doctrine The tarantulas who preach equality out of hidden revenge; redemption from revenge is Zarathustra's highest hope.
Ye do not mean to slay, ye judges and sacrificers, until the animal hath bowed its head? Lo! the pale criminal hath bowed his head: out of his eye speaketh the great contempt. “Mine ego is something which is to be…
Punishment out of revenge is rejected; the judge must justify life.
Read in the book →Flee, my friend, into thy solitude: I see thee stung all over by the poisonous flies. Flee thither, where a rough, strong breeze bloweth! Flee into thy solitude! Thou hast lived too closely to the small and the…
The small ones have only invisible vengeance toward the great, and sting in all innocence.
Read in the book →Yea, my friend, the bad conscience art thou of thy neighbours; for they are unworthy of thee.
Flattery, suspicion and secret maleficence are the small man's vengeance against whoever makes him feel small.
Read in the book →When, however, ye have an enemy, then return him not good for evil: for that would abash him. But prove that he hath done something good to you. And rather be angry than abash any one! And when ye are cursed, it…
A small revenge is called humaner than none, because no revenge leaves the wronged person with a hidden grudge.
Read in the book →Verily, I have done this and that for the afflicted: but something better did I always seem to do when I had learned to enjoy myself better. Since humanity came into being, man hath enjoyed himself too little: that…
Great obligations make the recipient revengeful rather than grateful.
Read in the book →And one day Zarathustra made a sign to his disciples, and spake these words unto them: “Here are priests: but although they are mine enemies, pass them quietly and with sleeping swords! Even among them there are heroes;…
Zarathustra warns that the priests' meekness is the most revengeful thing, born of their own suffering.
Read in the book →For this is your truth: ye are TOO PURE for the filth of the words: vengeance, punishment, recompense, retribution.
Names the words of vengeance and retribution as filth that real virtue should reject.
Read in the book →But sure enough there are those to whom virtue meaneth writhing under the lash: and ye have hearkened too much unto their crying! And others are there who call virtue the slothfulness of their vices; and when once their…
The 'just' who say 'I am just' really mean 'I am revenged'.
Read in the book →And when they say: “I am just,” it always soundeth like: “I am just—revenged!”
Claims of justice are exposed as disguised revenge.
Read in the book →Lo, this is the tarantula’s den! Wouldst thou see the tarantula itself? Here hangeth its web: touch this, so that it may tremble. There cometh the tarantula willingly: Welcome, tarantula! Black on thy back is thy…
The tarantula is introduced as a figure of hidden revenge, whose bite makes the soul giddy.
Read in the book →Because, FOR MAN TO BE REDEEMED FROM REVENGE—that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.
Deliverance from revenge is named as Zarathustra's bridge to his highest hope.
Read in the book →Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. “Let it be very justice for the world to become full of the storms of our vengeance”—thus do they talk to one another. “Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all…
The cry for equality and justice is exposed as impotent tyranny, envy and the urge to punish.
Read in the book →My friends, I will not be mixed up and confounded with others. There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and are at the same time preachers of equality, and tarantulas. That they speak in favour of life, though…
Even the tarantulas' praise of life is said to serve their wish to injure those in power.
Read in the book →Verily, no cyclone or whirlwind is Zarathustra: and if he be a dancer, he is not at all a tarantula-dancer!—
The tarantula bites Zarathustra in revenge for his praise of enmity, threatening to make him dizzy with vengeance too.
Read in the book →They take from me: but do I yet touch their soul? There is a gap ‘twixt giving and receiving; and the smallest gap hath finally to be bridged over. A hunger ariseth out of my beauty: I should like to injure those I…
The abundant giver imagines mischief and revenge on those he enlightens.
Read in the book →To kill ME, did they strangle you, ye singing birds of my hopes! Yea, at you, ye dearest ones, did malice ever shoot its arrows—to hit my heart! And they hit it! Because ye were always my dearest, my possession and my…
His grief turns into a curse against enemies who struck at what he loved most.
Read in the book →Will—so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus have I taught you, my friends! But now learn this likewise: the Will itself is still a prisoner. Willing emancipateth: but what is that called which still putteth…
Revenge is defined as the will's antipathy to time and its 'It was'.
Read in the book →THE SPIRIT OF REVENGE: my friends, that hath hitherto been man’s best contemplation; and where there was suffering, it was claimed there was always penalty. “Penalty,” so calleth itself revenge. With a lying word it…
Revenge disguises itself as 'penalty' and so gives suffering and existence a moral guilt.
