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A prophet came down from the mountain and told the crowd something they did not want to hear. This lecture from Academy of Ideas retells the prologue of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. There, Nietzsche sets the Superman — the one who overcomes himself — against the Last Man, who wants nothing but comfort and sameness. Man, he says, is a rope stretched between animal and Superman, and crossing it means living dangerously. But the crowd in the parable makes a chilling choice: give us the Last Man, you can keep the Superman.
Full Video Transcript
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the main character leaves his home at the age of 30 and retreats into the mountains hoping to find enlightenment.
There, 6,000 feet beyond man and time, Zarathustra remains for 10 years, and in his solitude his spirit grows and he pierces into the enigma of man and existence.
One morning, tired of his solitude and overflowing with wisdom, he rises at dawn and speaks to the sun.
Great star, what would your happiness be if you had not those for whom you shine?
You have come up here to my cave for ten years.
You would have grown weary of your light and of this journey without me, my eagle and my serpent.
Behold, I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee that has gathered too much honey.
I need hands outstretched to take it.
Zarathustra decides that it is time to detach himself from his heightened consciousness
and like the setting sun, descend from his mountain to empty his wisdom into the world
of ordinary men. I must descend into the depths, as you do at evening, when you go behind the sea
and bring light to the underworld too, superabundant star. Like you, I must go down.
Behold, this cup wants to be empty again, and Zarathustra wants to be man again.
During Zarathustra’s descent, he encounters a solitary old man who asks Zarathustra
what business he has with mankind. Zarathustra replies that he loves mankind and is bringing
them the gift of his overflowing wisdom. The old man warns Zarathustra that mankind will not take
kindly to his offering, but will respond with ridicule and hatred. But Zarathustra brushes
aside the old man’s warning and continues on his mission. He soon comes upon a town where a crowd
is gathered, awaiting the performance of a tightrope walker. Seizing upon the opportunity
to spread his wisdom, he begins by teaching the crowd his cosmic principle of creative evolution.
I teach you the superman. Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome
him? All creatures hitherto have created something beyond themselves. And do you want to be the ebb
of this great tide and return to the animals rather than overcome man? Zarathustra’s cosmic
principle of creative evolution, in contrast to Darwinian evolution, proposes that evolution is
not guided by accidental mutations and adaptations, but by a teleological force which regulates the
development of life from a lower spiritual state to a higher. This force is directly felt by human
beings as aspiration, and by embracing this aspiration, according to Zarathustra, the
individual can overcome himself and evolve. The teachings of the Christian church repressed this
aspiration by spreading the idea that to seek autonomy and act in the service of one’s self
interest is a sin, while to sacrifice oneself and admit dependence upon God the highest good.
As such, impulses such as sexual lust, pride, and the desire for power were branded as evil
elements to be tamed and eradicated. The individual was taught by the Christian church not to overcome
himself but to deny himself, and to weaken his body for the sake of his soul. The church fights
passion with excision in every sense, Nietzsche wrote in Twilight of the Idols. Its practice,
its cure, is castratism. It never asks, how can one spiritualize, beautify, deify a craving?
It has at all times laid the stress of discipline on extirpation, of sensuality, of pride, of the
lust to rule, of avarice, of vengefulness. But an attack on the roots of passion means an attack on
the roots of life. The practice of the church is hostile to life. Zarathustra urges the crowd to
discard with the teachings of the church and instead create a new meaning of the earth,
one that embraces the individual’s desire to actualize and assert himself and promotes the
development of a strong body in which the natural instincts are seen as sources of energy to be
channeled and sublimated for the sake of self-overcoming. This new meaning, Zarathustra
announces to be the Superman. Once you said God when you gazed upon distant seas, but now I have
taught you to say Superman. Upon finishing his speech, those in the crowd, believing Zarathustra
to be the tightrope walker they were awaiting, laugh and call out, now we have heard enough of
the tightrope walker, let us see him too. The tightrope walker, assuming these calls from the
crowd to be his cue, emerges from his tower and begins his performance. Unfazed by their apparent
confusion, Zarathustra continues his speech and uses the tightrope walker’s appearance as a
metaphor for man’s relationship to the Superman. Man is a rope, Zarathustra cries out to the crowd,
fastened between animal and Superman. A rope over an abyss. The tightrope walker’s performance is
dangerous, as he must traverse a rope suspended over a deep chasm. So too, in bringing about the
Superman, man must live dangerously. He must assume great risks and never remain stagnant,
but despite the dangers, always live for the sake of self-transformation. As Zarathustra explains,
those who live in this manner are the individuals destined to be the harbingers of the Superman.
