Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Rethinking Morality
The Superman and the Will to Power
Death of God and Christianity
Eternal Recurrence
Summary
Analysis
Zarathustra critiques hypocrites who seek so-called “pure knowledge.” Such people purport to resent the earth, yet deep down they still lust for it. They lie to themselves, desiring an “immaculate perception” that gazes on things without touching them. Zarathustra says that this desire slanders desiring; such hypocrites do not love the earth as creators do.
Nietzsche believes that knowledge cannot be divorced from emotion and personality. Here, Zarathustra criticizes people, especially the day’s scientists, who try to contemplate nature objectively. Such an attempt claims to be innocent, but it’s actually hypocritical.
Themes
Zarathustra says that only the one who wills to create something beyond t is innocent, and only the one who wills with all this will is beautiful. Love and dying belong together—willing to love means being willing to die. But cowards want to contemplate from afar and call what they see beautiful, and such contemplation will never bring anything forth. Zarathustra himself was once led astray by this supposed knowledge, until he understood that knowledge is like the sun’s light, suffusing everything.
Only an unrestrained, creative will to power is truly pure, unlike the scientists who claim that perfect objectivity is possible. The scientists also stand apart from the object of their study. Zarathustra says that this will never yield anything beautiful. Like the sun’s light, knowledge isn’t separate from what it knows; it is the light within which things are seen and understood.
Themes
