Introduction
In the section titled "The Three Metamorphoses" at the beginning of Part One of Thus Spoke Zarathustra , Zarathustra states, "Of the three metamorphoses of the spirit I tell you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child."(1) These three transformations point the way to the substance of the (anti-) gospel of Zarathustra and of Nietzsche himself. Although Gadamer has cautioned against equating the words of Zarathustra with the philosophy of Nietzsche (2), it does seem, at least in this instance, that Nietzsche's beliefs about the nature of mankind's spiritual need can be found in Zarathustra's proclamation. This suspicion is supported by the fact that in two of Nietzsche's later books, Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist , we find a diagnosis of Europe's cultural sickness in terms of these three transformations of the spirit.
In the progression from the camel to the child, there is a development of man from his most passive to his most active state of existence. But Nietzsche perceived evidence of a general decline in European man's spiritual health. He called this decline "nihilism," and diagnosed its symptoms in the type of resentful man that the culture was producing in large numbers. Christians and anarchists exemplified this type, and through their aggressive attack on the natural, hierarchical order of social, intellectual and spiritual organization, they threatened to subvert the coming of mankind's greatest possibility: the overman.
The overman is a higher type of man, corresponding to the highest metamorphosis of the spirit. He is like a child, at ease with the vital forces of the earth and nature as they express themselves in and around him. Being free from all resentment and pity for the world and its inhabitants, he is the only one capable of truly thinking "the most abysmal thought" of the Eternal Return while affirming and living in accordance with its (un-)truth.
The Symptoms: The Christian, the Anarchist and Socrates
In Twilight of the Idols , Nietzsche writes:
"My objection against the whole of sociology in England and France remains that it knows from experience only the forms of decay, and with perfect innocence accepts its instincts of decay as the norm of sociological value-judgments. The decline of life, the decrease in the power to organize, that is to tear open clefts, subordinate and super-ordinate -- all this has been formulated as the ideal in contemporary sociology." (3)
Nietzsche saw himself as a kind of philosophical physician capable of diagnosing this sickness and decay of man. The culture of Europe was experiencing a malaise and general decline in vitality which was exemplified in the Christian and the anarchist. These two types made especially apparent what was wrong with mankind, and in their decadence Nietzsche detected the symptom of nihilism.
The Christian is objectionable because he is a symptom of mankind's world-weariness. In rejecting the realm of the here and now in favor of a transcendent, heavenly afterlife, he reveals his weakness. This weakness is first observed in Judaism, whose logic is simply carried out in the development of Christianity. When faced with the question "to be or not to be," Nietzsche tells us that the Jews decided "to be at any price." (4) The price for the survival of their kind turned out to be an inversion of natural values and a flight from "Yahweh" into the hands of "God."
Yahweh originally represented the natural state of affairs that prevailed in the world, and the Jews were most noble in their worship of his severe and uncompromising presence. Yahweh was the principle of nature, personified as an arbitrary, all powerful ruler who creates and destroys on a whim. The exodus from Egypt, however, modified the needs of the Jewish people, and in accordance with this situation Yahweh changed from a natural force which tested the Jews' toughness of spirit into a willful God who erected a moral order with the proclamation of commandments. The priest is the mouthpiece through which this unnatural state of affairs gains a voice, and he judges everything stupidly in terms of "obedience or disobedience to God." (5) He is a further symptom of decline, inventing sin as the condition necessary for his own livelihood, draining the strength of his people like a parasite drains the blood of its host, and preparing the way for the nature inverting onslaught of Christianity.
The Jews at least retained the noble assertion that they were a "chosen people." But with Christianity, even this vestige of rank order was abolished. In this way Christianity revolted against the last thing that was noble in Judaism. Nietzsche interprets Christianity as an attempt to extend, preserve and multiply the type of human spirit found in Jesus. This project, however, was doomed to failure from the start. Jesus' teaching was about a way to live, not about a way to believe, and the attempt to perpetuate his type through preaching to the masses only led to a perverted and distorted doctrine. The lower men who followed Jesus reinterpreted his message in their own terms, thereby misconstruing it altogether. The Christian does what he does because it is the law, but Jesus did what he did out of an instinctual physiological sensitivity to suffering, similar to that of Buddha or Epicurus. No one who experiences this sensitivity is able to endure extended contact with the world because they "feel every contact too deeply." (6) The Christian, on the other hand, behaves in accordance with the rules of the Church only in order to gain access to Heaven and obtain eternal happiness. This difference is an extremely important one. It is the difference between acting in accord with one's nature and rebelling against what one is.
