Nietzsche. It’s one of those names that gets thrown around whenever someone wants to ‘explain’ a particularly potent case of sociopathy, someone who thinks they can get away with doing things with impunity. The two murderers in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, inspired by real-life murderers Leopold and Loeb, use his writings as an excuse for why they choose to hold a dinner party for their victim’s family, with the body in a trunk in the same room. It’s proof that they’re übermenschen, Supermen, they say. They even invite the professor who introduced them to Nietzsche’s writings because they think he’ll be impressed that they’ve taken to his teachings so well.
That… really isn’t what Thus Spoke Zarathustra is trying to do, though.
Admittedly, I’m not certain precisely what it actually is trying to do, but I think I’ve at least managed to suss out the general shape of it. This might be the toughest read I’ve yet encountered in here, just from a sheer ideaspace standpoint.
A good starting place might be to address the writing style. Nietzsche is generally known for a certain succinct quality to his writing, choosing words to make his thoughts as plain as possible. This is very much not that; rather, we’re looking at something akin to the writer channeling Walt Whitman’s mindset and “sounding [his] barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.” Zarathustra is exuberant in his desire to sound his ideas and opinions, to teach his philosophy to the people, to make sure that everyone knows that “God is dead,” and that the age to come will be the age of the Superman.
That Zarathustra’s ideals are laughed down by the masses, saying that they would rather become like Zarathustra’s “Ultimate Man,” who lives a life of luxury and relaxation without any strife or anything to trouble them, and which stands opposed to the Superman. Despairing, he goes in search of people who will be more receptive to his ideas.
Reading this right after The Time Machine, I couldn’t help but think that the Ultimate Man feels like the predecessor to the Eloi, but I doubt the two are related. However, the idea that the Ultimate Man represents the, well… ultimate endpoint of human desires for comfort and relaxation, leads directly in that direction.
The work as a whole is separated into four sections, each being one of the four volumes that Nietzsche published in the 1880s. The first gives the initial explanations of the Superman/Ultimate Man dichotomy, explains the differences and gives the general shape of the Superman; the second features Zarathustra expanding on his teachings to his disciples; the third is Zarathustra’s journey to return home after leaving the disciples, and commentary on the world and cultures as he travels; and the fourth concerns a group of pilgrims searching for Zarathustra because they are ‘Higher Men’ who believe themselves to be in a position to become somehow better.
The most important takeaway may be the specific way that Nietzsche, through Zarathustra, suggests that we get to the world in which the Superman can exist. Multiple times throughout the book, he describes Man as being a bridge of sorts, between the animal and the Superman. Man has, through sheer force of will, what is described as will to power, ascended to be the pinnacle of what animals can be. This will to power is defined as one of the primary characteristics of the Superman, that he is more interested in shaping his world than in even his own life. The Superman has no fear of self-injury, no outside influence shaping what he wants to create, nothing stopping him from pursuing the challenges he desires, or what he wants to do with himself. He is above all but his own desire to rule himself, living selfishly above all else.
The aphorisms offered as ways of explaining what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ for the Superman’s world are perhaps a little hard to wrap one’s mind around, on first glance. We are told that pride is a great sin, but vanity isn’t. Charity is bad, because it is giving in to other people’s desires; in the world of the Superman, there are no beggars, even if some might be wealthier in certain ways than others. Chastity is bad, because it in fact inflames lusts. Conventional wisdom as to what are Good and Evil are turned on their heads, because those ideas are tied in with religion and, after all, “God is dead.” He brings this up repeatedly. God is dead, and will be replaced with the new Superman, who makes his own choices about what is right and what is wrong.
Perhaps the most important aspect of Nietzsche’s Superman, though, is the concept of what happens after life. Zarathustra very openly decries any belief in an afterlife, instead preaching the concept of the eternal recurrence, where one’s entire life repeats infinitely, forever, such that if one hopes for a particular moment to come repeatedly, they must accept the entirety of their life doing such. The Superman, by Zarathustra’s explanation, lives a life such that every second of their life, both the high points and the low points, is a moment that they would gladly experience again, eternally. They have no regrets.
Zarathustra teaches that no man can become the Superman. It’s something to aspire to, to reach for, but not to attain. Rather, the goal of all people must be to create the world in which the Superman can exist, and this requires a tearing-down of religious thought, a complete rethinking of conventional morality, and apparently a great deal of solitude and living in the mountains as hermits, as any life surrounded by others invites the thoughts and desires of others, and the potential desire to submit to others’ needs. This is a big point: there is no submission of any sort for the Superman. The Superman is thus almost a sort of mythic hero, doing what he desires for the sake of doing it, rather than because he was told to. Even the powerful Hercules was not a Superman, because he feels remorse for what he did in a drunken rage and submits to complete the impossible labours assigned to him.
The one thing most explicitly described as a sin, and indeed the greatest sin in Zarathustra’s mind, is pity. Taking pity upon others is against the ideal of the Superman, because if you take pity, you are submitting your feelings to those of the misfortunate, feeling shame because of the shame they feel for themselves; this is even stated to be the cause of God’s death, that he felt pity for the entire human race and shamed himself to death. The entire fourth book is devoted to this topic; Zarathustra walks the forest because he has heard what he believes to be a cry for help, and encounters a number of “Higher Men” who have come to seek his teachings. Over the course of the book, he guides them all to his cave, where they share a meal together and listen to his teachings, an event directly compared to the biblical Last Supper. During the evening, however, these men show that even where they claim to have cast off their shackles, they are unable to maintain this mindset for even the full evening; every time Zarathustra steps outside for a little fresh air, they relapse in some way, culminating in the entire group starting to worship an ass because a proper replacement for the God would have to be someone who is slow, stupid, and never says ‘no’.
Seriously, they start worshiping a literal pack-ass, because its braying sounds like ‘Ye-a’.
That Zarathustra is disappointed in them makes for quite an understatement; he verbally tears into the whole group, until they renounce the false idol before them. The ass, for its part, doesn’t seem to much care, though someone got it drunk so when the Dionysian revelries that ensue during the night begin, it dances right along with everyone else.
The work as a whole ends on a cliffhanger; apparently Nietzsche planned it out as six volumes, but only wrote four of them. Zarathustra spends the whole work talking of the pride of his eagle and the wisdom of his serpent; they are joined in the last few pages of the book by a lion who, in the prophet’s estimation, indicates that the time to return and preside over the noontide for his followers is at hand. The book simply ends there, though; what would have come is lost to time. We can only wonder what the creation of a world that follows the ideals of Zarathustra might have been, to bring about the Superman.
In any case, by the end of reading, I had a very specific idea of what the Nietzschean Superman looks like in mind, and it’s certainly not what the Nazis were trying to create when they got done reading this book in the early part of the Twentieth Century.
I see the Superman, as described here, as being one of those off-the-grid sorts, living out in the mountains, off the land, not because it’s easy, but because it’s a perpetual challenge for them. The only rules are those they make for themselves, because nobody else is around to enforce anything. They just live a solitary existence, enjoying their life to the fullest and answerable to nobody, because they’re above everyone, figuratively but also literally, living at the high altitides offered by, well… a mountain.
Basically, what I’m getting from all of this is that Nietzsche’s ideal Superman is a doomsday prepper.
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