’s-eye position, that a perspective as such is no longer false, that some perspectives are better than others, and indeed that objectivity is still possible if by this we mean the collection of as many and as varied and as appropriate perspectives as possible (GM III:12). With respect to time, Nietzsche suggests, the local perspective of the present moment is inadequate and creates the illusion of temporal open linearity. But if we assume a much longer and global perspective, if we collect and compare all the perspectives gathered in our extensive temporal travels, we will then reach a much more objective and complete appraisal of the nature of time. Eternal recurrence, on this reading, is a doctrine about closed circular time, and about the implications of this kind of time for human life and meaning. Let us return now to the details of Zarathustra’s refutation of his Socratic opponent, and in particular to Zarathustra’s deduction that the two lanes extending from the gateway do not really contradict each other. First Zarathustra instructs the dwarf to adopt the perspective of someone traveling further and further along the lane extending backward from the gatewayAugenblick in which they stand. Then, in a series of Socratic questions, he argues that this perspective would force the dwarf to see that everything has already been on this lane – including the gateway-Augenblick itself: Behold this Augenblick! From this gateway Augenblick runs a long, eternal lane backward: behind us lies an eternity. See Fink 1973, pp. 87–88, 92, 98–100; White 1990, pp. 86–87; Moles 1989, p. 30; 1990, p. 418 n. 63; Small 1998, pp. 88–91. 32 In the Schilpp volume dedicated to his thought, Einstein (1949, p. 688) writes that Gödel has found such a cosmological solution (a global closed time-like curve) to his field equations (although it remains to be seen whether it is to be excluded on physical grounds). For a philosophical examination of Gödelian space-time structure and its implications, see the essays by Paul Horwich and John Earman in Savitt (1995). For a physics-based examination of other possible global closed time-like curves, see Gott 2001. 31

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The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra Must not whatever of all things can run already have run this lane? Must not whatever of all things can happen already have happened, been done, run past? And if everything already has been there: what do you hold, dwarf, of this Augenblick? Must not this gateway also already – have been there?

These questions constitute the first of three stages in Zarathustra’s crossexamination, and although his archenemy does not answer any of them, Nietzsche’s allusion to Plato’s Socratic dialogues indicates that he is forced to implicitly assent to all the questions until the point is reached when he is defeated and vanishes.33 Of special importance in this first set of questions is Zarathustra’s emphasis on his inference from all the possible things that have already been on the backward lane to the gateway-Augenblick itself. This is an inference we have already seen in the demon’s message of Gay Science 341. Since the gateway-Augenblick represents the present moment in time, Nietzsche is here presupposing a relational conception of time according to which temporal moments do not exist independently of the things with which they are associated.34 If the eternity of the backward lane guarantees that all possible things have already been on it, then all of the things within the gateway-Augenblick must have already been on it.35 But this means that the associated gateway-Augenblick must also have a lready been on the backward lane. In his second set of questions to his archenemy, Zarathustra adds a new premise about the knot of causes that guarantees the identical succession and sequence of all that recurs: And are not all things knotted together fast in such a way that this Augenblick draws after itself all coming things? Therefore – – itself too? For, whatever of all things can run: also in this long lane outward – it must run once again! – However, as I argue in Chapter 6, Zarathustra does not actually slay the dwarf with his gravitydefeating inhuman laughter until the end of the vision-riddle. 34 Although they do not cite Zarathustra’s inference as support, Stambaugh (1972, pp. 31–34, 104– 106), Abel (1998, pp. 236ff., 420ff.) and Moles (1990, pp. 233–234, 285–286, 295, 310ff.) all show how Nietzsche’s unpublished notes deny the existence of Newtonian absolute or universal time and all argue that this denial is presupposed by his doctrine of eternal recurrence. 35 Given Nietzsche’s suggestion of curved time, his use of the word “eternal” to describe the temporal lanes has to ultimately mean the unbounded finitude of time – i.e. the ability to travel time’s finite circle over and over again. Zarathustra’s animals also assert the unbounded finitude of time when they say that “the wheel of being rolls eternally,” or that “the year of being runs eternally”; and when they say Zarathustra teaches that “there is a great year of becoming, a monster of a great year [which] must, like an hourglass, turn itself over again and again, so that it may run down and run out anew” (III.13:2). In the context of his allusion to Phaedo’s Socrates, Nietzsche is able to assume that Zarathustra’s opponent accepts the premise of the eternity of the lane behind 33


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Again, it might seem that Zarathustra is simply counting the gatewayAugenblick as one of those possible things that are knotted fast together, and that this is the reason he says it draws after itself all possible coming things – including itself. However, given the relational view of time already introduced, Zarathustra’s compressed reasoning needs to be expanded as follows. Since the forward-moving gateway-things are knotted together fast with, and hence draw after themselves, all possible coming things, we may say that the gateway itself draws after itself all possible coming things. But the eternity of the lane ahead guarantees that all possible things will come again, and that therefore the gateway-things will come again.36 From this there follows the conclusion of Zarathustra’s entire proof: that the gateway-Augenblick draws after itself the coming gatewaythings, and with them itself too.37 This conclusion about the recurrence of time itself is highlighted by the word “Also” (which Nietzsche emphasizes) and by the double long dash that follows this word.38 In this way, Zarathustra’s archenemy is compelled to observe that the lanes do not in fact eternally contradict each other and that, independently of any transcendent comparison with some timeless absolute reality, time is indeed a the gateway. In the context of Zarathustra, this same premise follows from the death of God and Zarathustra’s denial of a creator and a creation of the cosmos (which I discuss in Chapter 8). 36 Zarathustra’s premise that the lane ahead (the future) must be eternal follows from his first premise of the eternity of the lane behind (the past). Since everything that can happen must have already happened on the eternal past lane, then any end to all things, and thus to time, must have already happened. But it has not (as the present moment shows). Nietzsche explains this link in more detail in his unpublished notes: “if the world could in any way become rigid, dry, dead, nothing … then this state must have been reached. But it has not been reached: from which it follows” (KSA 13:14[188]). See Deleuze 1983, pp. 39–42; Rogers 2001, p. 92. Compare this argument to Plato’s Phaedo argument (10a–d) that if becoming were not a circular process, then all becoming would have ceased (which it has not). 37 As I argue in Loeb 2007, some commentators (Magnus 1978, pp. 107–108; Gooding-Williams 2001, p. 218) do not notice Nietzsche’s presupposition of relational time, or still believe in absolute and universal time (contrary to current physical theory), and therefore find in this conclusion a self-contradictory idea of recurring moments. 38 As we saw in Chapter 1, the demon in GS 341 offers a similar conclusion, after a similar dash break, about the recurrence of time itself. He says that the eternal hourglass of being is turned over again and again, and that even the very Augenblick in which he is speaking must come again in the same succession and sequence. Similarly, Zarathustra’s animals, in explaining the doctrine they know Zarathustra teaches, express the idea that time itself recurs in terms of the metaphor of a monstrously great year of becoming which must, like an hourglass, turn itself over again and again so that it may run down and run out anew. And they express the idea that associated times will be identical by claiming that the (small) years within each great year will be identical with each other (III.13:2). And in his earlier UM II:2, Nietzsche alludes to the Pythagoreans’ proposal of time’s recurrence (Barnes 1987, p.88). Although they do not cite Zarathustra’s dialectical proof as support, Stambaugh (1972, p. 33) and Moles (1990, pp. 295, 313) both argue that Nietzsche is committed to time’s recurrence. See also Long 1985, pp. 26–30, on the Stoics’ assumption of time’s recurrence.

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circle.39 Traveling further and further down either of the lanes extending out from the gateway-Augenblick, Zarathustra’s archenemy would eventually complete a full rotation and return back to the identical gateway starting-point.40 From this deduction, there follows Zarathustra’s third and vanquishing set of questions: And this slow spider, crawling in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and I and you inside the gateway, whispering together, whispering of eternal things – must we not all have already been? – and come again and run in that other lane, outward, ahead of us, in this long horrible lane – must we not eternally come again? –

In these last two questions, Zarathustra focuses his opponent’s attention back on the smallest details of the moment they presently share – details that he describes as being located inside the gateway-Augenblick. If we suppose, as I have argued, that Zarathustra’s gateway is also a symbol for the threshold of death, and that he and his opponent are together facing what would appear to be their last moment of life, then Zarathustra’s conclusion certainly is extraordinary – namely, that he and his opponent have faced this same moment before and will come to face it again after they die. This interpretation helps to explain the peculiar asymmetry in Zarathustra’s treatment of the two lanes, especially his concluding emphasis on the “horrible” (schaurige) nature of the lane out ahead of the gateway. It is supported as well by the speech Zarathustra’s animals imagine him giving as Moles (1989, p. 30; 1990, p. 418 n. 63) argues that the dwarf ’s suggestion that “time is a circle” presupposes an absolute time existing independently of the cosmos, and that this is why Zarathustra rejects the dwarf ’s suggestion. But the claim that time is a circle is also entailed by Zarathustra’s doctrine of the endlessly repeating circular course of all things, together with his relational conception of time as a totality of moments that do not exist independently of the things associated with them (see van Fraassen 1970, p. 65). Elsewhere (1990, pp. 280–281, 312–314), Moles himself describes Nietzsche’s doctrine in terms of circular time. 40 Zarathustra’s animals express this full rotation as having the extent of a “great year of becoming” (ein grosses Jahr des Werdens) (III.13:2). Here Nietzsche alludes to Plato’s proposal in the Timaeus of a complete year, or complete number of time, in which all the celestial bodies return together to the starting point of their revolution (39c–d). Although I disagree with his dismissal of the animal speeches, Deleuze (1994, p. 241ff.) properly emphasizes Nietzsche’s essential distinction between his own doctrine of eternal recurrence, which “is said of a world the very ground of which is difference,” and any other cyclical theory of eternal recurrence which “presupposes the identity in general of that which is supposed to make the return,” e.g. ancient theories like the Pythagorean eternal recurrence doctrine of UM II:2, or Plato’s complete year, which are grounded upon the cyclical transformation of natural elements into one another or upon the circular movement of incorruptible celestial bodies. It is this distinction which is at issue in Nietzsche’s 1881 unpublished notes on eternal recurrence, and which so puzzles Krell (1996, pp. 158–176). See also Small 2001, pp. 127–128. 39


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he dies, in which he says that after he dies he will be created again by the recurring knot of causes in which he is intertwined. Indeed, it is precisely this hypothetical deathbed speech, with its similar phrasing and use of indexicals, which finally provides an answer to the last question posed by Zarathustra above – “must we not eternally come again?”: I come again, with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent – not to a new life or better life or similar life: – I come again eternally to this identical and self-same life, in the greatest and even in the smallest … (III.13:2)

T h e in e sc a pa bl e cyc l e Zarathustra’s dialectical contest with his Socratic archenemy thus concludes by proving to him what I have argued Nietzsche attributed to the daimonion of the dying Socrates in Gay Science 340–341: that his death will not afford him any escape from the life he has just finished living, but will instead return him to living it once again exactly as before. As some commentators have noted, Zarathustra’s overall argument for this conclusion corresponds closely to some of the deductive proofs Nietzsche considered in his unpublished notebooks of 1881 and 1888.41 These are proofs that resemble those offered by the Stoics, and that depend upon the assumptions of an infinite time and a calculable number of possible force-combinations. Since these proofs have been found wanting since the earliest days of Nietzsche interpretation,42 commentators have tended to dismiss Nietzsche’s depiction of Zarathustra’s dialectical victory. Alternatively, some have argued that Nietzsche’s contempt for dialectical reasoning leads him deliberately to present grounds for this victory that are weak but nevertheless sufficient to defeat Zarathustra’s dwarfish Socratic opponent.43 If we suppose, however, that Zarathustra’s archenemy is Plato’s Socrates, then we must assume that Nietzsche intended Zarathustra’s argument to have world-historic validity and significance. This point cannot be deflected by noting Nietzsche’s usual depreciation of Socratic reasoning. For the context of the struggle between Zarathustra and his archenemy is Zarathustra’s courageous decision to awaken the thought of

See KSA 9:11[202]; KSA 13:14[188]. See Lampert 1986, pp. 165–166; Abel 1998, pp. 249–253. But see Moles (1990, pp. 305–310) and Rogers (2001, pp. 86, 89–90) for a convincing account of how most of the standard criticisms have depended upon an uncharitable or tendentious reading of Nietzsche’s proofs. 43 See Small 1983, pp. 95–99; Lampert 1986, pp. 166–167. 41

42

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eternal recurrence – that is, to bring it up from the dark depths of his subconscious mind to the daylit surface of conscious rational knowledge (III.13:1).44 Since this decision is meant to defeat Socrates’ hope for release from the eternal cycle of rebirth, Zarathustra’s argument should consist in an appropriate refutation of Socrates’ dialectical grounds for this hope. On my interpretation, Zarathustra’s argument does attempt such a refutation. For, speaking from the perspective of his impending death, Socrates argues that life and death are contradictory opposites and that there must therefore be a cyclical relation between the living and the dead. Since the living come from the dead, there must be a timeless place outside this cycle of eternal rebirth where the disembodied souls of the dead exist before coming to life again. This is why Socrates hopes that his purified soul will be permanently released into this timeless place at the moment of his death (70a–72e, 77b–d). Against this proof, however, Nietzsche begins by noting Socrates’ short-sighted perspective on the beginning and end of life. If Socrates had taken a longer perspective and asked instead about the temporal beginning and end of the world itself, he would have deduced that time itself recurs and that life and death do not really contradict each other. Indeed, leaving aside his suffering-based fantasy of a timeless alternative reality, Socrates would have deduced that all things are knotted together in such a way that the world eternally recycles itself and all living things within it.45 But this means that the living do indeed cease to exist when they die, and that there is no need, and in fact no room, to posit a place outside the cycle where the disembodied souls of the dead exist before coming to life again. This is why Zarathustra’s hypothetical deathbed speech begins as follows: “Now I die and fade and in an instant I am a nothing. Souls are as mortal as bodies. But the knot of causes in which I am entangled recurs, – it will create me again!” (III.13:2). At this point, Socrates would have been forced to realize that there was no place to escape from his eternally recurring life and that he had lost his dialectical grounds for hoping otherwise. See TI II for Nietzsche’s equation of surface and daylight with consciousness and reason, and of depth and darkness with the subconscious and instinct. 45 Nietzsche has Zarathustra’s animals describe this eternal self-recycling when they say that “the same house of being builds itself eternally”; and also when they say, in an allusion back to GS 341 and to the cosmological concept of the Platonic year, that Zarathustra teaches that the great year of becoming must, like an hourglass, “turn itself over again and again, so that it may run down and run out anew” (III.13:2). See also KSA 13:14[188]. For a contemporary hypothesis of cosmological self-creation based on the curvature of space-time, see Gott 2001. 44


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Having exposed his archenemy’s ignorance of the thought of eternal recurrence, and having undermined as well his archenemy’s dialectical attempt to avoid this thought, Zarathustra can claim to be vindicated in his expectation that his archenemy did not know this thought because he could not bear it. However, this claim raises the question as to how Zarathustra himself knows his most abysmal thought. This question actually has three parts, since Zarathustra first communicates his thought while recounting a vision in which he foresees himself coming to know this thought. First, how does Zarathustra come to know the truth of eternal recurrence within his prevision? Second, how does Zarathustra come to have this prevision? And, lastly, how does Zarathustra’s prevision come to be fulfilled? In the rest of this chapter, I offer my interpretation of Nietzsche’s answer to each of these three questions. C ro ssing t h e g at e wa y Nietzsche’s reply to the first question has its source, I believe, in Plato’s suggestion throughout the Phaedo that the time before death is a special time that can grant prophetic powers to the one who is about to die. Plato emphasizes this suggestion during an interlude in which Socrates’ disciples raise objections to the dialectical grounds he has just finished summarizing. Noting his failure to convince with proofs, Socrates now compares himself to Apollo’s swans:46 they are prophetic birds with foreknowledge of the blessings of Hades, and therefore sing and rejoice more greatly on that day than ever before. Now I hold that I myself am a fellow-servant of the swans, consecrated to the same god, that I possess prophetic power from my master no less than theirs, and that I am departing this life with as good cheer as they do. (84c–85b)47

In this important passage, Socrates suggests that the true source of his cheerful hope for release is not the dialectical investigation that takes up most of the Phaedo, but rather the prophetic power given him on the day of his death by his master-god Apollo. This suggestion is extended by Socrates’ allusion to his famous Apollonian prophetic daimonion, together with his claim that at the moment of death the daimon allotted to him In an interesting aside, Socrates confesses that, because he is so close to dying, he may even be advancing false arguments in support of his continued existence – arguments that will at least lessen the distress of his companions (91a–91c). 47 See also Socrates’ remark in Plato’s Apology: “I have now reached a point at which people are most given to prophesying – that is, when they are on the point of death” (39c). 46

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in life will guide him on his way to Hades (107d–e).48 Further, Socrates’ account of himself as singing with joy over the prospect of joining his master is anticipated at the start of the dialogue when he admits that he has been composing a hymn to Apollo. This, he says, is something he has never done before but was prompted to do in an effort to obey the message of a recurring Apollonian dream (60d–61b).49 In the aphorisms of The Gay Science, however, Nietzsche had already challenged this aspect of Plato’s representation of the dying Socrates. As I discussed in Chapter 2, he speculated instead that Socrates heard his daimonion prophesying to him at the last moment that there would be no release after all, and that indeed he would have to relive exactly the same life he had just completed. Since Socrates says that this divine voice is the true source of his convictions, Nietzsche speculated that only this sort of final prophecy could have shattered the hope for release that had enabled Socrates to live and face death with such good cheer. Socrates’ “last word,” he conjectured, reflected his dying impulse to throw himself down, gnash his teeth, and curse the daimon who spoke to him thus. But Nietzsche imagined an antipode – Zarathustra – whose life-overfullness would enable him to respond instead: “You are a god and I have never heard anything more divine!” Accordingly, he concludes Zarathustra with a prophetic “swan song” in which Zarathustra’s soul joyfully affirms and blesses the final revelation of eternal recurrence: If I be a prophet and full of that prophetic spirit that wanders on high ridges between two seas, – wanders between the past and the future like a heavy cloud … – but thus speaks bird-wisdom: … ‘Sing! speak no more!’ Oh how should I not lust after eternity and after the wedding ring of rings, – the ring of recurrence! (III.16:1, 7).

In this way, Nietzsche depicts Zarathustra’s prophetic victory over Plato’s Socrates, and invites us to decipher his account of the grounds for this victory as presented in Zarathustra’s vision-riddle. Let us return, then, to this vision-riddle, and to the point where Zarathustra has just defeated his archenemy with his concluding dialectical questions. Although we are led to understand that his opponent had to answer these concluding questions in the affirmative, it is significant that Zarathustra – unlike the For the most extensive Platonic mentions of Socrates’ prophetic inner voice, see the Apology 31c–d, 40a–c, 41d. Nietzsche refers to the dying Socrates’ prophetic daimonion in BT 13–14. 49 Nietzsche refers to this passage in BT 15. See also Socrates’ reference to a dream prophesying to him the day of his death, in Plato’s Crito, 44a–b. 48


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demon in Gay Science 341 – does not actually announce the truth of eternal recurrence. Instead, Zarathustra recounts how he spoke ever more quietly because he feared his own thoughts and background thoughts. Then, suddenly, he heard a dog howling nearby and he wondered if he had ever heard a dog howl like that. His thoughts ran back to when he was a child, in the most distant childhood, when he had heard a dog howl like that and had seen him too.50 After seeing and repeatedly pitying this howling dog, Zarathustra wonders where the dwarf, the gateway, the spider, and all the whispering had gone. In thus turning our attention from Zarathustra’s concluding dialectical questions toward the shift in his vision, Nietzsche suggests that the confirming answer to these questions, and thus the true source of Zarathustra’s knowledge of eternal recurrence, can be found in a proper interpretation of this shift in vision.51 The key to this interpretation lies in Nietzsche’s suggestion that Zarathustra has just crossed the gateway-Augenblick. Thus, having just indicated that he and his opponent were whispering together inside the gateway (im Thorwege), Zarathustra asks the dwarf his final question: “ – and [must we not] come again and run in that [jener] other lane, outward, ahead of us, in this [dieser] long horrible lane – must we not eternally come again? – ”52 Nietzsche’s precise phrasing here lets us know that Zarathustra’s last question was asked just as he was stepping from inside the gateway and onto the lane extending out ahead of the gateway. This gateway is inscribed “Augenblick,” and Zarathustra’s step across it thus causes a “sudden” (plötzlich) shift in his vision that leaves him wondering where the gateway had gone. On the traditional interpretation of the gateway-Augenblick as a symbol for the generic moment, it is difficult to see why Nietzsche should thus highlight Zarathustra’s step across the gateway. Indeed, as we have seen, interpreters usually follow Heidegger’s suggestion that the vision-riddle of the gateway-Augenblick is designed to teach us how to remain within the “eternal” moment. But if we suppose, as I have argued, that the gatewayAugenblick is a symbol for the presently experienced moment of death, then Nietzsche’s emphasis may be read as a poetic device for suggesting Nietzsche’s precise phrasing, “Mein Gedanke lief zurück,” alludes to Zarathustra’s earlier description of the long lane behind (zurück) upon which every possible thing has already run. Since according to Nietzsche (BGE 5–6) reason is led to find proofs for our insights after these insights have already been discovered otherwise, this transition from Zarathustra’s dialectical proof to his dying prophetic vision suggests that the vision is earlier than the proof and the original stimulus for it. 52 Hollingdale’s translation omits Nietzsche’s noteworthy shift here from “ jener” to “dieser.” 50 51

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Zarathustra’s dying prophetic vision. This interpretation is supported by Nietzsche’s allusion to the ancient Greek image of the hound Cerberus guarding the gateway to Hades, together with his related allusion to Homer’s tale of a courageous Odysseus who must descend into Hades in order to find out his future.53 It is supported as well by Zarathustra’s new vision, which is saturated with death-imagery: during the stillest midnight, when even dogs believe in thieves and ghosts, a terrified dog bristles, trembles, and howls as the full moon, deathly silent, stands still like an intruder upon the roof of what is presumably the dog’s house. In addition, Zarathustra mentions the horrible nature of the lane into which he has just crossed, the fear he feels while making this crossing, and his sensation of having just awakened from a dream. This last sensation, which persists from the start of Zarathustra’s vision-riddle, is traditionally associated with the image of coming to life after having died, and alludes to Socrates’ own such association in the Phaedo (71c–72d). No tim e u nti l r e birt h On the exegesis I have offered so far, however, there would seem to be a conceptual difficulty in this Platonic suggestion that the dying Zarathustra is in a position to prophetically observe his own process of coming to life again. For Zarathustra’s dialectical questions were aimed at refuting Socrates’ contention that the souls of the dead have some kind of existence in the time between dying and coming to life again. Indeed, in his hypothetical deathbed speech, Zarathustra declares that souls are as mortal as bodies and that in the instant of death he will become a nothing (ein Nichts).54 And although he declares next that the knot of causes in which he is entangled will recur and create him again, this recurrence and his recreation cannot take place until an immense period of time has elapsed in which he has no existence at all. So how could Zarathustra’s dying consciousness possibly extend across this time in order to observe his own recreation? Such a longer perspective is what Zarathustra asks the dwarf to consider if he is to notice that the two lanes do not contradict each other at the gateway. But we may wonder whether this perspective is possible after all. 53

The Odyssey, Books 10–11: 539–731. These statements recall Zarathustra’s reassurance to the dying tightrope walker that his soul will be dead even before his body (P:6), along with his claim that the awakened and the knowing transcend the childish distinction between body and soul to realize that they are body entirely and “soul” is only a word for something about the body (I.4).

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The answer to this important question lies in Zarathustra’s dialectical contention that time, or rather the series of time-moments, is relational and must therefore itself recur along with all things. Because the associated moments in time are themselves entangled in the recurring knot of causes, Zarathustra’s recreation cannot take place until time itself has recurred and returned to exactly the same moment in which he was created. In his hypothetical deathbed speech, Zarathustra declares that his recreated self comes again, not to a life that is similar (ähnlichen) but to one that is identical and self-same (gleichen und selbigen) – identical and self-same, that is, even with respect to time. This answer helps to explain Zarathustra’s observation, immediately after crossing the gateway-Augenblick, that he finds his thoughts running back to the time when he was a child, in the most distant childhood (in fernster Kindheit). Nietzsche’s implication here, given Zarathustra’s dialectical preparation, is that Zarathustra experiences a sudden shift from the sights and sounds of his dying consciousness to the sights and sounds of his awakening consciousness in his very early childhood. The reason for this is that Zarathustra does not exist at all during the immense period of time that elapses after he has died but time itself has not yet recurred. Nor does he exist at all during the immense period that elapses when time itself has recurred but he is not yet recreated. Zarathustra’s dying consciousness therefore cannot return in any moment during either of these time-periods. Moreover, the knot of causes in which Zarathustra is entangled guarantees that his life must recur in exactly the same succession and sequence. So the first moment in time’s circle in which Zarathustra’s dying consciousness can return is exactly the same moment in which he first becomes conscious – a moment, that is, which both follows and precedes the moment in which he was last conscious. Thus, although an immense period of time precedes and follows Zarathustra’s lifetime, his consciousness is a closed circle of its own in which the endpoint must return back to the starting-point from which it first set out. Although others will perceive a complete end to his awareness, Zarathustra himself can never experience such an end or even a break in his awareness.55 This interpretation also helps to explain why Zarathustra describes his shift in vision as “sudden,” and indeed why he initially observes that the gateway is named “Augenblick.” Because Zarathustra’s consciousness is Presumably the dwarf has the same experience. But since Zarathustra’s perspective after crossing the gateway is that of his awakening awareness, and since he did not encounter the dwarf in his early childhood, it appears to him that the dwarf has suddenly vanished. See Chapter 6 for my interpretation of the dwarf ’s fate.

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absent in the immense stretches of time during which he does not exist, he has no means of perceiving any of this passing time. As far as Zarathustra is concerned, therefore, his dying consciousness is immediately succeeded by his returned awakening consciousness and no time at all passes in the course of this transition. As we saw in Chapter 1, Nietzsche makes this argument explicit in an unpublished 1881 note that anticipates his book’s symbol of the gateway-Augenblick: You think you will have a long rest until rebirth – but do not deceive yourself! Between the last moment of consciousness [dem letzten Augenblick des Bewusstseins] and the first appearance of new life [dem ersten Schein des neuen Lebens] there lies ‘no time’ – it passes by as quickly as a flash of lightning, even if living creatures were to measure it in terms of billions of years, or could not even begin to measure it. Timelessness and succession accommodate themselves to one another as soon as the intellect is gone. (KSA 9:11[318])

On a conception of time as absolute or universal, we may still wonder about the distinction in the sequence of Zarathustra’s life between the moment in time associated with his “last moment of consciousness,” on the one hand, and the moment in time associated with his “first appearance of new life,” on the other. But Nietzsche denies that time exists independently of the perspective or framework from which it is observed or measured. As Nietzsche’s note above argues, Zarathustra’s perspective must show these two moments in time as immediately succeeding each other, even if the perspective of other observers shows them as distinct and separated by Zarathustra’s lifetime. Because there is no absolute or universal time, both of these perspectives are correct, and there is no fact to the matter that favors either one. Finally, this interpretation helps to explain why Zarathustra experiences his shift in vision as taking place “in the stillest midnight” (im stillest Mitternacht). For Zarathustra poetically conceives the individual human life, and even the life of the human species, as progressing through the various sun-centered hours of a 24-hour day: daybreak (childhood consciousness), morning (youth), afternoon (adulthood), twilightevening (middle age), and night-time (old age). On this conception, the twelfth bell of midnight designates both the end of the day (death) and its re-beginning (coming to life again). Just as the hand of a clock crosses the transition between the immediately succeeding last and first moments, so too Zarathustra experiences a transition between the immediately succeeding events of dying and awakening.56 Indeed, if we count the number Zarathustra refers to the hand-movements of the clock of his own life (II.22); to the afternoon of his life that now follows the peak noon-moment in which he has just taught the vision-riddle (III.3); and to the various clock-stages of life and the midnight hour of death (IV.19).

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of separate paragraphs in Zarathustra’s dialectical proof that he will come again, we find that his step across the midnight-gateway enacts the twelfth and concluding step of this proof. And I argue next that Nietzsche’s narrative in the conclusion to Part III fulfills this previsioned last step when Zarathustra dies and foresees his return at the twelfth stroke of the ancient midnight bell. Reading the above unpublished note as a kind of addendum to the demon’s announcement in Gay Science 341, as well as to Zarathustra’s whispered questions at the gateway, we are in a position then to sum up Nietzsche’s grounds for declaring Zarathustra’s prophetic victory over Plato’s Socrates. It would appear at first that Socrates has an advantage in claiming foreknowledge of the afterlife, since he believes “that when the person has died, his soul exists, and that it possesses some power and wisdom” (70b). But this advantage quickly evaporates when questions arise, as they do right away among Socrates’ interlocutors, as to how his disembodied soul could possibly survive, much less possess any wisdom. Paradoxically, it is Nietzsche’s belief in his soul’s mortality that allows him to avoid just these questions and to claim an immediate connection between his dying consciousness and his re-awakened consciousness. Certainly, this claim would founder if Nietzsche accepted Plato’s assumption of an absolute later time in which a person is reborn after he dies. But since Nietzsche holds that time itself recurs in such a way that Zarathustra is eternally recreated at the same moment in time, he is led to depict a final gateway-moment of consciousness that grants Zarathustra foreknowledge of his life’s eternal recurrence. T h e a nci e nt m e mory I turn next to the second part of my question concerning Zarathustra’s knowledge of the truth of eternal recurrence – namely, how does Zarathustra come to have a prevision that he is acquiring this knowledge? Since I have argued that Zarathustra foresees himself acquiring a deathbed foreknowledge of his life’s eternal recurrence, this is to ask how Zarathustra is able to foresee his own moment of death. If Zarathustra’s prevision shows that knowledge of eternal recurrence is learned at the moment of death, how is Zarathustra able to learn this knowledge while still alive? Questions like these also face Plato’s Socrates when he concludes early in the Phaedo: “[I]t’s then, apparently, that the thing we desire and whose lovers we claim to be, wisdom, will be ours – when we have died, as the

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argument indicates, though not while we live” (66e). In reply, Socrates goes on to propose his epistemological theory that learning is recollection (anamnesis). According to this theory, what we are reminded of concerning absolute reality we must have learned at some former time when our souls existed somewhere apart from our bodies and outside the cycle of eternal rebirth (72e–77a, 91e–92e). Hence, Socrates argues, by living as close to death as possible, he is able to recollect the wisdom about the afterlife that his soul had gained while he was dead but had forgotten upon being reborn and reincarnated. Since this wisdom concerns the very same afterlife to which he will return after he dies, Socrates may thus claim to be able to recollect foreknowledge of Hades that will be confirmed at his moment of death. He is then able to teach this wisdom to others by eliciting in them similar recollections. From Nietzsche’s standpoint, of course, this theory is best understood as part of Socrates’ overarching attempt to find grounds for his hope that he will be released from the cycle of eternal rebirth. It is worth noting, however, that Nietzsche does not directly challenge Socrates’ mnemonic grounds in his Gay Science aphorisms, and does not imagine Socrates to be confronted with any contradictory revelation concerning his prenatal existence. Instead, as we have seen, Nietzsche imagines Socrates’ daimon announcing to him only that everything in his life will have to come again to him in the same sequence and succession – “and even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this Augenblick and I myself” (GS 340–341). In Zarathustra, however, Nietzsche aims also to depict Socrates’ epistemic defeat. For now he supplements the daimonic announcement above with Zarathustra’s whispered interrogation of his archenemy’s recollection: “And this slow spider, crawling in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and I and you in the gateway, whispering together, whispering of eternal things – must we not all have already been?” Immediately after, and as if in reply to this very question, Zarathustra attempts to recall if he had ever before heard the howling dog he is now hearing. His thoughts run back, and he realizes that he does recall hearing this – when he was a child, in his most distant childhood. After fully recalling the details of this experience, Zarathustra next recalls and wonders about the present whereabouts of the dwarf, the gateway, the spider and all the whispering. Let us suppose now, as I have argued, that Zarathustra had just seen himself crossing the gateway-Augenblick of death and experiencing a transition from his dying consciousness to his first childhood consciousness. So far I have noted that this experience grants Zarathustra a dying


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foreknowledge of coming back to life. Nietzsche’s emphasis above, then, leads us to notice that this same experience also grants Zarathustra a most distant childhood memory of having died and come back to life. Since Zarathustra was not dying when he saw the vision he is recounting to the sailors, his vision must have consisted in a recollection of this most distant childhood memory. However, Zarathustra’s consciousness is a closed circle in which the endpoint must return to the starting point from which it set out. So this childhood memory must also be of his future and Zarathustra’s recollection of this childhood memory may also be regarded as a “prevision” (Vorhersehen) of his death and recurrence.57 As the dramatic narrative of Part III indicates, however, Nietzsche draws a sharp distinction between Zarathustra’s voluntary and involuntary recollection of his latent knowledge of eternal recurrence.58 Although Zarathustra has just recounted his prevision of dying and recurring toward the start of Part III, we are led to understand that he did not choose to recollect this childhood memory. After the terrifying second scene of his prevision, in which he sees a serpent biting itself fast in the throat of a young shepherd, Zarathustra speaks of having been bitten himself by the silent burrowing worm of his most abysmal thought.59 He says that he has been carrying this fearful heavy worm without yet having the strength and lion’s voice to command it up from his abyss (III.3). This poetic image (reiterated in III.13:1), with its allusion to death (worms burrowing in corpses), and to the ancient ouroboros symbol (a worm that bites its own tail), captures Nietzsche’s idea that Zarathustra’s eternally recurring life is a closed circle in which the end always returns to the beginning. Anticipating Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, Nietzsche describes Zarathustra’s knowledge of eternal recurrence as most abysmal (abgründlicher) and as blind like a mole because it lies burrowing in the darkest depths of his subconscious. Nietzsche also describes Zarathustra’s knowledge as silent and sleeping because it has been repressed and buried in subconscious depths where Kain also points to this passage as a place “where Nietzsche suggests that there is a memory of past cycles” (1983, p. 376). By contrast, Soll describes this same passage as “aberrant and illconsidered” (1973, p. 335). In Chapter 8 I argue that the recurrence-memory suggested in this passage is consistent with Nietzsche’s account of memory in GM II. 58 Although Nietzsche most often characterizes Zarathustra’s doctrine of eternal recurrence as his “most abysmal thought” (abgründlicher Gedanke), he also has Zarathustra agree with his stillest hour that he “knows” (weiss) his teaching but will not speak it (II.22). And Zarathustra’s animals ask him if perhaps a new, bitter, and oppressive “knowledge” (Erkenntnis) has come to him once he has awakened his most abysmal thought (III.13:2). 59 The convalescent Zarathustra identifies this worm with this serpent, and in Chapter 6 I trace this identification back to Nietzsche’s allusion to Wagner’s image of the dragon or serpent-worm (Schlangenwurm) in Siegfried. 57

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it is then carried as a heavy burden. Still, this latent knowledge is able to manifest itself in episodes of excruciating psychological pain and in the terrifying vision-riddles that Zarathustra experiences while dreaming or intoxicated.60 Zarathustra is thus able to gain some knowledge of his thought by interpreting and solving the symbols and images that present themselves in these vision-riddles. At the right time, however, Zarathustra must choose to deliberately awaken and summon up his dormant knowledge so that it may speak to him directly. And, indeed, toward the end of Part III, Zarathustra roars his summons in a terrible thunderous voice, commands awake his sleeping burrowing worm, and hears his abyss speaking to him (III.13:1). This recovery of his most traumatic and deeply repressed memory demands all of his courage (III.2:1) and has such an impact that he falls down as if dead (III.13:2). Nevertheless, his confrontation is successful and leads to an awakening or enlightenment in which his long-hidden knowledge is finally exposed to the full light of day and rationally understood at a conscious level. In an unpublished note, Nietzsche suggests that this greatest event is the start of the “great noon” (grosse Mittag) hour for humankind, that is, the hour in which the shadows of God will cease to darken the human mind and the sun of human knowledge will stand at its peak: “And in every ring of human existence as such there is always an hour in which there emerges, at first for one, then for many, then for all, the mightiest thought, that of the eternal recurrence of all things – it is always for humankind the hour of noon” (KSA 9:11[148]; see also KSA 9:11[196]; GS 108–109; Z I.22:3; and TI IV). Following Plato’s lead, then, Nietzsche theorizes that Zarathustra’s knowledge of the afterlife is forgotten or repressed as soon as he comes to life again (75d–e). Also like Plato, Nietzsche hypothesizes that Zarathustra is obliged to interpret the latent memories that surface during his involuntary dream states (60e–61b).61 This is why Nietzsche is especially interested in depicting Zarathustra’s experience of falling asleep, when his conscious intellect drops away and “no time” passes for him until he awakens. In this blink of an eye (Augen-blick) between falling asleep and waking, Zarathustra paradoxically feels himself falling into “the well of eternity” (den Brunnen der Ewigkeit) and sleeping “half an eternity” in Nietzsche thus explains the Dionysian mystery-cult emphasis on wine and intoxication (Seaford 2006, pp. 15–22) as facilitating the recovery of our buried memory of life’s eternal recurrence. 61 In his earlier Daybreak Nietzsche claimed that in the fantasizing of dreams a person’s memory goes sufficiently far back to rediscover that prehistory and those primal experiences which were forgotten for the sake of evolving into an adult civilized condition (D 312). 60


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which he perceives the world as a perfect “golden round ring” (IV.10).62 With these metaphors, Nietzsche indicates the descent of Zarathustra’s sleeping mind into its subconscious awareness of his eternally recurring life. This awareness, Nietzsche suggests, necessarily has an infinite depth that is beyond the scope of Zarathustra’s waking consciousness’ comprehension (III.4, III.10). Finally, Nietzsche follows Plato’s lead in supposing that Zarathustra’s knowledge of the afterlife has its ultimate source in his recollected experience of death. This supposition is most vividly expressed by the “Once More” roundelay (Rundgesang) in which Zarathustra’s soul, to the accompaniment of the twelve bells of midnight, warns humanity to pay heed to the speech of deep midnight. In this speech, deep midnight recalls awakening out of a deep dream in which the world was revealed as deeper than the day had thought (III.15:3). But Zarathustra had just awoken his most abysmal thought so that it would speak to him, and midnight is the hour of Zarathustra’s eternally recurring death.63 Nietzsche thus leads us to understand that Zarathustra’s most abysmal thought, the thought that arises out of his infinitely deep subconscious well, is his deathbed revelation of the world’s infinite depth – a revelation that had so far been kept concealed from his daylit conscious rational thought.64 Although others do not of course possess Zarathustra’s particular memory of this revelation, they can be taught to recall their own such ancient memory. This is why, after they have become drunk with sweet wine, Zarathustra introduces his roundelay to the higher men as follows: 65 You higher men, midnight approaches: then I will say something in your ears, as that old bell says it in mine, – – as secretly, as fearfully, as cordially, as that midnight-bell says it to me … Also, after having become intoxicated in his celebration with the higher men, Zarathustra asks in his midnight roundelay: “Woe is me! Where has time fled? Did I not sink into deep wells? The world sleeps –” (IV.19:4). For a similar focus on these passages, see Stambaugh 1972, p. 114. 63 Since Zarathustra awakens his midnight thought at the great noon hour, he whispers to the assembled higher men that “midnight is also noon,” and “night is also a sun” (IV.19:10). See Chapter 4. 64 In thus equating night with death and with knowledge of ultimate reality, and in contrasting this equation with that of daylight, life, and illusion, Nietzsche alludes here (and at the end of III.4) to the dialogue in Act 2 of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. See also the end of III.4 and IV.19:3, 7. 65 This interpretation is supported by Zarathustra’s subsequent line-by-line exegesis of his roundelay, in which he alludes back to the imagery of his vision-riddle and appears to recollect each of the successive stages in his previsioned experience of dying – beginning with his hearing of the midnight bell and concluding with his joyful affirmation of his life’s eternal recurrence. 62

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The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra Still! Still! Then many a thing is heard that by day may not become loud; but now in the cool air, when even all the clamor of your hearts has become still, – – now it speaks, now it is heard, now it steals into nocturnal over-awake souls: ah! ah! how it sighs! how in dreams it laughs! – do you not hear, how secretly, fearfully, cordially, it speaks to you, the ancient deep deep midnight? (IV.19:3)

Where Nietzsche departs from Plato, however, and what allows him to declare Zarathustra’s mnemonic victory, is his claim that Zarathustra can recollect wisdom about the afterlife without ever having existed outside his body. This means, again, that there is no need, and indeed no room, for Zarathustra’s archenemy to postulate a place where his disembodied soul can exist outside the cycle of eternal rebirth. This difference helps to explain Nietzsche’s speculation in the Gay Science aphorisms that Socrates was surprised and dismayed to hear his daimonion announce to him at the last moment that he would have to relive even that last moment itself. Supposing Socrates was able to recollect his wisdom about the afterlife, he should have recalled hearing this announcement before and should not have been surprised to hear it again. Since Socrates’ dismay shows that he is not strong enough to bear this deathbed revelation, Nietzsche infers that the source of his surprise was his life-long denial and suppression of the memory of this deathbed revelation. Indeed, Nietzsche implies, Socrates’ fear of this buried knowledge was such that his reason had been forced to invent a fantasy memory in which his soul had escaped eternal recurrence and been transported from its body and from the earth into a happier existence (I.3). Hence, Nietzsche suggests, the shattering effect of this final daimonic revelation upon Socrates’ psyche: besides refuting his dialectical grounds of hope for release, and besides reversing his previous prophetic certainty of release, this revelation destroyed all of the defenses he had built up against his subconscious knowledge that no release was ever possible. M idnig h t s wa n s ong Assuming that Zarathustra thus foresees his dialectical, prophetic, and epistemic victory over his archenemy, we must now ask how this previsioned victory is actually fulfilled. This is the question as to how Nietzsche depicts the midnight-Augenblick of Zarathustra’s death. As I suggested in Chapter 2, the answer to this final question lies in Nietzsche’s challenge to Plato’s mythical image of the dying Socrates. Already in The Birth


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of Tragedy, Nietzsche had highlighted this image as the key to Socrates’ triumph over the Greek Dionysian and to his influence on all subsequent history. Socrates, he wrote, was the first man who was able to live by the belief that rational thought is capable not only of knowing but even of correcting being. But Socrates’ far greater accomplishment is that he was able to die by this belief as well, thus creating the mythical image of the man freed by reason from the fear of death: But Socrates himself seems to have insisted upon the pronouncement of a sentence of death rather than exile, with complete clarity of mind and without any natural awe of death. He went to his death as peacefully as, in Plato’s description, he left the Symposium at daybreak, the last of the revellers, to begin a new day. While behind him, on the benches and floors, his drowsy companions remained behind to dream of Socrates, the true eroticist. (BT 13, 15)66

By the time Nietzsche conceived of eternal recurrence and Zarathustra, he no longer believed Plato’s mythical image. According to his counterimage in Gay Science 340–341, Socrates suffered so much from life that he longed to die. The reason Socrates freely chose to die, and then appeared so calm and cheerful in the face of death, is that he believed death would bring him an escape from life. Yet Socrates’ last words revealed his inability to follow his own precept that one should die in silence (118e). The cause, Nietzsche speculates, is that Socrates’ deathbed revelation of life’s eternal recurrence destroyed his rationalistic optimism and with it his calm and cheerful demeanor in the face of death. Since his last words were in effect a blasphemous revenge on life, Nietzsche infers that the dying Socrates was psychologically crushed by the burdensome prospect of eternally recurring. Although his disciples could not see this, Nietzsche speculates that Socrates’ last inner experience was that of throwing himself down and gnashing his teeth in response to the revelation that his entire life, and all his actions, were unchangeable for all eternity. This challenge to Plato’s mythical image of the dying Socrates helps to explain why Nietzsche introduces his antipode Zarathustra as a figure who is beginning to die. Following Plato’s lead, that is, Nietzsche supposes that the most seductive aspect of a mythical figure is the time and manner of his death. In particular, he agrees with Plato that such a tragic hero 66

In a direct allusion to precisely this Platonic scene, Nietzsche depicts Zarathustra at the end of Part IV as leaving at daybreak to begin his new day while behind him his supper-companions remain dreaming of his intoxicated songs (IV.20). Nietzsche’s implication is that Zarathustra is also calmly and courageously departing to a freely chosen death. In the next two chapters I argue that this is indeed the case, since the end of Part IV chronologically introduces Zarathustra’s freely chosen death at the end of Part III.

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must be seen as dying by his belief, and as freely choosing to die when it is the right time to do so.67 This is why, in Gay Science 342, and at the start of Zarathustra, Nietzsche depicts Zarathustra as repeatedly announcing that he wants to die. Unlike Plato’s Socrates, however, Zarathustra does not want to die because he suffers from life and needs to escape it. Instead, like the setting sun that he seeks to emulate, he is suffering from an alltoo-great happiness and needs to empty himself of this overflow so that he can be refilled until he is again overfull. This is why, shortly before his selfovercoming confrontation with his most abysmal thought, Zarathustra proclaims: For I want to go to humans once more: among them I want to go under, dying I want to give them my richest gift! From the sun I learned this, when it goes down, over-rich: then it pours gold into the sea out of inexhaustible riches, – – so that even the poorest fisherman still rows with golden oars! For this I once saw and did not tire of my tears as I watched it – – Like the sun, Zarathustra too wants to go under … (III.12:3)68

This indication of Zarathustra’s inner experience allows us to notice that he, unlike Plato’s Socrates, will succeed in keeping silent at the moment of his death. Because Zarathustra is so well disposed to himself and to life, and because he therefore craves nothing more fervently than the eternal recurrence of his identical self and life, the deathbed revelation that this is indeed the case will seem to him a divine confirmation and seal (GS 341). In offering this background to the start of Zarathustra, as well as explicit clues that Zarathustra’s vision-riddle foresees the events at the end of his published three-part book, Nietzsche lets us know that the convalescing Zarathustra is in fact a dying Zarathustra who never did recover from his confrontation and ensuing redemption. Although Zarathustra is dying, Nietzsche describes him as “the convalescent” (der Genesende) because his newly redeemed soul is indeed recovering from its life-long illness of sin, shame, and melancholy (III.14). While he is convalescing, Zarathustra’s animals ask him to heal his soul with new songs: “Singe und brause über, Thus, in Plato’s Phaedo, shortly before drinking the poison, Socrates remarks: “but for myself, ‘e’en now’, as a tragic hero might say, ‘destiny doth summon me’” (115b–c). And after Crito suggests that there’s still time left before he has to drink the poison, he says: “I think I’ll gain nothing by taking the draught a little later: I’ll only earn my own ridicule by clinging to life, and being sparing when there’s nothing more left” (116e–117a). 68 Although commentators note the many senses of Nietzsche’s key terms, “Untergang” and “untergehen,” this key passage shows that he has literal death in mind in similar contexts (for example, at the start of Zarathustra). 67


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oh Zarathustra, heile mit neuen Liedern deine Seele” (III.13:2). This is why Nietzsche depicts the spiritually convalescent Zarathustra as having lost the lion’s strength with which he had commanded awake his most abysmal thought. Even seven days after he regains his senses, the bedridden Zarathustra describes himself as still weary and sick from his biting and spitting, and he continues to sigh and shudder at the vivid recollection of his confrontation with his most abysmal thought. Nietzsche’s implication is that Zarathustra is now a shattered man. Although he has regained consciousness, he is on the verge of dying as a result of the redemptive effort that has finally restored his soul to great health. But according to Nietzsche, Socrates needed to manipulate the power of others into putting him to death (KSA 12:5[71].11–12). By contrast, Zarathustra chooses to turn his great power against himself by awakening and confronting his most abysmal thought. He thereby inflicts tremendous suffering upon himself, and by these means ultimately brings about his own death.69 In this way, Nietzsche depicts Zarathustra as fulfilling the tightrope walker’s fate at the start of Zarathustra (P:6), the stillest hour’s prediction that Zarathustra will speak his word and break (III.22), and the animals’ claim that Zarathustra’s eternal lot requires that once he speaks his word of the great noon of humankind he will break of his own word and perish (III.13:2). Despite these tragic overtones, Nietzsche makes it clear that Zarathustra’s post-redemption death is freely chosen, timely, and victorious. It is freely chosen because, even though Zarathustra is commanded only by himself, he must still pay for this commanding by becoming the judge, the avenger, and the sacrifice of his own law (I.17, II.12). As the greatest of all humans who is able to command humanity’s self-overcoming, Zarathustra also commands his own self-overcoming and thus sacrifices himself for the sake of power (II.12). In this way, Nietzsche presents Zarathustra as dying by his belief. This self-sacrifice is timely, however, because (as I argue below) it takes place in that seventh-day evening when Zarathustra has completed his creative work and become ripe and perfect. Since Zarathustra has In Loeb 2008a, I show how Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals envisions internalized will to power as a means of self-destruction. In support of my reading Nietzsche’s use of the term “convalescent” as indicating Zarathustra’s recovery to spiritual, but not physical, health, notice that in Part IV he uses the same term with respect to the higher men whose physical health is not in question at all. Thus, in “The Sleepwalker’s Song,” the narrator says that the higher men become all at once conscious of their transformation and convalescence (Genesung) (IV.19:1). And in the immediately preceding chapter, Zarathustra says that only convalescents (Genesende) invent (erfinden) such things as the ass festival (IV.18:3) – a clear allusion to Zarathustra’s own convalescent inventing of new songs and of a new lyre for his new songs (III.13:2).

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earlier said that he would want to die when ripe (I.21), Nietzsche depicts Zarathustra’s animals as speculating that he now wants to die (III.12:2) and Zarathustra himself as noticing his over-ripe soul’s longing for the vintager-deliverer and the diamond vine-knife and the bark of free-death (III.14).70 Nevertheless, in an allusion to Nietzsche’s interpretation of Socrates’ death, Zarathustra’s suffering overfull soul worries that its great longing for death is an accusation against life, and life herself accuses Zarathustra of not loving her enough because he thinks of wanting to leave her soon.71 In a famous and much-debated passage, Nietzsche conceals from the reader the reply that Zarathustra’s soul whispers into life’s ear: ‘Yes,’ I answered hesitatingly, ‘but you also know—’ And I said something into her ear, right through her tangled yellow foolish tresses. ‘You know that, oh Zarathustra? No one knows that.’ – – And we gazed at one another and looked out at the green meadow, over which the cool evening was spreading, and wept together. – But then life was dearer to me than all my wisdom ever was. –

As Henry Staten notes (1990, pp. 176–177; see also Clark 1990, pp. 263– 264), the traditional interpretation of what Zarathustra’s soul whispers to life – “I will return to you” – is contradicted by the sadness expressed in their subsequent weeping together. For this promise should rather be the occasion of their rejoicing. In favor of the traditional interpretation, Michael Platt argues (1988, pp. 184–185) that this sadness is justified by life’s claim (uncontradicted by Zarathustra) that no one could know that he or she will return after dying. But I have been arguing that Nietzsche’s narrative is designed to show us Zarathustra’s latent knowledge of his eternal return. Besides, life does not actually reply that no one could know what Zarathustra whispers to her.72 And nowhere in Zarathustra does Nietzsche indicate that eternal recurrence is something life especially knows. By contrast, in one of the most important chapters of Zarathustra, “On SelfOvercoming,” Zarathustra reveals his wisdom – possessed by no one else, For an interesting interpretation of Zarathustra’s doctrine of timely and freely chosen death as applied to Nietzsche himself, see Crawford 1995, pp. 129–141. She extends this interpretation to the question of Nietzsche’s agon with the dying Socrates in Crawford 1999, pp. 273–274, 286. 71 As I argued in Chapter 2, Nietzsche attributes to the Zarathustran type the kind of suffering from great health and overfullness that he finds among the ancient Greeks (GS 370; BT P:1; EH BT). 72 This point contradicts Lampert’s guess (2001, p. 122) that Zarathustra faithfully whispers his desire to return, and that life replies as she does because no one can know that the world eternally returns. 70


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not even the wisest sages – concerning what life alone knows, namely her tragic secret that whatever she creates and however much she loves it, soon she must oppose it and her love (II.12).73 So life’s emphasis upon know ledge in her reply must indicate rather her surprise that Zarathustra does know what no one but she knows. Platt’s second guess as to what Zarathustra’s soul whispers to life, “you want to leave me,” or better yet, “you want me to leave you,” is therefore a superior guess for completing Nietzsche’s unwritten sentence. Life herself requires Zarathustra’s over-ripe soul’s great longing for death, and Zarathustra’s whispered reply that it is the right time for him to die reminds life that she knows that his longing is actually a sign of his faithfulness to her.74 With this reply, Zarathustra shows that he understands life: “Free to die and free in death, saying a holy No when the time for Yes has passed” (I.21). Thus, the reason life and Zarathustra weep (weinten) together is that, despite their love for each other, they are both suffering from his continued over-ripe existence. Although life is dearer to him than all of his wisdom about life’s self-overcoming, Zarathustra’s soul does not weep because he wants to remain alive, but rather because he does not. We know this because in the preceding chapter Zarathustra’s soul is so melancholy (schwer) over its suffering from being over-ripe that it longs for tears, its trembling mouth longs for sobs, and it wishes to weep (weinen) and pour forth its sorrow in gushing tears (III.14).75 At the Faustian twelfth bell of midnight, however, and as predicted in Gay Science 341, Zarathustra’s soul’s sunset-purple melancholy (Schwermuth) and weeping is transformed into celebratory joy and laughter (III.16). This twelfth bell corresponds, I believe, to the twelfth and unspoken step of Zarathustra’s proof in the “Vision and Riddle” chapter (III.2:2) and as such marks the occasion of Zarathustra’s dying step across In TI X:5, Nietzsche expresses this same secret wisdom of life’s self-overcoming as the Dionysian tragic feeling of “[t]he affirmation of life even in its strangest and hardest problems; the will to life rejoicing over its own inexhaustibility in the sacrifice of its highest types” (quoted in EH BT:3; see also GS 370). 74 See, by contrast, Gadamer 1988, pp. 226–227 and Seung 2005, p. 215 (“death wish and love of life go against each other”). Platt’s argument against his second guess (1988, p. 185) is that everyone does in fact know that life leaves, e.g. during a serious illness or in old age. But this phrasing does not accurately convey the table-turning parallel wording Nietzsche must intend in Zarathustra’s whisper and thus the tragic secret of life’s self-overcoming. Since life says to him that he is thinking of how he wants to leave her soon (“du denkst daran, dass du mich bald verlassen willst”), he is most naturally read as secretly whispering back: “you yourself want to leave me,” or “you yourself want me to leave you.” 75 Compare Nehamas, who dismisses the testimony of Zarathustra’s animals and writes about this section of the text: “There is no evidence that Zarathustra is planning or foreseeing his death, no literary or philosophical justification for such an interpretation” (2000, p. 178). 73

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the gateway of the midnight-Augenblick. Although every other tolling of the midnight bell is accompanied by a stanza of the “Once More” song, the last toll of the bell is silent, thus indicating the midnight-Augenblick of Zarathustra’s death. As his animals had predicted, Zarathustra’s over-rich and heavy soul breathes deeply with bliss and its heart stops in delight because a great weight and oppression has been lifted from him (III.13:2, III.14, III.15:1, III.16:6–7). This is because Zarathustra’s over-ripe vine-like soul with swelling udders is finally being harvested by the nameless vintager and redeemer who has arrived in the golden bark of freely chosen death (III.14, III.15:1). Having perfected himself and his life, Zarathustra’s soul praises the vintager’s drunken cruelty and blesses the vintager’s knife that cuts it: “joy wants itself, wants eternity, wants recurrence, wants everything eternally the same” (IV.19:9). With a great triumphant shout, the victorious Zarathustra says to death: “Was that life? Very well! Once more!” (III.2:1, IV.19:1). In dying like this, Zarathustra proclaims his awareness that he is wedded to life (herself now transformed into eternity) and that he will be able to return to her and grow once again into ripeness.76 This wedding is sealed and confirmed by what Nietzsche calls the “nuptial” (Hochzeitlichen) ring of rings, the ring of recurrence, and Zarathustra is now assured of the eternal recurrence of his life’s progression towards the complete fulfillment of his destiny (III.16). Zarathustra’s death is thus a victorious death because the intended coincidence of peak moment and last moment redeems or “makes good” (macht gut) all of the fragments, riddles, and accidents in his life up to that point (II.20). At the moment of his death, therefore, Zarathustra is able to retrospectively affirm and bless every one of his unchangeable past moments as contributing to the eternally recurring achievement of his ideal state (III.16). In this way, Nietzsche’s narrative confirms what Zarathustra’s animals had anticipated, in the last spoken words of the published book: “The hour has now come when the Untergehende blesses himself. Thus – ends Zarathustra’s Untergang” (III.13:2).77 Implicit in this climactic narrative, therefore, is Nietzsche’s suggestion that Zarathustra’s last words – “Oh how should I not lust for eternity and for the nuptial ring of rings – the ring of recurrence! … For I love you, oh eternity!” (III.16:7) – are a joyful response to his dying awareness of the See Seaford 2006, p. 77, on “the frequent interpenetration of death ritual and wedding in the Dionysian genre of Athenian tragedy.” 77 See KSA 11:35[73]: “Von dieser größten Entfremdung liebend zurückkehrend zum Engsten und Kleinsten, Zarathustra alle seine Erlebnisse segnend und als Segnender sterbend.” 76


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return of his most distant childhood, and thus to the same kind of presage he imagines occasioned Socrates’ figurative last words – “Oh life is a sickness” (GS 340). But whereas Socrates’ public response violated his own request for silence (17d–e), Zarathustra’s last words are the conclusion of a silent and solipsistic conversation with his own soul. This conversation takes place after Zarathustra commands his companion animals to be quiet and then stops listening and speaking to them altogether. Although these animals speak further in order to tell Zarathustra to sing and speak no further, and although they expect Zarathustra to say something in response, he does not. Accordingly, they honor his final silence by withdrawing and leaving him in the most solitary solitude anticipated by his vision-riddle. In accordance with Socrates’ claim that dying swans sing more fully and more sweetly than ever before, the dying Zarathustra then asks his own convalescing soul to sing to him (III.14). And, indeed, as proof of its foreknowledge and authentic joy in the face of death, Zarathustra’s soul sings its newly learned birdsong to the accompaniment of its new midnight-bells lyre. In the conclusion to this birdsong, and as anticipated in his vision-riddle, Zarathustra’s soul sings of its final victory over his archenemy, the spirit of heaviness: “I spread out a still sky above myself and flew with my own wings in my own sky:/… I swam playfully in the deep light-distances, and my freedom bird-wisdom came: – ” (III.16:7).78 Thus, whereas Socrates’ last inner experience was that of being thrown down by the greatest heavy weight of his eternally immovable past, Zarathustra’s last inner experience is that of being transformed by his bird-wisdom of eternal recurrence into a weightless flying bird that is freed from the bondage of time: “Behold, there is no above, no below! Throw yourself around, out, back, you who are light!” (III.16:7). Whereas Socrates’ last inner experience was that of gnashing his teeth over his eternal and incurable illness, Zarathustra’s last inner experience is that of his over-ripe heaviness being lifted and of his cured soul being drunk back up into the pure sky and abyss of light (III.4, IV.10).79 It is noteworthy that the final “Seven Seals” song is the only place in Nietzsche’s book where Zarathustra’s voice or that of his soul is not followed by the signature lines “Also sprach Zarathustra” or “Also sang Zarathustra.” On my reading, this is because Nietzsche wants us to notice that Zarathustra dies at the very end of his last song. Roberts (1998, p. 131) argues that the voice behind this last song is unidentified, but this is contradicted by Nietzsche’s very clear suggestion that Zarathustra’s soul is singing the last songs of Part III in response to Zarathustra’s final request (III.14). 79 See Crawford 1998 for a more general discussion of Nietzsche’s concluding emphases on silence, dance, song, and flight, and of the Dionysian aspects of each of these. Reschke 2000 offers a detailed discussion of the Dionysian aspects of dance in Zarathustra. 78

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The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra C onc l usion

In his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche located the essence of ancient Greek culture in the Dionysian mystery-faith, and traced the decay of this essence to Socrates’ anti-Dionysian influence on Greek nobles like Plato. Remarkably enough, Nietzsche continues to hold these views when writing Zarathustra. But whereas Nietzsche had earlier thought that this Dionysian mystery-faith expressed a Schopenhauerian pessimism, he now finds that it expresses the thought of eternal recurrence (KSA 10:8[15]). And whereas Nietzsche had earlier located Socrates’ anti-Dionysian tendency in his theoretical optimism (BT 15), he now finds it in Plato’s doctrine that a purified soul can be released from the cycle of reincarnation. As in The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche still sees Socrates’ willingness to die by his belief as his greatest accomplishment and the key to his triumph over the Dionysian. But whereas Nietzsche had earlier interpreted Plato’s world-historic image of the dying Socrates as that of the man freed by reason from the fear of death, he now interprets it as that of the man freed by reason from the fear of eternal reincarnation. Nietzsche’s new background hypothesis, it might be said, is that Plato employed the seductive image of the dying Socrates and the appealing doctrine of release from the body in order to overcome the then-prevailing Dionysian mystery-faith of eternal recurrence. Since Nietzsche thinks that the key to Plato’s victory was his false representation of Socrates and the doctrine of release as truly Dionysian, he aims to expose this appropriation and thereby recover the truth about death and the afterlife that has been suppressed for millennia by the text of Plato’s Phaedo. According to Nietzsche, I have argued, the truth once known by the ancient Greeks is that we are caught in a cycle of eternal recurrence back into our identical life, but that we do not exist and are therefore not aware in the immense stretches of time following our death and preceding our recurrence. This means that we can never have any experience of definitive death, but only of an eternal re-awakening into our first moment of awareness. From this it follows, however, that each of us has already died and recurred innumerable times, and that this buried knowledge of our life’s eternal recurrence may be recollected in our dreams or called up from our subconscious depths in the course of arduous philosophical struggles. Nietzsche’s doctrine of recurrence in Zarathustra thus has several parallels with Plato’s doctrine of reincarnation in the Phaedo.80 Like Plato, See Nietzsche’s remark to Overbeck, on October 22, 1883: “Dear old friend, in reading Teichmüller I am ever more transfixed with wonder at how little I know Plato and how much Zarathustra πλατονίζει.” (KSB 6, p. 449).