The Christian, Nietzsche claims, is similar to the anarchist. He denies the natural rank order of the world in favor of an egalitarian vision of the equality of all souls. This rejection of super- and subordination is a symptom of resentment against reality. It is the dissatisfied cry of the weak who, instead of acting in accord with their own temperaments, revolt against nature and commit a kind of hubris against the world. Nietzsche thought that the socialist doctrines advocated by anarchist writers of his time attested to just this sort of weakness of spirit. (7) These advocates of communal life thought that humans would enjoy expanded freedom and happiness with the abolition of property, leadership, unequal social status and privilege. But, Nietzsche points out, the complaints and desires of the anarchist are the complaints and desires of those who want revenge on a world that has denied them what they are too weak to seize. "...there is a fine dose of revenge in every complaint." (8) The anarchist tries to find someone at fault for the suffering that he undergoes, and in this fault-finding is exhibited the weakness of one who cannot simply move forward with his own life. The only difference between the Christian and the anarchist is that the Christian finds fault in himself while the anarchist finds fault in others.
A world full of Christians and anarchists is a world in decline. Desiring release from suffering in the here and now, Christians and anarchists imagine the existence of illusory, utopian worlds beyond this one: the Christian Heaven and the Anarchist Collective. In these other-worldly utopias, because everyone is equal, everything is perfect. Since all suffering is the result of the powerful imposing their will upon the weaker, in these other worlds, all suffering ceases. Pain and want are eliminated, life is happy, fulfilling and easy. This is all the result of the fact that the common structure of these utopias is in perfect synchronization with the capacities of the weak. But, in actual fact, this is a denial of the real structure of the world and a desecration of the earth itself. The desire for these utopias is decadent in that they represent a deterioration of the capacity for real world life and living. The Christian and the anarchist are both nihilists in that they reject the only kind of life possible in the here and now, and in this rejection they undercut the possibility of the only type of meaning that ever was or ever will be available to man. They hate the world in which they are what they are, so they desire a world ruled by the mediocre.
When the weakest portions of society band together, perverting and distorting the natural order, the situation that obtains is nihilism. Christianity and anarchism are two symptoms of this tendency, but in the example of Socrates we have the quintessential model of the slave revolt against master morality and the most significant antecedent of modern nihilism. The most important thing to know about Socrates, according to Nietzsche, is that he was ugly. This physiological fact accounts for his entire orientation towards life in the Greek Polis. He sought to take revenge upon the beautiful culture of the Greeks, and in a "masterful" departure from nature, he developed the art of dialectic. It was in the practice of logic and argumentation that Socrates saw his opportunity to overpower the authority of those around him and to thus secure a position of moral superiority to them. Anyone can learn logic, and since logic is directly opposed to unsubstantiated appeals to authority, Socrates and his followers were advocates of a kind of anarchism which invited the lowest common denominator to overthrow and subvert the commands of those in power. It was the perfect weapon for the weak who had no other means of enforcing their own preferences.
As this logical tendency spread throughout the Greek world, Socrates got his revenge. The Greek instincts began to change and the aristocratic bearing of the culture was destroyed, becoming democratic in its political and aesthetic tastes. Tragedy deteriorated and man became "absurdly rational." (9) Socrates was both a symptom and an instigator of modern nihilism. He stepped onto the scene at a time when western culture was facing the question that the Jews also faced upon their exodus from Egypt: "to be or not to be?" Socrates offered an answer which the world came to accept and embrace, namely that "...with the clue of logic, thinking can reach to the nethermost depths of being, and that thinking cannot only perceive being but even modify it." (10) This Socratic imperative reaches all the way into the present, and with it Socrates wreaks his revenge.
