Nietzsche’s three primary Doctrines: A Physiological, Ethical Naturalism

Written by: Shawn Monaghan (critical on scribd.com)

April 25, 1997

A table of values hangs over every people. Behold, it is the table of its
overcomings; behold, it is the voice of its will to power (Zarathustra henceforth
Zar; 84)1.

Nietzsche conceptualizes ‘will to power’ as the voicing of a peoples ‘table of values’. These
valuations are the embodiment of the peoples self-overcoming, the goals and aspirations
translated into the good and the bad. This voice of values or ‘will to power’ belongs to all life,
here we see Schopenhauer’s influence clearly.
All willing springs from lack, from deficiency, and thus from suffering.
Fulfilment brings this to an end . . . (my emphasis; WWR 196).

Schopenhauer is at the root of Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ for it is the life force of all living
things. Nietzsche names ‘Will to power’ the “unexhausted, procreating life-will” (Zarathustra
137). Willing for Schopenhauer is the condition of all life, action and will are one -- that which
lives also wills (WWR 101). Since lack always supersedes fulfilment of suffering, fulfilment
itself is transient. For Nietzsche, however, if fulfilment can result in something more than mere
pleasure then it is not a mere transient fulfilment but a bettering of the self, an overcoming of the
self.
Every true, genuine, immediate act of the will is also at once and directly a
manifest act of the body; and correspondingly, on the other hand, every
impression on the body is also at once and directly an impression on the will. As
such, it is called pain when it is contrary to the will, and gratification or pleasure
when in accordance with the will (WWR 101).

For Nietzsche, the good is that which spurs one onto betterment of self, the overcoming of the
self, in a way that can be construed as pleasurable. The bad consists in all those things which
detract from self-overcoming in a way that is felt as pain or displeasure.
. . . he who cannot obey himself will be commanded (Zarathustra 137).
The process of ‘self-overcoming’ is mastery of self, it is the table of values that allows us to
“maintain the self” but not in a static way, dynamic struggle toward self maintenance requires
constant struggle for control over the self and the environment. In this way valuations are
creations, the valuation itself is the creation of that which is important in all things, in essence
the act of valuation creates the very thing which you value. The change in a table of values
comes about only by a change in the creator, this is the giving life-force, it cannot exist without
destroying (Zarathustra 85).
No people could live without evaluating; but if it wishes to maintain itself it must
not evaluate as its neighbour evaluates (Zarathustra 84).

Different groups have or require differing value tables, each group is unique. They live in
different environments and thus strive for disparate things, it is this dissimilarity in peoples that
allows one to conquer another. With differing valuations there may arise a hierarchy of success
in self-overcoming, thus one peoples may have caught upon a table of values that entail greater
struggle to attain the ‘praiseworthy’, the attainment of “that which relieves the greatest need” is
the rarest (hardest to come by) and the most holy in the table of values of the conqueror
(Zarathustra 84).
This whole process of self-overcoming is as dangerous as it is necessary for the continuation of
self and life. Although not being the master makes you a slave, mastery itself is an enslavement.
For instance, one must be obedient even in the act of mastery (Zarathustra 137). As the “lesser
surrenders to the greater” the greater too must stake its own life (Zarathustra 138). Thus, the
master, the conqueror is obedient to her ‘will to power’ and creates but at a risk, the surrender of
the static, the certainty of life into the future. This is where the term ‘self-overcoming’ becomes
clarified it is the condition of all life it is synonymous with ‘will to power’.
And life itself told me this secret: ‘Behold,’ it said, ‘I am that which must
overcome itself again and again (Zarathustra 138).

This ‘self-overcoming’ has many names it is called ‘will to procreate’, ‘impulse toward a goal’
and so forth, but they are all different instantiations of the same stem the ‘will to power’
(Zarathustra 138). Here Nietzsche breaks strongly from Schopenhauer with a critique of ‘will to
existence’, “. . . that which is in existence, how could it still want to come into existence?”
(Zarathustra 138). If ‘will to existence’ holds true then life may only struggle with other life or
with death, but ‘will to power’ can and does come into direct conflict with life (Zarathustra 138)!
The very valuation of a thing over life is voiced by the ‘will to power’ (Zarathustra 138).
Even the valuations of good and evil themselves need be overcome for the ‘will to power’ the
‘self-overcoming’ also overcomes itself. Here the opposition of Apollonian and Dionysian
becomes useful, both are representatives of ‘will to power’.
And so , in one sense, we might apply to Apollo the word of Schopenhauer when
he speaks of the man wrapped in the veil of Maya (Welt als Wille und
Vorstellung, I, p. 416): “Just as in a stormy sea that, unbounded in all directions,
raises and drops mountainous waves, howling, a sailor sits in a boat and trusts in
his frail bark: so in the midst of a world of torments the individual human being
sits quietly, supported by and trusting in the principium individuationis.” In fact,
we might say of Apollo that in him the unshaken faith in this principium and the
calm repose of the man wrapped up in it receive their most sublime expression;
and we might call Apollo himself the glorious divine image of the principium
individuationis, through whose gestures and eyes all the joy and wisdom of
“illusion,” together with its beauty, speak to us.

