Pity, Revenge and Eternal Recurrence:
An Analysis of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Late nineteenth-century Germany gave birth to one of the most provocative and incendiary thinkers in European history, Friedrich W. Nietzsche. Widely considered by modern scholars to be one of the most influential philosophers and writers of the last two hundred years, Nietzsche spent the prime of his life attempting to place common European values, rooted in what he viewed as a Platonic-Christian tradition, under erasure. His deeply critical views on Christianity and Platonism have earned him a – perhaps unfounded and inaccurate – reputation as a notorious atheist and anarchist, but a careful analysis of his writings uncovers a much different image. Nietzsche’s better-known philosophical texts like Ecce Homo, The Gay Science and The Will to Power, written in a polemic style, often absorb much of the spotlight in Nietzsche studies at the expense of Nietzsche’s only fictive work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but do so with a terrible detriment to understanding Nietzsche’s philosophy. In this fictional masterpiece, Nietzsche weaves an intricate quasi-fictitious narrative revolving around the character Zarathustra – based on, Zoroaster, the Persian religious figure traditionally dating from the sixth century BCE – and his journey from being the teacher of the Superman to the teacher of Eternal Recurrence. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche employs various figures and characters with both metaphorical and allegorical relationships to dominant personalities within the Western historical tradition, while Zarathustra’s interactions with these characters behave as a platform for Nietzsche to communicate his challenging ideas in a subtler and less confrontational medium than his other aphoristic writings. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is, arguably, a book about the idea of Eternal Recurrence and its potential to replace, albeit nihilistically, the Platonic-Christian traditions as the system by which all Western values are generated. Moreover, it would not be an inappropriate interpretation to say that Nietzsche argues in the novel that the philosophy of Eternal Recurrence provides a more natural and powerful concept of redemption and justice than those traditionally attributed to Jesus and Plato, respectively. Embracing values that depart from the reactionary motivations of pity and revenge, this philosophy of Eternal Recurrence attempts to seek out an actively creative relationship to nature, replacing the old values system with “new, half-written” ones.
In the first chapter of Zarathustra, Nietzsche elaborates on what he refers to as the three metamorphoses of man: the camel, the lion and the child. The three metamorphoses bear a seemingly analogous relationship to the three stages of nihilism – living under a set of values, actively destroying those existing values, creating new values – and even in this early stage of the novel it is possible to see a foreshadowing of the cyclical nature of Eternal Recurrence in the narrative, which will be explained later. Having its roots in his longstanding contempt for metaphysical ontology, Nietzsche explains the camel as representative of man as a beast of burden. Within this interpretation, men – like the camel – have become docile and subservient, allowing themselves to be saddled down with the foreign weight of a values system based in a “wrong-headed” belief that there is an eternal, metaphysical and absolute “afterworld” that dictates an equally eternal and absolute morality, codified with a rigid understanding of good and evil.[1] In the world of Zarathustra, the man-as-camel is laden down with the weight of the “old law tables”.[2] Where the Christian apologist may be tempted to dismiss Nietzsche’s criticism as part of a largely failed tradition of atheistic critique against Judeo-Christian metaphysics, he/she would be grossly underestimating the uniqueness of Nietzsche’s own interpretation. To Nietzsche, speaking through Zarathustra, the burdensome metaphysical value system provided by Jesus and Plato stands as a life-negating force that, in its core, seeks answers outside of life itself, looking to an afterlife for worth rather than the one we all ostensibly share here on Earth. “It was suffering and impotence that – created all afterworlds… But that ‘other world’, that inhuman, dehumanized world which is a heavenly Nothing is well hidden from men” and it is these sickly men that “have a raging hate for the enlightened man and the youngest of all virtues which is called honesty.”[3] The great sin of metaphysical philosophy, and belief in God, is not simply that it hinders man’s growth but rather that it devalues and undermines human life altogether. For Nietzsche, metaphysical convention is a product of human weakness, a coping mechanism that provides a meaning and purpose for human suffering where there is none. This “Spirit of Gravity” – as it is referred to in Zarathustra – is what creates the man-as-camel along with words and values like “compulsion, dogma, need and consequence and purpose and will and good and evil”, which help cultivate a reactionary spirit within man and rob him of his actively creating will.[4] It appears to be, within this interpretation of the novel, that the highest value of both Platonism and Christianity is selflessness and a love of others over the love of one’s self. Unfortunately for those invested in the current convention, as Zarathustra tells his listeners and followers, valuing others over one’s own self is a prison and a negation of life: it is the root of pity and its indulgence is the origin of revenge and resentment.[5] Moreover, this reactionary value, to pity your fellow man – indeed, even worse to let your pity move you to help him – does not ultimately serve the needs of your neighbor. In an ironic interpretation of human pity and compassion, Nietzsche claims that aiding the afflicted very often reinforces a belief that people require an outside force to act upon them in order to “help” them. Worse, it may lead the healed or helped into a discontent with the way physis “created” them, while also obliging them to the healer and creating a bondage to them which, over time, may create a resentment and a desire for revenge.[6] Just as Nietzsche associates a reactionary pity with the idea of Christian healing and redemption, it is this reactionary revenge that Nietzsche clearly sees as the foundation for Platonic justice.
