Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Death of God and the Last Man
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: An Interpretation
Zoroaster and the Duality of Good and Evil
Zoroaster, also known as Zarathustra by the Greeks, was a Persian prophet who founded the religion known as Mazdaism or Parsiism. According to him, there are two conflicting realities: good and evil. These two principles are ontological, representing God and the anti-god. Hormuz, or Ahura Mazda, embodies good, while Ahriman, or Angra Mainyu, embodies evil. The struggle between these two forces was ultimately resolved in favor of the former, according to Zoroaster. This explains the presence of evil in the world; therefore, it is not a mere absence of good, as Christianity suggests (e.g., Saint Augustine), but a reality in this world.
Nietzsche believed that the interpretation of human life as a constant struggle against evil (the attempt to redeem oneself and move away from the evil fruit of original sin) is the biggest mistake of the Judeo-Christian conception and must be overcome. For that reason, he returns to the prophet who best expressed this idea, so that he may amend his error and preach a philosophy of life that is beyond good and evil.
The work is divided into three parts. In the first, Zarathustra, after long meditation atop a mountain in the company of an eagle and a snake (symbols of pride and intelligence), decides to descend into the world of men to preach the death of God and the idea of a Superman. However, he soon realizes that the people cannot understand him. Talking to everyone is like talking to no one. He decides to return to the solitude of the mountains to meditate further, and it is then that the terrible idea of eternal return occurs to him. At this moment, he only speaks to himself or with a few disciples.
The central ideas of the work are the death of God (discussed throughout), nihilism, the will to power, the Superman, and eternal return. These represent the positive ideas of Nietzsche’s philosophy, along with its critical dimension.
The Death of God and the Dawn of Nihilism
The death of God signifies that the idea of God will disappear from human consciousness, and with it, all the absolute values of Christian morality will become meaningless. Without God, there can be no absolute truth. There can be neither good nor bad, and any philosophy that proclaims a natural order based on divine law is nonsense. The death of God is the consummation of nihilism (see below). Only free spirits are able to accept that God is dead and that nothing can replace Him: neither humanity, nor science, nor technology, nor rationality, nor the Enlightenment. (“It is useless to kill the Prince to enthrone in his place the principle,” says Ortega y Gasset). “God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him.”
The death of God is the greatest of recent events, although for many it is still unknown. We must preach it, says the author. The roots of the death of God lie in the Renaissance (anthropocentrism), rationalism (reason as the foundation of everything), and positivism (only science can know reality). The final stage is the Enlightenment, when reason reaches its adulthood and can know and criticize everything. The French Revolution, which carried out the principles of the Enlightenment, ended with political authority (the king is guillotined) and moral authority (separation of Church and State). The result of this process is the death of God in the human heart, leaving in its place a void occupied by nothingness (nihilism).
After the death of God (through the will to power), there are two possibilities: the Last Man and the Superman.
The Last Man: The Culmination of Decadence
The Last Man is the pragmatic man, “a flea unquenchable.” He is the most despicable man, content with pragmatism, scientism, and technocracy. He is the bourgeois who lives in comfort and has found satisfaction. His life has no meaning, no purpose, and he represents the ruin of civilization. He is the culmination of decadence, of nihilism. According to Nietzsche, to assume that God is dead means accepting that we have run out of compass.