Thus Spake Zarathustra
Friederich Nietzsche
MP3 CD Library Binding
(MP3 Audiobook Classics, Sept. 3, 2018)
“God is Dead”. “The Superman”. The “will to power”. We’ve all heard the phrases, which are often used to represent concepts quite different from those first articulated by Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra. The most influential and famous of his books, the comic philosophic novel chronicles the imagined travels and speeches of Zarathustra, also known as Zoroaster, founder of the Persian religion Zoroastrianism, which is thought to be a precursor of Christianity. Nietzsche’s hero, however, is the opposite of the historical prophet. Here, the mission is to turn traditional morality upside down, to inform humanity that God is no more, that the meaning of life is to be found in the all powerful human life force represented by the Ubermensch, or Superman. The idea of “eternal recurrence”, which holds that events recur in an infinite cycle and is found in Indian philosophy and ancient Egypt, is a central theme of the work and stands in opposition to the linear concept of time in Christianity. In addition to its radical thinking, the book is also noteworthy for its unusual format and experimental style, which is full of wordplay, incorporates poetry and rhetoric, and, at times, mimics the styles of the New Testament and Platonic dialogs. Nietzsche said that "among my writings my Zarathustra stands to my mind by itself". Written in four distinct parts between 1883 and 1885, the first three parts were published individually and combined into a single volume in 1887. The fourth part was held back until incorporated in a new edition in 1892.