The Diagnosis: The Neglect of Dionysus
Nietzsche offers more than a symptomology of the modern malaise. In addition to pointing out the various sores and ailments of Western culture, he identifies the common cause of these symptoms. In the spirit of revenge lies the urge to distort the natural order of the world, and this disposition is caused by a lack of Dionysian vitality. As Heidegger writes, "If saving the earth is at stake, then the spirit of revenge must first vanish." (11)
For Nietzsche, the natural world is a chaotic flux of unorganized energy which has no purpose or meaning except the expression of the power that makes up its being. "The total character of the world...is in all eternity chaos..." (12) Though this chaotic flux is a never ending process, some of its fluctuations are distinctive. Man is one such distinctive fluctuation. The human world is a symptom of the natural impulse towards the expression of power, and man cannot avoid the struggle and battle which is at the root of his very being. With Heraclitus, Nietzsche sees the world of change and passing away as the only real world that there is. To deny this reality is to deny the nature of the universe.
Though man is a part of nature, he is also unique. He is like a wave on the surface of the ocean. A wave comes into being and disappears, but for those moments when it is in existence, it has a unique identity. Likewise, man erupts out of chaos and briefly moves across the surface of being, exhibiting a certain form and direction. In this way he is part of the nature and makeup of the universe. However, he also possesses the peculiar feature that he must have meaning in life. Just as a wave must have a shore to break on, so must man have a purpose for which to live. This need for purpose and meaning is simply the consequence of man's nature as a power expressing individual. The manner in which he expresses this "will to power" is through his interpretation of the world.
Nietzsche introduces two concepts in order to attempt an analysis of the structure of human interpretation. The Apollonian and the Dionysian are two opposite tendencies in human psychology which pull man back and forth in a struggle between the need for representation and the desire for uninhibited frenzy and expression of energetic impulses. The predominance of the Apollonian impulse is exhibited in the painter, sculptor and epic poet. It is characterized by a certain restraint in representation that allows us to look at and linger on the product of interpretation. It forms and shapes life in the same manner that our minds give shape and form in dreams to the impulses from our unconscious. The Apollonian is the principium individuationis, organizing reality and making it representable. The Dionysian, on the other hand, is the failure and destruction of the principium individuationis . It resists the imposition of form and structure, delighting instead in the uninhibited expression of frenzied activity. Dance, drunkenness and music exhibit a predominance of the Dionysian impulse. (13)
Both the Apollonian and the Dionysian impulses are necessary in any act of interpretation. The Apollonian provides a kind of formal cause and the Dionysian a kind of efficient cause for interpretive activity. Like Aristotle's form/matter duality, the two are conceptually distinct, but in fact normally appear in some admixture of one with the other. The product of such a nexus may end up being a well balanced compromise between the two, as in the highest forms of Attic Tragedy, or it may end up being an unbalanced mixture which leans too far towards one extreme or the other. If it leans too far towards the Dionysian, the product will be a confusing frenzy of undisciplined activity. If it leans too far towards the Apollonian, it will be an overly static and lifeless representation.
The human world is full of interpretations that lean one way or the other, but it also possesses a few examples of interpretations which are well balanced. The tendency of Western civilization since Socrates, however, has been to neglect the Dionysian in favor of the Apollonian. "...Nietzsche contends that Socrates was responsible for directing Western culture toward an imbalanced, exaggerated reliance on the Apollonian point of view." (14) Nietzsche's dissatisfaction with this development is more than simply a distaste for the products of these interpretations. It is more importantly an observation about the types of humans who predominate in the world. As one is more insistently called towards the Apollonian, one is called away from the Dionysian, and it is Dionysus rather than Apollo who provides the content and vitality of life. Whereas Apollo offers structure it is "...by the mystical triumphant cry of Dionysus the spell of individuation is broken, and the way lies open to the Mothers of Being, to the innermost heart of things." (15) The proliferation of Apollonian interpretations of the world, then, reveals an underlying general emptiness in man. It signals a lack of spiritual depth.
