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Second Part · XXIX. The Tarantulas

The ruined temple: divine enmity

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And just behold, my friends! Here where the tarantula’s den is, riseth aloft an ancient temple’s ruins—just behold it with enlightened eyes!

Verily, he who here towered aloft his thoughts in stone, knew as well as the wisest ones about the secret of life!

That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power and supremacy: that doth he here teach us in the plainest parable.

How divinely do vault and arch here contrast in the struggle: how with light and shade they strive against each other, the divinely striving ones.—

Thus, steadfast and beautiful, let us also be enemies, my friends! Divinely will we strive AGAINST one another!—

Beside the den stand the ruins of an ancient temple, whose vault and arch strive against each other in light and shade. Zarathustra reads this as a parable of struggle and inequality in beauty, and asks his friends to be enemies in the same way.

Commentary on this chapter

What the critics said

Aristocratic society and inequality of menAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909exposition

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.

The tarantulas are Socialists and DemocratsAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

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.