'Man Means the Evaluator'—A review of Friedrich Nietzsche,
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Oxford World's Classics
This is a much preferable translation of this great work and having read some passages in the German, somehow feels closer to it in its light-footed, pithy, and indeed harrowing brilliance—the work of an intellectually isolated man who was thoroughly at odds with the modern age back in the late 1800s and while the religion in the West at the time was that of 'progress', had this to say instead: 'The wasteland is growing.'
In my perception, Friedrich Nietzsche successfully unravels in devastating fashion the Judean-Christian tradition which he saw as only having managed to tame humankind and ensure the preeminence of mediocrity, petty-mindedness, and the power of knaves and fools in their various social disguises.
Our whole current technological paradigm is still permeated through and through with the said tradition, and Zarathustra's call for creators to stay true to the earth has never been so evocative as it is today, when the planetary power of technicity has become almost total and the thought of human freedom seems remote and unrealistic, provided that the human does not itself become trans-human as the agenda of cybernetic elites would have it.
This book is 'for everyone and nobody' in so far as it is open to anyone to read it but for no one in his or her current state of being who remains in that state, because the book pushes for nothing less than the advancement of the type 'man' towards what the translator calls 'the overhuman' (Übermensch).
In particular, Zarathustra hopes that man be such as to deliver himself from the spirit of revenge which he defines as 'the will's ill will towards time and its "it was".'
[This book paved the way for German philosopher Martin Heidegger's grappling with the Western tradition and the onset of a new Western beginning, the Western metaphysical tradition for Heidegger having found its logical fulfilment in Nietzsche's work.]
On a personal level, this book has in many ways determined the course of my life so far and, despite myself, I keep coming back to it and, each time I do, I make note of a new thought-provoking passage or insight which corresponds with my own experience and attempts at thoughtfulness.
That said, the book is not a comfortable read, but philosophy being the friendliness towards wisdom, and wisdom being often borne of suffering, this book must rate as a very wise work indeed, especially considering the bloodletting it represented for its author, who said as much in a letter to a friend.
It is in effect a new Bible addressed to an audience very different from that of the (Un)Holy Bible.
On this edition: as I said, this is a brilliant translation and better, in my estimation, than Hollingdale's or Kaufmann's.
Moreover, there is an extremely useful critical apparatus which contains plenty of notes of the references Nietzsche makes in his philosophical novel to the Western tradition: the Bible, New and Old Testament, Luther, Aristotle, Plato, Hegel, and so on...
The introduction is also quite helpful, although inevitably on the 'objective' side.
The introduction is also quite helpful, although inevitably on the 'objective' side.
I do wish there was a more elegant hardcover edition of this work available instead of a cheap paperback, an edition more fitting of its biblical nature, but some day maybe.
In conclusion: this is not entertainment, and I do not say that disparagingly as I too do like to read for entertainment, but a book for those who wish to transcend and overcome themselves spiritually, intellectually, and in relation to the world that surrounds them.
Addendum: Examples of
Thus Spoke Zarathustra Decoding
'Their jealousy even leadeth them to the paths of thinkers; and it is the mark of their jealousy that they ever go too far, so that their weariness hath at last to lie down on the snow to sleep.' —Thus Spoke Zarathustra Of Tarantulae
The Tarantula is the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu who wrote a mean-spirited account of the German thinker Martin Heidegger: L'ontologie politique de Martin Heidegger.
'Do they only believe a stammerer?' —Zarathustra's Prologue, §.5
The Stammerer is the British Scientist Stephen Hawking who wrote a pale scientismic version of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time: A Brief History of Time. Yet Hawking gets all the credit and Heidegger all the blame.
'Whoever is of the highest species will nourish the most parasites.' —Thus Spoke Zarathustra On Old and New Tablets, §.19
Who has fed the most parasites in the last century than the German Statesman Adolf Hitler?
'Where solitude ceases, there begins the market-place; and where the market-place begins, there also begins the noise of great play-actors and the buzzing of poisonous flies.
In this world even the finest things amount to nothing without someone to make a show of them: great men the people call these showmen.
Little do the people comprehend what is great, which is: the creative. But they do have a sense for all showmen and play-actors of great matters.
Around inventors of new values the world revolves—invisibly it revolves. Yet around play-actors the people and fame revolve: that is 'the way of the world'.
—Thus Spoke Zarathustra On the Flies of the Market-Place
An illustrative example and vindication of these words of Zarathustra is to be found in the actor president 'showman' Ronald Reagan's lifting a passage out of the occult philosopher 'inventor of new values' Manly P. Hall's book The Secret Destiny of America for use in public speeches (see this article), in a case where indeed the people and fame revolved around the former, but the spirit and authority around the latter.
'And this parable too, I give to you: not a few who wanted to drive out their Devil have themselves entered into swine.'
—Thus Spoke Zarathustra On Chastity
As a youth, the ex-British Prime Minister David Cameron put his penis in a pig's mouth as part of an elite ritual.