Nietzsche's diagnosis for modern man, then, is that he suffers from a lack of the Dionysian. This is apparent in those interpretive products which attempt to erect illusory representations of utopian worlds which cannot be made to exist in the here and now. These purely formal speculations ignore the single most important evidence against them; namely that man is part of nature and must struggle and express his power as long as he remains living. Without struggle and contest, man degenerates and becomes sick. Those who become sick instinctively retreat from struggle and contest, and in commiseration with them, the rest of mankind becomes infected. In obtaining the pity of the strong, the weak gain a type of control over the world and invert the natural order of things. With this inversion, the weak seek to bring an end to the cycle of struggle. By banding together they become collectively strong, and as Nietzsche observes, "What is strong wins: that is the universal law. If only it were not so often precisely what is stupid and evil!" (16)
The Cure: A Well Ordered Society
Nietzsche is as explicit as he can be about what is wrong with the culture that he sees around him. "What is bad? But I have said this already: all that is born of weakness, envy, of revenge. The anarchist and the Christian have the same origin." (17) Of course it is not just these two types that are bad, but by showing their common origin in weakness, Nietzsche offers his diagnosis of modern man's disease. It is because of the lack of Dionysian fervor that mankind is sick. Collectively speaking, modern man is not up to the task of producing higher men. Doctrines like Christianity and Anarchism don't even believe in higher men, and in this they exhibit their weakness.
This situation is fatal to higher culture. A higher, healthy culture is one which mirrors nature and its order of rank. Nietzsche seems to follow Plato in the assertion that such a society is naturally divided into three types: the spiritual ones, the guardians and the mediocre. "A high culture is a pyramid: it can stand only on a broad base; its first presupposition is a strong and soundly consolidated mediocrity." (18) The mediocre ones are the most numerous and least ambitious members of a healthy collectivity. They are, however, indispensable in that they provide society with its basic necessities like "handicraft, trade, agriculture, science, the greatest part of art, the whole quintessence of professional activity." (19) They are the backbone and the very machines that make collective life possible. It is well in accord with nature that the vast majority of humans are drawn to this sort of social activity by instinct, and there is certainly no need to coerce them into service. The mediocre ones find happiness in this function.
Once the material base of society is secure, there is much that mankind is capable of producing. Just as a strong foundation is necessary in order to support the tallest and most majestic of buildings, a strong and healthy mediocrity, free from resentment and instinctually happy with their social role, is necessary in order to support the higher types of men.
The second in order of natural rank are the "guardians of the law." (20) They are the kings, warriors and judges who enforce the rule of the most spiritual. As with the mediocre, they are drawn to their position by the instinct which is written in their nature, but unlike the mediocre, they are driven by a sense of duty to the law rather than by a desire for personal happiness. They are not the law's authors, however, and must depend upon the highest men for direction.
The highest type are the spiritual ones. They are the strongest men and enjoy the tasks that all others find unbearable, namely the activity of creation and the pursuit of knowledge. Their role is unenviable to the lower men, and the rewards they receive for their service are of a nature not appreciated by those of a lower rank. These higher men understand the dignity that comes from the unresentful acceptance of one's role and place in nature's hierarchy and so they in fact feel a duty to the lower men, treating them with the tenderness and respect that the lower type craves. Yet these highest men thrive in the outer reaches of human possibility where the conditions are severe and uncertain and so they are often misunderstood by the masses. Despite this fact, they are unable to feel resentment. Their overflowing strength of spirit will not allow them to wish for anything to be different than it is. They love the world and all of the preconditions which have allowed them to exist.
This tripartite division of human types and how they fit into the well ordered society bears an important relation to Zarathustra's discussion of the three metamorphoses of the spirit in the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra . It is here that he speaks of the transformation of the spirit from a camel into a lion and finally into a child. What may at first glance appear to be only an admonition towards personal development and growth is actually also a metaphor for the development of the healthy, well ordered society and a prescription for the treatment of modern European nihilism.