Read in the book →Here, however, did Zarathustra interrupt the foaming fool, and shut his mouth.— Stop this at once! called out Zarathustra, long have thy speech and thy species disgusted me! Why didst thou live so long by the swamp,…
Zarathustra diagnoses the fool's foaming as vengeance for never being flattered.
Read in the book →“Zarathustra! Zarathustra! Read my riddle! Say, say! WHAT IS THE REVENGE ON THE WITNESS? I entice thee back; here is smooth ice! See to it, see to it, that thy pride doth not here break its legs! Thou thinkest thyself…
The riddle asks what the revenge on the witness is, and Zarathustra answers that the man took it.
Read in the book →“Especially nowadays,” answered the voluntary beggar: “at present, that is to say, when everything low hath become rebellious and exclusive and haughty in its manner—in the manner of the populace. For the hour hath…
He sees envy, careworn revenge and populace-pride in the rising lower classes.
Read in the book →Brandes sets out Nietzsche's view that morality's value lies in prolonged constraint and obedience addressed to peoples, not individuals; that universal precepts like Kant's imperative fail because every act is unique; that we must create new tables of values; and that the exceptional man gives style to his character and becomes his own lawgiver, while the dissatisfied avenge themselves with virtuous precepts.
The unsuccessful preach morality out of envy and craving for revenge on the harmonious.
Brandes sets out Nietzsche's theory, built on Rée's evidence, that 'good' first meant noble and powerful, opposed to 'bad' as low, while the oppressed out of hatred and revenge created the opposition good–evil in which the former good become the evil; Brandes illustrates it with the Vikings' 'eagle ideal' and their victims' ideal of the lamb.
Slave morality springs from the distorting hatred of the lower orders for their masters.
Brandes reports that Nietzsche traces false modern morality to spite, envy and rancune, which renamed impotence as goodness, baseness as humility, submission as obedience, and hatred as the hope for God's kingdom and the victory of righteousness.
Ressentiment is the creative source that renamed all ideals.
Brandes judges that as a picture of historical Christianity Nietzsche's account is an eighteenth-century-style caricature, but that it does hit a type of apostle of spite-morality and vigorously unmasks the self-deception beneath moral preaching.
Grants that spite-morality is a real type.
Brandes judges that Nietzsche brought no fresh proof against the derivation of justice from resentment, that his excess of passion comes from its link with modern democracy, and that, ignoring feud among equals, he scorns the slave caste's morality while revelling in and excusing the ruling caste's delight in power.
Brandes partly agrees that modern cries for justice often carry plebeian spite.
Mencken reports Nietzsche's account of Christianity as the revenge of the Jews, who foisted their slave-morality on their masters, and judges this idea 'sheer lunacy', an instance of wild German speculation.
Nietzsche's genealogy of Christian morality as slave revenge, here rejected by Mencken.
Ludovici says that as a sociologist Nietzsche aimed at an aristocratic order of society and the rearing of an ideal race, holding that men are not equal and that every elevation of the type man has been the work of an aristocratic society with a long scale of ranks.
Cites Zarathustra's refusal to be confounded with the preachers of equality.
Ludovici identifies the tarantulas with Socialists and Democrats whose criticism of society from below is suppressed envy, and says Nietzsche refuses to be confused with them, including the 'Nietzschean Socialists' who preach his doctrine together with equality.
Equality-preaching as resentment and suppressed envy.
Ludovici explains that the great men in 'Redemption' are inverse cripples with one faculty overdeveloped, and that Nietzsche's redemption is the ability to say of all that is past 'Thus would I have it'; the inability to say it is the source of revenge and of punishment, its euphemism, while the man grateful even for his enemies and calamities knows neither revenge nor despair.
Resentment at the past is the source of revenge, and punishment is its euphemism.
Ludovici argues that the fool of 'On Passing-by' is Nietzsche's extreme opposite and his imitator, the iconoclast who destroys out of resentment and revenge, with whom the public confuses Nietzsche, who destroys out of love; Zarathustra's rebuke of him should warn readers against associating Nietzsche with noisy revolutionists.
Distinguishes destruction from resentment (revolutionists, anarchists) from creative destruction.
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 what sets him apart is having unmasked Christian morality, the Circe of all thinkers, as anti-nature: it teaches contempt for the instincts, invents a soul to defy the body, makes sex impure and self-love evil, and expresses the will to nonentity of decadent priests; morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents seeking revenge on life.
Morality is defined as decadents' desire to avenge themselves on life.
Nietzsche says that morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents moved by a desire to avenge themselves successfully on life.
Crisp definition tying morality to ressentiment against life.