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Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No One (Penguin Classics) Paperback – November 30, 1961

by Friedrich Nietzsche (Author), R. J. Hollingdale (Editor, Translator, Introduction)

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Friedrich Nietzsche's most accessible and influential philosophical work, misquoted, misrepresented, brilliantly original and enormously influential

Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his most famous and influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. Nietzsche's utterance 'God is dead', his insistence that the meaning of life is to be found in purely human terms, and his doctrine of the Superman and the will to power were all later seized upon and unrecognisably twisted by, among others, Nazi intellectuals. With blazing intensity and poetic brilliance, Nietzsche argues that the meaning of existence is not to be found in religious pieties or meek submission to authority, but in an all-powerful life force: passionate, chaotic and free.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Classics
Publication date

November 30, 1961
Dimensions

5.07 x 0.82 x 7.75 inches
ISBN-10

0140441182
ISBN-13

978-0140441185
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About the Author

Frederich Nietzsche (1844-1900) became the chair of classical philology at Basel University at the age of 24 until his bad health forced him to retire in 1879. He divorced himself from society until his final collapse in 1899 when he became insane. He died in 1900. R.J. Hollingdale translated 11 of Nietzsche's books and published 2 books about him.

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Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics (November 30, 1961)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140441182
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140441185
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.53 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.07 x 0.82 x 7.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #7,914 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6 in Modern Philosophy (Books)
- #28 in Metaphysical & Visionary Fiction (Books)
- #275 in Classic Literature & Fiction

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Martin Asiner

The "Ubermensch:" Not Guilty as Charged

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 25, 2011

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When Friedrich Nietzsche published THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA in 1883, his readers did not know exactly what to make of it. It seemed to be a hybrid of philosophy and literature, both of which were presented in a further hybrid of prose fiction, biblical parody, and even poetry. It did not sell well--at least at first, but before too many years had passed his readers acknowledged it as his masterpiece. Its influence on future writers and intellectuals--like Shaw, Mencken, Dreiser, London, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Derrida and others--has been unmistakable. Its basic plot--if one may call it that--relates to a man called Zarathustra who has spent the last ten years in seclusion meditating atop a mountain. He descends so that he may impart his accumulated wisdom to the world of ordinary folk. It is the content and mode of his interactions with his listeners that form the structure of the book.

In the book's four sections, Nietzsche through Zarathustra discusses, relates, and enlarges upon such diverse topics as the death of God, the Will to Power, the Ubermensch ("Superman" or Overman), the revaluation of values, and the doctrine of eternal recurrence. In Nietzsche's mind, these topics are not so divergent at all. At various points they merge, overlap, and interweave into a tapestry that forms the basis of Nietzsche's essential world view that for far too long the human species has been running downhill since the classical Greeks and Romans. Humanity as he saw it then was badly in the need to regenerate itself into a higher order of being--the Ubermensch. THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA is the working out of this transition between homo sapiens and homo superior.

When Zarathustra descends from the mountain top to begin Part I, he declares that God is dead. But he does not mean that he is expressing some new form of atheism. Rather, he suggests that whatever God may have been in the past or what kind of support He may have once provided, man now must not rely on any hope of divine intervention. Thus, the only salvation that man can expect must be from within himself. Man himself is presented as a species in progress. The future man which Zarathustra calls the Overman is one that must purposefully be bred into existence. The Overman is the hope of present day man: "I teach you the overman," Zarathustra exclaims. "Man is something that shall be overcome."

In Part II, Nietzsche elaborates on the will to power. This "will" is a direct result of man's realization that with the death of God and the resulting requirement that man must look only within himself for support that man must exercise his will over himself. There is an unfortunate current belief that Nietzsche meant "will" only in the context of dominion over others, but for him, the ability of the Overman to control his own base passions was the key distinction between the exalted self of the future Ubermensch and the lowly rabble that he despised.

The third part introduces a full explanation of eternal recurrence. Nietzsche believed that this universe was one marked by an inbuilt lack of order, structure, and design, thus positing that man himself is neither good nor evil. In fact man is doomed or fated to relive each moment of existence in a cycle with no beginning or ending. And what keeps getting repeated is everything--matters of the highest import, of the lowest and all else in between. It then becomes incumbent for all human beings to act as if they are worthy to relive each moment of repeated life. It follows that this entire theory implies that humanity thereby affirms the worth of its collective existence.

The fourth and final part emphasizes Nietzsche's belief in the wholeness of his entire philosophy. One cannot accept this part or that part and reject some other part. For man even to hope to make the transition from his current lowly state of bovine existence to the higher realm of the Overman, he must prove worthy by acknowledging that the death of God is a brutal necessity to spur him on to bravery, independence, and unyielding will. The very end of the book is a stark reminder that in the symbol of the donkey god man no longer needs the falsely comforting illusion that he needs an omnipotent deity to control his destiny. The Nietzsche of popular culture may believe in the need for a dominant and superior mind as charged, but the Nietzsche as a proto-Nazi is simply unwarranted.