The camel is an animal that feels its own strength by taking on burdens. Like those who make up the base of society's pyramid, the camel has the responsibility to carry someone else's load. His nature is that of a pack animal, and in this is the strength to persevere under the weight of much that is not understood. Because he receives punishment when he refuses to do his job and rewards when he carries through, the camel tends to obey. He follows the direction plotted by his master who gives a destination and purpose to his ordeal. A good camel accepts its job with the dignity of a beast of burden. He needs his master in order to become what he is and like the great mass of men in society finds his happiness here.
The lion is oriented, like the guardians of society, towards the law. However, whereas the guardians are entrusted to uphold and enforce the law, the lion is a mighty "NO" sayer, rejecting all values. He is a forceful negator who acts as a ground clearer, generating the opportunity for freedom. Instead of accepting the "Thou Shalt" of the camel, the lion asserts "I will." Despite what may at first glance may appear to be a departure from the guardian's character, it is this spirit which is actually at his heart. Both the lion and the guardians are ultimately at the service of the most spiritual men. Neither has the ability to create the values which by their very natures they must orient themselves towards. The lion spirit finds itself in the paradoxical situation that it needs to deny everything, while at the same time needing the existence of something to react against. It relies upon others to create the very values it must deny. In devouring and destroying all the values that it encounters, the lion is still a fearsome upholder of the law. His energetic pursuit of freedom confirms his place in nature and ends up bringing him to the point where he finds that there is something that he cannot will. He cannot will an affirmation. He cannot create. In the guardians, this spirit manifests itself in the willing enforcement of whatever laws and truths are handed down. A good guardian believes nothing, but wills the world to submit to him.
The final transformation of the soul takes place in the child. The child has the strength to do what the lion cannot. He can affirm new values. The child engages in an eternal form of play and experimentation, expressing the overfullness of one who is a mirror of nature's endless, Dionysian exuberance. It is at this point that the spirit comes as close as it possibly can to being one with the natural processes of the earth. It ceases to be burdened or to will, and desires nothing else than to be what it already is. For these reasons, Gadamer writes that for Nietzsche it is this transformation of the spirit into the child that is "the true content of his message." (21) The spirit of absolute affirmation and creation, this child's spirit, is that possessed by the highest men in any healthy culture. These higher men are made possible by the development of the lower tiers of society, but likewise the lower tiers of society need these "overmen" as the progenitors and source of all value in the world.
In this way we can see that there is an interdependence between each of the stages in the development of the spirit, and that there is a corresponding interdependence between the various castes in the well ordered, healthy society. The development of the spirit that Zarathustra speaks about, however, is not simply a transformation and metamorphosis, but an ascension from a lower, more common form of existence, to a higher, more exceptional form of existence. This ascension of the spirit is a collective and an individual pursuit.
The Program of Treatment: Thinking the Most Abysmal Thought
The stages of decline that Nietzsche has identified in the history of mankind not only exhibit similar symptoms, they reveal a recurrent process in the workings of life. Just as a culture that is in ascent must traverse the stages from camel to lion to child, so must a culture in decline travel through these same stages, except in a different order. The poles of ascent and decline are relative to one another, so to detect an ascent in culture is to detect movement away from a lower towards a higher form of existence and thus is cause for hope and optimism. On the other hand, to detect a decline is to sense a movement from a higher to a lower position, and so is a cause for concern and pessimism. The latter scenario, the thought that all that lays ahead is decline and decay, is the most abysmal thought imaginable for Nietzsche. However in thinking it, one is led to work out the logic of the eternal return and to transform the dark, brooding anticipation of all that is objectionable into an enthusiasm for what has already been produced and must be produced again.
