Zarathustra Hermeneutics Paul S

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4-2011 Zarathustra Hermeneutics Paul S. Loeb University of Puget Sound, [email protected]

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Citation “Zarathustra Hermeneutics.” The ourJ nal of Nietzsche Studies, in “Review Symposium: Paul S. Loeb: The eD ath of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra,” April, 2011.

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Paul S. Loeb

The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 41, Spring 2011, pp. 94-114 (Article)

Published by Penn State University Press DOI: 10.1353/nie.2011.0009

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nie/summary/v041/41.loeb.html

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PAUL S. LOEB

am honored to have this symposium dedicated to my study, and I would like Ito thank the participants for their extensive and thoughtful comments. Reading the contributions together, I find a shared interest in my study’s hermeneutic strategies and a shared skepticism regarding my study’s goal of offering a unified, coherent, and solution-oriented reading of Thus Spoke Zarathustra . For Stanley Rosen, Nietzsche’s book is instead an exoterically esoteric exercise in self-contradictory poetry; for Tom Stern, it is a deflationary thought experiment; and for Adrian Del Caro, it is an open-ended, ambiguous, and metaphorical liberation from philosophy. Rosen offers what he thinks is a decisive exegetical and philosophical argument in support of his alternative reading. This is the same argument that he first proposed in The Limits of Analysis and that he has revisited many times in the thirty years since. So I will here refute Rosen’s argument and with it his grounds for challenging the interpretive method of my study. By contrast, Stern and Del Caro do not offer any specific argument, exegetical or philosophical, in support of their alternative readings and write instead about their strongly felt preference as to how Z should be read. I myself do not have any such personal preference. Instead, as Stern and Del Caro both note, my study simply takes Nietzsche at his word and follows his own instructions as to how his book should be read. By “instructions” I mean his suggestions, guidance, comments, and warnings in his later books, especially in Ecce Homo, but also in his letters and sometimes, when confirming, in his unpublished notes. I think that the evidence I present in my study shows that Nietzsche’s instructions rule out the hermeneutic preferences of Stern and Del Caro. But both of them, especially Stern, challenge some of this evidence, as well as my evidentiary standards, so I will reply to these challenges as well.

Chaos and Creativity

Chaos lies at the heart of Rosen’s critique of my study, as well as of his own engagement with Nietzsche’s Z and with Nietzsche’s writings in general. More specifically, Rosen finds the key to Nietzsche’s project in his conception of the world as chaos and in his associated claim that the order and value human beings find in the universe are in fact their own projected poetic creation.

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According to Rosen, Nietzsche is thus led to a self-contradictory position in which human creativity is both validated and undermined: it is validated, because there is no longer any natural or supernatural constraint on the human freedom to create; and it is undermined, because all such human construction is mere illusion. This inconsistent and unstable position expresses itself in Nietzsche’s double rhetoric: he openly proclaims this conception of the world as chaos so as to justify his liberationist call for life-affirming human creativity; and he conceals his conception of the world as chaos (even, and especially, from himself) so as not to paralyze human creativity. Nietzsche is thus the first to propose a transformation of the esoteric into the exoteric wherein the former is no longer safeguarded by the latter but, rather, identified with it and debased by it. Accordingly, the great obscurity of Z “is due not so much to its possessing a hidden meaning that requires elaborate decoding” but, rather, to the fact that—since its esoteric teaching contradicts its exoteric teaching—“the meaning is intentionally and necessarily self-contradictory.” Hence, Rosen concludes, “the book implodes into chaos” (1995, 201–2). The best and most important evidence cited by Rosen in support of this argument is Nietzsche’s famous call in The Gay Science 109 for a complete de-deification of nature (Rosen 2000, 198n38; 2002, 197n25, 220n45). Here we find, as Rosen says, Nietzsche openly asserting that the total character of the world is in all eternity chaos (der Gesammt-Charakter der Welt ist in alle Ewigkeit Chaos ) and warning against the projection of our normative judgments into this chaos. Contrary to Rosen, however, we do not find Nietzsche making the further assertion that all such normative judgments are mere illusion. The reason, Rosen (2009, 9–13) might argue, is that Nietzsche is here concealing this discouraging aspect of his conception. But I think that the real reason is that Nietzsche doesn’t believe this further assertion. In fact, I think that the rest of the GS 109 passage explains why it would be a mistake to make this further assertion. Thus, having dismissed the idea that we can praise or reproach the universe, Nietzsche warns against attributing to the universe heartlessness (Herzlosigkeit ) or irrationality ( Unvernunft). In a preparatory sketch for this passage, Nietzsche writes that pessimists make precisely such reproachful attributions and thereby denigrate the value of existence ( KSA 14, p. 254). But Rosen interprets Nietzsche as just such a pessimist when he (1995, xiii, 41, 59) argues that according to Nietzsche all our moral and rational constructions are mere illusions that disguise the underlying hostile and irrational chaos. Indeed, Rosen writes that the inconsistency he finds in Nietzsche “expresses, and is intended to express, the chaotic interior or ultimate origin” because “the origin, as chaos, is self-contradictory in its ‘utterances’ ” (2000, 200). This is why he writes in his review that Nietzsche contradicts himself each time he opens his mouth to speak.

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Even more explicitly, Nietzsche points out in GS 109 that once you know that there are no purposes, you also know that there is no accident; for it is only beside a world of purposes that the word accident has meaning. But Rosen writes that for Nietzsche “[h]aphazardness replaces purposiveness” (1995, 58), and he argues that according to Nietzsche our purposes are illusions that mask an underlying world of random fluctuations of chaos (Rosen 1995, xi, 13, 40, 74, 137, 190–91, 245–47). Thus, whereas Nietzsche warns against the projection of either opposing side of our praising and reproachful judgments, Rosen continues to project the reproachful judgments and from this projection derives the illusory character of our praising judgments. In an unpublished note written in 1887, Nietzsche comments on this natural post-theistic tendency to replace the former extreme position with an extreme opposite position: “And so belief in the absolute immorality of nature, in purposelessness and meaninglessness, is the psychologically necessary affect once the belief in God and an essentially moral order becomes untenable[….] One interpretation has collapsed; but because it was considered the interpretation it now seems as if there were no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain ” ( KSA 12:5[71]; original emphasis; see Rosen 1995, xiii; 2000, 203; 2002, 198–202). 1 It seems to me that Rosen misunderstands Nietzsche’s de-deification argument in several crucial respects. First of all, he reverses the order of Nietzsche’s argument. Nietzsche does not assert that the world is chaos and from this derive the inapplicability of our normative judgments. Instead, he subtracts all of these projected normative judgments one by one until he finally arrives at his con - clusion that the world is chaos. Second, Rosen misidentifies the kind of illusion that is demonstrated by this argument. Nietzsche does not claim that the chaotic nature of the universe renders all our normative judgments illusory. Instead, he argues that we have so far lived under the illusion created by the misapplication of these judgments, namely, the illusion of an anthropomorphic universe. Third, Rosen misinterprets the logic of Nietzsche’s argument. Nietzsche does not argue that our normative judgments are false and distorting representations of the chaotic world. Nor does he argue, as Rosen also claims (1995, 14, 32, 58, 144, 248; 2002, 202), that humans and their judgments are themselves just further mani- festations of this chaos. Instead, Nietzsche asserts that humans (along with their properties, needs, and creations), organic life, the earth, and our astral order are all inexpressibly late, rare , and accidental features of the world (see also BGE 36). He then argues against the tendency to make these features eternal, universal, and essential and to posit these features generally and everywhere. But this means that Nietzsche thinks that these features are entirely real and that they are to be contrasted (dagegen ) with the Gesammt-Charakter of the world. Although our normative judgments are misapplied to the universe as a whole, they are correctly applied to these ultra-exceptional features that constitute the world that concerns human beings (die Welt, die den Menschen Etwas angeht [GS 301]).