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Nietzsche argues for personal immortality, thinks that we may recollect our souls’ knowledge of our past lives, and emphasizes the significance of dreams and courageous philosophical encounters with the fact of our deaths. But, unlike Plato, Nietzsche rejects the idea of a disembodied soul, thinks that all our past lives are identical, and believes that we are unable to dream or recollect anything outside of our corporeal experience. Nietzsche is thus led to agree with Plato that the moment of death is a singular transitional moment in which we are able to obtain a kind of certainty about death and the afterlife. This is why he invents his own seductive countermyth of a dying Zarathustra, and this is why he designs dramatic settings in which he re-enacts the death of Socrates and stages a world-historic agon between the dying Socrates and the dying Zarathustra. Against this interpretation, however, there stands the fourth and final part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which concludes with the image of Zarathustra leaving his cave quite alive, and indeed “glowing and strong as a morning sun that comes out of the dark mountains” (IV.20). Part IV, I would argue, is the most important single reason why commentators have so far passed over Nietzsche’s many obvious clues that Zarathustra dies at the end of Part III. David Farrell Krell, for instance, acknowledges that Nietzsche’s Grundconception of eternal recurrence necessitates a look into the question of Zarathustra’s death. But he says that he is compelled by Part IV to conclude that Nietzsche indefinitely postpones the death of Zarathustra that is anticipated from the very start of the book. Echoing Karl Reinhardt, Krell even suggests that “the principal difficulty with the figure of Zarathustra is that he refuses to die, that is, to fulfill his tragic destiny” (1986, p. 53; see also Ansell-Pearson 1997, p. 77; Crawford 1995, pp. 75–77). This difficulty is accentuated, Krell argues (1986, pp. 43–69), by Nietzsche’s life-long fascination with the legendary self-sacrificial death of Empedocles and with Hölderlin’s unfinished tragedy about this death. Indeed, in 1871–1872, Nietzsche had sketched out his own plans for a drama about the death of Empedocles, and these plans inform his later unpublished sketches of scenes having to do with the self-sacrificial death of Zarathustra. But, according to Krell, he never completes the parallel in his published work. Similarly, F. A. Lea writes that, although Nietzsche pits Zarathustra against Jesus at every stage, he fails to complete his parallel with the Gospels because he is unable to depict a tragic consummation in which Zarathustra suffers martyrdom (1957, p. 226). Kathleen Higgins and Robert Solomon concur: “And while the story of Jesus is completed with his death and resurrection, Zarathustra’s story is never finished” (2005, p. xvi). Likewise, and against the kind of parallel I have drawn between the dying Zarathustra and the dying Socrates, Daniel Conway comments that

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the first chapter of Part IV depicts a Zarathustra who refuses to go under, so that “[u]nlike Socrates, who perishes ‘again’ in the Phaedo, Zarathustra is granted a stay of execution, whereby he lives to impart Nietzsche’s teaching” (1990b, p. 23). Finally, although Laurence Lampert (1986) rightly emphasizes the many parallels between Zarathustra and Dionysus, he makes no attempt to find a counterpart in Nietzsche’s narrative to the symbolically crucial event of the death and rebirth of Dionysus.81 So I turn now to consider the place of Part IV in Nietzsche’s overall narrative. 81

In Chapter 2, I also emphasized the parallel Nietzsche draws between the midnight-Augenblick self-sacrificial deaths of Zarathustra and of Goethe’s Faust. And in Chapter 6, I will emphasize the parallel he draws between the self-sacrificial deaths of Zarathustra and of Wagner’s Wotan.

C h a pt e r 4

The great noon

Part IV of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra is generally considered to be one of the most puzzling aspects of this deeply puzzling work. Although Nietzsche subtitles it the “Fourth and Last Part,” and although he concludes it with the phrase “End of Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” interpreters who approach his book in a straightforward literal fashion have tended to agree that the ending to Part III contains the book’s real conclusion and that Part IV was added later as an unfortunate afterthought.1 In recent years, however, defenders of an ironic reading of Zarathustra have offered their textually faithful treatment of Part IV as evidence of the correctness of their alternative approach.2 Nietzsche, they argue, certainly intended Part IV to be an integral and concluding section of his book. And it is true, therefore, that the contents and position of Part IV tend to undermine the natural development and culmination in the parts which precede it. But this, they claim, is simply proof of Nietzsche’s intent to satirize and deflate, not only the ostensible progress of Zarathustra and his teachings, but also our need to find such progress and to read his book in a traditional linear fashion. In this chapter, I argue that the literalists’ approach to reading Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is still the correct approach, but that recent ironist readers are right to protest the literalists’ tendency to marginalize Part IV of this work. In particular, I argue, Nietzsche intended us to notice that Part IV, although positioned last for artistic and stylistic reasons, narrates dramatic and philosophical developments that chronologically precede the climactic conclusion of Part III. It follows, I suggest, that the literalists are See Fink 1973, pp. 114–115, 118, 2003, pp. 55, 102–103; Lea 1957, pp. 180, 226, 252; and Hollingdale 1965, p. 190. For the most recent and detailed defense of this kind of reading, see Lampert 1986, pp. 7, 224, 287–291. 2 See Higgins 1987, 1988; Conway 1988, 1990a, 1997b, p. 127; Magnus 1988; Pippin 1988; Shapiro 1989, pp. 97–123, 1991, pp. 53–107; Schacht 1991; Cauchi 1998; Nehamas 2000. For a version of this approach that is more critical of Nietzsche, see Berkowitz 1995, pp. 211–227. 1

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right in claiming the end of Part III as the conclusion of the Zarathustra tragedy, but wrong in inferring from this that Part IV could not be an integral part of the work so conceived. T wo c onc l usions As Laurence Lampert notes in his commentary, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that Zarathustra ends with Part III and not with Part IV. In the letters he wrote immediately after finishing Part III of Zarathustra, Nietzsche triumphantly proclaimed that Zarathustra was entirely finished and complete. In these letters, he described Part III as the last part of the whole work, as the conclusion of his drama in three acts, and as the sublime finale to his symphony. The last point is proven, he writes, by the way in which its ending circles back to the book’s beginning (KSB 6, p. 491). And, indeed, the themes of affirmation, joy, gratitude, superabundance, and blessing are common to the start of Zarathustra’s Prologue and the ending of Part III.3 In addition, when Nietzsche published Zarathustra as a single work, over a year after completing Part IV, he included only the first three parts (Schaberg 1995, pp. 134–135). And in his retrospective Ecce Homo, he wrote that he was finished with the whole of Zarathustra when he wrote the third and last part (EH Z:4). Besides this evidence external to the text, there are many thematic and symbolic ways in which the conclusion of Part III seems obviously designed as an ending. Lampert lists some of these indicators as follows: It is, as the animals say, the end of Zarathustra’s going under. Zarathustra’s private songs invite the harvester, the god Dionysos, whose coming brings the end of the old order (III.14). Zarathustra successfully concludes his courtship with Life in his dance with her, and the midnight bell tolls the completion of his wisdom (III.15). In the final song (III.16) Nietzsche seals his book with seven seals that mark the doom of the old order and the dawn of the new, the sixty-six chapters of Zarathustra thus ending with a repetition of the apocalyptic symbol from the sixty-sixth and final book of the Bible. Zarathustra’s final song, an ‘Amen Song,’ is a marriage song, another echo of Revelation bringing to a happy end his dance with Life. (Lampert 1986, p. 287)4

I discuss this circular structure at more length in Chapter 7. On my reading, Lampert omits some important indicators, all having to do with the issue of Zarathustra’s death: Zarathustra’s animals say that if Zarathustra were to die now he would give a speech concluding with the announcement of the end of his Untergang; Zarathustra’s dance with Life first ends on a melancholy note; and the midnight bell also tolls the completion of Zarathustra’s life.

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By contrast, Part IV does not seem an ending at all. For its three-day action concludes with Zarathustra’s conquest of his last sin and temptation – a conquest which anticipates and implies the subsequent events of Zarathustra’s completed work and the arrival of Zarathustra’s children and great noon. In addition, notes written while Nietzsche was composing Part IV seem to show that he was then planning further parts that would depict these events. For these reasons, Lampert concludes that “Thus Spoke Zarathustra as it exists today is therefore a whole (parts I–III) plus a fragment (part IV) of a larger whole that does not exist” (1986, p. 289). Indeed, Lampert suggests, Nietzsche knew that the existence of a fourth part would violate the ending of Part III and this is why he did not publish it, had it printed privately, kept this printing secret, gave copies only to a select few, and later wanted even these copies returned (1986, p. 287). Against this conclusion, however, ironist readers of Zarathustra have pointed out that, even before the completion of Part III, Nietzsche had made plans for a fourth part and had advised his friend Overbeck to “read [Part II of Zarathustra] as a second of four, i.e. understand that each of the various parts in it will first get its necessity in the sense of the whole” (KSB 6, p. 455).5 In addition, Nietzsche’s textual announcement that Part IV was the last part and ending of his book is echoed in the letters he wrote shortly after completing Part IV – letters in which he now called Part IV the last part of his work and the sublime finale of his symphony. Again, Nietzsche writes, this last point is proven by the way in which the ending of Part IV circles back to the book’s beginning (KSB 7, p. 46).6 And, indeed, the concluding chapter of Part IV alludes back to the Prologue’s initial image of Zarathustra rising with the dawn and stepping before the sun to speak to it the same words, as well as to the Prologue’s concluding image of Zarathustra being greeted by the sharp cry of his eagle overhead. Also, Nietzsche quotes from Part IV in his second Preface to The Birth of Tragedy and he describes its plot in Ecce Homo (EH I:4).7 Lampert emphasizes Nietzsche’s decision not to publish Part IV, but he downplays Nietzsche’s fallout with his earlier publisher and his ensuing failed search for a new publisher for Part IV. He also downplays Nietzsche’s worries about the blasphemous and libelous content of Part IV, as well as Nietzsche’s stated objective of retrieving copies of Part IV so that it could be secured and published at a future appropriate date. Furthermore, Nietzsche did announce the existence and possible future publication of See Shapiro 1991, p. 57. 6 See Shapiro 1991, p. 57. 7 See Shapiro 1991, p. 58.

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a fourth and last part in his advertisement for the published collection of Parts I–III. This advertisement can be found in Nietzsche’s list of his writings (according to the dates of their composition) on the back cover of the original edition of Beyond Good and Evil: “Also Sprach Zarathustra. In drei Theilen. 1883–84. (Der vierte und letzte Theil des gennanten Werks, aus dem Anfange des Jahres 1885, wurde bisher dem Buchhandel noch nicht übergeben.)” (Schaberg 1995, pp. 123–124). Finally, besides this sort of external evidence, all of the ironist readers cited above have emphasized the various ways in which the structure, content, and allusions of Part IV indicate its deliberate design as a kind of satire or parody of the three parts that precede it. This is why Kathleen Higgins, for example, concludes that “Part IV is making a strong statement about the limitations of Zarathustra’s own quest”: In terms of Zarathustra, Part IV thus casts a new and important light on the material in the preceding parts. It brings to completion in unmistakable clarity Nietzsche’s effort to modify Zarathustra’s doctrinal message with reflections of its limited nature. (Higgins 1987, p. xvii)8

In sum, ironist readers claim that literalists like Lampert refuse to acknowledge one half of the riddle of Part IV – namely, that Nietzsche really did intend it as the conclusion of Zarathustra. But a review of the evidence cited by these readers seems to me to show that they themselves refuse to acknowledge the other half of the riddle properly emphasized by Lampert – namely, that Nietzsche really did intend Part III as the conclusion of Zarathustra. Accordingly, I believe that a balanced adjudication of this dispute, and a proper resolution of the riddle of Part IV – the text he called a “secret door to the path to ‘me’” (KSB 8, p. 228)9 – requires an answer to the question, “How can both Part III and Part IV be the conclusion of Zarathustra?” In answering this question, I do not think we can accept the conclusions reached by either side of the dispute summarized above. Citing Nietzsche’s 1888 letters to Brandes and Fuchs (KSB 8, pp. 228, 374), Lampert develops Kaufmann’s suggestion that Nietzsche intended Part IV as an intermezzo or entr’acte (Zwischenakt, Zwischenspiel) between the whole of Parts I–III and additional Zarathustra parts that he planned but did not Gooding-Williams draws a similar conclusion in his commentary (2001, pp. 279–280, 287–291, 295–298). 9 “Ausserdem hat es überhaupt einen guten Sinn, gerade durch diese Geheim-Thür den Zugang zu ‘mir’ zunehmen: vorausgesetzt, dass man mit Ihren Augen und Ohren durch die Thür tritt.” (To Georg Brandes, January 8, 1888). 8

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write.10 But in his more detailed letter to Fuchs, Nietzsche writes that Part IV is an interlude between Zarathustra and what follows (zwischen dem Zarathustra und dem, was folgt), thereby indicating that “what follows” is not part of Zarathustra. Also, Nietzsche wrote these two letters long after he had stopped sketching plans for additional Zarathustra parts. It is thus more likely that he was retrospectively describing Part IV as a transition from the farsighted Yes-saying Parts I–III to the nearsighted No-saying book that followed Zarathustra, namely Beyond Good and Evil: “Erwägt man, dass das Buch nach dem Zarathustra folgt …” (EH BGE). This interpretation is supported by Part IV’s anticipatory theme of No-saying to the modernity represented by the collective group of higher men (e.g. in politics, science, and art) (IV.11, IV.20), as well as by the concluding discussion in Beyond Good and Evil concerning higher human beings and the danger of commiserating with them (BGE 268ff.).11 In addition, Nietzsche’s remark to Overbeck that he intended to write four parts for Zarathustra, coupled with his Athenian and Wagnerian tetralogy models (as explained below), make it unlikely that Nietzsche intended to add more parts after Part IV. Thus, I agree with Pippin (1988, p. 67, n. 8) and Nehamas (2000, p. 180, n. 15) that Nietzsche’s plans for two further parts were probably a ploy intended to attract a publisher for Part IV. In his letters to his closest friends and readers Köselitz and Overbeck (KSB 7, pp. 11–12, 14, 21), Nietzsche actually says that this ruse was the reason he had deliberately misled them about plans for a new book (entitled Noon and Eternity) that would include “Zarathustra’s Temptation” as only its first part. It is probable that Nietzsche similarly misled his sister about such plans (KSB 6, p. 557) and that he outlined fake plans in the private notebooks he kept during that time – some of which seem to inform the misleading information sent to Köselitz and Overbeck. Finally, and most importantly, Lampert’s answer – that Part IV is a transitional fragment of a non-existent whole in which Nietzsche planned to depict the crucial future events anticipated at the end of Part IV – assumes that Nietzsche did not already depict these events at the end of Part III. But this contradicts Lampert’s own claim that “[e]verything points to the end of Part III as The End” (1986, p. 287). In particular, Lampert (1986, p. 288) asserts that, because Part IV concludes with the anticipation of Zarathustra’s work, Zarathustra must not have completed his work by the Kaufmann 1954, p. 344; Lampert 1986, pp. 288–289, 313 n. 8. Gooding-Williams (2001, pp. 283–286, 302–308) also reads Part IV as leading into Beyond Good and Evil.

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end of Part III. However, the narrative at the end of Part III includes six mentions of the seven days that pass before Zarathustra begins his convalescence (III.13:2) – a clear allusion to the biblical account of God resting on the seventh day after completing his creative work (Genesis 2:1–4; EH BGE:2). Indeed, in Nietzsche’s last poem of his later Dithyrambs of Dionysus, Zarathustra is described as “tired and blissful / a creator on his seventh day.” These important clues suggest a reading Lampert does not consider: that the structurally final Part IV relates a story which chronologically precedes the ending of Part III. On this reading, Nietzsche wrote, and indeed published, Parts I–III so that they could be read as a self-contained book. But he later added Part IV so as to supplement, clarify, and expand certain dramatic and philosophical events that had already taken place in the published Parts I–III.12 This kind of design is familiar to us today in films. To take the best known example, consider the recent (1999–2005) Star Wars “prequel” films. These are structural sequels that relate a story which chronologically precedes the story related in the original (1977–1983) Star Wars trilogy. We may thus say that the series taken as a whole has two conclusions: the chronological conclusion in the third and final film of the original trilogy, and the structural conclusion in the sixth and final film of the entire series. Although the recent prequels supplement, clarify, and expand certain events in the backstory of the original trilogy (for example, the emergence of Darth Vader), we can of course still view the earlier trilogy as a self-contained whole that culminates and comes to completion at the end of its third installment. And although the recent prequels do not revise the Star Wars history as related in the original trilogy, we still view the recent prequels with the added interest of knowing that they must somehow lead into this same history. It may be objected, however, that this is an anachronistic reading of Nietzsche’s 1885 invention of Part IV. In addition, there are a couple of obvious disanalogies with the example I have chosen. The Star Wars prequel includes three additional parts, that is, an additional trilogy. But what I am calling the Zarathustra prequel consists of only a single additional part. Also, the Star Wars prequels relate a story that chronologically In Chapter 7, I offer a reading of the circular chronology of Nietzsche’s overall narrative that depends essentially on his Grundconception of eternal recurrence. But I am not making any such appeal here in my claim that Nietzsche designed the narrative in Part IV as chronologically preceding the ending of Part III. The relation between my two separate claims is that the recurrencenarrative of Nietzsche’s book requires the death of Zarathustra at the end of Part III and that this death in turn implies that the Part IV narrative chronologically precedes the end of Part III.

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precedes the start of the original trilogy, that is, the entire first trilogy. In general, the term “prequel” refers to a structural sequel that relates events which chronologically precede the start of the original work. But, on the reading I am proposing, Part IV of Zarathustra relates a story that chronologically precedes only the ending of the third part of the trilogy. T r agic e nd a nd a n a l e ptic s atyr pl a y By way of addressing this objection of anachronism, as well as these disanalogies with the Star Wars series, I would like to turn to Nietzsche’s well-documented interest in the ancient Greek satyr play (Satyrspiel) or satyr drama (Satyrdrama) and his application of this artistic design to Part IV of Zarathustra.13 In an important unpublished note, Nietzsche comments (or quotes someone else who comments) on the heyday of Athen’s Great Dionysia festival. It was the custom of this festival, he writes, for the tragedians (though not the comedians) to produce four dramas. On the basis of preserved schedules, we can see that Aeschylus (though not Euripides) chose to link together the parts of his tetralogy and to construct them out of the same mythological material. Aeschylus’ productions, as exemplified by the Oresteia, thus consisted of a trilogy of tragedies, or a three-act dramatic movement resulting from the succession of tragic dramas, followed – as a requirement of the Dionysian cult – by a single, more cheerful, satyr drama based on the same mythological material (KSA 7:1[109]).14 But this is precisely the design of Nietzsche’s own Zarathustra tetralogy: Parts I and II both end on a tragic note, with Zarathustra having to estrange himself from his beloved disciples; Part III Eugen Fink (1973, p. 114; 2003, p.102) (though the translator inaccurately translates Fink’s “Satyrspiel ” as “satire”) seems to have been the first to suggest Nietzsche’s satyr play design for Part IV. Anke Bennholdt-Thomsen (1974, pp. 14, 209–212) develops Fink’s suggestion in a little more depth and in a more positive vein. Ironist readers cite both these scholars and emphasize the satiric and parodic features of the satyr play to support their interpretation of Part IV. See Higgins 1987, p. 273 n. 2; Shapiro 1989, pp. 97–100, 102; Conway 1997b, p. 127; Nehamas 2000, p. 181; and Pippin 2006, pp. viii, xxxiii. Although Shapiro and Higgins make convincing cases for the influence of the medieval carnival play and Mennipean satire on Part IV, I think the influence of the Athenian satyr drama is more pointed and prominent. See also Crawford 1995, p. 290; and Hatab 2005, pp. 155, 161, 164. 14 Although Nietzsche’s unpublished note does not account for it, we have evidence of Aeschylean tetralogies in which the three tragedies were written on related myths but the appended satyr play was not, and of yet others in which the four parts were not written on related material at all (Sutton 1980, pp. 34–35). For recent elaborations of Nietzsche’s link between the cult of Dionysus and the satyr drama, see Easterling 1997 and also Seaford 1984, 1994 p. 267ff., and 2006, pp. 87–104. Easterling (1997, p. 47) notes that Aeschylus “was evidently more interested than any other known dramatist in plots directly relating to Dionysus.” 13

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ends with Zarathustra’s tragic estrangement from life; while Part IV ends happily with Zarathustra having overcome his last temptation and setting out to rejoin his returning disciples. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche also writes of the Greek satyr chorus that was the centerpiece of the satyr play (BT 7–8). But this chorus seems an obvious model for his invention in Part IV of a chorus of dancing, singing higher men who are stripped of moral pretensions, removed from civilization, and attending to a Dionysus-like Zarathustra.15 Moreover, in his only published explication of the satyr play design, and alluding to Wagner’s own explication of this design, Nietzsche writes that he wishes that Wagner’s last opera, Parsifal, had been intended as a satyr play (GM III:3; NCW VIII:3).16 But, as Roger Hollinrake has convincingly demonstrated (1982, p. 141ff.), Part IV of Zarathustra is designed as a parody of Wagner’s Parsifal following the Parts I–III (and Prologue) parody of Wagner’s tragic Ring trilogy (and preliminary evening, Das Rheingold). By extension, then, Nietzsche is letting his readers know that he himself did intend Part IV (with its central figure of the Wagnerian sorcerer) to be a leave-taking satyr play and parody of the tragic aspect in the Parts I–III trilogy – thereby demonstrating his artistic triumph by laughing at himself and seeing himself and his art beneath himself (GM III:3).17 Since Nietzsche also writes in Beyond Good and Evil that a satyr play, or afterplay farce (Nachspiel-Farce), is proof that the tragedy has come to an end (BGE 25), we may conclude that he intended the Zarathustra tragedy to come to an end with the tragic ending of Part III.18 In all these places, then, Nietzsche provides clues that his design of the entire Zarathustra was modeled from the start on a particular kind of Aeschylean tetralogy; and also that his design of Part IV was modeled on Nietzsche’s conceit that Zarathustra’s visitors are exalted above the rest of humankind alludes to the satyr play convention that beastly satyrs also possess superhuman powers (Sutton 1980, p. 178). 16 In his 1851 essay, “A Communication to my Friends,” Wagner relates his newfound cheerfulness as reflected in his new artistic plan to parody the musical contest in Tannhäuser with a short comic singing contest in Die Meistersinger: “Just as a jovial Satyr-play was wont at Athens to follow on the Tragedy so on that pleasure-trip there suddenly occurred to me the picture of a comic piece which well might form a Satyr-play as pendant to my [Tannhäuser]” (cited in Sutton 1980, p. 201). Nietzsche seems to allude to just this plan in his depiction of a short comic singing contest between the sorcerer and the wanderer (IV.14–16). 17 The last sentence of Nietzsche’s epigraph for Part III of Zarathustra (cited from I.7) also points in this direction: “Whoever climbs the highest mountains laughs at all tragic plays and tragic seriousness.” 18 Nietzsche announced the beginning of the Zarathustra tragedy when he published the (nearly identical) first section of “Zarathustra’s Prologue” under the title “Incipit tragoedia” in the conclusion of the first edition of his preceding book, The Gay Science. See also GS 382 and TI IV. 15

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the satyr play at the end of the tetralogy that parodied the thematically related material in the preceding trilogy. However, what Nietzsche does not mention, but must also have known, is that the Aeschylean tetralogies he had in mind included chronologically flexible satyr plays (some of which we would now call “prequels”). As Dana Sutton observes: It may also be worth pointing out that in those [Aeschylean tetralogy] cases in which the satyr play was written on a related myth [from the preceding trilogy], there is no hard-and-fast rule governing the manner in which this was to be done. In some cases the myth dramatized in the satyr play was an episode that chronologically followed the events of the trilogy (if Theoroi was produced with a Jasoneia). In others the dramatized episode preceded the events of the trilogy (if Dictyulci was produced with a Perseis), fell between the events dramatized in the first and second tragedies of the foregoing trilogy (Sphinx), took place approximately simultaneously with the events of the first tragedy (Proteus) and so forth. In such cases, Aeschylus clearly did not worry that audiences would find such chronological flexibility disturbing. (Sutton 1980, p. 35)19

It is not anachronistic, then, to trace Nietzsche’s invention of Part IV back to his interest in the Aeschylean satyr plays that may be regarded as the ancestors of modern prequels. As for the disanalogies I mentioned between Part IV and the Star Wars prequels, we can see first of all that Nietzsche’s ancient model (which was also an influence on his other model, Wagner’s Ring tetralogy) restricted him to a series consisting of only four parts and this is why he added only one sequel to his original trilogy. Indeed, this point helps to explain why Nietzsche advised his friend Overbeck early on to expect the completed Zarathustra to have precisely four parts, and also why his epistolary remarks and unpublished notes about possible additional parts were most likely disingenuous. With respect to the second disanalogy, Nietzsche’s ancient model certainly allows a sequel to relate events which chronologically precede the entire tragic trilogy. For example, Aeschylus’ Perseus trilogy relates events in the life of Perseus, and so the structurally subsequent satyr play about the infancy of Perseus must chronologically precede the start of the trilogy. But not all of Aeschylus’ satyr plays are like this, and indeed, as Sutton notes, some dramatize a mythical episode that chronologically follows the events in the trilogy. So we need a term that is more precise than 19

Similarly, Seaford writes: “Looking more closely at the clear cases of thematically coherent tetralogies (all Aeschylean), we find immediately that the satyr-play does not have to continue the story of the trilogy. Its theme is chosen rather for its suitability for the genre: the story of the Sphinx, for example, which is ideal for a satyr-play, belongs chronologically between the first and second tragedies [Laios, Oedipus]” (1984, p. 23).

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the familiar “prequel” to describe the kind of satyr play Nietzsche had in mind as a model for Part IV. I propose that we follow Gérard Genette’s narratological distinction between external and internal analepsis (1980, p. 49ff.). According to Genette’s schema, both the Star Wars prequels and the Zarathustra satyr play are analeptically (rather than proleptically) anachronistic because in both the narration jumps backward to a chronologically earlier point in the story (rather than forward to a later point). In film terms, both works may be described as extended flashbacks. But the Star Wars prequels are externally analeptic because this earlier point is before, and outside of, the time of the original trilogy. On my reading, the Zarathustra satyr play is internally analeptic because this earlier point is an implicit ellipsis or chronological gap within the time of the original trilogy.20 In the rest of this study, then, I refer to Part IV as an “analeptic satyr play” – with the understanding that this means internally analeptic so as to distinguish it from today’s familiar, and pedagogically useful, prequel film. It is worth noting that Nietzsche was quite careful in his design of the chronology of Part IV. A close examination shows that the time of its retrospective narration does sequentially follow the time of the narration of the preceding parts. As ironist readers have observed, the fictitious narrative voice is more pronounced in Part IV than in the preceding parts. This voice, like that of the New Testament Gospels or of Plato’s dialogues, does not belong to the protagonist but rather to someone who is narrating at a later date than the time in which his story takes place.21 Thus, the fictitious narrator (who is obviously not Nietzsche himself) refers to the history books which contain information about his story, mentions many earlier narrators who have told different versions of his story, and even raises doubts about the comparative veracity of his own story (IV.12, IV.19:1, IV.20).22 Moreover, the fictitious narrator of Part IV is familiar with the entire narrative of Parts I–III. Indeed, in the “Sleepwalker’s Song” chapter, Both works are also what Genette calls “homodiegetic,” because the line of action in each is continuous with that of the original trilogies. And the ellipsis toward the end of Part III is what Genette calls “implicit” because it only becomes apparent in light of the added analeptic satyr play. 21 See Higgins 1987, p. 204. This distinction between the narrator and the protagonist is perhaps what Nietzsche means when he warns himself in his plans for Part IV: “Im Zarathustra 4 kein ‘Ich’!” (KSA 10:17[18]). 22 See Higgins 1987, p. 204; Shapiro 1989, pp. 100, 123. Some commentators (Pippin 1988, p. 64; Whitlock 1990, p. 276) conclude too quickly that Nietzsche himself is the narrator of Zarathustra’s tale. But the fictive narrator’s voice comes from a time later than Zarathustra’s age and, as I discuss in Chapter 8, Nietzsche tells us that Zarathustra’s age must be later than his own (GM II:24–25). 20

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he actually quotes a verse-fragment from the “Seven Seals” chapter at the very end of Part III. In the rest of this chapter and the next, I explain why and how Nietzsche designed his Part IV satyr play so that it would dramatize only events taking place shortly before the end of the completed tragic trilogy. But first I would like to conclude this section by noting how the construction and details of Part IV provide further evidence of its deliberate design as a satyr play. In the first place, Nietzsche alludes directly and frequently to the only extant complete satyr play, Euripides’ Cyclops. For he depicts Zarathustra as a cave-dwelling Odysseus-like hero who uses wine to intoxicate, trick, and kill a monstrous spirit of gravity and melancholy.23 This ogre has been enslaving a group of arrogant yet cowardly satyr-like higher men who are led by their famously ugly Silenus-like spokesman (the ugliest man) and include a one-eyed Cyclops figure (the retired pope who is blind in one eye).24 Following their liberation, the grateful and rejuvenated satyr-like higher men are reunited with their rightful master, the god Dionysus, and celebrate this reunion with drinking, singing, and dancing (IV.19). Second, and more speculatively, Nietzsche seems to have constructed Part IV so as to reproduce the satyr play’s generic characteristics, that is, its frequently recurring and “limited repertoire of situations, themes, characterizations, and narrative elements” (Sutton 1980, pp. 145; 145–159).25 These include, as we have seen, the narrative themes of an evil ogre’s destruction; and of the satyr’s bondage, rescue, and escape. They also include the following: • Hospitality and its abuse: as displayed in Zarathustra’s interaction with the higher men throughout. • Miming of the activities of specific professions or callings: as in the kings, the conscientious academic, the play-actor, the pope, and the beggar. Nietzsche’s temporal references in Part IV also seem to allude to the three-day time span of the Cyclops scene in book Nine of the Odyssey which Euripides’ parody compresses into one day (Sutton 1980, p. 103). Nietzsche also duplicates the tendency of the Cyclops satyrs, and of Greek choruses in general, to merge their egos into a collective individual and to speak or cry out with a single voice as if from a single mouth (IV.2, 11, 20: Konstan 2001, p. 14). 24 Santaniello (2005, pp. 43–50, 68) mistakes the ugliness of Silenus for that of Socrates (who was often compared to Silenus) and therefore misses Nietzsche’s reference to David Strauss (as argued in Whitlock 1990, pp. 10, 272, 287 n. 63) and conflates Nietzsche’s symbol of the ugliest man with that of the dwarf (who does represent Socrates, as I have argued in Chapters 2 and 3). 25 More speculatively because, as David Lupher has pointed out to me, Sutton’s list depends on post-1890 discoveries of extensive fragments of satyr plays (such as Sophocles’ Trackers). Seaford (1984, pp. 33–44) also lists the further generic themes of sex (as in the wanderer’s recollections of his adventures among daughters of the wilderness) and of marvelous inventions and creations (as in the higher men’s invention of the ass festival). 23

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• Competition and contest: as depicted in the contest between Zarathustra and his archenemy, the spirit of gravity, and between Zarathustra and his lesser adversaries, the soothsayer and the sorcerer; or in the singing contests between the sorcerer and the wanderer. • Trickery, fraud and cunning, and clever tricksters, rascals, and rogues: as in Zarathustra’s clever overcoming of the spirit of gravity; but also as highlighted in the sorcerer’s deceptive imitation and songs; and in the higher men’s prankish ass festival that deceives Zarathustra. • Magic and the miraculous, and oracle-prophets, sorcerers, and magicians: as illustrated by the soothsayer’s ill tidings; by the effects of the wicked sorcerer, his magical harp, and the green lightning shooting from his eyes; by the black magician and witch-doctor and miracleworker pope; by the talking, dancing ass; by the sudden appearance and disappearance of Zarathustra’s sign of the flock of doves and laughing lion; by the ray of sunlight falling from the heavens on Zarathustra’s face during his mystical noon-time experience; and by the final transformation of the higher men, especially the ugliest man’s newfound ability to speak clearly. • Ghosts, the supernatural, rejuvenations, and resurrections: as illustrated by the ghost-like wanderer and shadow; by Zarathustra’s mystical and death-saturated incantations in his sleepwalker’s song; and by the concluding convalescence, rejuvenation, and resurrection of the newly sublime higher men. • Exotic settings: as in the many disjointed places entered by Zarathustra in response to the higher men’s cry of need, especially the desolate and eerie wasteland (“Serpent’s Death” valley) in which Zarathustra meets the ugliest man; and in the still and mysterious moonlit night-world where an ancient bell tolls midnight and Zarathustra sings and annotates his “Once More” roundelay. Finally, the aspect of Part IV that has proven the most puzzling and unsettling to Zarathustra scholars is Nietzsche’s relocation of the trilogy’s heroic and tragic protagonist into a slapstick gathering of preposterous, silly, buffoonish, bawdy, grotesque, and half-human creatures.26 Part IV is thus not straightforwardly tragic and heroic, but neither is it purely humorous or comedic. For this reason, some commentators have concluded that Nietzsche was confused in his artistic intentions or lacking in artistic skills.27 But they have failed to notice that here too Nietzsche I am grateful to C. Succor for advising me to address this aspect of Part IV. Fink is the most emphatic, writing that “[t]he fourth part constitutes a steep decline in which an allegorical and mythical type of exposition takes over and affects us often embarrassingly” (2003,

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had in mind the distinctive humor of the Athenian satyr play – namely, a juxtaposition of the heroic and the ridiculous that is supposed to be perceived as incongruous, unreal, inconsistent, inappropriate, and absurd. As Sutton observes, “the satyr play is not a wholly farcical genre, but a seriocomic form insofar as its characteristic humor comes from the collision of the serious and the comic and requires the presence of both” (1980, p. 162; see also Easterling 1997, p. 41). This last point is important because ironist readers cite the satyr-play aspect of Part IV as proof of Nietzsche’s intent to subvert or deflate the serious material at the end of Part III that communicates the complete fulfillment of Zarathustra’s quest and teachings. Thus, Nehamas, for example, writes with reference to Part IV: “The satyr play, so to speak, suggests that the tragic trilogy that precedes it must not be taken too seriously” (2000, p. 181). But these same readers assume that the satyr play is a wholly farcical genre, and they fail to notice Nietzsche’s adoption of the satyr play’s chronological flexibility. On my reading, by contrast, Nietzsche’s analeptic satyr play supplements, clarifies, and expands the details of one final and essential advance on the way to the complete fulfillment at the end of Part III: namely, Zarathustra’s overcoming of his final test and obstacle, the temptation to pity or commiserate with the higher human (EH I:4). Part IV is thus still partly tragic because it continues the tragic theme of Zarathustra’s agonized estrangement from his beloved disciples. Indeed, it is this very estrangement that tempts him to look for substitutes in the higher men and to take pity on them. But then Zarathustra receives the sign that his beloved disciples are returning, he is reminded of their superiority to the higher men, and he is able to overcome this temptation. Once assured of his reunion with his beloved disciples, Zarathustra hardens his heart toward the inadequate higher men and returns to the work which he completes while dying at the end of Part III. In this way, Part IV reaffirms the heroic and tragic arc of Zarathustra’s career while at the same time preserving the happy ending required of all concluding satyr plays (Sutton 1980, p. 133).28 p. 55). But, immediately after remarking upon the satyr play design of Part IV, Fink misses the point of its satyr play humor when he writes: “[Part IV] was meant to portray Zarathustra’s greatness in relation to the traditional forms of human greatness and to show his superiority over all kinds of ‘higher beings.’ However, just this fails and it remains a mere posture. He is portrayed as magnanimous, victorious, kind and confident among all the fragmented existences which form the higher being. Zarathustra’s character does not gain significant depth or existential clarity through its superiority over the higher beings” (2003, pp. 102–103). 28 I am grateful to Daniel Conway and David Lupher for their helpful and detailed comments on this section of my study.

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The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra Z a r at h ustr a’s hou r

My proposed solution to Nietzsche’s riddle, therefore, is that he designed Zarathustra to conclude chronologically with the climactic ending of Part III and structurally with the analeptic satyr play of Part IV. I think this solution helps to explain why students of Nietzsche’s book have been so puzzled by Part IV, and why they might have been led to suppose that it violates or deflates the ending of Part III. In the rest of this chapter and the next, I offer more evidence to support this solution and to determine the more specific chronological place of the story that is retrospectively narrated in Part IV. We can begin by noting that Part IV of Zarathustra is framed by an introductory chapter in which Zarathustra, quickly growing ripe but not yet quite ripe, is waiting on high mountains for the sign that the time has come for him to go under (IV.1), and by a concluding chapter in which this sign finally arrives (IV.20).29 Zarathustra had earlier been told by his stillest hour that he had become young late and that he still had to overcome the pride of his youth – as Jesus did not (I.21) – by returning to his solitude and becoming mellow enough that he would be ripe for his already-ripe fruit (II.22). And, indeed, at the start of Part IV, Zarathustra is described by his animals as becoming ever yellower and darker, and he explains this as what happens to every fruit when it grows ripe. Thus, despite his white hair (IV.1), long beard (IV.2), and old age (IV.19), Zarathustra is one of those in whom “late youth preserves long youth” – one of the sour apples, that is, “whose lot requires that they wait till the last day of autumn: and they become ripe, yellow, and wrinkled all at once” (I.21).30 In Part IV, therefore, Zarathustra is living the last day of his autumn and it is during this time that he becomes ripe all at once. The sign, a lion that laughs at the doves flocking about them, is taken by Zarathustra to indicate the proximity of his children, and this proximity is in turn interpreted by Zarathustra to mean that he has now finished ripening and that his hour has come. Nietzsche thus lets us know that we cannot push the conclusion of Part IV back past the chapter that is located toward the end of Part III, entitled “On Old and New Tablets.” For this chapter begins with Zarathustra explicitly saying that he is sitting and waiting for the arrival of signs, the In IV.1, Zarathustra says to his animals, “Wie mir geschieht, so geht es allen Früchten, die reif werden”; while in IV.20 he says, “Zarathustra ward reif.” See UM IV:2 for Nietzsche’s similar account of Wagner.

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laughing lion with the flock of doves, that his hour has come to go to men once more and to go under. In fact, and I think Nietzsche intended this as an important clue, this is the only place in all of Parts I–III where Zarathustra mentions the lion-and-doves sign. In the first chapter of Part IV, entitled “The Honey Sacrifice,” Nietzsche includes further clues that the introductory narrative of Part IV should be read as a direct continuation of the narrative that begins at the start of the “Tablets” chapter in Part III. Thus, after months and years have again passed over his soul, Zarathustra claims that he is still waiting for the sign that it is time for his descent and that he is still not going under, as he must, among men – hence implying a months- and years-long continuation of the waiting he began at the start of the “Tablets” chapter.31 Moreover, Zarathustra describes this waiting in the same way in the “Sacrifice” chapter and in the beginning of the “Tablets” chapter – namely, as the waiting of someone whose great and eternal destiny leaves him time, and who is therefore neither impatient nor patient but rather has time to talk and jest to himself. In both chronological and narrative terms, then, the entirety of Part IV’s final ripening action obviously follows the beginning of the Part III “Tablets” chapter. At the same time, and less obviously, Nietzsche lets us know that this Part IV ripening action has to conclude chronologically sometime before the Part III “Convalescent” chapter begins. This is because Zarathustra summons up his most abysmal thought at the start of the “Convalescent” chapter. Yet we know that he could not have done so unless he had received the lion-and-doves sign that arrives at the end of Part IV. For this sign indicates the ripening of Zarathustra that is a precondition of his bringing forth the long-ripe fruit that is his most abysmal thought (II.22). Indeed, this is why Nietzsche shows us Zarathustra becoming over-ripe after he awakens his most abysmal thought. His animals tell him that he has been lying like leavened dough and that his new and heavy knowledge has caused his soul to rise and swell over all its rims (III.13:2). And Zarathustra describes his own soul as over-rich and heavy, standing like a vine with swelling udders and crowded brown gold-grapes. Like all vines that are over-ripe, Zarathustra’s overfull soul longs for the vintager and the vintager’s knife (III.14, IV.19:9).32 The narrator’s suggestion that months and years have passed over Zarathustra’s soul before (“Und wieder liefen Monde und Jahre über Zarathustra’s Seele”) is most likely an allusion back to the last time months and years passed by while Zarathustra waited to be reunited with his disciples (II.1: “Also vergiengen dem Einsamen Monde und Jahre …”). 32 In Chapter 7, I explain why Zarathustra describes himself as similarly over-ripe at the very start of the book (P:1). 31

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More specifically, the lion aspect of Zarathustra’s sign announces his attainment of the lion’s spirit, strength, courage, and voice that he requires to command awake his most abysmal thought (III.3, II.22, III.13:1).33 And indeed, at the very end of Part IV, after meditating upon his sign, and just like the roaring lion in his vision that springs up to frighten away the assembled higher men, the newly hardened and bronze-faced Zarathustra springs up and shouts out his determination to stop commiserating with the higher men he has been shepherding throughout Part IV. Strong as a lion, and indifferent to his own happiness, Zarathustra shouts out his renewed dedication to his arriving children and to the work he must now complete in his dawning great-noon day. Also more specifically, the doves aspect of Zarathustra’s sign announces the silent arrival of his most abysmal thought, a world-guiding thought that is supposed to come on doves’ feet (II.22, III.3, III.13, IV.19). Since these doves arrive at the precise moment that Zarathustra is telling his right animals (rechten Tiere) that he still lacks his right men (rechten Menschen), and since Zarathustra subsequently interprets his sign to mean that his children are near, Nietzsche leads us to understand that these doves are a symbol of Zarathustra’s returning disciples.34 In fact, in his final reference to his sign – Der Löwe kam, meine Kinder sind nahe, Zarathustra ward reif, meine Stunde kam – Zarathustra simply replaces the symbol of the doves with his proximate children. These flocking doves form a cloud of love that empties itself over Zarathustra’s head; the doves sit on his shoulders and caress his white hair and do not weary of tenderness and rejoicing.35 Against this point, Seung objects that Zarathustra’s stillest hour says to him that the lion’s voice “is not the requirement but the impediment” for this task and advises him that he must “become like a child instead of becoming a lion” (2005, p. 304). But Zarathustra’s stillest hour does not in fact say that the lion’s voice will be an impediment to his summoning up his most abysmal thought. Moreover, after hearing his stillest hour’s advice, and immediately following his prevision of a leonine shout that precedes his invocation of his most abysmal thought (III.2), Zarathustra again says that he needs the lion’s voice to summon up his most abysmal thought (III.3) – a voice that is clearly depicted when Zarathustra actually fulfills his previsioned invocation of his most abysmal thought (III.13:1). Also, Zarathustra’s stillest hour does not say that he must become a child in order to summon up his most abysmal thought, but only that he must become a child in order to overcome the pride of his late youth that makes him feel ashamed and unworthy of his great destiny. I discuss this overcoming in Chapter 7. 34 This interpretation is compatible with Gooding-Williams’ observation of Nietzsche’s allusion to the Christian symbol of the Holy Spirit (2001, p. 294). As in the New Testament scene of Jesus’ baptism, the sign of the dove announces Zarathustra’s readiness for his great task. See Luther’s translation of Matthew 3:16 on Jesus’ baptism: “Und da Jesus gestaust war, stieg er alsbald herauf aus dem Wasser; und siehe, da tat sich der Himmel auf über ihm. Und er sah den Geist Gottes, gleich al seine Taube, herabfahren, und über ihn kommen.” 35 As I discuss further in Chapter 7, Nietzsche here recalls Zarathustra’s prevision in the “Soothsayer” chapter (II.19) of being rescued from his solitary mountain entombment by a thousand peals of children’s laughter emanating from a thousand child-sized angels and butterflies. 33

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They are no less eager in their love than the laughing lion that is also a symbol of the returning disciples he calls his “laughing lions” (IV.11). Since Zarathustra’s stillest hour had instructed him that his world-guiding thought would arrive on doves’ feet (II.22), we may infer that, besides being a symbol of the inaudibility of great events (II.18), the doves’ feet are a symbol of the return of Zarathustra’s disciples. In Nietzsche’s symbolic language, the arrival of Zarathustra’s world-guiding thought must follow upon the heels of his returning disciples. But this means that Nietzsche designed the ending of Part IV so that it would lead into the start of the Part III “Convalescent” chapter. No on cruci f i x ion On the chronological reading I have just proposed, it is noteworthy that the last chapter of Part IV begins with the image of Zarathustra springing out of his bed in the morning and ends with the image of him leaving his cave after having shouted out his command, “Arise now, arise, you great noon!” (IV.20). For the “Convalescent” chapter begins with the image of Zarathustra, not long after having returned to his cave, springing out of his bed in the morning and shouting out his command, “Arise, most abysmal thought, out my depths!”36 This repetition in images and phrasing suggests quite naturally that Zarathustra’s hour, the great-noon hour anticipated at the very end of Part IV, is in fact the hour when he summons up his most abysmal thought. Of course, this conclusion flies in the face of the traditional assumption that Nietzsche postpones Zarathustra’s great-noon hour until some indefinite future not included in his book. But this assumption ignores the number and escalating intensity of Zarathustra’s prophecies of the impending great noon in the Part III chapters leading up to the “Convalescent” chapter (III.5, III.7, III.10, III.12:30). The last of these prophecies, in the concluding section of the “Tablets” chapter, even points directly to the immediately 36

As published without Part IV, the narrator’s mention of Zarathustra’s return to the cave (Rückkehr zur Höhle) at the start of the “Convalescent” chapter most naturally alludes to the preceding “Return Home” (Heimkehr) chapter. With Part IV added, however, and on my reading, this mention alludes rather to the narrator’s announcement, at the very end of Part IV, that Zarathustra left his cave (verliess seine Höhle) glowing and strong like a morning sun that comes out of dark mountains. Thus, Zarathustra awakens his most abysmal thought one morning “months and years” after he began waiting at the start of the “Tablets” chapter but “not long” (nicht lange) after he has returned from his end-of-Part IV journey to meet his arriving disciples. I am grateful to Robert Gooding-Williams for asking me to clarify this point.

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following “Convalescent” chapter as the location of the great-noon event: – That I may one day be ready and ripe in the great noon: as ready and ripe as glowing bronze, clouds pregnant with lightning, and swelling milk-udders – ready for myself and my most hidden will: a bow lusting for its arrow, an arrow lusting for its star – a star, ready and ripe in its noon, glowing, pierced, enraptured by annihilating solar arrows – a sun itself and an inexorable solar will, ready for annihilation in victory! (III.12:30)

There is a natural continuity between this final prophecy and the last lines of Part IV where Zarathustra is described as bronze-faced, glowing, and as invoking the dawn of his great-noon day. This continuity suggests that Zarathustra is already ripe at the end of the “Tablets” chapter and that he wants to preserve this ripeness for the climactic high-noon moment of his great-noon day. And Nietzsche lets us know that this moment takes place in the “Convalescent” chapter. For, as we have seen, he identifies the great-noon hour as the hour of the arrival of the thought of eternal recurrence (KSA 9:11[148]), and he identifies Zarathustra’s most abysmal thought with the thought of eternal recurrence (III.2, III.13).37 Zarathustra also had said to his disciples at the end of Part I that the sun of his knowledge would stand at its peak overhead position during this great noon (I.22:3). So when Zarathustra crows like a rooster so as to awaken his thought of eternal recurrence, he fulfills his final “Tablets” prophecy of becoming a sun itself and an inexorable solar will. Indeed, in his prevision of this great event, he sees himself as one surrounded with light (ein Umleuchteter) (III.2:2).38 Following this great event, Zarathustra further Because Nietzsche writes in Ecce Homo that Zarathustra finds in his most abysmal thought no objection to existence, not even to its eternal recurrence (EH Z:6), some commentators (Nehamas 1985, p. 148; Clark 1990, pp. 261–262) have questioned whether Nietzsche actually identifies Zarathustra’s most abysmal thought with the thought of eternal recurrence. For what sense does it make to write of finding in the thought of eternal recurrence no objection to eternal recurrence? The answer to this puzzle, I think, is that Zarathustra’s most abysmal thought concerns the eternal recurrence of existence in the specific sense that this entails the eternal recurrence even of the smallest human (III.13:2). So Nietzsche’s point above is simply that Zarathustra does not consider this entailment an objection to eternal recurrence. By contrast, Nietzsche writes about himself: “But I confess that my deepest objection to ‘eternal recurrence,’ my truly most abysmal thought, is always mother and sister” (EH I:3) – that is, the fact that eternal recurrence entails the eternal recurrence even of his mother and sister. In Chapter 8, I discuss further this contrast Nietzsche draws between himself and Zarathustra. 38 See Nietzsche’s contemporaneous note: “Und liess den Mittag um ihn leuchten” (KGW 7:15[1]). In the chapter following his prevision, Zarathustra suggests that his serpent-decapitation is the 37

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fulfills his final “Tablets” chapter prophecy by becoming a tall ripe vine with swelling udders (III.14) and a heavy cloud pregnant with lightning (III.15:1). After Zarathustra’s final great-noon prophecy at the end of the “Tablets” chapter, the great noon is mentioned only once in the rest of Part III. In the hypothetical deathbed speech attributed to him by his animals after he has summoned up his most abysmal thought, Zarathustra says that he has already spoken and broken upon his word of the great noon (III.13:2). Further, in his final song of Part III, Zarathustra’s soul repeatedly expresses his lust for the wedding ring of rings, the ring of recurrence. But Nietzsche’s term for wedding, “high time” (Hochzeit), alludes back to the call Zarathustra hears throughout the book’s narrative (including Part IV): “It is time! It is high time [höchste Zeit]!” (II.18, III.3, IV.2). Since this call refers to Zarathustra’s great-noon hour (II.18, 22), Nietzsche leads us to understand that the wedding to eternity made possible by Zarathustra’s awakening of his most abysmal thought was in fact the high-time greatnoon event anticipated throughout the narrative. Despite its enlightening aspect, however, Zarathustra’s thought is “most abysmal” (abgründlicher) to him, and he has been dreading and postponing the great-noon hour when he must summon it up and have it speak to him (II.22, III.3). And, indeed, once he does succeed in awakening this thought, Zarathustra cries out his nausea, falls down as if dead, and remains like a dead man for a long time. Recalling his horrific experience to his animals, Zarathustra explains that he was made sick by his thought’s implication that even the dwarfishly small human must eternally recur. Alluding back to his prevision of carrying upon his back the heavy weight of the dwarf while climbing up a solitary mountain path, Zarathustra describes himself as a cross-bearer (Kreuzträger), compares his experience to a crucifixion (Kreuzigung), and speaks of having been riveted onto a torture-stake (an Marterholz geheftet). Thus, contrary to the reading of Lea (1957, p. 226) and Higgins and Solomon (2005, p. xvi), Nietzsche does indeed complete his parallel with great self-overcoming deed that follows his summoning of his most abysmal thought (III.3). In his final great-noon prophecy in the “Tablets” chapter, Zarathustra draws this same distinction between his last great annihilating victory and his preparatory great destiny (grosser Schicksale) of teaching eternal recurrence (described as such by his animals in III.13:2). Alluding to his prevision of himself climbing up a difficult mountain path in the corpse-colored twilight (III.13:1), Zarathustra worries: “Ah, whose eye has not dimmed in this drunken twilight? Ah, whose foot has not stumbled and in victory forgotten – to stand! – ” (III.12:30). I discuss Zarathustra’s last great victory in Chapters 6 and 8.

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the Gospels by depicting a tragic consummation in which Zarathustra suffers martyrdom. Like Jesus in Judea (Luke 23:21–23), Zarathustra is a value-breaking lawgiver who is hated by the Pharisees and crucified by them (III.12:26). Like Jesus at Gethsemane (Mark 14:32–36), Zarathustra fearfully anticipates “his hour” – the hour when he must undergo his passion and crucifixion (II.22). Like Jesus with the crown of thorns (Mark 15:21–20), Zarathustra suffers ridicule and torture at the hands of small human beings who enjoy watching the great human being’s pain (III.13:2). And, like Jesus at Golgotha (John 19:17), Zarathustra is forced to bear his own cross up to the site where he will be crucified (III.2).39 Finally, like Jesus fulfilling the scriptures (Mark 15:25–37), Zarathustra undergoes crucifixion during a noon hour in which the sun sets and darkness comes over the whole land.40 As predicted in his riddling prophecies that “midnight is also noon” (Mitternacht ist auch Mittag) and that “night is also a sun” (IV.19:10), as well as in his prevision of an inner experience that takes place in the stillest midnight hour (III.2, IV.19)41, Zarathustra’s noon crucifixion But whereas Jesus’ cross is a metaphor for the great wickedness of humankind and Jesus aims to redeem humankind by forgiving its sins, Zarathustra says that he is tortured by the smallness of human wickedness (III.13:2, IV.13:5) and that he aims to redeem humankind by choking the choker that is called “sin” (III.14). In Chapter 6, I show how Zarathustra’s camel-spirited carrying of his cross of the eternal recurrence of dwarfish humankind is transformed into a lion-spirited negation of the continued and future existence of humankind. In Zarathustra’s prevision, this transformation takes place at the precise moment in which his death-dealing courage bids him to stop and challenge the dwarf to battle (III.2:1). In Chapter 7, I show how Zarathustra redeems himself and humankind. 40 The relevant scripture is Amos 8:9: “On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun go under at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight.” In Luther’s translation: “Zur selben Zeit, spricht Gott der Herr, will ich die Sonne am Mittag untergehen und das Land am hellen Tage finster werden lassen.” In the New Testament narrative, where daytime begins at 6.0 am and ends at 6.0 pm, the eclipse during Jesus’ crucifixion lasts from noon (“the sixth hour”) until the time of his death (“the ninth hour”). Karl Schlechta (1954, p. 17) cites the noon hour of Jesus’ crucifixion, but he does not see its significance for Nietzsche’s identification of Zarathustra’s great noon/midnight hour as the time of his confrontation with his most abysmal thought and of his completed Untergang. See also GS 125, where the madman identifies the murdered God with the sun, brings a lantern during the bright pre-noon morning (Vormittag), and asks: “Kommt nicht immerfort die Nacht und mehr Nacht? Müssen nicht Laternen am Vormittage angezündet werden?” But the madman concludes that he is too early (“ich bin noch nicht an der Zeit”). As I discuss in Chapter 8, Nietzsche thereby suggests that the right time for the madman’s proclamation of deicide is instead the great-noon hour (Mittag) in which the future Zarathustra awakens his most abysmal thought and thereby kills God. 41 Since Zarathustra’s prevision is followed by his ode to the afternoon of his life (Nachmittag meines Lebens) (III.2), and since Nietzsche’s narrative sequences youth, noon, afternoon, evening, night, and midnight (IV.19:8), we are led to understand that Zarathustra’s prevision of his midnight experience took place during the noon of his life – thus again fulfilling his riddling prophecy that midnight is also noon. In the same ode, Zarathustra suggests that the hour of his last struggle will take place in the evening (Abend) of his life, thereby setting up Nietzsche’s narrative depiction of his seventh-day evening convalescence and midnight-death at the end of Part III. 39

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concludes with the ancient heavy bell striking midnight (III.14).42 Like the biblical sun (a symbol for Jesus) that is divinely compelled to go under while at its highest noon position, Zarathustra completes his Untergang at the great-noon hour in which he brings the highest enlightenment to humankind. In the “Seven Seals” chapter (III.15:2–3) that follows the event of Zarathustra’s crucifixion and that (as I have argued in the last chapter) depicts the event of Zarathustra’s death, Nietzsche alludes to the earthquake (die Erde bebte und brach) and the opening of graves (Gräber brach) that mark the moment of Jesus’ death: “Und die Erde erbebete, und die Felsen zerrissen, und die Gräber taten sich auf ” (Matthew 27:51–54, Luther’s translation).43 S e v e nt h-da y c onva l e sc e nc e Turning next to the aftermath of Zarathustra’s great-noon awakening, we can find various symbols here that also presuppose the events anticipated at the end of Part IV. I have already mentioned Nietzsche’s repeated use of the biblical symbol of seven days to signify the completion of Zarathustra’s creative work – the same creative work (Werk) that frames the start and finish of Part IV as Zarathustra’s overriding concern (IV.1, IV.20). Since Zarathustra is resting on the seventh day of his great-noon hour, he thus fulfills his Part IV prediction that a seventh-day evening (eines siebenten Tages Abend) would come to his soul just at noon (IV.10). And since Nietzsche associates ripening with pregnancy and ripe fruit with finished artistic work (IV.13:11–12; see also GS 369, 376), he is led to think of Zarathustra’s ripening as a precondition of his giving birth to this completed work. Anticipating his later idea of a long “fermata” in which Nietzsche’s original plan for Part III included the midnight prevision of the “Vision and the Riddle” chapter within the noon “Convalescent” chapter (KSA 14, p. 309; Krell 1986, p. 54) and thus emphasized even more his Heraclitean equation of the seeming opposites of midnight and noon. Commentators who are interested in this equation as an expression of Nietzsche’s Dionysian mysticism (Stambaugh 1994, pp. 149–15; Roberts 1998, p. 131 n. 21) miss some of the narrative aspects of this equation because they accept the traditional assumption that Zarathustra’s great noon is indefinitely postponed. 43 Nietzsche alludes to this same moment in the conclusion of the Aftersong to Beyond Good and Evil when he writes of Zarathustra’s arrival at the noon hour with the wedding (Hochzeit) of light and darkness and the rending of the veil: “Um Mittag war’s, da wurde Eins zu Zwei… / Freund Zarathustra kam, der Gast der Gäste! /Nun lacht die Welt, der grause Vorhang riss, / Die Hochzeit kam für Licht und Finsterniss .…” See, e.g., Luke 23:44, Luther’s translation: “Und es war schon um die sechste Stunde, und es kam eine Finsternis über das ganze Land bis zur neunten Stunde, / und die Sonne verlor ihren Schein, und der Vorhang des Tempels riss mitten entzwei.” Burnham 2007, p. 233, notices the allusion in Beyond Good and Evil to Jesus’ crucifixion, but does not see the associated allusion to Zarathustra’s crucifixion. 42

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the tempo of the pregnant artist’s life slows down and becomes thick like honey (GS 376), Nietzsche shows Zarathustra becoming fully ripe and gestating over a period of years (IV.1). Finally, however, and alluding to Plato’s conceit of the Socratic midwife prompted by the beauty of his disciples (Symposium, 208–209; Theaetetus, 148e–151d), Nietzsche portrays the fully ripened and pregnant Zarathustra as experiencing great nausea, undergoing horrifically painful labor contractions, and giving birth to the heavy memory of recurrence he has been carrying like a hidden fruit.44 After this, the sickened Zarathustra becomes light, convalesces, and washes his soul clean of the afterbirth (III.13, 14; IV.13:12).45 In thus unburdening himself of the heaviest weight of his most abysmal thought, Zarathustra finally leaves behind entirely the camel-spirit he described in his first speech (I.1). Also, we have seen how the end of Part IV and the start of the “Convalescent” chapter show Zarathustra’s associated transformation into a hardened and courageous leonine spirit that commands the rise of the great noon and the awakening of his most abysmal thought. If we turn next to Zarathustra’s recollection of the seven days following the birth of his most abysmal thought, we can see him fulfilling his anticipation of a final spiritual transformation into a child.46 Lying in bed and convalescing like a lioness whose old, wild wisdom has just given birth (II.1), Zarathustra indicates to his animals that he has used his new knowledge of eternal recurrence to create a new soul that is a new In carefully depicting each of these stages, Nietzsche constructs the kind of Dionysian mystery doctrine that he later attributes to the ancient Greeks: “Every single element in the act of procreation, of pregnancy, and of birth aroused the highest and most solemn feelings. In the doctrine of the mysteries, pain is pronounced holy: the pangs of the woman giving birth hallow all pain; all becoming and growing – all that guarantees a future – involves pain” (TI X:4). 45 In his speech to the higher men, Zarathustra says that whoever has given birth is unclean, that with a new child much filth has also entered the world, and that whoever has given birth should wash his soul clean (IV.13:12). And, indeed, after giving birth in the “Convalescent” chapter, Zarathustra tells his soul that he has brushed dust, spiders, and twilight away from it and washed the petty shame and corner-virtue away from it so that it might stand naked before the eyes of the sun. The dust, spiders, and twilight are the symbols of death that Nietzsche introduces in GS 341 and that he incorporates into Zarathustra’s previsions of his confrontation with his most abysmal thought (III.2, II.19: “I breathed the odor of dusty eternities: sultry and dusty lay my soul”; III.2) – thereby indicating that Zarathustra has given birth to his deathbed memory of eternal recurrence. 46 On my reading of Part IV as relating events that chronologically precede those in the “Convalescent” chapter, there is no contradiction in reading Part IV as relating the transformation into a lion-spirit that has already taken place at the start of the “Convalescent” chapter and that has already been followed by a transformation into a child-spirit. See, by contrast, Berkowitz 1995, pp. 226–227, 301 n. 11. In Loeb 2007, I criticize Gooding-Williams’ 2001 argument that the final stage of Zarathustra’s spiritual transformation takes place in Part IV, and I suggest that this argument is motivated by his assumption that the ending of Part III is chronologically followed by the story of Part IV. 44

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world to which there is no outside (III.13:2).47 But this means that, as he had anticipated in his speech on the three metamorphoses, Zarathustra has now won his own world after having been lost to the world (I.1). Alluding to Genesis, Nietzsche has the wise lioness mother Zarathustra recount his creative acts in the “Great Longing” chapter – for example, how he blew across the surging sea of his new soul-world, poured out every sun and night on his new soul-world, and gave new names to his new soul-world. In addition, the maternal Zarathustra sings to his just-washed and naked newborn soul, gives it colorful toys, and baptizes it with names that indicate its selfpropelling nature – “circumference of circumferences” and “time’s umbilical cord.”48 In keeping with his former lion-spirited nature, Zarathustra sings to his child-spirited soul of having given it back its freedom and of having given it the right to say “Yes” as the open sky says “Yes” (I.1). In response, Zarathustra’s new child-spirited soul sings a sacred “Yes” song confirming and blessing his gifts. This song has seven parts and recounts each of the seven days in which Zarathustra’s new knowledge of eternal recurrence allowed him to create his new soul-world. Alluding again to Genesis, and to its image of the creator-God recuperating on the seventh day of his days’ work (Tagewerk) and approving all of his beautiful work (EH BGE:2; DD IX), Nietzsche has the convalescing Zarathustra’s soul review the metaphorical stages of the creation of its world – the light, the earth, the plants, the sun and stars, the sea, and the heavens – and bless each one of them as good (III.16).49 In even more compressed and symbolic passages, the convalescent Zarathustra describes his animals’ words as “rainbows” (Regenbogen) and “bridges” (Brücken) to his new and self-contained soul-world – both symbols of the superhuman that he had been creatively sculpting out of human stone (P:9, II.1, II.7, KSA 10:15[7], 10:16[83]). He also describes Alluding to the New Testament nativity scene (Matthew 2:11, Luke 2:7–16), Nietzsche here shows Zarathustra’s newborn soul lying in a manger (constructed of yellow and red berries, grapes, rose-apples, sweet-smelling herbs, and pine cones) and being adored by visitors (his animals) that bring him gifts and sacrifices (two lambs instead of two pigeons). Like Jesus, Zarathustra’s newborn soul is a result of immaculate conception, is the first born, and is announced by a (greatnoon) star standing overhead (III.12:30). Nietzsche thus fulfills the soothsayer’s anticipation of a new God lying in a cradle and swaddling clothes (IV.14) as well as his own anticipation in his preceding book’s title (Fröhliche Wissenschaft) of a new glad tidings and a new Fröhliche Weinacht. 48 I explain what Nietzsche means by these names in Chapter 7. 49 In depicting Zarathustra’s shattered dying at the moment when he has been spiritually transformed into a child and created a new soul-world, and in incorporating Dionysian imagery throughout the concluding chapters of Part III, Nietzsche alludes to the mystery-doctrine that Dionysus is torn to pieces as an infant while distracted by colorful toys (BT 10; Seaford 2006, pp. 73–74). 47

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their words as a means of “forgetting” (vergessen) his new soul-world’s isolation – a symbol, again, that Zarathustra’s spirit has been transformed into an innocent child that is a new beginning and a first movement (I.1). This symbol is reinforced by Nietzsche’s retrospective suggestion (GS 367) that Zarathustra’s final inattention to his animals and monological conversation with his own soul shows that he has forgotten the world and no longer concerns himself with witnesses. When speaking to his animals, Zarathustra could not help sighing and shuddering while remembering the sickness and nausea he had to overcome during his confrontation with his most abysmal thought. But afterwards, and following the counsel of his animals to sing and speak no further so as to heal better, as well as the consolation and recovery he had devised for himself during his seven days, Zarathustra and his soul sing final dithyrambic songs that are based on forgetting and that are the music of forgetting (EH Z:7).50 At the same time, speaking to the convalescent Zarathustra, his animals tell him that the world outside his cave is waiting for him like a garden containing bees, roses, and flocks of doves. The bees, with their associated image of honey, symbolize Zarathustra’s sweet ripeness (P:1, IV.1). The roses symbolize Zarathustra’s attainment of the inhuman laughter he had longed for – a laughter that signifies his final victory over his archenemy, the spirit of gravity (I.7, III.2:2, III.16:6, IV.13:18, 20, IV.17). And the garden (mentioned twice by his animals and once by Zarathustra himself), besides alluding to the biblical Eden, symbolizes the surrounding presence of Zarathustra’s reunited children and heirs. For Zarathustra had earlier described his disciples as the trees of his garden and of his best soil (III.3), and in Part IV he tells the higher men that his disciples are his living garden, the trees of life of his will and of his highest hope (IV.11; see also BGE 25). More specifically, the flocks of doves (Taubenschwärmen) are a clear allusion to Zarathustra’s sign of the laughing lion with the flock of doves (der lachender Löwe mit dem Taubenschwarme). Although Zarathustra was waiting for this sign at the start of the preceding “Tablets” chapter, he recognizes the arrival of this sign at the very end of Part IV and the narrator describes the countless doves (Tauben) that flock (umschwärm) about his head. These doves, as we have seen, are best interpreted as a symbol of Zarathustra’s returning disciples, and so here Nietzsche lets us know that the convalescent Zarathustra is awaited by the disciples that had rejoined

As Nietzsche writes later in GM III:4, the pregnant Zarathustra could not be spared the repellent and bizarre aspects of his pregnancy, but he needs to forget these if he is to enjoy his child.