"Human society is a trial: thus I teach it -- a long trial; and what it tries to find is the commander." (22) This "trial" of society in its search for a "commander" is the struggle of the group towards higher transformations of the spirit. The conditions of life are such that transformations cannot help but occur; the only question is whether they lead to ascension or decline. Now, the judgment on whether a society is in ascension or decline must take place from the point of view of one who is embedded in a perspective. No one can step outside of his own perspective, which is made possible by the sum total of the history of the culture. Depending upon the stage of ascent or descent, what the culture seeks and moves towards, then, will be different. A low culture has nowhere to go but up, and when it looks for higher types, it doesn't have to look very far off. An advanced culture, on the other hand, has produced so many higher men during its ascent that it becomes increasingly difficult for it to overcome and surpass these types. Thus the rapidity at which a culture in its higher stages ascends is less than that at which a culture at its lower stages does so. A low culture can look forward to much, while a high culture may either revel in what it has already produced or look forward with pessimism towards its own decline. This is an abysmal thought for those who, from an elevated perspective, have the vision to see all that a culture has produced and what it is now capable or incapable of producing.
But the choices between affirming the moment or despairing of the future are not the only options for higher men. There is a third possibility which emerges when the psychological experiment of "thinking the most abysmal thought" is carried through to its completion. This third option consists of recognizing the overall process of spiritual transformation for what it is: a reflection of the eternal struggle of Dionysian vitality which underlies everything. When this realization occurs, it no longer makes any sense to despair of the future. On the contrary, with this insight one can only affirm all that ever was or that will be. To take delight in one single instance of human history is thus to desire everything that made that instant possible to recur again and again. The web of occurrences connecting everything that happens is so tightly spun that a tug in one location forces a reaction in another location. When we judge that a culture is in decay, the logic of ascent and decline tells us that our perspective must be situated at some degree of elevation since it allows us to make lofty determinations. Furthermore, since we recognize the strength of our perspective only through the exercise of its powers of valuation, we naturally wish to affirm its worth. Affirming the worth of our perspective necessitates affirming all that made our perspective possible, and what has done so is all that has ever occurred. For this reason, at the end of the third book of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra exclaims over and over again "For I love you, O eternity!" (23) upon accepting the doctrine of eternal recurrence. That everything eternally recurs is "the most abysmal thought" only from the perspective of weakness. From the perspective of exalted strength and wisdom, the eternal return of everything is the ultimate affirmation of the spirit, mankind, the earth and the universe.
With the proclamation of the eternal return, Zarathustra and Nietzsche have become who they were always meant to be. "...behold, you are the teacher of the eternal recurrence -- that is your destiny!" (24) With the acceptance of the underlying truth of this doctrine, both Nietzsche and Zarathustra take a step towards the overcoming of resentment and weakness, allowing their spirits to take on the child-like characteristics of the highest development of the soul. But there is an irony in accepting eternal recurrence. When one reaches this highest point of development, decline is immanent. Life will not allow a soul to remain statically elevated. There is no eternal world of spiritually enlightened bliss. The elevated one must always fall again, and it is that frenzied, Dionysian scramble back up to the pinnacle that defines spiritual height. Height, individually or collectively, is measured in distance, and so Apollo plays his role in spiritual need no less than does Dionysus. It is the tension between distance and activity which allows progress towards goals and the recurrent struggle for superiority demands decline as a part of ascent.
What Nietzsche calls "nihilism" is tightly bound together with the battles fought in the name of the eternal return. As one who felt himself in a position to make judgments about the ailments of his culture, Nietzsche must have struggled with ambivalence towards a world that was capable of producing him and his philosophy as well as the philosophies of Christianity, anarchism and Socrates. Yet the logic of the eternal return provides the solution to this seeming inconsistency. Through it the Dionysian impulse is represented as a process aimed at no final purpose. It finds its satisfaction only in the repetition and perpetuation of activity. The decline of culture and spirit is thus a natural part of the life of a culture or spirit, and nihilism is part of the very nature of the world itself. "Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale of nothingness: 'the eternal recurrence.' This is the most extreme form of nihilism." (25)
The sickness of modern man is a symptom of nihilism, but nihilism is also the ultimate cure. The inversion of the natural order, and thus the submission of Dionysus to Apollo, is the root cause of man's spiritual and social ills, but it is also a symptom of the natural process that makes up being. Slave revolts must happen from time to time in order to produce strong masters, and the strongest of masters are those who recognize in these revolts the necessary conditions of the ongoing struggle for earthly power. The man who can unresentfully claim "What does not destroy me, makes me stronger"26 understands the import of the doctrine of the eternal return. He overcomes nihilism in himself and in his culture by thinking through the logic of decline and ascent, mirroring nature and standing as an example to all the world of what mankind is capable of. To will everything again, even one's own destruction, is the surest symptom of a human being who has lived life well.