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Finally, Rosen misidentifies the source of Nietzsche’s disparaging tone in this argument. He thinks that Nietzsche is disgusted by the ugly truth that all beauty, wisdom, nobility, reason, and order is ultimately nothing but chaos. But in fact Nietzsche is simply expressing his usual disgust at the modern tendency to reduce everything that is rare and exceptional into something common and universal. Calling the universe a machine, he writes, does it far too much honor. Let us beware, he writes, of positing everywhere else anything as elegant as the cyclical movements of our neighboring stars. The whole music box eternally repeats its tune—a tune that may never be called a melody . Nietzsche’s remark about eternal repetition brings me, finally, to Rosen’s interpretation of eternal recurrence. According to Rosen, “[o]ne can speak of eternity in Nietzsche’s thought only in the sense that Becoming is intrinsically chaotic, and strictly speaking chaos is atemporal” (1995, 178). This means that “[a]part from human intentional activity, there is no time” (Rosen 1995, 185). But eternal recurrence is a teaching about time, either cosmological time or historical time, and for Nietzsche “both cosmological and historical time are intrinsically chaotic, both owe their respective order to the will of the human beings who inhabit them” (Rosen 1995, 178 ff., 185). It follows that eternal recurrence is “itself an illusion” and “an instrument for the enactment of the will” (Rosen 1995, 181, 14). Hence, eternal recurrence cannot be a “philosophical argumentation or scientific discovery” but only “prophetic rhetoric”: “It is entirely erroneous therefore to attempt to analyze the inner conceptual structure of the doctrine of eternal return as if it were a complex and harmonious set of rational arguments, whether philosophical or scientific” (Rosen 1995, 14). This is why Rosen says that there is no point in my study’s defense of the logical coherence of eternal recurrence. Instead, he argues, we can only investigate the ways in which Nietzsche intended eternal recurrence to function as a rhetorical product of his will, as a noble lie, as a poetic myth, or as prophetic revelation. Thus, responding, for example, to my claim that eternal recurrence entails an embodied personal immortality (Loeb 2010, 82–83), Rosen argues that this could never be a rational teaching but at most a kind of myth (see also 1995, 123). I have already mentioned Nietzsche’s allusion in GS 109 to his doctrine of eternal recurrence: das ganze Spielwerk wiederholt ewig seine Weise. This allusion is important because it is Nietzsche’s first published reference to eternal recurrence and because he includes it in the context of his call for a completely de-defied nature. In this passage, then, Nietzsche is associating his conception of the world as chaos with his doctrine of eternal recurrence and arguing that a completely de-deified nature will include both these elements. As I explain in my study, Nietzsche argues that if we reject the concept of a creator-God and with it the covertly theological idea that the world has an origin or beginning, we will see that the world is in fact an eternally self-creating ouroboros (Loeb 2010, 231). Since eternal recurrence is a doctrine about time, it follows that Rosen

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is mistaken in claiming the atemporality of Nietzsche’s chaotic world. Indeed, as I argue in my study (2010, 52–54, 174), Zarathustra’s first speech on time explains that the concepts of God and atemporality belong together, whereas his post-theistic doctrine of eternal recurrence will be aligned with the reality of time. Later, Zarathustra alludes to this same speech when he rejects the dwarf ’s interpretation of eternal recurrence because it assumes a God’s-eye point of view that denigrates time as lie and illusion. So when Rosen argues that Nietzsche understood time and eternal recurrence as human constructs and illusions, he is actually attributing to him the theistic interpretation that Nietzsche rejects. Having thus refuted Rosen’s argument for the methodological intractability of Nietzsche’s book and doctrine, let me correct a few of his misunderstandings concerning the methodology of my study. By “doctrinal,” I mean having to do with the content of Zarathustra’s teachings, and by “doctrinal approach,” I mean an interpretive focus on this content. I do not mean, as Rosen thinks, logical or conceptual analysis. Also, I only use these terms as applied to Nietzsche’s clue that eternal recurrence is the Grundconception of his book. Thus, a doctrinal approach to this clue assumes that Zarathustra’s teachings are grounded by the thought of eternal recurrence. A more literary approach assumes that the literary properties of Nietzsche’s book are grounded in the thought of eternal recurrence. I don’t think that these approaches are mutually exclusive, but I do think that the latter approach better explains what Nietzsche meant by his clue— namely, that he constructed the narrative of Zarathustra’s life so as to display its eternal recurrence. Certainly, previous commentators have emphasized the narrative of Nietzsche’s book, but as far as I know I am the first to explain this performative function of the narrative. By Grundgedanke , then, I do not mean, as Rosen thinks, some first principle or logical key. Here the confusion is Rosen’s, not mine: I do not seek to defend the logical coherence of eternal recurrence by an appeal to the narrative of Nietzsche’s book. My method is rather to explain how Nietzsche’s doctrine has been greatly misunderstood and then to show how a clearer understanding of this doctrine helps to solve the riddles of Nietzsche’s book.