“Your killing, you judges, should be a mercy and not a revenge. And since you kill, see to it that you yourselves justify life”, says Zarathustra of the “Pale Criminal.”[7] All throughout Zarathustra Nietzsche writes passionately on the need for man to reconceptualize “justice,” to take it from the realm of “good and evil” and reaction and into a realm of active creation and attuning our minds to physis via a naked and impartial observation of nature. In physis, one can hear him claim, there is no morality, no good and no evil. A distant star, half-the-galaxy away explodes and destroys whole planets. Where is physis’s remorse? Where is her shame in all of that destruction? There is none and this is Nietzsche’s “truth”: death and destruction are a part of life and the beauty of that reality stems from the idea there is no revenge inherent to physis, no cosmic score to settle. Physis does not react, it acts and as such the destruction that is perpetrated within it is necessary and even good. One might even understand this scientifically with the idea that the distribution of matter and energy associated with the death of a star is the birthing grounds for new matter to form, new energy to take shape, new life to begin. From those distant supernovas, to violent Earth-bound hurricanes, to the slow decomposition of a single insect: this is the cooperative – albeit violent, dangerous and deadly – dance that physis is performing every moment of existence. It is the dance that she beckons all life to participate in with her. Indeed, it is her justice: perhaps the only real justice in the world. But Zarathustra, as well as Nietzsche, observes another system – an artificial system – being imposed on man and nature. This artificial convention relies on arbitrary ideas of good and evil and the virtues of our values system is based on rewards and punishments… reaction rather than pro-action, and it has become part of our foundation.[8] Justice, within this understanding, has become all reaction: “revenge, punishment, reward, retribution.”[9] This idea we call justice in the Platonic-Christian tradition is a “cold” justice with “cold steel” (or revenge), but Eternal Recurrence requires a justice that not only “bears all punishment but also all guilt” and devises a justice that acquits everyone but those that sit in judgment.[10] In other words, Eternal Recurrence requires that the “old tables” of morality and reaction be smashed and replaced with “new, half-written” ones. To Nietzsche, what we call goodness and justice, including virtue and moderation, is nothing more than weakness, cowardice and mediocrity.[11] Books One and Two of Zarathustra are used as the platform by which Nietzsche attempts to demonstrate how men hide behind their lofty metaphysics and those associated virtues in order to shield them from the impartial “reality” of life. He does not, however, simply limit his criticism to the idea of justice in the abstract but also extrapolates that criticism onto the modern state and, in particular, the modern, liberal and democratic state. In Zarathustra, the state is called “universal slow suicide” and he claims that it is produced by the same good-evil convention that produced Christian redemption and Platonic justice.[12] In a sense, one might convincingly argue that Nietzsche envisioned the state as the offspring of the parental pairing of Christianity and Platonism. Worse, however, than simply giving life to the state is the peculiar way in which the Christian-Platonic tradition had encouraged the development of the democratic ideology and the powerful framework of “equality” that supports it. In the section titled “Of the Tarantulas” Nietzsche, crying out vicariously through the biting voice of Zarathustra, asserts that it was the revenge of the slaves that gave birth to Christianity – a religion of slaves as Nietzsche referred to it – which, in turn, forced the powerful rulers of the Earth to adopt democracy in order to lower the great into a false equality with the “rabble.”[13] This Christian-Platonic tradition, complete with its imported metaphysical good and evil, its moral codes, its pitiful redemption and vengeful justice, its Church and its State is, to Nietzsche, the first metamorphosis: the heavy laden man-as-camel, driven relentlessly into the desert… into isolation and a life negating environment. And, as Zarathustra explains to us, it is here in this desert that the second metamorphosis happens: the camel meets the lion and is destroyed by it.[14] It would not be inappropriate for the “lion” to be interpreted as a sort of “active nihilism” as Nietzsche would call it. This man-as-lion is described as full of courage and able to destroy those values and “law tables” which burden men and divert his affections to odious “afterworlds” and, as such, may represent an element within man that is able to free himself from the convention to which he is bound. Zarathustra explains, however, that the courage and will to destroy the camel is not enough to create new values. This responsibility lies with the third metamorphosis of the “child” and its actively creative will, its “unlearned” mind – a mind not yet conditioned to the falsities of the Christian-Platonic tradition – and its voiceless and carefree appreciation of the moment and affirmation of life in all forms.
