Nietzsche linkZarathustra Answers Jesus

Linked from Essay I, Section 13: "When the oppressed, downtrodden, outraged exhort one another with the vengeful cunning of impotence...."

 

quotes'Enemy,' you shall say, but not 'villain'; 'sick' you shall say, but not 'scoundrel'; 'fool' you shall say, but not 'sinner.'"  

From "On the Pale Criminal," Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin, 1978: 38.  

Reader's Notes

  • Several values from the New Testament are inverted here - find the connections to Matthew's gospel; also note the way in which Zarathustra fulfills the mission of the "Antichrist" that appears at the end of Essay II (p. 96).
  • Note how the terms recommended by Zarathustra come not from an obsession with sin, but from a very different value system. Look back in Essay I (pp. 33-34) to the passage about how the "priestly mode of valuation" leads to "revaluations of their enemies' values". Then consider how Nietzsche's Zarathustra is using the same tactics to move humans away from values based upon sin and guilt.

RETURN TO ESSAY ONE

 

Intertextual LinkAscetic Life as Self-Contradiction

Linked from Essay I, Section 13: "When the oppressed, downtrodden, outraged exhort one another with the vengeful cunning of impotence...."

 

quotesFor the ascetic life is a self-contradiction: here rules a ressentiment without equal, that of an insatiable instinct and power-will that wants to become master not over something in life but over life itself"

From Essay III, Section 11, p. 118

"The sick are man's greatest danger; not the evil, not the 'beasts of prey.'"

From Essay III, Section 14, p. 122.

Reader's Questions

  • What is the relationship between the "oppressed, downtrodden" people of Essay I and the followers of "the ascetic ideal" of Essay III?
  • What makes people "sick," in Nietzsche's terms?

RETURN TO ESSAY ONE