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him at the end of the chronologically preceding ending to Part IV.51 These are the same disciples in whose love and soft-grassland-hearts Zarathustra had predicted his old, wild lioness wisdom would bed her dearest child – a child that was conceived upon lonely mountains and carried through the desert (II.1). L a st t e mptation Nietzsche’s highly condensed depiction of the event and aftermath of Zarathustra’s awakening of his most abysmal thought thus includes significant clues that he intended the drama related in Part IV to chronologically precede and introduce the climactic opening of the “Convalescent” chapter. There are other important clues having to do more specifically with the narrative of Part IV. In the first place, the convalescent Zarathustra recalls that it was the great nausea that choked him and crawled down his throat. This great nausea, he tells his animals, had been induced by having once seen the greatest humans naked, and realizing that they were all-toohuman, all-too-small. What Zarathustra means by seeing the highest and best humans “naked” is seeing them no longer disguised and well decked out, vain and dignified, as “the good and the just” (II.21; GS 352). And throughout Part IV Zarathustra does indeed encounter higher men who are all stripped of moral pretensions and suffering from nausea and selfcontempt with regard to their own newly exposed smallness.52 In fact, it is just this suffering that leads to Zarathustra’s repeated temptation to pity, or commiserate with, the higher men. And it is only his own great nausea induced by their revealed smallness – symbolized by the lion’s roaring rejection of the assembled higher men at the end of Part IV – that finally allows him to overcome this temptation. But then, in the “Convalescent” I develop this point at length in the next chapter. In the Part II chapter “On Human Prudence” Zarathustra had also said that he had seen the highest and best men naked and that this sight led him to grow wings so as to soar off into distant futures (II.21). So although Zarathustra’s encounters with the higher men in Part IV are not required for the truth of his report to his animals, these encounters (taking place much later and in much more detail than Zarathustra’s earlier sightings as recounted in II.21) do quite naturally supplement and lead into this report. Again, my argument in this chapter and the next is that Nietzsche wrote and published Parts I–III so that it could be read as a self-contained book and that he added Part IV so as to supplement, clarify, and expand certain dramatic and philosophical events that had already taken place in the published Parts I–III (what are often today called the “backstory”). Although I am arguing that the Part IV story chronologically precedes the Part III ending, this does not mean that the Part IV story logically precedes the Part III ending in the sense that the former is required in order to understand the latter. I am grateful to Robert Gooding-Williams for asking me to clarify this point.

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chapter, this great nausea chokes him until the redemptive moment when he is able to bite off and spit out the head of the serpent. In this way, Zarathustra’s conquest of his pity for the highest men at the end of Part IV quite naturally leads into, and prepares the way for, his Part III overcoming of the nausea induced by even the highest men.53 Second, because Zarathustra’s commiseration (Mitleid) is an instance of his own misery (Leid), his last temptation and sin, and his last and real proof of strength, has to do with his continued pursuit of happiness and avoidance of suffering (IV.2, IV.20, EH I:4).54 This is why, after recalling the soothsayer’s words from the day before, after realizing the nature of his last temptation and sin, and after recalling what he had said to his animals before being tempted (IV.1), Zarathustra truly proves his strength for the last time by declaring at the very end of Part IV: “My misery [Leid] and my commiseration [Mitleid]! – what do they matter! Do I strive after happiness [Glücke]? I strive after my work!” (IV.20). Here Zarathustra acknowledges that the further pursuit of his creative work will bring him much unhappiness. On my reading, this means that Zarathustra is now finally prepared to confront his most abysmal thought and hence descend deeper into pain than he has ever descended before (III.1, III.2:2, III.3, III.13:2). And, indeed, just before his experience of torture and crucifixion in the “Convalescent” chapter of Part III, Zarathustra calls himself the advocate of suffering (Leid). Moreover, when recalling his Christ-like passion (as previsioned in II.19 and III.2), the convalescent Zarathustra explains how he had confronted and endured the suffering required to achieve his selfredemption. Only then, after he no longer seeks it (III.3), does his happiness finally find him. In “On the Great Longing,” Zarathustra describes Compare Walter Kaufmann’s summary of Part IV: “Now that [Zarathustra] has overcome his nausea, his final trial is: pity” (1954, p. 344). But this sequential reading is contradicted by Zarathustra’s exclamations of (non-recollected) nausea late in Part IV (13:3), as well as by Zarathustra’s repeated anticipations that his nausea will create wings for him to fly over the deepest abyss of his pity (II.6, II.21, III.2:1, III.12:14). Although the voluntary beggar describes Zarathustra as the man without nausea and as the overcomer of the great nausea (IV.8), Zarathustra himself says that the higher men suffer only from their great nausea toward themselves and that none of them understand his much greater suffering from his great nausea toward humankind (IV.13:6). Notice also Zarathustra’s nausea with respect to his higher-men guests in IV.13:1, IV.15, IV.17. In Chapter 7, I discuss the saint’s claim at the start of the book that Zarathustra has been transformed and is free of nausea. 54 In his Ecce Homo summary of Part IV (I:4), Nietzsche writes that Zarathustra’s commiseration with the higher men tries to entice him away from himself. Similarly, in “Involuntary Bliss,” Zarathustra recalls that his desire for his children’s love tempted him to lose himself in them (III.3). In both cases, Zarathustra acts as a kind of shepherd and therefore needs to keep his task free of the associated herd-impulses that in the above summary Nietzsche calls “the many lower and more myopic impulses that are at work in so-called selfless actions.” 53

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his soul’s achieved great happiness in terms that suggest the full achievement of what he had only partly experienced at the start of Part IV.55 Third, although he did not know it at the time, Zarathustra had already foreseen himself undergoing precisely the same redemptive experience of choking, biting, and spitting that he recalls as a convalescent (III.2:2). In the “Vision and the Riddle” chapter, that is, Zarathustra had recounted to the surrounding sailors his prevision of a “young shepherd” (einen Jungen Hirt) who must have been sleeping when the serpent crawled into his throat and bit itself fast there. Upon hearing his advice, the choking shepherd bit off and spat out the head of the serpent and leapt up (sprang empor) transformed, no longer a shepherd. But throughout Part IV Nietzsche shows Zarathustra becoming young late and shepherding (finding, gathering, feeding) the higher men. He shows him, moreover, sleeping during the secret, solemn Dionysian noon-hour when no shepherd plays his flute, and experiencing a vision of eternal recurrence during his sleep (IV.10; BT 5; DW 1). Since the convalescent Zarathustra says that the serpent that choked him was the thought of the eternal recurrence of the small human, and since the small human includes even the higher men, Nietzsche leads us to identify the sleeping young shepherd in Zarathustra’s visionriddle with the sleeping Zarathustra in the “Noon” chapter of Part IV. But Zarathustra’s vision-riddle is fulfilled in the “Convalescent” chapter, so Nietzsche leads us to notice as well that this chapter shows Zarathustra biting the head off the serpent that had crawled into his throat in Part IV and thus ending his Part IV role as shepherd of the higher men.56 Fourth, there are many points of connection between Zarathustra’s experience in the “Noon” chapter of Part IV and his experience after awakening his most abysmal thought. But in “Noon,” unlike the “Great Longing,” Zarathustra asks his soul not to sing. This is because, although his soul has indeed grown weary and is indeed oppressed by its golden Referring to Zarathustra’s (and his animals’) mentions of his happiness (Glück) at the start of Part IV, Lampert (1986, p. 288, see also pp. 289–292) argues that Zarathustra has already achieved his happiness at the end of Part III and before the start of Part IV. Part IV, he writes, “falls between the achievement of his happiness and the resumption of his work.” On my reading, by contrast, Zarathustra fully achieves his happiness in the last chapters of Part III. But he is not fully happy at the start of Part IV and, indeed, the entire design of Part IV concerns Zarathustra’s further and continued pursuit of his not yet fully achieved happiness. This is why the soothsayer, for example, tells the trembling Zarathustra at the start of Part IV that he does not seem like someone made giddy by happiness (IV.2). 56 At the finish of his Prologue, Zarathustra says only that he is abandoning his role as shepherd with respect to the people (Volk) and herd (Herde) in the marketplace (P:9). As I argue in Chapter 6, there is thus no contradiction in Zarathustra foreseeing an end to his new role as shepherd with respect to those outside the marketplace-herd. 55

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sadness (as it is in III.14), it is not quite yet fully ripe and it is therefore not quite yet ready to be harvested by the vintager with his vintager’s knife. Although at the very end of Part III Zarathustra’s soul sings joyfully of its dying flight back up into the sky (III.16:7), in “Noon” Zarathustra ends by asking the noon sky-abyss above him (whose watching eye falls upon him as a sunbeam) when it will drink his soul back up into itself. So although the noon sun stands exactly over Zarathustra’s head where he sleeps under a vine-tree filled with ripening grapes, and although he has an ecstatic experience of eternal recurrence, Zarathustra chides himself out of his sleep because he still has a long way to go. Just as immediately after his prevision of awakening his most abysmal thought, Zarathustra pushes away his involuntary bliss because it came to him too early (III.3); so too in “Noon” Zarathustra pushes away the bliss of his seventh-day evening because it has come to him too early. Also, the grapes in the “Noon” tree are described as yellow (gelb), just as Zarathustra’s animals at the start of Part IV describe him as becoming ever yellower (gelber). But in the “Great Longing” chapter, Zarathustra compares his soul to a vine with brown gold-grapes (braunen Gold-Weintrauben) (see also IV.19:6). Fifth, Zarathustra’s long meal with the higher men at the end of Part IV is described as the last supper (das Abendmahl), and the convalescent Zarathustra describes his struggle with his great nausea as a crucifixion. But this allusion to the Gospels dictates that the former event should chronologically precede the latter. Similarly, Part IV’s “Last Supper” should chronologically precede Nietzsche’s allusions to the Book of Revelation in the concluding chapter to Part III (III.16), while the apocalyptic imagery Nietzsche associates with the rise of the great noon at the end of Part IV naturally leads into Part III’s concluding allusion to the symbol of the seven seals in the Book of Revelation (III.5:3, III.7, III.10:2). Sixth, in the penultimate chapter of Part IV, the sleepwalking Zarathustra waits until midnight to whisper to the deficient higher men only what his thought says while still asleep and hidden from the world and the light of day (IV.19:3, 7).57 But in the “Convalescent” chapter Zarathustra Both Rosen (1995, pp. 242–244) and Gooding-Williams (2001, pp. 20, 280, 288–290) argue that Nietzsche did not intend us to take seriously Zarathustra’s communication to the higher men in this chapter because this is a degenerate imitation or caricature of Zarathustra’s authentically Dionysian songs at the end of Part III. But just because the higher men are not the right men to comprehend Zarathustra’s full teaching of eternal recurrence, it does not follow that he offers them only a degenerate rendition of this teaching. On the reading I am advocating here, Nietzsche intends us to notice that Zarathustra’s sleeping and still-concealed wisdom in “The Sleepwalker’s Song” anticipates and prepares us for his fully awakened and revealed wisdom in the last chapters of Part III. I agree of course that we are supposed to read the Part IV story as a parodic satyr play

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commands his thought to permanently awaken and rise out of his depths into the world and into the light of day: “And once you are first awake, you shall stay awake eternally for me. It is not my way to awaken great-grandmothers from their sleep in order to bid them – keep sleeping!” (III.13:1).58 Since Zarathustra’s thought cannot go back to sleep after being eternally awakened, the action of the penultimate chapter of Part IV must chronologically precede the action of the “Convalescent” chapter.59 Seventh, Zarathustra jokes and chats with his animals at the start of Part IV, recommends their advice to the higher men (IV.8), and repeatedly declares his love for them (IV.14). But at the end of the “Convalescent” chapter, and once he has entered into solipsistic conversation with his own soul, Zarathustra silences his animals, stops speaking with them, and even forgets about them altogether (III.13:2). Finally, toward the end of Part IV, Zarathustra describes himself as light, as waving with the wings that were grown by his nausea, and as “one prepared to fly, waving to all birds, prepared and ready, blessedly light prepared” (IV.13:18). But in his last words in Part III, Zarathustra describes himself as a bird that is actually flying: “I spread out a still sky above myself and flew with my own wings in my own sky:/… I swam playfully in the deep light-distances, and my freedom’s bird-wisdom came: –” (III.16:7). Since, however, Zarathustra has earlier said that one cannot fly into flying, but must first learn the previous stages of standing, walking, running, jumping, climbing, and dancing (III.11:2), his actual flight at the following the climax of Part III. But it does not follow, and it did not follow with the Athenian satyr plays on which Part IV is modeled, that the transition from tragic ending to satyr play indicates an abandonment of that which was achieved in the tragic ending. Given my reading of the Part IV story as chronologically leading into the Part III climax, we do not need to suppose, and indeed should not suppose, that the transition from the latter to the former is some kind of degeneration or abandonment. In Loeb 2007, I criticize Gooding-Williams’ more specific reasons for discounting the worth and authenticity of Zarathustra’s sleepwalker’s song. 58 As Hollinrake notes (1982, pp. 83–87), Nietzsche here parodies Wotan’s awakening of the sleeping and subterranean Erda in Wagner’s Siegfried. My reading adds the suggestion that, just as Wotan awakens the sybil Erda from her silent sleep of wisdom so as to have her speak her knowledge of the future (Siegfried, Act III, Scene 1), so too Zarathustra awakens his latent knowledge of eternal recurrence, commands it to speak to him, and gains prophetic powers. 59 I think this point serves to refute Whitlock’s argument (1990, pp. 28, 191–192, 279) that Zarathustra’s mastery of his thought of eternal recurrence at the end of Part III must be followed by his teaching of this thought to the higher men in the penultimate chapter of Part IV. See also Lampert, who writes that in IV.19 Zarathustra “becomes for the superior men what the animals had said he would become, the teacher of eternal recurrence” (1986, p. 309). But notice that Zarathustra does not teach the higher men what his animals said he would teach about the great year of becoming. In the next chapter, I discuss Zarathustra’s animals’ claim that it is his great destiny to be the first teacher of eternal recurrence and I argue that Zarathustra does in fact teach this doctrine at the end of Part III.

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end of Part III must be preceded by his readiness for flight in Part IV. As I explain in Chapter 7, this conclusion is supported as well by Nietzsche’s use of flight as a metaphor for escape from time’s bondage, together with his narrative claim that the redemptive deed needed for this escape takes place in the “Convalescent” chapter.60 T h ird -da y r e s u rr e ction There is a final important reason why, after ending his book with the triumphant last chapters of Part III, Nietzsche chose to add a fourth Part that relates events which chronologically precede this ending. I have already argued that Nietzsche designed Zarathustra as a kind of Aeschylean tetralogy and also as a kind of “fifth Gospel” (KSB 6, p. 327). However, both these literary genres suggest that the entire piece should conclude with a resurrection coda. In the case of Aeschylus, as Gilbert Murray persuasively argues, “tragedy represented the death of Dionysus or his counterpart, [while] the satyr-play represented his triumphant return or resurrection at the head of his rout of attendant spirits” (1940, p. 148, and pp. 5–9).61 And in the case of the Gospels (which were themselves influenced by the Dionysian cult (Seaford 2006, pp. 120–130)), the tragic crucifixion and death of Jesus is followed by his secret resurrection and return to his disciples.62 But since Nietzsche rejects the concept of literal resurrection (A 41–43, KSA 13:11[275]), he instead constructs an implicit temporal, dramatic and philosophical ellipsis (Genette 1980, p. 108) that can be filled

In Chapter 7, I explain Zarathustra’s claim already to be flying at the end of the very early chapter entitled “On Reading and Writing” (I.7). See also Murray 1962, p. 344; and Arrowsmith 1960, pp. 225–226. Indeed, since Nietzsche represents Zarathustra’s first two descents to humanity (at the start of Parts I and II, respectively) as metaphorical deaths, and his two ascents back to solitude (at the end of Parts I and II, respectively) as metaphorical rebirths, the entirety of the published Zarathustra may be read as exemplifying the tragic mystery doctrine of Dionysus’ three deaths and two rebirths (BT 10). More interestingly still, the ending of Part III and transition into Part IV seems to follow Murray’s outline of the Athenian tetralogy sequence which constituted the secret Dionysian mystery (1962, p. 362): Contest or Agon (with the dwarf and serpent), Tearing-asunder (Zarathustra’s shattered or dismembered state), Messenger (Zarathustra’s animals), Lamentation (Life with Zarathustra, and Zarathustra’s soul), Discovery (by the higher men), Recognition (by the higher men), and Resurrection (Zarathustra triumphantly returning to his work and to his disciples at the very end of Part IV). 62 Since he associates the deaths of Socrates and Zarathustra in Gay Science 340–342, and since he alludes to Plato’s writings in Part IV (e.g. in “The Last Supper”), Nietzsche is also alluding here to the metaphorical rebirth of Socrates following his death in the Phaedo (through the narrated recollections of Socrates’ activities and dialogues before his death, e.g. in the Symposium). 60 61

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in after he has written the conclusion of Zarathustra’s tragic Untergang.63 Since the time of this chronological gap is indefinite (lasting “months and years”), and since Part IV fills in only three days of this time,64 Nietzsche leaves himself room to write further analepses and to supplement further dramatic and philosophical events – perhaps the ones outlined in his unrealized plans for two additional Zarathustra parts. Supposing they were authentic, these plans could thus be explained by a John-inspired conceit of further appearances following the day of resurrection, or alternatively by Nietzsche’s contemporaneous query within those plans as to how many times does Zarathustra still have to be resurrected (KSA 11:30[9], 11:31[39]).65 Either way, as Nietzsche himself hints in a letter to his sister, these plans are most plausibly read as depicting further events leading up to the midnight Augenblick of Zarathustra’s death at the end of Part III: “it is no use, I must help my son Zarathustra to get his beautiful death, otherwise I cannot stop thinking about it” (KSB 6, p. 557).66 This elliptical design allows Nietzsche to resurrect Zarathustra on two different levels.67 On the first level, he metaphorically resurrects Zarathustra for his readers, who were led to believe that his story had come to an end with the conclusion of Part III. Just as Jesus is resurrected to his divine destiny on the third day after his death (Matthew 28:63–64; Luke 24:7, 24:21; KSA 9:4[252]), so too Zarathustra is resurrected to his great-noon destiny on the third day after his death at the end of Part III. Nietzsche’s secret My point here about Zarathustra’s metaphorical resurrection in Part IV should be distinguished from my point in Chapter 3 about Zarathustra’s literal recurrence as he crosses the gatewayAugenblick in his prevision at III.2:2 and in the fulfillment of this prevision at the end of Part III. 64 We know that Part IV ends on the third day after it begins because at the start of IV.2 the narrator says “the next day” (des nächsten Tages) and at the start of IV.20 the narrator says “the morning after this night” (des Morgens nach dieser Nacht). Thus, almost all of the action of IV takes place on the long single day that begins in the morning in IV.2 and ends after midnight in IV.19: Zarathustra’s morning encounters with each of the higher men, his noontime nap, his late-afternoon greeting to the assembled higher men, his evening supper with the higher men, the higher men’s evening songs and speeches to each other, the collective ass festival, and the collective midnight walk and sleepwalker’s song. At the end of IV the narrator observes that after Zarathustra remembers his conversation with the soothsayer he comprehends at a glance “all that had happened between yesterday and today” (Alles, was zwischen Gestern und Heute sich begeben hatte). 65 In an early unpublished note, Nietzsche remarks on the possibility of a satyr play having two acts (KSA 7:1[57]). 66 On my reading, since the brief outlines he wrote for these additional parts mostly concern dramatic and philosophical events that lead up to the conclusion of Part III, Nietzsche means that he feels the need to write in more detail about the events that lead up to the beautiful death that he has already depicted at the end of Part III. 67 Of course, these two levels collapse into one if the narrative frame is broken and if Nietzsche intends select members of his future reader audience to identify with Zarathustra’s children. I discuss this idea at more length in Chapter 8. 63

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distribution of Part IV to a select few may thus have been inspired by the Gospels’ narrative of the resurrected Jesus’ secret appearances among his favorite companions and disciples.68 It is also interesting that Nietzsche attempted to retrieve all the distributed copies so that Part IV might be published “after a few decades of world historical crises – wars!” (KSB 8, pp. 514–515). Perhaps Nietzsche wanted to imitate the Gospels’ account of the resurrected Jesus’ disappearance after briefly showing himself to a select few, as well as the subsequent prophecy in the Book of Revelation that Jesus would show himself to all following a time of world wars. In any case, Nietzsche’s design of the fourth and last part of Zarathustra seems to follow most closely that of the fourth and last Gospel, where the narrator seems to have knowledge of all the other synoptic Gospels and where the event of Jesus’ third-day resurrection is most emphasized. On the second level, and within the framework of the narrative itself, Nietzsche metaphorically resurrects Zarathustra for the higher men he meets throughout Part IV and for the disciples whose arrival is imminent at the end of Part IV. Following the Gospels’ account of Jesus’ resurrection, Nietzsche depicts the higher men’s search for signs of Zarathustra, followed by their initial failure to recognize him and their ensuing shock and adoration. Thus, one of the kings recalls his fear that Zarathustra might have died in the metaphorical sense that solitude had swallowed him up. And, indeed, as Zarathustra notes at the start of the Part III “Tablets” chapter and at the start of Part IV, he has been waiting alone on the mountains for so many years that his hair has turned white. Nevertheless, the king observes: “Now it happens that solitude itself becomes brittle and shatters, like a tomb that shatters and can no longer hold its dead. Everywhere one sees the resurrected.” (IV.11; see also II.11). However, Zarathustra has not been waiting alone on the mountains for the higher men and he will not be going down for the last time with them (IV.13). Instead, like Jesus, he has been waiting to appear to the disciples whom he last saw at the very end of Part II (II.22). These disciples, we find out at the end of Part IV, have also come up the mountain to find their departed teacher who has been entombed in his years-long solitude. Nietzsche thus concludes his book with the image of a glowing Zarathustra finally resurrected and risen from his long wait and departing to meet his disciples in the dawn of his rising great-noon day (IV.20). Following the Gospels, this great-noon resurrection ushers in the day of final judgment and the beginning of a new thousand-year kingdom (III.10:2, IV.1). Accordingly, the fictitious narrator of I am grateful to William Beardsley for this suggestion.

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this enigmatic fourth part – modeled perhaps on the beloved disciple who is said to be the source of the enigmatic fourth Gospel (John 21:20–24)69 – may be identified as one of Zarathustra’s children who indeed arrived shortly after he received the sign that they were near. C onc l usion In this chapter I have argued that Nietzsche designed Thus Spoke Zarathustra to conclude twice: chronologically with the ending of Part III, and structurally with the analeptic satyr play of Part IV. To take one central strand of my argument, I began by noticing that the arrival of Zarathustra’s ripening-sign at the end of Part IV had to chronologically follow Zarathustra’s wait for his ripening-sign at the start of the Part III “Tablets” chapter. This point led me to observe next that Nietzsche’s waiting theme at the start of the “Tablets” chapter leads directly into his treatment of this same theme at the start of Part IV. However, I argued, the end of Part IV must chronologically precede both the start of the Part III “Convalescent” chapter where Zarathustra has become ripe enough to bring forth his long-ripe fruit and the “Great Longing” chapter where Zarathustra complains of being overripe. I therefore concluded that Nietzsche intended Part IV to relate supplementary dramatic and philosophical events that are chronologically interposed between those related by the start of the “Tablets” chapter and the start of the “Convalescent” chapter. Given this exegesis, literalist readers are right to see the end of Part III as the culminating conclusion to a whole that begins with Parts I and II. At the same time, ironist readers are right to insist that Nietzsche must have intended Part IV to be an integral part of this same whole. But it is no longer necessary to suppose, as both literalists and ironists do, that the whole consisting of all four Parts is somehow incomplete, or that it is a fragment of a larger whole that does not exist.70 For this supposition, that Nietzsche’s book ends in midair, or that it has a beginning but no ending, is a result of reading the story of Part IV as a chronological sequel to the ending of Part III.71 On such a reading, it will certainly seem See “The Soothsayer” (II.19) for Nietzsche’s mention of Zarathustra’s most beloved disciple (perhaps the same young man befriended by Zarathustra in “On the Tree on the Mountain” (I.8)). 70 See Lampert 1986, pp. 157–158, 288, 353 n. 6; Higgins 1988, p. 150; Shapiro 1991, pp. 57–58. See also Fink 2003, p. 106; Deleuze 1994, pp. 92, 297–299; Whitlock 1997, pp. 241, 260; Gadamer 1988, pp. 230–231; Berkowitz 1995, pp. 211–227; Rosen 1995, pp. 207–208; Ansell-Pearson 1997, p. 77. 71 See, for example, Fink’s comment about the ending of Part IV: “One remains uncertain whether Zarathustra embarks on new revelations of his doctrines or on the fulfillment of a great deed. It is a strange ending which leaves behind a peculiar void” (2003, p. 106). 69

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that Nietzsche’s book leads us to expect, but does not fulfill, a narrative conclusion in which Zarathustra revaluates all values, descends to humans for the third and last time, celebrates the great noon with his reunited children, has his spirit transformed from that of a commanding lion into that of a yes-saying child, completes his creative work, gives humanity his richest gift while dying, and finally blesses himself as he dies (I.1, I.22:3, III.12:1, 3, IV.1, IV.20). By contrast, on the new interpretation I have offered, according to which Nietzsche designed Part IV as an analeptic satyr play that relates a story antedating the end of Part III, it is already possible to see the fulfillment of most of these events in the four concluding chapters of Part III. Specifically, as the last two items above suggest, and as I have been arguing in Chapters 2 and 3, it is possible to begin reading Nietzsche’s Zarathustra as a completely self-contained text in which the life of its protagonist comes to a climactic end precisely as Nietzsche announced it would when he first introduced the character of Zarathustra to the world (GS 342). On this reading, Zarathustra does indeed fulfill his tragic destiny, and Nietzsche does indeed succeed in completing his allusions to the tragic deaths of Dionysus, Empedocles, Socrates, Jesus, Faust, and Wotan. Still, this leaves the question as to how Nietzsche depicts the fulfillment of some of the other events I have listed above. In particular, although Zarathustra announces the arrival of his children at the end of Part IV, it is difficult to see how this prediction is fulfilled at the end of Part III. So far I have cited Nietzsche’s symbols of the garden and the doves in the “Convalescent” chapter as well as his Part IV emphasis on the fictive narrator. In the next chapter, I turn to discuss more fully Nietzsche’s theme of Zarathustra’s great-noon celebration with his reunited disciples (I.22:3) and to locate even more precisely the chronological place of Nietzsche’s analeptic satyr play.

C h a pt e r 5

The laughing lions

The title of Nietzsche’s book, as well as the signature line in nearly every chapter, emphasize Zarathustra’s speeches above all. But, as commentators have long pointed out, the book is not a mere collection of didactic speeches. Instead, these speeches are set into a story that from the very start details Zarathustra’s search for their appropriate audience.1 This means that Nietzsche intends us to pay close attention, not only to the content of Zarathustra’s speeches, but also to his interactions with his listeners. There are many such listeners, of many different kinds: the sun, his animals, town people, dancing girls, a tarantula, cripples, sailors, a dwarf, the sea, higher men, and even Zarathustra’s own heart and soul. Following Plato and the Gospels, however, Nietzsche designs his narrative so as to draw our attention especially to those who listen to the majority of Zarathustra’s speeches and who call themselves his “disciples” (Jünger) (I.22:1). For example: • The book begins with Zarathustra’s realization that he must speak to companions (Gefährten) and ends with his anticipation of their arrival as “laughing lions.” 2 In between, Part I ends with Zarathustra’s first See especially Bennholdt-Thomsen 1974; Alderman 1977, p. 39ff.; Higgins 1987, p. 96ff; Gadamer 1988; Pippin 1988; Nehamas 2000. At the very end of Part IV, Zarathustra has a prolonged vision of a powerful yellow lion. In an allusion back to Nietzsche’s famous first image of jungle cats – the tigers and panthers that lie down fawning at the feet of the Dionysian man (BT 20) – this lion lies at Zarathustra’s feet, lovingly presses his head against his knee, and will not leave him. Fulfilling Zarathustra’s announcement that his final descent must wait until he has received the sign of the laughing lion with the flock of doves (III.12:1), the lion literally laughs in wonder every time one of the newly arrived flocking doves glides across his nose. It is surely significant that Nietzsche chooses to end his entire book with this extremely vivid and concrete articulation of the schematic lion image introduced in Zarathustra’s first speech. Since Zarathustra had earlier called his children “laughing lions” (IV.11), Nietzsche’s concluding emphasis on the lion image draws our attention especially to Zarathustra’s returning disciples. Like the lion in his vision, these disciples will have grown powerful in their time away, but no less devoted and loving to their former master. Also like the lion in his vision, they will spurn and terrify the higher men whom they far surpass. For a further

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departure from his disciples; Part II begins with Zarathustra’s decision to return to them and ends with his second departure from them; Part III begins with Zarathustra’s sorrow over having just left his disciples; and Part IV begins with Zarathustra’s anticipation of their second reunion. This second reunion, about to be fulfilled at the end of Part IV, is according to Nietzsche’s narrative the start of a much-anticipated and climactic great-noon day in which Zarathustra and his disciples will together destroy the old values and create new ones; descend back to humankind; perform consecration, purification, and sacrificial rites; celebrate a festival in honor of Zarathustra’s timely and freely chosen death; and, finally, raise the sun of human knowledge up to its highest point. • Nietzsche depicts his protagonist Zarathustra as above all preoccupied with the creating, nurturing, teaching, testing, and commanding of his disciples. These disciples are Zarathustra’s beautiful artistic work, his children-heirs, his new race, his living-tree-garden in the Blessed Isles, his pupils, his smooth mirrors, his companions-brothers-friends, and his right-arm-warriors. None of the higher men in Part IV can measure up to them (IV.11, 13).3 • Nietzsche offers a narrative that clearly identifies Zarathustra’s disciples as the key to accomplishing his goal, realizing his destiny, and fulfilling his will and highest hope. Zarathustra says that these children of his highest hope will be the founders of a new nobility that will give rise to a new chosen people and begin his thousand-year kingdom as the ancestors of the superhuman (I.22:3, II.2). • Nietzsche portrays Zarathustra’s relation to his disciples as the source of his most intense and intimate feelings: love, desire, longing, joy, devotion, pleasure, aesthetic rapture, need, disappointment, revenge, bitterness, sorrow. This, at any rate, is the straightforward and utopian reading of Nietzsche’s narrative of Zarathustra’s relation to his disciples. In recent years, however, scholars have wondered whether Nietzsche did not design this narrative so as to show us rather the inevitable shortcomings and failure of any such relation. Perhaps, as Robert Pippin writes, “the dramatic and discussion of Nietzsche’s image of the laughing lion, and its relation to his infamous image of the blond beast, see Loeb 2004. 3 Despite this explicit point, some commentators (see Magnus 1988; Whitlock 1990, pp. 28, 102, 261; Schacht 1991; Nehamas 2000) downplay Zarathustra’s relation to his disciples and emphasize instead his relation to the inadequate higher men of Part IV.

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philosophic resolution of Zarathustra is that Zarathustra can only wait for the ‘age’ of his children, that, tragically, he can do little to help propagate or even prepare for such children, and that he cannot protect himself from the kind of constant mistakes about his audiences that he has made so frequently before” (1988, pp. 63–64). In support of this ironic and deflationary reading, these scholars have cited the following narrative details:4 • Although he had promised to be with his children for a third time in order to celebrate the great noon (I.22:3), Zarathustra fails to keep his promise. After his departure at the end of Part II, Zarathustra never returns to his disciples. At the end of Part IV Zarathustra announces that his children are near, but he does not actually see them and the narrator offers no confirming evidence of their arrival. • Indeed, leaving aside the unpublished Part IV, and as the book’s subtitle suggests, Zarathustra’s selected audience seems to dwindle from all to none. Toward the end of Part II, Zarathustra takes pains to conceal his thoughts from his disciples (II.20, 22) and by the end of Part III he excludes even his animals (III.13:2). Although his animals say that it is Zarathustra’s great destiny to be the first teacher of eternal recurrence (III.13:2), he never fulfills this great destiny. • On the way to Zarathustra’s self-imposed solipsism, there are important signs that Zarathustra’s disciples have failed him because they are not able to find their own way and guard themselves against him. As mere believers and followers, Zarathustra’s disciples (on their only speaking occasions) do not want to hear that he too is a poet (II.17), that his greatest event will be invisible and inaudible (II.18), and that he is vulnerable to the soothsayer’s prophecies (II.19). After each of these tests of his disciples, Zarathustra shakes his head, thus indicating their failure. • Besides his disciples’ failings, Zarathustra realizes that his own need for disciples has been problematic and that only he who suffers needs children and heirs (IV.19:9). In his night song he expresses his envy and feelings of revenge towards his disciples who are always receiving from him (II.9), while his stillest hour (II.22) and his return home (III.9) let him know that his love for his children was causing him to postpone and even avoid his great destiny. Joy needs no children, and at the end of Part III Zarathustra sings his joyful independence of any such need (III.16). See, for example, Bennholdt-Thomsen 1974; Lampert 1979; Higgins 1987; Pippin 1988; Conway 1989; Deleuze 1994; Berkowitz 1995; Nehamas 2000. Although Lampert’s 1986 account of Zarathustra’s relation to his disciples is less deflationary than his 1979 account, I argue below that he still underestimates this relation.

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In this chapter, then, I investigate more closely these various narrative details and I argue that they are not as problematic as they have seemed to these recent scholars. In particular, and drawing on my argument in the preceding chapter, I suggest that my alternative understanding of the structure of Nietzsche’s book resolves the difficulties cited above and supports instead the utopian reading I summarized earlier. R e va luation of va l u e s The Prologue to Nietzsche’s book concludes with Zarathustra’s decision to speak only to companions and no longer to the people. These new companions, he says, will be fellow creators (Mitschaffende) and fellow harvesters (Miterntende). As a creator, he seeks fellow-creators who will inscribe new values on new tablets. And as a harvester, he seeks his hundred fellowharvesters who know how to whet their sickles: those who will shatter the old tablets of values and break the old laws. Because these old values and laws are protected by the shepherds of the people who call themselves “the good and the just,” Zarathustra predicts that he and his new companions will be hated by them and called “destroyers” and “despisers of good and evil” (P:9). As Robert Gooding-Williams has recently argued, however, it would seem that Nietzsche ends his book without depicting this culminating revaluation. This is because Zarathustra had said he would accomplish this task together with his fellow-creators, and yet the book ends without their having arrived: Through most of Part 4, Zarathustra anticipates the appearance of the ‘children’ and ‘right men’ in whose company he hopes to become a creator of new values … Zarathustra ends, of course, without the appearance of Zarathustra’s children (they are said to be ‘near’) and without the creation of new values. The book’s conclusion shows Zarathustra believing that a creation of new values is imminent, yet hardly insists that his modernist optimism is well founded. And why should it? Having explained how new values could be created, Zarathustra ultimately leaves unresolved the question of whether what could be will be in the future. (Gooding-Williams 2001, pp. 19–20; see also pp. 302–304)5

Pippin 1988, pp. 63–65, offers a similar argument that Nietzsche deliberately left open the question whether Zarathustra’s children will appear. Strangely, these interpreters and others (Higgins 1987, pp. 231–232; Nehamas 2000, pp. 185, 187–189; Seung 2005, p. 334ff.) do not follow Nietzsche’s many clues that Zarathustra’s anticipated children at the end of Part IV are in fact his returning disciples. Nehamas and Seung are therefore led to the implausible claim that these children should be identified only with aspects of Zarathustra’s own self.

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Against this conclusion, however, there is Nietzsche’s instruction that his book already expresses a vision of some stronger future age in which some younger and healthier type, a Zarathustra-type, will have the strength to say and do what he himself, belonging to a weak and decadent age, could never say and do (GM II:24–25).6 So Zarathustra should itself be the place in which Nietzsche shares with us his prophetic vision of the actual creation of new values. In addition, if my argument in the last chapter is correct, Gooding-Williams here conflates Zarathustra’s structural ending with its chronological ending. If Nietzsche does indeed write the chronological ending in the concluding chapters to Part III, then we must look for his depiction of Zarathustra’s creation of new values in these same chapters. Among these, the chapter entitled “On Old and New Tablets” stands out right away. For this chapter, which Nietzsche later called the “decisive” (entscheidende) chapter of his book (EH Z:4), depicts Zarathustra as a Moses-like figure who inscribes new-value tablets and commands the destruction of the old-value tablets. Further, I have argued that the start of this chapter is where the story of Part IV picks up its narrative line of Zarathustra’s years-long wait for his children; and that the ending of Part IV, in which Zarathustra announces the imminent arrival of his children, has to take place sometime before the events of the next chapter begin. From these clues we should infer that Nietzsche depicts the prerequisite reunion of Zarathustra and his disciples in the “Old and New Tablets” chapter. Yet this conclusion would seem to be contradicted by the lack of any narrative suggestion that Zarathustra’s children are present.7 Indeed, except for the ubiquitous signature line, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” there is no narrative voice in this chapter at all. Instead, we hear only Zarathustra’s voice, and he begins by saying that he is talking to himself and telling himself to himself. Thus, unlike other chapters (even those in which we hear Zarathustra speak to the sun or to his animals), the long “Tablets” chapter would appear to contain an extended monologue in which Zarathustra simply reviews and summarizes his career and previous speeches.8 This I discuss this instruction at length in Chapter 8. Seung (2005, pp. 340–341) thinks this conclusion is also contradicted by Zarathustra’s passionate longing to have children with eternity in the “Seven Seals” song at the end of Part III, since this would seem to show that Zarathustra has a “short memory” of his reunion with his children before the “Convalescent” chapter. But this longing is actually expressed by Zarathustra’s soul and the latter, I have argued, is an incarnation of his final spiritual metamorphosis into the forgetting child. In addition, I argue below that Zarathustra’s longing to have children with eternity is actually an expression of his self-sufficiency and thus of his liberation from his previous need for children and heirs. 8 See Whitlock 1990, p. 216; Berkowitz 1995, p. 202; Rosen 1995, p. 198. 6 7

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is why Gooding-Williams writes about this chapter in particular: “As he speaks, however, Zarathustra creates nothing. Where Goethe’s Prometheus defiantly creates (forms) men, even as he sits, Zarathustra has deferred his creative action (his going among men with ‘new tablets’ of values) to an unspecified time in the future (‘my hour’) that he presently awaits” (2001, p. 206). Let us suppose, however, as Gooding-Williams convincingly argues, that Nietzsche is here alluding to Goethe’s 1773 poem “Prometheus.” Just as Zarathustra says at the start of the “Tablets” chapter, “Here I sit” (Hier sitz ich), so too the concluding stanza of Goethe’s poem begins with this phrase: “Here I sit [Hier sitz ich], forming men / in my own image, / a race to be like me, / to suffer, to weep, / to delight and rejoice, / and to defy you, / as I do” (Gooding-Williams 2001, p. 238; see also BT 9). To follow through on this allusion, rather than depart from it, Nietzsche needs to depict Zarathustra’s formation of men in his own image, his formation of a race that will be like him. But these men, this race (or at least the ancestors of this race), consist of his disciples (IV.11). And this formation is something Zarathustra has worked on each of the times he has been with his disciples, first in Part I and next in Part II. So it is precisely here, in the “Tablets” chapter, that Nietzsche should depict the second reunion and final formation that was promised at the end of Part I (I.22:3) and that has so far been missing in Part III. His book would then be artfully constructed so as to depict a tripartite interaction between Zarathustra and his beloved disciples (leaving the contrasting interaction with the inadequate higher men for the Part IV satyr play). Daw n r eu nion Although there is no narrative depiction of this second reunion, and although only Zarathustra speaks in this chapter, I think there is evidence of such a reunion within Zarathustra’s speech itself. To begin, Zarathustra’s review of his career and teachings lasts only through the first three sections of the chapter. Toward the end of the third section, Zarathustra reiterates his introductory waiting theme, thus indicating that he has finished telling himself to himself. In the next section, he turns instead to display one of his new tablets of values, and asks: “but where are my brothers, to carry it with me to the valley and into hearts of flesh?” Here Zarathustra refers to his realization in the Prologue that he must seek fellow-creators who will inscribe new values on new tablets (P:9). This question lets us know that Zarathustra is no longer just telling himself to himself, but is instead

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looking around expectantly for the companions who are supposed to hear this speech in particular. And this expectation in turn sets up the continuation of his speech in section 6, where all of a sudden we hear Zarathustra address his brothers directly and explicitly: “Oh my brothers, whoever is a first-born (Erstling) is always sacrificed. Now, however, we are first-borns.” Following this shift, and except for that part in section 30 addressed to his own will, the rest of Zarathustra’s speech is addressed entirely to these same brothers (also called “friends”). The reason, Nietzsche’s story suggests, is that Zarathustra has now been rejoined by the disciples whose arrival was imminent at the end of the chronologically preceding Part IV. According to this story, Zarathustra’s solitary wait at the start of the “Tablets” chapter has already extended many years (a time in which Zarathustra has become an old man with white hair) and has already been interrupted by the arrival of the higher men. So the disciples’ interruption of this solitude in the chapter’s sixth section, and Zarathustra’s expectation of such an interruption in the fourth section, are not abrupt at all. To continue my argument from the previous chapter, I would like to propose more specifically that Nietzsche’s analeptic satyr play relates events that belong in the implicit chronological gap between the remarks in the third and sixth sections of the “Tablets” chapter. On this reading, Nietzsche ingeniously threads a narrative line into Zarathustra’s speech itself – or, more precisely, into this speech’s expectation and awareness of its intended audience. Of course, this reading is quite a departure, and commentators have so far not paid much attention to the hermeneutic question of audience in the “Tablets” chapter. However, those scholars who have discussed this question all agree that Zarathustra is here speaking in solitude to a merely imagined audience of brothers that will be arriving sometime in the future. Thus, Lampert writes that – by contrast with the comparable speech in Part IV, “On the Higher Humans,” which is addressed to “actual men who, though superior, are not the longed-for followers” – the speech here is addressed to “true but imaginary followers” and to “an imaginary audience of brothers to whom will fall the tasks of the new nobility”(Lampert 1986, pp. 300, 204; see also 203–210).9 And Thomas Pangle observes that Zarathustra is in this chapter “speaking in utter privacy, and addressing only imagined future ‘brothers’” (1998, p. 245). Finally, Anke Bennholdt-Thomsen, whose study is devoted to Although Lampert describes Zarathustra’s “Tablets” speech as “public,” he seems to mean only that it is a solitary account of his public teaching. For what does it mean to say that Zarathustra’s speech is “public” if he is alone and knows that he has no audience?

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the question of Zarathustra’s audiences, characterizes the speech in this chapter as one of the monologues Zarathustra delivers after his return home. Commenting on Zarathustra’s unusual addresses to his brothers and friends, she writes that at this point in his career “there is no other possibility for him as teacher than to anticipate the future pupils in his solitude and to speak with them” (Bennholdt-Thomsen 1974, p. 121; see also pp. 120, 126).10 Nevertheless, much of the motivation for these scholars’ reading of the “Tablets” chapter derives from the standard account of Part IV as a chronological sequel to the ending of Part III. On this account, since Zarathustra’s children do not arrive until after the end of Part IV, then they certainly cannot have arrived in Part III. I would like to ask, however, whether there is evidence within this particular “Tablets” chapter to support this standard account. It is not enough to cite Zarathustra’s obviously monologic remarks in the first three sections of the chapter (or his rejoicing over his renewed solitude in the earlier chapter, “The Return Home”). For we need to know whether this initial solitude persists through the dialogic remainder of Zarathustra’s speech. Besides Zarathustra’s supposed solitude, then, is there any evidence within the chapter that Zarathustra is speaking to a merely imagined or anticipated audience of disciples? Writing about the concluding sections of Zarathustra’s speech, Lampert alludes to his use of the future tense: “Building with rising intensity to the harshest tablet he will set before his friends (§27), he imagines their shocked response (§28) and, granting its legitimacy, shows them how to overcome their initial horror (§§29–30)” (Lampert 1986, p. 208).11 Here, that is, Lampert suggests that Zarathustra is speaking about the tablet that he will set before his friends sometime in the future and is therefore merely imagining his disciples’ shocked response. In this speech, Lampert writes, Zarathustra prepares instructions for his followers (1986, p. 309). But a close look at the entirety of Zarathustra’s speech to his brothers, including the portion cited here by Lampert, shows that he is always speaking to them in the present tense only. Although the German simple future tense can be replaced by the simple present tense, this would require that the future action be indicated by the context – for example, by an adverb of time or some time expression.12 But in fact the context in these Similarly, Ronald Hayman writes that the audience Zarathustra addresses “consists of phantoms called up to dispel the overwhelming solitude” (1980, p. 270). See also Nehamas 2000, p. 175. 11 But see the very next page in which Lampert inconsistently, but more accurately, paraphrases Zarathustra’s speech as delivered in the present tense to a responsive audience. 12 I am grateful to David Tinsley for this clarification. 10

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passages indicates present action. Indeed, as the following examples show, Zarathustra seems to go out of his way to emphasize the present moment in which he is speaking to his brothers: “Now, however, we are first-borns” (§6); “Oh my brothers, is not everything in flux now?” (§8); “And now for the first time the great horror comes to humans … Now you shall be seafarers for me, valiant, patient!” (§28); “This new tablet, oh my brothers, do I set over you: become hard!” (§29). Also, Zarathustra repeatedly tells his brothers to look to the future, and it would be somewhat redundant to have him imagining a future speech in which he is directing his brothers toward the future. Nietzsche’s tenses in the “Tablets” chapter thus do not support, and even undermine, the idea that Zarathustra is merely imagining, or anticipating, or preparing for his future reunion with his disciples. Moreover, the concluding portion of Zarathustra’s speech further undermines this idea by exhibiting not only the presence of his intended audience, but also his interaction with that audience. Zarathustra does not merely imagine his audience’s response to his last words, but actually perceives and reacts to it: “Oh my brothers, do you understand this word too? … You flee from me? You are horrified? You tremble before this word?” (§§27–28). Zarathustra’s perception here does not anticipate some future event, but rather confirms what he had already anticipated at the start of Part II. In a warning that included the image of the lion for the first time since his first speech, Zarathustra described the violent roaring of his lioness wisdom and said: “Yes, even you, my friends, will be horrified by my wild wisdom; and perhaps you will flee from her together with my enemies” (II.1). Zarathustra’s parallel speech in Part IV, “On the Higher Humans,” although also a non-narrated monologue, contains the same sort of evidence of his presumably real interaction with his audience of actual and present higher men: “Do you understand this word, oh my brothers? You are horrified: do your hearts fail? Does the abyss here yawn for you? Does the hound of hell here yelp at you?” (IV.13:2).13 A final problem with the standard reading of Zarathustra’ speech in the “Tablets” chapter is that in fact Zarathustra does not speak and interact with just his disciples. Having commanded his disciples to shatter the ancient tablets of the pious, Zarathustra turns in section 16 to command them also to shatter a new tablet he found hanging in the public 13

Of course, what Zarathustra says to the deficient higher men is quite different from what he says to his returned disciples. For a good comparison of these two speeches, see Lampert 1986, pp. 300–301.

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markets. This is a tablet that preaches world-weariness, and in section 17 Zarathustra turns directly to the world-weary themselves (obviously not his disciples) and asks who wants to die now. He observes that no one takes up his offer, and perceives that their eyes and lips contradict their claim to world-weariness. In the next section, he distinguishes these people, who are merely lazy, from a man lying close by who is genuinely weary. But now Zarathustra has resumed speaking to his disciples, and he asks them to look closely at this man: he points out his languishing position in the dust, his defiant yawning, even the sun beating down on him and the dogs licking his sweat. He tells his disciples to leave the man alone, but to scare the dogs away. Later, in section 20, Zarathustra asks his disciples to see how these men of today roll into his depths. And in section 21, he advises his disciples to pass by the rabble who din in their ears, and he asks that they observe closely all the various ways in which the surrounding people behave like shopkeepers. Finally, in section 22, Zarathustra even seems to point as he speaks of some of these people who according to him are coarse beasts of prey. Morning c ons e cr ation In thus constructing Zarathustra’s speech to include references to the valley and the people below, Nietzsche completes his allusion to the biblical narrative in which Moses descends from the top of Mount Sinai in order to consecrate God’s chosen people and bring them the covenant and the new commandments (Exodus 32–35).14 Just as he had said he would do once he received the sign that it was the right time for it, Zarathustra sets out down the mountain to meet his ascending disciples so that together they may carry his new commandments to the valley and into hearts of flesh (III.12:1–4; IV.1, 11). All these details of Zarathustra’s speech thus imply the fulfillment of his leave-taking promise that he would be with his disciples a third time in order to celebrate with them the great noon (I.22:3) – a promise that was recalled at the very end of Part IV when Zarathustra 14

Some other Exodus allusions in Zarathustra’s speech are to Moses’ long wait on the mountains before his descent (§§1–3), to the Israelites’ sacrifice of first-born animals (§6), and to God’s instruction to build encircling boundaries around his mountain (§19). Nietzsche’s other important Exodus allusion, in the Part IV chapter entitled, “The Ass Festival” (IV.18) is to the Israelites’ worship of the golden calf after Moses told them his new commandments. On my reading, the allusions are linked: Zarathustra, like Moses, has to deliver his new commandments twice – first, in his speech to the higher men who then blaspheme him with their ass-idolatry; and second, in his speech to his returned disciples who (like the select sons of Levi) will end up overwhelming the higher men.

