We have killed him — you and I. All of us are his murderers. Nietzsche, The Gay Science. The death of the biblical God does not just leave behind a world as it has always been. Rather, it leaves behind a world which has lost its meaning.
We can see the beginning of this loosening in the emergence of the modern scientific worldview of the seventeenth century and its de-humanization of the world. The relentless dismantling of the relation between Man and World played a central role in this process. The emerging de-humanized world, one which no longer relates to man from within itself, henceforth became a dead world.
The prelude to the death of God was the death of the World. According to him, unlike the ancients, modern man no longer inhabits an eternal world created for him. More precisely, the ones emerging victorious from the battle over goals and values will be the ones giving shape to the world of posterity.
Regardless of greater or smaller differences across different customs, or of the historical evolution of beliefs, the essential nature of these goals and values — the fundamental structure of world they belong to — remains the same.
The moral consciousness of contemporary Europeans, for example, is evidently of Christian heritage. Instead, it changed itself into a secularized version of Christian morality: becoming one of its acceptable, convenient presuppositions. The fact that the self-centered individual finds it necessary to present its own narrow will — dishonestly — as the will to truth, does not mean that it can no longer distinguish evil from good.
If anything, if it serves its own interest, it might even sharpen that distinction. And this, in the words of the Madman, means that modern man cannot assume the death of God as a result of his own actions.
Morality is not lacking in a God-bereft world. What is lacking is rectitude: the ability to take upon oneself the tragic consequences of being of the world. The heaviest burden. The Overman, the one who is able to identify its own life with the totality of existence, is not some immortal being.
Nothing in it has infinite duration. It has no life other than the one it lives. They think of it as one possible cosmological theory among others. Following this, most conclude that, as a theory, it is incoherent. Nevertheless, the approach is unsound methodologically.
For what is ignored by these critics is the fact that our world, as we experience it, is incommensurable with the world in which everything returns. Consequently, the comings and goings, familiar to us in our everyday experiences, teach us nothing about the eternal becoming of the world-totality.
That it has no origin means that it has no goal either: this world is always already accomplished in all its instances, it is already done, and it is always at its goal. Therefore — draws itself too? Struggling with distance learning? Themes All Themes. Symbols All Symbols. Theme Wheel. Everything you need for every book you read. The way the content is organized and presented is seamlessly smooth, innovative, and comprehensive.
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Thus Spoke Zarathustra , which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. Zarathustra says that life is wonderful, but that the masses poisons the wells from which they drink.
For a long time, Zarathustra has lived as if deaf and blind, trying to avoid the masses; eventually, however, he learned how to free himself from this disgust.
Solitaries orient themselves toward the future. He begins to use descriptive imagery to describe his return. He compares himself to a lake pouring into the sea and a warrior preparing to go into battle.
He takes joy not only in the fact that he will be returning to his friends, but also in fact that he must destroy his enemies. Zarathustra knows that his anger will reinvigorate his teachings, even though his disciples might even be afraid of him.
Zarathustra then leaves the mountain to return to mankind to give a new kind of wisdom to his disciples: a wild wisdom. Zarathustra begins a new set of speeches not in the gentle way he spoke in part one, but in a harsh critique of the work that his disciples have tried to accomplish.
Zarathustra reappears suddenly, comparing himself to a north wind that knocks down ripe figs from their tree. Zarathustra appears to his disciples during the fall season, but even with the beauty that surrounds them, he implores his disciples not to take joy in that beauty.
Instead, he tells them to look forward to a future time, a time of the overman. Zarathustra must remind his disciples that his teachings are for the coming of the overman and are not compatible with the teachings of Christianity or teachings of God. His disciples, it seems, had fallen prey to these Christian teachings. They have attempted to make Zarathustra's teachings into hybrid teachings incorporating a Christian version of the overman.
Zarathustra strongly rebukes his disciples for this and tells them again that there is no God. He tells his disciples that "if there were gods, how could I stand not to be a god! Therefore there are no gods. Zarathustra teaches his disciples again about the power of envy. Zarathustra knows that if God exists, the rivalry between his teaching of the overman and teachings of God would be unbearable.
Instead, Zarathustra can see the future of his teaching; therefore, God must not exist. For Zarathustra, death is a better state of being than the possibility of unfulfilled accomplishments. In this teaching, Zarathustra again demonstrates the usefulness of envy. To finish this speech, Zarathustra claims it has been the poets of the age that have created God or gods, and that "poets lie too much.
This is the kind of poetry, he muses, that will help to create the overman in this life. This is the kind of poetry Zarathustra himself seeks to create. In this speech, Zarathustra addresses those that think he has become too proud. Zarathustra tells his disciples that this kind of pride is appropriate for a "knower" like Zarathustra is.
A person who does not know must compare himself to a person who does, but a person who is a "knower" can only seek to transform himself, ultimately, into the overman. This speech hints that the enemies of Zarathustra have made his disciples believe that they are foolish for thinking of themselves too highly. Zarathustra says this is not so. Zarathustra's enemies think small, but his disciples must become "knowers. The point of Zarathustra's speech is this: a person should not take pity on or identify himself with mankind.
The only way to become the overman is to harden one's heart towards pity for mankind. Instead, one should show people the way to become "knowers" of the way of the overman. As a group of priests pass by, Zarathustra takes the moment to show his disciples just how much the spirit of Christianity has distorted and manipulated the good intentions of mankind.
The priests, Zarathustra says, are actually noble in intent, just as Zarathustra is. They are self sacrificing, just like Zarathustra, and they seek something higher, just as he does. It is not the priests' fault that they are misled. The notion of the Savior binds them to false notions of pity for mankind.
The priests are Zarathustra's enemies because they teach mankind to be obedient to God and to the Church. Zarathustra teaches people to look beyond this to the goal of the overman.
It is not the priests themselves who are wrong; they have much inner strength, but they are misled by the nature of Christianity. Christianity makes them doubt what they think, putting emphasis on their hearts and on giving pity towards mankind. Christianity makes people believe that they cannot overcome themselves; they need the help of an outside God.
Zarathustra teaches that one must become the overman by having a hard heart and envy towards those who are better. Christianity, Zarathustra says, is for those with a "sultry heart and a cold head," which are qualities not to be found in one of his disciples. Zarathustra now addresses his disciples' disappointing behavior during his absence.
Zarathustra mocks his disciples for thinking that they deserve something for being virtuous in his absence. Zarathustra says that there is no reward for being virtuous; not even virtue is its own reward. He tells them that their virtue should simply be a part of their being, not a series of acts done to gain some kind of reward.
Zarathustra is attempting to awaken envy in his disciples by treating them like children who do not understand. Though he explained in a previous speech that his disciples should be proud if they have knowledge that others do not, he now reproaches the pride that causes them to seek a wrong path on the way to the overman.
The kind of pride that seeks reward from man is the opposite of the kind of pride that leads to the overman. Zarathustra tells them that though their virtue is like a child's toy, he will replace that toy with a newer toy with which they can play.
Zarathustra then turns his attention to the masses of the unenlightened people.
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