He also, after his death, was accused of being a proto-Nazi due to his sister’s influence over his final posthumous works. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, along with the Bible, ironically, were given to German soldiers during the First World War. Nietzsche’s legacy is an interesting one. Nietzsche wanted people to recognise the void in values left by God’s absence and the responsibility we have been given to create our own meaning. Similarly, continuing his claim from The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra also reminds the reader that “God is dead”. His masterwork Thus Spoke Zarathustra suggests we should look forward to the “Ubermensch” or “Superman”, a spiritually healthier individual who approaches the world in an honest and fearless way.
How he envisioned this is subject to much scholarly debate but Nietzsche provides certain clear themes over his prolific authorship.
Nietzsche’s prognosis? To stand in the face of this indifference and shout yes! To affirm life and strive for personal excellence. To him, these were all attempts to cower in the face of an objectively indifferent reality. Life denying, for Nietzsche, came in many ways: the asceticism of the Buddha or Arthur Schopenhauer, the herd-like mentality of what Nietzsche called “the Last Man”, and most famously – the otherworldly illusions of Christianity. His diagnosis focussed primarily on the human tendency to deny life. Nietzsche, often poetically and rhetorically, dissected what he perceived to be the root of the suffering or apathy many of his contemporaries were facing. Yet, his remedies were not aimed towards physical conditions of the body, but rather the personal and societal ills of his time. Welcome to 'Episode 53 (Part II)', where we'll be discussing Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra.įriedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), a man who suffered greatly from bodily ills, considered himself somewhat of a physician.