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.
- Will, freedom and the 'I will'Feeling suffers in prison while willing comes as liberator and comforter, and weariness of will is what he fears most.
- Creation and the creatorEven knowing is described as the will's procreating delight.
Commentary on this chapter
What the critics said
Zarathustra is not the place to beginAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation
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.
Creating as salvation from godless pessimismAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation
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.
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'.