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
1. Zarathustra’s tongue is too glib, his writing too foolish, and his foot too joyful for ordinary people to understand. He is the enemy of the Spirit of Gravity.
Zarathustra praises his own incomprehensibility to the average person. But he isn’t opposed to them—he only opposes the guilt (imposed by traditional morality) that burdens them.
Themes
2. The Spirit of Gravity teaches people to call life heavy, but Zarathustra teaches people to love themselves in order to become light and birdlike. One should not roam around with so-called “love of one’s neighbour.” Indeed, learning to love oneself is the highest art of all. From birth, people are taught “good and evil” by the Spirit of Gravity. They are taught that life is hard to bear—but this is because, like camels, people allow themselves to be burdened.
This section introduces Nietzsche’s teaching on self-love. Nietzsche believed that the modern soul is incapable of loving itself, preferring to project that love onto other things. One form of diversion is love of neighbor—which, although it’s praised as “good,” just distracts humanity from evolving. They accumulate burdens, like camels, instead of learning flight for their souls.
Themes
Because of the Spirit of Gravity, it’s difficult for a person to discover one’s own goodness. A person achieves this when they silence the Spirit of Gravity by saying, “This is my good and evil.” However, this isn’t the same thing as calling everything good without distinction or endlessly waiting for gratification. One must have taste, and one should wait only for one’s own validation.
Learning to love oneself is a process, not a sudden transformation, especially in a world that teaches guilt for sin. A higher person learns to determine good and evil for oneself. Nietzsche held that “taste,” not any external measure, enabled such a person to make moral distinctions.
Themes
Zarathustra did not arrive at his truth once and for all, but by trying and questioning a wide variety of different paths. He has had to learn how to answer such questioning, but his answers are to his taste. His taste is not “good or bad,” but simply his, and he is no longer ashamed of it. When others ask him “the way,” he tells them that this is his way; where is theirs? The way does not exist.
Each individual’s “way” is the right way. This is a succinct summary of Nietzsche’s moral perspectivism, or relativism. Each (higher) person must explore and discover one’s “way” for oneself and without apology; they cannot point others to the correct path, because there’s no single, objective path.
Themes
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