P a r t I V

Perhaps the most important and impressive of Nietzsche’s riddles is his construction of four parts and two conclusions for his masterpiece. On my performative reading of Nietzsche’s Grundconception, Nietzsche shows us the death of his protagonist at the end of part III, and this means that he wanted us to notice the chronological anomalies in the structurally subsequent part IV narrative where Zarathustra is depicted as having grown older. By contrast, as Del Caro notes, commentators usually describe the odd features of part IV as

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by-products of Nietzsche’s unstructured writing process. This is why he says I may be overreaching when I claim that Nietzsche’s satyr play model led him to plan precisely four parts for his book. Indeed, it has now become part of the scholarly lore surrounding part IV that this was merely the first of several more parts that Nietzsche planned to write and that the book’s current ending is unplanned and accidental. However, it is simply not the case, as Del Caro claims, that Nietzsche planned different continuations of Z after part IV was completed and printed. In fact, two days after he sent the printer a fair copy of what he called “the fourth and last part of my Zarathustra” (12 March 1885, KSB 7:19), Nietzsche told his friend Köselitz that this was his book’s last part and finale (15 March 1885, KSB 7:21)—exactly the same thing he had told his friend Gersdoff a month earlier (12 February 1885, KSB 7:9). These instructions accord with his earlier plans for a fourth part and with his advice to Overbeck to read the just completed second part as “a second part of four ,” which together would constitute the whole (9 November 1883, KSB 6:455). Despite this strong direct evidence, commentators continue to claim that Nietzsche planned to add further parts to Z. They usually cite three different pieces of indirect evidence in support of this claim. The first of these, emphasized by scholars like Del Caro and David Farrell Krell (1986, 68–87), is that Nietzsche continued to write notes involving Zarathustra, which eventually culminated in the last work he prepared for publication, Dionysian Dithyrambs . But this point is easily countered, since these notes do not include any mention of additional parts for the completed and published Z . The second piece of evidence, and the main reason Del Caro and others claim that Nietzsche planned further parts for his book long after he completed part IV, in fact until 1888, is that during this year he described part IV to a few correspondents as an interlude or entre’acte ( Zwischenakt , Zwischenspiel [ KSB 8:228, 374]). Following Kaufmann (1954, 344), commentators such as Laurence Lampert (1986, 288–89, 313n8) have assumed that this meant an interlude in between the whole of parts I–III, on the one hand, and further parts that he planned but did not write, on the other. But I show in my study (2010, 88–89) that Nietzsche’s exact wording—“zwischen Zarathustra und dem, was folgt”—rules out this interpretation: what follows cannot be part of Z and refers instead to his next book, Beyond Good and Evil . Finally, commentators point to some notebook plans contemporaneous with the composition of part IV, and a few contemporaneous letters, in which Nietzsche writes about a new book entitled Noon and Eternity that would include what is now its fourth part as only its first part, with two further parts to follow. However, as I explain in my study (2010, 89), Nietzsche told his friend Köselitz in the same letter above that he had misled him about these plans and that they were in fact merely a ruse intended to attract a publisher for part IV. A couple of scholars have noted this crucial point (although not this key letter), and Nehamas correctly observes that “the possibility of getting the whole [ Zarathustra ] book

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published together by a new house depended on his convincing them there was more to follow, since sales of the first three parts of Zarathustra had been dismal” (2000, 180n15; see also Pippin 1988, 67n8). But most scholars—including seri- ous archivists like Colli (KSA 14, p. 282) and Schaberg (1995, 101–3)—have continued to take these fake plans seriously and to infer that Nietzsche planned to write further parts in the future. I think that the main reason for this is that they believe the conclusion of part IV is chronologically open-ended, so that it is easy to imagine Nietzsche planning further adventures for his protagonist. But if my reading of this conclusion is right, as Del Caro seems to concede in the second half of his review, then this conclusion actually loops back into the end of part III and into the chronological ending of the entire narrative where Nietzsche has already staged the death of his protagonist. This, I claim, is why Nietzsche told his sister that this fourth part was intended to help his son, Zarathustra, “to get to his beautiful death ” ( KSB 6:557). Tom Stern says that my solution to the problem of part IV is new and interesting, but he thinks that it does not sit very well with the opening sentence of part IV in which Zarathustra is depicted as having grown old. However, he misunderstands my solution when he says that I see the action of part IV as tak- ing place before that of part III. I actually claim that it takes place shortly before the ending of part III, within the implicit chronological ellipsis that Nietzsche constructed between the third and sixth sections of the “Old and New Tablets” chapter (Loeb 2010, 125). This gap, I argue, allows for years to go by and for Zarathustra to grow old (in the usual sense) as he waits for the lion-and-doves sign that his disciples have returned (Loeb 2010, 98–99, 123). So there is no conflict at all, and indeed there is a natural continuity, with this chronological gap being filled in by the three-day action of part IV that opens with a reference to Zarathustra’s having grown old as he waits for this same sign (Loeb 2010, 99) and that closes with the arrival of this same sign.

Gay Science 341 and Plato’s Phaedo

Aside from his brief objection to my reading of part IV, Stern’s critical response to my study dwells on my reading of GS 341. In the first place, he argues, we can simply sidestep my philosophical questions concerning the deterministic and fatalistic aspects of eternal recurrence. The key, he says, is to focus on the diagnostic function of eternal recurrence and to reject the common assumption that Nietzsche was interested in the transformative effects of his teaching. Stern’s term assumption suggests some unstated background conviction that is not supported by anything Nietzsche actually says. But in fact Nietzsche frequently emphasized the extraordinary transformative effects that his doctrine had on him and would have on the human race (Loeb 2010, 12). And even in GS 341, which is the only textual evidence Stern considers, Nietzsche

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writes that if this thought gained possession of you, it would transform you as you are or perhaps crush you, and that the question in each and every thing, “Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. This emphasis on the transformative and burdensome aspects of eternal recurrence is carried over into Z , especially in the “Vision and Riddle” chapter, where Zarathustra has a prevision of crushing his archenemy with the great weight of his thought and then being transformed into a figure that is no longer human. In my study, I show how this prevision is fulfilled in the final chapters of part III, where Zarathustra is so deeply affected by eternal recurrence that he falls down as if dead, remains unconscious for seven days, and then, as I argue, actually dies. Stern doesn’t consider these final chapters at all, but I don’t see how he could deny that Nietzsche is here depicting the profound spiritual transformation undergone by Zarathustra as a result of having awakened and confronted his thought of eternal recurrence. As for Stern’s emphasis on the diagnostic function of Nietzsche’s doctrine, I would ask why we should care whether someone fails the test of eternal recurrence and reveals (as Stern says) his belief in a fictional world beyond our own in which to live out his fantasy existence. If, as Stern thinks, eternal recurrence is not supposed to be true, then this test simply pits one metaphysical fantasy against another, and both demonstrate a refusal to affirm this nonrecurring life as it actually is. But if, as I argue in my study, eternal recurrence is supposed to be true, then this test is indeed significant, but now we cannot sidestep the relevant philosophical questions. And here I would simply note that the strong intuitions Stern feels on behalf of Aaron Ridley’s objections simply do not take into account the novelty of Nietzsche’s position—in particular, as my study (2010, 29) argues, his proposal of a circular and relational time that dissolves the traditional asymmetry between a determining past and a determined present. Also, in citing the skepticism about deliberative action that Nietzsche pres- ents throughout his career, Stern declines to investigate what I have argued is Nietzsche’s new and distinctive account of backward-willing freedom (Loeb 2010, 179 ff., 220–26). Stern is most skeptical about my interpretive emphasis on the role of Plato’s Socrates in Nietzsche’s Z . He claims that I misread GS 340–42 and that this misreading compromises my ensuing interpretation of the “Vision and Riddle” chapter in Z. On the basis of these assessments, Stern concludes that my study’s general evidentiary standards are inferior and idiosyncratic. I will discuss each of these points in turn. In the first place, Stern’s claim that I have misread GS 340–42 is overstated. For he criticizes only my continuous reading of GS 340–41 and does not consider at all my very closely related interpretation of GS 342. This is an important omission because I read the three sections as a narrative and philosophical unit: Socrates in GS 340 is contrasted with Zarathustra in GS 342, and this contrast is mediated by the doctrine of eternal recurrence

