Have you read Nietzsche's............?

Question

Thus spoke Zarathustra?

What is he trying to tell us?

tough question hey guys?

Shades - actually i have read the book and books ABOUT the book but just wanted to see if anyone would 2 like to share his/her insights.

Answer 1

Zarathustra represents the Superman who has excepted his nothingness as freedom and chooses to make his own meaning out of life. the other characters in Zarathustra represents those human failures whose false consciousness hasn't excepted the fact the God( all meaning )is dead. So hold to illusionary beliefs rather than take responsibly for their freedom. For an excellent play by play of Zarathustra characters and exposition why he important to us read The Mask of Enlightenment by Stanley Rosen.
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Answer 2

Yes. I'm not good at this:

It has several themes which can presumably be unified, though i'm not the person to do it.

The central character is Zarathustra, who was conceived as the first prophet to introduce ethical principles of good and evil in religion. In 'Also Sprach Zarathustra', he is portrayed as a figure who does the opposite, destroying the division between good and evil, which has held back the human race. The only reality is the will to power, and there are two kinds of people, slaves and masters. Christian values and often those of other relgions are those of slaves, an attempt to undermine the morality of masters, which is devious and clever but ultimately not the best kind of morality.

Other themes are eternal recurrence, the death of God and the superman. Eternal recurrence is the thought that the best way to live one's life is that living the same moment over and over again forever would be a glorious thought rather than a terrible one. The death of God is partly to do with the idea of slave morality, but also with the idea that believing in God is no longer tenable and that this is a revolutionary thing that could be expected to change everything about one's attitude. The superman idea is that humanity is something transitory which is to be transcended, and people restrict their development by considering themselves to be the pinnacle of creation rather than a stage on the way to being superhuman. Therefore, it is a mistake to behave like a human and more appropriate to recognise one's animal nature and live in accordance with it. Part of being this involves the recognition that there is nothing beyond this life - no afterlife, reincarnation and so forth. People's being has been restricted by the sort of process seen in mediaeval times, where people simply got through this life as a preliminary stage before the afterlife and lived with reference to that, and Nietzsche seeks to overcome that. He saw such impulses as pity and charity as big problems which needed to be defeated, and the nihilism associated with the idea of there being no God and no afterlife as something that could be overcome by the idea of the superhuman, to which one could aspire instead. It's a little like transhumanism, in fact, and also possibly like Ayn Rand's objectivism.

Nietzsche saw 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' as the most important and greatest book ever written. It has quite a heavy and excessive style to it which makes it a little hard to get used to.

Answer 3

I've read the book numerous times. Very interesting & entertaining even if not understood.
What I get from the book & Nietzsche in general is:
One must accept 'all' things. Be it a kiss from a lover, a painful stubbed toe, or the cruel malice that is your foot on an insect. Nothing is any more or less important. If you could do this, you would be 'you-completely' or as he calls it "the thing in itself". But that never happens. For example, a fool will leave his own path, & try to be less foolish(or more like some other character. One is then eternally trapped in this cycle of ones own downgoing & labouring to rise again.

Answer 4

"Keep you doped with religion,sex and tv
and you think that you're happy, classless and free
but you're still f***ing peasants as far as I can see
working class hero is something to be."

You will recognize these words as John Lennon's, no doubt.
I don't know for a fact that Lennon went along with Nietzsche's philosophy, but the message of both is the same: you cannot rise above the mob mentality as long as you belong to the crowd.

No need to quote here. Go through the chapter "Of the Higher Men" and you will find there Nietzsche's 'ruling idea', not just his message in this one book.

Edit: okay, Whiner. Sorry I took you for a 'newcomer' to F.W.N, I wasn't to know otherwise.

I read and re-read and studied Nietzsche in my early twenties in translation when I still had not learned German. Here was one at last who dared to go 'all out' against the establishment in all the senses of the word, and this in the late 19th century, when conservatism ruled supreme with the masses, and with the greater part of the intelligensia, at that.

Nietzsche represents to me the greatest in what I would term 'human-level philosophy'', that philosophy dealing primarily, if not exclusively, with the problem of man, and of man alone ,through reason alone (as contrasted with Eastern philosophy, so that my meaning is clear). Of European birth, greater still, because vaster ('infinite' in fact) in the scope of his philosophy , towers only Giordano Bruno, but his philosophy is a bridge between the rational Western and the esoteric Eastern so-to-say branches of philosophy.

I do not think Nietzsche is trying to tell US anything, if US means the vast mass of humanity. This is one point that many fail to get. If Nietzsche is concerned in any way at all with 'man as he is' it is only with the view of urging the few fit to 'depart from the market-place' to do so.

Answer 5

better to read the book once more.