The figs fall from the trees, they are good and sweet; and in falling the red skins of them break. A north wind am I to ripe figs. Thus, like figs, do these doctrines fall for you, my friends: imbibe now their juice and…
In an autumn setting Zarathustra compares his teachings to falling figs. He says the word Superman now replaces the word God.
Read in the book →God is a conjecture: but I do not wish your conjecturing to reach beyond your creating will. Could ye CREATE a God?—Then, I pray you, be silent about all Gods! But ye could well create the Superman. Not perhaps ye…
Zarathustra asks whether they could create or conceive a God and restricts their guessing to what is conceivable. He argues that if gods existed he could not bear not being one, therefore there are none.
Read in the book →IF there were gods, how could I endure it to be no God! THEREFORE there are no Gods.
Zarathustra reveals his heart and states his conclusion that there are no gods.
Read in the book →God is a conjecture: but who could drink all the bitterness of this conjecture without dying? Shall his faith be taken from the creating one, and from the eagle his flights into eagle-heights? God is a thought—it maketh…
Zarathustra asks who could drink the bitterness of the God-conjecture without dying. He calls the thought of God a reeling sickness that makes time a lie, and wants similes that justify perishing.
Read in the book →Creating—that is the great salvation from suffering, and life’s alleviation.
Zarathustra says the creator needs suffering and much dying, and must bear the pangs of birth. He recalls his own many farewells and says his fate is what his Will wills.
Read in the book →Willing emancipateth: that is the true doctrine of will and emancipation—so teacheth you Zarathustra.
Zarathustra says all feeling suffers in him but his willing frees him. He prays to be spared the weakness of no longer willing, valuing or creating.
Read in the book →Away from God and Gods did this will allure me; what would there be to create if there were—Gods! But to man doth it ever impel me anew, my fervent creative will; thus impelleth it the hammer to the stone. Ah, ye men,…
His will leads him away from gods and to man, where an image slumbers in the hardest stone. He hammers at it without regard for the fragments, since the Superman's beauty has come to him as a shadow.
Read in the book →Ludovici argues that Zarathustra, though Nietzsche's opus magnum, should not be read first: many chapters are nearly meaningless without knowledge of Nietzsche's life and friendships, and its philosophical views are best clarified by his other works, which he himself regarded as preparation for it.
Ludovici says that in 'In the Happy Isles' Nietzsche overcomes the pessimism that godlessness brings by pointing to creating as salvation from suffering, the Superman supplying the cheerfulness to face a world without God.
This is an experiment in interactive reading, and in using AI to help you grow. Thus Spake Zarathustra is notoriously difficult for a modern reader; yet taken as a set of mental exercises, it is guaranteed to transform your thinking by the time you reach the end. Along the way you will have help from the companion, who is always beside the book.
Do you accept the challenge?
Nietzsche elsewhere
Nietzsche says that for Zarathustra man is neither an object of love nor of pity but raw material, an ugly stone for the sculptor's chisel, quoting the passage where the creative will drives the hammer against the stone to free the Superman's image; a Dionysian task needs the hardness of the hammer and the joy even of destruction, 'all creators are hard'.