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sensed the proximity of his disciples and immediately proceeded to summon up the great noon (IV.20). Hence, besides depicting the second reunion of Zarathustra and his disciples, Nietzsche’s “Tablets” chapter should depict the start of this muchanticipated great-noon celebration. Again, as we have seen, commentators typically assume that Nietzsche postpones Zarathustra’s great-noon hour until some indefinite future not included in his book. But Nietzsche himself writes retrospectively that those who know his Zarathustra will find no mystery (Räthsel-Begriff ) in his vision of a great-noon festival where the most select (Auserwähltesten) consecrate (weihen) themselves to the greatest of all tasks (EH BT:4). This is a vision, he writes, which he first expressed in his untimely meditation on Wagner’s concept of Bayreuth (UM IV:4).15 In that essay, Bayreuth signified the morning-consecration (Morgen-Weihe) on the day of battle by those select few who have to fight “against everything that confronts them as a seemingly invincible necessity: against power, law, tradition, convention, and the whole order of things.” In order to find the courage to fight, these individuals must consecrate themselves to something above the personal that compensates them for their struggle, eases their worry about their personal inadequacy, and lets them forget their terrible anxiety over the prospect of death. They therefore prepare themselves to die and to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the highest task that is charged to all future human generations – the task of growing together into a single whole with a single common goal. On the reading I have offered so far, we can indeed find Nietzsche’s early vision reiterated in Zarathustra. This is because, at the end of Part IV, the Zarathustra who knows his disciples are about to arrive is likened to an emerging morning sun, commands the great noon to arise, and proclaims the moment in which he is speaking as his morning and the beginning of his day. Presumably, then, it is still Zarathustra’s morning when he is reunited with his disciples in the “Tablets” chapter toward the end of Part III. If we now turn to Zarathustra’s address to his brothers with Nietzsche’s Bayreuth allusion in mind, we are led to notice that he begins in section 6 by encouraging his first-borns to sacrifice themselves for their cause. He then spends most of the rest of his address exhorting them to fight against all established tradition, convention, and morality.16 In the See also Hollinrake’s quote (1982, p. 20) from unpublished material: “The fourth of the Untimely Meditations is entitled ‘Richard Wagner in Bayreuth’… Read: Nietzsche-Zarathustra and the festival of the future, the great noon. Nothing but world-historical accents; the genuine psychology of the genuine dithyrambic poet, the poet of Zarathustra.” 16 In Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, of course, Nietzsche is still influenced by Wagner and urges this fight for the ultimate sake of “love and justice” (UM IV:4). 15

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middle sections 11 and 12, Zarathustra articulates a positive supra-personal task that will justify all of their combat and sacrifice. He consecrates and directs (weihe und weise) his brothers to the task of founding a new nobility (Adel) that will write the word “noble” (edel) on new tablets. This nobility will not be founded upon that which has previously founded human nobility: wealth, family ancestry, service to royalty, or the fatherland. Nor is Zarathustra’s consecration like previous “spiritual” consecrations, such as Moses’ consecration of the Israelites as God’s chosen people, or King Arthur’s consecration of the Round-Table knights who sought the Holy Grail. Instead, Zarathustra directs his brothers to become begetters and cultivators and sowers of the future, and to found their new nobility upon their love of their children and heirs.17 For this reason, Zarathustra turns in sections 23–25 to write new values for his brothers regarding marriage and family: they should be fit for war and their women for child-bearing; their marriage should be decided carefully, honestly, and with a trial term if needed; and once decided, their marriage should assist them in propagating not only forward but upward.18 From such upward propagation, he says, there will ultimately arise a new chosen people (auserwähltes Volk) – the same chosen people he had earlier said would be able to yoke together the thousand ancient peoples and goals into a single unified humankind with a single common goal (I.15, 22:2; II.20; III.12:3).19 C a l l t o a rms Let us turn now to the central and dominant theme of Zarathustra’s speech in the “Tablets” chapter. Alluding often to his earlier speech, “On War and Warrior People,” Zarathustra presents himself as a commander and implicitly addresses his disciples as his obedient warriors (see §4, §25). Before he and his disciples can create new values, they must first seize the freedom and the right to do so by killing the great dragon called “thoushalt” (“Du-sollst”) upon whose scales glitter the values of a thousand years Nietzsche alludes back to this decisive “Tablets” chapter of Zarathustra when he concludes the first essay of Genealogy of Morals by encouraging his readers to go beyond good and evil and to desire, will, and promote the rekindling of the old aristocratic flame. See Loeb 1995 and 2004 for my further discussion of Nietzsche’s aristocratic revaluation of values. 18 Compare Nehamas’ claim that Zarathustra is not concerned to teach a tablet of values (2000, p. 174). 19 See also EH D:2, where Nietzsche ascribes to himself the task of “preparing a moment of supreme self-examination on the part of humankind, a great noon, when it looks back and looks forward, when it steps out from the dominion of accident and priests and for the first time poses, as a whole, the questions why?, to what end?” I discuss Nietzsche’s strategy for unifying humankind in Chapter 7. 17

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and a thousand peoples. Accordingly, speaking to his disciples with his leonine imperative voice, Zarathustra repeatedly commands them to shatter all the old tablets of values. In obeying this command, his disciples will enact their own new role as laughing lions and thieving predators whose power enables them to find illusion and caprice in the old values and commandments they previously considered holy (P:9; I.1). Alluding again to Moses’ commandments, Nietzsche has Zarathustra single out especially the ancient commandments “Thou shalt not steal!” and “Thou shalt not kill!” (§10) – thus indicating that he and his warriors will themselves have to steal and kill in order to be able to create new values. But he counsels his brave swordsmen to let pass the despised rabble, and instead spare their hard-cutting swords for a worthier and hated enemy (§21). These true enemies, Zarathustra announces, are the shepherds and guardians of the rabble who call themselves “the good and the just” (die Guten und Gerechten). Zarathustra’s entire address to his warrior-disciples therefore culminates in a call to arms against the good and the just: Oh my brothers! With whom does there lie the greatest danger for the whole human future? Is it not with the good and the just? – … They hate the creator most: he who breaks the tablets and old values, the breaker – they call him the law-breaker. For the good – cannot create: they are always the beginning of the end: – they crucify the man who writes new values on new tablets, they sacrifice the future to themselves – they crucify the whole human future! The good – they have always been the beginning of the end. – Oh my brothers, have you understood this word too? And what I once said about the ‘last human’? – – With whom does there lie the greatest danger for the whole human future? Is it not with the good and the just? Shatter, shatter the good and the just for me! – Oh my brothers, have you understood this word too? (§§26–27)20

Although commentators have not paid special attention to this startling peroration,21 Nietzsche’s presentation shows that he himself regarded this passage as the most radical and controversial in his entire book. Just before and just after the sentence in which he commands his disciples to shatter (zerbrecht) not just the old tablets but the good and just themselves, Neither Kaufmann nor Hollingdale translate Nietzsche’s “mir” in his sentence, “Zerbrecht, zerbrecht mir die Guten und Gerechten!” 21 For an exception see Schutte 1984, pp. 135–139. But she does not offer a close reading of this passage, and even suggests that Zarathustra is here speaking to the higher men (who are spurned by the lion at the end of Part IV). 20

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Zarathustra asks his audience whether they have understood his “word” (Wort).22 Nietzsche thus implies that Zarathustra’s single brief command is literally incredible to his audience, so much so that they may not even have understood it at first.23 But then Zarathustra observes the horror and shock that follows their belated comprehension of his word (§28). As he had anticipated earlier in the book, even his most devoted disciples seem terrified by his wild lioness wisdom, and he worries that some of them might even be driven off by her and join his enemies. Although their return and assembly in this chapter shows that his disciples had indeed passed his earlier tests, Zarathustra implies that he has now begun in earnest the testing he had promised earlier: “Yonder, where storms plunge down into the sea … / [Each of my children] shall be known and tested, to see whether he is of my race and descent … / one who writes with my will on my tablets” (III.3). This is because his word has now for the first time embarked humankind upon newly stormy high seas where it will find no moral compass and where it will experience the great terror, the great looking-around (Um-sich-sehen), the great nausea, the great sea-sickness. Zarathustra therefore counsels his disciples: “Straighten up by me in time, oh my brothers, learn to straighten up! The sea is storming: many want to straighten themselves up again by your aid. / The sea is storming: everything is at sea. Well then! Come on! You old seamanhearts!” (§28). Responding to the lack of destiny he sees in his disciples’ glances, Zarathustra compares himself to a flashing, cutting diamond and exhorts his noble brothers in war to become hard like him so that they may conquer and create alongside him (§29).24 Hollingdale translates “Wort” variously as “word,” “saying,” and “teaching,” thereby obscuring some of Nietzsche’s key associations. Nietzsche’s language in this passage recalls his own veiled directive in the conclusion of his first book: “Some day, [the German spirit] will find itself awake in all the morning freshness following a tremendous sleep: then it will slay dragons, destroy vicious dwarfs … What is most painful for all of us, however, is – the prolonged degradation in which the German genius has lived, estranged from house and home, in the service of vicious dwarfs. You understand the word [das Wort] – as you will also, in conclusion, understand my hopes” (BT 24). Although Zarathustra’s command does not share the anti-Semitic overtones of Nietzsche’s earlier Wagnerian allusion, it is not difficult to see how Zarathustra’s identification of the good and the just with the Pharisees who crucified Jesus (BT 26) might have attracted the Christian anti-Semitic audience that Nietzsche complained about in his correspondence. 24 Under the title, “The Hammer Speaks,” Nietzsche quotes this same exhortation at the very end of his later Twilight of the Idols (subtitled, “How One Philosophizes with a Hammer”), immediately following his invocation of his teaching of eternal recurrence. In the next chapter I discuss Nietzsche’s conception of the relation between Zarathustra’s overcoming of compassion and his hammer-like teaching of eternal recurrence. See also Gillespie’s interesting suggestion (1988, p. 143) about the significance of Nietzsche’s wanting to append the last two sections of Zarathustra’s “Tablets” chapter to the end of his later works, Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist. 22 23

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Thus, toward the end of his book’s “decisive ” chapter, Nietzsche has the lion-voiced Zarathustra speak the commanding word that begins to fulfill his predictions of a great-noon day of apocalyptic violence and destruction.25 Alluding to the Bible’s book of Revelation, Nietzsche suggests that the final judgment has now begun, and that Zarathustra’s disciples must now begin wielding their “swords of judgments” (Richtschwerten) and fulfill their anticipated role as his hundred sickles and fellow harvesters (III.10:2).26 Just as he himself had overcome his compassion at the end of Part IV and thereby become a lion-spirited bronze-faced commander, Zarathustra now orders his newly arrived lions to overcome their own compassion and to embrace the evil, cruelty, and hardness that will allow them to cut into the living (§§7, 20, 29). These lions, and Zarathustra himself, are “laughing” lions because “in laughter all evil comes together, but sanctified and absolved through its own bliss” (III.16:3).27 Fin a l fa r e w e l l a nd l a st w i l l On the reading I have offered here, according to which the analeptic satyr play of Part IV has a chronological place within the “Tablets” chapter, Nietzsche’s addition of a fourth part no longer counts against all the evidence that Part III concludes with the death of Zarathustra. Still, it might seem that there is a contradiction in this death taking place shortly after Zarathustra has left his cave glowing (glühend) and strong like a morning sun that has come out of dark mountains (IV.20). This is why Claudia Crawford, for example, observes: “In the last section of Part IV, See also KSA 12:2[71]: “Der entscheidende Moment: Die Rangordnung. 1) Zerbrecht die Guten und Gerechten!” 26 See III.5:3 for an allusion to the final harvest; III.7 for an allusion to the pillars of fire that will destroy the great city of Babylon; and III.10:2 for an allusion to the revelation itself. 27 Here Nietzsche alludes to the ancient myth of the laughing, leonine god Dionysus as a hunter and man-shatterer (Seaford 2006, p. 76) and to his own depiction of the shame-free philosophergod as inhumanly counseling humans to become stronger and more evil (BGE 295). Contrary to Rosen (1995, p. 244) and Lampert (1986, p. 311), then, it is unlikely that Nietzsche intended his final association of the lion and the doves to convey the peaceable expectation that the lion will lie down with the lambs (Isaiah 11:6–9). By contrast with Zarathustra and his children, the higher men in Part IV can only recall their own panther-like desire for this kind of laughter: “Full of cats’ prankishness, / Leaping through every window / Swish! into every chance, / Sniffing out every jungle, / Sniffing with greedy longing, / That in jungles / Among colorfully speckled beasts of prey / You might roam, sinfully healthy and colorful and beautiful, / With lusting lips, / Blissfully jeering, blissfully hellish, blissfully blood-thirsty, / Preying, prowling, peering: … / You that have seen man / As God and sheep – : / Rending the God in man / No less than the sheep in man, / And while rending laughing – / That, that is your bliss! / A panther’s and eagle’s bliss!” (IV.14). See Loeb 2004 for a further discussion of Nietzsche’s image of leonine laughter. 25

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‘The Sign’, there is no clear indication that Zarathustra will die; ‘glowing and strong’ he leaves his cave. This does not sound like a death” (1995, p. 77).28 However, we know that lots of time has passed since Zarathustra descended his mountain at the age of forty and that he is now an old man with white hair. In addition, Zarathustra has taught the doctrine that at the right time one should freely choose to die: “My death I praise to you, the free death which comes to me because I choose (den freien Tod, der mir kommt, weil ich will)” (I.21). And the right time for someone like himself, who has a goal and heirs, is the time when he has become sweetly ripe and when his spirit and virtue still glow (glühn) like a sunset around the earth. Such a time is best if he wants to be loved longest and if he does not want to become too old for his truths and his victories. But this is precisely the time in which he finds himself at the very end of Part IV.29 Commentators have often pointed to Zarathustra’s free-death speech as a prime example of a place where events are anticipated but not fulfilled within the scope of the book’s narrative. In particular, they have noted Zarathustra’s promise in this speech that he would show his disciples his own freely chosen and timely death: “Thus I want to die myself that you, my friends, may love the earth more for my sake.” This was an important promise because Zarathustra said that he who has a goal and an heir should freely choose to die at the right time for the sake of his goal and his heir. And he also said at the end of his speech that he had a goal (the solar superhuman), that he threw his golden ball, and that his disciples are now the heirs of this goal.30 So according to his own teaching Zarathustra But see Crawford’s acknowledgment later in her book that the autumnal time, the harvest time, the time when all has turned out well, is according to Zarathustra precisely the time when the voluntary death has its greatest effect on the heirs of one’s goal (1995, p. 171). My claim that Nietzsche depicts Zarathustra’s free death at the end of Part III undermines Crawford’s suggestion that Nietzsche denied a voluntary death to his fictional character because he himself intended to enact this voluntary death in the guise of simulated madness (1995, pp. 135–136, 245). Indeed, since Crawford draws evidence for Nietzsche’s “voluntary death” from the concluding chapters of Part III (1995, pp. 129–130), she undermines her own claim that Zarathustra does not die at the end of Part III (1995, pp. 75–76). 29 In a direct allusion to his free-death speech mention of the sour apple that ripens all at once on the last day of autumn, Zarathustra is told by his stillest hour that he had become young late and that he still had to overcome the pride of his youth by returning to his solitude and becoming mellow and ripe (II.22). So when Zarathustra does become ripe just like this at the end of Part IV, he is now ready to fulfill his promise of a freely chosen and timely death. See also Zarathustra’s remark in “Tablets” §3 about wanting to die while giving his richest gift, just as the sun goes down over-rich. 30 In the “Noon” chapter of Part IV, Nietzsche depicts Zarathustra’s ecstatic vision of this same golden ball: “Lass mich doch! Still! Ward nicht die Welt eben vollkommen? Oh des goldnen runden Balls!” (IV.10). 28

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should die a freely chosen and timely death that will be a spur and promise to his disciples; that will be consummating and victorious; and that will be a beautiful festival in which he consecrates the oaths of the hope-filled heirs that surround him. It is puzzling, then, that Zarathustra concludes his speech on free death by apologizing to his disciples for still lingering on the earth because he enjoys watching them throwing the golden ball. This is why Lampert, for example, remarks that Zarathustra’s teaching on free death is “of special interest because he refuses it”: “But Zarathustra betrays his own teaching when, instead of giving his disciples a riveting example of death in the interest of the superman, he lingers as a spectator of what he anticipates will be the historic drama of their march toward the superman … He needs forgiveness from his disciples because he is depriving them of an occasion for resolve, perhaps even the occasion” (1986, pp. 71–72; see also Crawford 1995, p. 135). As Lampert himself admits, however, Nietzsche’s narrative lets us know that if Zarathustra had died at the time of his Part I free-death speech, he would have died at the wrong time, namely too early. This is because Zarathustra is at this time (like Jesus) still too melancholy, still too full of hatred of the good and the just, and still not ripe enough in his love (I.21, II.22). But this does not mean that Zarathustra betrays his free-death teaching or that he fails his disciples by depriving them of the occasion for resolve in the goal they have inherited from him. Instead, Nietzsche must show Zarathustra freely choosing to die at a later point in the narrative when it is actually the right time for him to die. On my reading, this later point is the conclusion of Part III when the fully ripened Zarathustra has conquered the spirit of gravity as well as the good and the just.31 We should therefore expect to see Zarathustra wanting or choosing to die at the end of Part III. And, indeed, this expectation is confirmed, as we have seen, in many ways: the convalescent Zarathustra’s animals observe that he wants to die (“Und wenn du jetzt sterben wolltest, oh Zarathustra …”) and that he would die breathing deeply with bliss (III.13:2); Zarathustra himself observes his over-ripe soul’s great longing for the golden freely chosen death-bark (freiwilligen Nachen) with the vintager-deliverer and the vintager’s knife (III.14)32; Zarathustra’s over-ripe soul takes heart-stopping delight in his vision of this golden death-bark (III.15:1); life accuses I explain this two-fold conquest in the next chapter. In “Tablets” §17, Zarathustra asks the world-weary why they will not freely embark on the deathbark (Todes-Nachen) and, alluding back to his free-death speech, suggests that they should choose to pass away.

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Zarathustra of not being faithful to her because he wants to die when the ancient heavy bell strikes midnight (“ – du denkst daran, oh Zarathustra, ich weiss es, dass du mich bald verlassen willst!” – ) (III.15:2);33 also, as I have argued, Zarathustra secretly whispers to life that her self-overcoming nature dictates that it is the right time for him to die (III.15:2); and, finally, Zarathustra’s soul joyfully sings his affirmation and blessing when the ancient heavy bell strikes midnight (III.16).34 It is true that the convalescent Zarathustra’s last moments at the end of Part III are spent in complete solitude and silence. But I have argued that Zarathustra has just finished consecrating the oaths of his hope-filled reunited children in a great-noon festival and that these same children (as symbolized by the garden and the flock of doves) are waiting outside Zarathustra’s cave during his last moments at the end of Part III. On my reading, then, Zarathustra does indeed fulfill his early promise to show his disciples his own freely chosen and timely death. According to Nietzsche’s later account in Twilight of the Idols, such a death should be “brightly and cheerfully accomplished amid children and witnesses: so that a real farewell is still possible, where the one who is taking leave is still there; also a real estimate of what has been achieved and willed, a summation of the life” (IX:36). Commentators have usually interpreted Zarathustra’s unusually long speech in the “Tablets” chapter as Nietzsche’s device for reviewing his protagonist’s career in the reader’s mind. As Hollingdale writes, for instance, Zarathustra deserts his disciples at the end of Part II “and this time for good.” Hence, he writes, in Part III “[f]or the most part Zarathustra is alone and addressing himself” and the “Tablets” speech “is a re-exposition in brief of Zarathustra’s teachings, up to but not including the theory of the eternal recurrence” (1961, pp. 33–34). Similarly, Kaufmann writes of the “Tablets” chapter: “Attempt at a grand summary, full of allusions to, and quotations from, previous chapters” (1954, p. 262). But on my reading, Zarathustra’s “Tablets” speech after section 3 is directed at his surrounding reunited children and is in fact just the sort of final estimate Whitlock (1990, pp. 227, 237 n. 69, 98–99) notices life’s allusion to Zarathustra’s earlier teaching of voluntary death, and rightly observes that Zarathustra should die at the highest point of maturity and greatness which is attained by him at the end of Part III. But the structural position of Part IV, which ends with Zarathustra still alive, leads him to conclude that Nietzsche planned to depict the death of Zarathustra in some further Part that was never written (1990, pp. 241, 260, 278, 281). 34 Hollingdale obscures Nietzsche’s concluding allusions to Zarathustra’s promised voluntary death by leaving untranslated Nietzsche’s use of the verb wollen and thus Zarathustra’s animals’ suggestion that he wants or chooses to die (“And if you should die now”) and life’s accusation that he wants or chooses to leave her (“you think of leaving me soon”). 33

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and summation that Nietzsche describes above as the proper preparation for a bright and cheerful death. Zarathustra has taken leave of his disciples twice before, in the endings of Part I and Part II, and my reading proposes that his “Tablets” speech in Part III constitutes his third and final farewell. As one who takes his leave while he is still there, Zarathustra uses his final speech to transform his impending death into a spur and a promise for his reunited children, into the occasion for their renewed resolve, and into a beautiful evening festival that helps them love the earth more for his sake. On this reading of Zarathustra’s “Tablets” speech as a final farewell to his disciples, the last section (§30) is of course the most significant. In these very last words of his very last speech to his disciples, Zarathustra turns to speak to his own will. Alluding back to his warning in his freedeath speech that sometimes grinning death will creep up like a thief and overcome the victor, Zarathustra begins and ends his speech by asking his will to spare him for one great destiny and one great victory: “Ah, who does not succumb to his victory! / Ah, whose eye does not darken in this drunken twilight! Ah, whose foot does not stumble and in victory forget – to stand!”35 Alluding also to his promise at the end of his first farewell that he and his disciples would declare their last will (letzter Wille) during their third meeting and great-noon celebration (I.22:3), Zarathustra asks his will to spare its last greatness for its last feat so that it might be inexorable in its victory: “Und deine letzte Grösse, mein Wille, spare dir für dein letztes auf, – dass du unerbittlich bist in deinem Siege!” As Crawford notes, Zarathustra’s last will is thus “his last instance of willing” as well as “his last will and testament, that which he leaves those who survive him” (1995, p. 245).36 Although Zarathustra does not say what this last will is, we know from his first farewell that it must involve the birth of the superhuman.37 Finally, recalling his promise to show his disciples a freely chosen and victorious (siegreich) death, Zarathustra implies that his final and greatest victory will be his last because he will choose to die in victory. Comparing As he anticipates in the vision-riddle that is fulfilled in the final chapters of Part III, Zarathustra’s great destiny is to be the teacher of eternal recurrence and his great victory is to use this thought to defeat his archenemy the spirit of gravity. I explain Zarathustra’s great victory in the next two chapters. 36 Crawford makes this point about Nietzsche’s “Last Will” poem in his Dithyrambs of Dionysus, which she rightly traces back to section 30 of the “Tablets” chapter in Zarathustra. 37 Zarathustra’s first farewell ends as follows: “‘Dead are all gods: now we want the superhuman to live’ – on the great noon, let this be our last will!” (I.22:2). This last will is reiterated in Zarathustra’s parallel speech to the higher men, when he says to them that the great noon comes and: “God died: now we want the superhuman to live.” On my reading, Zarathustra’s ass festival and celebration with the higher men in Part IV is paralleled by his great-noon festival and celebration with his children in the “Tablets” chapter of Part III. 35

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himself to the sun and describing his will as a solar will, Zarathustra takes a solemn oath in front of his disciples to annihilate himself through the very deed that grants him an annihilating victory:38 That I may one day be … a bow lusting for its arrow, an arrow lusting for its star: – a star ready and ripe in its noon, glowing, pierced, enraptured by annihilating solar arrows: – a sun itself and an inexorable solar will, ready to annihilate in victory (Siegen)! Oh will, cessation of all need, you my necessity! Spare me for one great victory (Siege)! – –

As Gooding-Williams rightly observes, Zarathustra here imparts “a vision of self-annihilation, picturing his dying as an act of birth-giving that will engender the ‘lightning’ that is the overman”; depicts “the triumph of [his] (now hidden) will as collateral to an act of ecstatic self-sacrifice”; and celebrates “a vision of his will as at once triumphant and disposed to selfannihilation” (2001, pp. 249–250). Z a r at h ustr a’s gr e at de stiny There thus remains only the question of how Zarathustra fulfills his promise at the end of Part I that his third meeting with his disciples would be the occasion for celebrating with them the high-noon moment of his great-noon day, that is, the moment when the sun of human knowledge stands at its peak (I.22:3). Since Nietzsche elsewhere uses this same highnoon image to symbolize humankind’s discovery of the thought of eternal recurrence (KSA 9:11[148]), this is the question of how Zarathustra fulfills what his animals say is his great destiny (grosse Schicksal) as the first teacher of eternal recurrence (III.13:2). Certainly, Zarathustra anticipates this great destiny at the very end of the “Tablets” chapter: “You destination of my soul, which I call destiny! You-in-me! Over-me! Keep me and spare me for one great destiny [Einem grossen Schicksale]!” (III.12:30). But Zarathustra says these words after he has stopped directly addressing his disciples and is speaking instead to his own will. Moreover, when we turn to the immediately following chapter, “The Convalescent,” where we should expect to see Zarathustra fulfilling his great destiny and where he 38

Here Zarathustra alludes to his fulfillment of his stillest hour’s prediction that he will speak his word and break of his word (II.22) and to his animals’ prediction that upon dying Zarathustra will say to himself that he spoke his word and broke of his word (III.13:2).

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does indeed speak explicitly of eternal recurrence, we find that he is no longer speaking to his disciples at all. Instead, he speaks only to his most abysmal thought and to his animals. Although his animals speculate that a new knowledge (Erkenntnis) has come to him, and although they say that they know what he teaches, we do not see Zarathustra teaching at all. After his animals have left him alone, and throughout the remainder of Part III, Zarathustra lies silent and still with closed eyes like a sleeper, forgets the world and all witnesses (including his animals), and enters into a completely solitary conversation with his own soul.39 Confronted with this puzzling conclusion to Part III, and assuming that this conclusion is chronologically followed by the story related in Part IV, commentators have typically looked to Part IV for the fulfillment of Zarathustra’s great destiny as the first teacher of eternal recurrence. In particular, they have looked to the penultimate chapter of Part IV, entitled “The Sleepwalker’s Song,” where Zarathustra teaches the higher men how to sing and interpret the “Once More” roundelay that his soul sings toward the very end of Part III. In this chapter, Zarathustra initiates the assembled higher men, who are now convalescing and joyful, into his Dionysian mystery-doctrine of eternal recurrence. Some of the marks of a Dionysian initiation include Zarathustra’s whispering and secrecy, his three calls for silence, the shared altered states of intoxication and sleepwalking, and the mysterious, still, and moonlit midnight hour with the tolling bell.40 Accordingly, Lampert writes that in this chapter Zarathustra “becomes for the superior men what the animals had said he would become, the teacher of eternal recurrence” (1986, p. 309). Answering the question famously posed by Heidegger, “Who is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?,” Lampert writes that he is “the wise man who teaches the superior men the grounds for eternal return” (1986, p. 309). Similarly, Greg Whitlock writes that “it is not enough that [in Part III] Zarathustra summons, masters and survives the doctrine [of eternal return], for he must also teach it. This does not transpire until IV.19” (1990, p. 191).41 Although Zarathustra’s destiny is to In Ecce Homo (Z:7), Nietzsche writes: “ – What language will such a spirit speak when he speaks to himself alone? The language of the dithyramb. I am the inventor of the dithyramb.” In Gay Science 367, Nietzsche explains further that only a truly godless artist like himself can invent a truly monological art that depicts a solitude without any witnesses. Nietzsche’s Dithyrambs of Dionysus are similarly written from the point of view of Zarathustra’s monological conversations with himself. 40 For further discussion of this Dionysian aspect, see Seung, p. 290ff. 41 Strangely, though, at the very end of his commentary, Whitlock writes: “In refraining from teaching the eternal return during the previous evening, Zarathustra succumbed to his temptation [of pity] and spared the higher man” (1990, p. 280). 39

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teach eternal recurrence, and although “achieving this destiny formed the plot of the first three Parts,” he has no real chance to fulfill his destiny by actively teaching the notion to others, e.g., the higher men, until the very last sections of Part IV. Once this is accomplished, the necessary Parts of the work are complete and Zarathustra comes to a close, though much could have conceivably followed. (Whitlock 1990, p. 28)

However, there are several problems with this interpretation of Zarathustra’s great destiny. In the first place, and most obviously, Zarathustra tells the higher men that they are not the right men for him (IV.11:13) and thus presumably for his world-historical teaching. And, indeed, the morning after initiating the higher men (IV.20), Zarathustra notices that they continue to sleep while he is awake because they are missing the ear that listens to him and that obeys him. He thus says again, to his heart this time, that they are not his right companions, and that he is still waiting for the latter. At this point, Zarathustra receives the sign that these right men and companions are near, and he watches as the laughinglion-aspect of his sign frightens away the now-awakened and assembled higher men. Since Zarathustra has earlier called his children “laughing lions,” this vision symbolizes the replacement of the inadequate higher men by the newly returned perfect men and companions. Lampert himself admits this point when he recounts how, the morning after Zarathustra’s midnight instruction, the higher men resume their cry of need (1986, pp. 310–311). This is why he retreats to the position that “Nietzsche privately permitted himself this spectacle of instructing the best, albeit needy, men of his age in his most important teaching” (1986, p. 310). As Lampert correctly observes when comparing Zarathustra’s “Higher Men” speech with his “Tablets” speech, Zarathustra’s instruction to the weak and needy higher men is a tempered version of the instruction he prepares for his strong and complete children (1986, p. 301). So, given Zarathustra’s description of eternal recurrence as a weighty thought that only the strongest can bear (II.2), we should expect him to teach the higher men only a tempered version of this thought. And, indeed, as I argued in the last chapter, the sleepwalking and intoxicated Zarathustra teaches the higher men only what his thought says while still asleep and hidden from the world and the light of day (IV.19:3,7).42 Although Zarathustra’s 42

Or, in Zarathustra’s metaphorical terms, he teaches the higher men what his child-thought of eternal recurrence says while still in his womb, as opposed to what it says after he gives birth to it and reaches his hand to help it out of his womb.

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animals say that it is his great destiny to become the first teacher of eternal recurrence, Zarathustra does not teach the higher men what his animals say they know he teaches about eternal recurrence (which is different than what they, as animals, think about eternal recurrence) – namely, the cosmological doctrine of the great year of becoming that turns itself over again and again like an hourglass (III.13:2). In fact, and this is perhaps the most important difficulty for those like Lampert and Whitlock who see Zarathustra’s great destiny fulfilled in IV.19, Zarathustra does not actually teach eternal recurrence to the higher men. In the famous concluding sections of IV.19, Zarathustra teaches the higher men the value and necessity of affirming the eternal recurrence of life, but not this eternal recurrence itself.43 He instructs them only that joy wants recurrence; that if they have ever said “Yes” to one joy, then they must want that joy to return; and that the entwinement of all things dictates that they must want everything to return along with that joy, even all their woe. So there remains Nietzsche’s riddle as to when, and how, Zarathustra fulfills his great destiny as the first teacher of the eternal recurrence. Again, some scholars would argue that Nietzsche indefinitely postpones this event to some future time not depicted in his book. But on the reading I have proposed, according to which Nietzsche’s book is complete and self-contained, Zarathustra must teach what his animals know he teaches sometime after he has fully awakened his thought and yet sometime before he dies at the very end of Part III. On my reading of Part IV as an analeptic satyr play, Zarathustra cannot have taught eternal recurrence to the higher men because he speaks to them before he has awakened his thought.44 But neither can he have taught eternal recurrence to his disciples because he does not speak to them at all after he has awakened his thought. It is true that Zarathustra speaks to his animals after awakening his thought, but this speaking is not instruction, and in any case these animals proclaim his great destiny and say right away that they already know what he teaches. The key to solving this riddle of Zarathustra’s destiny, I propose, is to reject the assumption, expressed by Whitlock for example, that Zarathustra Clark makes a similar point when she notes that the higher men praise Zarathustra for teaching them to say to death, “Was that life? Well, then, once more!” – “not a recurrence cosmology, but the affirmation of recurrence” (1990, p. 256). But from this point, and from the fact that we never hear Zarathustra directly teaching a recurrence cosmology to others, she mistakenly concludes that he does not teach a recurrence cosmology at all. 44 On my reading of Part IV as an analeptic satyr play, Zarathustra’s IV.19 exegesis of his “Once More” song chronologically precedes his soul’s singing of this song at the end of Part III. At the same time, and in keeping with its analeptic function, this exegesis helps the reader to understand the song that structurally precedes it. 43

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must “fulfill his destiny by actively teaching the notion to others” (1990, p. 28, my italics). In fact, what Zarathustra’s animals say is that his great destiny, a destiny that was never yet any human destiny, and that is also his greatest danger and sickness, is as follows: to be the teacher of eternal recurrence (du bist der Lehrer der ewigen Wiederkunft) and to be the first to have to teach this doctrine (als der Erste diese Lehre lehren musst). Also, anticipating Zarathustra’s deathbed speech, his animals predict that he will say to himself that he will return eternally to teach once more the eternal recurrence of all things (dass ich wieder aller Dinge ewige Wiederkunft lehre). Nowhere do his animals say that Zarathustra is destined to teach eternal recurrence to others, and indeed at the very start of their claims about his great destiny, they instruct him to heal his own soul with new songs. Since Zarathustra is also the first human being ever to learn eternal recurrence, what they must mean here is that he was destined to teach eternal recurrence to himself – or rather, to his own soul. Zarathustra’s great destiny as the teacher of eternal recurrence is also his great danger and sickness because he is teaching himself, and the knowledge of eternal recurrence is dangerous and possibly fatal, not to the teacher, but rather to the one being taught. This reading of Zarathustra’s great destiny explains why the animals also ask Zarathustra whether a new knowledge has come to him that has caused his soul to rise and flow over all its brims.45 Given the context in which the animals are speaking, this question implies that Zarathustra has acquired this new knowledge during the seven days after awakening his thought in which he remained lying down on his bed, with heavy eyes, endangered and sick, pale, and trembling. Moreover, Zarathustra himself, as we have seen, tells his animals that during these seven days he created a new soul to which there is no outside. While conversing with his own soul after he stops paying attention to his animals, he speaks immediately of what he has taught it regarding the circle of time – namely, to say “today” like “one day” and “formerly”: “Oh meine Seele, ich lehrte dich ‘Heute’ sagen wie ‘Einst’ und ‘Ehemals’” (III.14). Zarathustra also speaks to his soul of having given it the name “Destiny” (Schicksal) and of having taught 45

In an unpublished contemporaneous note, Nietzsche confronts directly the obvious question as to how Zarathustra’s knowledge of eternal recurrence can be “new” if there is indeed eternal repetition of the same. After teaching a version of eternal recurrence that in Zarathustra is spoken by the animals as what they know Zarathustra teaches, Zarathustra says: “Diese Lehre ist noch nicht auf Erden gelehrt worden: nämlich auf der diesmaligen Erde und im diesmaligen grossen Jahre” (KSA 11:25[7]). See Chapter 1 for an account of Nietzsche’s distinction here among numerically distinct but qualitatively identical recurrences.

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it the great loving contempt and the ability to persuade even the elements. These teachings, he says, are gifts that have caused his soul to rise, swell up, and overflow (just as his animals had observed). With respect to his teaching of eternal recurrence, he says that there is now nowhere where future and past could dwell closer than in his soul. And in response, as we have seen, Zarathustra’s soul sings to him its song of gratitude for all the gifts it has received over the course of the seven days in which its new world was created. Even more specifically, in his reply to his animals, Zarathustra also says how well they know what had to be fulfilled in these seven days and how he had to redeem himself by biting off and spitting out the head of the monster that crawled into his throat and choked him (III.13:2). In saying this, Zarathustra alludes to his earlier redemption speech, which concluded by asking about the will’s self-redemption, its unlearning of the spirit of revenge, and its being taught reconciliation with time and something higher than this, namely backward-willing. Nietzsche’s implication is that during the seven days Zarathustra taught himself all these things as well as the doctrine of eternal recurrence they presuppose. In addition, Zarathustra’s reply to his animals alludes to the speech in which he recounts to the daring sailors his prevision of the young shepherd that bites off and spits out the head of the heavy black serpent that crawled into his throat and choked him (III.2:2). Nietzsche’s clear implication here is that Zarathustra was foreseeing himself performing this redemptive deed. Since Zarathustra also foresees himself coming to the aid of the young shepherd with the advice to bite the head off the serpent, Nietzsche leads us to infer that Zarathustra somehow taught himself to perform this redemptive deed. Part of what the convalescent Zarathustra recalls, then, is being taught by himself to perform this redemptive deed. Finally, since Zarathustra’s fulfilled prevision of the shepherd and the serpent is preceded by his prevision of teaching his dwarf archenemy his most abysmal thought, Nietzsche leads us to infer that the latter prevision is fulfilled as well. During the seven days after awakening his most abysmal thought, Zarathustra’s inner experience is one of himself teaching the cosmology of eternal recurrence and deducing from it, step by step, the eternal recurrence of the dwarf.46 But the dwarf is a symbol for the small human, and, as the convalescent Zarathustra reports to his animals, this self-taught 46

This point is supported by the fact that Nietzsche’s original plan for Part III included the prevision from the “On the Vision and the Riddle” chapter within the “Convalescent” chapter (KSA 14, p. 309; Krell 1986, p. 54).

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knowledge of the eternal recurrence of the small human is the monster that chokes him until he teaches himself the redemptive deed of biting off and spitting out its head. In the next two chapters, I unravel these details of the complicated prevision and fulfillment of Zarathustra’s self-teaching of eternal recurrence. Notice for now, however, that this understanding of Zarathustra’s great destiny as autodidactic accords also with my argument in Chapter 3 that his most abysmal thought is his deathbed memory of life’s eternal recurrence and that eternal recurrence is therefore a quasi-Platonic doctrine learned through recollection.47 Hence, although Zarathustra cannot teach others his own deathbed memory of recurrence, he is able to act as quasi-Platonic “midwife” and aid others, such as the higher men and his disciples, in recovering their own such memories. This is why the sleepwalking Zarathustra encourages each of the intoxicated higher men to listen to what the ancient deep midnight bell says into his own ears (IV.19:3). And this is also why Zarathustra, having begun to speak more explicitly about eternal recurrence at the end of his redemption speech, gazes upon his audience of disciples with terrified eyes until he is reassured that they have not understood him (II.20). Zarathustra speaks differently to himself than to his disciples because he knows that they are not yet strong enough to bear the heavy weight of his most abysmal thought. Although he has more to tell and to give his disciples (II.22), he refrains from doing so because he knows that once they are strong enough they will themselves begin to recollect and teach themselves their own latent knowledge of eternal recurrence.48 According to Nietzsche’s notebook entry shortly after discovering eternal recurrence, the mightiest of thoughts “emerges first for one, then for many, then for all” (KSA 9:11[148]). In thus depicting Zarathustra’s complete isolation and self-sufficiency at the end of Part III, Nietzsche fulfills Zarathustra’s prediction at the Given my proposal that Zarathustra is surrounded by his reunited disciples at the moment when he awakens his most abysmal thought, Nietzsche here alludes as well to Plato’s narrative claim in the Phaedo that Socrates is prompted by the beauty of his disciples into giving birth to his recollection of the afterlife. 48 By contrast, Zarathustra tells his own soul that he has given it all that he had (III.14). On the chronology I have proposed, Zarathustra becomes bronze-hard at the very end of Part IV and thus prepared to confront his most abysmal thought in the later “Convalescent” chapter. Similarly, in his last new law-tablet to his disciples before turning to speak only to his own will, Zarathustra instructs them to become hard as bronze so that they may become destinies (Schicksale) (III.12:29) – presumably because they too will be confronting their own thoughts. 47

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end of Part IV that his attained perfection and ripeness will liberate him from the need for heirs and children that has consumed him since the start of his journey (P:9).49 In Zarathustra’s sleepwalker’s song, the vintager who is wielding his vintager’s knife asks the cut and bleeding vine why he praises and blesses his drunken cruelty (IV.19:9). And in response, the vine contrasts the perspective of those who are unripe and imperfect with the perspective of those who have become ripe and perfect. The former, he says, suffer but want to continue living so that they may yet become ripe, joyous, and longing for what is farther, higher, brighter. They do not want themselves but rather heirs and children. This is why, immediately after this song, we find the not-quite-ripened Zarathustra still waiting for his proper companions and crying tears of relief when he finally sees the sign that his children are near (IV.20). By contrast, and in accordance with what the vine says about those who have become ripe and perfect, the over-ripe vine that is Zarathustra’s soul is described at the very end of Part III as wanting to die and as blessing the vintager’s knife. Describing eternity as a woman, Zarathustra’s soul sings of his love and desire for her, of wanting the ring of recurrence that is their wedding ring, and of wanting children only from her. Since Zarathustra has used his new knowledge of eternal recurrence to create his own newborn soul, he thereby indicates his new desire for himself alone rather than for heirs and children. C onc l usion Let me return now to the narrative details that scholars have offered in support of an ironic and deflationary account of Zarathustra’s relation to his disciples. Against these, I have argued for a reading that vindicates, and indeed reinforces, the more straightforward and utopian account of this relation: • At the end of Part IV, Zarathustra leaves to meet his disciples, and their second reunion is depicted in the structurally preceding, but chronologically subsequent, sections 6–30 of the “Tablets” chapter toward the end Notice also that immediately after setting his last law-tablet over his disciples in section 29 of the “Tablets” chapter, Zarathustra turns away from them and toward his own will which he now calls his necessity and dispeller of need – thus implying that what he is about to will next will dispel his need for disciples. In his first farewell to his disciples, Zarathustra had told them that he who wills his single will, and calls this dispeller of need his necessity, thereby commences his virtue (I.22:1).

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of Part III. Zarathustra thus keeps his promise to be with his children for a third time and their great-noon celebration is depicted throughout this decisive chapter. • Leaving aside the unpublished Part IV, and as the book’s subtitle suggests, Zarathustra’s selected audience does indeed dwindle from all to none. The reason is that Zarathustra himself becomes strong and perfect and ultimately can give his most important gift only to himself. He does not teach eternal recurrence to his disciples because they are not yet strong enough to bear it, but he does fulfill his great destiny by teaching this thought to his own soul. • Although Zarathustra’s disciples do not always understand him and at times overestimate him, his ringing praise of them toward the end of Part IV and his chronologically subsequent reunion with them in the Part III “Tablets” chapter shows that they did not fail him at all. Indeed, it is Zarathustra himself who protects his disciples by keeping his meaning from them when they are not yet prepared for it. His real tests for them do not begin until after their second reunion when together they destroy the old values and create new values. • It is true that throughout most of his journey Zarathustra is unripe and therefore in need of his disciples as heirs and children. But Zarathustra’s teaching of his disciples is precisely what enables him finally to become ripe and perfect, at which point he is able to declare his complete independence from them and immerse himself in solitary communion with his own soul. On this new utopian reading, the tragic resolution of Zarathustra is not that Zarathustra is consigned merely to wait for the age of his children, but rather that he has to die once he finishes celebrating the arrival of this age. Although Zarathustra freely chooses this timely death by awakening his most abysmal thought, we still need to know why this thought is so abysmal and why his struggle with this thought leads to his death. Why is Zarathustra’s great-noon event a passion and crucifixion and what is the meaning of his self-redemptive deed? And since we are led to understand that Zarathustra’s disciples will experience their own such passion and crucifixion once they are strong enough to awaken their own thought of eternal recurrence, we also need to know why this thought is so devastating and how it is that some of them will nevertheless survive and even flourish after their struggle with this thought. This is especially the case since Nietzsche introduces his thought in GS 341 as crushingly heavy and later depicts Zarathustra as crushing the dwarfishly small human with the

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heavy death-blow of his hammer of eternal recurrence. In the language that Nietzsche uses in his unpublished notes, we need to know how eternal recurrence acts as a principle of selection that leads to the self-destruction of the human and ultimately results in the emergence of the superhuman. It is to these questions that I turn next.

C h a pt e r 6

The shepherd and the serpent

Summarizing the results of his ground-breaking study of the influence of Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung on Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Roger Hollinrake writes: [T]he parallel between the quest for the ring of the Rhinegold and Zarathustra’s quest for the ‘ring of rings’ provides the basis of a comparison that discloses marked similarities. These similarities inhere not only in the mythological style and messianic stance of Nietzsche’s book, but also – more importantly – in its conceptual scheme, which at every decisive stage elicits pointed allusions to Wagner’s trilogy, Der Ring. (1982, p. 117)

As Hollinrake observes further, Nietzsche’s most pointed allusions, in the climactic scenes of Part III of Zarathustra, refer to the equally climactic scenes of Wagner’s Ring in its third cycle, Siegfried. This is why Hollinrake suggests that Siegfried is “the germinal cell from which Zarathustra grows” (1982, p. 103). Surprisingly, however, Hollinrake fails to notice Nietzsche’s allusions in Part III of Zarathustra to those key scenes in Act II of Siegfried where the fearless hero kills Fafner and Mime (1982, pp. 80–82). These allusions can be found in the vision-riddle presented by Zarathustra at the start of Part III and fulfilled by the narrative at the end of Part III. In this visionriddle, Zarathustra courageously overcomes his most abysmal thought and his archenemy the spirit of gravity. The awakened most abysmal thought appears to Zarathustra just as the awakened depth-dwelling Fafner appears to Siegfried – in the shape of a monstrous, toothed serpent. And the spirit of gravity appears to Zarathustra just as Mime appears to Siegfried – as a treacherous, malevolent, mole-like dwarf.1 Moreover, when Zarathustra According to Lampert (1986, pp. 163 n. 13, 167), the dwarf in Zarathustra’s vision-riddle is an allusion to the crippled Periphetes who is clubbed by Theseus with his own club. But the symbol for Zarathustra’s archenemy should allude back to Theseus’ archenemy, the Minotaur. In any case, Nietzsche’s surrounding allusions point more plausibly to the mole-like, shuffling Mime who, like

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fulfills his own prevision by biting the head off the serpent-monster, he is for the first time able to converse with his animals (III.13:2) – a clear allusion to Siegfried’s new ability to communicate with the forest birds just after slaying the serpent Fafner (Act II, Scene 2).2 Also, as I argued in the last chapter, Nietzsche implies that Zarathustra’s great victory takes place in his great-noon hour (III.3, III.12:30) – thus alluding to Siegfried’s own noon-time victory (Act II, Scene 3). Finally, the victorious Zarathustra goes on to court and wed the woman life with his newly affirmed thought of the ring of eternal recurrence (III.15–16)3 – just as Siegfried goes on to court and wed Brünnhilde with his newly acquired gold ring (Twilight of the Gods, Prelude).4 One reason why perceptive scholars like Hollinrake have not noticed these fairly obvious allusions is that Siegfried’s victory over Fafner is usually related and translated as a victory over a dragon.5 But Nietzsche uses the image of a great dragon (grosse Drache) to symbolize the thousandyear-old values of a thousand peoples (I.1, I.15). Thus, scholars typically find an allusion to the Siegfried-Fafner scene in Zarathustra’s early anticipation that his lion-spirit will slay the great value-dragon.6 In fact, however, Wagner’s libretto never uses the Greek-based term Drache, but rather only the archaic terms found in Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology: Schlange, Wurm, or Schlangenwurm (Grimm 1883, pp. 688–691). So when Nietzsche depicts Zarathustra’s most abysmal thought as a sleeping Wurm that, when awakened by his cock’s crow, is transformed into a Schlange and an Unthier (III.13), he is indeed alluding to Wagner’s Nibelung symbol of the monstrous Schlangenwurm. the spirit of gravity, raises Siegfried from childhood. Gooding-Williams also points out Nietzsche’s allusion to Mime and corrects J. P. Stern’s reference to Alberich (2001, pp. 222, 231, 368 n. 114). Lampert (1986, p. 213) notes this allusion. The ending of Part III, in which Zarathustra’s soul sings (and no longer speaks) about his new bird-wisdom implies that Zarathustra’s victory, like Siegfried’s, grants him the ability to understand for the first time his animals’ communications. On my reading of the chronology of the story in Part IV, Zarathustra’s animals speak to him once before his victory over the serpent-monster (IV.1). But in the book Nietzsche published, they do so for the first and only time after this victory. See also DW 1, where Nietzsche describes how Dionysus’ arrival causes animals to talk. 3 See Lampert 1986, pp. 234–240, 287. Seung (2005, p. 226ff.) argues against Lampert’s assertion of a wedding in the “Seven Seals” chapter. But his reasons, having to do with Nietzche’s allusion to a Revelation prophecy, and his use of the term Lust, are unconvincing. 4 Gooding-Williams (2001, p. 370 n. 125) notes in addition that the recovered shepherd of Zarathustra’s vision-riddle alludes back to Brünnhilde’s depiction of Siegfried as a laughing hero (Lachender Held) in the final scene of Siegfried. 5 See, for example, Whitlock 1990, p. 200. 6 See, for example, Gooding-Williams 1990, p. 235 and 2001, pp. 35, 222. Except for one minimal observation (2001, pp. 231, 370 n. 125), Gooding-Williams does not notice Nietzsche’s complete connection between the Schlangenwurm in Wagner’s Siegfried and in Zarathustra’s vision-riddle. 2

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This is not to say that scholars are wrong to find an allusion to the Siegfried-Fafner scene in Zarathustra’s anticipation of his victory over the great value-dragon. For Nietzsche does sometimes use the term “Drache” when relating Wagner’s scene. Referring to the German spirit at the conclusion of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche writes: “one day he will find himself awake, in all the morning freshness of a monstrous sleep: then he will slay dragons [Drachen], destroy the vicious dwarfs and awaken Brünnhilde – and Wotan’s spear itself will not be able to block his path!” (BT 24). Or, discussing Wagner’s opera more directly in his later Untimely Meditations, Nietzsche relates Siegfried’s fortunes as follows: “he forges the sword for himself, slays the dragon [Drache], gains the ring, eludes the [dwarf’s] most cunning deception, awakens Brünnhilde” (UM IV:11).7 These remarks suggest that Nietzsche’s symbol of the dragon at the start of Zarathustra, and his symbol of the serpent in Part III, are in fact linked, and that Zarathustra slays the great value-dragon at the same time as he bites the head off the serpent. This conclusion is supported by Nietzsche’s use of the lion symbol, and by Zarathustra’s prediction that he will only be able to slay the great value-dragon once he has acquired the strength and negating spirit of the preying lion.8 For, as we have seen, Nietzsche’s narrative lets us know that Zarathustra could not have commanded awake his most abysmal thought unless he had already acquired the strength, spirit, and voice of a lion (II.22, III.3). In this chapter, then, I argue that these specific Wagnerian allusions are the key to solving the riddle of the shepherd and the serpent at the heart of Nietzsche’s book. I begin by reviewing the current scholarly consensus as to how this riddle should be analyzed and solved, as well as the textual evidence and interpretive assumptions underlying this consensus. Next Here Nietzsche alludes to the famous scene in which Siegfried sings while forging and hardening the sword called “Needful” (Notung) that he then uses to slay the awakened Schlangenwurm (Act I, Scene 3) and to break in half Wotan’s path-blocking spear (Act 3, Scene 2). Similarly, just before summoning the sleeping Schlangenwurm out of his depths, Zarathustra prepares himself for battle by hardening his will, which by contrast he calls “Necessity” (Nothwendigkeit) (III.12:29–30). Zarathustra’s invocation – “Oh Wille, Wende aller Noth, du meine Nothwendigkeit!” – recalls and inverts Siegfried’s invocation: “Notung! Notung! / Neidliches Schwert!” And just as Siegfried breaks Wotan’s law-inscribed spear before proceeding to wed Brünnhilde, so too (as I argue in the next chapter) Zarathustra breaks time and time’s desire and the path-blocking “it was” with his creative will (II.20) before proceeding to wed life (III.15). Although he misses Nietzsche’s distinction between Siegfried’s Notung and Zarathustra’s Nothwendigkeit, Michael Gillespie (1988, pp. 122–123, 142–143) argues, correctly I think, that Nietzsche is alluding to Siegfried’s sword-forging tool when he uses the term “Hammer” in connection with Zarathustra’s doctrine of eternal recurrence (see below). 8 Nietzsche is also alluding here to the New Testament’s book of Revelation, in which the lion of Judah (Christ) ultimately defeats the serpent-dragon Satan. 7


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I argue that this consensus is contradicted by the symbolism, imagery, and allusions built into Zarathustra’s vision-riddle. I then show how his Wagnerian allusions suggest an alternative, and more precise, analysis and solution of this riddle. I conclude by confronting some of the difficult questions that are raised by this new interpretation. T h e e t e rn a l ly r e c u rring h u m a n Commentators have long noted that the solution to Zarathustra’s visionriddle must involve his teaching of eternal recurrence. This is because Zarathustra relates his most abysmal thought to his teaching of eternal recurrence. Further, Zarathustra foresees that his struggle with the serpentmonster will be initiated by his unveiling of his teaching of eternal recurrence. Finally, when recalling his struggle with the serpent, Zarathustra explicitly and repeatedly recalls his great nausea at the realization that the small human (der kleine Mensch) must eternally recur. Nietzsche thus leads us to interpret the symbol of the serpent as the thought of the eternally recurring small human, and to interpret the symbolic deed of biting off and spitting away the head of this serpent as Zarathustra’s means of overcoming his great nausea at this thought. Precisely here, however, is where all of Nietzsche’s explicit clues seem to leave off. Nowhere in this book, or elsewhere in his writings (published and unpublished), does Nietzsche explain what he means by Zarathustra’s symbolic deed. Faced with this lacuna, most scholars have appealed to Nietzsche’s description of eternal recurrence as a formula for the highest affirmation that is at all attainable (EH Z:1). Zarathustra, they have agreed, overcame his great nausea by learning to affirm even that aspect of life he finds most contemptible, namely, the small human. And Zarathustra learned this, they argue, because he at last recognized that the small human must eternally recur and is indeed inextricably tied into the whole. As Martin Heidegger writes: Yet the small humans too are; as beings they too recur forever. They cannot be put out of action; they pertain to that aspect of things that is dark and repulsive. If being as a whole is to be thought, the small men too wait upon their ‘Yes’ … Zarathustra recognizes that the recurrence of the small human too is necessary … he grapples with the ‘Yes’ spoken to everything that over the years wearied and sickened him, to everything he wanted to repulse … he conquers his illness with that ‘Yes’ and so becomes a convalescent. (Heidegger 1984, pp. 57–58)

More specifically, recent commentators have argued, Zarathustra comes to learn that he must will the eternal recurrence of the small human

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because the small human is actually necessary for life and even for the greatest men such as himself. As Laurence Lampert writes, for example, “[l]ife needs a hierarchy of human beings” and “[t]he small man must be willed as necessary to the highest man in his highest affirmation” (1986, pp. 218, 171).9 According to Lampert, this interpretation is supported by the convalescent Zarathustra’s allusions to an earlier speech in which he first posed the question that gets resolved at the end of Part III: And to know that life itself has need of enmity and dying and martyr-crosses, that was not the bite that choked me most. But once I asked, and almost gagged on my question: what, does life have need even of the rabble? Are poisoned wells necessary, and stinking fires and dirty dreams and maggots in the bread of life? (II.6)

Lampert thus concludes that Zarathustra’s “biting the head off the heavy black snake requires that he affirm the eternal return of the small” (1986, p. 217). Indeed, Lampert and others go on to argue, Zarathustra’s choking nausea over the thought of willing the eternal recurrence of the vengeful, life-accusing, small human is actually a symptom of his own vengeful will against the small human and of his own accusation against life as that which must include the small human.10 Only by biting the head off the serpent is Zarathustra finally cured of, and able to convalesce from, the universal human sickness of revenge and life-denial. According to the scholarly consensus, then, Zarathustra does not kill the serpent-monster that chokes him. Indeed, because eternal recurrence is always of the same, and because the small human is inextricably connected to everything else, Zarathustra cannot kill this serpent. Insofar as Zarathustra learns to affirm life and great humans like himself, he also learns to affirm the small human that is necessary to both. As David Allison comments, Zarathustra learns to “swallow” the truth of the serpent – that is, to incorporate, affirm, and even celebrate the truth that even the basest aspect of life must eternally recur: In this very dramatic and complex scene, Zarathustra realizes that it will require a great deal of courage to humanly incorporate the teaching – literally, to ‘swallow’ its truth – that the individual must embrace the whole of natural existence, together with its all-too-pressing-deficiencies, its necessary component of pain, suffering, and pity. … It will require courage to bite off the head of the snake See also Ansell-Pearson 1991, pp. 179–181, 195; and 1994, pp. 117–119. See Lampert 1986, pp. 171, 217–219; Pippin 1988, p. 55; Clark 1990, pp. 270–277; Westerdale 2006, p. 59.

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depicted in the encounter with the shepherd and to swallow its truth, which is also the truth of this suffering and pity. (Allison 2001, p. 163)

The future human Having outlined this traditional analysis of Nietzsche’s riddle, let me now turn to some of its problems and difficulties. In the first place, this analysis correctly assumes that Zarathustra needs to overcome the great nausea induced in him by the serpent-monster. Since, however, Zarathustra can do nothing to alter eternal recurrence, this analysis infers that he is forced instead to learn how to affirm that which nauseates him. But this means that the only aspect of his predicament that Zarathustra can alter is the poor inner disposition (revenge, life-denial) that causes him to be so nauseated. Hence, the analysis goes, Zarathustra’s biting off and spitting away is Nietzsche’s symbolic way of referring to the psychological means whereby Zarathustra is able to overcome this poor inner disposition. Against this analysis, however, there are Nietzsche’s explicit and repeated images of Zarathustra’s biting and spitting as directed at the serpent itself. These images let us know that Zarathustra does not learn how to overcome the poor inner disposition that leads him to be nauseated by something he must affirm. Instead, he learns how to overcome that very thing which he rightly loathes and which rightly induces nausea in him, namely, the eternal recurrence of the small human. This point is supported by Nietzsche’s emphasis on the more specific symbols of the head and the bite of the serpent. Although the traditional analysis does not consider them, the following details are clearly important for solving Zarathustra’s vision-riddle:11 • The serpent’s head-first entrance into Zarathustra’s speaking mouth and speaking throat. • The serpent’s biting-hold on Zarathustra’s throat as that which makes its removal so difficult and indeed requires that its head be bitten off. • The contrast between Zarathustra’s vain effort to pull out the serpent by its visible hanging tail and his successful advice that the young shepherd bite off the concealed head. • The parallel focus on the area of Zarathustra’s own head: his mouth, his throat, his choking, biting, spitting, and laughing. Heidegger considers these details a little, but not enough to propose any satisfactory interpretation of them (1984, pp. 179–180).

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• Zarathustra’s own strong counter-bite on the serpent’s head as the only effective means of dislodging it. • The image of the serpent’s head being spat far away from its decapitated body. Once we do recognize and consider these more specific elements of Nietzsche’s presentation, the consensus solution seems difficult to support. For it is not clear how Nietzsche’s virulently negating image of “biting off” (abbeissen) and “spitting away” (Wegspein) the serpent’s head is supposed to be linked, or even compatible, with this tolerant and affirming interpretation. As Eugene Wolfenstein wonders in his commentary, “in what sense is biting off the head of the snake and spewing it out an affirmation?”: Rather, the act of biting off the snake’s head is problematic in Nietzsche’s own terms. One might even see the situation that he presents as aporetic. Because the snake has bitten into his throat, the shepherd cannot swallow it and truly allow it to enter him – which is what amor fati and the real acceptance of eternal return would seem to demand. But biting off the head, while indubitably an overcoming of disgust and a kind of self-affirmation, is not an affirmation of the nausea itself. (Wolfenstein 2000, p. 157)

Indeed, as Wolfenstein’s reference to the snake’s bite suggests, it would seem that Zarathustra advises the young shepherd to bite off the serpent’s head so that he will then be able to tear the serpent out by the tail.12 Nietzsche even hints at this point in his next book, Beyond Good and Evil: Advice as riddle. – ‘Should the band not tear, – you must first bite it.’ (BGE 140)13

As long, that is, as the serpent is biting itself fast in the shepherd’s throat, Zarathustra is unable to tear it out. But once the shepherd bites and severs the serpent’s head from its body, the serpent is no longer alive and is no longer able to keep biting itself fast in his throat. Zarathustra is then able to remove the serpent’s body from the shepherd’s throat, and the shepherd is in turn able to spit out the serpent’s head. Of course, Zarathustra cannot negate and overcome the serpent itself – that is, the eternally recurring small human – if it is true that nothing can be done to alter eternal recurrence. As Heidegger notes, there is no way to The most interesting feature of Zarathustra’s vision-riddle is his interaction with a figure that is later revealed to be his future self. I discuss this feature in the next chapter. That Nietzsche intends this aphorism to allude back to Zarathustra’s advice in the vision-riddle is indicated by Nietzsche’s use of the same alliterative terms Rath and Räthsel and by his use of the same rhymed contrast between reissen and beissen. Also, at the start of his Part III speech, “On Human Cleverness,” Zarathustra anticipates that he will have to tear the bond that keeps him tied down to the human and away from the superhuman.

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prevent the eternal recurrence of those small humans that are. Indeed, it is not even possible to prevent the eternal recurrence of those small humans that have been. But it does not follow from either of these points that there is no way to prevent the existence, and thus the eternal recurrence, of small humans that might be in the future. Nor are any as-yet-non-existent small humans inextricably tied into the whole. So perhaps the solution to Zarathustra’s vision-riddle, the meaning of his biting the head off the serpent, is that he negates the future existence of small humans. Such a solution, according to which the future is still open to change, would also help to explain why the convalescent Zarathustra says that his redemptive deed allowed him to overcome the soothsayer’s choking prophecy that everything is always the same.14 Interestingly enough, this is the solution Zarathustra himself seems to anticipate when he first chokes on the question whether life needs even the life-poisoning rabble. For he goes on to say that he redeemed himself from his nausea by flying to a height where the rabble no longer sits at the well of life. But Zarathustra’s image of flying like an eagle to extreme heights turns out to be a metaphor for his seeing into the far future: “We build our nest in the tree Future; eagles shall bring food to us solitaries in their beaks! / Truly, food in which no unclean men could join us!” (II.6, III.21; see also EH III:8). Thus, far from supporting the claim that Zarathustra sees life as needing even the small human, Zarathustra’s speech would seem to suggest that he believes the well of life can, and indeed must, be purified of the rabble which poisons it. Against this last conclusion, Lampert argues that Zarathustra changed his mind after that speech. Zarathustra’s later redemptive insight, he writes, is that “there is no redemptive future like the one pictured in the earlier [“Rabble”] speech in which the high is utterly free of the low.” Whereas Zarathustra “had once envisaged a future free of what is low, that future is now known to be impossible: life needs the whole order of rank that it has generated.” Hence, Zarathustra’s biting the head off the serpent “cannot be renewed optimism about what is possible for mankind through elimination of the small man, the optimism that had previously sustained him” (1986, pp. 218–219). Lampert seems to recognize this possible solution when he writes: “Still, although the will says to the whole of the heretofore unwillable past, ‘But thus I willed it!’ and thereby wills even the small man who exists in past and present, it does not face the willable future with the expectation of the Soothsayer, that it will simply be more of the same. From where Zarathustra now stands in the passage of time, an alterable future lies ahead, willable by the one with the whole future of mankind on his conscience” (1986, p. 219). See also Gooding-Williams on “Nietzsche’s avant-garde consciousness that the future can differ radically from the present and the past” (2001, p. 29ff.)

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However, if we leave aside any inference from Zarathustra’s necessary affirmation of the small human’s past and present existence, there is really no independent basis for supposing that Zarathustra does change his mind in this way. Nor is it plausible that Zarathustra came to recognize that the small human is needed for life’s hierarchy and rank to exist, or for a pathos of distance to obtain, or for overcoming by the great human, and so on. For the convalescent Zarathustra says that he learned above all the smallness of every human. In the course of recalling his struggle with the serpent, he says that he has seen the greatest humans naked – that is, stripped of moral pretensions (II.21) – and realized that even they were alltoo-human and all-too-small. The greatest and the smallest humans are so similar, he says, and humankind’s best is so very small, that all humans may be described as small (see II.21). But this means that Zarathustra was nauseated by the human itself, and that the serpent in fact symbolizes the eternally recurring human: “The great disgust at humans – it choked me and had crept into my throat … Alas, the human recurs eternally!” (III.13:2, my emphasis; see IV.13:6). In this way, Nietzsche actually leads us to extend the negation anticipated in the “Rabble” chapter so as to include even the future existence of great humans and, indeed, of the human as such. Zarathustra’s recollection of his struggle with the serpent also contradicts the recent scholarly consensus that his great nausea betrays a hidden desire to revenge himself against the small human. For the convalescent Zarathustra says that he was equally nauseated by the great human for whom he presumably harbors no vengeful feelings. In addition, although Zarathustra clearly has contempt for the small human, he says that he is incapable of resenting the small human. This is because resentment and revenge are feelings harbored only by the small and impotent against the great and powerful (I.12, II.7). Insofar as the spirit of revenge is a universal human sickness, possessed even by Zarathustra himself, it is one that stems rather from impotence against the past (II.20).15 And although it is true that Zarathustra can only cure himself of this sickness by affirming eternal recurrence, we have already seen that this affirmation does not require him to affirm the future existence of the small human. Indeed, since Zarathustra argues that it is always those who are small who secretly seek vengeance against the great, his curing humankind of this kind of Clark suggests, implausibly I think, that Zarathustra’s impotence against the past is evidence that he harbors a secret vengeful will against the small human (1990, p. 273ff ). Although Zarathustra admits to having quasi-vengeful feelings in his “Night Song” (II.9), these feelings are directed only at his disciples to whom he gives without being able to receive anything in return.

