Fourth and Last Part · LXVII. The Ugliest Man

The great despiser as higher man

“How poor indeed is man,” thought he in his heart, “how ugly, how wheezy, how full of hidden shame!

They tell me that man loveth himself. Ah, how great must that self-love be! How much contempt is opposed to it!

Even this man hath loved himself, as he hath despised himself,—a great lover methinketh he is, and a great despiser.

No one have I yet found who more thoroughly despised himself: even THAT is elevation. Alas, was THIS perhaps the higher man whose cry I heard?

I love the great despisers. Man is something that hath to be surpassed.”—

Alone, Zarathustra reflects that great self-love is matched by great contempt. He loves the great despisers and repeats that man must be surpassed.

The higher menZarathustra wonders whether this self-despiser is the higher man whose cry he heard.
The Superman (Übermensch)He closes by returning to the thought that man is something to be surpassed.
Self-overcomingGreat self-contempt is seen as a kind of elevation.

Commentary on this passage

What the critics said

Anthony M. Ludovici, Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra (1909)

The ugliest man's atheismAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Ludovici reads the ugliest man as the murderer of God by an atheism of the great ugly man who reveres beauty: an omniscient God's pity, lacking shame and reverence, could not be evaded and so must not exist; Zarathustra honours his self-contempt as the mark of a great despiser.

Commentary on this chapter

What the critics said

Anthony M. Ludovici, Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra (1909)

Shame, not pity, before miseryAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Ludovici argues that in meeting the ugliest man Zarathustra shows the only right response to great misery, shame and reverence, against obtrusive pity, which is self-glorification; Nietzsche blushes for his race and wills a world where one need not blush for one's fellows.