In the same work Schopenhauer has depicted for us the tremendous terror which
seizes man when he is suddenly dumbfounded by the cognitive form of
phenomena because the principle of sufficient reason, in some one of its
manifestations, seems to suffer an exception. If we add to this terror the blissful
ecstasy that wells from the innermost depths of man, indeed of nature, at this
collapse of the principium individuationis, we steal a glimpse into the nature of
the Dionysian, which is brought home to us most intimately by the analogy of
intoxication (his emphasis; BoT 36).
In one fell swoop we can see both Schopenhauer’s influence on Nietzsche and how this
translates into Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The first half of the above quotation contains an image
devised by Schopenhauer which is uncannily similar to Nietzsche’s image of a boat in his
chapter: “Of Self-Overcoming”. The symbol of Dionysus is central to the creation of values, the
interpretation of the world of becoming that is all around us, as being. These interpretations
require the intersession of the god Apollo in order to hold on to the illusion that this valuation is
right and is indeed static being. Without continual additional intervention by Dionysus we no
longer live on as beings overcoming ourselves, we instead become static. The people are like a
river, the river of becoming, the boat that floats upon the river contains the valuations of good
and evil. These are illusions, the river is constantly in flux, in a word ‘becoming’, the people
must bear the boat of illusions no matter how unhelpful or harmful the illusions become. They
can angrily foam and crash themselves like a wave against the boat all to no avail because they
are not yet aware that the boat is mere illusion. Enter Dionysus (or they themselves as
‘Dionysian’ people): They now see the world for what it is, leaping into the abyss their ‘will to
power’ gives them courage, taking the risks and shattering the illusions that are the world.
Through knowledge of their ‘acquired character’ they destroy these values and create a new boat,
through interpretation of new values that suit their new knowledge of their true character. Since
this river is ‘becoming’ the process of self-overcoming once again overcomes itself in a greater
power and the boat need be destroyed again, else that which is dynamic -- life, the people -- will
become static their ‘will to power’ would be denied (Zarathustra 136-7)! Throughout it is clear
that Dionysus and Apollo are dangerous travesties without the counterbalancing between them,
the one tendency in humanity has not the power to overcome, or do without the other.
Apollo allows for the solidity and stability of the boat so we can travel up the river of becoming
but the boats shape and construction does not remain to our liking forever, thus to continue on
the river of becoming we must destroy the boat and build a new one more suited to the beings we
have become. If you aren’t the master then you are the slave thus in obedience to ourselves (will
to power) we are becoming but in obedience to the values of our ancestors we are not even slaves
to our own selves (will to power) anymore.
Dionysus is the interpreter and Apollo takes this interpretation as ‘being’ as reality but the
interpretation can become harmful as we grow and ‘overcome’, thus we need to appeal to the
Dionysus in ourselves for further reinterpretation and to Apollo once again to give this
interpretation solidity the illusion becomes accepted, as fact, until we need to overcome this as
well. Many passages stream with symbols of interpretation, though one need only look at the
very medium of Zarathustra to realize that his is the philosophy of interpretation. 2
For Schopenhauer Christ is the embodiment of our freedom, though it be a dismally nihilist one
(WWR 405). The Uberman in Nietzsche is a very Christ-like creature, the one who reveals and
dies for our original sin. Just as Dionysus, as embodied in Oedipus and Prometheus, suffers
greatly for his contribution to (the salvation of) humanity for violating nature by forcing her to
reveal her secrets (BoT 69 & 75 respectively). It is the wisdom that the Dionysian spirit elicits
the great and the tragic, the life-giving and life-taking-away. Yet, in Ecce Homo Nietzsche refers
to Dionysus as the Antichrist. What is the Antichrist in a world of constant becoming, but
another leader? A leader, a ‘Dionysian man’, who provides a new interpretation on which the
people can find new ‘being’ as a means of ordering a world of constant ‘becoming’, and here I
have in mind Fedor Dostoevsky’s penultimate chapter in The Brothers Karamazov, namely “The
Grand Inquisitor”. There are numerous points, throughout his many works, at which Nietzsche
likens himself to Christ, and Zarathustra to Christ as well. At the same time we should not lose
sight of another common theme in Zarathustra and elsewhere, in which, Nietzsche describes
himself, describes Zarathustra as not [blank]. Not Hegel, not Schopenhauer, not -- though I have
heard reports that Nietzsche referred to him as the Uberman incarnate -- Goethe. Here we must
plough on toward the ‘Eternal Recurrence’ for the present may be eternal, but Dionysus has not
yet come to the fore in this the age of the Apollinian Socrates -- reason has not yet been seen for
the error that it is3.
The ‘Eternal Recurrence’ is the lion spirit that allows for the creation of freedom and the courage
to take it. Even the lion, however, requires the child’s innocence and forgetfulness to create a
new table of values4. In “Of Great Events” it is rumoured that the Devil had carried Zarathustra
off, “. . . one of [his disciples] even said: ‘ I would rather believe that Zarathustra had carried off
the Devil” (Zar 152-3). Clearly, what is being intimated here is that Zarathustra’s ‘will to power’
and talk of creation through destruction is a great power of monstrous evil. Though talk of evil
should not be to fast and free, clearly we do not want the world to be free from ethics (perhaps
better understood as norms than ideals). Hence Zarathustra introduces the Eternal Recurrence.
The ‘greatest events’ come in our stillest hour, thus it is not those who exert their power and
rejoice ‘noisily’ but those who create (values) anew that are the great inventors. ‘Redemption’
for Zarathustra is to become freed from the past making every ‘it was’ into an ‘I wanted it thus’.
Truly, my friends, I walk among men as among the fragments and limbs of men . . . And when
my eye flees from the present to the past, it always discovers the same thing: fragments and
limbs and dreadful chances -- but no men . . . And it is all my art and aim, to compose into one
and bring together what is fragment and riddle and dreadful chance (Zar 160-1).

