Fourth and Last Part · LXVII. The Ugliest Man

Why the all-seeing God had to die

Thou thyself, however,—warn thyself also against THY pity! For many are on their way to thee, many suffering, doubting, despairing, drowning, freezing ones—

I warn thee also against myself. Thou hast read my best, my worst riddle, myself, and what I have done. I know the axe that felleth thee.

But he—HAD TO die: he looked with eyes which beheld EVERYTHING,—he beheld men’s depths and dregs, all his hidden ignominy and ugliness.

His pity knew no modesty: he crept into my dirtiest corners. This most prying, over-intrusive, over-pitiful one had to die.

He ever beheld ME: on such a witness I would have revenge—or not live myself.

The God who beheld everything, AND ALSO MAN: that God had to die! Man cannot ENDURE it that such a witness should live.”

He warns Zarathustra against his own pity for the many who are coming to him. He explains that the prying, pitying God who saw everything, man included, had to die.

The death of GodGod died because his over-pitiful gaze saw all of man's hidden shame, and man cannot endure such a witness.
PityHe warns Zarathustra against his own pity, the axe that fells him.

Commentary on this passage

What the critics said

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

The ugliest man's atheismAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Ludovici reads the ugliest man as the murderer of God by an atheism of the great ugly man who reveres beauty: an omniscient God's pity, lacking shame and reverence, could not be evaded and so must not exist; Zarathustra honours his self-contempt as the mark of a great despiser.

Commentary on this chapter

What the critics said

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

Shame, not pity, before miseryAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Ludovici argues that in meeting the ugliest man Zarathustra shows the only right response to great misery, shame and reverence, against obtrusive pity, which is self-glorification; Nietzsche blushes for his race and wills a world where one need not blush for one's fellows.