Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra begins with Zarathustra descending from the heights of his overflowing wisdom to effect, in the wake of what he calls the “death of God,” the transformation of the historical destiny of mankind through the dissemination of his teaching of the “overman.”  The overman, he proclaims, must now become the “meaning of the earth,” the supreme aim of the human will, and the ultimate object of all human thought and striving.  The book ends, however, with Zarathustra, in the aftermath of the collapse of all his efforts to transmit this teaching, renouncing his doctrines of the overman and the will to power, and turning away from human beings and a concern with the historical progress of mankind, in order to retreat once again to his mountain solitude.  This turn away from the will and history coincides with a turn toward the quest for the truth of the soul and mind in their relation to eternity.  The following question must arise for anyone attempting to understand the argument of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: What has happened to Zarathustra during the course of the drama of the book such as to cause this radical transformation of his thought.  This lecture will make an attempt to begin to address this question.

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Steven Berg was born, near the middle of the last century, in San Francisco, California.  He received his B.A. in Liberal Arts from the New School for Social Research, in New York City, and a M.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, Santa Fe.  Finally, he received a second M.A. and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.  He is at present Professor of Philosophy at Bellarmine University in Louisville, KY.  

📷: Edvard Munch, "Friedrich Nietzsche" (1906) | via Wikimedia Commons