That is my emphasis in bold for these are all of the things which the Eternal Return is intended to
do. Zarathustra is the seer, and the bridge, since most of humanity consists of only fragments of
men and they do not see into the future, Zarathustra devises the Eternal Recurrence as a way to
make humans whole -- perhaps this is a primary to the secondary5 task of providing an ethics
(Zar 160-61).
The old man, struck by an excess of misery, abandoned solely to suffer whatever
befalls him, is confronted by the supra terrestrial cheerfulness that descends from
the divine sphere and suggests to us that the hero attains his highest activity,
extending far beyond his life, through his purely passive posture, while his
conscious deeds and desires, earlier in his life, merely led him into passivity. Thus
the intricate legal knot of the Oedipus fable that no mortal eye could unravel is
gradually disentangled -- and the most profound human joy overcomes us at this
divine counterpart of the dialectic (my emphasis, BoT 68).

Thus in the creation of new value the destruction of old values is not necessarily of conscious
intention but can come when catching sight of the Abyss corrupts your ‘natural’ tendencies (for
example, incest). The future and past are shattered by your moment in the Abyss and all natural
order is corrupted. Compare this with what Schopenhauer has to say on the topic of being the
subject of willing:
. . . so long as our consciousness is filled by our will, so long as we are given up
to the throng of desires with its constant hopes and fears, so long as we are the
subject of willing, we never obtain lasting happiness or peace . . . it is the same
 whether we pursue or flee, . . . but without peace and calm, true well-being is
absolutely impossible (WWR 196).

Zarathustra’s last ‘manly prudence’ is to be among humanity disguised, both from himself and
from humanity. This disguise is that which comes in ‘the stillest hour’ and beyond. The disguise
is the Eternal Recurrence itself. A necessary illusion to allow Zarathustra to be a bridge for
humanity, if he becomes the Superman, as an indicated possibility at the beginning of the chapter
“Of Manly Prudence”, then he would do so at the expense of humanity following him. They
would all mistake him for the devil (see reference to devil above). He also struggles here with
‘will to obedience’ as he must obey himself in the need to lead but to lead is also to exert a
‘power over’, which weakens. In his ‘will to lead’ he must lead humanity to the Superman.
The two kinds of willing referred to by Zarathustra in “Of Manly Prudence” are ‘will to illusion’
(Apollo is blind) and ‘will to create’ the dangerous and destructive, yet, the path upward to the
Superman (Zar 164). His discussion of the abyss in this chapter is very difficult to interpret
because at one moment the hand reaches upward and in another the hand is reaching downward.
Perhaps I can find something less contradictory in:
That my hand may not quite lose its belief in firmness: That is why I live blindly
among men, as if I did not recognize them ( Zar 164).