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in GS 341. Without GS 342, I would not have looked for a continuity between GS 340 and GS 341, and I would not have carried my exegesis of GS 340–41 over into the “Vision and Riddle” chapter of Z . Stern’s critique of my unified reading of GS 340–41 consists of three points. The first has to do with my observation that GS 341 includes an odd vagueness in the timing of the demon’s announcement, namely as arriving some day or night (eines Tages oder Nachts ). I suggest that this vagueness may refer to the idea that death can come at any time and that it constitutes textual evidence for reading GS 341 as continuing the theme of the moment of death introduced in GS 340. Having selected this particular suggestion, Stern lets loose a flurry of strong critical comments: he says that interpretive claims like this are rather weak, he questions my tendency to assume that readers are on board with these kinds of inferences, he asks readers to decide for themselves what standards of evidence they should adopt instead of mine, and he then later refers back to this case as calling into question my evidentiary standard with respect to later interpretive claims. That is a lot to hang on a single sentence, and it seems to me that Stern has a tendency to exaggerate the force of his criticisms. In any case, Stern fails to see that this particular interpretive claim is part of a larger argument in which I canvass the various GS 341 temporal references in order to show that they point back to the GS 340 concern with Socrates’s moment of death. Stern also fails to see that this larger argument has a structure in which I first emphasize Nietzsche’s use of the word Augenblick in both GS 340 and GS 341 and only afterward turn to mention five other potentially confirming temporal clues—one of which is the vagueness of day or night. Finally, Stern doesn’t see that this larger argument is followed by a second argument that includes a canvassing of poetic death imagery in GS 341. In this second argument, I point out that the image of moonlight does not f it a literal interpretation of eines Tages oder Nachts. In short, Stern simply extracts a single interpretive claim out of a carefully elaborated argumentative structure and then dismisses its isolated evidentiary value. He further reveals his selective and reductive exegetical approach when he says that my discussion cites many other such pieces of evidence and then alludes to Wittgenstein’s joke about two copies of the same newspaper not providing twice the evidence. Stern’s second critical point concerns my observation that in GS 340 Nietzsche seems to express some doubt about what caused Socrates to loosen his tongue at the moment of death: “War es nun der Tod oder das Gift oder die Frömmigkeit oder die Bosheit — irgend Etwas löste ihm in jenem Augenblick die Zunge und er sagte: ‘Oh Kriton, ich bin dem Asklepios einen Hahn schuldig.’ ” I suggest that Nietzsche is thereby inviting his readers to consider that the GS 341 demon’s revelation of eternal recurrence was actually the true cause. Stern finds this suggestion unconvincing and wonders again about my standards of evidence. But he also once again strips my interpretive claim of its argumentative context. Stern focuses on my phrase “we may infer” and says that I interpret Nietzsche

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as inviting us to conclude, with certainty, about the true f ifth cause. I don’t actually do this. Immediately after suggesting this possible inference, I go on to argue that it is supported by three important pieces of textual evidence (Loeb 2010, 37). Stern doesn’t mention any of these supporting items or even seem to notice that I go on to support my inference, thus leaving the impression that I am simply making what he later calls an interpretive leap of faith, that is, a rapid, speculative, and idiosyncratic interpretive move. Stern’s third and final critical point is according to him the most decisive. According to Stern, and contrary to my unified reading of GS 340–41, Nietzsche could not have been suggesting that Socrates experienced a deathbed revelation of being trapped within life’s eternal recurrence. This is because the dying Socrates asked for a sacrifice to be made to the god of health, and this meant that he believed he had gotten better from the sickness that is life, that is, escaped it. My response is that Stern is here (and also in 2009, 104) assuming Plato’s interpretation of Socrates’s dying words: they were truthful words uttered in a calm and peaceful state of mind; they were meant genuinely, sincerely, and piously; and they were meant to convey the actual reality in which Socrates found himself. As I argue in my study, however, Nietzsche’s whole point in GS 340 is to expose and undermine Plato’s interpretation of Socrates’s dying words. Socrates, he writes, had lived his entire life with a cheerful and stoic mien, while all along concealing his inmost feeling of suffering from life. But, then, at the moment of death, something happened to make him loosen his tongue and reveal this inmost feeling. Socrates’s last words, Nietzsche claims, were actually an expression of his suffering state of mind, and they demonstrated his sudden despair and abandonment of his lifelong cheerful and stoic demeanor. These last words were veiled (verhüllten ) and not what they seemed. They were actually blasphemous, ridiculous, terrible, and lacking in an ounce of magnanimity. What Socrates intended with these last words was revenge on the life from which he suffered, and he accomplished this by communicating to his disciples a veiled and coded condemnation of life. According to Nietzsche, then, Socrates’s dying words did not mean that he believed he had gotten better from the sickness of life and they did not reflect his experience of a final death or escape to a better afterlife. I conclude that Stern has not shown the failure of my unified reading of GS 340–42 and that he is therefore not entitled to dismiss it as part of the foundation for my subsequent reading of the “Vision and Riddle” chapter in Z . His brief summary of this subsequent reading is very inadequate, so I would ask readers to look for themselves at my actual argument in chapter 3. I find it interesting that Stern expresses some embarrassment about his discussion having gotten a little too hung up on the level of “minor” detail at which my study is working. Actually, he didn’t get hung up nearly enough on this level, but in any case his reluctance dovetails with Del Caro’s complaint that my reading of Z is hyperclose and perhaps too close. I am reminded yet again that many