24 people found this helpful

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An Experiment on The Human Condition

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 22, 2021

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When Nietzsche wrote Thus Spake Zarathustra he had finished with trying to topple the idols of nineteenth century civilization: the market, the monarchies, academia and the Church had all received the blows of his literary hammer.

Now he turns to describing life after the demolition. Arguing that man is just another animal and has no soul, he thought that the laws of science, mathematics and even logic were not eternally binding rules of the universe but simply repetitions recorded by the senses. Thus, he discovers that the Ubermensch must legislate his owns rules for life; just as Zarathustra originally created a vision of the moral universe, this new Zarathustra legislates a law for himself. This is the supreme meaning of the “will to power”—not so much to exert power over others as to create a universe for yourself.

I think a helpful analogy is to think of Nietzsche and Monotheism as two paths: Monotheism believes man has a rational soul that can discover moral, logical and scientific rules that are perennially true. Nietzsche thought that each man must create rules that were binding on himself and his particular experience of the universe. Most of us end up borrowing parts of both and accept inconsistency.

Nietzsche’s later biography might be read as a warning against this thought. This is fair, but one should also consider that few men have penetrated the consequences of death of the idols as thoroughly as Nietzsche. It hardly needs a recommendation, but I was fascinated by this man’s effort to create and live in a world of his own making. Must reading for those interested in experiments on the human condition.

15 people found this helpful

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guy

Also Sprach Zarathustra - Difficult but Worth the Effort

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 8, 2007

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To start off with, the Walter Kaufmann translation is by now well known to be probably the authoritative edition of Zarathustra (although the excerpts I've read from the Del Caro Cambridge Texts edition seems to be perhaps a more beautiful style). One of the reasons I originally picked up this edition was because the only translations available over the web were the droning and pedantic Thomas Common versions which are not only dull but muddled. Walter Kaufmann's translation gives a degree of clarity that far surpasses the Common translation, cannot speak to all the differences (however large or small) between it and the Del Caro version.

The book isn't particularly long, but Nietzsche fills it with metaphors and parables in addition to simple narrative and merriment. This is one of the challenges of the book: you're forced to figure out what is meaningful from what isn't and on top of that what each metaphor means. Nietzsche has never been in the habit of going into intricate detail or clarifying what he's saying to the same degree as some other thinkers, and although the book is a stylistic masterpiece (with narrative deliberately done in a biblical style and herein lies one of the advantages over the Common translation, namely that Common translated everything to mimic the King James version with an overabundance of "thees" "thous" and "ests") the philosophy is at times difficult to comprehend. Again, it's not difficult in the sense that the Critique of Pure Reason is difficult, or at least not nearly to the same degree, it is difficult because it is at times cryptic.

Additionally, I've seen a lot of reviews suggesting reading Nietzsche just for the pithy phrases or the beauty of the work. And while the work is indeed a very beautiful piece in places and is often quotable (and even considering Nietzsche was very big into each individual making his own meaning, creating his own path or values), I'd caution you against that approach. Although the book has a strong "make your own way" line of thought, that doesn't preclude understanding the ways of others.

I will admit that this is a contender for one of the more difficult books I've ever read (up there with Kant, though Nietzsche's previous and subsequent books are by far easier to understand). I've noticed that numerous readers recommend reading the book a second time. I'd say that might be useful, but it would take someone with either a lot of free time on their hands or someone with a very great degree of insight to grasp the meaning of each part of this work. What I found useful was having read other works by Nietzsche first. Before reading Zarathustra (which I read for the first time when I was 15 at the urging of a friend who was taking political science and philosophy in college) I had already read On the Genealogy of Morality and Human, All Too Human. My recommendation is to read at least one of Nietzsche's other books, preferably a couple. I'd suggest making Beyond Good and Evil one of your choices. By doing this, you will have already been introduced to Nietzschean philosophy and will be able to more readily grasp the symbolism used.

Even if you don't choose that approach, you should get the main lines of thought, specifically the eternal recurrence of the same, the overman, and the glorification of struggle, in the work. Either way, this book is a landmark work in the history of philosophy and deserves to be read.

96 people found this helpful

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Bill Cooke

Amazing very quotable text.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 9, 2022

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Amazing very quotable text. Very surreal before surrealism. The key message is the idea of the Superman.

