Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None

Nietzsche's Prophetic Work

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote Thus Spake Zarathustra between 1883 and 1885, in a white heat of inspiration he compared to revelation. The book is unlike anything else in Western philosophy. It is not an argument but a dramatic poem, cast in the form of a pseudo-biblical narrative. The prophet Zarathustra descends from ten years of mountain solitude to announce that God is dead and that humanity must overcome itself. What follows is a series of speeches, parables, songs, and encounters that lay out Nietzsche's central ideas in their most vivid and compressed form.

What the Book Contains

The three major doctrines appear here: the Overman (the human being who creates values rather than inheriting them), the will to power (life as self-overcoming), and eternal recurrence (the thought experiment that asks whether you would live your life again, identically, forever). Nietzsche considered this his most important work. He also considered it his funniest, which says something about his sense of humor.

The prose style borrows from Luther's Bible translation, from Persian scripture, and from the rhythms of Wagner's libretti. It is deliberately archaic, deliberately excessive, and deliberately strange. Readers who come to Nietzsche expecting systematic philosophy will be disoriented. Readers who are willing to meet the book on its own terms will find it among the most intense reading experiences available in any language.

About This Edition

• Author: Friedrich Nietzsche
• Publisher: Notting Hill Editions
• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9781910749258