Читать книгу Thus Spoke Zarathustra - FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Friedrich Nietzsche - Страница 17

Part One is made up of 22 speeches or discourses. There is little dramatic action. Rather, Zarathustra declares in grandiose terms his views on various topics – friendship, the modern state, war, women, suicide, chastity, the scholarly life, and so on.

Most of these speeches do not suggest any correctives or concrete alternatives but critique aspects of modern society. There is a chord of cynicism in Zarathustra's words, reflective of someone who has suffered from life, but there is also deep longing.

In Part One, Nietzsche recapitulates many perspectives from his previous works. It is the end product of his free‐thinking middle years, where he had systematically unmasked the ideals of society. Nietzsche bundles these insights and themes into the separate sections of the text. However, they reveal a common undercurrent: skepticism towards all ideals upheld by modern society.

At the conclusion of Part One, Zarathustra departs from his followers. He enjoins them to forget him and go their own way. It is a curious ending. He has lured solitary individuals away from the masses – and mass thinking – but then offers them nothing concrete to embrace. His original vision of a transcendent human type remains diffuse and undefined.