The Routledge Guidebook to Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Nietzsche notoriously said that anyone who could understand six sentences of Z would have risen to a higher level than modern humanity (EH “Books” Z). Nietzsche scholars have dared to go much further in claiming a grasp of the book’s content. When “Peter Gast” (aka Heinrich Köselitz) brought out a new edition of Z in 1893, he contributed a lengthy preface that, he explained, was only a forerunner of the full, line-by-line commentary that was certain to come. Given the work’s enormous implications, he added, such a commentary might grow into an entire library. This essay had a short life: A few months later, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche took control of Nietzsche’s literary estate and withdrew Gast’s edition, along with its preface. However, fulfilment of his vision was on the way. Nietzsche was still alive (and his EH claim not yet published) when the first installment of Gustav Naumann’s four-volume Zarathustra-Commentar appeared in 1899. This also marked the beginning of public controversy, since Naumann’s prefaces described his disagreements with the Nietzsche-Archiv of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche.Today’s debates among Z scholars tend to be amicable, leading at worst to dignified silence. Still, Nietzsche’s tendency toward provocation suggests that he might prefer to see heated disputes among his readers. As for the full commentary envisaged by Peter Gast, a recent milestone is Katharina Grätz’s Kommentar zu Nietzsches “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (De Gruyter Brill, 2024), which consists of two large volumes, each almost a thousand pages. If English-language readers feel deprived on seeing this resource, they can find a growing number of books about Z in English. In 2005, Weaver Santaniello could write: “Currently, only a few works on Zarathustra exist in the English-speaking world” (Zarathustra’s Last Supper Routledge, 2005, 2). Nobody could say that today, as new contributions appear at a steady rate. For readers, this growth offers welcome options. For example, they can choose between degrees of closeness to the text. Keeping a certain distance enables flexibility, as well as sparing the author from having to say something about “On Child and Marriage.” Readers gain from not facing stretches of summary and paraphrase that have no advantage over a highly readable text. A commentator may focus on Z, highlighting its unique features and making little mention of Nietzsche’s other writings, or else set out to place it within Nietzsche’s writing as a whole, bringing out continuities and overlapping themes. Some guides feature an interpretation announced at the start, while others allow a general view to emerge along the way. Some pick out broad philosophical issues (for instance, about the nature of time) and treat them in isolation, while others take the literary character of the book as a crucial key to its interpretation.One of the strengths of Matthew Meyer’s Routledge Guidebook to Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra is that it combines the advantages of many of these approaches. From the start, the author takes care to place Z within Nietzsche’s career as a thinker, which he presents as having an identifiable overall trajectory. That overview informs every discussion that follows, and supports many links with earlier and later books. According to Meyer, the theme that runs throughout Nietzsche’s writing is the tragic view of life, a conception set out in his early work. Meyer rejects the common idea that BT is based on a Schopenhauerian pessimism that Nietzsche later rejects—in fact, he argues, the “Apollonian” and “Dionysian” themes remain a presence in the later books, including Z. But BT is crucial because it states the problem clearly: How can human life be endured, given the inescapability of suffering? At that stage, an answer is found in the music dramas of Richard Wagner, which Nietzsche hoped would rescue European culture from the predicament of modernity through a recapture of the power of tragic art. After the 1876 Bayreuth Festival, however, Nietzsche lost his faith in the Wagnerian cause. On Meyer’s account, he now decided to take upon himself the role that he had attributed to Wagner—that is, the creation of works that would restore a tragic vision for the modern world. Meyer finds that project within the free spirit books, despite their “Réealism,” and argues that it emerges clearly with the themes of amor fati and eternal return introduced in GS. These conclusions determine the reading of Z that Meyer offers.One incidental task for this contextualizing approach is the need to address the boundaries between Z and Nietzsche’s earlier and later work. The first transition might seem straightforward, given that GS (in its original form) ends with a section featuring Zarathustra that is almost identical with the opening of Z. But things are not that simple. The previous section (GS 341) presents the thought of eternal return, and so one might expect this to reappear soon in Z. Instead, Zarathustra seems to talk about everything but that theme, and much of Part I wanders through the topics of HH and its sequels. The dramatic role of Zarathustra makes his personality and its development a key point of interest for many readers. The Zarathustra of the Prologue is, it seems, not ready for the doctrine that the “demon” of GS 341 announced rather in the manner of a modern news reader. Instead, Z