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Nietzsche scholars have not yet begun to think of their interpretive work as requiring the kind of slow, patient, careful, detailed philological attention that Nietzsche himself requested (D P:5; GM P:8) and that is completely standard in the rest of the history of philosophy. Del Caro is also skeptical of the intertextual connections I find between Nietzsche’s Z and Plato’s Phaedo. But he doesn’t address the extensive evidence I present showing such connections in GS 340–42 and in the “Vision and Riddle” chapter of Z. Nor does he present any evidence of his own to substantiate his preferred connections to Christ in these same passages. In addition, my study shows how eternal recurrence functions in the first instance as a counterdoc- trine to Plato’s afterlife doctrine, not to Christ’s. The reason is that Nietzsche regards Christianity as a Platonism for the masses and thinks that Christianity’s afterlife doctrine was derived from Plato’s—which itself was conceived as a means to conceal and falsify the Dionysian mystery cult doctrine of eternal recurrence (Loeb 2010, 38–41, 82–83). Finally, as for Del Caro’s objection to my claim that Zarathustra uses Socratic reasoning against his Socratic archenemy in the “Vision and Riddle” chapter, Del Caro (2002, 265) himself emphasizes Nietzsche’s decision to call his protagonist “Zarathustra” in order to show him using Zoroaster’s own method of truthfulness against him. So why should he object to my interpretive claim that Nietzsche uses the same literary strategy with Socrates?

Readers, Disciples, and Philosophers

In his response to my study, Del Caro expresses his conviction that Nietzsche’s Z , for all its riddles and hermetic qualities, is an open book, one of the most open books of all time, and should be read as such. So he worries that my focus on solving the riddles of Z has a closed and closing tendency. As I understand his discussion, this worry seems to be motivated by three separate claims: that there are necessarily different solutions for different readers of Z , that discipleship is rejected in Z , and that works of art like Z do not admit of philosophical resolution. I will discuss each of these points in turn. In the first place, Del Caro seems to object to my claim to offer correct solutions to the riddles of Z . With his background in Germanist studies and literary criticism, Del Caro seems to subscribe to the assumptions of reader-response theory. He describes Z as an interactive sounding board that encourages an active relationship between the text and its readers, and he cites his essay “Facing Zarathustra,” which concludes with a classic reader-response manifesto: “Instead, in the space that opens up between Nietzsche’s inspiration and the critics’ speaking back to Zarathustra, a transforming image of Zarathustra shapes and reshapes itself, assuming new meaning for each new critical inquiry, and adopting new features as they are

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added on by the critics” (2002, 283). Del Caro’s point, then, is that my interpretive approach closes down the open space in which other readers can interact with Z in their own and different ways. As I understand Del Caro’s position, he seems to think that this is how Nietzsche himself intended his text to be read. For other reader-response theorists who deny the relevance or even intelligibility of any concept of authorial intention, this is an untenable position. Yet Del Caro alludes often and in detail to Nietzsche’s authorial intentions and often praises my study for having more correctly understood these intentions. I don’t think that Del Caro can have it both ways: either there is simply no correct interpretation of Nietzsche’s book, only different readers’ responses to it; or there is a correct interpretation, and in order to find it we need to postulate Nietzsche’s authorial intentions and attempt to follow his hermeneutic instructions. My study follows the second of these interpretive strategies, but it seems to me that Del Caro inconsistently tries to follow them both. Of course, it’s possible for Del Caro to argue that Nietzsche himself intended his text’s meanings to be constructed by his readers. But, then, is this intention something that could not have been constructed by his book’s readers? And, besides, what is Del Caro’s evidence for ascribing such an authorial intention to Nietzsche? By contrast, when I strive in my study correctly to understand Z , I am pursu- ing a hermeneutic strategy that Nietzsche himself recommends for all his works and especially for his favorite book, Z . This general recommendation becomes especially clear toward the end of his career when he says at the start of EH that it is his duty to exclaim, “Hear me! for I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else!” and when he signs off at the end of this same work, “Have I been understood?” As applied to Z , this recommendation is also especially clear in EH when he chastises scholarly oxen for misunderstand- ing his book’s concept of the superhuman; wonders why he hasn’t been asked about the name “Zarathustra”; spends page after page explaining the origin, meanings, and significance of his book; bemoans the lack of good readers for his book; and despairs over how long it will take before his book is properly understood. I think it is very difficult to square this extremely defensive and possessive authorial stance with Del Caro’s suggestion that Nietzsche intended readers of Z to construct their own individual meanings. For example, why aren’t scholarly oxen entitled to their Darwinist reading of the Übermensch ? Nietzsche’s answer is, because they are wrong, and it seems to me that we need to heed these kinds of instructions. This brings me to Del Caro’s worry about what he calls my elevation of Zarathustra’s disciples. He is right to say that I attribute a far greater presence and importance to the disciples than any other scholar to date. And he is right to say that I part company with scholars like Robert Pippin who aim to downplay this presence and significance. Del Caro’s reason for thinking that Nietzsche

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has Zarathustra speak against the cultivation of disciples is the farewell speech at the end of part I: Now I go alone, my disciples. You too go now, alone. Thus I want it. Verily, I counsel you: go away from me and resist Zarathustra! And even better: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he deceived you. […] One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil. And why do you not want to pluck at my wreath? You revere me; but what if your reverence tumbles one day? Beware lest a statue slay you! You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what matters Zarathustra? You are my believers—but what matter all believers! You had not yet sought yourselves: and you found me. Thus do all believers; that is why all faith amounts to so little. Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves[….] ( Z:I “Gift-Giving Virtue” 3) Del Caro doesn’t actually cite or quote this farewell speech, but his remarks allude to it (see also Pippin 2006, xxxii). Having identified the readers of Z with Zarathustra’s disciples, Del Caro says that we are not supposed to follow him so much as we are supposed to use him to find ourselves. Hence, he claims, if we accept my study’s elevation of Zarathustra’s disciples, we will lose the sense in which Nietzsche’s book is an interactive sounding board, an active relationship between text and reader in which readers are challenged to overcome Zarathustra and his teachings. I agree with Del Caro that Nietzsche intended the readers of his book to iden- tify with Zarathustra’s disciples (Jünger ). But I think that he, Pippin, and many others misinterpret the above quote. Zarathustra is not criticizing discipleship as such, only false or inauthentic discipleship. Because his students have not yet sought themselves, they have not yet become self-directed. So far they have needed to receive all their direction from Zarathustra, and this means that they are still mere believers, the faithful, or ones who have faith ( Gläubige ). They revere him, have faith ( Glaube) in him, and unquestioningly accept whatever he teaches them ( Z :II “Way of the Creator”). So Zarathustra instructs them to leave him so that they can find themselves and become self-directed. He instructs them to resist him, to become suspicious of him, and to become more than just his pupils. Notice, however, that Zarathustra instructs his disciples to leave him and stop idolizing him and that their true devotion to him will be demonstrated by their ability to follow this instruction. Notice also that the reason Zarathustra instructs them to do this is that mere reverence and faith amount to so little and cannot be counted on. Mere reverence, he suggests, will eventually fade, and when it does, his believers will become cowardly apostates. Teachers like Zarathustra should therefore not bind their hearts to such mere