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vengeance would seem to point once again to his need to negate this future existence. Although quite radical, this possible solution to Zarathustra’s visionriddle is nevertheless consistent with Deleuze’s reminder of Zarathustra’s mockery of a philosophy that would affirm everything and deny nothing (1983, pp. 68ff., 177ff.).16 This mockery is expressed most vividly in Zarathustra’s ridicule of the ass with long undiscriminating ears that brays “Ye-a” and pushes none away from himself (III.11:2, IV.17).17 Zarathustra’s implication, reinforced by his early speech on the metamorphosis of a Yessaying child-spirit out of a No-saying lion-spirit, is that true creative life affirmation can only grow out of some kind of tremendous negation to all that is harmful and poisonous to life. Since Zarathustra possesses a lion’s commanding voice at the start of the “Convalescent” chapter (II.22, III.3), we may assume that his spirit has already been transformed into that of a lion who will affirm life by negating whatever poisons it. In sum, the current scholarly consensus as to how to analyze and solve Zarathustra’s riddle rightly emphasizes his need to overcome the inner disposition that prevents him from fully affirming life and its eternal recurrence. But this consensus ignores the textual evidence showing that Zarathustra’s ability to affirm life depends upon his ability to negate all that harms, poisons, and impoverishes life. Once this evidence is properly considered, it becomes apparent that a more precise analysis of Zarathustra’s riddle has to show his overcoming of the inner disposition that prevents him from achieving such a negation. On this analysis, Zarathustra does not have difficulty affirming life because he is nauseated by that aspect of life which poisons it. Instead, as Zarathustra anticipates in his “Rabble” speech (see also III.12:14), it is only his great nausea that finally allows him to negate this poisoning element and thereby affirm a newly cleansed and purified life. Z a r at h ustr a t h e dr ag on- s l a y e r I turn now to show how Nietzsche’s allusions to Wagner provide us with the key to this more precise analysis and solution of Zarathustra’s riddle of the shepherd and the serpent. The most important such allusion, of course, Unfortunately, Deleuze does not interpret Zarathustra’s riddle of the shepherd and the serpent, but writes only that the eternal recurrence of the small human puts contradiction into the eternal recurrence so that “[i]n order to affirm the eternal return it is necessary to bite off and spit out the snake’s head” (1983, p. 65). 17 Elsewhere (for example, IV.13:1), Zarathustra suggests that this ass with the long undiscriminating ears is a symbol for the small human. 16

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is to Siegfried’s slaying of the Schlangenwurm. If we note as well Nietzsche’s allusions to related ancient myths, such as Apollo’s slaying of the Delphic Python, or Theseus’ slaying of the Minotaur, then we must conclude that Zarathustra does indeed kill the heavy black serpent that chokes him. As Nietzsche himself states in his plot summaries, however, Siegfried’s slaying of the serpent-dragon is immediately followed by his slaying of the dwarf. So it must be the case that the scene of Zarathustra’s vision-riddle in which he is engaged in mortal combat with a dwarf is essentially linked to the next scene in which the young shepherd struggles with the serpent. And since the serpent scene is fulfilled in the later “Convalescent” chapter, this fulfillment must also presuppose Zarathustra’s mortal combat with the dwarf. This point is important because commentators have traditionally separated the two scenes of Zarathustra’s vision-riddle and analyzed the serpent scene, and its fulfillment in the “Convalescent” chapter, in isolation from the dwarf scene. We might wonder, however, why Nietzsche’s allusion reverses the order of Siegfried’s two conquests. This question assumes that Zarathustra kills the dwarf before his vision shifts to the scene of the young shepherd and the serpent. As Lampert writes, for example: “Zarathustra’s speech to the Dwarf ends on the whispered question, ‘Must we not all eternally come again?’ That thought is fatal to the Dwarf” (1986, p. 169). In fact, however, Zarathustra does not see the dwarf killed (or clubbed, or crushed) by this last question. Instead, he wonders where the dwarf has gone, along with the gateway and the spider. Also, Zarathustra says that his courage failed him just at the moment when he was asking his last question, and it is this courage that he had called his slayer (Todtschläger). Since the next scene in his vision shows a symbol of his future self in mortal combat with a new opponent, it is more plausible to suppose instead that his archenemy narrowly escaped defeat and transformed himself into this new opponent. This conclusion is supported by Zarathustra’s early announcement that the spirit of gravity symbolized by the dwarf will be killed, not by anger, but by laughter (I.7, IV.18:1). Since Zarathustra’s vision shows him speaking angrily with the dwarf while questioning him about eternal recurrence, and his future self laughing after he has bitten the head off the serpent, we may conclude that Zarathustra succeeds in killing the dwarf only after he has first killed the serpent. Nietzsche’s allusions to Wagner’s opera suggest that this is indeed the best reading of Zarathustra’s vision-riddle. For at the very start of the Ring (Rheingold, Scene 3), the black dwarf Alberich is deceived by the god Loge into showing off the powers of his magic helmet, the


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Tarnhelm. Putting on this helmet, Alberich says: “Giant worm [RiesenWurm] / wind yourself into a ring!” And Wagner’s stage directions at this point read: “He disappears instantly: in his place a monstrous giant serpent [Riesen-schlange] winds itself on the floor; it rises up and snaps with open jaws at Wotan and Loge” (Wagner 1976, p. 49). Yet this is the very same giant serpent that confronts Siegfried, for Fafner had stolen the magic helmet and used it to transform himself into this same monstrous shape. In a parallel fashion, then, Zarathustra’s dwarf archenemy, about to be killed by Zarathustra’s spoken words, must have transformed himself into a monstrous serpent and crawled into his throat in order to prevent him from speaking any further and choke him to death. This conclusion is supported by the details of Nietzsche’s symbolism: the Wagnerian dwarf and the serpent-monster are both black, subterranean, mole-like, and blind; the spirit of gravity that sits on Zarathustra’s shoulders, and the serpent that crawls into his throat, are both poisonous and heavy; the Wagnerian dwarf and the serpent are both symbols of cleverness and cunning; the lame-footed dwarf and the crawling serpent are both unable to stand, walk, or run; and the Wagnerian dwarf and the choking serpent are both sources of great nausea.18 A further link between the dwarf scene and the serpent scene of Zarathustra’s vision-riddle is the thought of eternal recurrence. For Zarathustra threatens to crush the dwarf with his most abysmal thought that the dwarf must eternally recur; and the convalescent Zarathustra identifies the serpent as his most abysmal thought that the small human must eternally recur. In this way, Nietzsche leads us to understand that the dwarf symbolizes not only the spirit of gravity, but also the small human that is the source of this spirit of gravity (IV.13:16).19 This symbolism is a natural one (dwarfish as small), and one that Zarathustra employs throughout his speeches. Moreover, the spirit of gravity and the small human are both lords and masters of the present world (III.11, IV.13:3); they both limp and tell crooked lies (III.2, III.5:2, IV.13:8); and they both sit on the shoulders of greater humans as heavy evil dwarfs (III.2, IV.11). Hence, Nietzsche’s only departure from Wagner’s plot is his literary suggestion that it is the ring itself, and not a magic helmet, which enables Also, Nietzsche identifies the spirit of gravity and dwarf as the Devil (II.10, IV.6) and alludes to the Bible’s Book of Revelation in which the serpent-dragon symbolizes Satan. See also GoodingWilliams 2001, pp. 227, 369. 19 Nietzsche’s symbols often have multiple meanings, as when the convalescent Zarathustra claims that the choking serpent symbolizes both the eternal recurrence of the small human and the soothsayer’s prophecy that nothing is worthwhile. 18

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the transformation from dwarf to serpent – that is, from small human to eternally recurring small human. Further support for thus linking the two scenes of Zarathustra’s visionriddle can be found in Nietzsche’s allusion to Wagner’s mythical distinction between dwarves and giants. Thus, in the exchange of questions between Wotan and Mime (Siegfried, Act I, Scene 2), Wagner associates dwarves and giants as two aspects of a single race that (along with the gods) must perish and be replaced by Wotan’s chosen Wälsung people. Both the Wagnerian dwarf and giant need the Tarnhelm in order to transform themselves into the more threatening and powerful Schlangenwurm. Similarly, Zarathustra associates small and great humans as two aspects of a humankind that (along with all the gods) must be overcome and replaced by the self-chosen people who will one day father the superhuman (I.22:2). As we have seen, one source of Zarathustra’s great nausea was his realization that even the greatest humans are all too small. He realizes, that is, that humankind itself is nauseatingly small and dwarfish. But this means that Zarathustra’s dwarf archenemy is also a symbol for humankind in general.20 Moreover, since the serpent slain by Siegfried is a giant in disguise, the serpent attacking Zarathustra may also be interpreted as a symbol for the eternal recurrence of the greatest human. And since the greatest human is all too similar to the smallest human, the serpent attacking Zarathustra should ultimately be interpreted as a symbol for the eternal recurrence of humankind. T h e de c a pitation Nietzsche’s Wagnerian allusions thus establish a strong narrative continuity between the two scenes of Zarathustra’s vision-riddle, and thereby put us in a position to find the key to its solution. This key consists in Nietzsche’s implicit use of his symbols of the serpent and the serpent’s head in Zarathustra’s spatial image of eternal recurrence. As we have seen, the centerpiece of this image is a two-faced gateway inscribed “Moment” (Augenblick) where two eternal lanes, one running backward, one running forward, come together and contradict each other – or, as Zarathustra says, “bump each other on the head” (stossen sich gerade vor den Kopf ).21 See also BGE 203 for Nietzsche’s description of the modern human as a nauseating dwarf-animal (Zwergthier). 21 Nietzsche’s emphasis here on the word Augenblick points forward to his depiction in Part IV of Zarathustra’s vision of eternal recurrence at the secret hour of perfect noon: while lying down under a tree, Zarathustra experiences an Augen-blick of the best happiness and a sunbeam falls 20


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Zarathustra asks the dwarf whether he thinks these two lanes contradict each other eternally, and then goes on to suggest to him that they do not – that if one were to follow one of these lanes far enough he would end up coming back around on the other lane to the gateway from which he first departed. As I argued in Chapter 3, his implication is that the limited gateway-horizon of the present moment does not show how the two seemingly distinct, straight, and eternal lanes of past and future curve around and join together to form a single circular lane that is tremendously extended yet still finite. According to Zarathustra, that is, eternal recurrence is the doctrine of “the unconditional and endlessly repeated circular course [Kreislauf ] of all things” (EH BT:3) – even of dwarfishly small humankind. Given this presentation of eternal recurrence, and given Nietzsche’s use of the ancient ouroboros image throughout his career,22 we may therefore interpret Nietzsche’s symbol of the serpent as referring to the lane of time in which humankind eternally recurs. This serpent, Nietzsche suggests, has a “head” – namely, the present moment in which humankind exists. But it also has a “tail,” as the following unpublished passage makes clear: The eternal recurrence … There have been several attempts lately to find a contradiction in the concept of the time-endlessness of the world as regards the past: it has even been found, although at the cost of thereby confusing the head [Kopf ] with the tail [Schwanz]. Nothing can prevent me from calculating backward from this moment [Augenblick] to say ‘I will never come to an end thereby’: just as I can calculate forward from the same moment into the unending. Only if I made the mistake – I shall guard against it – of equating this correct concept of a regressus in infinitum with an utterly unrealizable concept of an unending progressus up to now, only if I suppose the direction (forward or backward) as logically indifferent, would I grasp the head, this moment, as tail: that I leave to you, my Herr Dühring! (KSA 13:14[188])

Here, that is, Nietzsche sharply distinguishes between the head and the tail of the serpent of eternal recurrence: the head symbolizes the present moment that serves as a “gateway” (Thorweg) from the past into the future, while the tail symbolizes the past that has transpired up to this present directly from heaven onto his face causing him to wonder if the sky is watching him (IV.10). Similarly, after killing Fafner and Mime, Siegfried moves to rest under a tree once he notices the eye of the overhead sun glancing down upon him: “Hoch steht schon die Sonne: / aus lichtem Blau / blickt ihr Aug’ / auf den Scheitel steil mir herab” (Act II, Scene 3). Although Zarathustra recounts his vision-riddle as taking place in the stillest midnight, I have argued that its fulfillment takes place at the high-noon moment when Zarathustra awakens his most abysmal thought so that it may speak to him in deep midnight’s voice (III.13, III.15:3, IV.19). 22 See BT 15; Z IV.19:11; TI IX:24; KSA 10:4[85].

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moment. This distinction helps explain Nietzsche’s symbolic contrast between Zarathustra’s vain attempt to tear the serpent out of the shepherd’s throat by its tail, and his successful advice that the shepherd bite off the serpent’s head. As the traditional analysis correctly notes, and contrary to Deleuze who writes that “the small, petty, reactive man will not return” (1983, p. 71), nothing can be done to end or remove the eternal recurrence of humankind’s past existence.23 To this past, Zarathustra must say “Yes.” But, as he had anticipated in his speech on the rabble, humankind’s present existence can be ended, thereby foreclosing a future that would itself have been eternally recurring. To this present and to this future, the prophetic Zarathustra advises “No.” In acting upon this advice, and in doing No, the young shepherd Zarathustra thus acknowledges that he of course cannot stop humankind from eternally recurring, but can only abridge the span of its eternally recurring existence. The solution to Zarathustra’s vision-riddle, therefore, is that his nauseaovercoming decision to bite the head off the serpent-monster is a decision to end the present existence of eternally recurring humankind. This emphasis on the present is consistent with Zarathustra’s warnings throughout his speeches that the nauseating small human is the lord and master of today and wants to become the master of humankind’s entire destiny (IV.13:3). Although sterile and laughable, the ever-smaller humans of the present (Gegenwärtigen) must be overcome because they pose the greatest threat to humankind’s chance of fathering the superhuman (P:5, II.14). Alluding back to his vision-riddle, and to the small spider that crawls slowly at the base of the gateway-present leading to the future, Zarathustra says to the present-day small human: “Even what you omit weaves at the web of all human future; even your nothing is a spider’s web and a spider that lives on the blood of the future” (III.22:3).24 See also my critique (Loeb 2007) of Gooding-Williams’ contention (2001, p. 218ff.) that Zarathustra’s “willing backwards” enables him to end or remove the eternal recurrence of humankind’s past existence. Although Gooding-Williams correctly sees that Zarathustra’s biting off and spitting out the serpent’s head are negating and killing actions (2001, pp. 229–234, 370 n. 128), he interprets Zarathustra as doing what he says he is unable to do, namely, tearing the serpent out by its tail. 24 Lampert rightly points out that the spider in Zarathustra’s vision-riddle is a symbol for Socratic rationalism (1986, pp. 166, 168). But Nietzsche traces Socratic rationalism to Socrates’ plebeian descent and to his secret will to revenge himself against the Athenian aristocrats (TI II). Since the plebeian is synonymous for Nietzsche with the small human, his symbol of the spider is more fundamentally a symbol of the small human. This identification is supported by Zarathustra’s speech on revenge, in which he portrays the small human as a web-spinning black spider that bites in order to poison others with his secret vengeful will against the powerful (II.7). Thus, the spider (introduced in GS 341) is small and clever like the dwarf, and black, slow-moving, and poisonous like the dwarf and the serpent (that also bites). 23


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However, the present-day small human includes the majority of the human population that Zarathustra berates throughout the course of his speeches as the sheep, the herd, the all-too-many, the multitude, the rabble, the mob, the people, the superfluous, and the greatest number. This is why Nietzsche emphasizes the symbol of the shepherd, and why he includes the suggestion in the narrative that Zarathustra’s nausea-overcoming decision brings to a complete end his role as shepherd.25 This is also why Nietzsche emphasizes the serpent’s bite which lodges the serpent in Zarathustra’s throat and which cannot be overcome until he bites back. For Nietzsche typically writes of the guilt and bad conscience instilled by the herd as a kind of pang or “bite” (Gewissensbiss), and even as a kind of snake bite or gnawing-worm bite (GS 117, GM II:14).26 Indeed, in an early anticipation of his own bite, Zarathustra teaches his disciples: “And likewise sinners and bad consciences [bösen Gewissen] [should be entirely abolished!] Believe me, my friends: pangs of conscience [Gewissensbisse] teach one to bite” (II.3). The serpent’s bite thus symbolizes the pang of bad conscience which is meant to prevent the young shepherd, newly lionvoiced, from speaking his teaching and thereby doing harm to the sheep he is supposed to protect. T h e h e avy h a mm e r If we now ask how exactly Zarathustra intends to carry out his decision to end the present existence of dwarfish humankind, we need to turn back again to the dwarf-scene of his vision-riddle. For this is the scene in which Zarathustra challenges the gateway-dwarf to mortal combat and threatens him with his death-dealing courage. This courage inspires him finally to summon up his most abysmal thought in order that the dwarf will perish under the deadly blow (Schlag) of the heavy weight of his death-wielding At the finish of his Prologue, Zarathustra says only that he is abandoning his role as shepherd with respect to the people and herd in the marketplace. There is thus no contradiction in Zarathustra foreseeing an end to his new role as shepherd with respect to those outside the marketplace-herd. Nietzsche shows Zarathustra in Part IV shepherding (finding, gathering, feeding) the higher men, and resting at the secret, solemn Dionysian hour when no shepherd plays his flute (IV.10; BT 5; DW 1). I argued in Chapter 4 that these events chronologically precede and prepare the way for Zarathustra’s overcoming of his nausea for even the highest men in the “Convalescent” chapter. 26 Nietzsche also alludes here to Plato’s Symposium image of Socrates as a poisonous serpent that bites into the hearts and minds of the Athenian youth and makes them ashamed of their lives (215a–218b). Given my argument in Chapter 3 that the dwarf symbolizes Socrates, this allusion reinforces my claim that Zarathustra’s vision-riddle depicts the transformation of the dwarf into the biting serpent. 25

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hammer (Todtschläger).27 Here again Nietzsche alludes to Wagner’s Ring and in particular to Wagner’s image of the thunder-god’s hammer and its heavy weight (gutem Gewicht) that can deal a crushing and deadly blow (Schlag) (Rheingold, Scenes 2, 4).28 In his preparatory notes, Nietzsche has Zarathustra say more explicitly about his teaching of eternal recurrence: “The human is something that must be overcome. I hold here the hammer [Hammer] that will overcome him!” (KSA 10:21[6]).29 Because the gateway-dwarf is a symbol for present-day humankind, the dwarf-scene of Zarathustra’s vision-riddle implies that present-day humankind could not bear the heavy weight of the thought of its own eternal recurrence. This scene also alludes back to Gay Science 341, where it is suggested that the life-impoverished human will gnash his teeth and throw himself down – perhaps to be crushed under the heaviest weight of the thought of his eternally recurring life. In both places, Nietzsche incorporates his metaphorical conception of the remembered past as a kind of heavy weight. Already at the start of his second untimely meditation, he had written of the remembering human being who “braces himself against the great and ever-greater burden of the past” that “weighs him down or bends him over, hampers his gait as an invisible and obscure load.” Unlike other animals who are able to forget, the human being is perpetually confronted with the “it was” that brings him suffering and instills in him a longing for oblivion through death (UM II:1). Similarly, in his speech on redemption, Zarathustra describes the human will as gnashing its teeth and powerless (ohnmächtig) when confronted with the (presumably heavy) immovable stone of the “it was.” Because the human will is will Although Nietzsche does not explicitly use the term “Hammer” in Zarathustra’s vision-riddle, he does, as I point out below, use it twice in the same sense in a closely connected passage in the “Blessed Isles” chapter (along with the associated BGE 62, 203, 211, 225) and also very frequently in the notes accompanying his composition of Zarathustra. In addition, Nietzsche’s use of the term “Hammer” in his other works is often associated with the terms “Schlag” and “schlägen” (UM II:4, HAH I:37, GM II:17, GM III:19). See Brobjer 1999 for a further discussion of Nietzsche’s symbol of the hammer. 28 This Wagnerian allusion is supported by BGE 62, where Nietzsche writes of holding a divine (göttlichen) hammer in his hand with which to sculpt the stone of humankind. Also, immediately after signing himself the teacher of eternal recurrence, Nietzsche entitles the next and final section of Twilight of the Idols, “The Hammer Speaks” (Das Hammer redet). In this section, he includes a slightly revised version of “Tablets” 29 in which Zarathustra exhorts his disciples and fellow creators to become hard (presumably like hammers). Nietzsche’s implication at the end of Twilight of the Idols is that he defers to the voice of Zarathustra who holds the hammer of eternal recurrence that will be used to overcome the human and create the superhuman. In his exegesis of Twilight of the Idols, Gillespie (1988, pp. 122–123, 142–143) also observes that Nietzsche’s use of the term “Hammer” is an allusion to Wagner’s Rheingold. 29 See also KSA 10:21[6]; KSA 10:17[69]; KSA 11:26[298]; KSA 11:27[80]; KSA 12:5[70]. 27


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to power, this impotence causes such suffering in the human being that he ultimately longs to liberate himself through death (through “willing become not willing”) (II.20). Confronted with the thought of an eternally recurring “it was,” the human being therefore has no choice but to act on his immeasurably greater longing for death and select himself out of existence.30 As Nietzsche writes more explicitly in his unpublished notes, eternal recurrence acts as a “pessimistic teaching and way of thinking, an ecstatic nihilism, [that] can under certain conditions be indispensable precisely to the philosopher – as a mighty pressure and hammer with which … to implant into that which is degenerate and desires to die a longing for the end” (KSA 11:35[82]).31 If, therefore, Zarathustra were to fully affirm his most abysmal thought, as he seems on the point of doing at the end of his whispered dialogue with the dwarf, he would initiate the self-destruction of present-day humankind.32 So it must be the case that Zarathustra’s biting the head off the serpent requires him to finish what he had already begun and fully affirm his selective thought of humankind’s eternal recurrence. This more specific understanding of the solution to Zarathustra’s vision-riddle is supported by Nietzsche’s narrative suggestion that Zarathustra lost his courage at the very moment when he was about to kill the dwarf: “Thus I spoke, and ever more quietly: for I feared my own thoughts and reservations [Hintergedanken].” On the traditional analysis, Zarathustra’s loss of See Loeb 2008b for a further development of this argument that draws upon Nietzsche’s GM II analysis of the human being as the mnemonic animal and upon his GM III analysis of the human being as the animal that tends toward suicidal nihilism because he suffers from his inability to find meaning. 31 There are many other similar statements in Nietzsche’s contemporaneous notes: “The great noon as turning point – the two paths. The hammer to overpower the human: highest development of the individual, so that it must perish of itself (and not, as until now, of dietary mistakes!) (how death came into the world!)” (KSA 10:21[3]); “The hammer: a doctrine which, by unleashing a deathseeking pessimism, brings about a selection of those most suitable for life” (KSA 12:2[100]); “The hammer – a danger upon which the human can shatter” (KSA 11:34[78]). Although a few interpreters (e.g. Deleuze 1983, pp. 68–71; Strong 2000, pp. 269–292) have written about Nietzsche’s unpublished remarks about selective eternal recurrence, none of them have shown how he incorporated this account into Zarathustra. Clegg 1981, pp. 90–91, offers an interesting alternative argument regarding the selective effects of recurrence-immortality: the weak will no longer have reason to reproduce for “there is obviously no point in their trying to gain a vicarious, bogus immortality”; while the strong “will realize that they can afford to live dangerously without concern for mere survival.” 32 Here Nietzsche alludes to Wagner’s theme of the ring’s curse of death (Rheingold, Scene 4), as well as to Wagner’s depiction of Wotan’s decision to initiate the self-destruction of the gods (Siegfried, Act III, Scene 2). As Hollinrake notes (1982, p. 76ff.), Nietzsche frames these allusions with his reference to Wagner’s image of Wotan as the Wanderer before Zarathustra recounts his visionriddle (III.1), and with his reference to the Wanderer’s awakening of Erda (Act III, Scene 1) during the fulfillment of this vision-riddle (III.13:1). 30

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courage stems from his realization that he is destined to fail in his quest to completely eradicate small humankind. Even if he succeeds in destroying the present small human, eternal recurrence guarantees that the small human will return. Hence, the analysis goes, Zarathustra must learn to affirm even the small human that he had previously wanted to eradicate. Against this analysis, however, we have already seen that there is no necessity for the small human to exist in the future, and that Zarathustra rejoices at the prospect of a future devoid of the small human. Nor should Zarathustra’s knowledge of the eternal recurrence of the small human’s past existence do anything to lessen that joy – unless he adopts an unrealistic, supra-historical, perspective that shows the joyful future devolving into the nauseating past.33 On the reading I offer, by contrast, we can understand Zarathustra’s reservations and loss of courage as stemming instead from his growing realization that his affirmation of eternal recurrence will indeed succeed in eradicating humankind. Confronted with this certainty, Zarathustra is overcome by the herd-instilled guilt and bad conscience that are symbolized by the serpent’s bite. At the same time, as we might expect, he is assailed by the values of a thousand years and a thousand peoples that are symbolized by the Wagnerian dragon or Schlangenwurm. In addition, since his affirmation will lead to the suffering and self-destruction of even the greatest humans with whom he partly identifies, Zarathustra experiences vertigo over the deepest abyss of his pity or commiseration (Mitleid). And, finally, because he is still young (a “young shepherd”), Zarathustra is blocked by the pride of youth which keeps him from speaking his word. At the very moment when he is about to command the end of humankind, Zarathustra becomes afraid and ashamed. He doubts whether this is truly his word, and whether he is worthy and strong enough to speak it. He doubts whether he really has the lion’s commanding voice, and whether his word can have any influence at all on humankind (II.22). But then, having hesitated to affirm his selective thought, Zarathustra confronts the prospect of humanity’s continued existence – indeed, the crushing and crucifying prospect of the eternal recurrence of this continuation. He now becomes so nauseated at this prospect that he regains the courage needed to achieve his life-affirming negation: “He has heart who knows fear, but masters fear; who sees the abyss, but with pride. / Whoever sees the abyss, but with eagle’s eyes; whoever grasps the abyss with an eagle’s claws: He has courage” (IV.13:4; see also IV.14:3). This 33

See Soll 1973, pp. 336–338; and Clark 1990, pp. 271–272.


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regained courage is the attacking courage that Zarathustra had said would slay his fear, his pain, his vertigo, his pity, even death itself – by saying: “Was that life? Well, then! Once more!” Fortified by this new courage, the prophetic Zarathustra is now able to cry out in a lion’s commanding voice: “Bite! Bite! / The head off! Bite!” With this word of the end of humankind, he pronounces his own good and evil and the lion-spirited “I will!” that is needed to finally slay the great value-dragon’s “Thou shalt!” (KSA 10:16[64]). In obeying his own command, Zarathustra overcomes his pity and his youth and laughs the inhuman laughter that is needed to finally slay the spirit of gravity that has so far ruled the earth (I.7). This is because his tremendous annihilating deed dwarfs all previous human evil and overcomes all the tradition, custom, and morality embodied in the spirit of gravity which says: “Good for all, evil for all.” With this new laughter, Zarathustra mocks and ridicules the small and dwarfish standards by which the spirit of gravity has so far assessed what is good and evil for all.34 No l ong e r s h e ph e rd Although highly compressed and symbolic, Nietzsche’s depiction of the immediate aftermath of Zarathustra’s deed helps to confirm this new solution to the book’s central riddle. Thus, upon regaining consciousness, Zarathustra finds at his feet two lambs that his eagle had stolen from their shepherds. This gift symbolizes the regained eagle’s courage that enabled Zarathustra to dive into his abyss in order to steal the herd of human sheep away from their true shepherds, the good and the just. It symbolizes as well the end of Zarathustra’s role as shepherd, and the start of his new role as a bird of prey hunting for lambs. Singing his second dance song, Zarathustra says he is weary of being life’s sheepish shepherd and represents himself instead as a hunter with life as his hound. As the sorcerer alludes, it was Zarathustra’s blessedness to see humans as God and sheep, that is, as great and small – and then: “To rend the God in humans / As the sheep in humans, / And in rending to laugh –” (IV.14:3). Zarathustra’s eagle also brings him rose-apples (Rosenäpfeln), and the first thing Zarathustra does when he sits up is to take one of these apples and delight in its smell. This gesture, along with the waiting new garden-world pointed out by his animals, alludes of course to See BGE 294, GS 382, and also Foucault’s famous concluding depiction of the transformed shepherd’s laughter as announcing the death of the human (1973, p. 385).

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Genesis and the Garden of Eden. As such, they symbolize Zarathustra’s temptation by the serpent into taking fruit from the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil. However, Zarathustra tells his soul that he has now choked the choker called “sin,” washed away all shame, and regained an earthly paradise where he is able proudly to stand naked, that is, wickedly, before the eyes of the hot sun (II.21, III.14).35 In his second dance song, life tells him that they have together discovered an island and a green meadow beyond good and evil. For this reason, Zarathustra now possesses a “laughing wickedness, at home under rose-slopes and lily-hedges: / – for in laughter all evil comes together, but sanctified and absolved by its own bliss: –” (III.16:6). The convalescent Zarathustra, who is awaited by roses outside his cave, is thus able to crown himself with the rose wreath that symbolizes laughing wickedness (IV.13:18, 20). Having killed the spirit of gravity with this laughing wickedness, Zarathustra’s soul jumps, dances, and flies until he is a weightless songbird (III.16:6–7). Perhaps most cryptically, the convalescing Zarathustra describes his animals’ comforting words as “rainbows” and “bridges.” Zarathustra’s animals also tell him that he is awaited outside by flocks of doves and a wind laden with heavy fragrances. These symbols also allude to Genesis, and in particular to the signs of the end of the forty-day storm that God sent to flood the earth and to destroy all humankind except Noah and those members of his family who entered his ark (Genesis 6–9). They thus refer to the commanding words (“Bite! Bite! / The head off! Bite!”) which Zarathustra’s stillest hour said belonged to him and which he and his animals call “the Zarathustra-word” (das Zarathustra-Wort) of the great-noon of earth and humankind.36 They refer as well to the storm of the spirit brought on by those words that, although cried out of himself, were communicated only to himself and are therefore the stillest (II.22, III.12:3, III.13:2). But whereas the Genesis God decided to eradicate humankind because he was outraged at the extent of its evil and corruption, Zarathustra decided to do so because he was nauseated at the smallness of this evil (which is needed for humankind’s best) (II.21, III.13:2). The convalescing Zarathustra’s rainbows, along with the doves and the fragrant winds, thus symbolize the See BGE 295, where Nietzsche alludes back to Zarathustra’s laughing, wicked, naked, shame-free soul when he represents Dionysus as a laughing god without shame who has no need to cover his nakedness with pomp-and-virtue names and who aims to make the human being more evil and thus more beautiful. 36 In his later Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche describes this same Zarathustra who “must come one day” as a “bell-stroke of noon and of the great decision (Entscheidung) that liberates the will again and once again gives the earth its goal and humans their hope” (GM II:24). I discuss this passage at length in Chapter 8. 35


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end of this protracted storm and the fulfillment of his covenant to redeem humankind from the spirit of revenge (II.7). Finally, besides containing this important allusion to Genesis, Zarathustra’s post-redemptive experience of rainbows and bridges alludes back to his announcement of the coming of the superhuman (P:9). This allusion is significant because it suggests that Zarathustra’s biting the head off the serpent is the deed that successfully begins humankind’s selfovercoming. In his first speeches after coming down from his mountain, Zarathustra had attempted to flatter and scorn humans into sacrificing themselves for the sake of the superhuman (P:3–5). But this attempt was a failure, and Zarathustra has now learned that only his affirmation of the selective thought of eternal recurrence can compel humans to go under freely so as to make room for the superhuman.37 In thus wielding the hard sculpting hammer (Hammer) of eternal recurrence so as to deal crushing heavy blows to the hard, ugly stone of the human, the creatorartist Zarathustra is finally able to chisel free his imprisoned vision of the beautiful superhuman (II.2).38 Alluding once again to Wagner’s Ring (Rheingold, Scene 4), Nietzsche thus portrays Zarathustra as the god of thunder who swings his hammer down in an act of tremendous negation. This hammer-blow summons storms, lightning, and thunder that sweep away all the gloomy and weighty clouds and reveal a clear, open sky-abyss of life to which Zarathustra can finally say “Yes and Amen” (III.4, III.16). And arising out of this clear sky, there now appears a radiant rainbow-bridge leading to the future Valhalla-castles where the superhuman resides.39 By contrast with this suggestion of an important continuity between Zarathustra’s first teaching of the superhuman and his later struggle with the thought of eternal recurrence, contemporary scholars argue that Nietzsche has Zarathustra abandon or deflate his initial ideal of the superhuman so that he is able to affirm the eternal recurrence of the small human. See Lampert 1986, pp. 19–21, 170–171, 181, 217–219, 257–58; Clark 1990, pp. 270–277; Pippin 1988. 38 See also BGE 62, 211, 225; EH Z:8; TI X:5–6; KSA 10:21[6]. Throughout his notes, Nietzsche emphasizes not only the heaviness of the hammer of eternal recurrence, but also its hardness and the hardness and strength needed by the man who would wield it. On my reading, this hardness symbolizes the overcoming of compassion that is needed to wield the selective thought of eternal recurrence against the small human. Thus Zarathustra becomes bronze-hard at the end of Part IV as a prerequisite to awakening this thought at the start of the “Convalescent” chapter. See BGE 203 where Nietzsche writes of a revaluation of values that would act as a hammer with which to steel the conscience of future philosophers and turn their hearts to hard bronze. And, again, see the concluding sections of Twilight of the Idols in which immediately after declaring himself the teacher of eternal recurrence, Nietzsche has the hammer commanding readers to become hard like bronze. 39 For a similar analysis of Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols allusion to Wagner’s image of the hammer, see Gillespie (1988, pp. 122–123). 37

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The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra C onc l usion

Let me now sum up my exegesis of Zarathustra’s vision-riddle in this chapter. I began by noting that Nietzsche’s allusions to Wagner’s Siegfried suggest a narrative continuity between two scenes that are usually analyzed separately. Most important among these allusions are the symbol of the dwarf in the first scene, the symbol of the serpent-dragon in the second scene, and the symbol of the ring that is implicit in both scenes. With this narrative continuity in mind, I then observed that Nietzsche’s temporal imagery in the first scene could be used to analyze the details of his serpent-imagery in the second scene. The result of such an analysis, I argued, is that Zarathustra’s decision to bite the head off the serpent should be interpreted as a decision to end the present existence of humankind. This conclusion, I noted, is entailed as well by a continuous reading of the two scenes that shows Zarathustra breaking off, and then resuming, his attempt to crush present humankind with the heavy weight of his thought of eternal recurrence. Finally, I pointed out some confirming allusions and narrative details in Nietzsche’s depiction of the immediate aftermath of Zarathustra’s decision. I think that this new exegesis helps to resolve the various problems and difficulties that I said confronted the traditional analysis of Zarathustra’s vision-riddle. But it may be objected that this resolution has been purchased at the cost of attributing to Nietzsche views so radical and implausible that they would seem to violate the principle of interpretive charity.40 It may be wondered, for example, how the idea of ending humankind could possibly be considered a life-affirming idea. I have already partly addressed this question by pointing to Zarathustra’s disdain for undiscriminating affirmation and to his general view that all true Yes-saying includes No-saying. I have also emphasized Zarathustra’s more particular view that life affirmation means affirmation only of that which enhances life and hence includes a negation of that which poisons life. But I think that Nietzsche would also reply that this question conflates life affirmation with life preservation. This is why he has Zarathustra instruct the higher men as follows: The most cautious ask today: ‘how shall humanity be preserved?’ Zarathustra, however, asks as the sole and first one to do so: ‘How shall humanity be overcome?’ It is worth noting that several other commentators have also found these radical views in Zarathustra: Whitlock 1990, Rosen 1995, Waite 1996, Conway 1997a and 1997b, Gillespie 1999.

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The superhuman lies close to my heart, he is my first and sole concern – and not the human: not the nearest, not the poorest, not the most suffering, not the best – . Oh my brothers, what I can love about humans is that they are a going-over and a going-under. (IV.13:3)

Indeed, since Zarathustra’s thought of eternal recurrence is meant to initiate the suicide of humankind, and since Zarathustra must now follow his own command (II.22), his decision is best interpreted as an act of selfovercoming on the part of humankind itself. As such, this decision simply follows the law and essence of life itself: All great things perish through themselves, through an act of self-cancellation [Selbstaufhebung]: so wills the law of life, the law of necessary ‘self-overcoming’ that is the essence of life – always, the call goes out finally to the legislator himself: ‘patere legem, quam ipse tulisti.’ (GM III:27; see also II.12) 41

Alternatively, it may be objected that I have followed Nietzsche’s Wagnerian allusions too closely. After all, he was a harsh critic of Wagner, and he worried especially about the nihilism built into the Ring’s apocalyptic conclusion: “And he translated the Ring into Schopenhauer’s terms. Everything goes wrong, everything perishes, the new world is as bad as the old: – the nothing, the Indian Circe beckons … ” (CW 4). How then could Nietzsche envisage an equally apocalyptic and nihilistic conclusion for his magnum opus Zarathustra? Shouldn’t we instead read his allusions as pointing to a parodic reversal of the Ring’s conclusion? Again, I would argue that this objection presupposes an understanding of Nietzsche’s concept that is not his own. For Nietzsche, “nihilism” means the weariness suffered by present-day humankind when confronted by its own smallness: For this is how things stand: the diminution and leveling of European man constitutes our greatest danger, for the sight of him makes us weary. … Just here lies the fatality of Europe – along with fear of the human we have also forfeited love of him, respect for him, hope for him, even the will to him. The sight of the human now makes us weary – what is nihilism today if it is not that? … We are weary of the human … (GM I:12)

When, therefore, Nietzsche writes that the philosopher of decadence, Schopenhauer, actually did redeem Wagner by revealing the artist of decadence to himself (CW 4), he implies that the Ring’s nihilistic conclusion “Submit to the law which you yourself have decreed.” For a further discussion of the issues raised in this reply, and of Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s concept of the superhuman as entailing the end of the human, see Ansell-Pearson 2000.

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actually did express Wagner’s own true weariness of the human and of himself. This implication is supported especially by Nietzsche’s portrayal of Wagner as the higher-man sorcerer to whom Zarathustra says: “You evil old sorcerer, that is the best and most honest thing that I honor in you, that you have grown weary of yourself and have declared: ‘I am not great’” (IV.5:2). By contrast, Nietzsche would argue, Zarathustra’s decision to sacrifice the human for the sake of the superhuman overcomes this weariness of the human, and justifies humankind by giving it something to create beyond itself. This is why he proclaims Zarathustra the anti-nihilist and conqueror of nothingness whose great-noon decision will once again give the earth its goal and humans their hope (GM II:24). In this sense, then, Nietzsche’s Wagnerian allusions do indeed sow the seeds for a philosophical refutation of the germinal cell that grew into Zarathustra. Finally, it may be objected, what does Nietzsche imagine will be left once humankind has been led by the thought of eternal recurrence to will its own downfall? In several places, Nietzsche describes eternal recurrence as the thought about time that will split humankind, or the history of humankind, in two (KSB 6, p. 485). This split will have a horizontal and a vertical dimension. Horizontally, the history of humankind will be split into what came before the thought of eternal recurrence and what comes after it. Vertically, humankind itself will be split in two by the selective action of the thought of eternal recurrence. The lower segment, and great majority, of humankind will be driven by its lower will-to-power to crushing despair and suicide. But the higher segment, and very small minority, comprising the ancestors of the superhuman, will be driven by its higher will-to-power to an initial self-emancipation from the fetters of “it was.” In the next chapter, then, I articulate Nietzsche’s vision of the revolutionary development that will take place after the advent of the thought of eternal recurrence and within the highest and smallest and most powerful segment of humankind.

C h a pt e r 7

Circulus vitiosus deus

“What else remains for us to say but that Zarathustra’s teaching does not bring redemption from revenge?” (1977, p. 76). With this verdict, Martin Heidegger concluded his published reflections on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. This is an especially significant conclusion, because Zarathustra sees revenge as the source of most human failings and declares early on that one of his chief goals is to redeem humans from revenge (II.7). Revenge, Zarathustra argues, is the human will’s ill-will against the past. Zarathustra thus proposes a new teaching on time – the eternal recurrence of the same – that empowers the human will with respect to the past and thus redeems it from revenge (II.20). According to Heidegger, however, this new teaching attempts to fix the passing of time, to render it secure and stable, and therefore still conceals within itself a hatred of time and a supremely spiritualized form of revenge. Although Heidegger was careful to add that he did not mean this verdict as a refutation or even as an objection, he was aware that such an impression might easily arise. He worried that he might be read as attempting to refute Nietzsche by imputing to him precisely what he sought to overcome. And, indeed, this has traditionally been regarded as the upshot of his influential discussion. More recently, however, commentators have tried to remain faithful to Heidegger’s intent by following his claim that Nietzsche himself anticipated this response. But instead of relying, as Heidegger does, on Nietzsche’s unpublished notes, they have emphasized Nietzsche’s distinction between himself and his fictional character Zarathustra. According to this more sophisticated reading, Nietzsche intended us to notice the self-defeating character of Zarathustra’s quest to redeem humankind.1 Thus, Peter Berkowitz, for example, writes: “The Pippin (1988, pp. 64–67) also emphasizes Nietzsche’s “ironic” distance from the views presented through his “mask” Zarathustra. I address the question of Nietzsche’s distinction between his own voice and Zarathustra’s voice in Chapter 8.

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argument and action of Zarathustra powerfully suggest that the eternal return must be understood as a reactive thought, a reflection of weakness, indeed, the brainstorm and child of the spirit of revenge” (1995, p. 207).2 Hence, “[i]nasmuch as Zarathustra attempts to achieve liberation through willing time, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is perhaps the supreme case study of the supreme form of revenge” (1995, p. 192). Nevertheless, the low point of Zarathustra’s ordeal is “the high point of Nietzsche’s thought experiment” and “a triumph for Nietzsche’s art and thought”: “For by showing that the ethics of creativity requires Zarathustra to command eternity, and that Zarathustra must abandon his beloved wisdom to make himself believe that eternity can be made subject to his will, Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra exposes the vain and debasing ambition that underlies Zarathustra’s highest hopes” (1995, pp. 176, 209).3 Against this Heideggerian reading, however, we have already seen that Zarathustra’s “Blessed Isles” speech attacks the thought of an eternal, unmoving, permanent God because this thought does away with time and makes a lie out of all that is transitory (II.2). In this speech, to which he explicitly alludes in his later redemption speech,4 Zarathustra identifies the reality of time with flux and impermanence. He also hints that his new teaching of eternal recurrence will be a parable (Gleichniss) that speaks of time and becoming and that praises and justifies all transitoriness. This is why in his “Vision and Riddle” speech Zarathustra teaches eternal recurrence for the first time as something he saw in a parable (Gleichniss). Moreover, as I argued in Chapter 3, Zarathustra rejects his archenemy’s interpretation of this gateway-parable precisely because it assumes a Platonic God’s-eye point of view on reality that relegates time and becoming to the world of lie and illusion. On Zarathustra’s own interpretation of this parable, there is no standpoint outside the ceaseless and irreversible flow of time. To be sure, Zarathustra does argue that this temporal flux eventually turns back into itself, thus rendering illusory any absolute distinctions among past, present, and future. But these absolute distinctions themselves derive from a conception of absolute linear time that Zarathustra associates with the thought of God and with the Platonic contempt for temporal flux. Hence, Zarathustra’s justification of the Berkowitz (1995, pp. 8–9, 177–178) cites Heidegger as his inspiration for this argument. For a similar argument see Pippin 1988, p. 55. 3 See Lampert 1997 for a sharp critique of Berkowitz’s reading of some of the relevant passages, especially of III.2. 4 In his redemption speech, Zarathustra reminds his disciples that he has earlier taught them, in his “Blessed Isles” speech, that the will is a liberator and joy-bringer and creator. 2


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reality of time and becoming actually requires a teaching that eliminates these absolute distinctions. Of course, just because Zarathustra claims he has vindicated the reality of time does not mean that he has in fact done so. According to the Heideggerian reading, Zarathustra’s subconscious hatred of time leads him unwittingly to devise a teaching about eternity, recurrence, and sameness that degrades the temporal and transitory aspect of all that is earthly. The most important evidence cited by this reading is Zarathustra’s speech on redemption, in which he implies that his new teaching will grant humans a power over time that will enable them to will backward in time and thus to “break” and “escape” time. So in this chapter I want to investigate more closely this particular speech and especially this concept of backward-willing (das Zurückwollen). This concept, I show, still presupposes the reality of temporal flux and in no way requires its cessation, reversal, or elimination. In addition, I argue that Nietzsche constructed the narrative structure of his book in such a way that the narrative event of Zarathustra’s self-redemption actually exhibits his discovery and exercise of his ability to will backward in time. But if Nietzsche designed his book so that it would exhibit precisely what Zarathustra teaches, then it cannot be the case, as recent Heideggerians suggest, that he aims to expose and undermine his protagonist’s teaching of eternal recurrence and backwardwilling. In fact, I argue further, Nietzsche’s narrative shows Zarathustra accurately foreseeing that his self-redemption will transform him from the human into the no-longer-human. Hence, we should conclude that Nietzsche also aims to confirm and reinforce his protagonist’s inaugural prophecies, promises, and teachings. I mp o t e nc e a nd r e v e ng e I begin, then, with a closer reading of Zarathustra’s diagnosis of revenge in his speech on redemption (II.20). According to Zarathustra, the will suffers from the impotence it feels when confronted with the unchangeable past. Because time is constantly flowing, and flowing in a forward direction only, the will sees that it cannot undo any deed and that it is powerless (ohnmächtig) against that which is done and in the past. Zarathustra describes the will’s feeling of impotence with respect to the past in metaphorical terms: as the feeling of being fastened in fetters and imprisoned in a dungeon, or of being confronted with a stone which it cannot move and roll away. Thus, the will’s loneliest melancholy, says Zarathustra, is that it cannot will backward and that it cannot break time and time’s

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appetite: “there is suffering in the willer himself, since he cannot will backward.” With this account of the will’s impotence-derived suffering in mind, Zarathustra goes on to suggest that the will – which is a liberator (Befreier) – has so far devised only a foolish strategy for liberating itself from the “it was” which causes it such feelings of impotence. This foolish strategy is “revenge” (Rache): And so the will rolls stones out of wrath and ill-temper, and it wreaks revenge upon whatever does not likewise feel wrath and ill-temper. Thus the will, the liberator, becomes a hurter: and upon all that can suffer it takes revenge for its inability to go backward.

Thus, according to Zarathustra, it is because the will feels impotent against time and the past that it aims to increase its feeling of power by making others suffer as it does. In particular, Zarathustra says, the will takes revenge upon all that can suffer, upon whatever does not likewise feel wrath and ill-temper. In this way, Zarathustra reiterates the psychological lesson of his earlier “Tarantulas” speech – namely, that what is impotent secretly plots revenge against everything that has power. Next, Zarathustra teaches about the will’s “spirit of revenge” (der Geist der Rache). This spirit, he says, is an outgrowth of the will’s revenge-based strategy for liberating itself from the past. Indeed, the curse for humanity is that such foolishness acquired intelligence and hence no longer appeared foolish. Hence, the spirit of revenge, humanity’s best afterthoughts, is still predicated upon the will’s foolish attempt to diminish its suffering by inflicting hurt upon all that does not suffer as it does. The only difference is that the will now aims to justify its deeds of revenge by calling them “punishment” and by claiming that those whom it makes suffer deserve to suffer. Although Zarathustra does not say so explicitly, it is clear why he thinks the will’s revenge-strategy is foolish. For in ensuring that others suffer as it does, the will does not thereby feel any less impotence with respect to time and hence does not diminish any of its own suffering. For this reason, Zarathustra aims to contrast his own wise proposal for the will’s selfliberation with the will’s hitherto-foolish attempt to liberate itself.5 But Due to his over-emphasis on the single remark in “On Tarantulas” – “that humanity be redeemed from revenge: that is for me the bridge to the highest hope” – Heidegger (1977, p. 69ff.) conceives only of redemption from (the spirit of) revenge, and is unable to follow Nietzsche in his interpretation of redemption (Erlösung) as release, liberation, or escape from time’s imprisonment. See also Lampert 1986, pp. 140–151 and Stambaugh 1994, p. 53.

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this means that Zarathustra aims to teach the will how to diminish its suffering – something that can only be done by teaching it how to lessen its feeling of impotence with respect to the fact of time’s ceaseless forward flow. Supposing he can teach this, Zarathustra says, then the will would also be able to unharness itself from its own folly and to unlearn its spirit of revenge: I led you away from these fable-songs when I taught you: ‘the will is a creator.’ All ‘it was’ is a fragment, a riddle, a dreadful accident – until the creative will says to it: ‘but thus I willed it!’ – Until the creative will says to it: ‘But thus I will it! Thus I shall will it!’ But has it already spoken thus? And when does this happen? Is the will already unharnessed from its own folly? Has the will already become its own redeemer and joy-bringer? Did it unlearn the spirit of revenge and all teeth-gnashing? And who taught it to be reconciled with time, and what is higher than all reconciliation? Higher than all reconciliation must that will will which is the will to power – : yet how does that happen to it? Who taught it also even backward-willing?

In the last lines of this conclusion to his redemption speech, Zarathustra proposes a cure for the spirit of revenge that follows naturally and directly from his earlier diagnosis: since the will is led to acquire the spirit of revenge by its inability to will backward in time, then the will must be taught how to do this. Such a cure, Zarathustra suggests, would teach the will to reconcile itself with time, that is, to accept the ceaseless forward flow of time. But it would also teach the will something higher than this, something that is required by Zarathustra’s discovery that “where there is will, there is will to power” (II.12) – namely, how to exercise power over time and liberate itself from the past. Indeed, it is precisely because the will is will to power that it suffers so much when it feels impotent against the past.6 This is also why Zarathustra calls the will a “joy-bringer” (Freudebringer) when it increases its sense of power by teaching itself how to will backward in time.7 Now, according to the Heideggerian reading of Zarathustra’s speech, this natural interpretation of Zarathustra’s cure cannot be right, for it would attribute to Nietzsche the absurd view that time can be stopped, reversed, For a similar reading, see Fink 1973, pp. 81, 84. “What is happiness? – The feeling that power grows, that a resistance is overcome” (A 2).

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or eliminated in such a way that the past can be changed or undone.8 On this reading, Nietzsche himself does not take seriously the possibility of backward-willing, but rather intends us to notice that his character Zarathustra’s longing for this possibility still conceals within itself the will’s aversion to time and spirit of revenge. Thus, when Zarathustra claims that the will’s spirit of revenge is a foolish and hence unsuccessful attempt to escape time’s imprisonment, we are supposed to learn that the spirit of revenge is actually the will’s refusal to admit its complete inability to escape time’s imprisonment. And when Zarathustra claims that the will’s redemption requires a wise and hence successful escape from time’s imprisonment, we are supposed to learn that redemption is actually the will’s final acceptance, and indeed affirmation, of its complete inability to escape time’s imprisonment. Against this reading, however, it should be noted that the conclusion of Zarathustra’s redemption speech clearly indicates his aim of teaching the will two compatible abilities: first, how to reconcile itself with time; and, second, something higher than all reconciliation, namely how to escape time through backward-willing. Nowhere in his speech does Zarathustra suggest that the second ability would undermine the first, or that backward-willing would require a reversal or cessation in the flow of time. More importantly, and contrary to a widespread assumption among Nietzsche commentators, nowhere does Zarathustra’s redemption speech say that willing backwards involves altering or undoing the past.9 It is true that Zarathustra characterizes “that which was” as the name of the stone the will cannot roll away, and also that he says that the will is powerless against what has been done and an angry spectator of all that is past. But all that these remarks show is that the will in the present regards itself Thus, for example, Gooding-Williams (2001, pp. 219–268) argues that Zarathustra relates the act of willing backwards to a cosmological vision of a perpetual now and thereby to the undoing of the Christian-Platonic past; Stambaugh (1994, pp. 85–86) argues that willing backward so as to change the past would mean reversing the direction of time; Pippin (1988, p. 55) claims that Zarathustra’s attempt to will backward would be an attempt to will away the past; and Lampert (1986, p. 148) argues that Zarathustra’s speech shows that, because time as passage cannot be suspended by humans, redemption cannot come through liberation from time as passage. Of these commentators, only Gooding-Williams thinks that literal backward-willing is intended seriously by Nietzsche – but still only in a provisional sense, as a “simply absurd” stage to be replaced by the superior third act of Zarathustra’s thought-drama (2001, p. 213). 9 Toward the end of his redemption speech, Zarathustra sees madness as preaching: “No deed can be annihilated: how could it be undone by punishment!” (“Keine That kann vernichtet werden: wie könnte sie durch die Strafe ungethan werden!”). But this is madness (Wahnsinn) speaking about punishment being able to undo the past. It is not the liberating will speaking about willing backwards. 8


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as powerless to will what has already been done in the past.10 The will must remain a spectator of all that is past because, since “time does not run backwards,” it cannot regard itself as having now willed this past into being or as having now had any creative effect or influence on this past. This is precisely why Zarathustra says at the end of his speech that the will shall have learned to will backwards when it has learned how to say to the past, “But thus I willed it! But thus I will it!” The point of willing backwards is not to will now so as to alter or undo what is already done, but rather to will now so that what is already done is such as it is and not otherwise precisely because of this creative present willing.11 I think these crucial exegetical points go a long way toward refuting the Heideggerian reading of Zarathustra’s redemption speech. Still, we need to ask next what exactly Zarathustra means by his concept of backwardwilling. How is this concept supposed to entail the will’s escape from time’s imprisonment without yet denying the reality and irreversibility of time’s ceaseless forward flow? And how can the will empower itself with respect to the past without yet being able to change or undo the past? Finally, how exactly are these ideas supposed to follow from Zarathustra’s doctrine of eternal recurrence? B ack wa rd -w i l l ing Let me return, then, to the concluding question at the end of Zarathustra’s redemption speech: “Who taught [the will to power] also even backwardwilling?” This is of course a strange question for Zarathustra to be asking, since it suggests that he knows the mentioned teaching took place, but not who did the teaching. But it is also a strange question for the reader to be hearing, since the narrative of Zarathustra indicates that the teaching Against this point, Gooding-Williams cites Nietzsche’s use of the German verb, ‘wälzen’, as in “so heisst der Stein, den er nicht wälzen kann,” which he interprets as follows: “Now to roll a stone is, in fact, to alter its position, and Zarathustra, I argue, wishes to alter the past’s position as a burden that excludes the possibility of creating new values – as if the past were a stone that he might roll aside and so remove from its position as such a burden – by undoing, or annulling, the past” (2007, p. 103). But to roll a stone aside is not to destroy it. Similarly, to alter the position of the past is not to alter the past itself, much less to undo or annul it. On my reading, Zarathustra’s backward-willing does indeed alter what had previously seemed like the past’s closed-ended and fixed position in relation to the present and the future (namely, as passed away and forever out of reach), but this does not in any way alter, undo, or annul the past. Nietzsche’s imagery also refers to Zarathustra’s newfound power over death because it alludes to the heavy stone sealing the door of the sepulcher entombing the corpse of the crucified Jesus and rolled aside at the moment of his resurrection (Matthew 27:59, 27:66, 28:2). 11 See Dummett 1993 and Lewis 1993 for arguments about affecting the past without having to change it. 10

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cannot have taken place when Zarathustra suggests, that is, before he asks these questions. Zarathustra’s question becomes less strange, however, if we suppose that the thought of eternal recurrence is the Grundconception of Nietzsche’s literary creation in the performative sense I have proposed. Suppose, that is, that Nietzsche hopes to employ the chronological structure of his book’s narrative as a means of figuratively exhibiting Zarathustra’s discovery of backward-willing. Thus, although Zarathustra does not claim to have been redeemed until after his confrontation with his most abysmal thought, we are supposed to infer that this redemption requires him to teach himself how to will backward in time. But since Nietzsche has designed a circular narrative in which Zarathustra’s life is a closed circle where his future is also his past, Zarathustra may be said to have already learned backwardwilling. Hence Zarathustra’s suspicion, at the time of his redemptionspeech, that someone has already taught backward-willing, together with his confusion as to who this might be. Such an elaborate reading would of course be implausible if it were based only upon the peculiarity of the single line cited above. But this peculiarity is found also in the series of mixed-tense declarations and questions immediately preceding this line: But has it already spoken thus? And when does this happen? Is the will already unharnessed from its own folly? Has the will already become its own redeemer and joy-bringer? Did it unlearn the spirit of revenge and all teeth-gnashing? And who taught it to be reconciled with time, and what is higher than all reconciliation? Higher than all reconciliation must that will will which is the will to power – : yet how does that happen to it? Who taught it also even backward-willing?

In this conclusion to his redemption speech, where he has forgotten that his disciples are listening, Zarathustra asks himself three questions about the backward-willing learned by the will to power: who taught it? How does this happen to it? And, when does this happen to it? The second question, I have argued, at least has a determinate solution. For Nietzsche clearly suggests that the will to power becomes able to will higher than all reconciliation with time, namely backward, because someone teaches it the truth of eternal recurrence. From this answer, however, there follow Zarathustra’s other two questions to himself concerning the identity of this teacher and the time of his teaching. We readers know that Zarathustra is the teacher of


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eternal recurrence, and that his teaching will take place sometime after his redemption speech. But for Zarathustra himself, a character caught in the midst of Nietzsche’s circular narrative, there cannot be a definite answer to the question at what point in his life his teaching takes place.12 This indeterminacy is reflected in the confluence of Zarathustra’s confused recollection of someone having already taught backward-willing, his present wariness about teaching backward-willing to his unprepared disciples, and his confident expectation of someone teaching backward-willing in the future. This indeterminacy is intensified, moreover, by Zarathustra’s implication that, once having been taught backward-willing, the creative will shall be (or was, or is) able to say that it wills “it was” not just in the past tense, but also in the present and future tenses. Since, however, Zarathustra’s teaching of backward-willing is soon to be part of the “it was” of his life, Zarathustra will then have to regard himself as having willed this teaching in the past, present and future.13 Although Zarathustra’s speech on redemption ends with questions, Nietzsche offers us some important clues for answering them when he next depicts Zarathustra as anticipating, and then relating, the event of his own redemption in the conclusion of Part III. Thus, in the “Old And New Tablets” chapter, Zarathustra reviews the cure that was outlined at the end of his redemption speech, and then says that he is awaiting his own redemption. Nietzsche’s clue here is that we need to study his narrative depiction of Zarathustra’s redemption if we are to understand the conclusion of his earlier redemption speech. In fact, however, Nietzsche does not directly depict Zarathustra’s redemption. Rather, immediately following “Old and New Tablets,” Nietzsche depicts Zarathustra as awakening his most abysmal thought and then remembering his redemption during his ensuing convalescence. Speaking to his animals, Zarathustra says: how well you know what had to be fulfilled in seven days: – – and how that monster crawled into my throat and choked me! But I bit the head off of it and spat it away from me. And you, – have you already made a lyre-song out of this? Now however I lie here, still weary from this biting and spitting away, still sick from my own redemption. (III.13:2) Something like this idea, as applied to Nietzsche himself, motivates Derrida’s reading of the start of Ecce Homo in 1985, pp. 7–21, 45–46, 56–57, 88–89. 13 Strictly speaking, as I argue at the end of this chapter, Nietzsche’s concept of backward-willing does not even permit the identity of its teacher and the time of its teaching to be narrowed down to Zarathustra and his lifetime. 12

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Here, then, Nietzsche lets us know that Zarathustra’s confrontation with his most abysmal thought – the thought of the eternal recurrence of even the smallest – somehow led to his redemption, and that in particular his biting and spitting away was the occasion of this redemption. In his preparatory notes, Nietzsche has Zarathustra say more explicitly: “Redemption! I spat out the head of the serpent! Redemption! I taught the will backward-willing” (Erlösung! Aus spie ich den Schlangenkopf! Erlösung! Den Willen lehrte ich das Zurückwollen) (KSA 10:18[45]). So Nietzsche clearly intends for us to see that the thought of eternal recurrence is what led Zarathustra to his redemptive teaching of backwardwilling. But Nietzsche does not tell us the meaning of Zarathustra’s remembrance. Instead, this remembrance alludes in turn back to the two parts of Zarathustra’s prevision (III.2). For the initial part of this prevision depicts Zarathustra’s confrontation with his most abysmal thought of eternal recurrence. As we have seen in Chapter 3, this is a thought represented by the image of two straight lanes, seemingly eternal and leading in opposite directions, yet in fact joined together into one tremendously extended, though finite, circular course wherein all forward-running things and events – including even their associated moments of time – eternally recur. And the concluding part of Zarathustra’s prevision, as we have seen in Chapter 6, depicts his ensuing encounter with a young shepherd choking with nausea on a heavy black serpent that had crawled down his throat and bit itself fast there. After unsuccessfully trying to pull the serpent out, Zarathustra cries to the shepherd, “Bite! Bite! / The head off! Bite!,” and the shepherd follows his advice, spits the head of the serpent far away, and springs up transformed and no longer human. Again, however, Nietzsche does not explain Zarathustra’s prevision, but instead depicts Zarathustra as challenging his fellow travelers to guess the meaning of his prevision by solving the following series of riddles: – What did I see then in a parable? And who is it who must yet come one day? Who is the shepherd into whose throat the serpent thus crawled? Who is the human into whose throat all that is heaviest, blackest will thus crawl?

Nietzsche’s clear implication is that we ourselves need to solve these riddles if we wish to understand how Zarathustra attained redemption by teaching himself backward-willing. And the key Nietzsche provides us for solving these riddles lies in his narrative fulfillment of Zarathustra’s prevision. During his convalescence, that is, Zarathustra remembers


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having an experience that we recognize as the experience he attributed to the young shepherd in his recounted vision. Obviously, then, the solution to Zarathustra’s who-riddles is Zarathustra himself: he is the one who was destined to come one day, he is the human and young shepherd into whose throat the serpent, and all that is heaviest and blackest, was destined to thus crawl.14 Or so it would seem. For having drawn this natural conclusion, we are immediately faced with an important discrepancy between Zarathustra’s prophetic vision and Zarathustra’s convalescent remembrance – namely, the difference in their narrative point of view. In the vision, that is, the gagging nauseated figure is seen from the outside point of view of the Zarathustra who is having the vision that he later recounts to the sailors. But in talking to his animals, Zarathustra describes the experience of gagging and nausea as something he has just undergone himself. Since Zarathustra’s vision predicts his future experience, we may infer that Zarathustra sees himself giving aid to his unrecognized future self at a crucial and difficult moment later in his life. And this suggests further that the older Zarathustra was able to perform the necessary redemptive act of biting the head off the serpent because he was commanded to do so by his younger self. But that is not all. For if we look more closely still at the details in Zarathustra’s prophetic vision, we find that the Zarathustra who is having the vision is first alerted to his future self’s plight by a howling dog. Zarathustra recalls hearing this dog howl at the moon in his most distant childhood, and he now sees this dog leaping, bristling, and whining at the side of the gagging nauseated shepherd who is lying on the ground. When the dog sees Zarathustra coming, it howls again and then cries out for help in a way he has never heard before. Indeed, the gagging shepherd’s inability to cry for help himself seems to be the reason why the dog is forced to howl and cry for someone to come to his master’s aid. But the convalescent Zarathustra remembers that he had screamed in great pain during his confrontation with his most abysmal thought, and that he had cried as no one had yet cried at the smallness of humanity. Nietzsche’s implication, 14

Although it seems odd that Zarathustra’s prevision represents his chronologically older self as a young shepherd, Zarathustra’s stillest hour has told him that he would become young late and that he would need to overcome even this late youth in order to become a child (II.22). Here Nietzsche alludes back to the earlier speech “On Free Death,” where Zarathustra distinguishes between emotional or spiritual age and chronological age: “In some the heart grows old first and in some the spirit. And some are old in their youth: but those who are young late stay young long” (I.21). In GM II:24–25 he foresees the advent of a Zarathustra figure who will come one day in the future and be “younger” than himself by virtue of belonging to a stronger and healthier age.

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then, is that the older Zarathustra depicted in the “Convalescent” chapter is represented in Zarathustra’s prevision not only by the symbol of the gagging young shepherd but also by the symbol of the howling dog.15 Indeed, Zarathustra’s commiserating with the gagging shepherd and his howling dog shows that he identifies with both of them.16 This reading of Zarathustra’s prevision is supported by Nietzsche’s allusion to Zarathustra’s earlier realization, after he has been mocked by the people at the marketplace, that he is not meant to be their shepherd and shepherddog (P:6). The reason he says this is that he has just tried, and failed, to play both these roles: first, as shepherd, enticing them to follow him with his teaching of the superhuman (P:3–4); and next, as shepherd-dog, biting the heels of their education-based pride with his speech about the last humans (P:5). But Zarathustra’s unprecedented cry of pain during his confrontation with his most abysmal thought was prompted by the same object of disgust that was the theme of his earlier shepherd-dog speech, namely the smallness of the human. Nietzsche thus leads us to infer that the shepherd-dog in Zarathustra’s prevision is a symbol for that aspect of Zarathustra which warns of the great peril of small humanity. And since this great peril is that the dominance of the small human will prevent the superhuman from ever arriving, Nietzsche leads us to infer as well that the shepherd-dog’s cry for help is in fact an attempt to save the shepherd-Zarathustra from small humanity’s attempt to forever silence his teaching of the superhuman. Together, these inferences lead us to a reading of Zarathustra’s vision in which he foresees his older will as divided in two: the will of a shepherd under attack, and silenced, by the dominance of small humanity; and the will of a shepherd-dog coming to the aid of the former by “backward-willing” a cry for help to a younger will that can issue the proper advice. Here, then, we have Nietzsche’s narrative exhibition of the idea, implicit in Zarathustra’s redemption speech, that Zarathustra’s act of backwardwilling will have to involve some kind of interaction between his older and younger will. But Nietzsche suggests more specifically here that the older will belongs to Zarathustra at the climactic moment in his life when he has just awakened his thought of eternal recurrence, and that the younger will belongs to that time in Zarathustra’s life when he has a prevision of thus awakening his thought of eternal recurrence. This is because, after awakening his most abysmal thought, Zarathustra learns that his life is a closed Also, in “The Sleepwalker’s Song” (IV.19:8) the howling dog is identified with the wind, which is in turn associated with Zarathustra throughout the narrative (II.6). For an alternative interpretation of the symbol of the howling dog, see Shapiro 2003 and 2004.

