The first statement of the speech 'Of the Joys and Passions'('My brothers, if you have a virtue and that virtue is your own virtue, you have it in common with no one') seemingly values a virtue by its originality; not its actual merit. This is to be expected, as this book is contrasting to the merely content 'Ultimate Man', of whom shares virtues with other people, such as compassion - one of the virtues that Zarathustra despised, as it took the focus away from the individual and the distant man (by which in notes of the Oxford Edition was meant to mean the man of the distant future: the Superman). An interesting concept he illustrated was his disapproval of naming virtues, as they have too much 'familiarity', and, in turn, is well known, and,
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From the essay 'On Voluntary Death', the strange asymmetry between his description of Jesus and Christianity as a whole. Whilst disapproving of Jesus, he seems to think him a noble man - 'He was noble enough to recant!' - and that if he wasn't too 'immature' and hadn't died so early, he could be a Superman. On the other hand he wishes the preachers an early death. Why? Well, perhaps it was because Jesus spoke his ideas 'in blood', but corrupted the truth of it. Or perhaps Zarathustra was gentler with him simply because he was a 'Creator', and, although misguided, created his own values instead of following the majority. The preachers, on the other hand, were not creators and simply used the Bible and Jesus's ideas to corrupt, and ultimately cause harm. I am not saying that they misinterpreted Jesus's ideas (although that is indeed a possibility), but that them taking on the role of the passive preacher was destroying truth, while Jesus was attempting create it. He only disapproved of it from the point of view of the reader. This is also reflected in 'Of Reading and Writing', where he stated, 'I hate the reading idler'. This is probably because reading involves seeing someone else's values instead of making our …show more content…
And when other people ask for the credibility of your ideas, you can name the virtue and sink 'into the familiarity of
From the essay 'On Voluntary Death', the strange asymmetry between his description of Jesus and Christianity as a whole. Whilst disapproving of Jesus, he seems to think him a noble man - 'He was noble enough to recant!' - and that if he wasn't too 'immature' and hadn't died so early, he could be a Superman. On the other hand he wishes the preachers an early death. Why? Well, perhaps it was because Jesus spoke his ideas 'in blood', but corrupted the truth of it. Or perhaps Zarathustra was gentler with him simply because he was a 'Creator', and, although misguided, created his own values instead of following the majority. The preachers, on the other hand, were not creators and simply used the Bible and Jesus's ideas to corrupt, and ultimately cause harm. I am not saying that they misinterpreted Jesus's ideas (although that is indeed a possibility), but that them taking on the role of the passive preacher was destroying truth, while Jesus was attempting create it. He only disapproved of it from the point of view of the reader. This is also reflected in 'Of Reading and Writing', where he stated, 'I hate the reading idler'. This is probably because reading involves seeing someone else's values instead of making our …show more content…
And when other people ask for the credibility of your ideas, you can name the virtue and sink 'into the familiarity of