Our course offers a series of close readings and discussions of Friedrich Nietzche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
‘My Zarathustra has a special place for me in my writings. With it, I have given humanity the most profound gift it has ever received’ The Anti-Christ
‘In order to understand anything at all from my Zarathustra, you might need to be as I am – with one foot beyond life’ Ecce Homo
‘Perhaps none of them are even alive yet. Maybe they are the ones who will understand my Zarathustra’ The Anti-Christ
‘Whenever I glance through my Zarathustra, I walk around the room for half an hour, sobbing uncontrollably’ Ecce Homo
In the wake of the official directive to try to return to normality and tourism, we shall read through, above and below Nietzsche’s sayings about the crowd and dogmatic instincts in the marketplace, a risky dance in solitude, about children and melancholy, lions, lioness, and other parabolic body-thoughts vital to appreciate and learn from the last sceptical prophet at the zenith of his philosophical dying.
Part 1: Now we can feast, with triumph in the air
Part 2: The fest of all fests
Part 3: Friend Zarathustra came, the guest of all guests!
Part 4: The world can laugh, the gruesome curtain tear
Conclusion: The wedding day of light and dark was here . . . (with Daniel Stewart)
- Textbook: a hard-back edition of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: a book for all and none
Secondary literature
- C.G. Yung (1989). Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: notes of the seminar given in 1934-39. London: Routledge
- Pierre Clossowski (1969). Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle. Chicago: UCP
- Maurice Blanchot (1992). The Infinite Conversation. Minnesota: UMP
- Laurence Lampert (1989). Nietzsche’s Teaching: an interpretation of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. New Haven: YUP
- Stanley Rosen (1995). The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. New Haven: YU