The Prophet Zarathustra

The Prophet Zarathustra

Outside Reading: Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

April 9, 2016

In his most renown work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche uses the character Zarathustra as a fictitious prophet through whom he heralds his revolutionary philosophical insights to the world. The work is more of a rhetorical masterpiece than a philosophical treatise. Seeing through the counterfeit claims of philosophers throughout history, Zarathustra rejects all ideals of a real world of metaphysics. Whether it be Plato’s Forms, Aristotle’s unmoved mover, Augustine’s God, Kant’s noumenal world, or Hegel’s absolute spirit, all of philosophical history has assumed a metaphysical real world that Zarathustra declares to be illegitimate. Man has projected deity onto the universe when, in reality, nature is cold and indifferent, subject to random flux.

“Man would rather have the void as his purpose than to be void of purpose.” The incessant, undeniable desire for meaning drove humans to create religion. In his most famous parable, Nietzsche’s madman comes down to the public square, proclaiming the death of God. The title of madman infers that his message of God’s death will be scorned and hard to receive by a culture that has been deeply entrenched in religion for two millennia. The consequences of such a message are severe. With the death of God comes the daunting threat of nihilism. For a society that has operated within the framework of religion for two thousand years, such a message is paradigm shifting. All objective truths and metaphysical reference points for meaning in life are now lost. After the initial shock and inevitable depression that such a message will incur, Zarathustra holds full faith that people will eventually begin to see such a reality as liberating and exciting. Each individual will become the poet of their own life and a great reassessment of values will take place.