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Post by Bob D on Jan 30, 2016 6:10:01 GMT
I could keep working on this reply, but better to just push it out there in it's awkward present development than to wait any longer! Here she blows:
This is a really good opening question that itself opens up what I think is an important sphere in the whole area of how to interpret TSZ. That is, the set of questions around the identity of Zarathustra, how he is positioned in and contra the world, what his message is, why he preaches, his co-being with F. Nietzsche (and the mission he has in common with Nietzsche) and what FN’s goals are in the whole endeavor.
There are reasons on several levels that I think this identity of Z is so interesting and important. Nor should this be very controversial. Throughout his later work, Nietzsche seems to be railing and speaking from a subjective voice, often in regards to and usually ‘contra’ any number of figures (Socrates, Wagner, Schopenhauer, Napoleon, “the herd”, the religious and on and on). Here, to a greater or lesser extent, Zarathustra is his mouthpiece and a fictive embodiment of him in the world. Another key to this is that FN sets up Zarathustra very much like a classic prophet, who is himself an expression or embodiment of the message that he attempts to convey. Also I sense that we are getting a fairly direct transmission of Nietzsche's own sense of things, his own emotive landscape, reflections and exaltations in regards to himself-in-the-world, through the figure of of Z. In other words, Z is often giving expression Nietzsche's spleen. And this is in keeping with FN’s own assertions about how philosophy is dishonest in its claims to some kind of objectivity based on this quasi-pure and truth laden substance called reason. He says that the thinking of a philosopher or group is as much an expression of their temper/mood/affect, even eating habits (“There is too much beer in the German intellect!” -Twilight of the Idols) as anything else. After all, Nietzsche was a philosopher whose practice it was to espouse views and he is simply here adopting a literary voice presumably to continue that practice. Surely also he had Plato’s staging of Socrates in mind as well as Zoroaster and the Buddha as predecessor models. Anyway, all this stuff, and the emotional temper and landscape that emerges from the overheated environs of the staging of the self conscious mind, fascinates me for my own reasons, and l hope post about it in the “How TSZ Strikes You” section of the forums.
But to come at your speculation directly, I am going to say first that the reason Z comes down off the mountain to declaim his lofty view to the lowly masses is that he felt the urge within himself vis a vis his vision. It’s my strong hunch that this urge and urgency is one he shares very closely with Nietzsche himself. Z, N, wanted let it out. He (Z/N) is overfull - he wants to unburden himself. He sets up a direct comparison to the sun, who would only make the trek up the mountain because of the reception by Zarathustra, his eagle and the serpent. Z is ready to do like the sun. He is the “cup that wants to overflow.” He gives a motive for his preaching straight up in the great line, “Behold, I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to receive it.” (Collective footnote: RD 1, pg 10).
In fact, you could argue that the prologue is a series of dialogues where the question of why and whether Zarathustra should preach his word is discussed, litigated, developed:
1- The dialogue with the sun, “I have gathered too much honey, I need hands outstretched to receive it.”
2- The dialogue with the old hermit, who urges him to think better of dearling with man. “I love man,” says Z & then in the next line,: "Did I speak of love? I bring men a gift."
3-The crowd beneath the tightrope walker,
“I teach you the overman.” (p12) & “"Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the ”meaning of the earth!” (p13) This seems like a pretty clear statement of purpose. I think this gives us the ‘why?’
But he will soon decide that he can not and shall not speak to man any longer. (I take “man” to mean, the herd, “the last men.”)
The troubles begin. Maybe the old hermit who tried to dissuade him wasn’t so clueless. In an aside Zarathustra addresses his heart (itself a practice of visionaries much seen in religious texts such as the gospels). "There they laugh. 'They do not understand me; I am not the mouth for these ears.” (p16) And again, the same line two pages later: "There they laugh. 'They do not understand me; I am not the mouth for these ears.” (p18) And then a repetition of the overman purpose, followed by a third reiteration of the notion of his not being understood, but in different words: “I will teach men the meaning of their existence-the overman, the lightning out of the dark cloud of man. But I am still far from them, and my sense does not speak to their senses.“ (p20)
He then walks, eats, buries the corpse and sleeps. In the morning comes the dawning of the big change of heart:
"An insight has come to me: let Zarathustra speak not to the people but to companions.” (p23)
So it would seem that he’s deciding that it’s no good talking to the rabble, and instead he needs these special companions, those with the right stuff, ubermensch apprentices, of a kind who are equal to his, if you will, lofty view.
“Never again shall I speak to the people: for the last time have I spoken to the dead. I shall join the creators, the harvesters, the celebrants: I shall show them the rainbow and all the steps to the overman.” (p24)
So, yes, maybe you picked out what it took Zarathustra a bit of trial and error to arrive at: that his message isn’t for just anyone. Turned out to be not just futile but dangerous, as the fool warns him and as he reiterates at the end of the preface. The cryptic subtitle to the book appears to be pointing to much the same thing: “A book for everyone and no one.”
As something of an aside, one thing I think might be a pitfall is to get too hung up on the nuts and bolts of the emerging ubermensch, or the question of what lonely elite might be fit for FN’s message if we are to take him at his word. Kind of like you could lose the value of a Marx, Freud or even Darwin by insisting that certain literalisms that could be drawn from their work may now seem absurd or wrongheaded to us. (I am probably guilty of this with Freud.) My feeling is that there is much here to challenge and inspire us if we use the text as a tool to test and inspect the nature of inquiry and our own held beliefs, rather than as a blueprint for some fixed emerging good. Funnily (sadly?) this little take away seems more important to me than the somewhat interminable textual pursuit of an exact reply to your query that makes up most of this post. Se la vie.
Thanks again for the question. It got me to go over the prologue quite a bit and brought forward much for me. The question of Nietzsche's elitism will plague us inevitably, but again I hope it doesn’t overshadow the potentially virtuous result of a risk-taking tussle with the text and the demands it might make on our good faith.
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