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believers ( Z:III “Apostates” 1). But those who pass this test will find even more reason than before to attach themselves to him, they will self-directedly choose to follow him, and their loyalty will be dependable and really matter. These will be his rightful companions, the ones whose obeying ears will listen to him (Z :IV “The Sign”). These will be the true and genuine disciples upon whom Zarathustra will bestow his true love. This is why Zarathustra goes on to say in the same passage (though this is usually not quoted): “and only when you have all denied me will I return to you. Truly, my brothers, with different eyes shall I then seek my lost ones; with a different love shall I then love you. And once again you shall become my friends and children of a single hope.” And, indeed, in the following chapter, at the start of part II, after years have gone by, Zarathustra realizes that his teachings are in danger, and he rushes out to reclaim his disciples. The disciples’ denial of Zarathustra is thus merely a first step on the way to their further and complete initiation at his hands in part II and also, I argue, at the end of part III (Loeb 2010, 128–38). I think that this fuller and more accurate exegesis of Zarathustra’s farewell speech justifies my study’s elevation of Zarathustra’s disciples. Of course, Nietzsche’s book can still be interpreted as an interactive sounding board, as an active relationship between text and reader. But contrary to Del Caro, Nietzsche is not asking his book’s readers to use Zarathustra to find themselves or to overcome Zarathustra and his teachings. Instead, Nietzsche is challenging his readers to find themselves and to question and resist what they are reading, so that eventually they will be in a better position to understand and follow Zarathustra and his teachings. Del Caro’s other reason for protesting my elevation of Zarathustra’s disciples is that he thinks I have a tendency to make them into religious disciples. This was certainly not my intent, and besides my references to Nietzsche’s pervasive New Testament allusions, I am not sure why Del Caro thinks this. Just before citing Zarathustra’s same farewell speech, Nietzsche comments that Zarathustra does not preach or demand faith and that Zarathustra says precisely the opposite of what some sage, saint, or world-redeemer would say in the same situation ( EH P:4). This shows, I think, that Nietzsche identifies religious disciples as believers (as those who have faith) and that he imagines Zarathustra’s true disciples in completely nonreligious terms. In the last chapter of Ecce Homo , Nietzsche says that he himself is no founder of religions, that he doesn’t want any believers, and that he is too malicious to have faith in himself ( EH “Destiny” 1). Del Caro also raises the related question of whether I think Nietzsche conceived eternal recurrence as a religious doctrine. But I don’t agree with his suggestion that Nietzsche planned to have the test of eternal recurrence take the place of faith, and I certainly don’t think that Nietzsche intended eternal recurrence to be accepted on faith. Instead, I argue, Nietzsche believed that we could come to know the truth of his doctrine by recovering our suppressed memories and

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I claim that the plot of his book turns upon the crucial event of Zarathustra’s own such awakening and enlightenment. I do not say that Zarathustra teaches eternal recurrence to his disciples or that they somehow come to have faith in eternal recurrence on the basis of his teaching. On the contrary, I argue that Zarathustra deliberately refrains from teaching his disciples eternal recurrence and instead teaches this only to his own soul. Zarathustra’s true, self-directed disciples must wait until they are strong enough to recover their own buried memories of life’s recurrence and thereby teach themselves this mightiest of all thoughts (Loeb 2010, 141–44). The last reason Del Caro seems to offer for saying that my study has a closing tendency is that it takes a philosophical approach to Nietzsche’s work—in the sense that it seeks to clarify and reveal what is hidden in this work. But this, he claims, is to ignore Z ’s status as a work of art and literature and to ignore its effectiveness in steering a course different from philosophy and liberating its readers from the philosophers. This would be a significant objection, especially since a chief aim of my study is to show the integration of Z ’s literary and philosophical aspects. However, the source of this objection is Pippin’s distinction between literature as preserving hidden meanings and philosophy as purporting to reveal what is hidden. And I am not at all persuaded that Nietzsche objected to such a philosophical task. Indeed, I would argue that Nietzsche spent most of his philosophical career trying to reveal what was hidden. I would also argue that Pippin (2010, xiv–xv) is projecting back into Nietzsche’s book a twentieth- century complaint about philosophy that derives from the later Wittgenstein. But Wittgenstein was a fundamentally Christian thinker who objected to philosophy as a prideful enterprise and he should be regarded as Nietzsche’s antipode. I also think that Pippin and Del Caro are projecting back into Nietzsche’ book a twentieth-century concern with literary meaning. This becomes evident, I think, when Pippin claims that the text “On Parables,” by that “Nietzschean” author Kafka, might serve as a commentary on the antiphilosophical point of the literary aspects of Z . Pippin argues that Nietzsche’s parabolic and highly figurative language is an attempt “to resist incorporation into traditional philosophy, to escape traditional assumptions about the writing of philosophy” (2006, xii). But the far plainer and simpler truth is that this language is modeled upon that of the Bible, the most famous and analyzed book in Western history. Like Jesus in the New Testament, Zarathustra does not simply explain his complex and profound teachings but instead uses metaphorical, parabolic, and figurative language to help his disciples understand these teaching in terms of their ordinary experience. In the book he called a fifth Gospel, Nietzsche shows Zarathustra teaching by means of naturalistic images, figures, and metaphors because this is what Jesus did. And I would argue that Nietzsche wants his meanings to be found just as much as the authors of the biblical Gospels wanted their meanings to be found.

