7 passages
By our best enemies we do not want to be spared, nor by those either whom we love from the very heart. So let me tell you the truth! My brethren in war! I love you from the very heart. I am, and was ever, your…
Zarathustra declares himself both counterpart and best enemy to his hearers and will not spare them. He bids them own their hatred and envy, seek their own enemy, and wage war for their thoughts.
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Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars—and the short peace more than the long. You I advise not to work, but to fight. You I advise not to peace, but to victory. Let your work be a fight, let your peace be a…
He advises fighting over working and victory over peace. War and courage, not sympathy, have done the great things, and bravery is what is good.
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Ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? I say unto you: it is the good war which halloweth every cause.
Zarathustra turns the claim around: war itself sanctifies the cause, not the reverse.
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They call you heartless: but your heart is true, and I love the bashfulness of your good-will. Ye are ashamed of your flow, and others are ashamed of their ebb. Ye are ugly? Well then, my brethren, take the sublime…
Zarathustra reads his hearers as bashful in good-will and wicked in their sublimity. They are to have only enemies worth hating and to be proud of them.
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Resistance—that is the distinction of the slave. Let your distinction be obedience. Let your commanding itself be obeying! To the good warrior soundeth “thou shalt” pleasanter than “I will.” And all that is dear unto…
Resistance marks the slave; the warrior's mark is obedience. All that is dear to them they shall first have commanded to them.
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Let your love to life be love to your highest hope; and let your highest hope be the highest thought of life! Your highest thought, however, ye shall have it commanded unto you by me—and it is this: man is something…
Love of life is tied to the highest hope, and the highest thought is given as a command. He closes by refusing to spare his brethren in war.
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Your highest thought, however, ye shall have it commanded unto you by me—and it is this: man is something that is to be surpassed.
Zarathustra gives his hearers their highest thought: man is to be surpassed.
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What the critics said
Brandes argues that Nietzsche, like Hartmann, denies the possibility of equality and peace because life is inequality and war, praising the good war that hallows every cause, and that both reflect the militarism of the new German Empire, Nietzsche differing only in wanting war so that manliness may not die out.
Mencken argues that for Nietzsche instinct and experiment reveal one's power, that happiness lies in unrestrained yielding to the will to power through constant contest, citing Zarathustra's 'not to peace, but to victory' and casting dice with death, and that this means a crusade against ethics of self-sacrifice for inferiors and a transvaluation that frees the will to power from infamy.