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 has seen many lands and peoples and discovered their good and evil; what seems good to one people seems shameful to another. “A table of values hangs over every people […] the voice of its will to power.” Each table praises what it finds difficult, and it deems “holy” what relieves people’s greatest need. All people have given themselves their version of good and evil—it wasn’t handed down to them from heaven.
In this chapter, Zarathustra delves more deeply into the idea of moral relativism. Different groups of people have different standards for good and evil. Zarathustra determines that each group’s “table of values,” or set of moral teachings, is an expression of the will to power—that is, stronger people exert that power over the weaker by setting moral standards. The standards aren’t God-given.
Themes
Humankind gives things values. “Evaluation is creation,” and evaluating is itself the value of things. When values change, that means there is a change in the creators of values, and creators first must destroy. It used to be that entire groups of people were creators, but more recently, individuals have been creators. Although there have been a thousand individual goals, the overarching goal for humanity is still lacking.
This section restates Nietzsche’s belief that human beings’ decision to call things “good” and “evil” is subjective—things aren’t objectively good or evil. People strong enough to become “creators,” by exercising the will to power, destroy old values and make new ones. Humanity as a whole, however, lacks a common goal (though Nietzsche believes that it should be to become the Superman).
Themes
