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First Part · XV. The Thousand and One Goals

Is humanity itself still lacking?

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But pray tell me, my brethren, if the goal of humanity be still lacking, is there not also still lacking—humanity itself?—

The chapter ends on a question: without a goal, is humanity itself missing?

Commentary on this chapter

What the critics said

All morality is expediencyH. L. Mencken · The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, 1908interpretation

Mencken argues, citing Zarathustra's account of the tables of many peoples, that every moral code is a changing expression of a people's expediency and will to power, that a people's god merely reflects its current ideas, and that the Ten Commandments are no more immutable than acts of Parliament.

All morality is expediencyH. L. Mencken · The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, 1908interpretation

Mencken argues, citing Zarathustra's account of the tables of many peoples, that every moral code is a changing expression of a people's expediency and will to power, that a people's god merely reflects its current ideas, and that the Ten Commandments are no more immutable than acts of Parliament.

Morality as means to power; modern goallessnessAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Ludovici says that 'The Thousand and One Goals' opens Zarathustra's doctrine of moral relativity, declaring all morality a means to power, with verses on the Greeks, Persians, Jews and Germans, and that its close diagnoses the root of modern nihilism: man has no goal.