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circle in which the future flows into the past. But this means that it is possible for him to intend his willing to be recollected by his younger self at the appropriate time in the form of a dream-prevision. Also, as Nietzsche later observes, the most powerful aid to memory is pain (GM II:3), and the older Zarathustra is undergoing an experience which he describes as a torture and crucifixion (III.13:2). Zarathustra’s prevision is thus actually a recollection of that key moment in his future when he awakens his most abysmal thought and is overwhelmed by it. Although the younger Zarathustra does not know the source or meaning of this recollection, he is able to offer the right advice for whomever will be undergoing the experience he foresees. Accordingly, when Zarathustra himself undergoes exactly such an experience, he is able to remember this advice and thereby rescue himself from its traumatic effects.17 S e l f -r e de mption Let me now turn to the question as to why and how Zarathustra’s discovery of eternal recurrence and backward-willing brings him redemption in both the senses mentioned at the end of his speech. To begin, after awakening his most abysmal thought, Zarathustra comes to learn the unconditional and endlessly repeated circular course of all things. What this means, as I argued in Chapter 3, is that Zarathustra’s perspective on his own death is transformed. Although he realizes that his soul is still as mortal as his body, and that he therefore becomes nothing upon dying, he now sees that his death is no longer final. Instead, he will be created again by the recurring knot of causes in which he is entangled and return to a life that is qualitatively identical in every respect. Since, however, the associated moments of time are themselves entangled in the recurring knot of causes, Zarathustra will only be recreated once time itself has recurred and returned to exactly the same moment in which he was created. But Zarathustra cannot perceive any of this elapsed time because he does not exist after his death or before his creation. From his perspective, therefore, the last moment of consciousness is immediately followed by a return to that moment of his most distant childhood in which he first became aware. Although others will perceive a complete end to his life, 17

As David Lewis (1993, p. 140) argues, every event in the closed causal information-transmitting loop of Zarathustra’s life has a causal explanation, being caused by events elsewhere on the loop. But there may be no causal explanation of the loop as a whole and no answer to the question where did the information in the loop come from in the first place. Dummett 1993 discusses the role of foreknowledge (as a kind of mirror image of memory) in the ability to affect the past.

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Zarathustra himself can never experience such an end or even a break in his life. Whereas Zarathustra previously regarded his life as an arrow that began at some point in the past and would end at some point in the future, he now sees that his life is actually a ceaselessly forward-flowing ring in which the endpoint eternally turns back to become the starting point. From this realization, there follows that first aspect of Zarathustra’s redemption which he call his reconciliation (Versöhnung) with the fact of time. Before he learns eternal recurrence, Zarathustra was filled with melancholy and nostalgia regarding those treasured moments in his life that were past and hence gone forever. In the course of his speeches, Zarathustra expresses this sadness most vividly when he curses those who murdered the now irretrievable divine moments of his youth (II.12). But after learning eternal recurrence, Zarathustra’s soul recounts each of the peak moments he has experienced in the course of his journeys, and sings joyfully after each: “Oh how should I not lust after eternity and after the wedding ring of rings, the ring of recurrence?” (III.16). Nietzsche’s implication is that Zarathustra’s new understanding of his life as a ring leads him to see that he will once again, and indeed eternally, experience all those joys that he wanted back but thought were lost forever. This is why, in his preparatory notes, Nietzsche has Zarathustra say: “I teach you redemption from eternal flux: the flux always flows back into itself again, and you always step into the same flux, as the same” (KSA 10:5[1].160). And: “Do not be afraid of the flux of things: this flux turns back into itself: it flees itself not only twice. / All ‘it was’ becomes again an ‘it is’. What is past bites all that is future in the tail” (KSA 10:4[85]). Next, Zarathustra turns his attention to the irreversible and unending temporal flow of his eternally recurring life. On his old conception of his life as an arrow, there is a unidirectional flow of influence from his past to his present to his future. But on his new understanding of his life as a ring that turns back into itself, Zarathustra is led to see that there must also be a flow of influence from his present to his past, and even from his future to his past and present. Although Zarathustra still cannot change the undesirable aspects of his past, he is now able to reconcile himself with these aspects because he sees that his past is partly a result of his present and future willing. In this way, the creative will of the redeemed Zarathustra is able to say to his past: “But thus I will it! Thus I shall will it!” Because Zarathustra now sees that his past bites the tail of his future, he expects that this willing will eventually be directed at his past and hence become a kind of backward-willing.18 For a similar analysis, though more abstractly formulated, see Fink 1973, p. 88.

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Now, it is just this expectation, Nietzsche suggests, that leads Zarathustra to gain that second aspect of redemption which he calls a power over time that is higher than all reconciliation with time. This is because Zarathustra’s older will is now able to exert a deliberate influence upon his younger will in order to ensure that he completes his destiny and becomes who he is. After learning eternal recurrence, Zarathustra discovers that he can develop a new kind of memory of the will which can be said to extend backwards, from his present to his past – thus allowing him to keep promises to himself and to fulfill his responsibility toward himself.19 This mnemonic willing is buried in his younger self’s subconscious and manifests itself in the form of prophetic dreams, visions, and omens. Although the younger Zarathustra does not know the source of these manifestations, the older Zarathustra designs and encodes them in such a way that they are recalled at the right times and elicit the appropriate responses. Zarathustra’s backward-willing is thus analogous to the kind of ordinary (that is, non-recurrence-based) forward-willing in which his younger self designs reminders for himself at various later points in his life. But there are important disanalogies as well. Zarathustra’s backwardwilling older self is more perfected and therefore has a stronger influence than his younger self. Also, while Zarathustra’s ordinary forward-willing cannot even be guaranteed a recipient, his backward-willing is aimed at a remembered past and can be more accurately designed and targeted for those times when it is most needed. This performative interpretation of Zarathustra’s backward-willing thus presupposes the reality of cosmological eternal recurrence as embodied in the structure of the narrative itself. It should therefore be sharply distinguished from the current interpretive consensus which denies Nietzsche’s interest in this reality. According to this consensus, Zarathustra’s backward-willing just consists in a literary, historical, or psychological operation whereby he retrospectively redescribes his past in an affirming and empowering manner.20 Here is Alexander Nehamas’ formulation in his influential commentary: Through a new way of life, [Nietzsche] believes, even the past can be changed. In this new way of life the past itself becomes new: “The will is a creator. All ‘it was’ Here I am referring to Nietzsche’s GM II account of “memory of the will” (Gedächtniss des Willens) as an active ongoing willing of what was once willed and as a precondition of all responsibility and promise-keeping (GM II:1–3). I discuss this account in detail in Chapter 8. 20 For other examples of this interpretive consensus, see Higgins 1987, pp. 187–188; Clark 1990, pp. 255–260; Large 1994, pp. 44–49 and 2007; Stambaugh 1994, pp. 85–86; White 1997, pp. 114–115; Schutte 1999, pp. 120–125; Strong 2000, pp. 235–237; Young 2003, pp. 87–95; Anderson 2005; 19

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is a fragment, a riddle, a dreadful accident – until the creative will says to it, ‘But thus I willed it.’ Until the creative will says to it, ‘But thus I will it; thus I shall will it’” (Z,II,20). Such willing “backward” cannot literally undo the past. Yet it is not easy to say exactly what the past is in the first place. … [Nietzsche] is thinking of his view that every one of my past actions is a necessary condition for my being what I am today. How I see my present self affects crucially the very nature of my past. If I am even for a moment such as I would want to be again, then I would also accept all my past actions, which, essential to and constitutive of the self I want to repeat, are now newly redescribed. By creating, on the basis of the past, an acceptable future, we justify and redeem everything that made this future possible; and that is everything. … To accept the present is then to accept all that has led to it. It is in this sense that one can now say of what has already happened, “Thus I willed it.” (1985, p. 160)

Notice here Nehamas’ background assumption that backward-willing is an attempt to change the past so that it becomes new. But Zarathustra claims that the past cannot be changed in any way and that any attempt to do so is an expression of dissatisfaction with the past as it is. It does not matter that Nehamas thinks it is impossible literally to undo the past, and that he proposes instead only a metaphorical sense whereby the past is redescribed as leading to an affirmable present.21 For, as Nietzsche argues explicitly in his discussion of providential reasoning (GS 277), any such redescription has to consist in falsification and wishful thinking.22 This is because, absent the reality of cosmological eternal recurrence, it is impossible for Zarathustra to be willing now what has already happened. Here Nehamas conflates the fact that Zarathustra’s past is a necessary condition of his present willing with the impossibility that Zarathustra’s past is the goal of his present willing. Accordingly, what Zarathustra now wills, on Nehamas’ reading, is actually his past as he wishes it would be, that is, as otherwise than it is. In addition, Zarathustra’s present situation may change for the worse in such a way that he no longer affirms it, and in that case he would no longer will the past that he has successfully redescribed as leading to this present. Or Zarathustra might will a very different past which he conceives as leading to a still more affirmable present than his actual present. Since Zarathustra has multiple, hypothetical, and varying Ridley 2005b; Richardson 2006, pp. 224–225; Westerdale 2006. I discuss this interpretation in more detail in Loeb 2008b. 21 Oddly, in making the additional ontological claims that the past remains to be fixed by a future that is yet to come (1985, pp. 160–161) or that it is transformable by its relocation within different narratives (1985, p. 163ff.), Nehamas also seems to suggest that it is indeed possible to literally change the past. But both these claims are incompatible with Zarathustra’s account of the past in his redemption speech and also with Nietzsche’s account of the remembered past in GM II. 22 I discuss Nietzsche’s theodicy argument in more detail in Loeb 2008b.


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affirmable presents, he is committed to having multiple, hypothetical, and varying redescriptions of his past. But this means that Zarathustra’s present willing in no way introduces unity, meaning, or necessity into his past. On the consensus reading inspired by Nehamas, Zarathustra’s past remains fragmentary, unsolved, and accidental, and his backward-willing in no way solves the problem it is supposed to address. On the reading I have offered, by contrast, Zarathustra knows that his life is always subject to the fact of time and that the past can never be changed in any way at all. Contrary to Nehamas and most commentators today, Zarathustra’s backward-willing is not supposed to change the past in any sense – not in a literal sense that would involve absurdity, and not in a metaphorical sense that would involve denial and falsification. Yet Zarathustra’s new realization of his life’s eternal recurrence leads him to see that his will may nevertheless be released from bondage to the fact of time and help bring into existence those divine life-moments that he wants eternally returned. From the standpoint of the moment in which he has perfected himself, and through the use of his memory as indicated above, Zarathustra is able to will into being the very past that has enabled him to become who he is. In this way, and as Zarathustra anticipates in his redemption speech, what seemed to be fragments in his past are unified by the backward-willed destiny toward which they are directed by his future completed self. What appear to be riddles in his past are solved by the underlying hidden meaning that is his backward-willed destiny. And what appear to be chance accidents in his past are necessitated and preordained by his backward-willing perfected future self. Given his new knowledge of eternal recurrence, the redeemed Zarathustra becomes the artist-creator (Dichter) of his own life because he is able to backward-will his completion and perfection into his past so as to guarantee its fully affirmable unity, meaning, and necessity.23 In his next book, Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche is silent about eternal recurrence except for one section in the part devoted to religion (BGE 56). Thus, on my interpretation, Nietzsche’s claim in GS 335 that an individual like Zarathustra can give aesthetic style to his life and self depends on his assumption of the literal truth of cosmological eternal recurrence. My interpretation therefore helps to explain Nietzsche’s famous but puzzling praise of physics as the means whereby certain unique and incomparable individuals may become those they are, give laws to themselves, and create themselves. By contrast with Kaufmann’s unsatisfying explanation of Nietzsche’s term “Physik” (in his footnote to his translation of GS 335; also adopted by Leiter 2001, pp. 315–316), my account explains Nietzsche’s characterization of physics – “the study of everything that is lawful and necessary in the world” – as naturally pointing forward to his unveiling, six aphorisms later in GS 341, of the cosmological doctrine that “the eternal hourglass of being is turned over again and again.”

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Nietzsche concludes this section with the image of a circulus vitiosus deus and inquires whether this would not be an appropriate way to describe his “ideal of the most high-spirited, vital, and world affirming human being.”24 For such an individual, he writes, “has learned not just to accept and bear what was and what is,” but “wants to have [what was and is] again just as it was and is through all eternity, insatiably shouting da capo not only to himself but to the whole play and performance, and not only to a performance, but at bottom to the one who needs precisely this performance – and makes it necessary: because again and again he needs himself – and makes himself necessary – –.” Here Nietzsche is clearly referring back to his ideal-type Zarathustra and to his earlier distinction between two senses of redemption: reconciliation with time, and something higher than all such reconciliation, namely a power over time through backward-willing. On my reading of this second sense, we should understand quite literally Nietzsche’s suggestion here that the most world-affirming individual makes himself necessary and is therefore a kind of divine vicious circle.25 Or, if we recall Nietzsche’s identification of Zarathustra with Dionysus – both eternally recurring into their identical lives, both personifications of cosmic eternal recurrence – he is the vicious circle made god.26 T h e t h ird tr a nsf orm ation An obvious exegetical objection to the reading I have just proposed has to do with another seeming discrepancy between Zarathustra’s prophetic vision of his self-redemption and the fulfillment of this vision at the end of Part III. For the previsioned young shepherd who bites the head off the serpent leaps up, no longer shepherd, no longer human, transformed, radiant, and laughing as no human being has ever laughed. By Notice that this image of a circulus vitiosus deus as outlined above is not the same as that of a casua sui (self-caused being) and is therefore not subject to his criticism of the latter in the earlier BGE 21. For nowhere does the concept of backward-willing in circular time involve the nonsensical and internally contradictory idea that an individual can be completely uninfluenced by the world, his ancestors, coincidence, or society and cause himself to come into existence. 25 Lampert, by contrast, does not believe that Nietzsche had in mind any true physical or cosmic eternal recurrence and is therefore led to interpret the necessity of BGE 56 as merely “a lover’s necessity, erotic necessity” (2001, p. 119). 26 Commentators (see Lampert 2001, pp. 120–121; Burnham 2007, pp. 87–89) usually interpret Nietzsche’s word “deus” as referring to the Judeo-Christian God, but my reading is supported by the very next section of Beyond Good and Evil, which alludes to Heraclitus’ Dionysian image of eternity as a child playing dice (Barnes 1987, p. 50; BT 24; GM II:16; EH BT:3), and by the linked conclusion of BGE 295, which re-introduces readers to the Greek god Dionysus after a fourteenyear absence in Nietzsche’s writings. 24


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contrast, the self-redeemed Zarathustra, after telling his animals that he has accomplished this same feat, remains bedridden, describes himself as still weary and sick from his redemptive deed, and sighs and shudders as he remembers the great pain and nausea he has just experienced. Worse yet, I have argued in this study that Nietzsche intends us to notice that Zarathustra has actually been shattered by his self-redemptive effort and that he dies at the end of Part III. So it is difficult to see how the redeemed Zarathustra has perfected himself, much less how he is in a position to backward-will this perfection into his past so as to create a purposeful and unified life that is fully affirmable. The solutions to this further aspect of Nietzsche’s riddle lies, I believe, in Zarathustra’s description of the redeemed young shepherd as “a transformed one” (ein Verwandelter). This description is surely significant when read against the background of Zarathustra’s very first speech to his disciples, “On the Three Transformations” (Von den drei Verwandlungen). For, as applied to the narrative plot of the book, this first speech anticipates that Zarathustra himself will sequentially undergo the three transformations – his spirit becoming a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion a child. And, although there is no mention of a child at the end of Zarathustra’s vision-riddle, I argued in Chapter 6 that the young shepherd’s biting the head off the serpent involves all the various aspects of the leonine spirit: his predatory seizing of freedom for himself and his declaration of “I will”; his sacred “No” to duty; and his victory over the great “thou shalt” dragon of millennial values and the associated spirit of gravity. It must be the case, then, that following his great negating deed, the young shepherd is spiritually transformed from lion to child. Indeed, abstracting from the different temporal representations of Zarathustra in his dream-vision, we can chart his three spiritual transformations as follows: the camel-spirited Zarathustra is burdened and crushed by the spirit of gravity; the lionspirited Zarathustra uses his courage to combat and cast off this burdensome spirit of gravity; and the child-spirited Zarathustra leaps up laughing, free and unburdened of the spirit of gravity. This reading is supported by Nietzsche’s unexplained emphasis on the youth of the shepherd (einen jungen Hirten). For Zarathustra’s stillest hour had predicted that he would become young late, and I argued in Chapter 4 that he did so in the Part IV narrative that chronologically leads into the Part III ending. The stillest hour also predicted that Zarathustra would then overcome the pride of his youth (der Stolz der Jugend) and become a child without shame (II.22). But I argued in Chapter 6 that Zarathustra’s youthful pride and shame had kept him from using his commanding

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leonine spirit to bite the head off the serpent. Since the young shepherd finally does just this, we may infer that the shepherd has overcome his youth and become a child spirit without pride or shame. Also, laughter is one of Nietzsche’s most frequent symbols of child-spirited levity, playfulness, innocence, and affirming joy. Indeed, in his depiction of Zarathustra’s earlier dream (II.19), Nietzsche associates the nihilism-overcoming thousand peals of laughter with the thousand masks of children and of child-sized butterflies, and even writes explicitly of the “thousand-pealed children’s laughter” (tausendfältigem Kindesgelächter) and child’s laughter (Kindes-Lachen). So Nietzsche’s special emphasis on the tremendous, gravity-k illing, laughter of the transformed young shepherd lets us know that this figure has undergone his third spiritual transformation. In addition to this evidence internal to Zarathustra’s prevision of his self-redemption, I also argued in Chapters 4 and 5 that Nietzsche depicts Zarathustra’s third spiritual transformation in the concluding chapters of Part III where this prevision is fulfilled. As preparation, he shows Zarathustra’s second spiritual transformation at the very end of Part IV. Having used his camel-spirit to shepherd the higher men (who collectively represent the dwarfish human he carried on his back in his prevision), Zarathustra has a vision of a laughing lion that savagely roars the higher men away. He then becomes lion-spirited: hardened like bronze, he rejects the compassion he has felt so far for the higher men and leaps up, courageously calling up the great-noon moment in which he will complete his work of overcoming the human and creating the superhuman. This event, I argued, chronologically leads into the Part III conclusion where, after using this same courageous leonine spirit and commanding voice to leap up and roar awake his most abysmal thought, the formerly heavy and pregnant Zarathustra lies in bed and convalesces like a lioness whose old wild wisdom has just given birth. During this convalescence, Zarathustra and his animals discuss how he has used his new knowledge of eternal recurrence to create a new soul that is a self-contained world. But soon Zarathustra forgets his animals and sings final dithyrambic songs to his soul that are based on forgetting and that are the music of forgetting. In his maternal role, Zarathustra sings to his redeemed soul as to a newborn, naked child and tells of having washed it, baptized it with new names, and given it colorful toys. In keeping with his leonine spirit, and alluding to the tremendous No-saying involved in biting the head off the serpent, the convalescing Zarathustra sings to his soul of having removed its shame and guilt and of having given it back the freedom and the right to say “Yes.” And to this gift-giving song, his soul sings in grateful response a


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sacred Yes-song confirming and blessing all these gifts he has received. In particular, his soul sings of his readiness for the redemptive ray of light and for lightning-rays that laugh “Yes”; of having laughed the laugh of creative lightning; of possessing a laughing wickedness; and of leaping, dancing, and soaring into flight.27 Nietzsche’s distinction here between the lion-spirited Zarathustra and his child-spirited soul is subtle, but it allows him to show that the climax of Zarathustra’s prevision is indeed fulfilled at the end of Part III. For just as the young shepherd undergoes a third transformation into a leaping, laughing, luminous being that has become a child and overcome his youthful pride and shame; so too Zarathustra’s newly created soul is depicted as a leaping, laughing, luminous child without pride or shame.28 Hence, when we are looking to see how Zarathustra has perfected himself through his redemptive deed of biting the head off the serpent, we should not be misled by his sick and bedridden state. Instead, we are supposed to notice that Zarathustra, his animals, and his own soul all testify to the perfected and fully ripened state of his newly created soul. Similarly, when we are looking to see how Zarathustra exercises his newfound power to will backward in time, we should not be misled by his haunted and shattered state. Instead, we are supposed to notice that his soul is backwardwilling its ripened perfection into, and throughout, Zarathustra’s past. As Seung notes (2005, pp. 178–179), Zarathustra’s final shattered state, his being broken to pieces (zerbrochen) (II.22, III.13:2), alludes to the myth of Dionysus’ dismemberment before his rebirth (BT 10). On my reading, Nietzsche intends us to notice that Zarathustra’s dismemberment before his recurrence consists in his newborn soul’s dispersal back into various key moments throughout his past. As he had anticipated, Zarathustra goes under like the over-rich sun, scattering gold over the sea of his life (III.12:3). Indeed, on the performative reading I have outlined above, Zarathustra’s transformed child-spirited soul has backward-willed Zarathustra’s prevision of this third transformation, and this is precisely why this prevision is fulfilled at the end of Part III. Upon hearing the child-spirited laughter of his future ripened soul, Zarathustra is consumed by an unstillable longing to hear this laughter again. But this longing is what gives him the courage Here Nietzsche seems to allude to Pliny’s Natural History (VII.16), where Zoroaster laughs on the day on he is born. 28 Besides his emphasis in the “Seven Seals” chapter on the rays of light and lightning surrounding Zarathustra’s soul, Nietzsche depicts Zarathustra’s soul as a radiant glowing sun-star in the midst of its great noon (III.12:30). 27

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to keep on living despite knowing that he is about to descend deeper into pain than he has ever descended before (III.1). Thus, although Zarathustra does not know it, he is actually longing for his own future laughter, and it is his own redeemed laughing soul that is instilling this yearning in him so as to ensure that he completes his destiny and becomes who he is. T h e c h i l d spirit Once we notice that Nietzsche intends us to see the culmination of Zarathustra’s prevision as backward-willed by his future perfected soul, we are in a position to notice his design of other such backward-willed communications. The most evident of these take place throughout Part II. Thus, at the start of Part II, Zarathustra dreams of a child who holds up a mirror in which there appears the mocking, laughing devil mask that he interprets as his enemies’ distortion of his teachings (II.1). On my reading, Nietzsche is implying here that Zarathustra’s redeemed child-spirited soul has backward-willed him a warning that keeps him from losing his disciples and his destiny. So Zarathustra is right when he says that it was not himself he saw in the mirror. But this is because the devil’s mask (Teufels Fratze) and mocking laughter (Hohnlachen) do not belong to his current self but, rather, to his future redeemed soul.29 Later in Part II Zarathustra hears that he has been seen flying through the air overhead at noon while a voice said “It is time! It is high time!” (II.18). Zarathustra interprets this flying figure as his ghost or shadow who has the power to ruin his reputation, but he does not understand why the voice says what it does. On my reading, Nietzsche implies that this is because he does not yet understand that this flying figure and this voice are communications from his future redeemed soul letting him know that he must soon leave his children in order to prepare for the great-noon event of summoning up his most abysmal thought (III.3). The high time, I have argued, alludes forward to the great-noon wedding (Hochzeit) ceremony at the conclusion of Part III when Zarathustra’s redeemed soul says “Yes” to the question whether he takes life for his bride and seals their union with the nuptial ring of eternal recurrence. And the power of flight alludes forward to the gravity-defying leaping, dancing, and soaring into flight that is anticipated by the transformed figure in Zarathustra’s prevision and that is fulfilled by Zarathustra’s soul at the very conclusion of Part III. Seung (2005, p. 93) rightly argues that we should notice Nietzsche’s repetition of these phrases in Zarathustra’s later dream in the “Soothsayer” chapter (II.19).

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Finally, at the very end of Part II, Zarathustra dreams of his mistress, the whispering, admonishing, mocking, laughing stillest hour. She tells him without voice that he must yet become a child without shame or youthful pride and that it is therefore time for him to leave his children and return to his solitude for further ripening (II.22, III.3). According to my reading, this dream shows Zarathustra’s future redeemed soul – who overcomes his youth in the prevision, and is a child without shame at the end of Part III – instructing him on how to gain precisely this future redemption. All these messages from Zarathustra’s laughing child-spirited soul thus serve as a conscience that keeps the still-ripening Zarathustra focused on his ultimate goal and prods him into action at those times when he is tempted away from himself or does not feel adequate to his destiny (III.3). Nevertheless, Zarathustra is horrified in the face of all these reminders of his destiny because – as prefigured by the early image of the living Zarathustra carrying a dead companion on his back (P:7–9) – he carries within his subconscious the buried mnemonic messages of his “dead” self.30 This “ghost” or “shade” visits Zarathustra at certain key moments in his progress to perfection, and grows slighter and weaker as Zarathustra comes closer to attaining his destiny (II.18, IV.9). The most explicit such visit from Zarathustra’s own “afterlife,” and the one Nietzsche most emphasizes as a riddle that needs to be solved by the reader, takes place in the Part II dream in which a roaring wind helps Zarathustra overcome the soothsayer’s nihilistic prophecy (II.19). This wind tears open the gate of the fortress of death and throws up a black coffin that bursts open with a thousand peals of child’s-laughter that liberate Zarathustra from his most solitary midnight-entombment in the dust-filled past. On my reading, Zarathustra rejects his favorite disciple’s interpretation of his dream because he knows that his various dream-symbols do not refer to the power of his current self, but rather to the power of his redeemed “dead” self. This reading is supported by the dream-imagery in which the thunderbolt-knocking at the gate of death, and the tearing open of the gate of death, both come from the other side of the gate where someone has been carrying his ashes up the mountain (as the saint said Zarathustra had done (P:2)). It is supported as well by Nietzsche’s image of the redeeming Zarathustra as a blustering wind liberating the will from its imprisonment in the past (II.19, 20, III.12:16); by his allusion Anticipating the symbol of the howling dog in Zarathustra’s prevision, Zarathustra’s first companion is called a “dead dog” (P:8). Also Zarathustra’s seven-day pre-convalescent condition is that of a “dead man” (III.13:2).

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to Zarathustra’s post-redemptive description of himself as a mocking gust sweeping into old tomb chambers and bursting tombs (III.16:2); and by his allusion to the post-redemptive, wicked, gravity-killing laughter of his child-spirited soul (III.2:2, III.16:3, 6). After hearing this backward-willed message from his future redeemed self, Zarathustra is therefore reassured that his light will be saved and last through the coming fulfillment of the soothsayer’s nihilistic prophecy. The sound of his own ripened and childspirited soul’s life-affirming laughter allows the still unripe Zarathustra to awaken and to come back to himself and stop being like those of whom the soothsayer had spoken. Thus, on the reading I have proposed here, Zarathustra’s early teaching on the third transformation of the spirit is only explained and fulfilled once he has unveiled his final teaching on time and eternal recurrence. Commentators have long noted the unifying Romanticist ethos behind Nietzsche’s list of child-spirited traits: freedom, forgetting, play, creation, novelty, innocence (Unschuld), and affirmation. But they have missed Nietzsche’s deeper philosophical point that none of these traits have yet been realized in human history. According to Zarathustra’s redemption speech, this is because humans have so far lived in accordance with the concept of an immovable “it was” which they cannot escape or forget, which renders impotent their efforts to create and seek new beginnings, and which burdens them with an ever-accumulating and unredeemable guilt (Schuld) that prevents true life affirmation. By contrast, the awakened truth of eternal recurrence and the resulting discovery of backward-willing enable Zarathustra to create a new soul that possesses all the traits that he earlier attributed to the child-spirit. In the first place, his new power over time frees his soul from the crushing weight of the past and enables his soul to forget the immovable “it was” that imprisoned his will. Singing of this new temporal freedom, Zarathustra’s soul equates his new playful childish spirit with the playful spirit of a bird whose new bird-wisdom (Vogel-Weisheit) regarding circular time has enabled him to become light, to grow his own wings, and to fly up and away from the earth’s gravity and into his own skies where there is no above and no below (III.16:6–7).31 In II.19 Zarathustra invokes the poetic image of liberation from imprisonment through soaring flight with liberated wings, thus suggesting that the next chapter’s concept of redemptive backward-willing liberation from the imprisonment of “it was” will also be poetically expressed in terms of winged soaring flight above the past. In addition, Zarathustra relates in II.14 how he flew into the future and then back again to the present, thus anticipating the image of the backward-willing specter of Zarathustra flying through the air at noon crying “It is time! It is

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Second, as we have seen, Zarathustra’s ability to backward-will necessity, meaning, and unity into his life enables him to become the artist and creator of his own life and self. Singing of this creative willing that was anticipated in his redemption speech, and alluding to his inaugural teaching of the chaos that gives birth to the dancing star (P:5), Zarathustra baptizes his soul with the name “Fate” (III.14) and Zarathustra’s soul confirms that he is now able to compel even accidents to dance stellar round-dances (III.16:3). Because he is now able to say to all the seeming accidents in his past, “But thus I willed it!,” Zarathustra’s soul sings of his creative breath, of his heavenly necessity, and of laughing the laugh of creative lightning that allows him – like Heraclitus’ “great child” (BT 24, GM II:16) – to play dice on God’s table of the earth so that it trembles with new words (III.16:3). Third, Zarathustra’s soul’s discovery of eternal recurrence and backward-willing allows him to shape his life and self in such a way that he is led to affirm and bless them – to say “Yes” as the open heavens say “Yes” (III.14), to be pregnant with lightning bolts that say “Yes” and laugh “Yes,” and to sing the “Yes and Amen” song (III.16). But this affirmation is in turn what leads him to long for his eternal recurrence and thereby to teach himself backward-willing. So Zarathustra’s child-spirited soul is actually a self-propelled wheel, and this is why Zarathustra baptizes him with the name, “umbilical cord of time” (III.14) – meaning that within his soul time circles back upon itself and nourishes itself. Zarathustra’s child-spirited soul thus wills his own will and is not confined to acting within a closed future that is always determined by what has already been. Instead, as a first movement, he is able to seek new beginnings, to savor the delight of the future-to-be (III.14), and, like a seafarer, to shout with joy as the coast disappears and boundlessness roars all around him (III.16:5). Finally, because all guilt flows out of an immovable “it was” (II.20), Zarathustra tells his soul how he was able to strangle the strangler called “sin” and to persuade his soul to stand naked before the sun (III.14). Confirming this gift, Zarathustra’s innocent soul describes himself as a grain of redemptive salt that binds good to even the most evil and sings of his laughing wickedness that is pronounced holy and free by its own blissfulness (III.16:6).32 Free of any guilt, Zarathustra’s child-spirited high time!” As Zarathustra’s prevision indicates, then, the teachings of eternal recurrence and backward-willing provide not only the cure for the spirit of revenge but also the means for a great victory over his archenemy, the spirit of gravity and heaviness (der Geist der Schwere). 32 Compare Nietzsche’s notorious association of innocence and wickedness in GM I:11.

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soul therefore affirms and blesses himself to the point of longing for his eternal recurrence (III.16:1–7): “Oh how should I not lust after eternity and after the wedding ring of all rings – the ring of eternal recurrence!” And in Beyond Good and Evil 56, as we have seen, which is followed by an aphorism regarding the “eternal child” in humankind, Nietzsche retrospectively portrays this child-spirited soul, this backward-willing selfpropelled wheel, as a circulus vitiosus deus who “wants to have [what was and is] again just as it was and is through all eternity, insatiably shouting da capo not only to himself but to the whole play and performance, and not only to a performance, but at bottom to the one who needs precisely this performance – and makes it necessary: because again and again he needs himself – and makes himself necessary – –.” No l ong e r h u m a n Supposing this new reading of Zarathustra’s third transformation is correct, I think it puts us in a position to resolve most of the long-debated interpretive questions regarding Zarathustra’s teaching of the superhuman. For I have argued that Nietzsche intends us to identify the laughing figure in the conclusion of the “Vision and the Riddle” chapter with Zarathustra’s laughing soul in the final chapters of Part III. But Zarathustra describes the former figure as no longer human (nicht mehr Mensch), as laughing like no human being on earth has ever yet laughed – with a laughter that is not human (das keines Menschen Lachen war). So we may infer that Zarathustra himself has fulfilled his own prevision by advancing beyond the human. Since the key to his transformation was his acquisition of a backward-willing power over time, we may infer further that the difference between being human and advancing beyond the human consists in precisely this backward-willing power over time. This conclusion is of crucial importance, especially because the conclusion to the “Vision and the Riddle” chapter is the only place where Nietzsche explicitly and directly incorporates Zarathustra’s teaching of the superhuman into the narrative itself. Nevertheless, we need to pay close attention to Nietzsche’s careful linguistic distinction between the no-longer-human and the superhuman. This distinction is reinforced by the dying words Zarathustra’s animals say they know he would speak to himself, in which he announces his death as the “herald” (Verkündiger) of the superhuman (III.13:2). For these words refer back to Zarathustra’s own identification of himself, at the very start of the narrative, as the first heavy drop that falls singly from the dark cloud that hangs over the human and


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that perishes as it heralds the coming of the lightning which symbolizes the superhuman (P:4). Thus, at the very end of his journey, in which he has awakened the thought of eternal recurrence, redeemed himself through his new backward-willing power over time, and undergone his third and final transformation of the spirit, Zarathustra perishes by his own hand just as he said he would at the start of his journey – namely, as the first herald of the superhuman. Although Zarathustra is no longer human, he is not superhuman. Rather, in an allusion to the early tragic figure of the tightrope walker who falls and perishes, Zarathustra is the first to walk out on the rope that stretches between the human and the superhuman and to fall to his death. He is the firstling (Erstling) who must sacrifice himself for the sake of the superhuman (III.12:6). Zarathustra’s unique role as a first transitional figure between human and superhuman is reinforced by his central announcement, in his inaugural teaching of the superhuman, that the time has come for humankind to set itself its goal (P:5). Implicit in this announcement are three conditions for the redemption of humankind (III.12:3). The first of these is that all the separate human peoples, with all their separate goals, be unified into a single whole with a single goal: “Hitherto there have been a thousand goals, for there have been a thousand peoples. Only fetters are still lacking for the thousand necks, the one goal is still lacking. Humankind still has no goal. / But tell me, my brothers, if humankind still lacks the goal, is there not also still lacking – humanity itself? –” (I.15). The second condition is that all of the riddles in human existence be solved through the meaning provided by this goal: “Uncanny is human existence and still without meaning … I want to teach humans the meaning of their existence” (P:7). And the third condition is that all the accidents in human history be redeemed by the purposeful willing of this goal: “We are still fighting step by step with the giant Accident, and over the whole of humankind there has hitherto still ruled the senseless, the meaningless” (I.22:2). The superhuman, then, is not any single individual, but rather a self-imposed collective goal whereby humankind is able to redeem itself. But Zarathustra’s own self-redemption, as we have seen, presupposes the truth of eternal recurrence and requires his backward-willing. And Nietzsche tells us that Zarathustra is the prototype (Vorbild) of humankind (KSA 10:16[65]). So we are led to infer that the emergence of the superhuman also presupposes the truth of eternal recurrence and requires backward willing. This conclusion helps to explain Nietzsche’s emphasis, throughout his narrative, on Zarathustra’s dual role as a herald of the superhuman (P:4) and as a teacher of those self-chosen individuals who will one day form

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a new people that will give rise to the superhuman (I.22:3). For we are supposed to extrapolate into the future where Zarathustra’s disciples will themselves confront their dormant knowledge of eternal recurrence and thereby learn how to backward-will. So Zarathustra’s backward-willing allows him a prevision of his own future, and his interaction with his backward-willing disciples allows him a prevision of their future as well.33 But the future of Zarathustra’s thousand heirs and children is a future in which they themselves interact with later backward-willing generations who in turn interact with even later backward-willing ancestors of the superhuman, and so on. Accordingly, Zarathustra is able to have a prevision of humanity’s future that extends all the way to the emergence of the superhuman itself.34 This is why Zarathustra says that he picked up the word “superhuman” (Übermensch) when he flew out into distant futures (III.12:2–3), and why he counsels his disciples to listen to the good tidings that come from the future (I.22:3).35 Paradoxically, it is the very success of Zarathustra’s heralding and teaching that first enables him to see what he must herald and teach. Z a r at h ustr a’s dying gi f t Among those who take seriously Nietzsche’s concept of the superhuman, there is wide agreement that he meant the kind of being who is able to affirm an eternally recurring life.36 However, on my performative reading of Zarathustra, the superhuman is in addition supposed to be the kind of being whose affirmation of eternal recurrence yields a new and unprecedented backward-willing power over time. Indeed, I have argued, the book’s narrative demonstrates that this new power over time is itself needed to facilitate the affirmation and to shape life so that its eternal recurrence is affirmable. On my reading, then, backward-willing power over This is an additional reason why Zarathustra is able to overcome the soothsayer’s prophecy through a reassuring dream in which he sees himself as a raging wind throwing up a black coffin that spills open with a thousand peals of children’s laughter and a thousand masks of children and child-sized butterflies (II.19; see also II.3 and IV.14:3). 34 See especially the conclusion of the “Blessed Isles” chapter, where Zarathustra anticipates his teaching on redemption and describes the shadow that once came to him – that is, his prevision of the future superhuman imprisoned within the stone of the human past. Alluding to his image of the teaching of eternal recurrence as a hammer with which to break time and the immovable stone “it was” (KSA 10: 15[48], 17[69]; KSA 11: 27[80]), Nietzsche has Zarathustra say that only the blows of his hammer will serve to free this lightest of all things. See also BGE 62. 35 See Large 1994 for a discussion of Nietzsche’s futurism in Zarathustra. 36 Questions are raised, however, as to whether such an affirmation, and thus such a kind of being, is possible or even desirable (see Magnus 1988; Clark 1990, p. 278ff.). 33


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time, and not mere affirmation, is the essential conceptual link between Zarathustra’s doctrines of the superhuman and eternal recurrence. Nevertheless, two important interpretive questions remain about this link between Zarathustra’s first and last teachings. The first question concerns the fact that Zarathustra’s teaching of the superhuman does not mention, or even imply, eternal recurrence, backward-willing, or power over time. So why should we read this inaugural teaching as involving his concluding doctrines? And how did Zarathustra come to know about the superhuman at the start of his journey in order to teach it? The second question concerns my interpretive proposal that Zarathustra dies at the end of Part III, and that he does so in complete solitude and without teaching anyone about his third transformation into the first transitional figure to the superhuman. So why should we read Zarathustra’s final transformation as involving his teaching of the superhuman at the very start of the book? And how could this transformation have any influence on the disciples who are supposed to be the ancestors of the superhuman? In other words, the constraints of my own interpretation would seem to preclude a unified reading of the opening and ending of Nietzsche’s published book. By way of resolving these remaining interpretive questions, I want to return to my claim that Nietzsche designed the narrative of his book so that it exhibits Zarathustra’s backward-willed communications to himself. As I explained above, these communications include his cry for help, his prevision of his third transformation, his warning about the distortion of his teachings, his reminders that it is time to leave his disciples and ripen in solitude, and his reassurance in the face of the soothsayer’s prophecy. Zarathustra’s mnemonic willing thus extends backward from the ending of Part III to the very start of Part II. But Nietzsche provides us with important clues that this willing extends backward even further – in fact, to the very start of the book where, after ten years of solitude, Zarathustra’s heart is at last transformed (endlich aber verwandelte sich sein Herz) and he decides to descend the mountain and bestow his overflowing wisdom on the humans below. In the first place, Nietzsche himself states that the ending of his published book should be read as circling back to its beginning. Writing to Köselitz about the ending of Part III, and anticipating his later allusion in Beyond Good and Evil 56 to the eternally recurring Zarathustra, Nietzsche explains: “It goes back to the beginning of the 1st part: circulus therefore, although hopefully not circulus vitiosus” (March 30, 1884; KSB 6, p. 491). For most commentators, this is an obscure remark because there are no

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explicit affinities between the start of the Prologue and the ending of Part III (as there are, by contrast, with the ending of Part IV). However, given the reading I have outlined in this chapter, there are several crucial affinities. Speaking to the sun in the Prologue, Zarathustra says that he wants to become human again (will wieder Mensch werden) (P:1), thus suggesting that he has ceased being human at some point before this speech. This suggestion is reinforced when Zarathustra distinguishes himself from the humans below and when the holy man includes himself among the humans to whom Zarathustra brings a gift: “But what do you bring us as a gift?” (P:2). Zarathustra’s remark, spoken before he has begun teaching his doctrine of the superhuman, is most naturally read as anticipating his later prevision of himself as becoming no longer human with a laughter that is no human laughter. Next, after Zarathustra has begun his descent from the mountain, he meets an old holy man in the forest (P:2). This holy man recognizes Zarathustra as the wanderer who passed by many years ago on his way up the mountain. But he also notices that Zarathustra has changed much since then. Picking up on the narrator’s mention of Zarathustra’s transformed heart, the holy man remarks that Zarathustra has transformed himself (hat sich verwarndelt) and that he is transformed so as to become a child: Verwandelt ist Zarathustra, zum Kind ward Zarathustra. Again, these remarks, spoken before Zarathustra has given his speech on the three metamorphoses, are most naturally read as anticipating Zarathustra’s prevision of himself as a transformed one. They also anticipate the various manifestations of Zarathustra’s third self-transformation in the concluding chapters of Part III.37 Finally, the holy man mentions several other ways in which Zarathustra has changed since he saw him ten years ago: he is no longer carrying his ashes to the mountain, but rather fire into the valley; his eye is now pure and around his mouth there is no trace of nausea; he moves like a dancer; he is an awakened one. Zarathustra’s awakening points forward to his awakening of his thought of eternal recurrence toward the end of Part III and to the new knowledge this thought brings him. Zarathustra’s dancing 37

In another important clue, the last of Nietzsche’s Dithyrambs of Dionysus, “Of the Poverty of the Richest” (KSA 6, pp. 406–410), alludes to the opening lines of Zarathustra when it begins and concludes by mentioning the ten years that pass before Zarathustra wearies of his solitary stay on the mountain. In the middle of this poem, however, Nietzsche describes this same Zarathustra as “tired and blessed, a creator on his seventh day” – thus anticipating his repeated mention in the “Convalescent” chapter of the seven days in which Zarathustra remains lying down following his creation of his new child-spirited soul-world.


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movement points forward to his prevision of himself as leaping up and also to the actual dancing and flying of his soul at the end of Part III.38 And Zarathustra’s pure eye and freedom from nausea anticipate his prevision of himself as biting the head off the serpent that gagged and nauseated him. Lastly, Zarathustra’s fire represents of course his Promethean gift (Geschenk) to the humans below, namely his teaching of the superhuman that is symbolized by lightning.39 But shortly before his redemption Zarathustra says that once he is redeemed he will go to humans one last time so that, down among them, he will go under and while dying give them his richest gift (III.12:3). And, indeed, in the concluding chapters of Part III, where I have argued Zarathustra dies, we find him fulfilling his prophecy that he would one day be ready and ripe in the great noon, a cloud pregnant with lightning and swelling milk-udders (III.12:30; see also IV.13:7). For Zarathustra relates how his soul has grown into an overripe vine with swelling udders (III.14), and Zarathustra’s soul describes himself as a heavy dark cloud who wanders between past and future and is pregnant with prophetic lightning bolts that say “Yes” and that laugh “Yes” and that will some day kindle the light of the future (III.16:1). In this way, Nietzsche leads us to see that Zarathustra’s awakening of eternal recurrence enabled him to give birth to his child-spirited soul, and that this new soul is now in turn pregnant with the lightning that symbolizes the superhuman. But whereas the linear narrative at the end of Part III actually shows the birth of Zarathustra’s new soul, we need to turn to Nietzsche’s clue about the ending of his book circling back to the beginning in order to find his depiction of the birth of the superhuman. On my interpretation, that is, the dying Zarathustra’s child-spirited and no-longer-human soul backward-wills his transformation to his solitary mountain-dwelling self so that the latter becomes ready to teach others about the lightning that is the superhuman. But this teaching is the magnet which attracts the disciples who are later Zarathustra’s children and who are destined to become the ancestors of the superhuman. So Zarathustra’s dying soul is able to conclude triumphantly that he and eternity – the only woman he loves and the only woman from whom he

See also Zarathustra’s claim at the very start of Part I (I.7) already to be light, dancing like a god, and flying. 39 This gift is actually a mortal threat to the humans, and the holy man therefore asks Zarathustra whether he does not fear the arsonist’s punishment. Later, Zarathustra himself warns of his arsonist plans for the great-noon day (III.5), with Nietzsche alluding here to Wagner’s depiction of Loge’s arson and of the great conflagration that destroys the hall of the gods. 38

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wants children – have together given birth to these children and to the superhuman (III.16). C onc l usion Reviewing his own books in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche praises Thus Spoke Zarathustra above all the others. This book, he writes, contains the highest realization of the concept of the superhuman and is grounded upon the highest formula of affirmation that is at all attainable, namely the concept of eternal recurrence (EH Z:1, Z:6). Yet there has always been a suspicion among careful students of Zarathustra that there is some kind of deep incompatibility between its two major concepts. In particular, scholars have doubted that the linear time presupposed by the progressive teaching of the superhuman is compatible with the circular time presupposed by the teaching of eternal recurrence. Also, they have doubted that the negation of the past implied in the futuristic ideal of the superhuman is compatible with Nietzsche’s characterization of eternal recurrence as a supreme formula of affirmation. Partly as a result of these persisting doubts, many commentators have concluded that Nietzsche did not intend eternal recurrence as a literal cosmological doctrine.40 Alternatively, and more recently, they have concluded that Nietzsche eventually abandoned or reformulated the ideal of superhumanity.41 However, in a departure from earlier commentary, these commentators propose that their reading does not detract from the merits of Nietzsche’s book because he himself wanted us to notice the incompatibility of Zarathustra’s teachings. Nietzsche, they argue, placed Zarathustra’s teaching of eternal recurrence at the end of the book because he wanted to show that Zarathustra’s teaching of the superhuman as a redemptive future goal was actually inspired by his own spirit of revenge. On this reading, Nietzsche depicts Zarathustra’s abandonment or reformulation of his inaugural teaching in favor of a concept of a kind of human being who would no longer need to seek redemption Löwith’s bibliographic survey (1997, pp. 199–202) reports that these doubts, and this conclusion, are expressed for the first time in Oskar Ewald’s 1903 commentary and receive their most influential formulation in Simmel 1986, pp. 174–175. For some well-known attempts to refute these doubts, see Heidegger 1977, Müller-Lauter 1999, p. 84ff., and Soll 1973, pp. 336–338. 41 See Lampert 1986, pp. 19–21, 181, 257–258; Pippin 1988, pp. 51–63; Conway 1989, p. 215ff.; Conway 1990a, p. 103ff.; Clark 1990, pp. 270–277; Ansell-Pearson 1991, pp. 160, 192; White 1997, pp. 100– 123; and Westerdale 2006, pp. 58–59. Of these commentators, Lampert is the most emphatic: “It seems to me that one of the greatest single causes of the misinterpretation of Nietzsche’s teaching is the failure to see that the clearly provisional teaching on the superman is rendered obsolete by the clearly definitive teaching on eternal return” (1986, p. 258). 40


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from the passing of time. Such a human being, who wills his life’s eternal recurrence, would instead be capable of affirming the intrinsic value of the unchangeable past and thus of affirming life in its totality. In this chapter, I have proposed a new understanding of Zarathustra’s twin concepts that better displays their internal coherence and thus allays the doubts which lead to the textually implausible conclusions mentioned above.42 My central claim has been that a careful reading of Zarathustra’s speech on redemption, as well as of the narrative event of Zarathustra’s self-redemption, reveals Nietzsche’s concept of backward-willing as the key link between his concepts of eternal recurrence and the superhuman. More specifically, I have argued that Nietzsche depicts Zarathustra’s discovery and exercise of his ability to will backward in time. This discovery, he suggests, flows from Zarathustra’s realization of time’s circular and relational nature, and leads in turn to his achievement of a power over time that cures him of the spirit of revenge and advances him beyond the human. Zarathustra’s twin teachings are thus indeed compatible because the concept of the superhuman actually presupposes a theory of circular time according to which there is no way to affirm the future without also affirming the past. Indeed, I have argued, Nietzsche incorporates this theory of circular time into the very narrative structure of his book, thereby exhibiting in figurative terms what his character Zarathustra teaches in literal terms. This cyclical reading of Nietzsche’s narrative shows how his introductory concept of the superhuman, which has so often been criticized as devoid of content,43 is in fact deeply grounded in the details of the book’s subsequent narrative and theory. More specifically, this cyclical reading shows how Zarathustra’s “initial” teaching of the superhuman, far from being rendered obsolete by his “final” teaching of eternal recurrence, actually presupposes it.44 Yet the reason why so many readers have thought there was a contradiction between Zarathustra’s twin teachings, and For an exegetical critique of the first conclusion, see Abel 1998, p. 188ff.; Moles 1990, pp. 323–326; and Chapters 1 and 3 of this study. For an exegetical critique of the suggestion that Nietzsche has Zarathustra progressively abandon his teaching of the superhuman, see Ansell-Pearson 1991, pp. 185–191. See Clegg 1981 for an alternative, and I think complementary, resolution of this longstanding dispute. 43 For example see Tanner’s dismissal as “a sad piece of wishful thinking” Nietzsche’s claim that the concept of superhumanity becomes the highest reality in Zarathustra (1994, p. 51). In truth, he observes, “one has to imagine all too much about the Übermensch, that blank cheque which Zarathustra issues without any directions about cashing it, for him to be helpful” (1994, p. 65). 44 Citing Zarathustra’s animals’ concluding announcement that he must become the teacher of eternal recurrence, Heidegger infers that Zarathustra obviously cannot commence by teaching 42

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indeed why they have not been able to find any content in the teaching of the superhuman, is that they have dismissed Nietzsche’s unifying concept of backward-willing as requiring an impossible reversal in the direction of time. In fact, however, Nietzsche always assumes that time flows in a forward direction only. But given his claim that time is relational, and that it must eventually return back to its starting point, Nietzsche is able to argue that the course of a human life is actually a closed circle, and that all forward-willing within this circle inevitably has an influence on the past. To redeem oneself, then, is to recognize the fact of this influence, and purposefully to will in accordance with this fact so as to shape one’s life into a meaningful necessary whole. Supposing a few humans were able to redeem themselves in this way, they would point the way towards the superhuman – that is, towards a more powerful species that is able to shape its history into a meaningful necessary whole. This is why Nietzsche – whose self-appointed task is “to prepare a moment of supreme self-awareness on the part of humankind, a great noon, when it looks backward and looks forward, when it steps out from the dominion of accident and priests and for the first time poses, as a whole, the question why? to what end?” (EH D:2) – reserves his highest praise for his gift of Zarathustra’s gift: “ – Among my writings my Zarathustra stands by itself. With it I have made to humankind the greatest gift that has been made to it so far” (EH P:4). Over a century has passed since Nietzsche singled out Thus Spoke Zarathustra as his greatest contribution. Disappointed with the reception of this book during his lifetime, Nietzsche predicted that a century would have to pass before the significance of his contribution was properly recognized and appreciated. In fact, however, the reputation of Zarathustra reached its zenith shortly after he made this prediction and has declined ever since. The scholarly consensus today is that Nietzsche’s most important and lasting contributions are actually to be found in the books he wrote after Zarathustra, especially On the Genealogy of Morals. So I turn next to consider some of the reasons behind this consensus. eternal recurrence and so instead begins by teaching superhumanity (1977, pp. 66–67). On my interpretation, however, Zarathustra also fulfills his destiny as teacher of eternal recurrence during his inaugural teaching of superhumanity. See also Müller-Lauter 1999, p. 85.

C h a pt e r 8

Post-Zarathustra

Although scholars usually take it for granted that a philosopher’s later thinking supersedes his earlier thinking, this periodizing proves complicated in Nietzsche’s case. For he himself privileges above all his other works Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a book he wrote before his widely acknowledged twin masterpieces Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals.1 According to Nietzsche, these later works are “fish hooks” (Angelhaken) meant to attract and prepare readers for the superior insights of Zarathustra. These later works, he tells us, are No-saying, destructive books focused on the contemporaneous; while Zarathustra is a Yes-saying, constructive book focused on the future (EH BGE). Contrary to scholarly expectation, then, Nietzsche instructs us to think of the analyses in his later books as preemptively superseded by the philosophy of Zarathustra. Most Nietzsche scholars today ignore this instruction. Although they sometimes cite Zarathustra as a source of confirming textual support, they mostly regard this work as an embarrassment that needs to be finessed. Their chief reasons for this opinion are well known. First, Zarathustra is a poetic fictional work that is not written in Nietzsche’s own voice. And, second, it centers around two idiosyncratic philosophical ideas – the superhuman and eternal recurrence – which are not substantially revisited in any of his later works. As for Nietzsche’s instruction mentioned above, scholars contend that it cannot be taken seriously because it appears for the first and only time in Ecce Homo, the book he was writing as he quickly approached his breakdown. So, these scholars argue, when we consider the problematic aspects of Zarathustra alongside the sustained brilliance and power of Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals (especially Nietzsche also privileges Zarathustra with respect to the books he wrote before it: “Reading through Daybreak and Gay Science I have found that there is hardly a line in them that cannot serve as introduction, preparation and commentary to the above-mentioned Zarathustra. It is a fact, that I have composed the commentary before the text – ” (to Overbeck, 7 April 1884; KSB 6, p. 496).

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the latter), we have no choice but to regard the later works as “mature” by comparison and as superseding his favorite work. Michael Tanner sums up the case as follows: [Nietzsche] insisted that everything he wrote after TSZ was a commentary on it, but that seems to have been more in the nature of an attempt at self-reassurance than a genuine assessment of their nature or quality. For one thing, the Übermensch is never heard of again; the Eternal Recurrence rarely recurs. … For another, the progress through the first post-TSZ book, Beyond Good and Evil, through his masterpiece The Genealogy of Morals, to the torrential pamphlets of the last year, has little to do with anything stated or adumbrated in TSZ. (1994, p. 59)

In this concluding chapter, I argue that my interpretation of Zarathustra undermines this scholarly consensus. Because Genealogy is Nietzsche’s most widely admired and studied work today, I concentrate on showing how the Zarathustran concepts of the superhuman and eternal recurrence do indeed preemptively supersede some of the key ideas in Genealogy. Although Nietzsche developed new and sophisticated analyses in Genealogy, I argue that he did so on behalf of what he regarded as his superior insights in Zarathustra, and that these analyses are therefore best understood and appreciated against the background of these insights. N i e tzsc h e a nd Z a r at h ustr a The most obvious problem for today’s consensus about the relation between Zarathustra and Genealogy is the conclusion to the second essay of the latter. Alluding specifically to Zarathustra’s speech on the vision and the riddle, in which he challenges his listeners to guess “who it is that must come one day,” Nietzsche writes as follows: But some day, in a stronger age than this decaying, self-doubting present, he must yet come to us, the redeeming man of great love and contempt, the creative spirit whose surging strength always pushes him out of any outside or beyond, whose solitude is misunderstood by the people as if it were a flight from reality – : whereas it is only his sinking, burrowing, diving into reality, so that, when he one day emerges again into the light, he brings home the redemption of this reality: its redemption from the curse that the hitherto reigning ideal has laid upon it. This man of the future, who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also from that which was bound to grow out of it, from the great nausea, from the will to nothingness, from nihilism, this bell-stroke of noon and of the great decision that makes the will free again, that gives back to earth its goal and to humankind its hope, this Antichrist and anti-nihilist; this conqueror of God and of nothingness – he must come one day … 25. – But what am I saying here? Enough! Enough! At this place only one thing behooves me, to be silent: otherwise I usurp that which only one younger, one

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‘more of the future,’ one stronger than I am, is at liberty to do – that which only Zarathustra is at liberty to do, Zarathustra the godless.