Conclusion
Nietzsche's prescription for the sickness of man is to think the most abysmal thought of the eternal return through to its logical conclusion in order to realize that the eternal struggle of nature's forces is the only purpose, goal and meaning that mankind can ever truly discover. Any philosophy or doctrine which tries to deny this reality is nihilistic in that it denies the necessary conditions of all life. Christianity, anarchism and the philosophy of Socrates are all examples of philosophies which attempt to deny life by asserting the ultimate end of struggle through flight into a utopia. They are expressions of resentment against reality, though they are also expressions of life; albeit life on the decline.
To realize that all life is a struggle between the forces of frenzy and representation is to affirm the basic logic of ascent and decline. Man must interpret the world out of which he has sprung, for this is how he expresses his power, but his interpretations are in battle with one another for dominance. The development of the human spirit from its most passive, camel-like state to its most active, child-like state is made possible by this entire history of interpretation. Spiritual ascent is a quality measured by the distance from all things lower and earthly, not by reference to a God or some other-worldly ideal. The overman is a product of the entire history of mankind capable of thinking the eternal return, and in so doing he pushes the frontier of human possibility farther than it has ever been pushed before. But in accomplishing the superlative human feat, he also dooms himself to an ensuing decline.
In the overcoming of nihilism, nihilism reasserts itself, and the overman is consumed by his very success. His spiritual fullness spawns spiritual need, and the vacillation between satisfaction and want is eternally repeated.
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Notes
(1) Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra in The Portable Nietzsche (Penguin Books, 1968), p.137.
(2) Hans-Georg Gadamer, "The Drama of Zarathustra" in Nietzsche's New Seas (The University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 220 - 231.
(3) Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols in The Portable Nietzsche (Penguin Books, 1968), p. 541.
(4) Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist in The Portable Nietzsche (Penguin Books, 1968), p. 592.
(5) Ibid, p. 597.
(6) Ibid, p. 602.
(7) Ironically, Richard Wagner did not share this opinion. He had nothing but praise for the "greatness of spirit" possessed by Mikhail Bakunin, the Russian anarchist who was in competition with Karl Marx for control of the Worker's International.
(8) Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols , p. 534.
(9) Ibid, p. 478.
(10) Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (Dover Publications, 1995), p. 53.
(11) Martin Heidegger, "Who is Nietzsche's Zarathustra?" in The New Nietzsche (Delta Publishing Company, 1977), p. 73.
(12) Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (Vintage Books, 1974), p. 168.
(13) In the Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche conceptually separates these two impulses very distinctly from one another. However in his later works, he seems to modify this distinction, absorbing elements of one into the other. Especially in Twilight of the Idols , pp. 519 - 520, Nietzsche conceives both impulses as "kinds of frenzy." For this reason, Kaufmann has written that Nietzsche starts his philosophic career as a dualist and ends it as a monist.
(14) Bernd Magnus and Kathleen Higgins, "Nietzsche's Works and Their Themes" in The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 23.
(15) Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy , p. 56.
(16) Friedrich Nietzsche, "Notes" in The Portable Nietzsche , p. 39.
(17) Nietzsche, The Antichrist , p. 647.
(18) Ibid, p. 646.
(19) Ibid
(20) Ibid
(21) Hans-Georg Gadamer, "The Drama of Zarathustra", p. 222.
(22) Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra , p. 324.
(23) Ibid, pp. 340 - 343.
(24) Idid, p. 332.
(25) From The Will To Power , quoted in: Maurice Blanchot, "The Limits of Experience: Nihilism" in The New Nietzsche (Delta Publishing Company, 1977), p. 126.
(26) Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols , p. 467.