This is a sort of twofold blindness: he is blind as is Apollo to a world of constant becoming,

blind to the abyss. Secondly he is trying not to see what humanity is like, because he is does not
belong among them he is different . . . He is the bridge to the Superman he sees the superman but
they do not, thus to remain among them he must ignore his differences from them. Both types of
blindness find adequate expression in the following passage:
When after a forceful attempt to gaze on the sun we turn away blinded, we see
dark-colored spots before our eyes, as a cure, as it were. Conversely, the bright
image projections of the Sophoclean hero -- in short, the Apollonian aspect of the
mask -- are necessary effects of a glance into the inside and terrors of nature; as it
were, luminous spots to cure eyes damaged by gruesome night (BoT 67).

And so finally, we come to the Eternal Recurrence itself, the illusion that can lead humanity
toward the Uberman. The most pertinent section for this phase of the Eternal Return is in “Of the
Vision and the Riddle” Part 2. Here we are fully immersed in the eternal present, the eternal
return of the ‘moment’ which is the now ( Zar 178). Zarathustra’s riddle is the image of the
shepherd with a snake in his throat, upon biting its head off the shepherd is surrounded by light
and begins to laugh like no human ever. The shepherd is an allusion to the satyr shepherd of
Greek tragedy and myth (mentioned frequently in BoT). He is Apollo, dreaming and sleeping
happily static. The snake is a symbol for knowledge, it is this knowledge that is both the key to
freeing the shepherd to the greatness of becoming the Uberman and it also is his enslaver, it
chokes him into stagnancy, a death that is otherwise known as mere ‘being’. Zarathustra longs
for the laughter of the shepherd -- to really live. At the same time he fears death but this is no
simple fearing of death but the fear of self-destruction as the route to self-creation (Zar 179-80).
The second phase of the doctrine of the Eternal Return is relayed in “The Convalescent”.
Just before this chapter Zarathustra exclaims a great desire to one day be ready and ripe in the
great noontide (Zar 231). The noontide is:
 . . . when man stands at the middle of his course between animal and Superman
and celebrates his journey to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the journey
to a new morning. Then man, going under, will bless himself; for he will be going
over to Superman; and the sun of his knowledge will stand at noontide. ‘All gods
are dead: now we want the Superman to live’ -- let this be our last will one day at
the great noontide (Zar 103)!

It seems that Zarathustra is prepared for the journey. In “The Convalescent” however we receive
a bit of a surprise, perhaps all that came earlier in this book was a dream, for now it appears that
Zarathustra is the shepherd in the Riddle relayed above. Zarathustra speaks of the episode in the
riddle as his redemption (Zar 235)! And as we recall from “Of Redemption”:
To redeem the past and to transform every ‘It was’ into an ‘I wanted it thus!’ --
that alone do I call redemption (Zar 161)!

Thus it appears that the shepherd was a dream and like many dreams filled with metaphor and
allusions that one cannot trust, the shepherd was Zarathustra and he did not become the
Uberman. The animals clearly state that Zarathustra’s destiny was, indeed, to be the teacher of
the Eternal Return, this is the bridge from humanity to the Superman (Zar 237). However, even
here there is a discordance, for when the animals describe the Eternal Recurrence fully,
Zarathustra is silent -- conversing with his soul.
Convalescence is a very important aspect of thought in Zarathustra it appears to be that in our
sickness we can find new life. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche has this to say about convalescence:
. . . I discovered life as it were anew, myself included, I tasted all good and even
petty things in a way that others could not easily taste them . . . pay heed to this: it
was in the years of my lowest vitality that I ceased to be a pessimist: the instinct
for self-recovery forbade to me a philosophy of indigence and discouragement . .
.(EH 10)