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Memento Mori

I will close with my response to Del Caro’s misgivings about my study’s focus on the themes of death and suicide. Del Caro feels that the focus of my study is morbid and ruins the joyful, salutary, and life-affirming aspects of Nietzsche’s book. According to Del Caro, Nietzsche was a spokesman for life and therefore chose to dwell on life instead of death, on how to live instead of how to die. This is why he invented a protagonist who, unlike Socrates and Jesus, lives for his beliefs instead of dying for them. So he thinks that I have assimilated Nietzsche too much to the Platonic and Christian life-denying approaches by writing about Zarathustra’s death in a way that closely parallels the deaths of Socrates and Jesus. He also claims that I have transformed Nietzsche from an antiromantic to a death-seeking romantic by drawing on Wagnerian motifs that support my thesis regarding Zarathustra’s death. Since I claim that Nietzsche’s Z is a book about death, I certainly do think that he had in mind Wagner’s ideas about death, just as he had in mind those of Empedocles, the Dionysian cults, Plato, the New Testament, Goethe, Schopenhauer, and so on. But I argue that Nietzsche aimed to oppose and reverse most of these ideas, especially Wagner’s romantic death-longing ( Todessehnsucht [Loeb 2010, 171–72]). There are two background assumptions in Del Caro’s critique that I find simplistic and contradicted by his own commentary elsewhere. The first is that Nietzsche regards any celebration of death or suicide as morbid, life denying, or romantic. However, in his definitive account of romanticism ( GS 370), Nietzsche argues that everything depends on the source of this celebration—whether this is suffering from a superabundance of life or suffering from an impoverishment of life. The former, he says, leads to a life-affirming celebration, while the latter leads to a life-denying celebration. In my study I argue that Nietzsche depicts the postconvalescent Zarathustra’s great longing for death, his self-sacrifice, and his deathbed celebration as all having their source in his overripe suffering from a superabundance of life. These are therefore all life-affirming phenomena. Del Caro himself admits this need for what Nietzsche calls “a dual interpretation” (zwiefachen Interpretation ) when he (1989, 223–32) writes elsewhere that Nietzsche’s philosophy of life affirmation requires him to posit an antiromantic Dionysian notion of death that will liberate human beings from morbidity. Del Caro’s second assumption is that any close juxtaposition of Nietzsche’s ideas with those of his antagonists has a tendency to assimilate the former to the latter. But Nietzsche baptizes his protagonist with the name “Zarathustra” so as to show his self-overcoming ( EH “Destiny” 3); he uses Socrates’s own dia- lectical weapons against him in the “Vision and Riddle” chapter; and he inverts Wagner’s Parsifal story about compassion in part IV (Hollinrake 1982, 121–71). As Del Caro himself emphasizes elsewhere, one of Nietzsche’s favorite stylistic

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strategies is to mimic the words, thoughts, symbols, plots, themes, and methods of his opponents in order to subject these to criticism, parody, reversal, inver- sion, and self-cancellation. I think that my study of Z provides compelling evidence that he applied this same strategy to his opponents’ treatments of death and suicide. So the question is why talented and insightful interpreters like Del Caro have not recognized this before. His reason is telling and probably shared by others: he has always admired Nietzsche as a spokesman of life, so he was disinclined to find such thanatic themes in Nietzsche’s favorite and most life- affirming book. Nevertheless, as I mentioned above, Del Caro acknowledges elsewhere that Nietzsche posited a new and life-affirming concept of death, and in several places he explains this concept by closely juxtaposing it with the Christian concept of death. In particular, Del Caro writes about Nietzsche’s contrast between “the different kind of martyrdom each [Dionysus and Christ] represents”—that is, between the dismemberment death of Dionysus and the crucifixion death of Christ: “In this juxtaposition one recognizes Nietzsche’s vitalistic constant: abundance and strength are symptoms of ascending vitality, so that the death symbolized by the dismembered Dionysus is an expression of lust for more of this life, while on the other hand, paucity and weakness as symptoms of declining life result in a death that redeems us of this life” (1998, 82; see also 1989, 229). Leaving aside these background assumptions, Del Caro points to the more precise source of his misgivings when he mentions Nietzsche’s concept of memento vivere ( HL 8). For Del Caro, this concept, with its opposition to the Christian memento mori , is the key to understanding Nietzsche’s “reorientation toward death and dying” (2004,70) as well as his critique of the romantics’ morbid preoccupation with death and dying (1989, 223–28). As Del Caro writes: “There can be little opportunity to practice immanent living if the hour of one’s death is regarded with anticipation and reverence while one’s entire life is lived in the shadow of this moment…. Nietzsche robs the concept of death of any dignity, of any power, and he so diminishes its capacity to intimidate and haunt humans that one could even say death is not a factor anymore, or, not the factor anymore” (2004, 70–71). But this analysis conflicts with my study’s claim that Nietzsche places an extraordinary emphasis on the moment of death—as the site of a world-historic agon between Socrates and Zarathustra, as the Augenblick when eternal recurrence is revealed, and as the occasion of Zarathustra’s third spiritual transformation and backward-willing affirmation. On my reading, that is, Nietzsche devises a new kind of memento mori and invests the concept of death with great dignity and power. Death may not be the factor anymore, but it is certainly a crucial factor, and Nietzsche even seems to have enhanced the capacity of death to intimidate and haunt life-impoverished Socratic types. In defense of my reading, I would note first of all that Del Caro’s interpretive approach derives from a single brief passage in Nietzsche’s early essay on history.

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Del Caro (1989, 223) asserts that Nietzsche never changed this position, but he doesn’t offer any textual evidence to support this assertion, and my study of Z offers a lot to contradict it. A more balanced interpretation shows that in his later career Nietzsche developed a dual interpretation even with respect to the hour of death. Outside of GS and Z , the strongest evidence for this is in Twilight of the Idols, where Nietzsche contrasts, on the one hand, the hour of death that was turned by Christianity into a wretched and revolting comedy and, on the other hand, the hour of death that is freely chosen and accomplished at the right time, brightly and cheerfully, amid children and witnesses, with a true farewell that includes a summation of the life, achievements, and aspira- tions (TI “Skirmishes” 36). On my reading of Nietzsche’s book, the second of these scenarios is precisely how he depicts Zarathustra’s hour of death (Loeb 2010, 136). Indeed, Nietzsche’s emphasis on the free choice involved in planning the hour of death shows that his dual interpretation extends even to the concept of suicide. For having declared that so-called natural death is actually a kind of suicide, Nietzsche contrasts the coward’s suicide performed at the wrong time with the courageous, timely suicide performed out of the love of life ( TI “Skirmishes” 36; see also Loeb 2008, 167 ff.). Against this rebuttal, Del Caro would most likely point to his further claim that Nietzsche’s later doctrine of eternal recurrence is a renewed and stronger expression of his early critique of memento mori. According to Del Caro, Nietzsche posited this later doctrine in order “to shift focus from morbid anticipation and its resulting ‘cure,’ that is, the hereafter, to the here and now,” and in order to vanquish death by showing that it is “but a moment, dissolved in the eternal cycle”: “Death is only a moment in a human life as long as there is no threat of punishment in hell and no promise of reward in heaven” (1989, 227–28). Given eternal recurrence, death no longer serves as “the threshold to a higher life or immortality” or as “a catalyst or trigger for the alleged experience of the afterlife” (Del Caro 2004, 70–71). I agree of course with Del Caro’s claim that Nietzsche thought eternal recurrence excluded any possible hereafter, heaven or hell, or higher life. Zarathustra states this explicitly when he says that he will come again, not to a new life or to a better life but to the identical and self-same life (Z :III “Convalescent” 2). Hence I agree with Del Caro as well that Nietzsche believed his doctrine excluded the concept of death as a threshold to a higher life or disembodied immortality, or as a catalyst or trigger for an experience of the afterlife, or as embodying the threat of punishment in hell or the promise of reward in heaven. But it doesn’t follow from any of these points that eternal recurrence dissolves death in the eternal cycle or converts death into a moment just like any other moment in a human life. As GS 341 makes clear, an eternally recurring life still retains a succession and sequence ( Reihe und Folge), and death still is the very final moment in this sequence before the entire identical sequence repeats itself. To say that this

