theme The friend as a third who holds the overflow; love of the neighbour is bad love of oneself; love of the farthest, of the ones to come.
Yea, my friend, the bad conscience art thou of thy neighbours; for they are unworthy of thee.
The neighbours' flies are the opposite of friendship: they hate the one who is their bad conscience.
Read in the book →“One, is always too many about me”—thinketh the anchorite. “Always once one—that maketh two in the long run!” I and me are always too earnestly in conversation: how could it be endured, if there were not a friend? The…
The friend is the third who keeps the two from sinking, and the longing for him betrays what we lack in ourselves.
Read in the book →And often with our love we want merely to overleap envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable. “Be at least mine enemy!”—thus speaketh the true reverence, which doth not…
True friendship requires being capable of enmity, and one is closest to a friend when withstanding him.
Read in the book →Thou canst not adorn thyself fine enough for thy friend; for thou shalt be unto him an arrow and a longing for the Superman.
Friend and friend should not expose themselves unguardedly; each should be an arrow of longing for the higher.
Read in the book →Thou canst not adorn thyself fine enough for thy friend; for thou shalt be unto him an arrow and a longing for the Superman.
The friend is measured by what he inspires in the other.
Read in the book →In divining and keeping silence shall the friend be a master: not everything must thou wish to see. Thy dream shall disclose unto thee what thy friend doeth when awake. Let thy pity be a divining: to know first if thy…
The friend must be a master of divining and silence, and can be neither slave nor tyrant.
Read in the book →Far too long hath there been a slave and a tyrant concealed in woman. On that account woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knoweth only love. In woman’s love there is injustice and blindness to all she doth not…
The charge turns on men: which of them is capable of friendship?
Read in the book →There is comradeship: may there be friendship!
Zarathustra contrasts men's stingy giving with a generosity so great that he gives a foe as much as men give a friend; he ends by wishing for true friendship beyond comradeship.
Read in the book →Ye crowd around your neighbour, and have fine words for it. But I say unto you: your neighbour-love is your bad love of yourselves. Ye flee unto your neighbour from yourselves, and would fain make a virtue thereof: but…
Zarathustra attacks neighbour-love as a flight from oneself and offers neighbour-flight and furthest love in its place.
Read in the book →Higher than love to your neighbour is love to the furthest and future ones; higher still than love to men, is love to things and phantoms.
The chapter's central ranking: the farthest and the future are loved above the near.
Read in the book →The phantom that runneth on before thee, my brother, is fairer than thou; why dost thou not give unto it thy flesh and thy bones? But thou fearest, and runnest unto thy neighbour. Ye cannot endure it with yourselves,…
Unable to bear near ones, one would have to create the friend and his overflowing heart out of oneself.
Read in the book →Not the neighbour do I teach you, but the friend. Let the friend be the festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of the Superman. I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But one must know how to be a…
The friend is the creating, overflowing one who holds a whole world to bestow.
Read in the book →My brethren, I advise you not to neighbour-love—I advise you to furthest love!—
The chapter's thesis repeated as its closing counsel.
Read in the book →Ah, that my lioness wisdom would learn to roar softly!
His wisdom wants to lay its newest offspring on the soft sward of his friends' love.
Read in the book →Thus speaketh all great love: it surpasseth even forgiveness and pity.
A friend should be a resting-place like a hard camp-bed, not a soft pitying cushion.
Read in the book →All great love is above all its pity: for it seeketh—to create what is loved!
The creator offers himself and his neighbour as himself.
Read in the book →Love ever your neighbour as yourselves—but first be such as LOVE THEMSELVES— —Such as love with great love, such as love with great contempt!” Thus speaketh Zarathustra the godless.—
Neighbour-love is conditional on loving oneself, with great love and great contempt.
Read in the book →Out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird take wing; but not out of the swamp!—
Contempt and warning are legitimate only when they spring from love.
Read in the book →Where one can no longer love, there should one—PASS BY!
Love is made the criterion for engagement; where it fails, the right response is to pass by.
Read in the book →One must learn to love oneself—thus do I teach—with a wholesome and healthy love: that one may endure to be with oneself, and not go roving about. Such roving about christeneth itself “brotherly love”; with these words…
'Brotherly love' is exposed as the roving of those who cannot endure themselves.
Read in the book →Behold, here is a new table; but where are my brethren who will carry it with me to the valley and into hearts of flesh?— Thus demandeth my great love to the remotest ones: BE NOT CONSIDERATE OF THY NEIGHBOUR! Man is…
Love for the remotest ones demands that one not be considerate of the neighbour.
Read in the book →Ye creating ones, ye higher men! One is only pregnant with one’s own child. Do not let yourselves be imposed upon or put upon! Who then is YOUR neighbour? Even if ye act “for your neighbour”—ye still do not create for…
Neighbour-love, the 'for' and 'hand washeth hand', is the virtue of petty people.
Read in the book →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?
What the critics said
Brandes reports Nietzsche's argument that praised unselfishness is good for the neighbour and community but harmful to the self-sacrificer, and that the neighbour who wants to be loved unselfishly is himself not unselfish.
Neighbour-love demands the renunciation of one ego for the benefit of another.
Brandes reports that Nietzsche, following Hartmann's lead, attacks Schopenhauer's morality of pity: pity is not unselfish but mixed with fear, comparison and the joy of being the stronger, real fellow-suffering would only multiply suffering, and against 'love thy neighbour' he sets aims beyond the neighbour, holding pity captive for the sake of the goal.
Love of the neighbour is opposed by a morality aiming at more distant objects even at the neighbour's cost.
Förster-Nietzsche says that just as Nietzsche's health recovered in 1881, bitter disappointments with friends made him feel the horror of loneliness, and finding no one who could follow him he created a perfect friend in the figure of a majestic philosopher and made him the preacher of his gospel.
Presents Zarathustra himself as the ideal friend Nietzsche could not find.
Mencken argues that Nietzsche offers a gospel of intelligent selfishness and absolute individualism, citing Zarathustra on loving oneself rather than one's neighbour, and an aristocracy that sacrifices the masses as scaffolding for a higher race under the law of natural selection.
Reads the rejection of neighbour-love in favour of self-love as plain individualist selfishness.
Mencken argues that the superman will be perfect in body and mind, delight in combat, say yes to life's pleasures and ills, be scornful, merciless and free of fear of gods and laws, owe nothing to his neighbours and sacrifice himself only for generations unborn; he will distinguish instinct from passion and renounce from expediency, as Zarathustra's sayings to the brethren and to the higher men are taken to show.
Reads 'love of the remote ones' over the neighbour as sacrifice for future generations rather than one's fellows.
Ludovici says 'The Land of Culture' epitomises Nietzsche's attack on the scholars of his day as sterile because they believe in nothing, and that its last verses explain his altruism: he rejects Christian pity and neighbour-love both as degenerative slave-values and because he can love only his children's land, redeeming his fathers' errors in his children.
Contrasts Christian neighbour-love with love of the children's land.
Ludovici reads 'The Return Home' as autobiography: Nietzsche confesses that pity was his greatest danger, pitting the lawgiver's far-sighted love of posterity against a meaner sympathy for the neighbour from which he suffered, and returning to solitude to recover from his attempt to be all things to all men.
A love for the farthest (posterity) set against sympathy for the neighbour.
Ludovici explains the doctrine of self-love in 'The Spirit of Gravity' as a response to modern man's terror of being alone with himself, which betrays self-contempt, so that learning to love oneself requires a slow inner transformation; and he notes that Nietzsche does not coerce but says 'This is my way, where is yours?'
Self-love as the patient art that losing oneself in friends and diversions has prevented.