begins with the Übermensch, and the relation between these ideas remains obscure, even when the eternal return finally appears in Part III. Meyer tries to bridge the gap with Nietzsche’s notebook remark that the thought of the Übermensch is an ideal that enables him to bear the weight of the eternal return (87).The other puzzling transition is between Z and later works, starting with BGE, which Nietzsche described to Reinhart von Seydlitz as “a kind of commentary to my Zarathustra.” Here Meyer poses a provocative question: Why does Nietzsche keep on writing after Z, if his great aim, finding a solution to the tragic condition, has been achieved there? One answer is that the later works are essentially supplements to Z, explaining its ideas in a more familiar vocabulary. Evidence for this view is Nietzsche’s statement in EH: “I have not said a word that was not said through the mouth of Zarathustra.” Meyer agrees, arguing that BGE fulfils the naturalization of morality implied by the thought of eternal return. However, Meyer extends his genre analysis of Z by arguing that the later works are comedies (apart from the purely poetic DD). Thus, the element of comedy in Part IV of Z provides a preview of this later development, a point to be returned to later on.Central to this book is an intensive examination of Z. Using the idea of literary genre as a resource, Meyer endorses the thesis that Z is essentially a work of tragedy. An obvious objection is that Zarathustra does not die at the end (or at the end of Part III, if that is regarded as the conclusion of the drama). Meyer replies that tragedy, as Nietzsche understands it, is not essentially about failure and death. Hence, it is not necessary that Zarathustra should meet with a catastrophic end, even if scenarios involving his death are tried out in a few notebook entries. However, he adds, Nietzsche’s own conception of tragedy is not to be found in BT, because the influence of Schopenhauer is a misleading factor. Meyer’s conclusion is that Z must be read as “a tragedy that dramatizes Zarathustra’s own quest to affirm life in the face of meaningless suffering” (5). Thus, it is designed to fulfill the task that Nietzsche had earlier assigned to Wagner. At the same time, giving some ground to the objection, Meyer suggests that at the end of Part III, Zarathustra does undergo “a kind of death.” But this is more of a transformation; Zarathustra now becomes a purely natural being, in fact one with nature itself.The author is methodical in approaching each of the four parts of Z in separate chapters. As its title indicates, this is a guide rather than a commentary, but it pays close attention to various key passages in Z. Here Meyer proves to be a perceptive and resourceful scholar, bringing to light aspects that even readers familiar with Z may not have noticed. In doing so he identifies some dramatic shifts in Nietzsche’s plan for the work that, like many ambitious projects, evolved as it was realized. Part I is essentially about the Übermensch, who is presented in a quasi-Darwinian fashion, as an improved substitute for the human, but is never characterized in any detail. In fact, much of Part I reads as an introduction to themes that call for more development, suggesting that Nietzsche already intended to add new material in further installments.Yet Part II is not simply a continuation. It changes course by introducing a strong mood of disillusionment. That is why the Übermensch is sidelined, at least in its earlier form. The dominant theme is the problem of revenge and its more subtle version, the “spirit of revenge.” If there is any way toward the Übermensch, it will depend on an overcoming of revenge, but just how this can be achieved is far from clear. The chapter “On Redemption” describes the predicament of the will faced with an immoveable “It was,” but merely hints at a solution. Can we assume that the answer is somehow implied in later parts of Z? The most important idea here is that vengefulness is ultimately due not to wounded pride or vanity (as the moralists tend to assume) but to something deeper: a condition common to every human being. Despite its power to transform, the creative will is incapable of acting on the unchangeable past. Like other commentators, Meyer faces the difficult task of explaining how Zarathustra (or Nietzsche) thinks that the “It was” can be turned into “Thus I willed it” and “Thus I will it.” He gives space to the thesis that altering the “significance” or meaning of the past amounts to changing the past itself, an idea (perhaps borrowed from Sartre’s Being and Nothingness) whose appeal to many Nietzsche scholars testifies to the power of wishful thinking. More promising is Meyer’s suggestion that the concept of amor fati can perform this function, by achieving a “tremendous moment” of affirmation that can somehow become a permanent state of being (198). Clearly, there is more to be said on the theme, but this appears to be the intended direction of Nietzsche’s own thought.For many readers, Part III of Z is of interest mainly for the appearance of the striking but problematical thought of eternal return, and it is not surprising that the author gives special attention to the chapter “On the Vision and Riddle.” He rejects any reading that identifies eternal return with circular time, since it confuses the finite sequence of recurring events with time itself, which Nietzsche elsewhere asserts to be infinite. As in GS 341, the thought’s effect on the person who encounters it is just as