To redeem what is past, and to transform every “It was” into “Thus would I have it!”—that only do I call redemption!
Zarathustra defines redemption.
- Redemption of the pastThe book's key formulation of redemption as turning every 'It was' into 'Thus would I have it'.
Commentary on this chapter
What the critics said
Redemption as 'Thus would I have it'Anthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation
Ludovici explains that the great men in 'Redemption' are inverse cripples with one faculty overdeveloped, and that Nietzsche's redemption is the ability to say of all that is past 'Thus would I have it'; the inability to say it is the source of revenge and of punishment, its euphemism, while the man grateful even for his enemies and calamities knows neither revenge nor despair.
Nietzsche elsewhere
Nietzsche says that only Dionysus suffers as in the Night-Song, whose answer would be Ariadne, and that Zarathustra's life-task, which is also his own, is a yea-saying that justifies and redeems all that is past, quoting the passage on recasting fragments and turning every 'it was' into 'thus would I have it'.