Second Part · XXIX. The Tarantulas

Not to be confused with them

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That they speak in favour of life, though they sit in their den, these poison-spiders, and withdrawn from life—is because they would thereby do injury.

To those would they thereby do injury who have power at present: for with those the preaching of death is still most at home.

Were it otherwise, then would the tarantulas teach otherwise: and they themselves were formerly the best world-maligners and heretic-burners.

Zarathustra refuses to be mixed up with tarantulas who preach his doctrine of life from their dens. He says they do so only to do injury to the powerful, and that they were once world-maligners and heretic-burners.

Revenge and ressentimentEven the tarantulas' praise of life is said to serve their wish to injure those in power.

Commentary on this passage

What the critics said

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

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.

Commentary on this chapter

What the critics said

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

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.