important as the doctrine itself. The overall theme of Part III is Zarathustra’s need to come to terms with the thought of eternal return. The chapters in which the thought is not mentioned are explained as his efforts to prepare himself by affirming the innocence of becoming and undertaking a revaluation of values. His overall progress is reviewed and summarized in “On Old and New Tablets.” By the end of that chapter, Meyer argues, Zarathustra has merged with nature and been reborn as a naturalized being, and the final chapters of Part III confirm that rebirth by describing his self-perfection and acceptance of the eternal return.The contrasts between Part IV and the rest of the work have been a challenge for all commentators, and the ambiguity of its published status adds to the confusion. Here the contrast is explained by the genre approach: If the first three parts of Z parallel an ancient Greek trilogy of tragic dramas, Part IV corresponds to the satyr play that usually followed these on the Athenian stage. This idea was advanced by Eugen Fink in his book Nietzsches Philosophie (Kohlhammer, 1960), although in a sharply critical way. Fink claimed that Nietzsche’s poetic vision ran out of steam by the end of Z III, and the addition of a “satyr play” was a hostile comment on his own work. This recalls Nietzsche’s comments on Wagner’s Parsifal in GM III:3, where he playfully suggests that Wagner intended the work “as a kind of concluding piece and satyr drama.” Perhaps, he adds, this was Wagner’s way of saying farewell, by creating an exaggerated parody of the ascetic spirit.Of course, Nietzsche does not really think Wagner had that in mind. But would he resort to (literally) satirizing Wagner’s final opera if he had recently done something similar on his own behalf—that is, written a satyr play as an appendix to a tragedy or group of tragedies? He was familiar with the only satyr play that survives, the “Cyclops” of Euripides (which he summarizes in his Basel lectures), so this theory cannot be ruled out, even if the “higher men” of Part IV are far too well-behaved by satyr standards. So, what further insights, if any, are gained from seeing Part IV as a satyr play? The answer seems to be that it provides a bridge to the comedy of the later works, paralleling the fate of Athenian drama in the aftermath of the age of tragedy. At the end of Part IV, Meyer concludes, Zarathustra once again leaves his cave—but this time it is to become a ruler over humanity by carrying out a revaluation of values. Here his identification with Nietzsche is plain, and the ending becomes a bridge to the project that dominates the writing of the final period.The book’s final chapter, headed “The Philosophical Significance of Zarathustra,” is an assortment of discussions of aspects of Z not touched on earlier. The first of these is on the relation between Z and Plato’s Phaedo. For Nietzsche, Plato’s view of the soul as free and rational, and thus aspiring to liberation from the body, is a denial of life which can only lead on to pessimism and nihilism. In this sense, the author argues, Z is Nietzsche’s answer to Plato’s dialogue, a reaffirmation of the body and the natural world. The next section links Nietzsche’s ideas on human unaccountability with the “compatibilist” view that actions can be free even though determined. Some recent writers have argued that we would be better off without the idea of moral responsibility, a view that resonates with Nietzsche’s thinking, especially in the “free spirit” books. A final section addresses Brian Leiter’s views on “self-creation” and the issue of its consistency with fatalism. Meyer argues that the two can be reconciled through naturalism, which suggests that we become free by getting away from social convention and religion and back to nature. As the previous chapter set out to show, Zarathustra enacts this fulfilment in Z, and this is where tragedy is replaced by Dionysian comedy, which recognizes our status as natural beings as well as our ability to create new values and conventions.Nobody reading this book can fail to be impressed by the scholarship that informs its engagement with a complex and challenging work. Given the growth in secondary literature that I remarked on earlier, one might ask: How does this compare to other guides to Z in English? Laurence Lampert’s Zarathustra’s Teaching (Yale University Press, 1986) stands up well, even after forty years, owing to Lampert’s ability to say something interesting about almost any passage. But Meyer has the advantage of drawing on the later work of Nietzsche scholars and taking note of their readings of Z as he develops his own interpretation. Added to this are his own strengths, which include an ability to maintain attention to the bigger picture even when addressing some textual detail. In many places his discussions throw new light on passages that have already attracted the attention of commentators. All this makes the book suitable for a wide readership, although it is introduced as aimed at a particular audience, which the author identifies as “Anglo-American philosophers interested in Nietzsche” (2). There I think he is doing himself an injustice. There are many outside the “Anglo-American” circle who will benefit from the breadth and thoroughness of this treatment. It may not be the commentary that Peter Gast envisaged, but it is something of more value to present-day readers of Z, a consistently helpful guide that will support them on their way through Nietzsche’s most thought-provoking book.