Books : Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (Modern Library)

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Rating:

- Zarathustra
In a world of cheap thrills and fast money, Thus Spoke Zarathustra offers an eciting journey into a path very often left dark. It is a book for unbelievers, for synics, for lovers of culuture and art. It is not a book for scholars who would simply like to master one more book to add to their arsenal and then to be able to bring it up in coversation to impress people. Zarathustra written in beautiful prose, means everything and absolutly nothing all in one. It challenges all values and offers ideas for one to discover oneself. Never telling one how to discover oneself, but simply that one must leave behind many things to rise out of the depths that are ones emotions, Nietzsche gives anyone looking to enjoy a good book what they want.

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- A book for those who search
This book does not have any easy answers. It is not the purpose of the book. The purpose of the book is to make the reader think for themselves. I find the book a comforting read - it gives hope and meaning to everyone that is dissatisfied with the answers given by organized religion, political parties, or just the usual howling mobs of sheep that think that just because they are members of a group they are wolves.
Nietzsche probably understood suffering and loss better than most, but he also understood hope better than most. True spiritual strength does not come from religious dogma or membership of a group. It comes from within, we all have it. For Nietzsche the only eternal truth is that we should always work for our betterment. We need no God or Leader to tell us what to do. In the end Nietzsche wants us to reject even him - he cannot tell us what we should do!
It can be said that horrible crimes have been committed in Nietzsche's name, but can we ignore that even more horrible crimes have been committed in God's or Allah's name? Or in the guise of "the common good" so favoured by our politicians?

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- AN INTRODUCTION: WISDOM CULMINATING IN "UEBERMENSCH" IDEAL
Before an extensive, in-depth review about this work, I give here a short synopsis of the German genius philosopher's most important work. The ideas of Friedrich NIETZSCHE are still very strongly influencing our thoughts and actions of today, even if we shouldn't notice instantly or after having had a first look around.

As a classic philologist, poet, moralist and philosopher we cannot deny his enormous impact on our culture, early 21st century (and before as FREUD didn't want to read Nietzsche - who had written down the basic elements for psychoanalysis - to keep his mind clear, focussing on his own work...). THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA is Nietzsche's magnus opum, his most important, overwhelming oeuvre. He identifies himself in this writing with an old Persian sage (Zoroaster...): THE FIRST HUMAN WHO MADE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIGHT AND DARK, BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL.

This superb masterpiece is NO LESS THAN A BRILLIANT COLLECTION OF MAXIMS AND APHORISMS, without any intellectual allusions, but full of "DIRECT" WISDOM OF LIFE. Wisdom about life as he understands it, FORCING THE ISSUE OF LIFE, WHICH ULTIMATELY MUST CULMINATE IN HIS IDEAL, HIS PRINCIPLE OF THE "UEBERMENSCH".

"Thus spoke Zarathustra" is a brilliant work, by far OUT OF CATEGORY, that - once again - will influence us (for certain!) for times and times to come. It is as if this true genius (honour to whom it deserves!) "ENLIGHTENS" the reader. OPPOSITE to what is so often said and published, THIS BOOK IS FAR BETTER READABLE than generally thought.
VERY WARMLY RECOMMENDED TO YOU ALL, FROM THE DEEPEST OF MY HEART, MY WHOLE BEING. A book you will never regret to have read and ... never ever forget for the rest of your life.

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- Even poetic and philosophical greatness has its limits
Neitzsche's writings helped inspire and were used/ misused by the greatest force for Evil the twentieth century knew. This is not a minor charge that can be dismissed by pointing out how the boorish Nazis misunderstood the complex philosopher. There is in Neitzsche an elitist arrogance, and a prophetic superiority, a tone of contempt for the ' masses' and a suggestion that truly it is only for the ' few ' that real life and thought are possible.
True, this is one strand and it does not do justice to a great thinker's complex paradoxical and often remarkably insightful thought. But the evil that men do lives after them, and in the file of Neitzsche must too be registered the ' evil done' by those who took his ideas and misused them.
That said what is there really to give heart and hope to in 'Thus Spake Zarathustra?" Do we want to say Neitzsche is a prophet because like Ray Kurzweill he sees Mankind as a bridge between the ' ape' and the ' super-computer'? Do we want to linger on his cultural definition of Western civilization as being godless and point to the church- empty Europe today as sign of his sociological acuity? Do we wish to look at the Cosmos and say that his 'Eternal Recurrence' shows some kind of possible connection with our sense of ' alternative universes' or with the Indian philosophical understanding of time as vastly beyond our conventional Western frameworks? Do we want to see profundity in the poetical paradoxical or perhaps muddled meaningless utterances of the pseudo - prophetic voice?
My sense is that in the deep bottom line of things Neitzsche has not given Humanity ideas, dreams, understandings that can truly help us realize our G-d given goal of sanctifying the universe as a whole, of making a tikkun olam in which we improve the lives and the quality of well- being of individual human beings. What Neitzsche has done I think, is to give the human mind another treasure of thought and poetic brilliance. In this sense I see his gift if to use Kierkegaard's terminology far more in the aesthetic realm than in the moral. In the moral realm I do not have much sympathy for his critique of Christianity, of slave - morality .And this because I believe human kindness and goodness are at the heart of what we are as human beings. And that it is not through contempt of others but rather through helping of them that we most live. For me then the man on the mountain can never be Zarathustra. For me the only mountain is Sinai where the most humble of men, Moses receives the Divine Revelation and then goes forth the second time to help Mankind walk in a way which is kinder.

Rating:

- Shattering.
Nietzsche's finest work, a mid-point between his break with Schopenhauer and his break with sanity. The book relates the adventures of Zarathustra, who descends from his lonely mountain wilderness in search of the "higher man". The result in a tour de force philosophical blitzkrieg on all philosophical sentiments. This book will make you question, will make you think, will inspire you, but above all, it is a book that, when finished, will make you say, "I do not believe in Nietzsche" as you begin to think for yourself. Exactly what Nietzsche intended.
"And to ask this once more- today, is greatness possible?"
-Nietzsche

Also recommended: Toilet: The Novel by Michael Szymczyk (A Tribute to the Literary Works of Franz Kafka)

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