In convalescence itself there is new valuation one is forced to let the old table of values decay
and die, perhaps with no need even to destroy in this sense of merely letting die. Perhaps this is
the incredible power contained within convalescence, ‘power over’ is nonexistent thus by the
time you are freed from your illness you have ‘power over’ nothing not even yourself. And to the
extent to which ‘power to’ must lead to a certain degree of ‘power over’, this to is nonexistent --
making convalescence a very real rebirth and redemption in one!
Throughout this chapter there is much said about the falseness of words and even of music.
Perhaps this is the meaning of Zarathustra’s silence, one cannot say the unsayable the abyss is
unbridgeable all words are lies.
Language can never adequately render the cosmic symbolism of music, because
music stands in symbolic relation to the primordial contradiction and primordial
pain in the heart of the primal unity, and therefore symbolizes a sphere which is
beyond and prior to all phenomena. Rather, all phenomena, compared with it, are
merely symbols: hence language, as the organ and symbol of phenomena, can
never by any means disclose the innermost heart of music; language, in its attempt
to imitate it, can only be in superficial contact with music; while all the eloquence
 of lyric poetry cannot bring the deepest significance of the latter one step nearer to
us (BoT 55).

It appears that Nietzsche has changed his opinions about music and about ‘phenomena’, as well,
in the seven years that span the BoT and Zarathustra. For in Zarathustra he communicates:
How sweet it is, that words and sounds of music exist: are words and music not
rainbows and seeming bridges between things eternally separated (Zar 234)?
AND
Are things not given names and musical sounds, so that man may refresh himself
with things? Speech is a beautiful foolery: with it man dances over all things.
How sweet is all speech and all the falsehoods of music! With music does our
love dance upon many-coloured rainbows (Zar 234).

There is a limit to language and music, all forms of communication, intuitive leaps and poetic
circles are as close as we can get to the inexpressible. However, the Eternal Return promises to
be an insightful new illusion that can lead us toward a ‘self-overcoming’. We only feel that we
go around in circles because we are not certain exactly what we are looking for. Once the
question is adequately posed the answer can only but follow. The questions of that which has
value, and that which is good these have been posed and the answer is simple enough for
Nietzsche. The new table of values is Becoming, life, and an increase in power. Only the static is
evil or bad. This is why Zarathustra tells his followers to forget him, they must find their own
unique way, their own values.
Near the beginning of the book Zarathustra talks to crowds and organized humanity, citizens of
states. Shortly thereafter Zarathustra seeks out and only preaches to the solitary, this philosophy
is a very individualistic one, in the sense that it focuses upon the individual. It could be said that
this book, if I bridge it with Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient represents a modern age of
ethics. Valuations can only work on the level of the individual. Let us bend our ear for Hana the
nurse:
. . . the bombs were dropped in Japan, so it feels like the end of the world. From
now on I believe the personal will forever be at war with the public. If we can
rationalize this we can rationalize anything (292).

As Zarathustra says in “Of the Thousand and One Goals”, “. . . if a goal for humanity is still
lacking, is there not sill lacking -- humanity itself?”6, this lack is the place from which
Schopenhauer says all willing springs. It could well be that the Eternal Return is the bridge for
this willing and the Uberman is the goal. More generally, the very act of self-interpretation and
self-authorizing, behaviour exhibited by all of the main characters of the English Patient, could
well be the very way to the Uberman of which Zarathustra speaks. This ‘way’ could be the
acceptance of constant ‘becoming’ and with it enough strength and courage to deny all others the
authority to interpret ‘becoming’ for us.
 The Superman is a way of reaching out for the achievable -- for the conceivable.
Could you conceive a god? -- But may the will to truth mean this to you: That
everything shall be transformed into the humanly-conceivable, the humanly-
evident, the humanly-palpable! You should follow your own senses to the end!
And you yourselves should create what you have hitherto called the World: the
World should be formed in your image by your reason, your will, and your love!
And truly, it will be to your happiness, you enlightened men! (my emphasis bold,
his in italics; Zar 110)

In this essay, I have denied the authority of Nietzsche’s more succinct and straightforward books
in interpreting Zarathustra, because clearly he believes that the succinct is the route toward ‘the
overlooking’, overlooking that all knowledge is error.

1Unless otherwise stated I have used page numbers, not section references.
2See; The Will to Power, Sect. 643, Zarathustra 103 “guard yourself against Zarathustra” and
“You had not yet sought yourselves when you found me . . .
3See, Zarathustra 186, “With all things one thing is impossible -- rationality . . .”
4Zarathustra 55, “. . .now it must find illusion and caprice even in the holiest, that it may steal
freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this theft.”
5Secondary because when referring to the ‘will to power’ Zarathustra says, “This, however is
certain: I must keep it under stricter control -- otherwise it will ruin my reputation” (Zar 155).
Contrarily, Zarathustra speaks of misunderstanding and the need to guide, “You highest men . . .
This is my doubt of you . . . I think you would call my Superman -- a devil!” (Zar 166).
6Zar 86