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Durga Prasad

Wrong product

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on July 2, 2018

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Received 'Home Science - class 12' book instead. Nice troll, Amazon 👊

150 people found this helpful

Mr. M. A. Gordon

Unofficial sequel to Zend Avesta, and the Gospels for good measure

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 28, 2019

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Not an easy book to get through from beginning to end, but still a monumental contribution to continental and critical philosophy, and indeed western literature. This isn't necessarily the first (or only) book you should read by Nietzsche (that would be Genealogy of Morals and Birth of Tragedy), but certainly not the last.
Once acquainted with the revolutionary, psychological and discourse based method of Nietzsche, this work is the perfect example of that method as applied to Christianity, western philosophy and ethics. It certainly laid the groundwork for Freud, Foucault and others - and here above all he is the true 'master of suspicion' in revealing the bitterness, bad faith and hypocrisy of standard, bourgeois moral reasoning. In that sense, Nietzsche is right when he claims in other work to be the successor to Voltaire and that Zarathustra is the successor of Candide. However, what skills he has in lyricism, he generally lacks in satire and humour. Nietzsche tries, he really tries, but is not a funny man - maybe it's the old translation?
However, as a master of suspicion, it's only right to turn that suspicion back on the author. Of course, he was a sick and unloved man, at odds with his time and resentful for that reason. He's a wannabe aristocrat without means or a true understanding of the steam engine or the telegraph. Therefore, as much as his tainted image comes from his obscure style and later misuse of his work, it has kernel of truth. There might be no direct line to National Socialism (Nietzsche would have fared more honourable than Heidegger - and would have despised their murderous nationalism and racism, thuggishness and obscurantism), but there is a line to thinkers like Gabriele D'Annunzio and Julius Evola that can't be denied.
It's bad faith and hypocrisy - and as such bad thinking and bad living - that his disgust (disgust at the modern world being a key mark of the superman) for the 'mob' comes from. We might call them 'normies' or 'sheeple' today. Nietzsche's anti-egalitarianism has to be read in light of his views on hypocrisy, and so there is key parallel to what Marx says about bourgeois hypocrisy, "This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham."
Today, the (liberal) left and right clearly share, if not the same moral assumptions, then the same meta-moral assumptions about methodology and reasoning, and a lack of true criticiality in how these assumptions are viewed - Nietzsche was right about that. In that sense, Nietzsche's 'transvaluation of values' is closer to the neo-Aristotelianism of 'virtue ethics' than Russell's quip about 'conquerors who speak Greek'. Hence, Schopenhauer, as the 'Soothsayer' is almost chief among the devils, but pride of place goes to Wagner, the 'Sorcerer'.
There is no engagement with Hegel in Nietzsche, or the 'societal ethics' of Philosophy of Right - but it is clear to me that the personal and psychological 'hypocrisy' Nietzsche identifies in this book, rather than a call to capitalistic individualism and philosophical subjectivism, was a warning about the type of people who are about to start the twentieth century. It was a fork in the road between industrial slaughter and pseudo-religious obscurantism that Nietzsche could sense, but as the poetry of this work shows, could not articulate clearly. It was a fork growing wider in 1890 that would be obliterated in 1914. As per the 'eternal recurrence', one of the most difficult ideas in Nietzsche's work and in this book, we can't go back to 1914, but we can spiral back as different people and turn the wheel again.

24 people found this helpful

Manendra

Ah ! This.

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on June 13, 2018

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Before writing 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' Nietzsche wrote to his friend in a letter that he did not have a single reason to live even tomorrow, he was extremely despondent at that time. From the 'understanding' of this chaotic phase of his life this book came out in existence.

"To give birth to a dancing star you need chaos in your soul."

It is the most misunderstood book in human history : this is the book from which Nazis had taken their whole philosophy for the world war second.
This is one of the profoundest books ever created in western philosophy and religion.
Even If Nietzsche had not written anything else except Zarathustra, he would have served humanity immensely - more cannot be expected from any man.
The whole book is over-rich in music, it has to be sung, rather than read.
"The highest hope to go beyond oneself" - this is the spirit of the book.

"Man is something that has to be overcome. What have you done to overcome man ?"

The whole book is mysteriously poetic and extremely extraordinary and of the highest caliber, therefore demand a great deal of understanding.
Nietzsche doesn't write for children. Scholars cannot understand him : he despises scholars. Only those who are ready to burn in their own flame are able to understand him.
I don't know why people give so much importance to "the idea of death of God and eternal recurrence" because both these things are really trivial if you see the whole book's content.

And most important thing - to understand the whole book and its very soul, one will have to study OSHO's commentary on this book. Only Osho has described the very essence of 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra.' One can download OSHO's commentary books in PDF through Google. They are two books : first book's name is "Zarathustra - A God that can dance" and second book's name is "Zarathustra - The Laughing Prophet".
There is something mysterious that can't be defined in words : the spirit of the book is completely inexpressible. One can feel it, live with it but can't capture it in words.
Meditate over it, it will pay you immensely.

91 people found this helpful

Douglas Rattray

Very poetic (maybe difficult to read) prose

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 30, 2020

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I'm not sure that this book would be the best place to start if you want an intro to Nietzsche - the book can be difficult to read due to the style and it might not be easy to parse Nietzsche's philosophy from this text. I'd recommend reading "Beyond good and evil" by Nietzsche or "Hiking with Nietzsche" by John Kaag prior to this book.

10 people found this helpful

Honeybadger

Don't buy#dont buy#dont buy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 16, 2021

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Don't buy it.The book is legendary but print quality is very very very poor.Also the price tag is unreasonable for such a poor quality print.
Paper feels cheaper than low quality toilet paper and Amazon,you should be ashamed of yourself for making money without a dignity.

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