I love all those who are like heavy drops falling singly from the dark cloud that hangs over
mankind. They prophesy the coming of the lightning and as prophets they perish. Behold, I am a prophet
of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud, but this lightning is called Superman. When
Zarathustra finishes his speech, the crowd erupts in laughter once more. Believing the fault to lie
in his approach, he tries a different tactic by warning them that western culture is in decline,
crippled by a disability of values. He informs them that this decline is breeding the most
contemptible man, the last man, the counter-ideal of the superman. It is time for man to fix his
goal. It is time for man to plant the seed of his highest hope. His soil is still rich enough for
it, but this soil will one day be poor and weak. No longer will a high tree be able to grow from
it. I tell you, one must have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you, you still
have chaos in you. Alas, the time is coming when man will give birth to no more stars. Behold,
I shall show you the last man. The last man is the individual who specializes not in creation,
but in consumption. In the midst of satiating base pleasures, he claims to have discovered happiness
by virtue of the fact that he lives in the most technologically advanced and materially luxurious
era in human history. But this self-infatuation of the last man conceals an underlying resentment
and desire for revenge. On some level, the last man knows that despite his pleasures and comforts,
he is empty and miserable. With no aspiration and no meaningful goals to pursue, he has nothing he
can use to justify the pain and struggle needed to overcome himself and transform himself into
something better. He is stagnant in his nest of comfort, and miserable because of it. This misery
does not render him inactive. On the contrary, it compels him to seek victims in the world.
He cannot bear to see those who are flourishing and embodying higher values, and so he innocuously
supports the complete de-individualization of every person in the name of equality.
The last man’s utopia is one in which total equality is maintained not from without by an
oppressive ruling class, but from within, through the evil eye of envy and ridicule. No herdsman
and one herd. Everyone wants the same thing. Everyone is the same. Whoever thinks otherwise
goes voluntarily into the madhouse. Upon finishing his speech on the last man, the crowd cries out,
make us into this last man. You can have the superman. Hearing their ridicule, the warning
of the old man in the forest rings through Zarathustra’s head. He had come to mankind out
of love and with a gift, but they responded to him with ridicule and contempt, just as the old
man had predicted. And now they look at me and laugh, Zarathustra says, and laughing, they still
hate me. There is ice in their laughter. The realization dawns on Zarathustra that the mass
of men are incapable of understanding the significance of his words, and so he formulates
a new mission. He is not going to bring his gift and love to mankind, but to a select few individuals
with the potential to rise above the herd and who, in the words of Zarathustra,
follow me because they want to follow themselves, and who want to go where I want to go.
With a newfound optimism and hope, Zarathustra leaves the town in search of new companions
on whom he can bestow his wisdom.
As he departs on his journey, Zarathustra witnesses an omen in the sky.
With the sun at its midday peak, he sees an eagle soaring through the air with a snake coiled around its neck.
Not as its prey, but as its friend.
This is a strange sight, as historically the eagle, a symbol for the highest aspirations of the spirit,
has been portrayed as the enemy of the snake, a symbol for animalistic desire and evil.
The union of the eagle and snake thus represents for Zarathustra the following injunction.
For the full development of the self, we must not only embrace our greatest possibilities,
but also lift our shadow out of its psychological depths
and acknowledge our capacity for evil.
As Zarathustra elaborates in one of his later speeches to his companions,
it is the same with the human being as with the tree.
The higher they climb into the height and light,
the more strongly their roots strive earthward, downward, into the dark, the depths, into evil.
Source: Academy of Ideas