Book SummaryThus Spoke Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Thus Spoke Zarathustra

In the 1880s, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a creative presentation of his views about life and philosophy. The book is a fictitious, poetic story about a prophet named Zarathustra, who is an avatar for Nietzsche and through whom he expounds his philosophy.

Zarathustra lives in a cave in the mountains with an eagle and a snake for companions. At one point he feels compelled to share his wisdom with others and visits a nearby village. He tries speaking to the crowd in a marketplace, but they aren’t interested in his teaching. Later he gathers a group of disciples and teaches them his philosophy. Much of the book consists of monologues that Zarathustra delivers to his disciples. Eventually, Zarathustra sends his disciples away, after which he continues to monologue, talking to himself, his animals, and people whom he encounters near his home.

(Shortform note: Zarathustra is another name for Zoroaster, the founding prophet of Zoroastrianism. However, **any resemblance between the historical Zarathustra and...

Thus Spoke Zarathustra Summary What Humans Are

Zarathustra argues that a human being is made up of a human body—not a body and soul, as some people believe. Zarathustra teaches that your soul, spirit, and consciousness are just parts or features of your body.

Zarathustra doesn’t believe in an afterlife in the usual sense, but he does believe in what he calls “eternal recurrence.” In his view, time is infinite in both directions: No matter when you live, there is always an infinite amount of time before and after you. He reasons that on this infinite timeline, everything that can happen eventually will happen. And eventually, it will all happen again. So after you die, someday in the eternal future, the same chain of events that led to your birth will happen again, and you will live again.

(Shortform note: We can infer that, in Zarathustra’s teaching, when you ‘recur’ you have no memory of your previous lives. He doesn’t say this outright, but he never mentions memories of past lives. And if your memory is just part of your body, as he believes, then your memory would be destroyed when your body dies, so nothing would carry over to your next life.)

Eternal Recurrence and Quantum Space-Time

In _[A...

Thus Spoke Zarathustra Summary How Humans Should Act

According to Zarathustra, unique individuals contribute the most to human progress. We can infer that this is based on Darwin’s theory that a combination of natural selection and random variation drives evolutionary progress: The more variation there is in a population, the more natural selection will favor the superior individuals and the more rapidly the species will evolve. Zarathustra never discusses this mechanism explicitly, but he does repeatedly assert that uniformity—especially compulsory conformity to social norms—hinders the evolution of humans into superhumans.

This leads Zarathustra to a kind of relative morality: As a unique individual, what’s good for someone else may not be good for you and vice versa. He denounces any objective distinction between good and evil as a concept that humans invented for the purpose of controlling others, usually in ways that promote conformity and thereby hinder progress.

For example, suppose someone is fascinated with stealing. If she cultivates this passion and becomes an expert thief, her children might become even better thieves because of what they learn from her and inherit genetically. So stealing would become an...

Thus Spoke Zarathustra Summary Criticism of Christianity

As he dispenses his wisdom, Zarathustra probably spends more time warning his hearers what not to do and be than he spends teaching them how to act. And most of his warnings hinge on his criticism of the Christian church and all the “good people” who endorse and enforce the social values taught by Christianity. So now that we’ve discussed Zarathustra’s philosophical teachings, let’s contrast them with what he says Christians believe and practice.

Criticizing the Christian Idea About What Humans Are

Christianity teaches that your body and soul are distinct from one another. Your body is the part of you that exists in the physical realm, while your soul exists in a spiritual realm, where it can live on after your body dies. But Zarathustra argues that trying to separate the physical from the spiritual is unhealthy because it leads Christians to emphasize the importance of spiritual wellbeing while de-emphasizing the importance of physical wellbeing. We can infer that in his view, you can’t have a healthy spirit without having a healthy body, since Zarathustra believes your spirit is just part of your body.

(Shortform note: While practically all Christians agree that...

Shortform Exercise: Apply Zarathustra’s Teachings

We discussed Zarathustra’s concept of virtue. In this exercise, you’ll think about how you could practice Zarathustra’s virtues in your own life.

Zarathustra says different people have different virtues, which he defines as your unique strengths and passions. What do you see as your greatest strengths and passions right now?