Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (), also translated as Thus Spake Zarathustra, is a work of philosophical fiction written by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and published in four volumes between 1883 and 1885. The protagonist is nominally the historical Zarathustra, more commonly called Zoroaster in the West.
Much of the book consists of discourses by Zarathustra on a wide variety of subjects, most of which end with the refrain "thus spoke Zarathustra." The character of Zarathustra first appeared in Nietzsche's earlier book The Gay Science (at §342, which closely resembles §1 of "Zarathustra's Prologue" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra).
The style of Nietzsche's Zarathustra has facilitated varied and often incompatible ideas about what Nietzsche's Zarathustra says. The "[e]xplanations and claims" given by the character of Zarathustra in this work "are almost always analogical and figurative." Though there is no consensus about what Zarathustra means when he speaks, there is some consensus about that which he speaks. Thus Spoke Zarathustra deals with multiple subjects ranging from the mundane to philosophical, such as metaphysics, war, perspectivism, and the amorality of nature; it also began or elaborated on many of Nietzsche's core ideas such as the Übermensch, the death of God, the will to power, and eternal recurrence.
Origins
thumb|right|Nietzsche wrote in [[Ecce Homo (book)|Ecce Homo that the central idea of Zarathustra occurred to him by a "pyramidal block of stone" on the shores of Lake Silvaplana.]]
thumb|Nietzsche's first note on the "eternal recurrence," written "at the beginning of August 1881 in Sils-Maria, 6000 ft above sea level and much higher above all human regards! -" Nachlass, notebook M III 1, p. 53.
Nietzsche was born into, and largely remained within, the Bildungsbürgertum, a sort of highly cultivated middle class. By the time he was a teenager, he had been writing music and poetry. His aunt Rosalie gave him a biography of Alexander von Humboldt for his 15th birthday, and reading this inspired a love of learning "for its own sake." The schools he attended, the books he read, and his general milieu fostered and inculcated his interests in Bildung, a concept at least tangential to many in Zarathustra, and he worked extremely hard. He became an outstanding philologist almost accidentally, and he renounced his ideas about being an artist. As a philologist he became particularly sensitive to the transmissions and modifications of ideas, which also bears relevance into Zarathustra. Nietzsche's growing distaste toward philology, however, was yoked with his growing taste toward philosophy. As a student, this yoke was his work with Diogenes Laertius. Even with that work he strongly opposed received opinion. With subsequent and properly philosophical work he continued to oppose received opinion. His books leading up to Zarathustra have been described as nihilistic destruction.
A few weeks after meeting this idea, he paraphrased in a notebook something written by Friedrich von Hellwald about Zarathustra. This paraphrase was developed into the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He said in a letter that the entire first part "was conceived in the course of strenuous hiking: absolute certainty, as if every sentence were being called out to me".
Thus, "[a]s Nietzsche admits himself, by choosing the name of Zarathustra as the prophet of his philosophy in a poetical idiom, he wanted to pay homage to the original Aryan prophet as a prominent founding figure of the spiritual-moral phase in human history, and reverse his teachings at the same time, according to his fundamental critical views on morality. The original Zoroastrian world-view interpreted being on the basis of the universality of the moral values and saw the whole world as an arena of the struggle between two fundamental moral elements, Good and Evil, depicted in two antagonistic divine figures [<nowiki/>Ahura Mazda and Ahriman]. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, in contrast, puts forward his ontological immoralism and tries to prove and reestablish the primordial innocence of beings by destroying philosophically all moralistic interpretations and evaluations of being". Nonetheless Thus Spoke Zarathustra "has contributed most to the public perception of Nietzsche as philosophernamely, as the teacher of the 'doctrines' of the will to power, the overman and the eternal return".
Will to power
Nietzsche's thinking was significantly influenced by the thinking of Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer emphasised will, and particularly will to live. Nietzsche emphasised Wille zur Macht, or will to power.
Nietzsche was not a systematic philosopher and left much of what he wrote open to interpretation. Receptive fascists are said to have misinterpreted the will to power, having overlooked Nietzsche's distinction between Kraft ‘force, strength’ and Macht ‘power, might’.
Scholars have often had recourse to Nietzsche's notebooks, where will to power is described in ways such as "willing-to-become-stronger [Stärker-werden-wollen], willing growth".
Übermensch
It is allegedly "well-known that as a term, Nietzsche’s Übermensch derives from Lucian of Samosata's hyperanthropos". This hyperanthropos, or "overman," appears in Lucian's Menippean satire Κατάπλους ἢ Τύραννος, usually translated Downward Journey or The Tyrant. This hyperanthropos is "imagined to be superior to others of 'lesser' station in this-worldly life and the same tyrant after his (comically unwilling) transport into the underworld".
Interpretations of the eternal recurrence have mostly revolved around cosmological and attitudinal and normative principles.
As a cosmological principle, it has been supposed to mean that time is circular, that all things recur eternally.
Though Nietzsche "probably learned Sanskrit while at Leipzig from 1865 to 1868", and "was probably one of the best read and most solidly grounded in Buddhism for his time among Europeans", Nietzsche was writing when Eastern thought was only beginning to be acknowledged in the West, and Eastern thought was easily misconstrued. Nietzsche's interpretations of Buddhism were coloured by his study of Schopenhauer, and it is "clear that Nietzsche, as well as Schopenhauer, entertained inaccurate views of Buddhism". An egregious example has been the idea of śūnyatā as "nothingness" rather than "emptiness". "Perhaps the most serious misreading we find in Nietzsche's account of Buddhism was his inability to recognize that the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness was an initiatory stage leading to a reawakening". Nietzsche dismissed Schopenhauer and Christianity and Buddhism as pessimistic and nihilistic, but, according to Benjamin A. Elman, "[w]hen understood on its own terms, Buddhism cannot be dismissed as pessimistic or nihilistic". Moreover, answers which Nietzsche assembled to the questions he was asking, not only generally but also in Zarathustra, put him "very close to some basic doctrines found in Buddhism". An example is when Zarathustra says that "the soul is only a word for something about the body".<br>Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Volume VI, 1899, C. G. Naumann, Leipzig.]]
The nature of the text is musical and operatic.
Nietzsche would often appropriate masks and models to develop himself and his thoughts and ideas, and to find voices and names through which to communicate. While writing Zarathustra, Nietzsche was particularly influenced by "the language of Luther and the poetic form of the Bible".
Reception
Nietzsche considered Thus Spoke Zarathustra his magnum opus, writing:
In a letter of February 1884, he wrote: