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This is cleary a work of passion from a philosopher who said "yes" to life. What a wealth of ideas Nietzsche presents, from a man with an excessively intense mind. Philosophical, poetic, psychological, and sociological all juxposized into a amazing free flowing work of fiction from a philosopher and self proclaimed psychologist. Nietzsche had a torn yet brilliant mind, due to his excessive solitude and health problems.
I have read this book three times and I never read a book more then once. One must read this book several times because all the ideas and insights crammed into such a short book. TSZ is Nietzsche at his best.
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bla bla bla, important book, bla bla bla, tremendous ideas, bla bla bla...
dudes, what happened? the spirit of gravity has got y'all down and you're trying to groove with sir nose d'voidafunk
read this book when you're feeling light. you won't understand a thing of what fred means if you read it in a "philosophical" mood.
if you approach this book with those droopy-frowny "serious literature" glasses and gloves on, you'll see only the reflection of your own sad-dog unfunkitude!
this is a MYTH, this is a play, this is something that came to fred when he was skipping around Italian mountainsides!
this is a book to read a bit of while dancing
if you treat it like the Bible, then that's exactly what you'll get
and that's not what fred wants you to get
so turn your mind upside down and read this book as if you randomly found it written on notebook paper in a dumpster frequented by hobos and started to read it with nothing better to do
might not be the best way to read it, but it's miles ahead of treating it with that terrible seriousness that makes everything heavy
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Clearly one of the most important books of mankind. Nietzsche has a tremendous influence on the thoughts of the 20th and 21st century, and in "Zarathustra", his ideas are put in an incredibly powerful poetic/rhethoric form that will influence you dramatically, no matter if you then like or dislike the book.
Is is extremely rare that there is such a density of ideas and messages, hence this book must be read several times and together with other works by Nietzsche, preferably "twilight of the idols", "beyond good and evil" and/or "the dawn".
Nietzsche wanted to create the bible for the individualistic, atheistic, independent man. He succeeded, and Zarathustra does not ask for faith and fellowship but critcal reflection, courage and independence.
In this book, the foundation of modern existentialism is laid and the philosophically educated reader will find the origins of an enormous amount of philosophical concepts of the 20th century.
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It is tempting to think that reading the Bible, or Goethe, Kant, and Hegel, or even some gloomy portion of Schopenhauer in which `common' is called an expression of contempt, might be advised to prepare some reader to begin THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA. But it might be wiser to suggest that almost everyone is already wise enough to see how THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA is the book in which Nietzsche fought for philosophy's right to party until it pukes. Irony in philosophy ought to be compared to the mathematical technique of refuting some hypothesis by showing that an analysis of its logic leads directly to a contradiction of itself or some cherished principle. In THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA, Nietzsche shows that mastery of philosophy includes a strong sense of when life has reached the desire to toss its cookies. Socrates set the most striking standard in philosophy for when hemlock might be the drink best suited for making an example of one's belief. Deadly party techniques have not disappeared in the 2400 years that have passed since the ancient Greeks let jurors decide the fate of individuals who had their own ideas about religion. Nietzsche has a series of sections in the first part of THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA "on the Preachers of Death" and "On War and Warriors" (THE PORTABLE NIETZSCHE, pp. 156-160), but embraces the paradox of free death wholeheartedly in "On Free Death" (TPN, pp. 183-186) while suggesting that it was not quite right with Jesus: "and for many it has become a calamity that he died too early. . . . Would that he had remained in the wilderness and far from the good and the just! Perhaps he would have learned to live and love the earth--and laughter too. Believe me, my brothers! He died too early; he himself would have recanted his teaching, had he reached my age." (TPN, p. 185). As far as age goes, Nietzsche considers Jesus, who was once like a twelve-year-old in the temple, was not yet mature enough to be the sacrifice we need. "But in the man there is more of the child than in the youth, and less melancholy: he knows better how to die and to live. Free to die and free in death, able to say a holy No when the time for Yes has passed: thus he knows how to die and how to live." (TPN, p. 185).
THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA challenges the notion that things happen in their proper time, and reading this book is hardly the most appropriate way to understand any particular moment, but the combination of ideas might help us understand how violent changes can occur when the mass of people feel "Would that a storm came to shake all this worm-eaten rot from the tree." (TPN, p. 185). Pious platitudes are the cookies that get thoroughly masticated and swallowed with "sour apples, to be sure, whose lot requires that they wait till the last day of autumn: and they become ripe, yellow, and wrinkled all at once" (TPN, p. 184), beer and potato chips, or whatever yellow party food Nietzsche got down before he found the logical conclusion:
"Verily, Zarathustra had a goal; he threw his ball: now you, my friends, are the heirs of my goal; to you I throw my golden ball. More than anything, I like to see you, my friends, throwing the golden ball. And so I still linger a little on the earth: forgive me for that." (TPN, p. 186).
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Nietzsche advocates social change in order for humankind to rise above its present deplorable condition. He says that God is dead and is no longer a model for moral leadership. He counsels us that redirecting our focus from the unknowable to the knowable will guide us towards the journey to humankind's next incarnation - the Superman. In order to begin this evolutionary journey we will first have to experience a great revulsion at the current human condition. In this "hour of great contempt" we will deny all of our previous, favorable conceptions concerning happiness, reason, virtue, justice, sympathy, and sin. Instead, we will embrace over-going, down-going, despisers, earth-worshipers, seekers of practical knowledge, workers, inventors, true virtue, altruists, achievers, and free spirits.
Nietzsche believes that all of the present, negative social trends will culminate in the most contemptible of all beings - the last man - who is no longer capable of despising himself. This last man will live in a condition which he has helped create of fear, false happiness, pleasure-seeking, working as a pastime, over-concern for the feelings of others, egalitarianism, and cleverness without wisdom. Further, once the last man evolves, the social environment that has created him (and he has also, reflexively, created this environment) will be somewhat permanent because it will tend to absorb all differences of opinion, merge them into a consensus, and reflect them back into society through an opinion-shaping filter of egalitarianism voiced in politically correct terms. In a moment of irony, the crowd called-out to the sage, Zarathustra, to "make us into these last men."
It is arguable that the last man is alive and well in contemporary society, and that the intellectual, social, and regional diversities which once generated the rich and vibrant hues of the American canvas are being replaced with a drab, homogeniety of sterile sameness. Nietzsche feels that the ultimate, inevitable revulsion against and overthrow of the kingdom of the last man will give rise to its polar opposite - the spiritually elevating, authentic world of the Superman.
The author has an almost compelling thesis, however, his bipolar construct ranging from the last man to the Superman seems to minimize the fact that objective reality represents only a small group of choices from an infinite pool of alternatives. The world will not long march to the tune of a single drummer, be he the last man or Superman, because of how unchanging human nature is constituted. A first constant of human nature seems to be that we are well aware of our own situation, but only remotely aware of others' concerns. A second constant seems to be that we will, on the average, tend to maximize our chances for immediate personal benefit over chances for potentially greater long-term gain. Therefore, we will, on balance, tend to act in ways which maximize our own short-term self-interest. We probably always have and likely always will. If history is any guide to the future, attempts to reshape the world modelled after the vision of a Superman (or even the last man) will be morphed to unrecognizable dimensions by the unfolding, collective self-interest of individuals in the day-to-day process of following their own, personal stars.
Although I feel that Nietzsche's prescribed alternatives are distortions of reality through oversimplification, misdirection, and projection to a whole from a subset, his work is a highly-influential, excellent read.
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