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very final moment is just like any other moment is like saying that the ending of any musical composition, which can be replayed identically, is just like any other moment in the composition. But Nietzsche’s analogy to a music box that eternally repeats its tune ( GS 109) and his emphasis on musical directions, “ Noch Eimal !” ( Z :III “Vision and Riddle” 1; Z :IV “Sleepwalker’s Song” 1, 12) and da capo ( BGE 56), show that he strongly privileges this particular moment as signifying the finale of the entire sequence. Thus, even in an eternally recurring life, the moment of death is still a kind of threshold, although now into the recommencement of the same entire sequence and into an embodied immortality. In my study, I argue at length that this is the meaning of Nietzsche’s central riddle of the Thorweg Augenblick (Loeb 2010, 46–69). In addition, the moment of death is still a unique catalyst or trigger for the experience of an identical afterlife. In my study, I show how Nietzsche emphasizes the revelatory qual- ity of this experience, as well as the crushing threat this experience can hold for those who are life-impoverished (like Socrates) and the joyful reward this experience can hold for those who are overflowing with life (like Zarathustra). Indeed, given my account of the role memory plays with respect to the moment of death within an eternally recurring life, I would say that Nietzsche discovered a new and literal concept of memento mori that serves to complement his earlier concept of memento vivere . I will mention one last problem with Del Caro’s claim that eternal recurrence is supposed to vanquish death. Like Rosen, Stern, and most other commentators, Del Caro (2004, 230–54) interprets eternal recurrence as Nietzsche’s ideal of life affirmation and is disinclined to take seriously the metaphysical or cosmological dimensions of this thought. Also like most other commentators, Del Caro (1989, 232; 2004, 250) thinks that Nietzsche is merely using eternal recurrence as a rhetorical device to encourage authentic living. By contrast, I argue that Nietzsche came to believe in the truth of cosmological eternal recurrence. Thus, the reason he recommends the affirmation of life’s eternal recurrence is that he believes life really does eternally recur (and necessarily so): to reject the eternal recurrence of life is therefore to reject life itself. But this means that Del Caro and others who think that Nietzsche did not believe this—who claim that Nietzsche believed death is final (Del Caro 1989, 228–32)—are actually attributing to him a formula or test of life denial, that is, of wanting life to be other than it is. Since Del Caro thinks that Nietzsche actually believed that death is final and merely employed eternal recurrence as a rhetorical device to shift the focus away from the hereafter, the question arises as to why Nietzsche didn’t simply deny the existence of an afterlife. Why did he go so much further and teach that life eternally recurs? One critical answer, proposed by many and debated by Del Caro (1989, 228–29) himself, is this: although Nietzsche knew that death is final, he simply couldn’t accept this fact, and so he posited life’s repetition so as to vanquish death’s finality and erase the horror of nonbeing.

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On my reading, by contrast, Nietzsche certainly did believe that life eternally recurs. But this means that he was not in any way using this doctrine as a rhetorical device—not in order to encourage life affirmation, not in order to shift the focus away from the hereafter, and not in order to vanquish death. Instead, he argued, eternal recurrence is true, therefore there is no afterlife. But also, he argued: eternal recurrence is true, therefore death is not final. Thus, contrary to Del Caro and most scholars, Nietzsche did not see the claims of afterlife and final death as opposed to each other. The afterlife is not false because final death is true; rather, both are false because eternal recurrence is true. According to Nietzsche, it is no coincidence that Socrates in the Apology is equally happy to think of death as the entry into Hades or as the start of an eternal dreamless sleep. Those who are life-impoverished, like Socrates, see both the afterlife and final death as welcome alternatives to an eternally recurring life. Or rather, as I argue in my study, Nietzsche claimed the following: although the life-impoverished remember that life eternally recurs, they simply cannot accept this fact, and so they posit both the afterlife and final death so as to vanquish life’s eternal recurrence and erase the horror of having to relive their lives for all eternity. Against these falsifiers and life-deniers, Nietzsche envisioned a future philosopher who is so overflowing with life that he is able to accept, affirm, embrace, love, and wed life just as she is: “Oh how should I not lust after eternity and after the wedding ring of rings—the ring of recurrence!” ( Z:III “Seven Seals”).

University of Puget Sound [email protected]

N OTES I am grateful to Christa Davis Acampora, Jonathan Cohen, Mark Jenkins, and David Tinsley for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. 1. In my citation of Nietzsche’s works, I have consulted W. Kaufmann’s translations of Z (New York: Penguin, 1978) and GS (New York: Random House, 1974). Translations of citations from KSA and KSB are my own.

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Krell, David Farrell. Postponements: Woman, Sensuality, and Death in Nietzsche . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. Lampert, Laurence. Nietzsche’s Teaching: An Interpretation of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Loeb, Paul S. The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. ———. “Suicide, Meaning, and Redemption.” In Nietzsche on Time and History , ed. Dries, Manuel 163– 90. New York: Walter de Gruyter Press, 2008. Nehamas, Alexander. “For Whom the Sun Shines: A Reading of Also Sprach Zarathustra .” In Friedrich Nietzsche: Also Sprach Zarathustra , ed. Gerhardt, Volker 165– 90. Berlin: Akademie Verlag GmbH, 2000. Pippin, Robert B. “Introduction.” In Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None , ed. Del Caro, Adrian and Pippin, Robert B. trans. Del Caro, Adrian viii– xxxv. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ———. “Irony and Affirmation in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra .” In Nietzsche’s New Seas: Explorations in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics , ed. Gillespie, Michael Allen and Strong, Tracy 45– 71. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. ———. Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Rosen, Stanley. The Ancients and the Moderns: Rethinking Modernity . South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2002. ———. The Limits of Analysis . South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2000. ———. The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ———. “Nietzsche’s Double Rhetoric: Which Nihilism?” In Nietzsche, Nihilism, and the Philosophy of the Future , ed. Metzger, Jeffrey 1– 19. London: Continuum, 2009. Schaberg, William H. The Nietzsche Canon: A Publication History and Bibliography . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Stern, Tom. “Nietzsche, Freedom, and Writing Lives.” Arion 17, no. 1 (2009): 85– 110.

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