For anyone reading through Genealogy without any prior knowledge of Zarathustra, this fervent encomium to Zarathustra is bound to seem jarring and puzzling.2 Except for his brief recommendation of Zarathustra in the Preface (GM P:8), there is nothing in what Nietzsche has written up to this point in Genealogy that would help such a reader understand these concluding passages. Clearly, Nietzsche intends his readers to go back and look up his earlier work so as to understand his allusion (in fact, he says just this in his Preface). Indeed, since this allusion is the climax to the entire second essay, it seems clear that Nietzsche intends his readers to think of his analysis in the second essay as needing completion through the ideas of his earlier Zarathustra.3 This reading is supported by the fact that, at one point in the composition of Genealogy, Nietzsche envisioned his work ending entirely with the conclusion to the second essay and with his deferring to the younger and stronger Zarathustra.4 If we look now at the details of Nietzsche’s conclusion in the second essay of Genealogy, we notice further that the terms in which he alludes to Zarathustra are strikingly similar to those he employs in Ecce Homo when discussing the relation of these two books. The way in which Nietzsche introduces the name of Zarathustra without further explanation fits his characterization of Genealogy as a “fish hook” to find readers for Zarathustra. His reference to Zarathustra as the man of the future who must come one day, who belongs to a stronger future age than this decaying self-doubting present, and as a younger man who is more of the future (Zukünftigeren) than he is, fits his description of Zarathustra as futureoriented compared to the present-oriented Genealogy. And his description of Zarathustra as the anti-nihilist, as the redeemer from the will to nothingness, as the conqueror of nothingness, fits his description of Zarathustra as a Yes-saying book compared to the No-saying Genealogy. This is why, In fact, Nietzsche points his readers back to Zarathustra in all of his later writings. Most prominently, he includes a book-long extravagant advertisement for Zarathustra in Ecce Homo and he collects poems about Zarathustra in Dithyrambs of Dionysus. He also quotes from Zarathustra in his Preface to the new edition of The Birth of Tragedy; he concludes Beyond Good and Evil and section V of The Gay Science with poems announcing the arrival of his friend Zarathustra; he concludes Twilight of the Idols with a quote from Zarathustra; he introduces The Antichrist with an invitation to read Zarathustra; he introduces The Case of Wagner with praise of Zarathustra; and he concludes the epilogue to Nietzsche Contra Wagner with a poem about Zarathustra. 3 For a similar reading, see Ansell-Pearson 1991, pp. 151–152. Although Ridley concentrates on GM II:24–25 as the passage that most points to Nietzsche’s constructive solution (1998, p. 134ff.), he does not follow up Nietzsche’s explicit allusion to Zarathustra. 4 I am grateful to Thomas Brobjer for calling my attention to this point. See Nietzsche’s letters to Naumann, July 29, 1887 (KSB 8, p. 116), and to Köselitz, July 30, 1887 (KSB 8, p. 117). 2

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pointing forward to his concluding praise of Zarathustra, and gesturing back to his just-completed critique of bad conscience and guilt, Nietzsche writes: “In order for a shrine to be set up, another shrine must be shattered: that is the law – show me the case where it is not so!” (GM II:24).5 But the scholarly consensus cannot point here to Nietzsche’s fragile mental state. Indeed, the more this consensus praises Genealogy as the peak of Nietzsche’s mature philosophical thinking, the more it is committed to taking this concluding allusion seriously and to offering an interpretation that does justice to this allusion.6 One option, given my focus in this chapter, is for the consensus to target the Zarathustran concept of the superhuman. It is often suggested that much of Zarathustra is important and continuous with Nietzsche’s later mature thought in Genealogy, and that we need only dismiss those aspects of Zarathustra having to do with the allegedly discarded concept of the superhuman. For example, Brian Leiter writes in his commentary on Genealogy: “In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche spoke of the ‘superman’ as a kind of ideal higher type. This particular concept, however, simply drops out of his mature work (except for a brief mention in Ecce Homo in the context of discussing Zarathustra). Unfortunately, it has received far more attention from commentators than it warrants …” (2002, p. 115, n.2).7 But I do not think this interpretive strategy will work either. For Nietzsche’s description of Zarathustra as the redeemer who “must come one day” (muss einst kommen) is a quite specific reference to Zarathustra’s prevision of himself as “he who must yet come one day” (der einst noch kommen muss), jumping up radiant and no longer human, with a laughter that is no human laughter – that is, to Zarathustra becoming the first In writing that he is only preparing the way for a Zarathustra-type who must come one day, Nietzsche invites us to think of the relation between John the Baptist and the Messiah. But he also implies that he himself is related to Zarathustra just as the No-saying freedom-seizing lion-spirit is related to the Yes-saying free child-spirit. This is why he used his own voice in the No-saying, destructive books Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals; whereas he poetically imagined the voice of Zarathustra in the Yes-saying, constructive book Zarathustra. 6 Oddly, recent commentary on the Genealogy has spent a lot more exegetical energy on the sentence from Zarathustra that serves as the motto for the third essay. For example, Janaway devotes an entire chapter (2007, pp. 165–185) to this sentence but only a couple of paragraphs (pp. 179, 241–242) to Nietzsche’s longer and much more significant allusion to Zarathustra at the end of the second essay. 7 Actually, GM I concludes with a description of Napoleon as a synthesis of the inhuman and the superhuman (GM I:16), a synthesis which Nietzsche had also proposed in the post-Zarathustra GS 382 (quoted at length in EH Z:2). Also, as Marsden 2005 points out, Nietzsche’s allusions to the superhuman in Ecce Homo are much more extensive and substantial than just a brief mention. In any case, Leiter himself gestures toward the Zarathustran concept of the superhuman when explaining Nietzsche’s alternative to the ascetic ideal (2002, pp. 287–288). 5

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transitional figure to the superhuman (Z III.2:2). Nor is this an incidental reference: if I am right in my interpretation below, this will turn out to be a very precise suggestion as to how the Zarathustran concept of the superhuman supersedes the analyses in the second and third essays of Genealogy. Before I outline this interpretation, let me say why I think the passage just noted undermines the two chief reasons behind the current practice of ignoring Zarathustra. For the student of Zarathustra, the conclusion to the second essay of Genealogy is one of the most important moments in all of Nietzsche’s published post-Zarathustra writing. This is because it is the only published place where Nietzsche explicitly – albeit very briefly and cryptically – explains why he chose not to write Zarathustra in his own voice and how Zarathustra therefore relates to all of the later books that he did write in his own voice. Zarathustra, he explains (see also his long sentence before the quote above), is his attempt to envision a philosopher stronger than himself: more warlike, more comfortable with solitude, more malicious, more healthy, more self-assured, more courageous in the face of reality, more atheistic, more anti-Christian. This philosopher – named “Zarathustra” in honor of, and in opposition to, the Persian metaphysician of good and evil (EH IV:3) – will be able to do what he, Nietzsche, knows he can never do himself: reverse the bad conscience, overturn the hitherto reigning ideal, conquer God, and liberate the will. No matter how strong and healthy he deems himself, perhaps stronger and healthier than almost all his contemporaries, Nietzsche sees himself as inheriting the base-line weakness and pathology of one of the weakest and most pathological of all ages. Still, he is strong enough to criticize this age on just these grounds and thereby set up the conditions for the emergence of a stronger age that can produce a fundamentally stronger philosopher than himself. Zarathustra, then, is the constructive work in which he envisions what such a future philosopher will experience, teach, and legislate. And Genealogy is one of the later destructive works in which he criticizes his contemporaries and prepares the way for this future philosopher. Now, to this it will no doubt be replied that, if Nietzsche is right about being bound by the decadence of his own age, then the most he can hope to accomplish is a diagnosis of this decadence. But he would be deluded in thinking that he can somehow transcend this decadence so as to envision a future philosopher who is not bound by it. Whatever limits Nietzsche’s age sets on his ability to reverse the bad conscience and overturn the ascetic ideal, surely it sets these also on his ability to envision a future philosopher who will do these things. As Daniel Conway comments: “Agents

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in late modernity, including Nietzsche himself, simply lack the volitional resources needed to orchestrate the redemption of the age” (1997b, p. 2). I think this is an important objection, but not fatal, and I argue below that Nietzsche’s concepts of the superhuman and eternal recurrence give him the resources to answer it. But if we suppose for now that Nietzsche is entitled to his distinction between himself and Zarathustra, then I think we can see right away the general interpretive mistake behind the two usual reasons for dismissing Zarathustra. In the first place, Nietzsche indicates, the reason he wrote Zarathustra in poetic fictional form is that he is trying to imagine a type that does not yet exist. But of course this does not mean that he does not believe in the futuristic ideas communicated in this work – anymore than Wagner does not believe in the futuristic ideas communicated in Siegfried. On the contrary, Nietzsche thinks these ideas are more belief-worthy than the preparatory ideas communicated in his non-imaginative later works addressed to his contemporaries. Second, Nietzsche tells us, the reason he does not write Zarathustra in his own voice is that he is not strong or healthy enough to do justice to the philosophical ideas he believes will dominate a stronger and healthier future age.8 In particular, as we know from his notes, letters, and published works, Nietzsche did not regard himself as strong or healthy enough to affirm his own life’s eternal recurrence: “I do not want life again. How have I borne it? Creating. What has made me endure the sight? the vision of the superhuman who affirms life. I have tried to affirm it myself – alas!” (KSA 10:4[81]).9 But, again, this does not mean that he does not believe in these futuristic ideas. Rather, his Writing specifically about Nietzsche’s deference in GM II:24–25 to one younger and stronger than himself, Lampert claims that Nietzsche was only attempting to “avoid the praise of oneself that offends good taste” (1986, p. 4). Indeed, Lampert suggests more generally that Nietzsche chose a fictional character, Zarathustra, because in this way “he observes the appropriate moderation about his immoderate task” and avoids “being seen to be an intolerable boaster” (1986, p. 157). But this suggestion lacks textual evidence and also the explanatory power commensurate with Nietzsche’s choice of a highly complex and elaborate literary invention. Moreover, the interpretive claim that Nietzsche wanted to appear modest requires that we read his assertion in GM II:24–25 (and elsewhere) as intentionally deceptive. Finally, this interpretive claim is contradicted by Nietzsche’s obvious and explicit immodesty in so many other places (especially Ecce Homo). 9 At the start of August 1881, in his very first note after discovering eternal recurrence, Nietzsche writes: “But whether we still want to live, is the question: and how!” (KSA 9:11[141]). Later, on March 8, 1884, he writes to Overbeck of the courage he needs to carry his thought of eternal recurrence and adds: “For I am still far removed from being able to express and present it” (KSB 6, pp. 484–485). And later still, in Ecce Homo, he writes that, although Zarathustra finds in his most abysmal thought no objection to existence, not even to its eternal recurrence (EH Z:6), he himself does: “But I confess that my deepest objection to the ‘eternal recurrence,’ my truly most abysmal thought, is always mother and sister” (EH I:3). 8

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whole point is that he does not believe in himself enough to express these ideas in his own voice.10 Or, as he says at the very end of the second essay of Genealogy, when cutting off his own forgetful exuberance, he must keep silent about the ideas in Zarathustra because only someone younger is allowed them. For example, he himself should not teach the superhuman affirmation of the thought of eternal recurrence because he himself is not strong enough for this affirmation.11 So instead he pictures what a philosopher would have to be like in order to affirm this thought and then constructs a narrative around him. In this way, Nietzsche designs a principled quarantine around the philosophical ideas he deems most important. By keeping them out of his later postZarathustra works, he singles them out for special attention and points to his deficiency, and indeed the deficiency of his entire age, with respect to them.12 Thus, when we turn to these later works, and we find that the Zarathustran ideas of the superhuman and eternal recurrence are no longer, or very seldom, discussed in them, we should not suppose that Nietzsche abandoned these ideas, or that he lost faith in them, or that his thought evolved beyond them. On the contrary, Nietzsche tells us, this is reason to suppose that these are his most cherished and valuable ideas, the ideas he recommends to us for study after we have digested his post-Zarathustra criticism of our own most cherished, but actually impoverished and decadent, modern ideas.13 Applying Nietzsche’s own warning, we should be on guard against confusing the artist and his creation: “as if he himself were what he is able to represent, conceive, and express. The fact is that if he were just that, he would in no way represent, conceive, and express it” (GM III:4). A Nietzsche would have not created a Zarathustra if Nietzsche had been a Zarathustra. Hence Nietzsche’s unpublished remark shortly after finishing Part III of Zarathustra in the spring of 1884: “Decision: I want to speak and no longer Zarathustra” (KSA 11:25[277]); and his later remark to his sister: “Do not think that my son Zarathustra expresses my opinions” (May 7, 1885; KSB 7, p. 48). 11 Although Nietzsche signs himself at the end of Twilight of the Idols as the teacher of eternal recurrence, he avoids Zarathustra’s claim that life returns identically. He also prefaces his signature by announcing his discipleship to the philosopher Dionysus (whom he identifies with Zarathustra) and he follows it by deferring to the “Tablets” speech (§29) in which Zarathustra exhorts his disciples to become hard. By entitling this quote, “The Hammer Speaks,” Nietzsche alludes to Zarathustra’s poetic goal of sculpting the hard, ugly stone of humankind with his chiseling hammer of selective eternal recurrence so as to liberate the beautiful superhuman (Z II.2; BGE 62). 12 Although Nietzsche remarks in EH IV:8 that he has not said a word in Ecce Homo that he could not have said five years ago through the mouth of Zarathustra, this does not mean that he has said in Ecce Homo everything that he said then through the mouth of Zarathustra. And, indeed, in Ecce Homo Nietzsche only mentions, but does not teach, the doctrines of the superhuman and eternal recurrence which he says belong to Zarathustra. 13 Nietzsche’s clear distinction between his own voice and Zarathustra’s voice helps to explain his contemporaneous statements in his letters that he has just finished building an entrance hall (Vorhalle) to his philosophy (see KSB 6, pp. 485, 490, 496, 499). By contrast, commentators who assume that Nietzsche regarded his own projects as coextensive with Zarathustra’s find it hard 10

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The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra R e v e rsing t h e b a d c onsci e nc e

The conclusion of Nietzsche’s discussion of guilt and bad conscience in the second essay of Genealogy is notoriously enigmatic.14 It should be possible, he writes, to reverse (umgekehren) the bad conscience we now feel with respect to our natural inclinations and to wed it instead to our unnatural inclinations. But Nietzsche does not explain any further what such a reversal would consist in or how it could be attained. Instead, as we have seen, he remarks that only a stronger and healthier future age could produce a Zarathustra-type who is strong and healthy enough to do this and that he himself should not interfere with this task. Notice that Nietzsche does not suggest here that Zarathustra will destroy bad conscience, but only that he will reverse it, turn it against something different. This is initially surprising, since the second essay seems highly critical of this psychological phenomenon. But in fact, as most commentators have noted, a closer reading shows that Nietzsche is deeply ambivalent throughout the essay. In his most famous formulation, he grants that bad conscience is an illness, but only in the same way that pregnancy is an illness. And he writes as well that the human animal with bad conscience is something pregnant with a future, one of the most exciting lucky throws in the dice game of Heraclitus’ “great child.” Finally, in a clear allusion to the Zarathustran concept of the superhuman, he writes that bad conscience “gives rise to an interest, a tension, a hope, almost a certainty, as if with it something were announcing and preparing itself, as if the human were not a goal but only a way, an episode, a bridge, a great promise. – ” (GM II:16).15 So Nietzsche is not suggesting that we should, or even that we can, escape or undo the bad conscience that human beings have refined over to explain why these statements do not prioritize the published post-Zarathustra works as “the completed edifice, or at least a systematic advance over Zarathustra” (Lampert 1986, p. 4; see also Rosen 1995, pp. 17–22). Alternatively, Heidegger (1984, p. 12ff.) speculated that these statements should be interpreted as prioritizing Nietzsche’s unpublished notes for a Hauptwerk project entitled The Will to Power. Although Heidegger’s speculation has been undermined by criticisms of the notes edited by Köselitz and Nietzsche’s sister, it has been revived recently in Brobjer 2006 and 2008, pp. 39–46. Brobjer claims (2008, p. 42) that “there existed for Nietzsche a still higher state, figure, and book than [the prophet] Zarathustra,” namely, the god Dionysus. But I have called attention throughout this study to all the various ways and places (e.g., EH Z:6–8) in which Nietzsche identifies Zarathustra with the ancient Greek divinity and points to their common teaching, philosophy, and exemplification of eternal recurrence. 14 See Ridley 1998, p. 134ff. 15 See Zarathustra’s opening speech to the townspeople in which he says that the human being is “a rope, fastened between the animal and the superhuman” and that “[w]hat is great in the human being is that he is a bridge and not a goal” (P:4).

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the millennia.16 Rather, he hopes to show how this very same instrument is the means whereby a future Zarathustra can achieve his world-historic goals. As recent studies have shown, Nietzsche’s account of bad conscience has many layers and complications. For example, a close reading of the text shows that Nietzsche distinguishes at least four different contexts for conscience and bad conscience: the ethics of custom (Sittlichkeit der Sitte) (§§2–3), the debtor-creditor relation (§§4–10), the imposition of society (§§16–18), and religion (§§19–23). Nevertheless, if we look at the very start of the second essay, where Nietzsche introduces his concept of conscience, I think we can find two fundamental and related aspects of this concept that run through all of these contexts and that help to explain his concluding allusion to Zarathustra.17 The first of these is Nietzsche’s claim that conscience is what allowed the emergence of the human animal, and the second is his claim that this conscience was in effect a new ability with respect to time. As Nietzsche writes in section 1, the human animal bred for itself a counter-faculty, a memory of the will, by means of which its usual animal forgetfulness was suspended and it was now able to ordain the future in advance: “between the original ‘I will,’ ‘I shall do this,’ and the actual realization of the will, its act, a world of strange new things, circumstances, even other acts of will may be interposed without breaking this long chain of the will.” Now, in a parallel fashion, Zarathustra opens with Zarathustra’s call for the superhuman to emerge from the human, just as previously the human had emerged from the animal (the ape, the worm) (Z P:3). And it closes, in its published Part III, with Zarathustra’s invocation of the thought of eternal recurrence that he had said would grant the will a new power over time (Z II.20, III.13:1). Nietzsche’s implication, therefore, is that the paired Genealogy claims about humankind and memory allude back to the paired Zarathustra concepts of the superhuman and eternal recurrence.18 Before spelling out this implication, let me first address an important exegetical point. When Nietzsche turns from his introduction of conscience in the context of the ethics of custom to his examination of bad conscience in the context of the debtor-creditor relation, it is easy to see See by contrast Risse 2001, p. 70. This continuous reading is supported by Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo review of GM II as offering the psychology of conscience. 18 This reading is supported by Nietzsche’s emphasis in GM II on the concept of will to power that he first introduced in Zarathustra as a second element in the triad: superhuman (Part I), will to power (Part II), eternal recurrence (Part III). 16

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how he carries over his introductory claim about the new mnemonic capacity of the human animal. As Nietzsche writes in section 5 about the debtors, “it was here that a memory had to be made for those who promised.” And since Nietzsche appeals to his analysis of the debtor-creditor relation when he later examines bad conscience in a religious context, we can see how his claims about human memory carry over into his analysis of guilt in the concluding sections of the second essay. But we might wonder how Nietzsche is interested in memory in his later, and most famous, claim that bad conscience – and indeed, the human soul – had its origin in the internalization of instincts imposed by the sudden enclosure within the walls of a peaceful society. Although I have not seen this question addressed in the literature, I think there is a good answer to it. To begin, Nietzsche clearly thinks of the memory-enabling “ethics of custom” as an instrument of society and as a product of social enclosure. In section 2, he writes that “it was with the help of the ethics of custom and the social strait-jacket [socialen Zwangsjacke] that the human was really made calculable” and that “society and its ethics of custom” are merely a means to the ripest fruit at the end of this long breeding process. And in section 16, Nietzsche identifies “being enclosed within the walls of society and peace” with being “forcibly confined to the oppressive narrowness and punctiliousness of custom.” So in Nietzsche’s view human memory is made possible by society and its ethics of custom. But it is also the case, Nietzsche suggests, that the existence and advantages of society depend upon memory. In section 3, he writes that the severity of the penal code “provides an especially significant measure of the degree of effort that was needed to triumph over forgetfulness and to make the moment-slaves of the affects and desire hold as present a few primitive requirements of social cohabitation.” Also, that, with the help of frightening means, the German plebeian eventually memorized five or six ‘I will not’s, thus giving his promise “in order to live under the advantages of society.” The key to understanding Nietzsche’s claim of the interdependence of human memory and society lies in his analysis of the role pain and cruelty play in both phenomena. Nietzsche argues in section 16 that the imposition of peaceful society and its customs (above all, punishment) prevented the nomad half-animal from venting its aggressive and warlike instincts against external enemies so that it was forced to turn these same instincts against itself. Nietzsche summarizes this thesis in his Ecce Homo review: “The second inquiry [of Genealogy] gives the psychology of the conscience: … it is the instinct of cruelty that turns backward after

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it can no longer discharge itself externally.” But a central proposition of the oldest psychology on earth, he writes in section 3, is that pain is the most powerful aid to mnemonics and that “only that which never ceases to hurt stays in the memory.”19 This is why society’s “ethics of custom” that forged memory in the human animal consisted above all of rituals of cruelty and torture: “The worse the human’s memory has been, the more fearful has been the appearance of its customs; the severity of the penal code provides an especially significant measure of the degree of effort that was needed to triumph over forgetfulness.” There is therefore a deep continuity between Nietzsche’s claims about memory at the start of the second essay and his claims about the internalization of the instincts toward the end of the second essay: society and its punishment-centered ethics of customs causes the human animal to inflict upon itself the kind of incessant pain that is needed for it to develop the kind of memory required for social cohabitation. Let me return, then, to Nietzsche’s claim that bad conscience is an illness, in fact the worst illness ever contracted by the human animal, one from which it has not yet recovered, one that makes the human animal the sickest animal on earth (§§13, 16, 19). As we have just seen, this illness involves above all a kind of incarceration or imprisonment in which the will to power cannot be externally discharged and therefore must be turned inward so as to inflict self-torture, self-punishment, and selfcruelty: The human being who, from lack of external enemies and resistances and forcibly confined to the oppressive narrowness and punctiliousness of custom, impatiently lacerated, persecuted, gnawed at, assaulted, and maltreated himself; this animal that rubbed itself raw against the bars of its cage as one tried to ‘tame’ it; this deprived creature, racked with homesickness for the wild, who had to turn himself into an adventure, a torture chamber, an uncertain and dangerous 19

It may be wondered (see Millgram 2007, p. 95) whether Nietzsche’s “central proposition” is coherent, since the very procedure which is supposed to inculcate memory requires that pain be remembered. But here we need to keep in mind, as I explain further below, that Nietzsche defines memory as a counter-faculty by means of which active, positive forgetting is in certain cases suspended. And the function of this forgetting, he writes in GM II:1, is to ensure that what we subconsciously absorb through experience impinges as little as possible on our consciousness. Forgetting enables “the temporary shutting of the doors and windows of consciousness” and “a little tabula rasa of consciousness.” Nietzsche’s proposition is therefore coherent as long as we suppose that the subconscious absorption (but not the conscious memory) of pain is an aid to the development of conscious memory, that is, of conscious suspension of forgetfulness. This is why he remarks in GM II:3 that pain is required to impress something on “this incarnated forgetfulness” (dieser leibhaften Vergesslichkeit), to make certain ideas “unforgettable” (unvergessbar), and to “triumph over forgetfulness” (gegen die Vergesslichkeit zum Sieg zu kommen).

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wilderness – this fool, this yearning and desperate prisoner became the inventor of ‘bad conscience.’

According to Nietzsche, the conquered, imprisoned, and tamed human animal invented bad conscience in order to hurt itself, and after that “seized upon the presupposition of religion so as to drive his self-torture to its most gruesome pitch of severity and rigor.” In this new psychic cruelty, where the human will now infected the fundamental ground of things with the problem of punishment and guilt, Nietzsche finds an unexampled madness and insanity of the will, an earth that has become a madhouse (§19; see also GM III:20). Although scholars have not noticed it, these famous remarks contain clear allusions to Zarathustra’s speech on redemption. For Zarathustra also speaks there of the human will as a prisoner in chains or fetters, as being powerless and impotent, as foolishly trying to escape its dungeon by seeking a revenge that it calls “punishment,” and finally as becoming insanely obsessed with finding this punishment in the very nature of existence. Even more specifically, Nietzsche’s analysis of bad conscience alludes back to Zarathustra’s further claim that the prison of the human will is the past. For although Nietzsche emphasizes the role that social confinement plays in the inhibition and suppression of the human animal’s instincts (so that they are eventually internalized), his deeper point is that the socially bred memory faculty is the true inhibitor and suppressor of these instincts. This is because the memory faculty suspends or disconnects (ausgehängt) active forgetting and represents an active will not to let go, to keep willing, that which it once willed in the past.20 But this means that the remembering human animal is forced to recognize for the first time an entire arena of possible willing, much more extensive than the sphere outside society, which is completely and forever outside of its reach: namely, that which it once willed and can now never un-will, deeds which it can never undo, in short, the past, the “it was.”21 Before socially bred memory, the prehuman actively forgets anything outside the present moment that could confine In GM III:20, Nietzsche writes that, under the influence of the ascetic priest, the human animal is led to believe that the physiological suffering resulting from his internalized cruelty is to be found in “a piece of the past” (einem Stück Vergangenheit). Hence, wherever we find the sight of the “sinner” we find “the past regurgitated, the deed distorted” (die Vergangenheit zurückgekäut, die That verdreht). 21 In his redemption speech (Z II.20), Zarathustra anticipates the Genealogy analysis of guilt when he notes that it is not a deed, but rather the pastness of a deed, its undoability, that leads to selflacerating guilt: “No deed can be annihilated: how could it be undone through punishment! This, this is what is eternal in the punishment ‘existence,’ that existence too must be an eternallyrecurring deed and guilt !” 20

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its activity. But with the advent of society and its mnemotechniques, some things were impressed upon the moment-centered animal affects and desire so that they remained there – inextinguishable, omnipresent, fixed – just as they once were. The human will thus became confronted with a new stone, a new barrier, “that which was,” which it could not move and in relation to which it was impotent and inhibited. We should therefore notice Nietzsche’s irony when he emphasizes the power and freedom of the sovereign individual at the start of the second essay. For insofar as this power and freedom depend upon the sovereign individual’s highly developed faculty of memory, they are in fact sharply curtailed. Unlike his non-human animal ancestors, the sovereign individual that is the completion of the human animal is at each and every point confined and burdened, not only by his own immovable “it was,” but also by the “it was” of the whole human prehistory of custom and tradition that has led up to him. The sovereign individual may seem to have power and mastery over circumstances, nature, accidents, fate, himself, and others less reliable than himself. But since he has no power over any of the “it was” that determined all of these, he ultimately has no power over these either. Indeed, because the sovereign individual’s mnemonic will has itself been determined by a past that is fixed and gone forever, this will does not actually ordain the future in advance after all. So the sovereign individual’s power over time turns out to be illusory. This is why Nietzsche describes the sovereign individual as possessing qualities that he has already criticized in Zarathustra as belonging to the spirit of the camel and to the spirit of gravity: namely, as bearing on his strong shoulders a tremendous responsibility and weight that makes him proud, self-conscious, measured, controlled, serious, solemn, and grave.22 As Christa Acampora (2006) has rightly pointed out, Nietzsche does not locate the sovereign individual in the future with which humankind is said to be pregnant, but rather in the already-attained completion or perfection of humankind which must be overcome.23 Already in UM II:1 Nietzsche had written of the human being who “braces himself against the great and ever greater pressure of what is past: it pushes him down or bends him sideways, it encumbers his steps as a dark, invisible burden which he would like to disown.” By contrast with the burdened and tension-filled sovereign individual, the redeemed Zarathustra’s transformed soul is weightless and soars in flight like a bird (III.16:6–7). And by contrast to the somber, measured, calculable, sovereign individual, the redeemed Zarathustra’s transformed soul laughs as no human has ever laughed, and is sudden like lightning and earthquakes, stormy like the wind, chance-governed like the dancing stars, playful like the gambling gods, and adventuring like the seafarer (III.16:1–3, 5). 23 Thus, contrary to much of the commentary on Nietzsche’s perfectionism (see, e.g., Conway 1997a), the concept of the superhuman does not involve a process of humankind completing or perfecting itself, but rather of the already completed or perfected humankind overcoming itself. 22

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So what is required for the human will to liberate itself from the prison of the past imposed by its socially bred millennia-old capacity of memory? Although there has been much discussion lately about Nietzsche’s views on freedom, none of it has framed the question in this way or looked for his answer to this particular question.24 This is because, as I have said, most commentators assume that Nietzsche’s definitive answers to the traditional questions of philosophy are to be found in his “mature” post-Zarathustra works. If I am right, however, these works contain only Nietzsche’s destructive critiques of the accounts of freedom accepted in his day (e.g. Schopenhauer’s in BGE 19; Kant’s in GM I:13) and nowhere offer what he regarded as the proper constructive solution to the real problem of the freedom of the will. It is no wonder, then, that most scholars judge the account of freedom they find in the post-Zarathustra works too thin, too provisional, or too fragmentary.25 On the reading I offer in this study, by contrast, Nietzsche certainly does have in mind a positive theory of freedom, and he intends his critical analyses of his contemporaries to prepare the ground for this theory. But he confines himself to envisioning how the future philosopher named “Zarathustra” will discover and teach this theory. This is why at the end of the second essay Nietzsche designates Zarathustra as the man of the future who makes the will free again. Characterizing Zarathustra’s task four separate times (two of these emphasized) in terms of redemption (Erlösung), Nietzsche explicitly points us back to Zarathustra’s speech on redemption: He must yet come to us, the redeeming man of great love and contempt … whose solitude is misunderstood by the people as if it were a flight from reality – : whereas it is only his sinking, burrowing, diving into reality, so that, when he one day emerges again into the light, he brings home the redemption of this reality: its redemption from the curse that the hitherto reigning ideal has laid upon it. This man of the future, who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal

In addition, Zarathustra begins by predicting a culminating spiritual metamorphosis into a child’s creative freedom whereby the will wills its own will, and Zarathustra’s later speeches show how eternal recurrence is the key to this metamorphosis. But when the current debate mentions eternal recurrence, it is typically concerned to show instead Nietzsche’s commitment to fatalism (see, e.g, Leiter 2001, p. 284ff.). 25 Solomon sums up this point of view when he writes that “we get nothing even remotely approaching a theory of freedom and responsibility from Nietzsche, nor does he even talk about such things except – usually – to mock various extravagances and liberties taken with ‘free will’ in particular” (2006, p. 207). See also Ridley, who never mentions Zarathustra and argues that Nietzsche’s “concern with the question of freedom was not motivated by metaphysical considerations” (2007, p. 204). 24

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but also from that which was bound to grow out of it … this bell-stroke of noon and of the great decision that makes the will free again…

As we have seen, Zarathustra’s solitary sinking, burrowing, diving into reality refers to his descent into his own subconscious depths so as to bring up to the light of consciousness his most abysmal thought, his deepest instinctive wisdom about the true nature of reality: the eternal recurrence of the same. According to this reality, every human animal has lived its qualitatively identical life innumerable times before. And since every human animal possesses a faculty of memory, it must be possible for it to remember these innumerable identical previous lives. More precisely, Nietzsche defines human memory as a counter-faculty by means of which its animal forgetting is suspended or disconnected. And animal forgetting, he writes, is “an active and in the strictest sense positive faculty of repression that is responsible for the fact that what is only absorbed, experienced by us, taken in by us, enters just as little into our consciousness during the condition of digestion (one might call it ‘inpsychation’) as does the entire thousand-fold process through which the nourishing of our body (socalled ‘incorporation’) runs its course” (GM II:1). Thus, every human animal subconsciously absorbs and experiences the reality of its innumerable identical previous lives, but this reality is actively forgotten and repressed for the sake of psychic room and order. Nevertheless, this forgetting and repression can be suspended, in which case the cosmic reality of eternal recurrence will enter into human consciousness and thought.26 So why does Nietzsche need to emphasize Zarathustra’s doctrine of eternal recurrence if he thinks that this is something every human being can remember on his own? The answer to this question, I have argued, is that Nietzsche did not think himself – or, indeed, anyone belonging to his age – strong or healthy enough to affirm the thought of an eternally As I argued in Chapter 3, there are strong affinities between Nietzsche’s epistemology of eternal recurrence and Plato’s theory of anamnesis. Nietzsche himself points to this influence when he alludes to Plato’s Phaedo in GS 340–341 and when he depicts Zarathustra’s dialectical contest with a dwarf that represents the Socrates of Plato’s Phaedo. Although Pierre Klossowski is famously concerned to show that “[a]namnesis coincides with the revelation of the [Eternal] Return” (1997, p. 57), his point is quite different from mine. Whereas I am arguing that for Nietzsche forgetting eternal recurrence is a suspendable condition of psychic efficiency, Klossowski argues that forgetting eternal recurrence is an unsuspendable condition of the truth of eternal recurrence (1997, p. 59). But it seems to me that Klossowski’s argument – “how could the return not bring back forgetfulness? … I learn that I was other than I am now for having forgotten this truth, and thus that I have become another by learning it” (1997, p. 57) – depends upon the common but false assumption (first advanced by Simmel and criticized by me in Chapter 1) that any memory of eternal recurrence adds something new which violates the qualitative identity of eternal recurrence. See also Kerslake 2000 and Allison 2001, p. 122.

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recurring life. Due to their base-line life-impoverishment, he and his contemporaries were far from being well enough disposed toward themselves and their lives to want their identical return. In Gay Science 341, Nietzsche imagines that he and his contemporaries would feel the thought of eternal recurrence as a crushing thought: the question in each and every thing, “do you want this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon their actions as the greatest heavy weight. He even imagines that he and his contemporaries, upon hearing the news of eternal recurrence, would throw themselves down, gnash their teeth, and curse the bearer of this news as a demon. But, according to the doctrine, this messenger, this news-bearer, must be memory itself. And according to Nietzsche’s proto-Freudian psychology, the human animal represses any memory that is too painful to bear: “‘I have done that,’ says my memory. ‘I cannot have done that,’ says my pride, and remains unyielding. Eventually – memory yields” (BGE 68). Extrapolating from Gay Science 341, Nietzsche directs us to imagine a similar sequence of psychological events with respect to our memory of eternal recurrence: “I have lived this identical life innumerable times before,” says my memory. “I cannot have done that,” say my life-hatred and my self-hatred, and remain unyielding. Eventually – memory yields. In terms of Nietzsche’s account of memory, the inability to affirm recurrence keeps the latent knowledge of it suppressed and forgotten. Although we may at some point be led to suspend our forgetting of the recurrence-reality that we have subconsciously experienced, we will certainly return to this forgetting when the recurrence-reality is too painful to bear.27 I think this reading helps to explain Nietzsche’s predictions in his notebooks that the truth of eternal recurrence would not be accepted for hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years (KSA 9 11:[158]). Anticipating what in fact has been the history of its reception in the last hundred years, Nietzsche believed that his thought of eternal recurrence would necessarily face deep skepticism and resistance from even his most sympathetic readers. This is why Nietzsche presents us with his contrasting vision of a far stronger and healthier future age (enabled by Nietzsche himself) in which there will arise an individual, Zarathustra, so overflowing with energy and vitality that he is completely well disposed toward himself and toward his life. Such an individual, he imagines, will carry within him a dormant This is the reason why Nietzsche would argue (pace Simmel 1986, p. 178; Berkowitz 1995, pp. 209–210; Hill 2007, p. 95) that his doctrine of eternal recurrence is not wishful thinking or a comforting self-deception of the kind he criticizes in GS 277.

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knowledge of his life’s eternal recurrence and at the right time will choose to deliberately awaken this knowledge. Since the rest of humankind will still be concerned to keep this reality suppressed, Zarathustra will have to escape collective thought and choose the most solitary solitude as a means of diving, burrowing, and sinking into reality. Nietzsche also imagines Zarathustra’s initial fear and weakness in relation to his latent knowledge of eternal recurrence; as well as his nausea, horror, and sickness once he has fully awakened and incorporated this knowledge. But Zarathustra’s ambivalence about his knowledge does not concern the eternal recurrence of his own identical life (which he longs for), but rather that of the dwarfishly small human. Hence, Nietzsche predicts, Zarathustra will be led to make “the great decision [der grossen Entscheidung] that makes the will free again, that gives back to earth its goal and to humankind its hope” (GM II:24) – that is, he will be led to affirm his thought’s selective power against the continued and future existence of the human. Having done so, and thereby made room for the emergence of the superhuman, Zarathustra will bless the news of his life’s recurrence as an eternal confirmation and seal. This affirmation, Nietzsche anticipates, will be the start of the great noon (grosse Mittag) for humankind, that is, the hour in which the shadows of God retreat and enlightenment arrives. This is why Nietzsche ends the second essay of Genealogy by proclaiming Zarathustra as “this bell-stroke of noon” (dieser Glockenschlag des Mittags) and why he begins Genealogy by alluding to Zarathustra as “one divinely preoccupied and immersed in himself into whose ear the bell has just boomed with all its strength the twelve strokes of noon [and who] awakens all at once and asks himself: ‘what really was that which just struck?’” (GM P:1).28 Thus, according to Nietzsche, the experience of the reality of the eternally repeating cosmos cannot be incorporated by non-human animals (not even Zarathustra’s) because they have no faculty of memory.29 Nor, however, can it be incorporated by most human animals, because their poor disposition toward themselves and their lives keeps them from suspending their forgetting of this experience. Only an exceptionally Notice that Nietzsche here contrasts the noon-bell awakening of the future Zarathustra with his own lesser awakening: “so we sometimes rub our ears afterward and ask, completely astonished, completely disconcerted, ‘what really was that which we have just experienced?’ still more: ‘who are we really?’ and, afterward, as aforesaid, count the twelve trembling bell-strokes of our experience, our life, our being – and alas! miscount them.” 29 Hence Nietzsche’s important narrative distinction between what Zarathustra’s animals say that eternal recurrence is for those who think as they do, on the one hand, and what they say that eternal recurrence is according to Zarathustra’s teaching, on the other (III.13:2). 28

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strong and self-loving individual like Zarathustra, who fervently longs for nothing more than his own eternal recurrence, will be able finally to recover and incorporate his deeply buried subconscious experience that this is actually the case. As a result, however, his relation to time will be completely transformed. Since it is a cosmological truth that Zarathustra will eternally relive the qualitatively identical life he has already lived, his faculty of memory will no longer be confined just to the “it was” of his life. Whereas non-human animals can live only in their present moment, and whereas human animals can also mnemonically live in their past, Zarathustra’s recovered memory of his eternal recurrence will allow him to live in his future as well. As I have argued, this is why Zarathustra so often calls himself a prophet, and this is why Nietzsche calls attention to Zarathustra’s prophetic ability by constructing crucial narrative episodes in which Zarathustra has previsions that are later fulfilled. In particular, and most importantly, the convalescent Zarathustra tells his animals that his confrontation with his most abysmal thought was a horrific torture and crucifixion (Z III.13:2). Since Nietzsche argues in the second essay of Genealogy that pain is the most powerful aid to memory, it should be the case that he depicts this experience as the one Zarathustra remembers the best. And, indeed, as we have seen, Nietzsche repeatedly depicts the younger Zarathustra as having an accurate prevision – that is, recurrencememory – of precisely this experience (Z II.19, III.2). We are now in a better position to understand Nietzsche’s suggestion at the end of the second essay of Genealogy that a future Zarathustra must turn bad conscience against the unnatural inclinations. This is because bad conscience is fundamentally memory, and the unnatural inclinations are all traceable to bad conscience.30 Further, the law of life, the law of necessary selfovercoming, dictates that all great things are the cause of their own destruction (GM III:27). Hence, in an act of self-cancellation, memory must be turned against memory itself. For it is memory that forces the human animal to hold on to the past, to fix the past, and to find an immovable “it was” in relation to which its will is impotent and inhibited. Memory is what teaches the human animal that it cannot will backward. Zarathustra must therefore employ this same memory to recover the past so completely that he finds time actually circling back upon itself and the past returning as the present. 30

See Allison 2001, pp. 150–154, for an insightful discussion of this point. See also Ridley’s perceptive criticism of the more literal interpretation of Nietzsche’s answer according to which “one should learn to feel bad about oneself for one’s transgressions against immanence” (1998, pp. 134–135).

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Unlike the non-human animal, Zarathustra will still possess a memory faculty that allows him to transcend the present moment. In addition, however, and unlike the human animal, he will be able to employ this faculty to transcend the past as well. Because he will have a recovered memory of the entire circular course of his life, Zarathustra will no longer share the limited human perception that there is an asymmetry between the past and the future such that the past is always fixed and gone forever compared to the future. Instead, his recurrence-memory will show him that his eternally returning past also lies ahead of his present and is therefore just as open to his will’s influence as is his future. Moreover, it is precisely Zarathustra’s faculty of memory that will make this backward-willing influence possible. For by storing mnemonic messages, commands, or reminders to himself at an “earlier” stage in his life, the fully developed and perfected Zarathustra will be able to transmit this very same development and perfection throughout his entire life so as to guarantee it meaning, necessity, and wholeness.31 Alluding to Socrates’ daimonion (BT 13–14; TI II), as well as to the Christian conception of conscience as a kind of divine voice that conveys warnings or instructions (GS 335; EH GM), Nietzsche predicts that Zarathustra will hear disembodied whispers calling to him, admonishing him, and commanding him at critical times in his life. Zarathustra will thus possess a new kind of conscience, a recurrence-conscience, which enables him to keep promises to his future self and to become who he is in the future (GS 270, 335).32 In Zarathustra, then, Nietzsche envisions a future redeemer who will employ his memory against itself so as to “forget” the remembered past that previously seemed forever fixed and out of his reach. However, this will not be a return to the forgetting of his non-human animal ancestry, that is, to the “partly obtuse, partly flighty understanding of the moment [Augenblicks-Verstande],” or to “the moment-enslaved [AugenblicksSklaven] affects and desire” (GM II:3). Instead, Nietzsche suggests, Zarathustra will go forward and exploit to its fullest the very illness that is also a pregnancy in order to attain a new and no-longer-human forgetting Berkowitz 1995, pp. 179, 199, 209, claims that Nietzsche aims to show how Zarathustra’s concept of backward-willing renders illusory the freedom of the will, whereas I am arguing that Nietzsche employs this concept to show for the first time why freedom of the will is not illusory after all. 32 Thus, by contrast with Acampora 2006, my interpretation shows that Nietzsche depreciates the sovereign individual because he is not responsible and autonomous enough – compared, that is, to the no-longer-human Zarathustra or to the superhuman. See Zarathustra’s extravagant praise and exemplification of the self-legislator who must obey his own laws and commands (Z II.12); or, more radically, of the spirit-become-child and self-propelled wheel who wills his own will (Z I.1). 31

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that will free him to will his own will.33 As predicted in his first speech on the three metamorphoses, Zarathustra’s new kind of forgetting will also free him from guilt and grant him a new kind of innocence: “Innocence is the child and forgetting, a new beginning, a play, a self-propelling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yes-saying” (Z I.1). Again, Nietzsche is not making the atavistic suggestion that Zarathustra will, or even can, return to the “first” innocence of his non-human ancestry (GM I:11; II:7).34 Nor is Nietzsche making the psychologically implausible suggestion that Zarathustra will, or even can, somehow return to the innocence of his first childhood. Instead, he predicts that Zarathustra will attain a new and nolonger-human innocence, or what his later Genealogy calls a kind of second innocence (GM II:20). At h e ism a nd t h e de at h of G od Commentators on Genealogy have so far failed to notice the important connection between this book’s association of memory and guilt (Schuld), on the one hand, and Zarathustra’s association of forgetting and innocence (Unschuld), on the other.35 But Nietzsche makes this connection explicit toward the end of the second essay when he offers a genealogy of the Christian God as representing humankind’s maximum feeling of indebtedness toward its origins (GM II:20). According to this analysis, the very earliest gods represented the forefathers toward which living generations felt indebted for the sacrifices, accomplishments, and wisdom that had granted them extraordinary advantages and victories (GM II:19). But the later Christian God represented the origin itself toward which all of humankind felt indebted – “whether we think of the causa prima of man, the beginning of the human race, its primal ancestor … or of nature from whose womb humankind arose … or of existence in general” (GM II:20–22). Now, one might suppose, Nietzsche writes, that the See by contrast Stambaugh’s suggestion (1994, p. 105ff.) that Nietzsche aims to regain the animal state described at the start of UM II in which we live “totally in the moment, in the present.” Acampora (2006, pp. 2–5, 11) also emphasizes the pre-human forgetting of GM II:1 and UM II and leaves obscure what else Nietzsche could mean by a new and super-human kind of forgetting. 34 See for example Stambaugh 1994, p. 105ff. It might seem, that is, that Zarathustra’s emphasis on the child as the third metamorphosis of the spirit should be interpreted in terms of Nietzsche’s UM II description of the child as “not yet having a past to disown, play[ing] in blissful blindness between the fences of the past and the future” (§1). But this cannot be right because the UM II description is linked to the innocence and forgetting of the non-human animal. 35 Commentators on Zarathustra also fail to notice this connection. See for example GoodingWilliams 2001, pp. 43–44. 33

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contemporary decline of faith in the Christian God would help to dispel humankind’s feeling of indebtedness and eventually to bring with it a kind of second innocence. But the reality, he insists, is fearfully different: in an attempt to halt, or even reverse, this decline of faith, the debt to the Christian God has now been rendered irredeemable, turned inward, pushed back into the pre-existing bad conscience, and thereby moralized as the feeling of guilt (GM II:21):36 That will to self-tormenting, that repressed cruelty of the animal-human made inward and scared back into himself, the creature imprisoned in the ‘state’ so as to be tamed, who invented the bad conscience in order to hurt himself after the more natural vent for this desire to hurt had been blocked – this human of the bad conscience has seized upon the presupposition of religion so as to drive his self-torture to its most gruesome pitch of severity and rigor. Guilt before God: this thought becomes an instrument of torture to him. (GM II:22)

Thus, according to Nietzsche, neither he nor any of his contemporaries are able to claim the complete and definitive victory of atheism that would redeem humankind from its feeling of indebtedness towards its origins and bring with it a second innocence.37 Instead, and this is a remark usually ignored by Genealogy commentators, only a stronger and healthier human being in a future age will be able to claim this victory – namely, Zarathustra “the conqueror of God” (GM II:24–25). In Genealogy, then, Nietzsche tells his readers that he has already depicted the future conquest of God in his earlier book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. But this is puzzling, since the earlier book seems to begin by See Risse 2001 for Nietzsche’s use of the same word, “Schuld,” to mean first debt and then guilt. Risse (2001, pp. 63–66) correctly interprets GM II:21–22 as arguing that the invention of the Christian God helped to introduce the moral concept of guilt, but he misses Nietzsche’s repeated emphasis on irredeemability as the feature that transformed debt into guilt. Because of this, Risse also misses Nietzsche’s understanding of the relation between bad conscience and guilt. Recoiling from the “iron impossibility” of repaying its debt to God, the human animal turned its debt against itself and thereby “pushed it back” into the pre-existing bad conscience. In this way, bad conscience became entangled with the concept of the Christian God. Just as the inability to discharge its will to power in society forced the human animal to turn its aggression back against itself, so too the inability to discharge its debt to God now forced the human animal to turn this debt back against itself and eventually against the very ground of its existence. 37 As Risse points out (2001, p. 69), Nietzsche thinks that the so-called atheists of his time (who mock the madman of GS 125) are not really such. In an important related section of GM III (§27), Nietzsche argues that the atheism of his age is not the counter-ideal to the ascetic ideal that it appears to be because it concerns only the destruction of Christianity as dogma. But it is Christianity as morality, with its insistence on truthfulness, which has led to the destruction of Christianity as dogma by forbidding the lie of belief in the Christian God. And that means that the Christian morality itself still remains to be destroyed, a task “which is reserved for Europe over the next two thousand years.” 36

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assuming the death of God as an event that has already taken place. After climbing down his mountain, Zarathustra is surprised to meet a holy man who has not yet heard that God is dead (P:2).38 Remarking on this scene, Kathleen Higgins notes: “The abruptness of this announcement of God’s death, couched as it is in a subordinate clause, is startling. But this grammar is pointed. Zarathustra takes the idea that God is no longer a living force in the world completely for granted. The death of God is not the culmination of Zarathustra’s gospel, but its starting point” (1987, p. 77). In addition, Part IV of Zarathustra contains many other references to God’s death as a past event. Most vividly, Zarathustra encounters the ugliest man who took revenge and murdered God for having witnessed too much (IV.7). He also has an extended dialogue with the retired pope in which they discuss the now-dead holy man (IV.6). This holy man, they agree, was the last pious human because, due to his solitude in the forest, he had not yet heard what the whole world knows today – that “the old god in whom all the world once believed no longer lives.” The two then discuss the cause and manner of God’s death, namely, his growing old, weak, and soft until he choked on his all-too-great pity for the human. And Zarathustra observes that it might have happened that way, and otherwise too, for when gods die, they always die several kinds of death.39 Speaking to the assembled higher men, Zarathustra reminds them that God has died and has been lying in his grave, so that there is no more reason for them to believe that they are equal to other men as before God (IV.13:1–2). Finally, having participated in an ass festival in which the higher men all made fun of their belief in God, the ugliest man implies that they have thereby killed God more thoroughly – with laughter rather than wrath (IV.18:1). And Zarathustra observes that the higher men have thereby acquired the innocence of little children (IV.18:2). The conjunction of Nietzsche’s discussion of atheism in Genealogy and his references to the death of God in Zarathustra thus poses a final and hitherto unnoticed riddle about the latter book: why does Nietzsche tell us that it contains a depiction of Zarathustra’s conquest of God when its narrative seems to presuppose the death of God as a past event? The solution lies, I believe, in the set of interpretive claims I have proposed in this study. In the first place, my reading of Part IV as an analeptic satyr play indicates that the events in Part IV serve to anticipate and prepare the way for the more Shortly after, when teaching about the superhuman for the first time, Zarathustra declares offhandedly that there can no longer be sacrilege against God because God has died (P:3). 39 In his speech on apostates, Zarathustra suggests that the old gods laughed themselves to death when one of them asserted monotheism (Z III.8). 38

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important events toward the end of Part III. Most generally, the c onclusion of Part IV represents the higher men as undergoing a series of positive spiritual developments which anticipate and prepare the way for the same series of spiritual developments in Zarathustra himself at the end of Part III: laughter, convalescence, renouncing of melancholy and weariness, loss of nausea and shame, childlike innocence, joy, gratitude, and affirmation of life and its recurrence (IV.17–19). But Zarathustra is clear throughout Part IV that these higher men are not adequate and that their spiritual achievements, although pleasing to him, are not sufficient (IV:11, 13, 17, 20). More particularly, the ugliest man explains how he was motivated by wrath and revenge when he murdered the divine witness, and how this deed has filled him with ugly and pity-inducing remorse, shame, and self-disgust (IV.7). But this means that he did not really succeed in killing God.40 Even his choice of the moralizing term “murder” (Mörder) to describe his deed shows that the ugliest man, like the madman in Gay Science 125, has not succeeded in overcoming his feeling of guilt before God.41 And indeed, in the ass festival, the ugliest man is reported to be the one who woke God up again. When questioned about this, the ugliest man recalls Zarathustra’s own teaching that whoever would kill most thoroughly, laughs, and that one kills not with wrath but with laughter. He then suggests that Zarathustra himself is an annihilator without wrath and is actually a concealed rogue who already knows best whether God is thoroughly dead (IV.18:1). Moreover, although Zarathustra is pleased to find the higher men killing their faith with laughter, he notes that they laugh in their own way with a laughter that he perceives as noise. Although they have learned their laughter from him, it is nevertheless not his laughing that they have learned (IV.17:1). The higher men are actually the last remnant of God among humans (der letzte Rest Gottes unter Menschen), the leftover of God (den Überrest Gottes), and as such they are inferior to the children-disciples for whom he is waiting (IV.11).42 See Whitlock 1990, pp. 10, 272, 287 n.63, for convincing evidence that Nietzsche intended the ugliest man and his murder of God to be a symbol for David Strauss and for the influence of Strauss’ Life of Jesus in killing Nietzsche’s own faith. To Whitlock’s evidence, I would add Nietzsche’s characterization of the ugliest man’s inability to express himself and his ridicule in UM I of Strauss’ poor writing skills. 41 In the terms of GM III:27, the ugliest man has ceased to believe in the Christian God as dogma but still follows his morality. Pippin (1999, pp. 144–153) rightly argues that we should see Nietzsche as criticizing the pathological insanity, guilt, and morbid melancholy of the prophetic madman figure in GS 125. But these are the same set of traits Zarathustra criticizes in the ugliest man and also, much earlier, in the pale criminal (Z I.6). 42 Parkes (2005, p. 247) mistranslates this passage and has Zarathustra say instead that it is his children, and not the higher men, who are the remnants of God. 40

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Thus, in Part IV of Zarathustra, Nietzsche asserts the claim that he first makes in Gay Science 125 and then makes again later in Genealogy (II:21–22, III:27) – namely, that the atheism which the whole world knows today is not really such. He also expands on his clue in the concluding sections of the second essay of the Genealogy that only a future Zarathustra-type will be able to gain a complete and definitive victory over God and guilt. The key, he suggests, is Zarathustra’s wrath-free annihilating laughter, that is, the laughter which he emphasizes so much after he relates his vision-riddle at the end of Part III. But this means that the narrative event of the ugliest man’s incomplete deicide, as recollected in the analeptic satyr play of Part IV, anticipates and prepares the way for the decisive event of Zarathustra’s true deicide, as foreseen in the vision-riddle at the start of Part III and as fulfilled in the concluding chapters of Part III (Z III.2:2, III.13:2). The concluding sections of the second essay of Genealogy also point us toward this textual location, for they characterize Zarathustra as the bell-stroke of noon, as the conqueror (Besieger) of God, and as he who must come one day. But I have argued that Zarathustra’s prevision of himself as he who must yet come one day is a depiction of his great-noon hour in which he gains his great victory (Sieg), that this event alludes to the noon-time event of Jesus’ crucifixion and death, and that Nietzsche associates the great noon with the moment when all gods are dead (Z I.22:3) and when the shadows of God cease to darken the human mind so that the sun of human knowledge stands at its peak (GS 109; TI IV). If we now ask how exactly Nietzsche represents Zarathustra’s deicide in his vision-riddle and its fulfillment, we are immediately led to focus on his courageous victory over the serpent-worm (Schlangenwurm). This is because Nietzsche begins his book by anticipating Zarathustra’s lionspirited defeat of the great dragon (Drache) he calls his Lord and God (Herr und Gott) (Z I.1) and we have seen that Nietzsche follows Wagner in identifying the figures of the dragon and the serpent-worm.43 Also, when Zarathustra first meets the ugliest man who murdered God, he is described as entering a realm of death, a dead wasteland, and a valley surrounded by black and red cliffs (schwarze und rothe Klippen) which the shepherds call “Serpent’s Death” (Schlangen-Tod). Upon entering this valley, Zarathustra sinks into black reminiscence because it seems to him that he has stood in this valley before, and much that is heavy descends upon his mind, and he walks slower and slower until he stands still and is horrified to see the 43

See also KSA 10:12[1]: “Erst muß die Schlange zum Drachen geworden sein, damit Einer an ihr zum Helden werden könne.”

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ugliest man sitting by the path. Similarly, Zarathustra’s prevision shows him entering into a desolate realm of death among wild cliffs (wilden Klippen) where he is horrified to find a young shepherd – his future self in the “Convalescent” chapter – being attacked by a heavy black serpent that has crawled into his throat and bit itself fast there. Nietzsche thus leads us to associate the young shepherd with the ugliest man, to think of both as killers of God, and to conclude that Zarathustra’s future decapitation of the serpent represents his triumphant deicide. This conclusion is supported by Nietzsche’s symbolism elsewhere of the world as a serpent, and of the creator-God as the head of that serpent. Thus, for Zarathustra to decapitate the serpent, and to spit its head far away, means for him to destroy the concept of a creator-God and with it the covertly theological idea that the world has an origin or beginning. What remains is a new conception of the world as an eternally self-creating ouroboros: “The world persists: it is not something that becomes, not something that passes away. Or rather: it becomes, it passes away, but it has never begun to become and never ceased to pass away – it maintains itself in both … It lives on itself: its excrements are its food” (KSA 13:14[188]). Furthermore, by symbolizing God as the serpent-head and the pangs of bad conscience (Gewissensbisse) as the serpent-bite, Nietzsche anticipates his later Genealogy claim that the true victor over God must overcome the entanglement of bad conscience with the concept of the Christian God (GM II:21). And by depicting Zarathustra’s own counter-bite to the serpent-bite, Nietzsche anticipates his later Genealogy claim that this bad conscience will have to be reversed. On my reading, then, Nietzsche intends us to notice that the deliberately inconclusive analysis of God and guilt in Genealogy is resolved by the ideas in his earlier Zarathustra. For Zarathustra’s decapitation of the serpent symbolizes his deicide and his ensuing redemption from the feeling of indebtedness toward his origins. This victory over God is made possible by his recovered knowledge of eternal recurrence which discredits the theological assumption that the world has any origin or beginning. And this redemption from debt is made possible by the new backward-willing power over time granted him by his knowledge of eternal recurrence. For this power liberates him from the “it was” that inhibited his will to power and that led to the bad conscience that got entangled with the Christian God. This new power also allows Zarathustra to forget the memory of his debt toward his origins and to erase the false asymmetry between past and future which grants deterministic priority to his origins. Most importantly, Zarathustra’s new backward-willing enables him to influence his

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own past in such a way that he can attribute his greatest accomplishments to his own will and thus be indebted to himself alone. Having thus redeemed himself from his weighty debt to God, Zarathustra’s soul leaps up unburdened, free of the strangler called “sin,” and laughing with a new child-spirited innocence. It is important to notice, however, that Zarathustra emphasizes that his future self is no longer human, and that his deicidal laughter is no human laughter and has never yet been heard on earth. Here Nietzsche lets us know again his view that there have not been, and there will not be, any true atheists before the arrival of Zarathustra. His more radical point, though, is that true atheism requires humankind’s self-overcoming. This is because it is simply not possible for the human mnemonic animal, the socialized animal which is defined by its imprisonment in the past, ever to be free of guilt before God. Thus, Zarathustra’s great overcoming of God is at the same time a great overcoming of the human, and his decapitation of the serpent symbolizes both the death of God and (as I argued in Chapter 6) the death of the human. This leaves us only with the question as to why Nietzsche depicts Zarathustra as assuming the death of God at the start of the book. For I have argued that Zarathustra discredits the atheism of the higher men in Part IV, and also that he does not conquer God until the chronological conclusion of the book at the end of Part III. So how can it be that the death of God is both the starting point and the culmination of Zarathustra’s gospel? I think that Nietzsche gives us one important clue when he has the narrator describe Zarathustra as sinking into a black reminiscence when he enters the ugliest man’s “Serpent’s Death” valley. On my reading of Part IV as analeptically referring back to the conclusion of Part III, this means that Zarathustra is having a recurrence-memory of the horrific event he is about to experience and that this memory causes much that is heavy to descend on his mind (just as it did in the “Wanderer” chapter preceding his vision-riddle). Nietzsche’s other crucial clue is the holy man’s observation that Zarathustra has transformed himself and has become a child and no longer shows any nausea. But Zarathustra’s new child-spirit is evidence of the second innocence he has acquired after conquering God and redeeming himself from guilt before God; and his freedom from nausea is the result of having decapitated the serpent that was choking him with nausea (Z III.2, III.13:2). Furthermore, as I argued in Chapter 7, both this child-spirit and this freedom from nausea are backward-willed by Zarathustra’s newborn and no-longer-human soul to the Zarathustra who is about to descend the

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mountain at the start of the book. But this means that Zarathustra’s newborn soul has also backward-willed to the descending Zarathustra his own future conquest of God. So when Zarathustra speaks to the holy man, and then later to the people in the marketplace, he simply takes for granted his own experience that God is dead and he is surprised when he discovers that the holy man does not know what he knows. And since Zarathustra subsequently teaches about the death of God, and since his teachings are recalled later by the higher men, they themselves have a sense that God is genuinely dead even though this great-noon event has not yet taken place. This is the right place, then, to address our earlier objection against the possibility of Nietzsche envisioning a future philosopher who would not be bound by the decadence of his own age. For this objection presupposes a linear conception of time according to which the direction of influence in human history moves in one direction only, from past to present and from present to future. On Zarathustra’s new teaching, however, there can also be an influence in the reverse direction, from the future to the present, and from the present to the past. In terms of the analysis in the second essay of Genealogy, forefathers may owe their accomplishments to the victories of their descendants in later generations. This is because, as I argued in Chapter 7, those individuals who have a recurrence-memory of their future may also have a memory of their future interaction with individuals who are positioned still farther in the future, and the latter may have a memory of their own such future interaction, and so on. Since these individuals are also able to use their recurrence-memory to will backward – that is, to send their “younger” selves mnemonic reminders and commands – we can see why Nietzsche thinks himself justified in moving beyond diagnosis and into prophecy at the end of the second essay of Genealogy and in Zarathustra. Although he does not regard himself as strong or healthy enough to teach the doctrine that will steer the course of human history toward its own overcoming, he does regard himself as uniquely positioned to hear and communicate the glad tidings that come from the future regarding the advent of just such a teacher (Z I.22:3). Let us return to Nietzsche’s famous formulation that human memory is an illness as pregnancy is an illness. By increasing its power and sophistication to a horrific and deforming extent, the human animal is at the very limit finally able to recover its deeply forgotten experience of life’s eternal recurrence. Because this new knowledge releases and opens up an arena of possible willing that previously seemed forever blocked, the self-overcoming human animal is once again free to fully externalize and express its instincts. This time, however, its will to power extends vastly

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further, and is directed in a vastly more focused manner, than that of his non-human animal ancestors tethered to the present moment. Since the past is now just as open and malleable as the future, there is no longer any deterministic influence of the past to chain, imprison, haunt, and burden its present willing. And because the “it was” is also the “it shall be,” its memory (a suspension of its first forgetting) is now precisely the means whereby the self-overcoming human animal is able to attain a new kind of forgetting of the “it was” and to influence its own development in a way that truly grants it freedom, autonomy, and self-mastery. This new forgetting will extend to the past millennia of breeding and custom that produced its faculty of memory in the first place. Hence, the crushingly heavy debt of millennia that once seemed irredeemable will finally be lifted and redeemed. From the womb of bad conscience, a superhuman progeny will be born: self-propelled, free, innocent, affirming, joyful, and at play with novelty and creation. C ou nt e ring t h e a sc e tic ide a l At the end of the second essay of Genealogy, Nietzsche positions Zarathustra not only in relation to a future reversal of bad conscience, but also in relation to a future redemption from the hitherto reigning ideal. Zarathustra, he writes, will be the redeeming man of great love and contempt whose compelling strength will allow him to redeem reality from this ideal, from the curse this ideal has laid upon reality, and from the great nausea and nihilism which were bound to grow out of this ideal. Although Nietzsche does not characterize this ideal any further here, he clearly intends this emphasis to serve as a transition to his next essay’s discussion of the ascetic ideal. In this third essay, Nietzsche examines the manifestation of the ascetic ideal in the artist, philosopher, and priest; details the origin, power, and damaging effects of the ascetic ideal; and concludes by arguing against plausible candidates, especially modern science, for opposing and replacing the ascetic ideal. But, again, his conclusion to this essay is inconclusive. As Christopher Janaway remarks: “Where, then, is the arrow of Nietzsche’s longing directed? The close of Genealogy is not explicit on this point, and the book in some ways ends as enigmatically as it began” (2007, p. 242). Aside from an obscure hint about uncorrupted art and poetry as natural antagonists of the ascetic ideal (§25),44 Nietzsche never actually Although I would argue that here too Nietzsche is pointing us to his own Zarathustra, with its deification of life and opposition to Plato, as an instance of such uncorrupted art and poetry.

44

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explains what should be the new counter-ideal (Gegen-Ideal). As Aaron Ridley comments: “That Nietzsche yearns for a counter-ideal is beyond doubt: he calls for one repeatedly. But it is much less clear that he actually has one in mind” (1998, p. 126). For this reason, scholars have found Nietzsche’s discussion at the very end of Genealogy dissatisfying, evasive, or simply more evidence that he is better at tearing down ideals than building them up.45 But here too we need to take seriously Nietzsche’s retrospective claim that his post-Zarathustra books were supposed to be critical and preparatory to the constructive solutions he had already proposed in Zarathustra. This point is supported by Nietzsche’s summary of Genealogy in Ecce Homo, where he writes that the ascetic ideal has been so powerful, despite being so harmful, because it has been the only ideal so far and has had no rival. He then adds that what is needed above all is not just a competing ideal but an opposing or countering ideal, and this can be found for the first time in Zarathustra: “Above all a counter-ideal was lacking – until Zarathustra.” (“Vor allem fehlte ein Gegen-Ideal – bis auf Zarathustra.”) In this sentence, as is often the case (Westerdale 2006, pp. 65–66), Nietzsche is simultaneously abbreviating the title of his earlier book and mentioning the name of his book’s protagonist. So we need to look at each use of the word to discern his meaning. Besides the concluding passage from the second essay of Genealogy, section 56 of Beyond Good and Evil also refers to the protagonist Zarathustra as the counter-ideal to the ascetic ideal. Speaking of “pessimism in its depth” and of “the most world-negating of all possible ways of thinking” – both alternative characterizations of Genealogy’s ascetic ideal – Nietzsche then describes their reverse ideal (das umgekehrte Ideal) as follows: the ideal of the most high-spirited, vital, and world affirming human being who has learned not just to accept and bear what was and what is, but who wants to have [what was and is] again just as it was and is through all eternity, insatiably shouting da capo not only to himself but to the whole play and performance, and not only to a performance, but at bottom to the one who needs precisely this performance – and makes it necessary: because again and again he needs himself – and makes himself necessary – – What? And this wouldn’t be – circulus vitiosus deus?

As I argued in Chapter 7, this description of Zarathustra alludes to his doctrines of eternal recurrence and the superhuman. The allusion 45

See Conway 1997a, p. 103; Ridley 1998, pp. 127–128.