Many conclusions can and may be drawn on what the ultimate meaning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra was intended to be, assuming, of course, that Nietzsche had any hard-and-fast meanings attached to the novel. There can be no doubt that he was a brilliant rhetorician and, as such, it might honor Nietzsche most to conclude that Zarathustra has an infinite number of meanings and, at the same time, a resounding lack of “meaning” as we’ve come to know it. After all, this novel is a “book for all and none.” With all of that being said, however, it would not be inappropriate to surmise that this book is, at its core, a book about Eternal Recurrence. That “heaviest weight” of this idea foreshadows every page of the text, giving clues and glimpses in the fog of Zarathustra’s journey. It waits patiently, voicelessly in the darkness and stillness of Zarathustra’s own mind and soul to be revealed… that ineffable truth which can barely be spoken, let alone categorized, canonized and formed into a doctrine. Eternal Recurrence, Zarathustra’s “mistress” and “abysmal thought,” requires the heart of the third metamorphosis, the man-as-child, in order to come forth.[15] Indeed, Nietzsche seems to argue that the “abyss” of Eternal Recurrence can lead to your demise or kill you outright; trying to comprehend it can drive you mad and trying to live it may undo you altogether.[16] Perhaps one of the most maddening aspects of Eternal Recurrence is that it is so unexplainable. As Nietzsche reminds us, “truth” and “reality” cannot be spoken. Language itself is a convention – perhaps even the progenitor of all convention – bringing a woefully inadequate medium to the task of comprehension, by virtue of language’s own inherent limitations as well as man’s own limited powers of perception on the Universal scale.[17] Among the few interpretations that one might be able to offer with regard to Eternal Recurrence is one that might claim that the moment, Das Augenblick, is in fact a microcosm of Eternal Recurrence. In this interpretation, the concept is offered that the “past” and the “future” are not progressively linear (i.e. Past à Moment à Future) but, rather, that the Augenblick is, as Zarathustra claims, the “gateway” by which all past and all future coalesce into the ever-present “now” (i.e. Past à Moment ß Future).[18] In a sense, then, man is not a goal or a destination but instead, as Zarathustra claims, a bridge or a tightrope suspended over the abyss of Eternal Recurrence, balancing himself in the moment, affirming the moment, dedicated to every moment of life on Earth without reservation.[19] This, however, raises the quintessential question of human life: why, then, are we here? Where is the purpose? Perhaps more pointedly: why should we abandon, indeed destroy, the old Christian-Platonic convention (a values system that provides a compelling – even flattering – identity and purpose for humanity) for this new one? Men, Nietzsche seems to claim, need to create their own values, their own good and evil, their own “law” for themselves. The “good” and the “just” as we know them today make no room for those with their own values, they are – and always have been – set against such people. And who better to invoke as an example of this than Jesus? It was the “good” and the “just” Pharisees that killed Jesus, and, thus, his premature death seems to have perpetuated a values system that negates life.[20] Indeed, the very life of Jesus himself can be interpreted not as the life of a camel but as a lion! His teachings and ministry is marked, albeit incompletely if you were to ask Nietzsche, by a powerful – epoch splitting – “trans-valuation” of the values that supported the world in which he lived. Yet, as Zarathustra would remind his followers in Book Two, Christians don’t appear to be very “redeemed” at all and, as such, they would have to seem to be much more “redeemed” if they were to inspire any great belief in the power of their Redeemer. Men, according to Nietzsche, would do better to find redemption elsewhere, a redemption that is of their own creation and not beholden to a Redeemer, not a reaction to the pity taken on them by a God.[21] Furthermore, one could argue that Nietzsche intends to say that it is the will to create that is the true redemption for man. The metaphysical redemption of Jesus and metaphysical justice of Plato do not seem to be compatible with one another. One might even make a persuasive argument that they are mutually exclusive to one another since it seems that the former moves the metaphysical “Power” to pity and the latter to revenge and punishment, a potentially irreconcilable situation.[22] The creative will, however, is “truly” redemptive because it has evidently unlearned reactionary motivation and defines its relationship with physis actively, engaging it, participating with it, affirming it in its totality. Creation and procreation, then, may be seen as the true act of redemption. A redemption that is not found in humility or in the selfless bloodletting that is, arguably, life negating, but is rather found in creation.[23] Alongside this more naturally attuned redemption is, not surprisingly, a more naturally attuned justice: a justice that restores inequality to men because men, by the virtue of their inherent differences are, not only different, but also unequal. Within this interpretation it is physis itself that requires inequality and the domination of the great over the least. Nature exposes for us the path of strife and contention with one another and this process is called “beautiful” and “natural.”[24] Also, within this interpretation, is a more natural “purpose” for humanity if it is appropriate to call it that. The “purpose” of men and women is war and childbirth: the balancing of contention and creation and it is within the juxtaposition of these activities – which are proactive and not reactive – that the anthropos element within physis finds the “balance” of the moment.[25]
It would seem to be a very poor reading of Thus Spoke Zarathustra if one, by the end, was unable to discern Nietzsche’s distaste for Platonic justice and Christian redemption, along with all of the cultural, moral, political, and religious offspring that they produced. Indeed, that point alone seems to be hardly worth raising. What is not immediately clear is how Nietzsche intended to usurp those two pillars of Western civilization. The philosophy of Eternal Recurrence behaves as an unspoken thread that runs through the course of Zarathustra, uniting it thematically – yet “voicelessly” – in a powerfully nihilistic and “trans-valuating” work of fiction. It might be said that this “book for all and one” stands in human intellectual history as a unique demonstration of the “truth” that the values that move the world are, indeed, ineffable.
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