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to eternal recurrence is obvious in Nietzsche’s phrases “all eternity” and “da capo” and “circulus vitiosus.” The first two phrases refer, of course, to Zarathustra’s concluding affirmation of his eternally recurring life. But the latter phrase, I argued, refers in addition to the new god-like power over time achieved by Zarathustra’s redeemed soul – a power which allows him to make himself necessary. This new power is also what allows Zarathustra to vanquish the solemn, gloomy spirit of gravity and to transform his soul into the laughing, radiant, and child-spirited being who is no longer human. Since the concept of the all-powerful spirit of gravity in Zarathustra is an earlier incarnation of the concept of the all-powerful ascetic ideal in Genealogy, we may say more precisely, then, that the counter-ideal to the ascetic ideal is Zarathustra’s recurrence-affirming, backward-willing, and no-longer-human soul. However, when Nietzsche writes that the counter-ideal to the ascetic ideal was lacking “until Zarathustra,” he is also abbreviating the title of the book in which his doctrines of eternal recurrence, backward-willing, and the superhuman all first appeared. More particularly, he intends us to notice that the conclusion of Genealogy points to the beginning of Zarathustra. Before the emergence of the ascetic ideal, he writes in this conclusion, human existence had no meaning or goal and the will for the human and the earth was lacking. The human animal was like a leaf in the wind, a plaything of nonsense, surrounded by a fearful void. It did not know how to justify itself, how to account for itself, how to affirm itself. Suffering from this problem of meaning, the human animal was therefore in danger of suicidal nihilism (selbstmörderischen Nihilismus), that is, of not willing at all. At this point, its life-preserving powers intervened, and, rather than choosing death, the human animal chose to will nothingness (das Nichts) – that is, to will a denial and hatred of itself, of life, and of the most fundamental presuppositions of life. Although harmful in the extreme, and bringing with it a tremendous increase in life-destructive suffering, this meaning was better than no meaning at all. The ascetic ideal thus offered a meaning for human existence and the human animal was saved. As Nietzsche expresses it in his concluding formulation, the human being preferred to will nothingness rather than not will at all. Turning from this Genealogy ending to the Zarathustra beginning, we find Zarathustra proclaiming the superhuman being as the meaning of the earth. The human being, by contrast, is a rope, tied between the animal and the superhuman. The human is not itself a goal, but rather a bridge to the goal of the superhuman, and the time has come for the human to

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set itself this goal. Reflecting a little later on the reception of his opening speech, Zarathustra asserts that the superhuman is the meaning of human existence: “Human existence is uncanny and still without meaning: a jester can become the human being’s fatality. I will teach humans the meaning of their existence – the superhuman, the lightning out of the dark cloud of the human” (Z P:7).46 Thus, according to this transition between Nietzsche’s two books, Zarathustra’s new goal of the superhuman will replace the goal of nothingness that the human being originally devised so as to preserve its existence in the face of its suicidal nihilism.47 By giving a new meaning to human existence, the goal of the superhuman will fill the void that led to the ascetic ideal and thereby offer an alternative to the hitherto prevailing choice between willing nothingness and not willing at all.48 What this means is that humankind will no longer have to remain concerned to preserve itself, but can instead aim to overcome, surpass, and exceed itself. This is why Zarathustra, the redeeming man of great love and contempt, devotes the rest of his opening speech to cataloguing those aspects of the human being that he loves because they lead to its self-sacrifice as well as those aspects that he finds contemptible because they aim at selfpreservation. However, this self-sacrifice of the human being should not be confused with simply not willing at all, that is, with a suicide motivated Zarathustra also refers to this same jester (Possenreiser) later in the book: “The human being is something that must be overcome [überwunden]. There are many ways and means of overcoming – you see to it! But only a jester thinks: the human being can also be jumped over [übersprungen]” (Z III.12:4). In the context of Zarathustra’s parable about the tightrope walker, Nietzsche’s meaning here seems to be that another species other than the human might come about that would somehow leap over the human and send it to its doom before it has a chance to overcome itself and complete its course on the way to the superhuman. 47 In Loeb 2008b, I argue against the “existentialist” interpretation (see e.g. Leiter 2002, p. 288) which claims that Nietzsche’s counter-ideal is to have humans accept, affirm, and thrive on the meaninglessness of life and suffering. Janaway (2007, pp. 240–243) offers some similar reasons against Arthur Danto’s claim that Nietzsche’s therapeutic aim is to free humans from the need to give meaning to their lives and suffering. 48 Clark claims (1990, p. 253ff.) that the superhuman ideal and the ascetic ideal both involve life-denial because they both aim to transcend life. But this is to confuse Zarathustra’s earthcentered goal of transcending human life for the sake of a stronger species, with the very different priestly goal of transcending all life as such for the sake of some beyond or hereafter. Conway (1997a, p. 21ff.) includes the same confusion when he criticizes the Zarathustran goal of transcending the human as a kind of idealism. In addition, Clark conflates the self-overcoming of human life with the negation of human life. On Nietzsche’s account, humans who sacrifice themselves for the sake of the superhuman are no more negated than parents who sacrifice themselves for the sake of their superior progeny. In both cases, the creators are affirmed in their creation. Indeed, on the interpretation I have offered here, according to which circular time allows a backward-willing relation from the superhuman to the human, the human is never left behind, denied, or negated. 46

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by the inability to find any existential meaning or goal. Instead, as we have seen, Zarathustra articulates a conception of free or voluntary death that is triumphantly chosen at the right time for the sake of a valuable goal; he urges his disciples to choose just this sort of death for the sake of the superhuman (Z I.21); he explains how the greatest yield life itself for the sake of greater power (Z II.12); and, finally, I have argued, he himself exemplifies precisely such a death in the chronological conclusion of the book’s narrative at the end of Part III. Applied more generally, this conception of free death yields Zarathustra’s most repeated dictum, “The human being is something that must be overcome.” Nietzsche alludes back to this same dictum in Genealogy when he writes that humankind will only attain true progress once it sacrifices itself for the sake of a species of greater power (GM II:12). These, then, are two versions of Nietzsche’s proposal for the counterideal to the ascetic ideal: on the one hand, the individual Zarathustra, and on the other, the superhuman type. But these two versions are clearly unified by Nietzsche’s emphasis on the no-longer-human aspect of Zarathustra’s redeemed soul. And this aspect in turn derives from eternal recurrence and the new power over time that will be fully exercised by the superhuman type. So it is actually the discovery and affirmation of eternal recurrence that Nietzsche thinks will provide a new meaning to human existence.49 In terms of Nietzsche’s Genealogy formulation, Zarathustra argues that willing backward is the needed, and indeed the only viable, alternative to the hitherto prevailing choice between not willing and willing nothingness. The reason for this, not noticed in the extensive literature on the ascetic ideal, is that suicidal nihilism and the ascetic ideal are both responses to the problem of “it was” described in Zarathustra’s speech on redemption. This problem, as we have seen, involves the human being’s inability to extend its willing into its past existence and thus the inability to project a meaning or goal into this past existence.50 And since this past existence determines what follows, such meaninglessness pervades its Genealogy scholars tend to agree that Nietzsche’s counter-ideal to the ascetic ideal is supposed to have something to do with the doctrine of eternal recurrence (see, e.g., Leiter 2002, pp. 287–288; Janaway 2007, pp. 242, 255ff.), but they do not follow up Nietzsche’s instruction that this doctrine is the Grundconception of his earlier Zarathustra book. 50 Notice that this problem of meaning is purely immanent and presupposes the absence of any external, transcendent, or metaphysical meaning such as that proposed by the ascetic ideal. Thus, Nietzsche asks, since human creative willing is the only possible source of meaning in the world, how is it possible for the human animal to create for itself and for its own existence a genuine, this-worldly, and life-affirming meaning? How is it possible for the human animal to set for itself a goal other than nothingness? 49

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present and future existence as well. Given this impotence, the human being is forced to internalize its will to power and as a result becomes sick, suffering, and self-destructive. In order to stave off its resulting death wish, the human being then wills revenge on the life which it blames for its misery. But this ascetic ideal is nothing other than the foolish and ineffective strategy devised by the spirit of revenge described in Zarathustra’s redemption speech. And we have seen that this strategy does not in any way liberate or empower the human being’s will with respect to the imprisoning and immovable “it was.” Thus, although the ascetic ideal appears to give a meaning or goal to human existence, this is actually an illusion. From the future perspective of Zarathustra, human existence is uncanny and still without meaning because the will to nothingness was in fact not a meaning at all, but only an indefinite postponement of the human animal’s suicidal nihilism and drive to cease willing entirely. We can understand more clearly now why Nietzsche describes Zarathustra as the one who will redeem us from the ascetic ideal and from its resulting nihilism by making the will free again and by giving back to the earth its goal and to humankind its hope. What he means by this is that the human being’s previously free animal will was tamed and imprisoned by society and most especially by the “it was” engendered by its new mnemonic abilities. And this will has remained imprisoned and without a goal ever since, despite its foolish strategy of taking revenge on life and willing nothingness.51 Indeed, Nietzsche implies further, because the human being is by definition the socialized mnemonic animal, it can never affirm life in such a way as to liberate its will and give a meaning to its past existence. As we have seen, Nietzsche laments the fact that he himself has been incapable of affirming his life and he therefore censors himself from speaking in his own voice on behalf of the counter-ideal to the ascetic ideal. The most he has been able to do, he says, is to envision a superhuman type that will be able to affirm life, and to envision the stronger and healthier man of the future – Zarathustra – who will be the first transitional figure on the way to this more powerful species. In Nietzsche’s vision, I have argued, Zarathustra will be able to affirm life to the extent of recovering and affirming the latent knowledge of eternal recurrence that enables him to extend his will back into his own past Shapiro 1994 shows how Nietzsche may be interpreted as tracing this spirit of revenge all the way back to the very beginning of the Western philosophical tradition in its earliest surviving sentence, the fragment attributed to Anaximander: “Whence things have their origin, there they must also pass away according to necessity; for they must pay penalty and be judged for their injustice, according to the ordinance of time.”

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existence. As a result, he will be able to creatively shape this past existence so that it has a meaning and a goal, namely, his own future completion and perfection. Nevertheless, Nietzsche predicts, even Zarathustra’s great strength and health will not be sufficient to help him survive his confrontation with his recovered knowledge of life’s eternal recurrence. This is why he devotes much of his book to picturing Zarathustra’s anguished subconscious knowledge of his impending torture, crucifixion, and death. Although Zarathustra’s soul is redeemed and learns a new power over time that allows him to give his life meaning, he is a firstling (Erstling) who willingly chooses to sacrifice himself for the sake of still stronger and healthier firstlings and for the sake of the still greater power represented by the superhuman species (Z III.12:6). With his unprecedented feat, Zarathustra leads the way for his disciples and for future generations to liberate their own wills to an even greater degree, to give even more meaning to their lives, and to attain an even fuller affirmation of eternal recurrence. And at the end of this long process of selection and cultivation, there will emerge the superhuman species with a fully externalized will to power and hence a great health that is free of self-induced illness and suicidal nihilism. Thus, although human beings cannot give meaning to their own existence, they can still receive meaning from their future superhuman progeny who will gain complete control over time and project back their own emergence as the ultimate goal of all human history. C onc l usion I would like to end this study by returning to Gay Science 342, the place where Nietzsche first introduces the figure of Zarathustra to the world. This section is nearly identical to the opening section of Zarathustra and is entitled “Incipit Tragoedia” [The tragedy begins]. In the Preface to the second edition of The Gay Science, Nietzsche comments about this title: “Beware! Something downright wicked and malicious is announced here: incipit parodia [the parody begins], no doubt …” Some scholars today have taken this comment very much to heart. What Nietzsche means, they have argued, is not just that there are obviously parodic elements in his book, but that Zarathustra’s teachings are unavoidably self-parodic and that this is precisely the sense in which he is a tragic figure.52 52

See especially Pippin 1988 and, more recently, Pippin 2006: “When repeated as a teaching or doctrine, Zarathustra’s parabolic speech becomes parodic, comic. But he has no option other than saying nothing (and he has found he cannot live in such isolation) or preaching more directly, in which case his disciples would be (even more than they already are) following

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In this study, I have been concerned to counter this doctrinal approach by offering a new reading which shows how Zarathustra’s key teachings are enacted by the narrative of Nietzsche’s book. In particular, I have argued, Zarathustra’s doctrine of free death is enacted by the protagonist himself when he chooses to confront his most abysmal thought and thereby to sacrifice himself for the sake of helping to realize the meaning of human existence. Although triumphant, this culmination of Nietzsche’s book is at the same time essentially tragic, for it requires and affirms not only the death of the strongest and healthiest man Nietzsche can envision, but also the death of this future teacher’s best disciples, and indeed ultimately the self-sacrificial death of humankind itself.53 All must grow to a height where they can be struck and shattered by the lightning of the superhuman (Z IV.13:6). In this way, Nietzsche fulfills his earlier promise of a single tremendous thought that would be supremely exalting, that would overthrow all other human endeavors, and that would achieve victory over the most victorious – namely, the thought of a tragic ending (Tragödien-Ausgang) in which humankind sacrifices itself for the sake of a tremendous goal and dies with the light of anticipatory wisdom in its eyes (D 45). In the penultimate section of the second edition of The Gay Science, Nietzsche explains further what he means by the combined parodic and tragic aspects of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Here he describes a new future ideal of a spirit with “overflowing abundance and power” and with a “human-superhuman [menschlich-übermenschlichen] well-being and benevolence.”54 Elaborating on his comment that the title of Gay Science 342 announces something downright wicked and malicious, Nietzsche says that this spirit will play naively “with all that was hitherto called holy, good, untouchable, divine” and that it will often appear inhuman (unmensch) “when it confronts all earthly seriousness so far, all solemnity in gesture, word, tone, eye, morality, and task so far, as if it were their most incarnate and involuntary parody” (my emphasis).55 With such an ideal in him, not themselves. The parodic return of his own words is thus the heart of his tragedy” (pp. xxxii–xxxiii). At the end of Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche defines the Dionysian tragic feeling as “[t]he affirmation of life even in its strangest and hardest problems; the will to life rejoicing over its own inexhaustibility in the sacrifice of its highest types” (TI X.5, quoted in EH BT:3; see also GS 370). 54 Nietzsche quotes this entire passage in EH Z:2 as his best and most personal way of explaining the concept of great health that is the physiological precondition of the Zarathustra type. 55 Nietzsche is also alluding here to the conclusion of Beyond Good and Evil in which he describes the god Dionysus as philosophizing and as laughing all the while “in a superhuman and new way – and at the expense of all serious things!”: “Gods enjoy mockery: it seems they cannot suppress laughter even during holy rites” (BGE 294). 53

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mind, Nietzsche writes, “it is inevitable that we find it difficult to remain serious when we look at [present-day humankind’s] worthiest goals and hopes.” According to the interpretation I have proposed in this study, the language Nietzsche uses here in describing his future ideal spirit should be read as referring back to the laughing, child-spirited and no-longerhuman soul of his protagonist Zarathustra, as well as to this protagonist’s world-historical confrontation with his all-powerful archenemy, the spirit of gravity. This same language also anticipates Nietzsche’s description of his ideal spirit in the conclusion of the second essay of Genealogy (written just a few months later). And the description of all earthly seriousness so far anticipates Nietzsche’s account of the ascetic ideal in the third essay of Genealogy. So the Zarathustran spirit who will play with, confront, and parody this previous seriousness will be the counter-ideal to the ascetic ideal. Whereas the life-denying ascetic ideal originated in impoverishment, impotence, illness, and the need for self-preservation, this lifea ffirming counter-ideal will emerge out of overflowing abundance, power, health, and the will to self-overcoming. But nowhere in this further explanation does Nietzsche imply that the new kind of parody begun by his protagonist Zarathustra will be self-parody. Instead, this will be the very first parody of everything that human beings have previously taken seriously. And as a consequence, Nietzsche adds, “it is perhaps only with [this ideal] that the great seriousness arises for the first time, the real question mark is posed for the first time, the destiny of the soul changes, the hand of the clock moves forward, the tragedy begins …”

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Index

backward-willing, 9, 143, 175, 177–185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 193, 194, 196, 197, 198, 199, 205, 206, 225, 231, 236, 238 communications, 194, 201 compared to forward-willing, 187 power over time, 200, 236–240 bad conscience, 10, 163, 210, 227 and God, 216 and religion, 231 as illness, 214, 217 as memory, 224 as pregnancy, 214 debtor-creditor relation, 215 internalization of instincts, 216 internalized will to power, 218 reversing, 211, 214–224, 234 serpent-bite, 166, 231 social enclosure, 216 Barnes, Jonathan, 40, 41, 59, 190 Bayreuth, 129 Bennholdt-Thomsen, Anke, 91, 119, 121, 125 Berkowitz, Peter, 2, 9, 54, 85, 106, 117, 121, 123, 173, 174, 222, 225 Beyond Good and Evil, 20, 89, 105, 154, 189–190, 207–208, 235, 241 bird flight, 81, 113, 196 song, 81, 168 wisdom, 81, 196 Birth of Tragedy, The, 3–4, 33, 36–37, 45, 74–75, 82, 92 Black, Max, 17 Blessed Isles speech, 52, 174 Blue, Daniel, 35 Brobjer, Thomas H., 164, 214 Burnham, Douglas, 105, 190

Abel, Günter, 14, 17, 18, 26, 56, 58, 61, 205 abysmal thought, see most abysmal thought Acampora, Christa, 219, 225, 226 accident, 9, 80, 189, 197, 199, 206, 219 Aeschylean satyr plays, 93 Aeschylean tetralogy, 92, 93, 114 Aeschylus, 7, 91, 93, 114 affirmation, 205, 213 child-spirit, 196 of life, 10, 196, 197, 239 of self, 28 Ahern, Daniel R., 36 Alderman, Harold, 119 Allison, David B., 18, 221, 224 analepsis, 94 analeptic satyr play, 7, 94, 97, 98, 118, 125, 133, 141, 228, 230 anamnesis, theory of, 70, 221 Anaximander, 239 Anderson, Daniel E., 39 Anderson, R. Lanier, 187 animals, 76, 106, 108, 113, 135, 139, 141, 148 credibility, 51 no memory, 53, 223, 225 talking, 51, 168, 192, 198 Ansell-Pearson, Keith, 1, 54, 83, 117, 152, 171, 204, 205, 209 Apollo, 37 swans, 63 archenemy, 46, 47, 49, 50, 54, 58, 60, 63, 64, 158, 174 devil, 47 dwarf, 50, 143, 159 Socrates, 61 spirit of gravity, 108, 148, 242 Arrowsmith, William, 114 ascetic ideal, 10, 211, 234–240 counter-ideal, 10, 234–240, 242 existentialist interpretation of, 237 Asclepius, 37 atheism, 10, 226–233 Augenblick, see moment

Čapek, Milič, 17, 24, 29, 30 casua sui, 190 Cauchi, Francesca, 85 change, see also transformation reality of, 4

255

256

Index

childhood, 183 consciousness, 68, 70, 185 distant, 7, 67, 70, 81, 183 forgetting, 226 innocence, 226, 228 memory, 8, 71 children’s laughter, 100, 192, 200 children of Zarathustra, 9, 87, 108, 110, 117, 121, 133, 136, 140, 146, 194, 195, 203 arrival of, 100, 118, 122, 126 disciples, 229 laughing lions, 119, 140 proximity, 98, 100, 123, 145 reunion with, 118, 136 child-spirit, 226, 232 self-propelled wheel, 197 child-spirited soul, 193, 195, 196, 197, 203 affirmation, 196 creativity, 196 forgetting, 196 freedom, 107, 191, 196 innocence, 192, 196 joy, 192 novelty, 196 playfulness, 192, 196 Christ, see Jesus Christian God, see God Christianity, see God circulus vitiosus deus, 3, 190, 198 Clark, Maudemarie, 2, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19, 22, 25, 30, 102, 141, 152, 156, 166, 169, 187, 200, 204, 237 Clegg, Jerry S., 165, 205 conscience, 215 Christian concept, 225 consciousness absence of, 67 awakening, 27, 67 childhood, 70 closed circle, 67 dying, 27, 67, 69, 70 last moment of, 68, 185 re-awakened, 69 convalescence of higher men, 96, 229 of soul, 76–77 of spirit, 229 of Zarathustra, 90, 181, 182, 192 Convalescent chapter, 99 Conway, Daniel W., 33, 83, 85, 91, 121, 170, 204, 211, 219, 235, 237 cosmology, 12, 18, 19, 143, 187, 188 eternal recurrence, 190, 204, 223 Crawford, Claudia, 3, 78, 81, 83, 91, 133, 134, 135, 137

creator-God head of serpent, 231 seventh-day rest, 90, 107 crucifixion of Jesus, 49 of Zarathustra, 103, 146 Cyclops, 95 daimon, 36, 64, 70 as devil, 36 Empedocles, 41 of Socrates, 40, 63 daimonion of Socrates, 38, 40, 47, 63, 64, 74, 225 of Zarathustra, 225 Dannhauser, Werner J., 35 Danto, Arthur, 14, 16, 237 Daybreak, 36, 72, 241 death, 21 consciousness at, 27, 67 fear of, 5 freely chosen, 77, 80, 134, 135, 136, 146, 238, 241 Hades, 35, 48, 66 imagery, 28, 48, 66 last words, 33–42 liberation through, 165 midnight, 7 moment of, 27, 60 not an escape, 61 of God, 59, 137, 226–233 of Socrates, 33–42, 47, 118 of the human, 232 of tragedy, 33 of Zarathustra, 133, 135, 136, 146 opposite to life, 62 psychological attitude to, 43 recollected, 73 self-destruction, 77, 165 self-sacrificial, 77, 84, 241 suicide, 171–172, 237 tragic, 10 timely, 77–78, 120, 134–138 Untergang, 48, 76, 80, 86, 104–105, 115 wedding, 80 will to power, 77 deathbed and demon, 35, 37, 69 and devil, 47 of Socrates, 37, 74 of Zarathustra, 103, 142, 144 prophecy, 38 revelation, 35 speech, 103

Index decapitation of serpent, 160 death of God, 162, 231, 232 death of human, 232 Del Caro, Adrian, 3, 8, 9 Deleuze, Gilles, 4, 59, 60, 117, 121, 157, 162, 165 demon, 15, 20 daimonic voice, 20, 225 prophecy, 35–38 demon’s message, 14, 15, 17, 18, 22, 23, 36, 42, 58 moment of revelation, 34 performative aspect, 21, 28 response, 41 tenses, 24 Derrida, Jacques, 181 devil and deathbed, 47 and God, 41 archenemy, 47 dwarf, 159 spirit of gravity, 159 Diethe, Carol, 9 Dionysian tragic feeling, 79, 241 Dionysus, 3, 38 and higher men, 95 as circulus vitiosus deus, 3, 190 as eternal child, 190 as god, 214, 241 as god of death, 40 as god of prophecy, 40 as hunter, 133 as lion, 133 as man-shatterer, 133 as personification of eternal recurrence, 3, 40, 214 as philosopher, 12, 213, 241 as superhuman, 241 as Zarathustra, 3, 12, 190, 214 death of, 118 dismemberment, 3, 193 dithyramb, 139 laughing, 133, 168, 241 mystery-cult, 3, 72, 82, 91, 114, 139 rebirth, 3, 84, 114, 193 resurrection, 114 satyr play, 91 satyrs, 92 secret, 3–4, 41 shame-free, 133, 168 tragedy, 80, 114 disciples of Zarathustra, 116, 119–147, 240 backward-willing, 200 brothers, 120 children, 120, 203, 229 estrangement from, 91, 97

257

final judgement, 133 flocking doves, 100 formation of new race, 124 garden, 108, 120 higher men, 97 laughing lions, 101, 120, 131, 133, 140 love for Zarathustra, 100–101, 109–110 relation to Zarathustra, 145 return of, 92, 97, 100, 101, 108, 116 right men, 120 tests of, 121 warriors, 120, 131 Dithyrambs of Dionysus, 4, 90, 137, 139, 140, 203 doves, 96, 98, 99, 100, 108, 168 feet, 101 dragon, 149, 230 “thou shalt”, 167 Fafner, 149, 150 identified with serpent, 150, 230 Schlangenwurm, 149 dreams, 35, 48 eternal recurrence, 2, 82 memory, 8, 72 of Socrates, 42 of Zarathustra, 8, 72 prevision, 195 subconscious, 72, 187 Dummett, Michael, 179, 185 dwarf, 161 archenemy, 50, 54, 159 devil, 159 eternal recurrence of, 143 gateway-dwarf, 163 killing of, 165 Mime, 148 mole, 50, 148, 159 mortal combat, 163 recurrence of, 103 response to recurrence, 52, 54 small human, 143, 159 Socratic type, 51, 52, 53 spirit of gravity, 159 dying consciousness, 67, 69, 70 Earman, John, 57 Easterling, Patricia, 91, 97 Ecce Homo, 2–4, 11–12, 204, 207–210, 213, 235–236 Einstein, Albert curved space-time, 56, 57 general theory of relativity, 56 Empedocles death of, 83, 118 god and daimon, 41 eternal change, 4–6

258

Index

eternal rebirth, 38–40, 50, 52, 62, 70, 74 escape from, 38, 40, 70 eternal recurrence, 11–31, 33, 42, 143, 196, 205, 207, 213, 221 affirmation of, 166, 204, 213, 235, 238, 240 animals’ doctrine of, 51, 223 animals’ knowledge of Zarathustra’s doctrine of, 51, 142, 223 arrival of thought, 102 as counterfactual, 22 as diagnosis of life affirmation, 23, 41 as enacted event, 3, 6, 8, 241 as Grundconception, 1, 90, 180 as Grundgedanke, 1 as hammer, 200, 213 as ideal of life affirmation, 10, 18, 21, 23, 151, 204 as selective doctrine, 165, 213 as test of life affirmation, 18, 23, 41 awakened thought, 62, 184, 196, 199, 202 awakening of, 203 awareness of, 13, 14, 16, 23, 30, 73 backwards, 16, 23 becoming, 174 circular course, 2, 26, 161 circular time, 204 closed circle, 71 closed time-like curve, 56 coherence of, 29 communication, 30 compared to reincarnation, 82 concern in, 30 cosmology of, 11, 18, 19, 143, 187, 188, 190, 204 crushing thought, 222 cyclical theory of, 60 deathbed memory of, 106 demonstration of, 18 dialectical proof of, 69 Dionysian doctrine, 3, 39, 139 discovery of, 12, 138, 197 doctrine of immortality, 56 doubles in, 25 dreams, 2, 82 dwarf ’s interpretation of, 51 dying response, 41 embodied in narrative, 2, 8 epistemology of, 18, 221 ethical significance of, 13 evidence for, 16, 20 existential doctrine, 55 fatalism, 23, 28 first appearance of, 32 forwards, 16 fundamental thought, 1, 45

heavy weight of, 164, 170 immortality, 165 imperative, 23 indifference towards, 23 intoxication, 2 invocation, 215 justification of time, 174 latent knowledge of, 71, 144, 223, 239 life-changing impact of, 22 logic of, 21 memory, 8, 28, 72, 73, 215, 221, 222, 233 metaphysics, 3 most abysmal thought, 50, 144 Nietzsche’s attitude to, 212 ouroboros, 161, 231 personification of, 3, 40 philosopher’s stone, 51 prevision of, 184 proof of, 69 psychological significance, 13, 18, 19, 25, 72 Pythagorean doctrine of, 19, 40, 60 quasi-Platonic doctrine, 144 rebirth, 27 recognition of, 14, 16 redeems from revenge, 173 regulative idea, 13 repressed memory, 222 ring of, 194 secret, 4 seen in parable, 174 selective thought, 165 self-taught, 143 sensory experience of, 21 serpent, 161–162 significance of, 23, 30 small human, 10, 111, 144, 151, 153, 155, 166, 223 solution to vision-riddle, 151 spatial image of, 160 splitting history, 172 Stoic doctrine of, 25 superhuman affirmation of, 200 time doctrine, 21 transformational power of, 23 truth of, 22, 180, 199, 222 weight of, 140, 147 Wiederholung, 1 Wiederkehr, 1 Wiederkunft, 1 Zarathustra’s teaching of, 141, 142, 143 eternal return, see eternal recurrence eternity, 22, 29, 51–52, 58–59, 72, 75, 80, 103, 123, 145, 190, 203, 258 Euripides, 91, 95 evil, 133, 167–168, 198

Index Ewald, Oskar, 204 fatalism, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 220 Faust, 47 death of, 84, 118 last moment of life, 42 Fink, Eugen, 57, 85, 91, 96, 117, 177, 186 first-born, 107, 125, 127–129, 199 forgetting, 223 active, 218 animal, 221, 225 child-spirit, 108, 196 innocence, 226 music of, 108, 192 new kind of, 225, 234 superhuman, 225, 234 suspension of, 234 Foucault, Michel, 167 Fraassen, Bas C. van, 17, 26, 30, 60 freedom, 220 child-spirit, 196 curtailed by memory, 219 deterministic past, 231, 234 of will, 24, 25, 28, 220, 233 redemption, 220 sovereign individual, 219 future, the, 46, 47, 59, 130–131, 155, 162, 166, 179, 186, 233, 259 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 1, 79, 117, 119 gateway Augenblick, 46–50, 55, 57, 59, 65, 67 crossing, 63–66 eternal lanes, 46, 160 moment of death, 7, 47, 60, 65 perspective, 46, 54 two-faced, 46, 49, 160 Gay Science, The, 33–34, 41, 50, 229–230, 240–242 340–342 sections, 2, 14–31, 32–45, 47–50, 58, 61, 64, 69–70, 74–76, 114, 164, 222, 240–242 Genealogy of Morals, On the Nietzsche’s voice, 211, 213, 239 No-saying, 209 present-oriented, 209 relation to Zarathustra, 208–213 Genesis, 107, 168, 169 Genette, Gérard, 94, 114 Gillespie, Michael Allen, 132, 150, 164, 169, 170 gnashing of teeth, 36, 75, 81, 164, 222 goal ascetic ideal, 236–239 nothingness, 237–238 of humankind, 199, 237, 240 superhuman, 236–237

259

god Dionysus, 3, 39, 41, 95 Empedocles, 41 God, 174, 226 and devil, 41 as creator, 59, 90, 231 bad conscience, 231 conquest of, 211, 227, 228, 230, 232, 233 creditor, 226 dogmatic belief in, 227 genealogy, 226 guilt, 230, 231 killers of, 231 outside time, 52 perspective, 55 serpent-head, 231 seven days of creation, 107 shadows of, 72, 223 God, death of, 59, 226–233 deicide, 104 madman, 104, 227, 229 Gödel, Kurt closed time-like curve, 56, 57 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Faust, 42, 43, 84 Prometheus, 124 good and the just, the, 131, 135 Gooding-Williams, Robert, 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 26, 52, 59, 88, 89, 100, 106, 112, 122, 138, 149, 155, 159, 162, 178, 179, 226 Gospels, 94, 104, 112–117 Gott, J. Richard, 57, 62 Great Longing chapter, 107, 111–112 great noon, 72, 77, 103, 128, 206, 223 consecration, 120 crucifixion, 104, 146 day, 100, 102, 116, 133, 138, 203 destiny, 115 enlightenment, 223 festival, 136 hour, 101, 103, 105, 230 midnight, 73 moment, 192 purification, 120 wedding, 194 great year complete year, 60 of becoming, 19, 40, 58, 59, 60, 62, 113, 141 Platonic concept of, 40, 62 greatest heavy weight, 38 Grimm, Jacob, 149 guilt, 163, 166, 196, 197, 210, 214–226, see innocence before God, 229 memory, 226

260

Index

guilt (cont.) sin, 197, 231–232 victory over, 230 Hartmann, Eduard von, 35 Hatab, Lawrence J., 14, 91 Hawking, Stephen, 56 Hayman, Ronald, 126 head of serpent, 152, 153, 154, 192, 193 God, 231 humankind, 151, 165 Heidegger, Martin, 49, 51, 54, 139, 151, 153, 154, 173, 175, 176, 177, 204, 205, 214 Heller, Erich, 14 Heraclitus, 39, 197, 214 Higgins, Kathleen, 1, 14, 16, 30, 36, 83, 85, 88, 91, 94, 103, 117, 119, 121, 122, 187, 228 higher men, 89, 100, 113, 116, 119, 125, 139, 140, 141, 144 atheism, 232 death of God, 228 pity for, 97, 109–110, 192 relation to disciples, 120, 140 remnant of God, 229 satyrs, 92, 95 spiritual development, 229 Hill, R. Kevin, 14, 22, 25, 26, 27, 222 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 83 The Death of Empedocles, 42 Hollingdale, R. J., 8, 65, 85, 131, 132, 136 Hollinrake, Roger, 4, 92, 113, 129, 148, 165 holy man, 202, 228 Homer, Odyssey, 95 Horwich, Paul, 57 hourglass of being, 40, 59, 62, 189 howling dog, 65 backward-willing, 183, 184 Zarathustra, 70, 183, 184 humankind, 156 bridge to superhuman, 236 conditions for redemption, 199 conscience, 215 death of, 232, 241 eternal recurrence, 162 goal of, 199 illness of, 217 indebtedness to origins, 226 memory, 215 prototype of, 199 self-overcoming, 169, 171, 232, 233 self-sacrifice, 10, 169, 172, 237–238, 240–241 split history, 172 identical life, 7, 16, 21, 22, 37, 40 Dionysus, 3

Zarathustra, 3 identity concept of, 17 personal, 31 temporal, 13, 28, 29, 30 identity, numerical, 13, 29, 30 diesmaligen, 17 identity, qualitative, 12, 13, 14, 15, 23, 24, 30 gleichen und selbigen, 17 impotence, 175–177, 218–219 innocence, 226, 232 childhood, 226 child-spirit, 196 forgetting, 226 guilt, 175–178, 196–197, 226–227, 232 second, 226–227, 232 “it was,” 150, 164, 172, 176, 181, 196, 197, 218, 219, 224, 231, 234, 238, 239 ascetic ideal, 238–239 immovable stone, 38, 51, 164, 200 memory, 218–219, 224 Janaway, Christopher, 210, 234, 237, 238 jester, 237 Jesus compared to Zarathustra, 32, 104, 115 crucifixion of, 49, 114, 230 death of, 118 resurrection of, 51, 114, 115, 116, 179 Kain, Philip J., 14, 24, 71 Kant, Immanuel, 220 Kaufmann, Walter, 8, 32, 34, 89, 110, 131, 136, 189 Kerslake, Christian, 39, 40, 221 Kingsley, Peter, 39, 40 Kitcher, Philip, 6 Klossowski, Pierre, 221 knot of causes, 58, 61, 62, 66, 67, 185 Konstan, David, 95 Krell, David Farrell, 60, 83, 105, 143 Krueger, Joe, 24 Lampert, Laurence, 1, 3, 32, 47, 49, 52, 53, 61, 78, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 111, 113, 117, 121, 125, 126, 127, 133, 135, 139, 140, 141, 148, 149, 152, 155, 162, 169, 174, 176, 178, 190, 204, 212, 214 lanes of time, 55, 56, 57, 60, 66, 182 contradicting, 161 Large, Duncan, 187, 200 last word Socrates, 33, 35, 44, 47, 64 Zarathustra, 43 last human, 184 laughing lions, 101, 108, 131, 140

Index laughter, 108, 196, 198, 210 child-spirit, 192, 197 higher men, 229 inhuman, 108, 133, 167, 198, 210 kills God, 229 of children, 100, 200 Lea, F. A., 83, 85, 103 Leiter, Brian, 189, 210, 220, 237, 238 Levine, Peter, 2 Lewis, David, 179, 185 life 24-hour day, 68 accusation against, 78 ascetic ideal, 236–240 as bride, 194 as eternity, 75, 80 as illness, 37 closed circle, 184 denial, 152, 236 eternal recurrence of, 62, 78, 186 identical, 7, 16, 21, 22, 37, 40 impoverishment, 22, 41 initial, 8, 15, 23 iterations, 24 last moment of, 27, 35, 48, 60 law of, 10, 171, 224 meaning of, 9, 57, 236 of Zarathustra, 2 opposite to death, 62 original, 15, 23 overflowing, 22, 76 overfullness, 41 recurring, 14, 15, 24 revenge on, 36–37, 41, 44, 75, 239 secret of, 78–79 self-overcoming, 136, 224 suffering, 22, 236 life affirmation, 21, 22, 157, 170, 196, 197, 239 diagnosis of, 23 test of, 18, 23 lion, 100, 119, 127 laughing, 96, 98, 99, 101, 120, 133, 140, 192 voice, 100, 133, 150, 157, 163, 166, 167 lion-spirit, 100, 106, 133, 149, 150, 157, 167, 191, 192, 193 Long, A. A., 12, 59 Löwith, Karl, 23, 204 Lucretius, 25 Lukacher, Ned, 39 Magnus, Bernd, 2, 14, 17, 18, 23, 24, 30, 41, 59, 85, 120, 200 Marsden, Jill, 210 meaning of human existence, 199, 236–241 melancholy, 76, 79, 95, 229

261

memory, 28, 214–217 backward-willing, 9, 225, 231 childhood, 8, 71 communications, 9, 225, 233 conscious, 217 deathbed, 106 deathbed revelation, 74 eternal recurrence, 8, 72, 73, 215, 221, 222, 232 foreknowledge, 69–71, 185 future, 224 guilt, 226 illness, 233 inhibiting, 218–219 missing in animals, 53, 223, 225 “it was,” 218–219, 224 news-bearer, 222 of death, 8, 73 pain, 185, 217, 222, 224 precognition, 28 previous life, 7–8, 16, 21 promises, 187, 216 recollection, 70, 71, 144, 221 repression, 72, 222 socially bred, 218 society, 216 subconscious, 8, 217 superhuman, 234 turned against itself, 224–225 will, 187, 189, 201, 215, 218 midnight, 35, 136 death, 48, 68 hour, 68, 104 moment of death, 7, 35, 47 noon, 73, 104–105, 161 speech, 73 twelfth bell, 7, 68, 79–80 Millgram, Elijah, 217 Moles, Alistair, 14, 17, 26, 28, 47, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 205 moment gateway, 7, 46–48 high-noon, 161 last of life, 27 midnight, 43, 47, 161 of death, 7, 21, 27, 35, 37, 47, 48, 50, 60, 65, 68, 69 of demon’s revelation, 34 of rebirth, 27, 68 of recreation, 27 present, 46, 55, 57, 161 recurring, 26 Moses compared to Zarathustra, 123, 128, 131

262

Index

most abysmal thought, 8, 50, 63, 71, 73, 76, 100, 101, 102, 106, 110, 111, 139, 143, 144, 146, 148, 150, 151, 163, 165, 180, 181, 183, 185, 221, 241 Most, Glenn W., 36 Müller-Lauter, Wolfgang, 204, 206 Murray, Gilbert, 114 nausea, 106, 110, 112, 183, 191, 234 eternal recurrence, 103, 151, 152 freedom from, 202–203, 232 higher men, 109–110, 163, 229 humankind, 109, 156, 160 loss of, 229, 232 most abysmal thought, 108 overcoming of, 163 serpent, 152, 153, 159 shepherd, 182 shepherd-role, 163 small human, 10, 109, 151 necessity, 9, 145, 150, 189–190, 197, 225 Nehamas, Alexander, 1, 14, 18, 36, 38, 41, 79, 85, 89, 91, 97, 102, 119, 120, 121, 122, 126, 130, 187, 188, 189 new nobility, 120, 130 New Testament, 7, 104–105, 107, 112 new values, 122, 130, 131 Nietzsche and Wagner, 4–6 attitude to eternal recurrence, 11, 13, 212–213, 221–222 compared to Zarathustra, 210–213, 223, 227, 239 decadence of his age, 211 disciple of Dionysus, 3, 39 own voice, 210–213, 239 nihilism ascetic ideal, 234, 239 eternal recurrence, 165 soothsayer, 9 suicidal, 236–240 Wagner, 171–172 weariness, 128, 171–172 no-longer-human, 175, 198, 203, 236, 238, 242 Noon chapter, 111–112, 134, 160 Oger, Eric, 20 Once More roundelay, 73, 139 Orphic tradition, 39, 40 Osborne, Richard, 4 Pangle, Thomas, 125 Parfit, Derek, 30 Parkes, Graham, 4, 8, 18, 42, 229 Part III of Zarathustra, 86

Part IV of Zarathustra, 83, 87–89, 91, 98, 123, 191, 228–230 analeptic satyr play, 94, 98, 112–113, 118 chronology, 94 narrator, 94 parody, 88, 91–92, 112 satire, 88 past time, 29, 46, 161, 174, see also “it was” asymmetry with future, 225, 231 determining, 231, 234, 283 forgetting, 218, 225, 234 heavy weight, 164 meaning, 238 open, 234 prison of human will, 218 transcending, 225 unchangeable, 175, 179, 188, 189 perfectionism, 219 perspective, 26, 27, 47, 66 of gateway, 46, 49, 54–55 of dwarf, 54 of present moment, 26, 46–47, 53, 55, 57 on death, 7, 27, 62, 66, 68, 185 on time, 26–27, 46–47, 55, 57, 68 Pippin, Robert B., 9, 85, 89, 91, 94, 119, 120, 121, 122, 152, 169, 173, 174, 178, 204, 229, 240 pity, 97, 109–110, 133, 169, 192, 228 Plato anamnesis, 70, 221 Apology, 38, 42, 63, 64 complete year, 19, 60 Crito, 64 depiction of Socrates, 75 Dionysian cult, 39 great year, 19, 40, 62 Hades myth, 50 immortality of soul, 38 Phaedo, 7, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 44, 45, 49, 52, 59, 63, 66, 69, 76, 82, 114, 221 recollection, 21, 70–71, 144 reincarnation, 38, 39, 50, 82 Socratic dialogues, 58 Socratic midwife, 106 Symposium, 41, 106, 163 Theaetetus, 106 Timaeus, 19, 60 view of reality, 52–53, 57, 59, 70, 174 Platt, Michael, 79 power curtailed by memory, 219 over time, 9, 198, 199, 200, 205, 231, 236, 238, 240 sacrifice, 10, 77, 83–84, 125, 128–130, 138, 169, 172, 199, 237–238, 240–241 precognition, 21

Index dreams, 8, 28 prevision, 21, 71, 182, 192, 193, 194, 200, 203, 230, 231 Prologue of Zarathustra, 202–203, 232–233 Promethean gift, 203 Prometheus, 124 prophecy, 35–38 of soothsayer, 121, 155, 195–196, 200–201 prophetic power Dionysus, 40 Nietzsche, 233 Socrates, 37, 38, 63 Zarathustra, 8, 101, 113, 224 rebirth, 34, 66 cycle of eternal, 38–40, 50, 52, 62, 70, 74 moment of, 27 of Dionysus, 3, 84, 114, 193 of Socrates, 38, 52, 114 recurrence, see eternal recurrence redemption, 177–185, 220 ascetic ideal, 234 meaning of, 189 of humankind, 199 of reality, 234 redemption speech, 143, 144, 175–179, 196, 197, 218, 239 Reeve, C. D. C, 38 Reeves, Sandra J., 28 Reinhardt, Karl, 83 Reschke, Renate, 81 resurrection Dionysus, 114 Jesus, 115–116 Zarathustra, 115–117 revenge, see also spirit of revenge ascetic ideal, 239 impotence, 156, 175–176, 218–219 murderer of God, 228–229 past, the, 38, 156, 218 small human, 156, 162 Socrates, 36, 37, 41, 75, 162 Zarathustra, 120–121, 152, 156, 173–174 Richardson, John, 188 Ridley, Aaron, 14, 23, 188, 209, 214, 220, 224, 235 Riemann, Bernhard, 55, 56 non-Euclidean geometry, 55 Risse, Mathias, 215, 227 Roberts, Tyler, 81, 105 Rogers, Peter, 13, 14, 59, 61 Rosen, Stanley, 2, 112, 117, 123, 133, 170, 214 Salaquarda, Jörg, 2, 20, 21, 32, 33, 36, 43 sameness, see identity, qualitative

263

Santaniello, Weaver, 95 satyr play, 93, 97 Aeschylean, 93 analeptic, 94 characteristics, 95–96 chorus, 92 Dionsysus, 91–92 Euripides’ Cyclops, 95 humor, 96–97 Part IV of Zarathustra, 91–97, 113 relation to tragedy, 7, 91–93, 96–97, 113, 114 Wagner, 92, 94 satyrs higher men, 92, 95–96 Silenus, 95 Savitt, Steven F., 57 Schaberg, William, 86, 88 Schacht, Richard, 1, 2, 6, 85, 120 Schilpp, Paul Arthur, 57 Schlechta, Karl, 104 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 34, 43, 171, 220 Schutte, Ofelia, 131, 187 Seaford, Richard, 3, 39, 40, 72, 80, 91, 93, 95, 107, 114, 133 self created, 189, 197 disposition toward, 28, 42, 76 identical, 25, 29, 30 iterations, 30 recreated, 26–27, 67 stages, 31 self-overcoming, 10, 79, 171, 242 human, 233–234 law of life, 171, 224 of human, 77, 169, 171, 232 of Zarathustra, 77 secret wisdom, 78–79, 136 serpent, 148, 156, 182, 190 as world, 231 bite, 71, 153, 154, 163, 166, 231 choking shepherd, 111, 191 decapitation, 160, 231, 232 dragon, 150, 158, 230 dwarf, 160 eternal recurrence of humankind, 156, 160, 161, 162 eternal recurrence of small human, 111, 151, 154, 159, 160 head, see also head of serpent 154, 155, 158, 160, 161 human existence, 161, 162, 170 monster, 143 most abysmal thought, 159 nausea, 153

264

Index

serpent (cont.) ouroboros, 161 shepherd, 192 tail, 153, 154 worm, 71, 159 Seung, T. K., 79, 100, 122, 123, 139, 149, 193, 194 Seven Seals song, 81, 95, 105, 124 Shapiro, Gary, 4, 14, 21, 27, 33, 46, 47, 54, 85, 87, 91, 94, 117, 184, 239 shepherd, 148 child-spirited, 191, 192 dog, 184 laughing, 190, 193 leaping, 193 luminous, 193 nausea, 182, 183, 184 no longer human, 190 of the disciples, 110 of the higher men, 100, 110–111, 163, 192 of the people, 111, 163, 184 radiant, 190, 210 serpent, 111, 143, 154, 157, 158, 162, 231 transformation, 190, 191, 192, 193 youth of, 191 Zarathustra, 111, 163, 183, 184 Siegfried, 150 compared to Zarathustra, 148 death of, 118 slaying of dragon, 158 slaying of dwarf, 150, 158 sword-forging, 150 talking to animals, 149 wedding to Brünnhilde, 149–150 sign of lion and doves, 96, 98, 99, 108, 119 Simmel, Georg, 12, 13, 204, 222 critique of eternal recurrence, 11–16 sin, 104, 168, 197, 232 as illness, 76 guilt, 197, 231–232 Sleepwalker’s Song, 48, 95, 139 small human, 10, 109, 154–157, 184 dwarf, 143, 146, 159, see eternal recurrence of, 143, 151, 153, 154, 166, 223 future existence, 155 past existence, 156 present existence, 156, 162–163 spider, 162 Small, Robin, 14, 17, 28, 30, 32, 36, 43, 46, 47, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60, 61 society, 216 bad conscience, 216 imprisonment in, 239 interdependent with memory, 216 internalized will to power, 218

punishment, 216, 217 Socrates anti-Dionysian, 39 archenemy, 61 compared to Zarathustra, 32 daimon, 40, 64, 70 daimonic voice, 20 daimonion, 36, 225 death of, 33–42, 62, 114, 118 deathbed prophecy, 38 deathbed revelation, 35, 75 dialogues, 58 disciples, 63 dwarf, 51, 162 dying, 47, 61, 64, 74, 82 dying words, 36, 75 eternal recurrence, 50 influence, 45 last moment of life, 28 last word, 33, 35, 44, 47, 64 life impoverishment, 22 perspective, 62 plebeian descent, 50, 162 prophetic powers, 63 psychological state, 37 rationalism, 162 rebirth of, 38, 52, 114 reincarnation, 38, 39 revenge, 36, 37, 41, 75, 162 serpent, 162 small human, 162 soul, 38, 62, 70, 74 spider, 162 spirit of gravity, 50 struggle with Zarathustra, 45 type, 41 wanting to die, 36 Soll, Ivan, 14, 18, 19, 20, 28, 71, 166, 204 Solomon, Robert, 83, 103, 220 soothsayer, 96, 110 prophecy, 121, 155, 195, 196, 201 sorcerer, 92, 96, 172 soul, 66 backward-willing, 193, 194, 197, 203 child-spirited, 107, 193, 195, 196, 198, 203, 242 dark cloud, 203 destiny, 142 disembodied, 69, 70, 74, 83 freed, 80, 82, 107, 168, 192, 196, 232 future-perfected, 194 happiness, 111 immortality of, 38 innocent, 193 laughing, 193, 197, 236 melancholy, 79

Index mortal, 185 new, 196 newborn, 107, 145 no longer human, 232, 236, 242 of Socrates, 62, 70, 74 of Zarathustra, 2, 48, 64, 73, 76, 78, 107, 135, 139, 142, 192, 195, 196, 197, 203, 238, 242 overfull, 99 over-ripe, 78–79, 135, 145 pregnant with lightning, 197, 203 radiant, 193, 236 redeemed, 192, 194, 195, 238, 240 self-contained world, 192 self-propelled wheel, 197 shame-free, 76, 106, 108 singing, 81, 108, 112, 136, 139, 143, 192 time’s umbilical cord, 107 vine, 48, 78, 80, 99, 112, 145, 203 world, 107 Zarathustra, 78 sovereign individual, 219, 225 spirit of gravity, 53, 135, 159, 167, 168, 191, 219, 236 archenemy, 96, 108, 148, 242 ascetic ideal, 236 devil, 159 dwarf, 158, 159 higher men, 95 killed, 95, 167–168, 191–192, 197 evil ogre, 95 Socrates, 50 spirit of revenge, 143, 156, 175–179, 204, 239 Stack, George, 56 Stambaugh, Joan, 1, 2, 26, 49, 54, 58, 59, 73, 105, 176, 178, 187, 226 Star Wars analogy with Part IV of Zarathustra, 90 conclusion, 90 prequels, 93 trilogy, 90 Sterling, M. C., 14, 24, 27, 30 Stern, J. P., 149 Stoics doctrine of eternal recurrence, 11 Heraclitus, 12 proofs of eternal recurrence, 61 Strauss, David, 95 Life of Jesus, 229 Strong, Tracy, 165, 187 sun, 202 eternal recurrence, 68 of human knowledge, 72, 120, 138 Zarathustra, 102, 129, 133, 138 Zarathustra’s invocation, 32 superhuman, 8, 162, 184, 192, 198–200, 204, 205, 206, 207, 210, 213, 235, 239

ancestors of, 120, 172, 200, 201, 203 backward-willing, 200, 206 bad conscience, 214 birth of, 137, 203 child-spirit, 203 coming of, 169 counter-ideal to ascetic ideal, 235–238 death of God, 137 emergence, 215, 223 eternal recurrence, 213 fire, 203 forgetting, 225 goal, 236–240 golden ball, 134 good news, 200 grounded in narrative, 205 herald of, 198, 199 inhuman, 210, 241 innocence, 226 lightning, 203, 241 meaning, 236, 237 no-longer-human, 198, 203, 210, 225, 238 power over time, 200 Promethean gift, 203 teaching of, 204 Übermensch, 8 Sutton, Dana, 91, 92, 93, 95, 97 Tablets chapter, 98, 99, 123–133, 181 audience, 125 decisive, 123, 133, 145 deflationary reading, 121, 145 utopian reading, 120, 122, 145–146 tenses, 126 Tanner, Michael, 14, 205, 208 Teichmüller, Gustav, 47, 53, 56 Thus Spoke Zarathustra as drama, 4, 6 as Gesamtkunstwerk, 4 beginning of, 32 chronological conclusion, 7, 85, 86, 88 chronology, 2, 86, 139, 232, 238 completeness, 7, 117 constructive work, 207 fictional form, 212 fifth Gospel, 114 fundamental conception, 1 future-oriented, 207, 209 Grundconception, 1, 180 ironic reading, 85, 121 narrative aspects, 2, 37, 120, 134, 241 narrator, 94 not in Nietzsche’s voice, 211 parody, 171, 240–242 Part III, 86, 98, 148

265

266

Index

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (cont.) Part IV, 83, 85, 88, 91, 94, 98, 112–113, 123, 191, 228 performative reading of, 4, 6–7, 9, 180, 187, 193, 200 poetic form, 45, 212 privileged by Nietzsche, 207 relation to Beyond Good and Evil, 208–213 relation to Gay Science, 14, 32 relation to Genealogy, 208–213 riddles, 1–11 structural conclusion, 7, 85, 86, 88 structure, 6, 7, 8, 122, 175, 180, 201, 205 tragic resolution, 146, 241 Yes-saying, 207, 209 tightrope walker, 66, 77, 199 time, 21 absolute, 26, 29, 58 absolute distinctions, 174 asymmetry, 225, 231 becoming, 174 before death, 63 bondage to, 81, 114 circular, 9, 26, 29, 47, 51, 53, 54, 57, 59, 161, 204, 224 closed, 55–57, 180 contradiction, 49 directions, 49, 186 elapsed, 26 escape from, 175 eternal recurrence, 26 flowing, 174, 175, 179, 186, 206 future, 29, 46, 161 hourglass of being, 40, 59, 62 God’s-eye standpoint, 52–57 illusory, 52–57, 174 impermanence, 174 impotence in relation to, 175–179 infinite, 61 irreversible, 174–175, 178–179, 206 linear, 29, 204 moments, 67 Newtonian, 58 past, see past time and “it was” perspectival approach to, 47, 53, 68 Platonic, 52–53 power over, 177, 187, 190, 198, 199, 200, 205, 231, 238, 240 present, 162, 174, 186, 225 reality of, 174, 179 reconciliation with, 186, 190 recurrence of, 59 relational, 29, 59, 67 relative, 26 spatial visualization of, 46

umbilical cord of, 107 unbounded finitude, 58 universal, 26, 58 tragedy Aeschylean trilogy, 91–93 death and rebirth, 33 death of Dionysus, 114 relation to parody, 240–242 relation to satyr play, 7, 91–93, 96–97, 113, 114 transformation of higher men, 78, 96 of shepherd, 193 of Zarathustra, 191, 192 personal, 23, 24 third, 192–193, 196–199, 202–203, 226 three of the spirit, 104, 106, 192 Twilight of the Idols, 2–3, 36, 132, 136, 164, 213 Übermensch, translation of, 8 ugliest man, 95, 228, 229, 230 associated with shepherd, 231 Silenus, 95 Untimely Meditations, 4, 129, 164 vision-riddle, 46, 64, 76, 111, 148, 151, 155, 160, 162, 163, 165, 191, 208, 230 Wagner, Richard, 4, 92, 212, 230 concept of Bayreuth, 129 Das Rheingold, 92, 164, 165, 169 Die Meistersinger, 92 dragon, 149, 150, 166 eternal change, 4–6 golden apple, 56 Grundconception, 4 nihilism, 171 Parsifal, 92 Ring of the Nibelung, 4, 10, 92, 93, 148, 149, 171 satyr play, 92 serpent-worm, 71 Siegfried, 71, 113, 148, 160, 170, 212 sorcerer, 92, 172 total work of art, 4 Tristan and Isolde, 73 Waite, Geoff, 2, 170 wedding death, 80 Hochzeit, 80, 103, 105, 194 ring, 103, 145 to eternity, 80, 103 to life, 80 weight greatest heavy, 22, 38

Index heavy, 22, 29, 81, 144, 222 of archenemy, 49 of choices, 29 of dwarf, 103 of eternal recurrence, 22, 50, 53, 140, 164, 170 of hammer, 163 of most abysmal thought, 106, 144 of past, 22, 29, 81, 164, 196 Westerdale, Joel P., 7, 18, 188, 204 White, Alan, 14, 51, 54, 57 White, Richard, 187, 204 Whitlock, Greg, 94, 95, 113, 117, 120, 123, 136, 139, 141, 149, 170, 229 will freedom, 220 impotence, 175–177, 218–219 imprisoned, 218, 239 internalized, 218 joy-bringer, 177 180 liberation, 211, 220, 226, 240 madness, 218 memory of, 215 not will, 237–239 nothingness, 236 self-liberation, 176 self-overcoming, 242 self-redemption, 143 time, 225 to power, 8, 77, 165, 177, 180, 217, 239 willing backward, see backward-willing Winchester, James, 2 Wolfenstein, Eugene, 154 Wood, David, 14 Wotan, 5, 113 and Mime, 160 death of, 84 spear of, 6, 150 Young, Julian, 187 Zarathustra animals, see animals annihilator, 229 anti-nihilist, 209 archenemy, 54, 61 artist-creator, 189, 197 as arsonist, 204 as bird, 113, 167, 168, 196 as bird of prey, 167 as camel, 191, 192 as child, 67, 70, 106, 191, 197 as commander, 130, 133 as dancer, 197, 202 as dice-player, 197 as hunter, 167

267 as lion, 150, 191, 192, 193, 230 as redeemer, 210, 225, 237 as seafarer, 197 as shepherd, 71, 183, 184 as shepherd-dog, 184 as sun, 102, 129, 133, 138 as wind, 195 ashamed, 166, 191, 195 atheism, 232 awakened, 202 backward-willing, 180, 187, 189 becoming human again, 202 bell-stroke of noon, 230 biting head off serpent, 153, 169 bronze-hard, 100, 144, 169, 192 brothers, 125 call to arms, 123–133 camel-spirited, 191 changes in, 202 children of, see children of Zarathustra child-spirited, 191, 193, 194, 195, 197, 203, 232, 236 choking, 155 combat with dwarf, 163 commiserating, 97, 100, 109–110, 166, 184 communications to himself, 201 compared to Dionysus, 12, 190 compared to Jesus, 32, 104, 115 compared to Moses, 123, 128, 131 compared to Prometheus, 124 compared to Siegfried, 148, 151 compared to Socrates, 32 conqueror of God, 228, 230 conscience, 195, 225 convalescence, 76, 90, 136, 143, 156, 168, 192 counter-ideal, 235 courage of, 166 creator, 105, 107, 122, 169 crucifixion of, 103, 104, 112, 146, 185, 240 dead, 103, 116, 195 death of, 7, 74, 83, 84, 133, 135, 136, 146, 240 deathbed memory, 144 deathbed speech, 103, 142 deicide, 230 descent from mountain, 202, 232 descent into subconscious, 221 destiny, 103, 138, 189 disciples, see disciples of Zarathustra dismemberment, 193 distinct from Nietzsche, 173 dithyrambic songs, 108, 192 dreams of, 192 dying, 66 dying words, 198 enlightenment, 72, 236

268

Index

Zarathustra (cont.) eternally recurring life, 2, 3, 7–8 farewell to disciples, 137 fire, 203 flying, 194, 196 freeing the will, 220 freely chosen death, 238, 241 ghost, 195 future self, 154, 158, 183–184, 189, 193–196, 231 goals, 134, 215 great destiny, 103 great noon hour, 101 happiness, 110 heirs, 134, 200 herald of superhuman, 199 higher men, 112, 113, 116 his word, 138 holy man, 202, 228 howling dog, 70 identification with Dionysus, 3 isolation, 144 joy, 22, 79, 81, 121, 186, 197 knowledge, 142 last will, 137 last word, 43 laughing soul, 198 laughter, 108, 194, 197, 230 light, 113 lioness-wisdom, 106–107, 109, 127, 132, 192 lion-spirited, 191, 192, 193, 230 love, 9, 97, 113, 117, 120, 203, 234 lion’s voice, 100, 133, 150, 157, 163, 166, 167 man of the future, 106, 209 martyrdom, 104 melancholy, 44, 76, 79 mnemonic willing, 201 most abysmal thought, 50, 53, 63, 71, 73, 76, 100, 101, 102, 106, 110, 111, 139, 143, 144, 146, 148, 150, 151, 163, 165, 180, 181, 183, 185, 221, 241 must come one day, 208, 210 nausea, 106, 109, 112, 151, 153, 156, 183, 232 new values, 130 newly created soul, 193 no longer human, 175, 198, 203, 210, 225, 232, 236, 238, 242 no longer shepherd, 167 Odysseus-like, 95 old age, 100, 116, 134 overfull with life, 64, 76, 99 over-ripe soul, 135, 145, 203 philosopher of the future, 208, 210–211, 233 pity for higher men, 97, 109–110 Platonism, 82

power over time, 187 pregnant, 192, 225 prevision, 69, 143, 182, 193, 194, 203, 230, 231 pride of youth, 166 pride-free, 192, 193 Promethean gift, 203 prophetic ability, 8, 101 prototype of humankind, 199 reconciliation with time, 186 redemption, 155 redemption speech, 143, 144, 175–179, 196, 197, 218, 220, 239 redemptive deed, 143 refutation of dwarf, 46–50 resurrection of, 115–117 return to life, 7, 179 reunion with disciples, 124 revenge, 120–121 reversing bad conscience, 214 ripeness, 98, 99, 102, 106, 108 self-loving, 224 self-overcoming, 77 self-redemption, 175, 177–185, 191, 193, 203 self-sacrifice, 77, 83–84, 138, 199, 240–241 self-sufficiency, 144 self-taught, 143 shame-free, 191, 192, 193 shattering of, 191, 193 sickness, 42, 142, 191, 225 sin, 87, 110 sleeping, 72, 111 sleepwalking, 112, 140, 144 solitude, 20, 34, 47, 126, 136, 195, 201 soothsayer, 195 soul, 2, 48, 64, 73, 78, 107, 112, 139, 142, 192, 195, 196, 197, 203, 238, 242 soul-world, 107 stillest hour, 47, 98, 101, 191, 195 suffering, 110 teacher of eternal recurrence, 138, 141, 180 teachings, 205 temptation, 87, 92, 97, 109, 110 transformation, 191, 196, 199, 202, 232 transitional figure, 199 true atheist, 232 type, 41, 123 Untergang, 48, 76, 80, 86, 104–105, 115 victory over archenemy, 74 victory over serpent, 230 victory over Socrates, 45, 64 victory over spirit of gravity, 95, 167–168, 191–192, 197 vision-riddle, 155, 160, 162, 165, 191

Index weariness, 42 wedded to life, 80 wicked, 168, 193, 196, 197 will, 137, 188 wisdom, 78–79, 81, 106, 113, 192, 196, 221

young, 98 Zarathustran type, 41, 123 Zittel, Claus, 7 Zöllner, Friedrich, 56 Zoroaster, 193

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The Death of Nietzsche's Zarathustra

Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Edinburgh Philosophical Guides)

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Also sprach Zarathustra

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Clearscan)

Thus Spake Zarathustra

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Thus Spake Zarathustra

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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Thus Spake Zarathustra

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Thus Spake Zarathustra

Thus spake Zarathustra

Thus Spake Zarathustra

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Nietzsche, Friedrich - Thus Spake Zarathustra

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Nietzsche, Friedrich - Thus Spake Zarathustra

Zarathustra, the Laughing Prophet: Talks on Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra (v. 2)

Nietzsche, Friedrich - Thus Spake Zarathustra

Nietzsche, F - Thus Spake Zarathustra

The Malady of Death

The Death of Nietzsche's Zarathustra

Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Edinburgh Philosophical Guides)

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Also sprach Zarathustra

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Clearscan)

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Also Sprach Zarathustra

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Encuentro En Zarathustra

Cosi Parlo Zarathustra

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Thus Spake Zarathustra

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Thus Spake Zarathustra

Thus spake Zarathustra

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (tr Kaufmann)

Brunner, John - Zarathustra 3 - Repairmen of Cyclops

Nietzsche, Friedrich - Thus Spake Zarathustra

Zarathustra kehrt zurück (suhrkamp 410)

Nietzsche, Friedrich - Thus Spake Zarathustra

Zarathustra, the Laughing Prophet: Talks on Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra (v. 2)

Nietzsche, Friedrich - Thus Spake Zarathustra

Nietzsche, F - Thus Spake Zarathustra

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